Former NIH Director Francis Collins admitted that tunnel vision handicapped the development of public policy to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a one-dimensional policy focused on stopping the disease without considering the broader consequences.
This admission was part of a summer symposium, with The Wall Street Journal noting that the lockdowns did tremendous harm and led to a loss of trust in public-health experts.
“As a guy living inside the Beltway, feeling a sense of crisis, trying to decide what to do in some situation room in the White House with people who had data that was incomplete,” Collins said. (Trending: Obama Judge Issues Shock Ruling Against Democrats)
“We weren’t really thinking about what that would mean to Wilk and his family in Minnesota, a thousand miles away from where the virus was hitting so hard.”
“We weren’t really considering the consequences in communities that were not New York City or some other big city,” he said.
“The public health people — we talked about this earlier and this really important point — if you’re a public health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is. And that is something that will save a life; it doesn’t matter what else happens,” he added.
It's hard to overstate how irresponsible and destructive Francis Collins' view is and was. He dispensed with all the rest of public health to focus on covid and lockdown, and countless millions — especially children and the poor — paid the price, sometimes with their lives. https://t.co/J8dv5ro3xV
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) December 31, 2023
“So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from. So, yeah, collateral damage.”
“This is a public health mindset and I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset and that was really unfortunate. It’s another mistake we made.”
An Op-Ed on National Review also highlighted that Collins’ statements would have triggered punishments during the pandemic, and suggested that leaders who took a more modulated approach got it right.
“Not too long ago, anyone who said that epidemiologists might be overly focused on disease prevention to the exclusion of other concerns — you know, like jobs, mental health, and schooling — were dismissed as reckless nihilists who didn’t care if their fellow citizens died en masse,” Rich Lowry wrote.
“If Francis Collins and his cohort got it wrong, the likes of Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Georgia governor Brian Kemp — and the renegade scientists and doctors who supported their more modulated approach to the pandemic — got it right,” he added.
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