I love history, but it can be depressing when you realise that historic lessons are forgotten and we are forced to re-live a grim past as a result.
But it seems that humans don’t learn – or perhaps learn the wrong lessons from the mistakes of history?
The evidence of this failure are various remarks made about it by figures who lived through such history:
“Everything to be re-enacted twice over, once as grand tragedy and the second time as rotten farce” – Frederick Engels
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
So in 2010 an article was published in the Toronto Star, The real lessons of H1N1, in the wake of the WHO calling off the H1N1 “pandemic”, by two men not to be dismissed lightly:
Dr. Richard Schabas is the Medical Officer of Health for the Hastings and Prince Edward Counties Health Unit and was Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health from 1987-97. Dr. Neil Rau is an Infectious Diseases Specialist and Medical Microbiologist based in Oakville and a Lecturer in the Department of Medicine (Division of Infectious Diseases) at the University of Toronto.
The analysis and conclusions – just like those around the earlier “population bomb” scare-mongering, and in the wake of our C-19 pandemic insanity – are sobering because of how little we’ve learnt from those panic attacks.
Some key quotes:
- The supposed danger of H1N1 for healthy young people was grossly exaggerated. The median age of death from H1N1 in Canada was 53 — younger than usual from influenza but not exactly young — and the great majority had serious underlying health problems.
- The picture was crystal clear by July 2009 following the winter outbreaks in Australia. Ironically, the more benign the evidence the more bellicose our rhetoric became.
- Canada responded to H1N1 with an aggressive immunization program.
- Immunization against H1N1 had very little benefit because it came too late.
Sound familiar?
And then the killer conclusions from 2010, exactly a decade before the c-19 insanity. Killer because we ignored all of these:
- Look before you leap. When a new infectious disease problem emerges, the premium must be on gathering and analyzing reliable information rather than triggering preconceived and inappropriate responses. The perception that these events are emergencies requiring instant response is overstated. A little thoughtful reflection will be invaluable.
- React to facts, not fears. Pandemic plans gave little or no flexibility to scale down measures for a mild (or ultra-mild) pandemic. Everything was geared to a 1918-style disaster — more of a phantom than a real threat in our modern world. Once activated, the plans took on lives of their own. Can anyone honestly say that the likes of Michael Baker and Siouxsie Wiles ever provided calm and reasonable forecasts during the C-19 pandemic? They sounded calm but their forecasts were not.
- Keep the politicians away. Public health officials can and should change their minds when new evidence emerges. They can be wrong without shame so long as they stay flexible and open-minded. Reversing fields is much more difficult for politicians. Our persistence with H1N1 immunization long after it had any value had much to do with political face-saving.
- Never exaggerate. Public health’s greatest asset is credibility. The unfortunate tendency to overstate the dangers of H1N1 will only mean that some people will doubt our word when we have something really important to say. Refer back to point 2.
- Be your own toughest critic. Public health authorities – federal and provincial – have yet to produce any rigorous evidence-based analysis of the H1N1 experience. If we don’t identify our mistakes, how can we learn from them?
We learned nothing.
No Minister 
The one graphic lesson from the Rona crisis chorus was how personal behaviour can reduce infection risks.
Simple hand washing after toileting and keeping a distance from others.
The mandating of the so called genetic manipulation, lock downs, border closures, abolition of gatherings particularly funerals, weddings and other vital societal events that could have been managed safely within the parameters above, for mental health and social cohesion were and remain increasingly disastrous mismanagement by political driven operatives.
The great plague was effectively avoided by many who could afford the option of decamping and creating distance. Meanwhile the poor buggers with out the means or ability to do so died in their thousands while the rats and the fleas did their work among them.
I expect that for the next pandemic, it will be even worse. With a complete unwillingness to admit or acknowledge that they got anything wrong, they will be emboldened by a warped view that they need to go even harder next time. And if it is something very mild, then the lack of deaths will be attributed to the hard, decisive response; not the underlying mildness of the virus. Celebrations all round.
It’s like climate change (which I see you have tagged this post as). As the world spectacularly fails to heat at the rate predicted, they originally started to ‘correct’ data to cool the past. There is only limited mileage to be had in that. Future failing to heat will be attributed to renewable energy and other such stupid policy responses, with no acknowledgement at all that the whole thing was over-hyped.
They’ve already started to transfer the processes, Oxford County Council announces ‘climate lockdown’ plan.
I disagree generally with the above. People had to make up their minds quickly in the 2020 pandemic and largely trusted the authorities. That trust is now greatly eroded. Next time there will not be the mass compliance and lockdowns simply won’t work. We’ve seen this in the abrupt loss of will by governments from NZ to China.
Agreed John JO, Labour have an election to lose, they dont want a total rout.
They need a rump to rebuild from, a body of low intelligence that they can add other low intelligence bodies to. Keep the process going that Helen Clark started.
Utterly unambitious for themselves or the country.