Like many of my progressive friends, I was shocked to find Democrats on the wrong side of the most consequential COVID policy decisions. They will pay for it.

On schools— Democrats were 100% wrong— schools could have reopened with limited COVID19 spread and massive societal benefit in 2020. (They probably should never have closed) We didn’t need masks or ventilation upgrades. We didn’t need asymptomatic testing or vaccines. Sweden showed us how, but we refused to follow. Why? Because Trump said it was a good idea. The smartest person on school reopening was…. Ron DeSantis.

On vaccines— These were a tremendous good for most adults who had not previously had covid in 2021, but their value and repeated value (booster after booster) in younger populations is far from certain. No amount of vaccination can stop COVID. The moment that was clear, any effort to pressure low risk individuals to get shots no longer made sense. Europeans again led the way. Instead, Dems pushed a divisive mandate without exemption for prior immunity.

On mandates— Some nurses & other health care workers who worked in 2020 who got COVID (perhaps even on the job) and recovered, were forced to get vaccinated. If they refused, some were fired. Democrats were crazy to fire a nurse who got covid and recovered from it and refused vaccination. First, there is no proof that shot would further help the nurse or anyone else, and second, what an ungrateful thing to do.

In fact, it was obvious to me that Americans would not take well to mandates. Even if there was a huge societal benefit, the unintended consequences would far exceed gains. It turned out there was not even any third party benefit. The Biden mandate was a medical and ethical disaster.

On vaccine safety— the moment you find a safety signal you have to address it. You can’t just deny myocarditis exists; then admit that it does, but say it is mild; then admit that it can be severe, but say covid is always worse (a lie). Why not: make Pfizer run RCTs of lower doses? further apart? Democrats did nothing to mitigate vaccine safety. They are too captured by corporate interest.

Masking kids— obviously this would be divisive. And honestly there is no evidence to support it. How stupid can you be to put political capital into masking 2 year olds? Obviously that is a stupid thing to do, and will haunt you. Then to top it off, many democratic politicians stood maskless infront of masked kids. Come on!

Adding COVID19 vaccines to the immunization schedule. Of course this would be divisive. And pretending the schedule has no implications is a lie. You didn’t even need to do this in 2022, could have wait a few years (although let me be clear, I am opposed to it) just from a political point of view.

Meanwhile, here is what they didn’t do:

1. Paid sick leave
2. Help to parents who have to work whose kids are sick
3. Improvements to universal health insurance coverage

The average person on the street is most interested by moments when government affects their lives. This happens at the gas pump, the grocery bill, and COVID19 policy. Democrats were on the wrong side of most COVID19 issues. This affects people’s daily lives. Ironically, their policies actually discriminated against poor minority groups—No one wore the mask more than someone who has to ride public transport & no one was hurt worse by school closure— the very groups they claim to want to empower.

My guess is polling is wrong, and they are going to get clobbered even worse than expectations for their COVID stances. I urge Dems who want to keep the White House in 2024 to fire all their COVID advisors and hire unapologetic centrists on COVID. If they don’t, they will stand no chance.