Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2020 12:29:14 GMT
This is an interesting article and I think people on both extremes of the "What to do about COVID-19" debate will find things that they like and don't like in here.
LINK
Full disclosure, the current title of this article is "The Founding Fathers Would’ve Been Pro-Face Mask." This is not the title found in the url, which is "covid-19-quarantines-are-part-of-america-s-disease-fighting-story." I'm assuming the "Face Mask" title was click-bait written by editors to get more views as the idea that the FF would support wearing masks is not a main contention of the article, nor does the author state more than his belief that Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson would wear a mask. He never says they would support a mandate.
Title aside, in many ways, the article takes a balanced view of the topic of disease control in America (before and after 1776), though it clearly tips toward government action, rather than inaction.
Here are some notable excerpts:
As I said, I found the article interesting and fairly balanced. There's a lot more there than what I posted here. The one quibble I have is a line in the last paragraph I quoted where the author says, "the countries that treated Covid-19 as a disease to be contained like smallpox or yellow fever have fared much better than those that by policy or by default have let it wash over them like influenza." He is ignoring the very crux of the entire debate debate, which is that "fared-better" only refers to how policies affect the spread of the disease, not how they affect other things, such as the economy. All if the benefits and costs of government action should be considered when evaluating the action. Still, it's a minor quibble in what I think is an otherwise well-written article.
LINK
Full disclosure, the current title of this article is "The Founding Fathers Would’ve Been Pro-Face Mask." This is not the title found in the url, which is "covid-19-quarantines-are-part-of-america-s-disease-fighting-story." I'm assuming the "Face Mask" title was click-bait written by editors to get more views as the idea that the FF would support wearing masks is not a main contention of the article, nor does the author state more than his belief that Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson would wear a mask. He never says they would support a mandate.
Title aside, in many ways, the article takes a balanced view of the topic of disease control in America (before and after 1776), though it clearly tips toward government action, rather than inaction.
Here are some notable excerpts:
As is apparent from the historical example above, there’s nothing unprecedented about restricting freedom in the name of fighting infectious disease. There’s nothing unconstitutional either: The U.S. Supreme Court explicitly endorsed state quarantine powers in 1824, and though citizens have occasionally challenged the application of those powers as violations of the due process clauses of the Fifth and 14th Amendments, they have usually lost their court cases.
Still, it is at least conceivable that some measures used this year to slow the spread of Covid-19 have been so harsh and so disproportionate that they represent a break with this country’s disease-fighting history and values.
Would George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, or Thomas Jefferson wear facemasks?...Yes, they probably would wear face masks. Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson were all creatures of the Enlightenment, firm believers in science and in progress...With face masks there is no “proof” in the form of randomized controlled trials that they slow the spread of Covid-19, but there is by now a growing pile of persuasive evidence and a firming scientific consensus that widespread mask-wearing probably helps a lot in keeping the disease under control. It is difficult to imagine Washington, Hamilton or Jefferson observing such a consensus and not putting on a mask in response.
Would they have closed down American society, abrogating all constitutional rights and freedoms out of fear of a pandemic?...[This question] is a little harder to answer. Government officials have many times since the 1600s abrogated some rights and freedoms to fight disease, as they have done again this year. It’s worth noting, though, that the diseases they were fighting in the past — mainly smallpox and yellow fever in the era of the Founding Fathers, with cholera coming along later — were far deadlier on a case-by-case basis than the coronavirus, which has so far killed 4.5% of those with confirmed cases around the world and probably something under 1% of those infected. The most common variant of smallpox has a fatality rate of 30%, yellow fever’s ranges from 15% to 50%, and cholera, while not very dangerous now if treated, kills half of those afflicted without treatment.
A major study of the 1918 pandemic published by the American Medical Association in 1927 concluded that while quarantines had kept influenza out of some small towns they were less effective in cities, and that the evidence on school closures, bans on gatherings and face-mask mandates was inconclusive...The two worst influenza pandemics of the vaccine era, those of 1957-1958 and 1968, killed an estimated 116,00 and 100,000 Americans respectively, mostly in the absence of interventions other than brief school closures.
Over the past two decades, though, attitudes have shifted. A key reason was the emergence of new diseases for which there were no pharmaceutical treatments, most notably Covid-19’s coronavirus cousins Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome...After that, researchers began re-examining the effectiveness of what they had come to call “nonpharmaceutical interventions.” A much-cited 2006 modeling study in Nature concluded that case isolation and household quarantine could be extremely effective in mitigating an influenza pandemic, and that school closings might at least slow it down substantially.
Which brings us, finally, back to Covid-19. It seems to be in the same ballpark as the 1918 influenza in overall fatality rate, but doesn’t pose nearly the danger to young adults. Eighty percent of deaths from it so far in the U.S. have been among those 65 and older. If Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson had been confronted with this exact disease when they were running the then-very-youthful U.S. together in the early 1790s, it seems highly unlikely that they would have endorsed large-scale quarantines and business and school closures to fend it off. (As already noted, I don’t think they would have had any objection to wearing masks.)
Still, there are good reasons we seldom turn to the Founding Fathers for medical advice. Science has progressed a lot since their time, and the infectious diseases that worried them most have been largely defeated, at least in the developed world.
Still, there are good reasons we seldom turn to the Founding Fathers for medical advice. Science has progressed a lot since their time, and the infectious diseases that worried them most have been largely defeated, at least in the developed world.
Some of [the COVID-19] interventions have surely been more effective — and cost-effective — than others. With the benefit of hindsight and several months of research into how Covid-19 spreads, it seems like stay-at-home orders are probably excessive, as are “nonessential business” closures that fail to differentiate between businesses likely to be hotbeds of disease spread (bars) and those that aren’t (garden centers). The efficacy of school closures also remains a topic of much debate. But it’s clear from looking around the world that the countries that treated Covid-19 as a disease to be contained like smallpox or yellow fever have fared much better than those that by policy or by default have let it wash over them like influenza. Also, even just delaying the disease’s spread has great value in an environment where doctors can quickly develop better ways to treat patients, and new pharmaceutical treatments and maybe even vaccines can be ready in a matter of months. This isn’t the late 1700s, happily enough. We can do better.
As I said, I found the article interesting and fairly balanced. There's a lot more there than what I posted here. The one quibble I have is a line in the last paragraph I quoted where the author says, "the countries that treated Covid-19 as a disease to be contained like smallpox or yellow fever have fared much better than those that by policy or by default have let it wash over them like influenza." He is ignoring the very crux of the entire debate debate, which is that "fared-better" only refers to how policies affect the spread of the disease, not how they affect other things, such as the economy. All if the benefits and costs of government action should be considered when evaluating the action. Still, it's a minor quibble in what I think is an otherwise well-written article.
