Latest news with #InCovid'sWake:
Telegraph
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
We've been ostracised for telling the truth about how the liberal elite got Covid so wrong
Five years on from the pandemic and yet Covid and the measures used to respond to it still, it seems, have the capacity to shock. Stephen Macedo, a liberal academic at Princeton University, has just spent months examining how the Western political class got its response to the pandemic so wrong – an endeavour that has made him an outlier among many of his peers. Macedo, 68, a professor of politics, says he was 'shocked on a daily basis' by information that he and Frances Lee, a professor of politics and public affairs at the university, unearthed throughout the writing process. 'I have often not been able to believe what I've been reading,' says Macedo. Among the most perturbing was a plan published by the World Health Organisation in 2019, months before the pandemic started, followed by a report by Johns Hopkins University (JHU) later that year, in which both were were 'sceptical about a whole range of non-pharmaceutical interventions [NPIs, i.e. face coverings and social distancing],' Lee explains. A 2011 UK government pre-pandemic plan had reached similar conclusions. And yet these 'interventions' formed a central part of the response to the pandemic in Britain and the United States. Along with Lee, Macedo has become a loud voice in the effort to challenge how the 'laptop classes' defined our pandemic response, and got it badly wrong. In their book, In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, published on Tuesday and described by The New York Times as 'an invitation to have a reckoning', the two men argue that, in the face of a global emergency, democracy and free speech failed. We meet at Princeton, in New Jersey, on a grey spring day, earnest undergrads clutching coffee cups passing along the cherry blossom-lined streets. Macedo and Lee explain that their goal is 'not just to look back for looking back's sake' but to reflect on where the liberal political class veered off course, and set out the change of approach that is required ahead of the next global emergency. The JHU analysis warned that 'public health officials would need to advise politicians that there's a poor evidence base here, and that they shouldn't go out and make promises for results that may not pan out, and that they needed to weigh the costs' of simply shutting everything down – from isolating humans, who are social creatures, to closing businesses, and the risk of learning delays for children being kept out of school.
New York Times
20-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?
Five years ago, at the urging of federal officials, much of the United States locked down to stop the spread of Covid. Over time, the action polarized the country and changed the relationship between many Americans and their government. Michael Barbaro speaks to Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, two prominent political scientists who dispute the effectiveness of the lockdowns, to find out what they think will be required when the next pandemic strikes. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, authors of In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us Image Domino Park in New York in 2020. According to several experts, a big lesson learned from Covid is that recommendations during any pandemic are necessarily based on emerging and incomplete information. Credit... Hilary Swift for The New York Times There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here's how. We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode's publication. You can find them at the top of the page. Fact-checking by Susan Lee. Special thanks to David Leonhardt, Paula Szuchman, Paige Cowett, Nick Pitman, Celia Dugger, Michael Mason, Jim Yardley. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez, Brendan Klinkenberg and Chris Haxel. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.
