8. Public health scientists and practitioners should avoid conflicts-of-interest, and any unavoidable conflicts-of-interest must be clearly stated.
"Hillsdale [College] is a conservative Christian institution with ties to the Trump administration. And the scholars behind the academy — Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff — are connected to right-wing dark money attacking public health measures." (https://www.levernews.com/how-the-koch-network-hijacked-the-...)
I think it's fine to do retrospectives. What I used to call "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly". What works, what didn't, what would you change. A pandemic is a crisis. Of course mistakes will be made. Learn and do better next time.
Attachment to notions like "herd immunity" wrt to this coronavirus is just nutty. I'm just a noob, but my impression is that this coronavirus mutates so fast that herd immunity isn't likely.
I'm okay with comparing prevalence of mask wearing with outcomes. There are always tradeoffs. Learning from this experience will helps us better model public health responses for future pandemics.
Lastly, with today's charged discourse, I utterly dismiss any missive that does not encourage vaccination as partisan concern trolling, or worse.
You know, we could attack The Declaration Of Independence -- because we don't like any of its writers -- Thomas Jefferson? He owned slaves! John Adams? He was affiliated with that seditious Washington guy! Benjamin Franklin? He wore a stupid hat! <g>
We could attack The Constitution in the same way!
Steps:
1) Choose a random writer or signatory.
2) Find the one unvirtuous act (in a whole lifetime of more-or-less virtuous acts!) -- that the public is most aware of.
3) Use that act to frame that historical writer or signatory -- in the most unvirtuous light possible.
4) Now, because the writer or signatory is framed in this way, that creates (by implication) -- the idea that the document is "bad" in some way -- when in fact it is not!
In fact, we can do the same thing to all the great historic documents of all time -- for that matter!
The Constitution Of The United Kingdom, The Magna Carta, The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights -- the list goes on and on!
Just attack one or more authors -- and you're attacking the document!
Harry Potter? Harry Potter sucks because J.K. Rowling did some small unvirtuous act in her youth, and that makes the book bad!
Star Wars? Star Wars sucks because I heard that George Lucas stole a piece of candy when he was 12! <g>
Your Math Teacher told you that 2+2=4? Well, that's wrong because that Math Teacher is a bad person because of some small unvirtuous act they may have committed (it's alleged, not proven!) -- 50 or 60 years ago! (I think it involved not thanking a student for an apple, or something like that, at least that's the way it was reported to me by a newspaper who reported it from TV news article who reported it from another newspaper who reported it from a guy who claimed it to be true while buying some donuts in midtown Manhattan...)
It reminds me of that quote from Billy Madison...
(You know, the one that begins with "Congratulations Mr. Madison"... and ends with... "Everyone in the room is now dumber..." <g>)
Anyway, interested parties may wish to read the following:
8. Public health scientists and practitioners should avoid conflicts-of-interest, and any unavoidable conflicts-of-interest must be clearly stated.
"Hillsdale [College] is a conservative Christian institution with ties to the Trump administration. And the scholars behind the academy — Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff — are connected to right-wing dark money attacking public health measures." (https://www.levernews.com/how-the-koch-network-hijacked-the-...)