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Notes -
Maybe you were lucky covid contrarians but you were mostly right.
However, I knew that the panic about covid was unjustified simply due to my healthcare training. I couldn't know how good the vaccines would turn out to be, or if covid is spread by droplets or aerosols, or if masks are effective. Those things require good studies and evidence. But for the general understanding for a disease that is so much age stratified, it was immediately clear what the upper limit of damage can be (bad for elderly, no effect on kids, variable to all others). Covid resembled exactly how other cold viruses work, kids get it several times per year, and we get constant exposure that keeps our immune system activated therefore we rarely suffer severe disease. It was immediately clear to me that kids are not in danger despite the panic. It was clear that people going outside are of very low risk. I also knew that once covid virus had spread in the country, it didn't make sense to close borders anymore (Australia was an exception due to specific geographic situation). I couldn't understand how people could support all these things despite clear evidence before their eyes about the contrary.
What Tegnell did in Sweden to me seemed like a standard textbook that I had studied at a public health course a couple of years ago before pandemic. I expected the UK going the same route because of all rationalists (e.g. Dominic Cummings) advising them, but alas, politics are so incomprehensible.
I lost my respect to rationalists due to this. I had learned in medicine that human biology is very complex, you cannot assume anything, you cannot make easy logical chains. You have to do RCTs instead. Sometimes things work like magic without our full understanding, like the most common painkiller, paracetamol (Tylenol for Americans).
I visited the conference a week ago with good presentation reminding us about the strength of evidence. The presentation showed the list of all the drugs initially approved for covid treatment (remdesivir, Paxlovid, several mabs etc.) showing the actual evidence for them. It reminded again and again that only RCTs is the gold standard, everything else is second or third class, regardless how much we want to believe. I still remember doctors who being asked about the evidence of mask effectiveness said that parachutes do not need RCTs. Ok, almost nothing in medicine are parachutes, including masks.
I feel vindicated at the end, but the damage done on all us was terrible. We had experimental vaccines made mandatory worldwide with very little evidence from RCTs. It's fine to take risks if we think the situation requires it, but don't force them on people against all medical ethics that were drilled to every healthcare professional. I still don't understand why we had so few dissenting voices from health professionals.
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