Side Effects

The American Council on Science and Health is not always considered a reliable source of information on health policy issues. Although it's a non-profit policy think tank, it receives significant funding from industry sources in areas it may investigate and not everyone is sure that its reports are always free from the influence of those donors.

Granted, most such policy analysis and advocacy groups probably keep an eye out for donor interests, but it's still enough to make sure we peer at the fine print of ACSH research and findings.

In any event, this item from the ACSH doesn't have much of an "industry" angle as it explores five consequences of government and public health agency missteps in dealing with the COVID-19 virus. As writers Alez Berezow and Josh Bloom point out, the problem is not that agencies like the Centers for Disease Control or World Health Organization got things wrong. Getting things wrong and then questioning why they were wrong is how science progresses, and the official name of the virus includes the word "novel" because it's new and we've never dealt with it before. So wrong answers are expected along the way.

But, Berezow and Bloom note, all too often the agencies appeared not wrong but flat-out incompetent. That may have been the result of poor communication techniques or information flow, but the whole point of a public health agency is that it brings information to the public. Miscommunication undermines a core part of the mission.

Berezow and Bloom leave out the heavy influence the Chinese Communist Party held over reports and activity from the WHO, which only helped fuel the conspiracy mongers who filled in the information vacuum with everything but hidden lizard-people to the Illuminati. But the items they do note are troubling enough.

Anyone who's voted in more than two elections has come to understand that a large portion of elected officialdom lacks that most esoteric of qualities we call "ability to understand things." We accept this because we understand that in many cases their role is to be the telegenic face of the wonks in white coats who do understand things and who can convey them to the telegenic non-understanding policymakers in small monosyllables that don't crowd the synapses required to pander to voters. Part of the bargain, though, is the belief that the wonks have either an idea about what's going on or a clear awareness that they have no idea about what's going on but do have the tools and methods to find out.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, the anti-Midas touch of 2020 has struck again and this time turned our wonks into zonks.