Great point, but be careful throwing around "we", I was 5
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Replying to @VaccineJo @vlamers
I also think about how we were primed by the memories of 2009 H1N1, which generally had less of an impact than feared, and Ebola and Zika, which had limited impact in the global north.
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Replying to @VaccineJo @vlamers
Yeah this biased me too. I figured it would be like SARS where it might get some spread around the world but with low case numbers overall and good containment. And then everything went to shit
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Replying to @ENirenberg @vlamers
I also remember the bits of "good news" that were clung to at the beginning. "No evidence of human-to-human transmission!" (until there was), "No infections of HCWs!" (until there was), "no traveler cases!" (until there was), "no deaths" (until there was)
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Replying to @VaccineJo @vlamers
I think a lot about the communication blunders in the beginning. “No asymptomatic transmission” was a huge one. And the airborne thing could have been better explained to the public.
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This entire thing has been one example of mistaking “we don’t have solid evidence of X happening” with “X doesn’t happen” regardless of whether it makes sense. It’s been an abject failure of medicine’s fanatical empiricism
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Replying to @baym @ENirenberg and
I don’t disagree—a lot of “no evidence that” was “we don’t know, yet”—but the process by which airborne transmission kinda sorta finally got acknowledged also shows a strong tendency to *reject* empirical data as valid until it became overwhelming. It’s more selective empiricism.
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I don't think that's entirely fair. Showing airborne transmission is a dominant mode of spread (as opposed to droplet) is extremely difficult and the paradigmatic dichotomy we had in place didn't help things either.
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Replying to @ENirenberg @zeynep and
The thought of covid being airborne wasn’t helpful. It meant creating isolation rooms and wards with resources we didn’t have and weren’t clearly necessary. In March 2020 during stressful meetings every time someone asked “what if it’s airborne” it totally shut down conversation.
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Yes, it wasn’t pleasant as a thought, but I think it would have been very helpful. The countries that did exactly that early on are doing so much better now. And so many health-care worker deaths around the world. It’s not like we avoided the consequences.
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It’s not that it wasn’t just unpleasant we were profoundly underesourced without guidance. A pure airborne model would mean N95s for all and negative pressure. We didn’t have those rooms or masks.
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Replying to @jessecouk @baym and
So I agree it would have been difficult at first but… Acknowledging reality is the first step to marshalling those resources. Also, negative pressure rooms weren’t used widely elsewhere, but N95s were which makes sense. Our understanding of airborne needed updating, too.
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