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We made mistakes during COVID, but some guessed better. Some said closing schools was wrong, now it's acknowledged the virus could have started in a lab. We overreacted, did silly things, and embraced bad ideas. Dissenting opinions were right. No COVID commission, no lessons learned. Gain of function research continues, animals are still mistreated. Money was stolen, blame put on Biden. Trump ignored COVID.

Public health officials during the pandemic acted more like dictators than scientists, suppressing credible dissent. Early on, they dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as conspiracy, only recently acknowledging its plausibility. Martin Kulldorff from Harvard, Sunita Gupta from Oxford, and I proposed a focused protection strategy in October 2020, which was labeled fringe by then NIH director Francis Collins, despite support from thousands of professionals. Government agencies collaborated with social media to control the narrative around COVID science, creating a false sense of consensus. The public deserves answers about the basis for school closures, whether the harms of policies were adequately considered, and why natural immunity and vaccine transmission failures were overlooked in mandates.

Living inside the Beltway, we didn't fully consider the impact of our decisions on people like Wilk and his family in Minnesota, far from the virus hotspot. Public health officials prioritize saving lives above all else, disregarding the potential consequences on people's lives, the economy, and education. This narrow mindset led to a mistake.

We made mistakes during COVID, but some guessed better. Some said closing schools was wrong, now it's acknowledged. Stupid things were done - overreactions, weird rules, and bad ideas. Dissenting opinions were right. No COVID commission, no lessons learned. Need for better ventilation ignored. Gain of function research continues. Money given out, much stolen. Blamed inflation on Biden, but bringing back Trump is not the answer.

I advised the president to shut down the country, despite knowing it would have significant economic consequences. I did not recommend locking anything down, but rather made a difficult decision to protect public health.

I recommended shutting down the country to control the spread of infection, but I don't regret it. If we had known earlier, we would have shut down sooner. Some criticize the economic impact, while others question why we didn't shut down earlier if it saved lives. I believe shutting down was necessary to prevent the explosion of infections. Regarding New York's shutdown, I never praised Governor Cuomo for having the highest death rate. That's a misunderstanding.

I made it clear that my children were immunized with childhood vaccines. Public health failed to explain that COVID vaccines are different. Childhood vaccines, like for many diseases, provide immunity after one dose by giving children the disease without the deadly consequences. The COVID vaccine wasn't designed to prevent infection. Vaccine hesitancy has doubled since COVID, and we need to address these concerns. The mRNA vaccine should have been prioritized for those at high risk of severe disease, as the science and data indicated. We should have protected the elderly and those with comorbidities first. It went into young people before the elderly and nursing homes. We need to align public health actions with science and data. When we don't, we fracture trust with the American people.

I advised the president to shut down the country, despite knowing it would have significant economic consequences. I did not recommend locking anything down, but rather made a difficult decision to protect public health.

Lockdowns failed to stop the spread of the virus or prevent deaths, according to data from various studies. They also caused significant harm to children and are projected to lead to an additional 900,000 to 1,200,000 American deaths due to economic fallout. If the U.S. had followed Sweden's approach, there would have been 1,600,000 fewer deaths. The responsibility for the lockdowns lies with those who implemented them, including federal officials and experts who rejected alternative strategies like targeted protection. This was fundamentally a health policy issue, and the focus should have been on mitigating both the virus's impact and the consequences of the lockdowns. I was the only health policy scholar on the White House task force, dedicated to addressing both aspects of this crisis.

During COVID, I was on the board of my kids' school and initially supported a strict lockdown policy. However, I now realize that keeping kids out of school for longer had a greater negative impact than the risks. We all operated with imperfect information, including myself, the CDC, and the governor. Let's learn from this and hold each other accountable while showing grace and forgiveness. Unfortunately, about 1 in 5 US adults are unwilling to get vaccinated, making them the global runner-up in vaccine hesitancy. This means roughly 56 million Americans are 11 times more likely to die from COVID than the rest of the population. It's embarrassing that some Americans are playing Russian roulette with their lives and the lives of others. Despite this, America's healthcare response to COVID has been a victory, thanks to the vaccines.

When COVID hit, the initial lockdown was meant to slow the spread, but it led to unforeseen consequences like educational gaps and mental health issues. There was a lack of planning for reopening schools and addressing the collateral damage. The speaker emphasizes the need for a better readiness plan for future pandemics and questions the role of government intervention. They advocate for less government involvement and more reliance on science.

Living inside the Beltway, we didn't fully consider the impact of our decisions on people like Wilk and his family in Minnesota, far from the virus hotspot. Public health officials, focused solely on saving lives, disregarded the potential consequences on people's lives, the economy, and education. This narrow mindset led to collateral damage and was a mistake.

I advised the president to shut down the country, despite knowing it would have significant economic consequences. However, I did not recommend locking anything down.

A prototype vaccine is being deployed to the public without actually preventing transmission, which is keeping the disease more dangerous than necessary. This is a concerning public health response. The problem is that even if we acknowledge this issue, we don't know how to change it. People tend to believe that public health authorities are doing the right thing because the alternative seems hopeless. It's difficult to discredit them without sounding like they are deliberately harming public health. People find it hard to accept that medical officials in charge of our lives may have bad motivations.

The speaker believes criticism of them is an attack on science. They stated vaccinated people don't need to worry about serious illness or transmission, but later acknowledged fully vaccinated people can transmit the infection. Masks were described as working "at the margins, maybe ten percent." School closures were considered an appropriate approach initially, but remote learning may have "forever damaged" kids, though the speaker doesn't believe it's "irreparably damaged anyone." The speaker claims they didn't recommend lockdowns, but recommended shutting the country down to the president, knowing it would have serious economic consequences. The speaker suggests the virus originated from the animal-human interface in wet markets, but that the place of origin was not within the market itself. Another intelligence arm concluded COVID began with a lab leak in China. The speaker denies the NIH funded gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute, while others claim NIH funded research that made a bat coronavirus more contagious. The speaker denies that this is gain of function.

I did not recommend locking down schools. The CDC, as the public health agency, makes recommendations based on their epidemiologists and science. It was a decision made to recommend to the president, not mine to implement. I advised the president to shut down the country when there were only a few cases of community spread, before the major outbreak in the northeastern corridor.

I advised the president to shut down the country despite knowing it would have significant economic consequences. I did not recommend locking anything down, but rather made the difficult decision to shut the country down.

During COVID, as a board member of my kids' school, I initially supported a strict lockdown policy. However, I now realize that keeping kids out of school for longer caused more harm than the risks involved. We, including myself, the CDC, and the governor, made decisions based on imperfect information. We did our best, but it's important to learn from our mistakes. Let's hold each other accountable, but also show some grace and forgiveness. It was a challenging situation, but we can grow from it.

The tragedy is that many young, healthy individuals under 50, who had minimal risk from COVID, were injured. A significant percentage of the population has documented cases of COVID. These individuals would have been fine if left alone. Instead, many were harmed, often against their better judgment, as they felt pressured to comply with mandates to keep their jobs or attend school.

I did not recommend locking everything down. I advised the president to shut the country down, which was a tough decision due to the significant economic consequences it would bring.

I advised the president to shut down the country, despite knowing it would have significant economic consequences. I did not recommend locking anything down, and it is important to note that shutting everything down was not my suggestion.

Speaker 0 questions the rationale behind implementing stringent interventions for people who will soon die anyway. Speaker 1 responds, stating that the choice was difficult and required a delicate balancing act throughout the pandemic. They explain that driving down the virus necessitates taking actions that can have damaging consequences in other areas. Speaker 1 acknowledges that their previous statement may not have been intended for public broadcast but was an attempt to summarize the problem. They express the need for a swift assessment of the benefits, impacts, and costs of the interventions.

There was never a scientific consensus on many COVID-related topics. Before the pandemic, most scientists held opposing views. A small, influential group of scientific bureaucrats seized control of the public narrative, dominating media and influencing politicians. This led to a disastrous response to COVID, and the repercussions will be felt for a long time.

We broke the public's trust by silencing one side of the debate, labeling experts as trustworthy and critics as dangerous. As a journalist, I heard stories of suffering and pain from people affected by lockdowns and vaccine mandates, but these stories were not being told. This burden affected my well-being as these people trusted me to share their truth.

In my 20 years of military and ER experience, I witnessed the challenges of dealing with a novel virus. As healthcare professionals, we made mistakes due to outdated knowledge and assumptions. We intubated patients unnecessarily and didn't consider alternative treatments. Families suffered as they were unable to be with their loved ones during their final moments. I held dying patients' hands, knowing there was little I could do. The government exacerbated the situation by interfering with healthcare decisions and keeping families apart. We shouldn't rely on the government to solve problems it created.