Liberty Exposé: Talking Coronavirus with Dr. Kevin Pham
One America news
It is almost September, and the world is still grappling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the repercussions from policies implemented by state and local governments have their intended (and unintended) consequences, Americans are still unsure about what is going on and what will be happening next. Throughout the news cycle, clashing voices on matters inconsequential saturated the air waves, and those looking for a calm and measured analysis of the situation are left sorely disappointed. Kevin Pham, a medical doctor, visiting policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, and contributor to The Daily Signal has written extensively on the subject in a wonderfully balanced way, and it was a delight to discuss all things COVID-19 with him.
Jennifer McDowell: A lot of time has passed since the initial revelations about the Coronavirus. What have we learned since then? What was false, and what has been proven true?
Dr. Kevin Pham: COVID-19 has proven to be a truly humbling phenomenon. As a case in point, at the beginning of the pandemic, doctors treating the disease were advising others to avoid anti-inflammatory drugs, and to use ventilators early and aggressively. What we’ve learned since is that out of control inflammation (the cytokine storm we’ve heard so often) was responsible for a large portion of the mortality and placing a patient on a ventilator only aggravates the inflammation. Early on in the two centers of infection in America—Washington and New York—the virus’s spread appeared unstoppable, so governors and mayors around the country implemented very harsh lockdown measures with the aim of staunching the spread. It was a move made with urgency and meant to address the most basic principle of disease transmission: human-to-human contact. Whether this was appropriate at the time or not will be debated endlessly, but it’s perfectly clear that these measures exacted a heavy price on the American people.
JM: A lot of people still have questions about why COVID-19 was treated differently than other viruses like the Flu. Can you elaborate on that?
Dr. Pham: Most of the other viruses we know of are less scary to us because we know of them. The novel coronavirus is new, having first infected humans sometime during 2019. Public health experts are all acutely aware of the consequences when a novel pathogen begins to spread in a population, such as when European settlers spread diseases to Native American populations. Even if we only account for recent history, the current death toll on Americans attributed to SARS-CoV-2 is 160,000 and counting. For comparison, a particularly bad influenza season will take 60,000 lives, as in 2018. Between 20-30,000 is more typical of a flu season, so compared to your average influenza season, SARS-CoV-2 has already killed 5 to 8 times more, and it’s unfortunately not done yet. There are some concerns about overcounting deaths. While that has happened, and in most cases corrected where found, overcounting errors cannot account for the 100-130,000 excess deaths attributed to SARS-CoV-2. In short, we treat this virus differently from the influenza virus because it is different.
JM: Do you think the response from federal and local governments was appropriate? Would you consider it a measured response or an overreaction?
Dr. Pham: I’ve tried to give as much grace to governors and mayors during this time. This is a new situation and every decision to make is a difficult one, balancing the prevention of a highly infectious disease with individual freedom and liberty. I give them a lot of credit when they react quickly to a dynamic situation, such as when governors halted reopening efforts, and rolled back reopening in response to the new surge of cases in July. I also can excuse governors who acted beyond what I would have done because, if faced with the same situation, everyone would come to a different calculation. Where I don’t credit governors or mayors is when they impose mindless restrictions ostensibly to control contagion that are not grounded in reality. For instance, Maine and New Hampshire are very similar states that neighbor one another, but Maine continues to restrict occupancy to 50 persons, while New Hampshire restricts occupancy to 50% of capacity. What this means is that a cathedral in Maine that seats 800 persons can have a funeral service attended only by 50, whereas a church in New Hampshire that seats 200 persons can have that service attended by 100. As no spikes in cases have been attributed to church services in New Hampshire, it is nonsensical for Maine to continue with its restriction. I give a lot of leniency to governors for placing restrictions on our lives in the first place, but they must be actively looking to restore those parts of our lives as soon as possible. Any delay in doing so is cruel at best, cruel and cynical at worst.
JM: Do you think the current measures should still be in place? When do you think they will no longer be necessary?
Dr. Pham: The current measures differ in every state, but on the whole, most states have some sort of partial reopening that was halted because of the July jump in cases. The states that have reimplemented shutdowns of bars and restaurants should release their tracing data to show that bars and/or restaurants were the source of transmission. It makes sense, but I want to know for sure because bars and restaurants run on very fine operating margins and cannot weather shutdowns for long. On the same note, houses of worship are barred from having indoor services in California, but having managed to attend Mass before this re-shutdown, I saw churches spend a lot of energy ensuring a safe and socially distance service. If Gavin Newsom is going to forbid church services, I want to know that infections were traced back to churches. I highly doubt this is the case and they should be reopened, with occupancy restrictions if need be. I would say the same of salons and nail shops, which have for the most part established surprisingly sophisticated safe check-in processes.
JM: What do you think about the data coming out of foreign countries who decided not to participate in a lockdown?
Dr. Pham: The main one in this arena is Sweden. Sweden is particularly helpful because they followed one path while their neighbors followed another. Regarding COVID-19 numbers, Sweden did not fare as well as Norway, Finland, or Denmark, but did fare better than many other countries in Europe and the United Kingdom. What this tells me is that it is possible to weather this pandemic without a complete shutdown, but it requires a lot of cooperation and trust between the government and the public. We lack that trust in America, but a large part of that is the not the fault of the public but of the government. Mixed messages early on followed by extremely harsh mitigation measures without clear communication about the goals or metrics for when the measures will end created enormous mistrust.
Sweden on the other hand has had middling success with minimally intrusive measures. They weighted personal liberties slightly higher than COVID-19 prevention and came out relatively well. To be sure, they faced higher mortality and case numbers than their neighbors who did lock down, but they’ve done better than many other European countries and show us an alternative route. We are not Sweden, but we should at least take note of their approach to bookend the spectrum of possible public health policies.
JM: What do you think about the reporting and media coverage on the Coronavirus?
Dr. Pham: It has been completely irresponsible—at best. It has been plainly obvious in the headlines of so many media outlets that every bit of data or information was twisted to work as an attack against the administration. During the Coronavirus Task Force press conferences, so many questions asked by the press amounted to, “Why don’t you care about the thousands of dead Americans?” or “What do you want to say to the child whose parents you personally killed because you’re a horrible person who didn’t handle the pandemic perfectly?” This occurred while there were still important questions about the distribution of PPE, diagnostic tests and much more, but the press was interested in throwing petty barbs at the administration. Do you suppose this was helpful to public health?
JM: In your opinion, should children return to school this Fall?
Dr. Pham: As a blanket statement, certainly yes. We’ve known that children are at low risk of severe disease, and at extremely low risk of mortality. We’re also learning, from studies around the world and from the experience of other countries that already have opened schools, that children seem to be at low risk of even contracting the virus and of transmitting it to others. This makes schooling one of the safest activities that we can resume as a society and, compared to many others, is supremely more important. That said, the risk is not zero, and different families have different concerns. If there are grandparents in the house, for instance, that changes the calculation. Certain households can make it work while others may wish to keep their children away from schools to protect their elders. Whatever the case may be, the decision should be up to families whether to return to school, and families who wish to do so should not be prevented from doing so.
JM: Hysterical voices abound on both sides. What do you find most annoying about the opinions that reside on both ends of the spectrum?
Dr. Pham: It’s the lack of humility. There’s a lot we don’t know and nobody is going to have the right solution to all of this. Extended lockdowns will continue to decimate our livelihoods, but throwing open the doors to normal life will lead to outbreaks all over the country like we saw in July. The best solution is somewhere in between, but no one can claim to know exactly where in between that best solution lies. The truth is, there are no more right answers, only wrong ones. The trick now is to find the least wrong answer, but all of us should be humble enough to say at least, “I could be wrong.”
JM: Where is the best place for Americans to get reliable data about the coronavirus?
Dr. Pham: I am obviously biased, but I and my colleagues have been putting out tremendous work at The Daily Signal and at The Heritage Foundation. Most of our experts regularly put out op-eds as well as long form papers, backgrounders, and issue briefs that all have very important information. Some names to look for are Amy Anderson, Doug Badger, and Jim Enstrom. There are more, of course, but these three have been laser-focused on COVID-19 for the past few months.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the doctor in this interview are those of the doctor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Modern Treatise.
