Anthony Fauci doesn’t need to say Sorry
In her 2021 webinar, “Crisis Management: Adaptive Recovery, Resiliency, and Moving Forward,” Juliette Kayyem explains how to understand, respond to, and recover from disasters using the American experience with COVID-19 as an example. While Kayyem is a veteran of crisis management, her presentation could have used a little help from a standup comedian.
The core of the webinar is a 5-stage cycle with existing conditions on one side of a “Boom” and responses to it on the other.
The first stage, Protection, refers to the context of a given moment. When COVID-19 emerged, the world’s global health system lacked transparency, and millions lived with food insecurity. These fundamental conditions would go on to influence the response to and outcomes of the crisis.
The second stage, Prevention, refers to measures taken to deal with the emerging crisis — Kayyem notes that there is not necessarily a single moment defining the Boom, unlike in cases of terrorist violence. Here, Chinese measures to contain the virus along with the readiness of testing kits, masks, and other necessary equipment defined this stage.
The Boom (not a stage itself) was defined by the spread of COVID-19 in the US, spurred by a lack of leadership from the Trump White House. This condition required state and local officials to take charge.
Stage Three, the Response, included personal actions such as masking and isolating, along with public rules about distancing, and institutional responses such as working from home, and defining essential versus non-essential workers. The goal here was to “flatten the curve,” and it was roughly where the country was at the time of the webinar.
Moving to the fourth stage, “Adaptive” Recovery, Kayyem anticipated the creation and rollout of vaccines, continued contact tracing, and living with the risk of further shut downs in case of local outbreaks. She defines this period the “now normal” not the “new” normal since it is provisional while universal vaccination and herd immunity remained works in progress.
Finally, the fifth stage, Resiliency, was defined as a new era with permanent changes to how we live. Masks have become a normal part of many people’s lives, as have new metrics for evaluating quality of life when it comes to where, when, and how we work. In addition, recognition of how the absence of schools and/or adequate childcare affected working mothers is a part of this stage, though as of 2024, nothing has been done about it.
At several points, Kayyem mentioned that throughout the early year(s) of the pandemic, public support for masks was generally 75–80%. Ideological opponents to this easy mitigation measure were disproportionately given a platform, and the same goes for anti-vaccine ideologues: Kayyem says they make up no more than 11% of the populace.
The real challenge, she says, is to make vaccination easily accessible to those on the fence for practical reasons, such as a lack of affordability (make it free) or time to visit a clinic (introduce pop-up clinics, allow time off from work to get the jab).
During the Q&A, Kayyem was asked how good scientific information could reach people and not be lost in the noise of political rancor. The information does get out, Kayyem asserted, citing the figures about mask and vaccine adoption again.
This is where she made a misstep.
Regarding opposition to mask mandates and vaccine mandates and Dr. Anthony Fauci himself, Kayyem sympathized with some of the criticism. She argued that the public health professionals overseeing the response to the crisis seemed to be veering out of their “lane.” The economic and social “lanes” are equally important when considering policy and deserved comparable consideration.
Social wellbeing and physical wellbeing are intertwined, of course.
Humans are social animals.
No objection there.
However, when juxtaposing “economic” health with actual health, Kayyem’s argument falters.
What the fuck…did you do?
In a classic bit where God confronts anti-environmentalist Christians, Louis CK identifies some of the most infuriating features of modern life.
A returning Jesus asks a mortal man about discolored polar bears and oil spills. He inarticulately answers that he needs the oil to “go faster.”
God gets more and more frustrated as the dialogue goes on, saying that He gave humanity everything it needed on Earth and that they are despoiling it for nothing.
The pollution and harm to nature is necessary, though, for our jobs, the human replies.
“What is a job?” God demands angrily .
What is “the economy” is just as reasonable a question. As it is currently structured, the economy does not do a very good job of distributing resources and talent to activities that make life better for people.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to really reexamine why and how we do what we do.
Indeed, work in some sectors is “essential” for human wellbeing: education (let’s include the arts here), healthcare, nutrition, sanitation, engineering.
The list goes on, but it stops far short of including every activity done for wages today.
Countless Republican politicians have raged at Dr. Fauci that taking measures to safeguard public health violated “freedom.” That this idiotic idea has been allowed to fester unchecked is an embarrassment. People work in order to live; they do not live in order to work.
Defining “freedom” down to gleeful wage slavery is a disgrace.
