LETTER TO THE EDITOR, SCMP. (ADDED: Published 26 May, here)
In your editorial you urge us not to let our guard down in case of another pandemic, and to "learn lessons" from the current one.
Fair enough.
I worry that in doing a "lessons learned" exercise, we consider only more of the same. You talk up, for example, a recent poll showing wide public acceptance of masking, suggesting the government take note. Thus, one assumes, the "next time" it will be renewed masking mandates, demands for vaccine boosters, school closures, social distancing, and so on. I suggest this is nonsense.
What's needed for proper "lessons learned" is a thorough look at the effects of these policies not just here, but around the world. A thorough, hard-nosed, scientific, look.
We have learned, for example, that school closures were extremely damaging to students, and that the worst affected were disadvantaged students. Countries that kept schools open fared better — often much better — than places such as Hong Kong that shut them down.
Strict society lockdowns not only didn't achieve their aims, but damaged the economies everywhere they were implemented. Outdoors "social distancing" rules were capricious and ineffective.
On masks, we have learned, from the most thorough meta analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCT) on public masking that they have no net benefit at the population level (the Cochrane Report).
Could we start calling for more heterodox views than those of our already well known local "experts"? A good place to start would be to review the Great Barrington Declaration of 2020, which restated long-recommended pandemic policies, namely of "focussed protection". One of the authors of the Declaration, professor Jay Bhattarachaya, has turned out to be more correct than his detractors, such as Anthony Fauci, who infamously called this Stanford Medical School professor a "fringe academic", and urged instead society-wide lockdowns, with all the harms they caused.
Could we also not pay any attention to random polls, such as the one you you quote: that 72% of a random group of Hongkongers would be "happy" to mask up again. How many of these know of the masking RCTs? I suggest very few. Taking note of these is like doing public health policy by vox pop. Not a good idea.
In sum, if we're going to do a "lessons learned" post mortem, let's make it a proper, independent, heterodox, and truly science-based one, not a populist "rinse and repeat".
Peter Forsythe
9308 0799
Discovery Bay
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3221038/lessons-hong-kong-learned-covid-19-must-never-be-forgotten
