CNN Medical Pundit Now Has Regrets about Her Covid-Absolutism
After masking hindered her son’s language development, Wen begins to embrace an approach we have embraced throughout the pandemic: Personal risk assessment.
Reflecting upon the last 30 months of the pandemic, it would be hard to name the top morally-righteous covid-absolutist.
But if one were to create a list, near the top would have to be The Washington Post columnist and CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen. Who could forget her demand that rights and privileges enjoyed by Americans be explicitly tied to getting the covid vaccine during the mandate push to autumn 2021?
“That if you wish to have these privileges, you need to get vaccinated.
Travel, and having the right to travel in our state, it’s not a constitutional right as far as I know to board a plane, and so saying that you want to stay unvaccinated, that is your choice, but if you want to travel, you better go get that vaccine.”
.@DrLeanaWen: “There are privileges associated with being an American. That if you wish to have these privileges, you need to get vaccinated. Travel, and having the right to travel in our state, it’s not a constitutional right as far as I know to board a plane." pic.twitter.com/eyhEVooV20
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 10, 2021
Even during the spring of 2022, she was still masking her son under certain circumstances.
…I still would want my son to mask when in other indoor, non-school settings. When I take him to the grocery store, when we’re on the train, when we’re in church — in these settings, he and I will still be masking.
Other families will make different choices. For us, the benefit of him going maskless in school outweighs the risk of Covid-19 in that setting. In other settings, we prefer to continue to reduce risk.
In the wake of the more infectious variants, the failure of the vaccine mandate to contain the uncontainable virus, and harm that has occurred to her own children, she has now decided to embrace the idea I have championed since the February of 2020: Personal risk assessment.
I accept the risk that my kids will probably contract covid-19 this school year, just as they could contract the flu, respiratory syncytial virus and other contagious diseases. As for most Americans, covid in our family will almost certainly be mild; and, like most Americans, we’ve made the decision that following precautions strict enough to prevent the highly contagious BA.5 will be very challenging.
Masking has harmed our son’s language development, and limiting both kids’ extracurriculars and social interactions would negatively affect their childhood and hinder my and my husband’s ability to work.
Other families will view these trade-offs differently. Some will maintain strict precautions to protect a severely immunocompromised household member.
…[M]y approach to this school year reflects the evolution of the pandemic and the acknowledgment that avoiding covid-19 cannot be the singular metric of people’s overall health and well-being.
Eventually the truth comes out pic.twitter.com/HFZvmspm07
— 🍁Antonio Tweets 📣 (@AntonioTweets2) August 28, 2022
It’s too bad Wen didn’t appreciate the negatives associated with covid-absolutism before her son’s language development was hindered.
For most of the pandemic, many Americans and most public health officials refused to acknowledge the reality of tradeoffs. In 2021, The New York Times described a phenomenon known as “Covid Absolutism.” It consists of two primary factors:
1. Taking every conceivable step that could reduce the spread of Covid regardless of its actual effectiveness;
2. Downplaying or ignoring the unintended consequences and tradeoffs of these policies.
Here’s hoping Wen’s son suffers no lasting harm and that she perhaps learns an important lesson about promoting narrative over facts.
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Comments
How convenient.
Now she reevaluates because harm came to someone close to her. She is a Doctor. Theoretically trained to evaluate evidence and diagnose best treatments for individual patients. She allowed her politics to lead her to a set answer and was done.
The good news is that we don’t have to forgive her…
…BECAUSE SHE HASN’T APOLOGIZED.
“She is a Doctor!” Has zero creditability since Covid except we get to pay her student loan.
“She is a Doctor. Theoretically trained to evaluate evidence and diagnose best treatments for individual patients”
No. Doctors are indoctrinated with “health recipes” – some of which are actually wrong. “Thinking” is discouraged.
I have just suffered a year’s worth of problems due to serious B-12 deficiency discovered in a hospital half-way through. I was unable to walk straight. Doctors are told not to test for B-12 during routine exams.
“She is a Doctor”…
So is Jill Biden and Bill Cosby!
The idea doctors determine civil rights is so bizarre it could only have been originated in an echo chamber of doctors/government employees and Democrats.
I keep telling you. It’s because we’ve developed this apocryphal tradition that “public health” and “public safety” are root passwords to your constitutional rights, and the people haven’t rebelled against it.
It’s a #MeToo epiphany that her choice (Pun intended? Well, yeah.) was poorly considered and her son’s life was poorly served (a double pun).
They’re just trying to rehab this idiot for her next useful idiocy episode for her handlers.
I’ve been saying this for years now: even when public health authorities get the science right, science alone doesn’t tell you what to do. That requires things like priorities, value judgements, and risk tolerance, none of which are scientific.
Many Americans decide to smoke cigarettes, ride motorcycles, ride horses, drink alcohol, participate in contact sports, and all these things are still considered to fall within the normal range of risk tolerance for a rational adult. Now, try to imagine if the CDC were an actual person. This person never smokes, never drinks, never exceeds to speed limit. When the pandemic began, he didn’t touch his own wife for months. He won’t even touch a soft-boiled egg. If you knew this man, you wouldn’t tell yourself “here’s a smart, rational person whose judgement I can trust.” He would be the biggest weenie you’ve ever met, and if he didn’t have a diagnosable anxiety disorder, he wouldn’t be that far off.
She could care less about the lives of those she destroyed…it was only the impact on her children that forces this turnabout for the rabid lockdown/vaxxer.
And I don’t trust she has changed in any actual way.
She would be in favor of locking us down again on any thin pretext if that was what her political peer group wants.
I believe that there are a lot more shoes to drop documenting on-going vaccine complications and the negligence of the Public Health establishment to apply traditional risk/benefit analysis to the deployment of COVID vaccine. The real tell, is that the “Believe Science, Woke, Wackos” are now blaming Trump for pushing the FDA for expedited approval.
Availability and choice (not that Choice) discerned through risk management, but neither mandates nor normalization in the general population. And he replaced Fauci et al with domain experts who followed a rational approach to science, social, and individual welfare.
Well, of course they do, because noting can ever be a Marxist’s fault.
The people DEMANDED availability of a vaccine.
They DIDN’T demand to be HELD HOSTAGE to a vaccine.
It’s an obvious difference, don’t expect Democrats to understand it.
This woman considers women murdering their unborn babies to be healthcare. I doubt she will learn anything long-term from this. Her child is impacted and that’s all she cares about. In fact, she gave birth to her child and that still didn’t make her change her position on murdering unborn babies.
Human rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes is imperative to keep women affordable, available, and taxable, and the “burdens” of evidence sequestered in darkness. Let us bray (sic).
How transhumane. The karmic irony of Planned Parenthood commenting on planned parent/hood and services with forward-looking collateral damage to the individual, society, and humanity.
Why aren’t citizens taking up pitchforks and torches?
I really don’t get it.
We are weak and afraid
You’re not!
I’m not.
The evidence that these tyrants are full of it and had no rational reason for their decisions except to be on a power trip is in front of everyone’s face.
Because we would spend our lives in prison unless an actual armed revolt begins.
For clerical purposes, I am not talking about arson and impaling. I don’t see any kind of revolt against authority any more. No questioning. For two years I saw nothing but shut up and do what you’re told from basically everyone.
Now, everyone can see that these “experts” are full of shit. And in the culture, and among all the people I know and talk to, I hear the sound of crickets.
Every time some conservative posts, “They are baiting us, daring us to make the first move so they will be justified in wiping us out,” you have your answer.
They’re going to publicly justify wiping us out no matter who does what when. If you care whether it will be true or not when it finally happens, you’re deluding yourself.
Besides using the phrase “pitchforks and torches”, what exactly are you suggesting? Voicing our outrage and supporting Trump through his travails leading the fight against the communists is what forced the issue in the first place. Masks dropped and continue to drop. They are making big mistakes and getting rattled as whistleblowers are stepping forward in increasing numbers. We are in a war of nerves right now and they are on the brink of all-out panic as the alligators begin to overwhelm them
And you are suggesting…. what exactly? Setting our hair on fire and start rioting?
Too little, too late. How does someone acquire enough education to be a “doctor” but doesn’t understand that everything involves trade offs? Those of us who, in 2020, who were screaming about the trade offs, first of lockdowns, later of perpetual masking, were censored, banned, and treated like evil ax murderers coming after grandma just for suggesting that the mandates had costs that were being ignored. Fascists like her, Fauci and Blix should be tried for crimes against humanity.
It’s a feature of leftist academia to ignore tradeoffs. By selectively ignoring benefits they can make anything into oppression, including that thing’s polar opposite. That’s how it can be racist oppression when white people move away from a neighborhood, but also racist oppression when they move back in.
“It’s a feature of leftist academia to ignore tradeoffs.”
Yes. This. Worried about climate change? Discard all of modern civilization no downside there. Some things are not perfect in a free market, discard freedom for authoritarian top down planned economy run by themselves. etc. etc. etc.
BS Rodgers
It wasn’t Rogan
It was President Trump!!!
Give the props to the real man…
Sorry, here’s the link with Rogan and Rodgers
https://www.insider.com/aaron-rodgers-thanks-joe-rogan-covid-treatment-game-plan-2022-8
Is it Betopox or monkeypox
Is there any difference?
https://www.weaselzippers.us/485126-beto-orourke-goes-to-hospital-with-bacterial-infection/
She harmed her children because she’s stupid. I avoided harm to my children because I’m not stupid. Since she didn’t harm my children, I don’t give a crap about here. Had she done so, there would be scores to settle.
She has, many children were severely injured because of her support of these policies. Some permanently amd some died
Those children’s parents didn’t properly defend them. It really wasn’t that difficult to see how stupid it was to be forcing your kid to wear a mask that wasn’t going to filter out anything significant and forcing them to take experimental drugs for a disease where they were literally the leas at-risk group .
WHO knows what Wen wants.
WHO’s on first?
Wen is out in left field?
Truthfully, she has been candid by admitting the mistakes in her approach, and I respect her a little more for that.
She could have hid behind lies and been a spineless jellyfish like Fauci.
She should be shown a little grace IMO for being willing to admit this publicly.
Hell, I don’t respect her at all. Had she not shot herself in the foot, personally, she would still be a COVID Karen.
What’s the saying: some people learn from the experiences of others, some people learn only from their own, and some people never learn? Nobody beyond the first category should ever be in power over others.
Too little too late. She didn’t give a rats @ss when she advocated that people lose their jobs and civil rights over the vaccine. Now that it affects her personally she’s had a change of heart. Is this what anerican medical schools are turning out?
Unfortunately yes, don’t go to a Dr under 45
“Masking has harmed our son’s language development, and limiting both kids’ extracurriculars and social interactions would negatively affect their childhood”
Plus they both have “Karen The Giant Fronthole” for a mother.
Somebody call CPS and save those kids.
Her ideology hurt her son? Too bad.
She regrets it? Good.
Don’t believe her. She’s a former leader of Planned Parenthood and she knows what she is doing.
covid or no, she’s already seen to the damage of her kids–what an example she is–reminds me of that retard psychiatrist (of course, repeating myself) bandy or banshee or whatever, from harvard–who, though she had never met DJT face-to-face, still went on live programs to give us all the benefit of her “diagnosis”
this “dr” is of the same ilk
She was a true believer in “The Science (TM)”. Medical history is chock full of them including modern times. In the past, the doctor espousing the theory was pilloried but now both the doctor and the patients are. Withholding medical care is the new tool of medical “compliance”.
She has the money to attempt to help her child…. many she doomed… don’t. Considering the number of doctors ..er.. physicians (sorry Dr. Jill) dropping dead or coming down with Covid …. Dr. Karma is paging them.
I hope that she obtained proper clearance from her CCP handlers before making her comments. Otherwise, she may be missing a finger or two the next time we see her.
Pretty sure that’s a Japanese thing.