Health Experts Were Wrong Again

How many times can a group of experts be wrong before they lose the title? Does the title mean anything anymore?

Health experts told us repeatedly that bars, gyms, and restaurants would become hotbeds for COVID-19 spread as states began reopening in the spring and summer of 2020. "Go there and you might die," they warned. It turns out, they were wrong. Very wrong. Wrong. As in "factually incorrect."

ABC News analyzed public data and found not only that bars, gyms, restaurants, nail salons, barbershops, and stores were not hotbeds, but that they only accounted for a small percentage, if any, of new outbreaks after the initial wave of COVID last year.

"If any."

"Based on ABC News’ analysis of public data of all coronavirus cases in four states and D.C., the outbreak settings accounted for less than 5% of all COVID-19 cases in those states," the report reads.

"Experts who spoke with ABC News said contact tracing efforts around the country were very limited, representing only a fraction of reported new cases, as was testing at specific businesses and locations. This meant that smaller businesses and industries, particularly retail shops, couldn't identify all of the cases that spread at that one location, according to Dr. Jason Andrews, an associate professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University's School of Medicine."

The locations found to be hit the worst include manufacturing and food processing centers. Between July 7, 2020, and the end of March 2021, 286 COVID-19 cases in the state of Washington were linked to manufacturing settings; 349 more cases were linked to food plants. That's just one state. North Carolina recorded 4,803 cases related to meat and poultry factories from May 2020 to the end of March 2021.

There's more information to be gathered to pinpoint exactly where outbreaks took place, but nothing so far vindicates the health experts. These fancy-dressing, steak-eating experts were not just wrong, their errors hurt people. Think of all of the bar, gym, salon, and restaurant owners who suffered and even lost their futures because of these warnings and statements...

Words have never meant less, as we argued yesterday. Titles appear not to mean much more.