Well, better late than never?
Vox now embraces the wisdom of travel bans to keep people from spreading a dangerous virus from country to country:
15 months apart pic.twitter.com/IIsUEMg3MO
— Michael Story ⚓ (@MWStory) April 23, 2021
WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS?
Before #COVID19, the thinking in global health was that travel measures carried harms for little benefit.
Then the pandemic happened and turned that upside down. Why? I took a look at Vietnam, a country of 97 million with 2700 Covid cases & 35 deaths ?https://t.co/wE8QNrrvGa
— Julia Belluz (@juliaoftoronto) April 23, 2021
Sure, praise the journos who got it wrong for coming to their senses now:
Good for journalists to course-correct when needed. But would also be good to build more humility into the process from the start. Writers at lots of outlets are pushed to have strong definitive takes with a provocative headlines and thus shy away from hedging or uncertainty. https://t.co/LUKHJi9a4h
— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) April 23, 2021
We’ll just guess right now that journos and their awful takes will never, ever get blamed for any of the 550,000 COVID-19 deaths though:
Also to Vox's credit, they changed their mind very publicly and thus opened themselves up to dunking. This is a good thing! When new evidence emerges or when the scientific consensus shifts, we want journalists who are open to changing course and being open to having been wrong.
— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) April 23, 2021
Of note, they did this with masks, too:
In Feb '20, Vox breezily dismissed masks: "most experts Vox has spoken to have said there’s no good evidence to support the use of face masks . . ."
Impliedly, some expert it spoke with in Feb did believe use of masks was supported. Vox revisited masks but not this dismissal.
— Pony phaeton (@ponyphaeton) April 23, 2021
Recommended
Anyway, what’s worse is that health policy experts were the ones touting this dumb advice:
The border belief described here was incredibly powerful and wormed its way around institutions the world over. The pandemic preparedness index ranked you *less* prepared if you had previously closed borders in the event of disease outbreaks pic.twitter.com/EPopeuGmog
— Michael Story ⚓ (@MWStory) April 23, 2021
No big deal, just another huge failure by the World Health Organization:
The WHO had measures to *prevent* border closures in the event of disease outbreaks written into the international health regulations, and even built tools to track outbreak-related border restrictions, so they could lobby to get them removedhttps://t.co/4yDbYVA5Dh
— Michael Story ⚓ (@MWStory) April 23, 2021
We doubt this will be last “just became ‘science’ because nobody checked it”:
Credit to Lawrence Gostin for acknowledging that this was crazy, but it seems quite bad that an evidence-free political assumption shared by members of one class just became 'science' because nobody checked it?
— Michael Story ⚓ (@MWStory) April 23, 2021
***
Join the conversation as a VIP Member