‘Experts’ Continue to Spread Misinformation

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Commentary

In a stunning turn of events, the CDC may be deciding to update its guidance to the year 2021. In February 2024.

Not about masks, which unequivocally do not work to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, or any other respiratory virus for that matter. They, of course, won’t be acknowledging their many mistakes on COVID vaccines or school closures or lockdowns.

Instead their proposed changes center around very basic guidance on isolation due to a COVID infection. You’d think that a very mild alteration to a policy so small would be widely celebrated, considering most members of the general public have long since abandoned isolation guidelines anyway. But that assumption rests on a misguided understanding of how committed COVID extremists are to pushing endless panic. And some of those extremists happen to work at the New York Times (NYT).

According to the NYT, the CDC’s changes would simply put COVID in line with guidance for the flu or RSV infections.

“Under the proposed guidelines, Americans would no longer be advised to isolate for five days before returning to work or school. Instead, they might return to their routines if they have been fever free for at least 24 hours without medication, the same standard applied to the influenza and respiratory syncytial viruses,” the article states.

Sounds reasonable enough, right? Especially considering how few people are still paying attention to isolation rules anyway. Not to the COVID extremists, it doesn’t!

COVID Obsession Continues to Cause Harm

The NYT, and specifically article writer Apoorva Mandavilli who was last seen claiming that the push to investigate a potential lab leak is “racist,” quickly reached out to her preferred “experts” for support in calling for the CDC to rethink the potential change.

“But by focusing on the isolation policy for Covid,” she writes, “The agency is squandering an opportunity to foster better public health policies, several experts said.”

We mustn’t forget that if experts said it, it must be true! After all, the “experts” have had an unblemished track record of success since the start of the pandemic, right? And this is the unblemished NYT, so the “experts” she relies on surely must be the very best of the best.

“‘From a long-term public health perspective, I think this sets really an unfortunate precedent,’ said Dr. Syra Madad, senior director of the special pathogens program at NYC Health and Hospitals.”

“She urged the C.D.C. to ‘seize this opportunity to truly change how we respond to deadly epidemics and pandemics and advocate for national, guaranteed paid sick and family leave instead of caving into the easier option of eliminating the isolation period.’”

Ah yes, instead of accurately communicating risk and providing real-world guidance, the CDC should be advocating for political positions that have nothing to do with them. There may be a case to incorporate paid sick and family leave into more jobs, but it has nothing to do with the CDC and whether or not the current threat posed by COVID necessitates extended isolation.

But Mandavilli wasn’t done there.

Ignoring Reality—A Consistent COVID Problem

“‘There’s still a lot of people getting Covid and dying from Covid in the U.S.,’ said Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases physician at Emory University in Atlanta.”

This of course, ignores that there will always be people getting COVID and dying of COVID in the United States. It’s an endemic respiratory virus that can never be eliminated. Just like there are always many people getting the flu and dying of the flu every year in the United States. It’s an unfortunate fact of life, but it is a fact. An infectious disease physician ought to know that, and making hyperbolic statements about COVID is as unhelpful as it is disqualifying. And it’s also wrong.

Thankfully, the number of people dying “from COVID” in the United States has effectively never been lower. There will likely be some adjustment in the coming weeks, but each successive winter has brought fewer and fewer severe outcomes as population immunity grows. That may change in the future with waning and new variants, but if the CDC is still hesitant to “downgrade” the threat of COVID now, when will they ever?

“When you make a public health recommendation, it’s not supposed to be based on what people are already doing,” Titanji said, according to the NYT. “Instead, she added, the advice must be grounded in evidence.”

What more evidence do they want that COVID is no longer a serious public health threat?

Mask Obsession Never Ends

Sure enough, Mandavilli also found another expert who refuses to end their obsession with pointless universal masking.

“I do feel for people who now feel even less protected,” said director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, Jennifer Nuzzo.

“‘At the very least, the C.D.C. should advise that people who end isolation after one fever-free day also wear N95 masks or the equivalent when leaving their homes, she added.”

There is no evidence available anywhere that suggests wearing N95s would keep anyone safer from COVID infection or transmission. And there’s plenty of evidence to the opposite effect. Masks don’t work. Studies have shown it, observational data has shown it, healthcare data has shown it. Even when individuals are trained to use N95s correctly, they don’t. Not to mention that fit testing, the only possible method to ensure any possible efficacy, will never be realistic for the general public.

But Nuzzo and the extremists like her have ceaselessly made masks and permanent pandemic safetyism the center of their entire worldview. They seamlessly shifted from saying we ought to wear a cloth mask to wearing two cloth masks, to wearing a surgical mask, to wearing an N95, without any semblance of awareness or acceptance that none of it worked. Austria tried N95s, Germany tried N95s. It didn’t work in either country. Austria, in fact, wound up with one of the highest COVID infection rates on earth.

Reality and science don’t matter. What does matter is political posturing and “We need to keep everyone safe” hand-wringing, even if what they’re advocating for doesn’t actually keep anyone safe.

Reducing COVID isolation guidance is one of the few times the CDC has made sense and has actually followed evidence throughout this entire pandemic. So naturally the NYT and their politically aligned “experts” hate it.

Oh, and the best part? The NYT initially, and incorrectly, claimed that there were 1,500 people dying of COVID per day. In 2024.

At least Mandavilli won a Pulitzer Prize for her outstanding work covering COVID though, right?

Originally published on the author’s Substack, reposted from the Brownstone Institute

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.