Four years ago, the largest single mistake in U.S. public health history began its commencement, leaving former Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards to manufacture the most unsavory portion of his legacy, along with others.
With a paucity of information about the Wuhan coronavirus in mid-March, 2020, it’s difficult to fault the extreme steps taken initially over the next few months. These comprised of closing schools, closing of all but the smallest public gatherings, restricting commercial activities, and requiring social distancing including face coverings.
Yet within three months it had become clear enough that much of this was or had been ineffective. Because the virus was quite selective in who got hit hardest – those with co-morbidities, followed by the elderly – the overwhelming majority of the public, and especially children, would face no more than an inconvenient respiratory virus of relatively short duration. In this time span, it became clear that these punitive measures Edwards imposed for the vast majority cost much more than any benefits that might accrue – learning and developmental loss among children, tremendous economic dislocation, and assaults on personal liberties.
Alternative models already existed for Edwards’ consideration by the time the 2020 school year commenced. Internationally, on almost every measure the light touch practiced by Sweden avoided these costs. Nationally, other states’ governors far less severely locked down their states and reaped the same benefits.
Edwards made matters worse, when availability arrived by the end of the year, by imposing unnecessary and intrusive vaccination policies on adults and worst of all on children without co-morbidities. The research has shown because of the extremely low benefit for children that becomes microscopic for those below the age of 5 since almost none suffer more than minorly, because detrimental side effect risks remained, even if very low in probability, overall children were put at unnecessary risk with vaccinations.
Even if he backed off from his goal of forcing vaccinations and/or frequent testing on state employees for its impracticality and bad optics (by the fall of 2021), for a time he tried to strongarm educational institutions into forcing their employees and students to have the same. Colleges were allowed free rein, and they stupidly did, to impose such rules. Worse, he pushed through a rule forcing that vaccination on school children that, again, proved so at odds with the science and public that only months later he had to retreat sheepishly.
Chalk up his enthusiasm for defying the science to his leftist impulse towards command and control, where mandates increased government power. As well, being a politician who focused more on retaining power than in deferring it to allow individuals greater autonomy, he fell prey to the zero COVID fantasy and attendant myths (such as acquired immunity wasn’t as good as vaccination, vaccines would prevent spread, and a host of others) to stave of fear that his political standing would be injured significantly with every single death that could be traced back to the virus.
Which ended up spreading blood on his hands. While overaggressive pandemic policies may have saved some lives, statistics would verify over time that on net they cost more. People couldn’t access crucial medical interventions and restrictions produced mental stress that, the data showed, led to Louisiana ranking among the highest in excess deaths not attributable directly to the virus.
It’s not like any of these warts and alternative approaches to his weren’t known within months of the pandemic descending, yet for the next couple of years that he continued to insist on strict measures (and ineffective ones; besides indicating that through the links in this post and the links within those, there’s here, here, here, here, and here, among many others). Unfortunately, he had many other enablers who either didn’t stand up to speak necessary truth to power, or who actively aided him in leaving this miserable legacy.
If it was Edwards who had blood on his hands from his pandemic policy, the apparatchik most responsible for handing him the knife was former state epidemiologist Joe Kanter. He came to the office a few months into the pandemic when it was peaking, upon the previous occupant resigning for what he said were personal reasons (who months later took a private sector job on the east coast). If Edwards was wanting a yes man to add a veneer of respect to his decisions, he found the right guy.
Kanter supplied full-throated support to a number of now-discredited policy choices by Edwards, with whom he shares political ideology. He kept up a drumbeat of alarmist rhetoric that never panned out and acted as chief cheerleader for every restriction or as thugee trying to suppress dissent. Even as recently as a year ago, in his official capacity he was pimping vaccination for infants. He didn’t last two months into Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s term, either or both because Landry couldn’t stomach his policy preferences and history or he knew because of that Landry would show him the door sometime soon; regardless, he has been shamelessly unrepentant to the end.
If Kanter was Edwards’ consigliere in the unfolding poor and unscientific policy choices, a pair of milquetoast Republican legislative leaders ended up facilitating these. Former House Speaker Clay Schexnayder and former Sen. Pres. Page Cortez, despite multiple opportunities offered by their party members, did little to put up resistance to Edwards’ agenda. They allowed many bills that would have clipped Edwards’ wings, if not reverse his moves, either to die in their chambers or didn’t back their revival as part of veto override votes. They even refused until too late to back a petition that could have done the same.
While a number of almost exclusively Republicans in the legislature and in some local governments did their best to overcome Edwards’ destructive pandemic agenda, one prominent appointed official stood out heroically: Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley, who didn’t assume the post until a couple of months into the pandemic. He defied Edwards and Kanter by refusing to order students out of classrooms statewide after the last couple months of the 2020 academic year, leaving it up to districts to decide, and he eventually he scrapped the rule that said students without symptoms but who had family members come down with the virus couldn’t attend in-person instruction.
In fact, as a result of Brumley’s decisions, Louisiana students’ learning weathered better than just about any states’ students in the pandemic period, and the dismal overall rankings the state received for pandemic policy didn’t hit bottom solely because its education policy performance turned out near the top. (I was anything but his many media critics, but if it helps, “OK, Brumley was right”).
Four years have passed, and what did and didn’t work and who were the responsible villains and heroes need public refreshing so that those whose moves disserved the state and those moves don’t get lost in a memory hole (a binning no doubt encouraged by those at fault) that would hinder future publics from avoiding the same mistakes again.
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