Virus Lockdown Plan - A 16 Year Old's Science Project
The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea
May 15, 2020
Now begins the grand effort,
on display in thousands of articles and news broadcasts daily, somehow to
normalize the lockdown and all its destruction of the last two months. We
didn’t lock down almost the entire country in 1968/69, 1957, or 1949-1952, or even during 1918. But in a terrifying few days in March
2020, it happened to all of us, causing an avalanche of social, cultural, and
economic destruction that will ring through the ages.
There was nothing normal
about it all. We’ll be trying to figure out what happened to us for decades
hence.
How did a temporary plan to
preserve hospital capacity turn into two-to-three months of near-universal
house arrest that ended up causing worker furloughs at 256 hospitals, a stoppage of
international travel, a 40% job loss among people earning less than $40K per
year, devastation of every economic sector, mass confusion and demoralization, a complete ignoring of all
fundamental rights and liberties, not to mention the mass confiscation of
private property with forced closures of millions of businesses?
Whatever the answer, it’s got
to be a bizarre tale. What’s truly surprising is just how recent the theory
behind lockdown and forced distancing actually is. So far as anyone can tell,
the intellectual machinery that made this mess was invented 14 years ago, and
not by epidemiologists but by computer-simulation modelers. It was adopted not
by experienced doctors – they warned ferociously against it – but by
politicians.
Let’s start with the phrase
social distancing, which has mutated into forced human separation. The first I
had heard it was in the 2011 movie Contagion. The first time it appeared in the New York Times was
February 12, 2006:
If the avian flu goes
pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the
only protection most Americans will have is “social distancing,” which is
the new
politically correct way of saying “quarantine.”
But distancing also
encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of
elevators — and the [elbow] bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will
rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of
influenza are washing over us.
Maybe you don’t remember that
the avian flu of 2006 didn’t amount to much. It’s true, despite all the extreme
warnings about its lethality, H5N1
didn’t turn into much at all. What it did do, however, was send
the existing president, George W. Bush, to the library to read about the 1918
flu and its catastrophic results. He asked for some experts to submit some
plans to him about what to do when the real thing comes along.
The New York Times (April 22,
2020) tells the story from there:
Fourteen years ago, two
federal government doctors, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, met with a
colleague at a burger joint in suburban Washington for a final review of a
proposal they knew would be treated like a piñata: telling Americans to stay
home from work and school the next time the country was hit by a deadly
pandemic.
When they presented their
plan not long after, it was met with skepticism and a degree of ridicule by
senior officials, who like others in the United States had grown accustomed to
relying on the pharmaceutical industry, with its ever-growing array of new
treatments, to confront evolving health challenges.
Drs. Hatchett and Mecher were
proposing instead that Americans in some places might have to turn back to an
approach, self-isolation, first widely employed in the Middle Ages.
How that idea — born out of a
request by President George W. Bush to ensure the nation was better prepared
for the next contagious disease outbreak — became the heart of the national playbook
for responding to a pandemic is one of the untold stories
of the coronavirus crisis.
It required the key
proponents — Dr. Mecher, a Department of Veterans Affairs physician, and Dr.
Hatchett, an oncologist turned White House adviser — to overcome intense
initial opposition.
It brought their work
together with that of a Defense Department team assigned to a similar task.
And it had some unexpected
detours, including a deep dive into the history of the 1918 Spanish flu and an important
discovery kicked
off by a high school research project pursued by the daughter of a
scientist at the Sandia National Laboratories.
The concept of social
distancing is now intimately familiar to almost everyone. But as it first made
its way through the federal bureaucracy in 2006 and 2007, it was viewed
as impractical,
unnecessary and politically infeasible.
Notice that in the course of
this planning, neither legal nor economic experts were brought in to consult
and advise. Instead it fell to Mecher (formerly of Chicago and an intensive
care doctor with no previous expertise in pandemics) and the oncologist
Hatchett.
But what is this mention of
the high-school daughter of 14? Her name is Laura M. Glass, and she recently
declined to be interviewed when the Albuquerque Journal did a deep dive of this history.
Laura, with some guidance
from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people – family
members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations –
interact. What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about
140 people a day, more than any other group. Based on that finding, her program
showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected
during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if
the schools were closed.
Laura’s name appears on the
foundational paper arguing for lockdowns and forced human separation. That
paper is Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza (2006).
It set out a model for forced separation and applied it with good results
backwards in time to 1957. They conclude with a chilling call for what amounts
to a totalitarian lockdown, all stated very matter-of-factly.
Implementation of social
distancing strategies is challenging. They likely must be imposed for the
duration of the local epidemic and possibly until a strain-specific vaccine is
developed and distributed. If compliance
with the strategy is high over this period, an epidemic
within a community can be averted. However, if neighboring communities do not
also use these interventions, infected neighbors will continue to introduce
influenza and prolong the local epidemic, albeit at a depressed level more
easily accommodated by healthcare systems.
In other words, it was a
high-school science experiment that eventually became law of the land, and
through a circuitous route propelled not by science but politics.
The primary author of this
paper was Robert J. Glass, a complex-systems analyst with Sandia National
Laboratories. He had no medical training, much less an expertise in immunology
or epidemiology.
That explains why Dr. D.A.
Henderson, “who had been the leader of the international effort to eradicate
smallpox,” completely rejected the whole scheme.
Says the NYT:
Dr. Henderson was convinced
that it made no sense to force schools to close or public gatherings to stop.
Teenagers would escape their homes to hang out at the mall. School lunch
programs would close, and impoverished children would not have enough to eat.
Hospital staffs would have a hard time going to work if their children were at
home.
The measures embraced by Drs.
Mecher and Hatchett would “result in significant disruption of the social
functioning of communities and result in possibly serious economic problems,”
Dr. Henderson wrote in his own academic paper responding to their ideas.
The answer, he insisted, was
to tough it out: Let
the pandemic spread, treat people who get sick and work quickly to develop a
vaccine to prevent it from coming back.
AIER’s Phil Magness got to
work to find the literature responding to this 2006 and discovered: Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic
Influenza. The authors included D.A. Henderson, along with
three professors from Johns Hopkins: infectious disease specialist Thomas V.Inglesby, epidemiologist Jennifer B. Nuzzo, and physician Tara
O’Toole.
Their paper is a remarkably
readable refutation of the entire lock-down model.
There are no historical observations or
scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of
possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread of
influenza. … It is difficult to identify circumstances in the past half-century
when large-scale quarantine has been effectively used in the control of any
disease. The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme
(forced confinement of sick people with the well; complete restriction of
movement of large populations; difficulty in getting critical supplies,
medicines, and food to people inside the quarantine zone) that this mitigation measure should be
eliminated from serious consideration…
Home quarantine also raises
ethical questions. Implementation of home quarantine could result in healthy,
uninfected people being placed at risk of infection from sick household
members. Practices to reduce the chance of transmission (hand-washing,
maintaining a distance of 3 feet from infected people,
etc.) could be recommended, but a policy imposing home quarantine would
preclude, for example, sending healthy children to stay with relatives when a
family member becomes ill. Such a policy would also be particularly hard on and
dangerous to people living in close quarters, where the risk of infection would be
heightened….
Travel restrictions, such as
closing airports and screening travelers at borders, have historically been
ineffective. The World Health Organization Writing Group concluded that
“screening and quarantining entering travelers at international borders did not
substantially delay virus introduction in past pandemics . . . and will likely
be even less effective in the modern era.”… It is reasonable to assume that the
economic costs of shutting down air or train travel would be very high,
and the societal
costs involved in interrupting all air or train travel would be extreme. …
During seasonal influenza
epidemics, public events with an expected large attendance have sometimes been
cancelled or postponed, the rationale being to decrease the number of contacts
with those who might be contagious. There are, however, no certain indications
that these actions have had any definitive effect on the severity or duration
of an epidemic. Were consideration to be given to doing this on a more
extensive scale and for an extended period, questions immediately arise as to
how many such events would be affected. There are many social gatherings that
involve close contacts among people, and this prohibition might include church
services, athletic events, perhaps all meetings of more than 100 people. It
might mean closing theaters, restaurants, malls, large stores, and bars. Implementing such measures would
have seriously disruptive consequences…
Schools are often closed for
1–2 weeks early in the development of seasonal community outbreaks of influenza
primarily because of high absentee rates, especially in elementary schools, and
because of illness among teachers. This would seem reasonable on practical
grounds. However, to close schools for longer periods is not only impracticable
but carries the
possibility of a serious adverse outcome….
Thus, cancelling or
postponing large meetings would not be likely to have any significant effect on
the development of the epidemic. While local concerns may result in the closure
of particular events for logical reasons, a policy directing communitywide
closure of public events seems inadvisable. Quarantine. As experience shows,
there is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or
individuals. The
problems in implementing such measures are formidable, and secondary effects of
absenteeism and community disruption as well as possible adverse consequences,
such as loss of public trust in government and stigmatization of quarantined
people and groups, are likely to be considerable….
Finally, the remarkable
conclusion:
Experience has shown that
communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with
the least anxiety when the normal
social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong
political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure
that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either
is seen to be less than optimal, a
manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.
Confronting a manageable
epidemic and turning it into a catastrophe: that seems like a good description
of everything that has happened in the COVID-19 crisis of 2020.
Thus did some of the most
highly trained and experienced experts on epidemics warn with biting rhetoric
against everything that the advocates of lockdown proposed. It was not even a
real-world idea in the first place and showed no actual knowledge of viruses
and disease mitigation. Again, the idea was born of a high-school science
experiment using agent-based modelling techniques having nothing at all to do
with real life, real science, or real medicine.
So the question becomes: how
did the extreme view prevail?
The New York Times has the answer:
The [Bush] administration
ultimately sided with the proponents of social distancing and shutdowns —
though their victory was little noticed outside of public health circles. Their
policy would become the basis for government planning and would be used
extensively in simulations used to prepare for pandemics, and in a limited way in 2009 during an
outbreak of the influenza called H1N1. Then the coronavirus came, and the plan was put to work
across the country for the first time.
[Note: You can read the 2007 CDC paper here. It is arguable that this
paper did not favor full lockdown. I’ve spoken to Ajeev Venkayya, MD, who
assures me that they never envisioned this level of lockdown.]
The Times called one of the
pro-lockdown researchers, Dr. Howard Markel, and asked what he thought of the
lockdowns. His answer: he is glad that his work was used to “save lives” but
added, “It is also
horrifying.” “We always knew this would be applied in
worst-case scenarios,” he said. “Even when you are working on dystopian
concepts, you always hope it will never be used.”
Ideas have consequences, as
they say. Dream up an idea for a virus-controlling totalitarian society, one
without an endgame and eschewing any experienced-based evidence that it would
achieve the goal, and you might see it implemented someday. Lockdown might be
the new orthodoxy but that doesn’t make it medically sound or morally correct.
At least now we know that many great doctors and scholars in 2006 did their
best to stop this nightmare from unfolding. Their mighty paper should serve as
a blueprint for dealing with the next pandemic.
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Jeffrey
A. Tucker
Jeffrey A. Tucker is
Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is
the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular
press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently The Market Loves You. He is also the editor
of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics
of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. Jeffrey is available for
speaking and interviews via his email. Tw | FB | LinkedIn
– May 19,
2020
“If I ever see that again
from you or anybody on your team I’m going to bury the guy at the plate.” So
said Roger Clemens to a Cleveland Indian on second, decades ago. George Will
reports in his endlessly great book about baseball, Men at Work, that the
baserunning Indian was tipping off the location of Clemens’s pitches to his
teammate at the plate. Will goes on to write that the runner “gave Clemens some
back talk.” That was a mistake. Clemens subsequently “returned to the mound and
on the next pitch sent the batter sprawling.”
That Clemens used baseball’s
unwritten and rather manly rules to send a message came to mind while thinking
about the hideous lockdowns, along with the masks that have become the symbol
of them. It’s hard to imagine someone as tough as Clemens wearing a mask. And
if he wears one, it’s hard to imagine he does so happily.
Traveling back in time to the
early 1980s, then Yankees catcher Rick Cerone was asked about how he was
enduring one of those periodic Major League Baseball strikes. This is a
paraphrase, but Cerone said he “missed being around the guys.” Imagine what
Cerone would think about baseball being suspended in response to a virus that,
by most accounts, thankfully tends to spare a substantial majority of those
exposed to it. Baseball isn’t just a profession, it’s a culture. Clearly a very
masculine culture that includes protecting the plate, the stealing of signs,
but also retribution for stealing those signs. The idea that potential illness
would keep the players from playing must aggravate more than a few major
leaguers.
In the just concluded ESPN documentary, The Last Dance, Michael
Jordan broke his foot early in his second season as a Chicago Bull. At that
point, Jordan’s net worth had already soared into the stratosphere based on
Nike shoe sales alone, but he was plainly miserable not playing. Despite being
financially set for life, and despite warnings from doctors that he was risking
his basketball career by
coming back too soon, Jordan did just that.
Notable about Jordan and the
Bulls was that they, in order to vanquish their critics, had to eventually beat
the Detroit Pistons of “Bad Boys” fame. The Bulls-Pistons were notoriously
rough, and arguably symbolized by Piston Bill Laimbeer and his plexiglass mask.
Laimbeer wore a mask for a time not to fend off germs, but because he’d
fractured a cheekbone after colliding with another NBA player in an exhibition
game.
The notoriously tough
Laimbeer’s use of a mask perhaps amused the legendary Rudy Tomjanovich. Los
Angeles Laker Kermit Washington punched Houston Rocket Tomjanovich in an
on-court fight in 1977, and nearly killed the Rocket. Two years later, however,
Tomjanovich was back on the court. And an all-star. Tomjanovich famously
coached the Rockets to two NBA titles in the 1990s, though some say asterisks
should be put next to both since Jordan was largely out of the NBA during those
championship seasons for the Rockets.
There’s no way of knowing
whether Jordan’s Bulls would have beaten the Rockets, but it’s fairly easy to
speculate that neither Jordan, nor Laimbeer, nor Tomjanovich would have been
fazed by the coronavirus. Basketball and winning plainly meant too much to all
three to stop playing the game.
Turning to football, Terrell
Owens played – brilliantly – in Super Bowl XXXIX after defying physician orders
that he not play. You see, Owens’s ankle had two screws and a metal plate in
it, yet he still risked life and limb to compete. Owens played 62 out of 72
offensive snaps for the Philadelphia Eagles, and amassed 122 receiving yards.
Understand that Owens had a broken
leg.
Defensive back Ronnie Lott
famously amputated the top of his left pinky finger so that he wouldn’t miss
any games. It seems Lott broke his finger tackling Dallas Cowboys rb Timmy
Newsome at the end of the 1985 regular season. Facing a choice between having
the finger operated on, a pin inserted and covered by a cast such that he would
have had to miss the playoffs, Lott chose the amputation route. Though he later
regretted doing as he did, one imagines Covid-like symptoms wouldn’t have kept
him off the field when he played. Neither would they have kept teammate Joe
Montana out.
Montana had a high fever and
the flu going into the 1979 Cotton Bowl that pitted Notre Dame versus the
University of Houston. Montana ate a bowl of chicken soup at halftime, and led
Notre Dame to a stirring comeback that ended with a 35-34 win. It seems neither
Montana’s teammates nor Houston’s players feared Montana breathing on them and
infecting them, though it’s said that Joe Namath’s New York Jets opponents
sometimes dreaded his
breathing on them after a sack so powerful was the stench of
alcohol from the night (and surely early morning) before.
Considering American sports
in a broad sense, how very American that the U.S.’s baseball, basketball and
football leagues crown world
champions every year. There’s a confidence about what’s American that is
unrivaled.
All of which raises a basic
question about the lockdowns and the masks: their effectiveness aside, along
with the view among some that they’re not terribly healthy, isn’t the bigger
story that they’re not very American?
Really, what does the rest of the world think? And doesn’t it kind of matter
what others think? Would Robert Mitchum have ever consented to wearing a mask
out of fear of a virus? Can anyone seriously imagine John Wayne putting on a
mask? As for social distancing, the Duke’s commanding, intimidating presence
ensured that none would come too close to him. And the idea that some business
owner would tell a mask-free Wayne to put one on, and that some hyper-alarmist
patron would tell him to keep 6 feet away is just too silly for words.
Sorry, but with the United
States there’s a perception about
it. Americans are rough around the edges, a little bit high strung, and in the
stereotype held by all-too-many, more than a bit manly. There’s a reason
Marlboro is the world’s biggest selling cigarette brand. When people buy the
cigarette they’re buying much more than just a smoke. They’re buying a
masculine American ideal. So are the buyers of Budweiser’s red, white and blue
can. It’s much more than the King of Beers. There’s underlying truth in all
stereotypes.
Americans don’t quarantine out
of fear of viruses, nor do these rugged individualists uniformly don masks to
protect themselves. Instead, Americans are the solution to whatever the problem is; always too busy
and productive to be held back by shelter-in-place orders and fears of N-95 shortages.
Oh well, it’s something to
think about. While wise minds can debate the U.S. as “the world’s policeman,”
they probably won’t debate the U.S. as the eternal answer to global questions.
Americans are doers, as opposed to them quarantining while waiting for others
to do for them. Notable is that whole world is watching as they do what John
Wayne probably never would have.
Republished from RealClearMarkets
John
Tamny
John Tamny, research fellow
of AIER, is editor of RealClearMarkets. His book on current ideological trends
is: They Are Both Wrong (AIER, 2019)
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