Thread by @ASlavitt

COVID Update December 2: There’s only so long you can be indifferent to people dying before people figure out you’re an asshole. 1/

In a public health emergency, you don’t need a bad guy. After all the pathogen is the real problem. 2/

And there’s a legit discussion one could have about the wisdom of lockdowns, the cost on the economy, on isolation, and on the fatigue of the public. 3/

Social media is not the best place for that. (Hence, the word “discussion.”)

One would hope that discussion is informed by data. But passions understandably run high in conversations like this. 4/

So let’s look at some data about what happens when we just completely minimize the measures we take to prevent the pandemic growth.

The Scott Atlas approach to be clear has been the track we’ve been on. And let’s see how it’s gone. 5/

In May most states took down the public health measures.

30k people died in June— the first month after the major restrictions were limited.
65k in July
62k in August
38k in Sept
66k in Oct
95k in Nov 6/

Test positives are up—
5% in June
8% in July
6.5% in August
5.3% in Sept
6.5% in Oct
11.3% in Nov

7/

Now a lot of things happened in September.
-Colleges started up.
-It got colder.
-We got tired.

And Scott Atlas arrived & our communication to those who follow Trump was— it’s not real, it’s not serious, it’s ok to give up. It didn’t help.

8/

Scott Atlas’s brother-by-another-mother Anders Tegnell who masterminded the “just ignore it” strategy in Sweden is also out.

Again— only so long your strategy can kill people before you either get fired or compared to Nazi. Or both. 9/

If 200,000 people getting COVID each day was the Tegnell-Atlas fantasy, here are are.

But all we have to do is protect the “old people”— one of the most dangerous myths these guys started. All theory. With people’s lives. 10/

Turns out with that myth, deaths among “old people” skyrocketed in both countries.

Nursing home deaths have topped 100,000 in the US. Multi-generational households are losing older adults fast. 11/

More reasons—

Hospitals are jamming up. Nursing homes are having a harder time moving patients in.

Essential workers are unable to avoid the luxury.

The inhumanity to ppl with disabilities 12/

This herd immunity theory is the modern medical equivalent of blood letting, leeches, arsenic, DES, thalidomide of our time. 13/

Yes the pathogen is the enemy. Was the only enemy. But people with murderously selfish ideas— driven by an unwillingness to sacrifice & wrapped in phony intellectualism— entered the scene. 14/

This slow motion drip-drip-drip herd immunity has led us to a sharply different place than in the rest of the world. 15/

And lo & behold, it turns out you can’t keep an economy open with mass hospitalizations and deaths. So the herders shut the economy down too.

Morally economically mentally & physically bankrupt. And now finally-politically.

Hear just one small part of the day to day of an ER today. Today we crossed 100,000 COVID hospitalizations.

Here’s what the docs & nurses are experiencing. 17/

https://twitter.com/aslavitt/status/1334148892645056514?s=21

https://t.co/RJaP5wydb6

When you have some people saving lives and others with theories costing lives, it’s hard to feel like we don’t have people fighting the greater good. 18/

Well, as of today, both Atlas & Tegnell, are where they belong— out.

These people have their days I suppose. These theories have their moments before they are exposed.

That we let the influence of Trump’s indifference win out is a lasting mark on us. 19/

As much as we’ve been fighting the virus, we’ve been fighting the people fighting those trying to fight the virus.

Never thought it would be a relief to getting back to just fighting the virus. /end