Sure but those are more complaints about government incompetence with the pandemic response. You are referring to much much more than the specific public health recommendations from pandemic research experts.
Along those lines, I recall politicians and pundits telling everyone testing and masks aren't a big deal. But the medical experts weren't saying this. However, the media was treating both perspectives with false equivalency.
As far as nursing homes, it's hard to imagine the pandemic experts overlooked this. Yet, I don't recall reading a lot early on about the need to focus on nursing homes.
Obviously, in retrospect, if every country would have immediately imposed White House-style testing, quarantines and contact tracing for everyone entering nursing homes and related facilities, this alone would have made a dramatic difference in the death toll.
I use the word government as a catch all for anyone contributing to or influencing coercive measures against the public. It encompasses employees of government or government funded organizations, including virtually all epidemiologists not working directly for pharmaceutical companies. I've already posted on the
incompetence of Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist who developed the dooms day model used to predict the absurd infection and death rates of the virus with or without the lockdowns. Even without the code review, we know now his models were way off.
On the wearing of masks, the message wasn't that masks weren't a big deal, it was pushed in the media with direct quotes from experts that masks don't work. The CDC, WHO and US Surgeon General are all on record as advising against their use, not just saying they were not a big deal. I can't give you links to their sites where it says that, because they don't keep online records of past recommendations. But here's some here-say from
CNBC and
USA Today.
And this isn't a case of what we know now, because past COVID outbreaks included much study on the effectiveness of masks; how much better they were than washing hands or attempts at isolation. There's absolutely no doubt this significantly increased the rate of infection. I don't believe this was a conspiracy so much as an attempt to preserve for medical use what was perceived as a shortage of masks. But there is little doubt the experts knew they were deceiving the public.
Epidemiologists, at least the ones quoted by government and the media, said nothing about the need to protect nursing homes. Even Sweden got that wrong. But as with masks, it isn't hindsight that makes them look incompetent. They knew from past outbreaks and numerous studies that corona as well as influenza viruses affect the old far more than anyone else.
In fact, the failure to protect nursing homes from influenza is the single largest contributor to that virus's death rate as well. Yet the experts seem to be all in with flu vaccines known to be much less effective with the old.
There are plenty of other things the experts at the CDC and WHO did that resulted in increased infections. For example, the WHO specifically recommended against flight restrictions from infected areas. This may have been a political decision, but it came from the organization employing many experts. The CDC used its influence to monopolize the distribution of test kits which turned out to be defective and in some cases contaminated with live COVID virus. Again, it may have been a political decision, but it was from an organization employing many experts. The experts in both organizations failed to speak out against their employers.
