In the beginning, I think everybody was legitimately scared. Scared of the images and reports from China. Scared of the unknown. We were dealing with a cousin of SARS and MERS. Public Health was ramped up and a vaccine moonshot was launched on an ocean of money.
We made mistakes. People died. But some sectors of government became too concerned with "keepin' up the skeer". Absolute power does corrupt. And depending on where it was at, some facilities became very fond of the COVID diagnosis on the chart and the extra $$ that brought. Hospitals that were struggling from procedure cancellations were depending on COVID funds for their existence.
The vaccines, most of them, anyway, did work. At least partially. But by the time we got to the Delta variant, governments and public health couldn't pivot fast enough and they were incapable of transmitting more than one coherent message to the public.
And then the lies, clinical malpractice and pressure to conform began.
Early in the numbers coming in from Delta, they knew vaccine efficacy was going down. They also knew natural immunity was a factor in the severity of Delta, yet that data was not given to the public and was downplayed.
Treatments took a backseat to vaccines, even after it became evident the vaccines would not protect against the ever-increasing number of variants.
Speaking of treatments...Whether they worked or not, it's the first time I've seen physician's licenses officially threatened because of off-label use of drugs with relatively few and mild side effects.
In America, we still have CDC recommending vaccination of groups with extremely low mortality rates, where it has been shown the vaccine does more harm than good. Vaccine reccomendations that Europeans have akready abandoned.I
The American public was flat lied to about the origins of COVID. Anybody with a college biology class or two and a bit of common sense, knew the wet market theory was bullshit.
There are other points which can be made, but the biggest take away from our mistakes is the lack of trust the people have in their health agencies right now. Trust is a precious commodity and it was foolishly wasted.
