The experts have not been quick to assess, let alone apologize for, their performance during Covid. I took note, therefore, when two elite institutions that led the pandemic response co-hosted a retrospective event on Thursday, November 6.
Johns Hopkins University is home to a world-renowned medical center and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The American Enterprise Institute is one of Washington, D.C.’s oldest and largest public policy think tanks. Both helped shape pandemic policy and perception from its earliest days.
The two organizations have been collaborating for the past year, and they framed their first event on November 6 around the book In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, a critique of lockdowns written by two Princeton political scientists, Frances Lee and Stephen Macedo.
Given their vocal insistence on maximal Covid impositions, Hopkins and AEI deserve credit for finally highlighting an opposing view.
Let’s recall how central the two organizations were in the early days, and even before. In October of 2019, Hopkins had, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and World Economic Forum, co-hosted Event 201, a tabletop pandemic planning exercise. Participants from the CIA, the Chinese CDC, and various public relations firms discussed how they would manage a future novel coronavirus outbreak, focusing especially on how to combat “misinformation” and shape public behavior. Just two months later, Covid hit.
Then, in the spring of 2020, AEI fellow and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb co-authored with Johns Hopkins infectious disease specialists a major lockdown blueprint. Gottlieb was a key Republican demanding lockdowns. Meanwhile, millions of people were hitting refresh on Johns Hopkins’ Internet dashboard map, which counted Covid “cases” and helped drive panic across the globe.
There are still giant holes in AEI and Hopkins’ understanding – especially on the Covid vaccines – and I’ll address those in the second half of this article. But first, the good stuff.
Hellbound and Down 