We should listen to the science... unless it's wrong, then we should know it's wrong?

Former FDA Commissioner: ‘White House Leadership Failed by Health Officials’ Over COVID-19

Well, look, the public messaging wasn’t clear and consistent in the outset and could have been better at all levels of government. I think if you look back in February, and I think when history looks back, the biggest failing over that month was that we were- we were situationally blind. We had no idea where this virus was and wasn’t spreading. And so when it came time to have to shut down cities, rather than focus on the cities that were truly epidemic, like New York City, we went for a simultaneous shutdown order across the whole country when that was unnecessary now, in retrospect, because there were a lot of cities where the virus wasn’t spreading at that time and we could have focused on mitigation. But we had no diagnostic test in the field to screen people. And what CDC officials were relying on and telling the coronavirus task force was that there was no spread of coronavirus in the United States in February, they were telling them that because they were looking at what we call the influenza-like illness surveillance network, basically a surveillance network of who’s presenting to hospitals with flu-like symptoms. And they said that they’re seeing no spike in people presenting with respiratory symptoms, therefore, coronavirus must not be spreading. And they were adamant about that. I was talking to White House officials over this time period. They were adamant about that. And I suspect the president was being told as well that this virus wasn’t spreading in the United States. And that may have impacted what he did and didn’t say and his willingness to, you know, as he said, talk it down a little bit because he was of the perception that this was not spreading here in the United States. That really was the tragic mistake, not just that we didn’t have the information, but we were so confident in drawing conclusions off of what proved to be faulty information and incomplete information.

 

Look, I think in this respect, the White House leadership was failed by health officials. We did not have a diagnostic in the field, so we couldn’t screen for it. We should have. We should have started working on that in January. And we over-relied on a surveillance system that was built for flu and not for coronavirus without recognizing that it wasn’t going to be as sensitive at detecting coronavirus spread as it was for flu because the two viruses spread very differently. Those were two critical failings. Now, you could say, well, the president put those people in place, he’s responsible. You know, you can make second-order arguments around that. But I think ultimately the White House did not have the information they need to make decisions. The key function of agencies and the government is to provide policymakers with accurate, actionable information. The White House didn’t have it. And I had a lot of conversations with the White House over this time period because I was concerned it was spreading here, and I was pushing them on that. And they were- they were telling me over and over that they were hearing from top officials from the agencies that they were pretty confident that it wasn’t spreading here. I think when history looks back, that’s going to be a key moment. That’s what was going on over February.

Clearly it's difficult for any leadership to provide the correct guidance when they receive faulty information from those tasked to provide it. Now the argument here from the left is that everything should be blamed on the President, even if he wasn't providing the information messaging or the ones using that information to make decisions.  

In other words, the task force led by Dr Fauci, the CDC, and other health officials provided information that they believed to be correct. Governors across the nations made certain decisions based on that official health information. Some Governors relied on other medical advice that they got locally (as we did in Minnesota) either as a replacement or supplement. 

But if there is any sort of failure in this process... well we just blame the President. 

Clearly just because someone is elected President, they are not suddenly gifted with expertise in every area. Certainly a President would not be in a place to second guess an epidemiologist such as Dr Fauci on how best to handle a possible pandemic. He didn't know "more" than everyone else in January or February or even early March. He knew what he was being told. Nothing more and nothing less.  

To the degree that he went outside of the conventional thinking was to sign travel ban executive orders that turned out in retrospect to have saved thousands of lives. At no time, was a policy initiative or a task force recommendation overruled by the President because he believed it to be too hard. Moreover, the President was not responsible for what Governors decided to do or not to do. To the degree that the statistics work, those who went further in locking down and other initiatives did not show better results than those who were more lax.

As much as people are loath to admit it. We still don't know that much about the virus, our experts have not figured out a consistent manner to stop the spread, and there is much scientific disagreement about much of what we are recommending. Eg: the use of cloth masks has been determined not to help in keeping out the pollution from forest fires, but it is supposed to be helpful in keeping out the much smaller Covid particles? At the end of the day we have a bunch of people trying a bunch of things and not much of it seemed to mitigate nearly to the degree that we might have expected. This has been consistent world wide and cannot be blamed on any one person or even any one country.