Throughout the pandemic, public-health officials have omitted uncomfortable truths, made misleading statements and advanced demonstrably false assertions.
No doubt, officials and organizations promulgating them had a range of motivations — including honorable ones, such as wanting to encourage salutary choices. Yet the subsequent loss of institutional trust may result in harm that far outweighs any short-term policy objectives.
Consider some messages the field has promoted to the public over the last two years and their shaky relationship with the truth.
Any mask is better than no mask. Last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky asserted that “any mask is better than no mask.” This statement was factually incorrect when she said it. The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during COVID-19 — performed in rural Bangladesh — found that surgical masks reduced the spread of COVID-19 among villages assigned to wear them, while cloth masks were no better than no masks at all. In an umbrella review of masking that I coauthored, we found no good evidence to support cloth masking. Two days after Walensky’s statement, the CDC conceded that cloth masks are inferior to other masks. Notably, however, this is still misleading because cloth masking is not just less effective — it is entirely ineffective.
Kids suffer no harm from not seeing faces. On Aug. 12, 2021, after more than a year in which day-care providers routinely wore masks while caring for infants, the American Academy of Pediatrics tweeted: “Babies and young children study faces, so you may worry that having masked caregivers would harm children’s language development. There are no studies to support this concern. Young children will use other clues like gestures and tone of voice. Being around adults wearing masks doesn’t delay babies’ speech or language development.”
The tweet appears meant to defuse a legitimate concern that kids not seeing faces may have a long-term deleterious impact. The truth is, we don’t know. We have never concealed faces from children in day-care for so many hours a day for so many years. Thus, we cannot be certain of the full effects.
Vaccine policy must be one-size-fits-all. For some reason, the United States seems committed to a one-size-fits-all vaccine policy despite abundant evidence to the contrary. This has led us astray in several respects.
First, consider boosters. The case for population-wide boosters, including for young, healthy adults, is tenuous and was contentious even among senior scientists. Marion Gruber and Phil Krause — the director and deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration — reportedly resigned over White House pressure to approve boosters for all. An initial advisory action approved boosters for older and vulnerable populations but was reluctant to grant a blanket approval for adults aged 18 and above. Slowly, booster approval expanded to 18 and up and now to 12 and up.
Current policy is built on the claim that we know that it is in the best interest of a young person to receive a booster shot. We don’t. After two doses of mRNA vaccination, a 20-year-old man will have a markedly reduced chance of hospitalization or death. He will also face a nonzero risk of myocarditis from a dose three. We do not know with confidence that such a person should receive a booster.
COVID-19 vaccination in healthy children is the topic of considerable global disagreement, yet the United States advises it (though uptake remains poor). Recently, the CDC published an alarming study suggesting that children who get COVID-19 may develop diabetes at higher rates than normal. Yet the study was grievously flawed. It did not adjust for risk factors — being poor or overweight — that predispose to both diabetes and COVID-19. It also failed to note that the absolute risks were astonishingly low. One can’t help but wonder if the CDC promulgated a highly imperfect study to push vaccination in this age group.
Falsehoods and half-truths have consequences. Publishing flawed science to raise irrational fear and making false statements about the efficacy of treatments constitute bad scientific practice. In normal times, scientists would not tolerate such behavior.
Yet repeatedly, federal agencies and respected organizations push recommendations that are deeply uncertain, rely on fearmongering or provide hollow reassurances. The right answer would be to acknowledge the massive residual uncertainty surrounding these issues and embark on studies to reduce it.
We need public-health institutions in times of crisis. But if they won’t tell the truth, they don’t deserve the public’s trust. If we meet future health threats as a more polarized society, these institutions will deserve their share of the blame.
Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. This article was originally published in City Journal.
ThinkCivics News publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of ThinkCivics News or ThinkCivics Media.
This article was originally published by the NY Post. Read the original article.
ThinkCivics researches, examines, and reports on issues that matter most. We deliver explanative, fearless, and insightful analysis for public consumption.
