Some Bureaucrats Now Admit They Were Wrong About Covid

With the passage of time, it has become apparent that many of the decisions made by public health officials during the Covid pandemic were not in the best interest of our citizens. Francis Collins was the head of the  National Institutes of Health( NIH) during the pandemic. He was part of the group, which included Anthony Fauci, that pushed for stringent lockdowns and school closures.

Collins recently showed his intellectual honesty by admitting that he and his colleagues demonstrated a narrow-minded approach to Covid. During the height of the pandemic, anyone who suggested this was characterized as reckless by CNN, MSNBC and the Democrats.

During the three year span of the pandemic, many in our country turned all authority over to the bureaucrats who were happy to take complete control of our daily lives. 

In business, many corporations  have several departments: manufacturing, sales, accounting, transportation and risk management. The CEO takes input from all departments when making policy. 

The risk-management department is often hyper-focused on all that could go wrong. If you give too much credence to risk management, a CEO would find it difficult to make a profit.

During the pandemic, our country put the risk management department (public health officials) in complete control. This resulted in an unmitigated disaster. Schools and businesses were closed. Parks and beaches were closed. There was a hyper-focus on stopping the spread of Covid which for most people was the equivalent of a bad case of the flu. 

Francis Collins is now admitting that many of the people who were  considered anti-science, because they questioned the efficacy of school closures and vaccines, were in fact correct. 

Collins said “if you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have a  very narrow view of what the right decision is.” This is emblematic of the problem. While public officials should have been involved in the discussion of how to respond, politicians elevated them to the SOLE DECISION MAKER.  

This is where the train went off the tracks both nationally and locally. Democrats and moderate Republicans are people that inherently scare easily. When Covid arrived, they panicked. They quickly bought into the “shut everything down” theory. Businesses were closed, schools were closed, parks were closed and even doctor’s offices were closed. Several of our local county commissioners (Benac and Servia) were quick to have mask requirements and fight for stringent closings. 

This behavior is the folly that Francis Collins belatedly recognizes as wrong. Collins stated that officials attached “infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.”

Collins also acknowledged that he had a strong urban bias. These bureaucrats who were based in Washington DC and New York City did not recognize that their rules were not needed in rural America. 

Too many moderates and Democrats were  happy to be “mother hens” watching for any violations of their Covid rules. Many of these people have refused to admit how wrong they were and how much harm they caused to so many people. 

Dr. Collins has at least recognized the shortcomings of the process he and the bureaucrats used to determine the rules and regulations of the Covid era.