We reported on several COVID-19 narrative-shifting stories that were now being published in the American media, putting an entirely new emphasis on returning to normal.
The post discussed studies showing lockdowns failed to effectively reduce caseloads, created long-term health problems due to unemployment, and may cause 890,000 excess American deaths over the next 15 years because of the health impacts.
There are even more narratives that are beginning to turn, favoring a reopening of schools and the economy. To start, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say that in-person classes aren’t driving the COVID-19 outbreaks.
The return to in-person classes in nearly two-thirds of the U.S. hasn’t led to a rash of community outbreaks, federal scientists said in a study of 2.87 million cases among those under age 24.Disease rates in counties where in-person learning is available for school-aged children and adolescents is similar to areas where classes are entirely online, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It concludes schools should be the last to close, and the first to re-open.Meanwhile, young adults ages 18 to 24, who led the country in infections during the summer and fall, may have contributed more to community transmission, the agency said in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.“CDC recommends that K-12 schools be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely,” according to the report.
Interestingly, Ryan Craig, the Forbes’ Senior Contributor for Education, says that LA County health officials “cried wolf” when forcing schools to shut down.
…L.A. was the only county in America that effectively prohibited all K-12 schools from opening. Second, according to the L.A. Times, L.A. became the epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic. There’s good reason to believe the two are related: L.A. County’s decision to cry wolf on schools has contributed to the current public health disaster….L.A. County’s singular decision on school openings left zero public health dry powder for the winter surge everyone knew was coming. Now the surge is here, and there’s little more the County can do to make it clear to Angelenos that it’s officially very dangerous out there.Instead of doing too little too late, L.A. County did too much too early. If L.A. County had allowed schools to open this fall, it would have preserved the option to close them in an actual crisis, shocking the community into action. But throughout the summer and fall, L.A. County cried wolf. Our kids paid a price over the course of a remote, mostly useless fall semester. This winter thousands of Angelenos are paying the ultimate price.
Additionally, there has been a narrative shift on a potential new treatment, Ivermectin. Before last week, the press warned against this anti-parasite drug as a treatment for Covid-19.
Then, a judge intervened in one case:
A judge ordered Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital last week to give a Covid-19 patient an experimental treatment, and her family and attorneys say they believe that saved 80-year-old Judith Smentkiewicz’s life.The drug Ivermectin – a pill sometimes used to treat children with head lice or to rid dogs and cats of worms – is not yet approved by the federal government for use against Covid-19. But Smentkiewicz’s son and daughter call it “a miracle drug” in their court papers.So do her attorneys, Ralph C. Lorigo and Jon F. Minear.“This lady was on a ventilator, literally on her deathbed, before she was given this drug,” Lorigo told The Buffalo News about Smentkiewicz, a Cheektowaga resident. “As far as we’re concerned, the judge’s order saved this woman’s life.”
Shortly after, the National Institutes of Health revised its guidance on Ivermectin and removed the recommendation against its use for COVID-19. Now the press is abuzz about the treatment’s “encouraging results.”
Finally, the narrative denying a Chinese laboratory connection to the virus’s origins is also shifting. Now, one of the Wuhan scientists is admitting….to being bitten by a bat.
Scientists at the Wuhan lab admitted being bitten while collecting samples in a cave which is home to coronavirus-infected bats.One researcher said one animal’s fangs went through his rubber gloves ‘like a needle’.Staff inside the top-secret facility were also shown handling bats without gloves and working on ‘live viruses’ without masks in apparent breach of strict World Health Organisation safety rules on PPE, according to footage captured by a Chinese TV crew and broadcast in 2017.
Open economies. Open schools. Effective treatments. Origin identified. Frankly, it all so astonishing.
In conclusion, at this rate, the narratives are changing and the vaccines distributed, there will be few stories about the dreaded coronavirus by Easter.
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