Oct 24, 2023 02:11 AM
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?...id=4447806
Valuable long (119 pp) paper examining whether the COVID response globally caused massive social harms.
From the Abstract:
"A harm framework was developed spanning 10 categories: health, economy, income, food security, education, lifestyle, intimate relationships, community, environment and governance. The analysis synthesizes 600 publications with a focus on meta-analyses, systematic reviews, global reports and multi-country studies. This cumulative academic research shows that the collateral damage of the pandemic response was substantial, wide-ranging and will leave behind a legacy of harm for hundreds of millions of people in the years ahead. Many original predictions are broadly supported by the research data including: a rise in non-Covid excess mortality, mental health deterioration, child abuse and domestic violence, widening global inequality, food insecurity, lost educational opportunities, unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, social polarization, soaring debt, democratic backsliding and declining human rights."
From p.3:
"...there is a general tendency for the public health community to be overly optimistic about the benefits of their interventions and under-play or ignore their harm... public health contrasts markedly with clinical medicine, where there is a substantial literature on adverse events and patient safety, and the Hippocratic injunction to 'do no harm' is arguably more salient."...
From p.4:
"...It is important to appreciate that, prior to Covid, many in the public health community supported a cautious skepticism about the types of government restrictions and mandates widely used in 2020-21. Fear-based messaging, punitive rules and lengthy restrictions on normal human interaction were seen as counter-productive, lacking strong evidence and, in many cases, unethical or unconstitutional..."
From p.5:
"...In our current 'data-driven' technological society what is not measured, or easily measured and grasped, can more readily be ignored. There is a degree of imbalance in trying to mentally weigh the control of one virus (e.g. Covid), against the wide range of social consequences from control policies: Covid statistics are much simpler to undertand and communicate to the public... In contrast, a multitude of different types of societal harms may appear diffused, hypothetical and difficult to measure. In this regard, methodological and epistemological limitations have restricted the public debate..."
From pp. 52 and 53:
"...First, policy studies from 2020 largely agree that Covid task force over-represented biomedical experts and excluded many forms of scientific expertise, including mental health, ethics and economics. In many countries, power was concentrated in a select number of science advisors who disproportionately shaped policy and public narratives, revealing the inadequacies of ad-hoc science advisory mechanisms. Second, decisions to lockdown and implement other restrictive npi's heavily politicized science, blurring the line between science and politics and challenging scientific norms and ethical frameworks. Research from the sociology of science has shown that 'normal science' was suspended and, in its place, a 'scientific consensus' was manufactured to support mainstream political narratives motivated by urgency, precaution and imperatives for social control..."
Valuable long (119 pp) paper examining whether the COVID response globally caused massive social harms.
From the Abstract:
"A harm framework was developed spanning 10 categories: health, economy, income, food security, education, lifestyle, intimate relationships, community, environment and governance. The analysis synthesizes 600 publications with a focus on meta-analyses, systematic reviews, global reports and multi-country studies. This cumulative academic research shows that the collateral damage of the pandemic response was substantial, wide-ranging and will leave behind a legacy of harm for hundreds of millions of people in the years ahead. Many original predictions are broadly supported by the research data including: a rise in non-Covid excess mortality, mental health deterioration, child abuse and domestic violence, widening global inequality, food insecurity, lost educational opportunities, unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, social polarization, soaring debt, democratic backsliding and declining human rights."
From p.3:
"...there is a general tendency for the public health community to be overly optimistic about the benefits of their interventions and under-play or ignore their harm... public health contrasts markedly with clinical medicine, where there is a substantial literature on adverse events and patient safety, and the Hippocratic injunction to 'do no harm' is arguably more salient."...
From p.4:
"...It is important to appreciate that, prior to Covid, many in the public health community supported a cautious skepticism about the types of government restrictions and mandates widely used in 2020-21. Fear-based messaging, punitive rules and lengthy restrictions on normal human interaction were seen as counter-productive, lacking strong evidence and, in many cases, unethical or unconstitutional..."
From p.5:
"...In our current 'data-driven' technological society what is not measured, or easily measured and grasped, can more readily be ignored. There is a degree of imbalance in trying to mentally weigh the control of one virus (e.g. Covid), against the wide range of social consequences from control policies: Covid statistics are much simpler to undertand and communicate to the public... In contrast, a multitude of different types of societal harms may appear diffused, hypothetical and difficult to measure. In this regard, methodological and epistemological limitations have restricted the public debate..."
From pp. 52 and 53:
"...First, policy studies from 2020 largely agree that Covid task force over-represented biomedical experts and excluded many forms of scientific expertise, including mental health, ethics and economics. In many countries, power was concentrated in a select number of science advisors who disproportionately shaped policy and public narratives, revealing the inadequacies of ad-hoc science advisory mechanisms. Second, decisions to lockdown and implement other restrictive npi's heavily politicized science, blurring the line between science and politics and challenging scientific norms and ethical frameworks. Research from the sociology of science has shown that 'normal science' was suspended and, in its place, a 'scientific consensus' was manufactured to support mainstream political narratives motivated by urgency, precaution and imperatives for social control..."