Do you hear that sound? Those are footsteps running by you towards the door. The past few weeks have been a difficult time for our leaders in the public health and medical domains. Presented with data about the cost of lockdowns, negatives of school closures, and inefficacy and consequences of masks (especially in children) combined with the continued analysis of the lack of efficacy and safety of the vaccine, especially in men under the age of forty years old, the response from our health leaders is to retire, retreat, and reroute focus.
This response is not surprising as most public health ‘leaders’ rarely deal with tangible consequences but instead devote their lives to ‘models’ and numbers. Confronting mistakes and missteps requires humility mixed with real courage.
In an interview recently with Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., a true man of character, first a physician-epidemiologist, and an economist, second, the most important yet challenging thing he did when called to the White House to help President Trump and Scott Atlas on COVID-19 response in August 2020 involved telling him the reality that shutting down the economy did not save millions of lives. Instead, the models presented to him by the experts were wrong. This means that the president’s actions had almost no benefit but immense harm. That is a difficult pill to swallow for any leader, but the courage to admit mistakes and learn from them separates the ‘science experts’ from true leaders.
As discussed previously, the term in common circulation is ‘follow the science.’ The problem is science is not an executive or leader; it is not an active participant. It is a passive informer/observer, data tester, and body of knowledge. People, especially leaders in the field of health, use science to inform decisions and test hypotheses. However, an individual makes decisions, not blindly following a passive actor like science. Rigorous debate and challenging data allow the creation of scientific theories and laws. They are not picked from the tree of science when in bloom.
Myocarditis in Young Men:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.059970?cookieSet=1
Jay Bhattacharya Video
https://twitter.com/sketchnoteson/status/1561307328825233411