It's actually an immeasurable amount of hubris and ego that Collins has not moved into a cabin deep in the wood somewhere in self-imposed exile. I suppose when everyone around you tells you that you are right for decades to curry favor for funding it warps your mind.
I think what I find the most frustrating in public health officials is that they continue to insist that they had the best strategy and the failures were in how the public implemented them. They look at the continued waves of infections and think that the public didn't mask enough or lock down hard enough instead of considering that mask mandates and lockdowns don't work. Their answer is always to repeat what was done previously and failed. Kind of like the people who argue "Real communism has never been tried!"
The other frustration is that the insistence from public health officials that they were completely right fuels the extreme narratives on the public side about the COVID vaccine and vaccines in general.
My take: When confronted by their first big public health crisis, the team at NIH & CDC got together and decided on recommendations. They HAD to make recommendations - no choice. These were issued without reference to uncertainty, since that could let the public come to their own conclusions. CANNOT HAVE THAT! Therefore, any doubt about the recommendations had to be suppressed. Media, social suppression, yada yada yada, you know the rest. Continues to this day, no admission of consequences. However, final judgement rests with Trump & Biden. Both politicians and their enablers sought cover.
"My biggest disappointment with Dr Collins during the pandemic was his response to the Great Barrington Declaration"
Mine was his cover-up of the lab-leak theory. The lab-leak theory was a valid consideration, and still is. Sure it is based on circumstantial evidence, but there is more circumstantial evidence for the lab-leak theory than the zoonotic theory, and it is totally possible the virus occurred zoonotically and an animal with the zoonotic virus was in the lab, and the zoonotic virus escaped the lab. However, no missing link animal has been confirmed. The last speculation was racoon dogs, but the fact the bats were 900 miles away from Wuhan, and no one promoting the racoon dogs theory has tied the racoon dogs to the bat caves still makes things questionable. The fact the lab-leak was covered up remains.
I think the reason for the cover-up is the greatest question of the 21st century so far. Was Collins ordered from to cover it up? Did the cover-up originate from his level or below? Why did the cover-up happen? Was the cover-up just a noble lie? If so, what was the purpose of the noble lie? Quite possibly it was the concern that a severe anti-China blow-back would plunge the world into an economic depression, given how dependent the world economy is on China. But that should have been accompanied by much more aggressive reshoring, knowing no cover-up lasts forever. And while there was a lot of trumpeting about reshoring, it was mostly blather, as most of the the Fortune 500 just gave reshoring lip service and waited out pandemic before going all-in on China's manufacturing again. Sure Apple moved some iPhone production to India, and other companies moved some electronics assembly to Vietnam, but the anticipated mass moves of electronics assembly to Mexico did not happen.
“his insistence that everyone in charge was doing their best and had the best intentions” this is what he must tell himself in order to sleep at night
It's actually an immeasurable amount of hubris and ego that Collins has not moved into a cabin deep in the wood somewhere in self-imposed exile. I suppose when everyone around you tells you that you are right for decades to curry favor for funding it warps your mind.
I think what I find the most frustrating in public health officials is that they continue to insist that they had the best strategy and the failures were in how the public implemented them. They look at the continued waves of infections and think that the public didn't mask enough or lock down hard enough instead of considering that mask mandates and lockdowns don't work. Their answer is always to repeat what was done previously and failed. Kind of like the people who argue "Real communism has never been tried!"
The other frustration is that the insistence from public health officials that they were completely right fuels the extreme narratives on the public side about the COVID vaccine and vaccines in general.
My take: When confronted by their first big public health crisis, the team at NIH & CDC got together and decided on recommendations. They HAD to make recommendations - no choice. These were issued without reference to uncertainty, since that could let the public come to their own conclusions. CANNOT HAVE THAT! Therefore, any doubt about the recommendations had to be suppressed. Media, social suppression, yada yada yada, you know the rest. Continues to this day, no admission of consequences. However, final judgement rests with Trump & Biden. Both politicians and their enablers sought cover.
"My biggest disappointment with Dr Collins during the pandemic was his response to the Great Barrington Declaration"
Mine was his cover-up of the lab-leak theory. The lab-leak theory was a valid consideration, and still is. Sure it is based on circumstantial evidence, but there is more circumstantial evidence for the lab-leak theory than the zoonotic theory, and it is totally possible the virus occurred zoonotically and an animal with the zoonotic virus was in the lab, and the zoonotic virus escaped the lab. However, no missing link animal has been confirmed. The last speculation was racoon dogs, but the fact the bats were 900 miles away from Wuhan, and no one promoting the racoon dogs theory has tied the racoon dogs to the bat caves still makes things questionable. The fact the lab-leak was covered up remains.
I think the reason for the cover-up is the greatest question of the 21st century so far. Was Collins ordered from to cover it up? Did the cover-up originate from his level or below? Why did the cover-up happen? Was the cover-up just a noble lie? If so, what was the purpose of the noble lie? Quite possibly it was the concern that a severe anti-China blow-back would plunge the world into an economic depression, given how dependent the world economy is on China. But that should have been accompanied by much more aggressive reshoring, knowing no cover-up lasts forever. And while there was a lot of trumpeting about reshoring, it was mostly blather, as most of the the Fortune 500 just gave reshoring lip service and waited out pandemic before going all-in on China's manufacturing again. Sure Apple moved some iPhone production to India, and other companies moved some electronics assembly to Vietnam, but the anticipated mass moves of electronics assembly to Mexico did not happen.