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I'm looking for examples of governments where top officials have declared that their approach to COVID was incorrect in hindsight. Couple of hypothetical examples:

  1. Swedish officials saying that their (relatively speaking) laissez faire approach was incorrect and they should've locked down hard in March 2020
  2. Italian officials saying that their hardcore lockdowns in March 2020 were a mistake and they should've followed Sweden's lead instead

An ideal answer would include links to official reports by governmental organizations rather than one-off statements by politicians.

JonathanReez
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  • Would a different "and" clause, for example one advocating a middle road, be acceptable? – phoog Nov 09 '22 at 19:25
  • @phoog yes, as long as the government in question has admitted that substantial mistakes have been made in March 2020. – JonathanReez Nov 09 '22 at 19:26
  • @JonathanReez specifically in March 2020? – Reasonably Against Genocide Nov 09 '22 at 20:14
  • Ok, and when you say "substantial," it for some reason makes me wonder whether "mistakes" includes "knowing what we know now we'd've done it differently, but at the time it was a reasonable course of action," or whether the admission must be "we made the wrong decision with the information that was available to us at the time." – phoog Nov 09 '22 at 20:34
  • @phoog ideally the latter but the former would be okay too, as long as there's direct acceptance of substantially large mistakes. – JonathanReez Nov 09 '22 at 20:39
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    The UK is currently holding an inquiry into the government's response. Any comprehensive UK answer to this question may have to wait until the inquiry has completed its work. – Steve Melnikoff Nov 09 '22 at 20:56
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    Of course any pandemic response is going to be "incorrect in hindsight", just as any poker player, no matter how good, is going to make decisions that are "incorrect in hindsight". That's an absurd standard. If you're going to criticize a pandemic response, you should criticize it on the basis of making an argument for how it was clearly incorrect on the basis of information available at the time. This question seems to suggesting that people should be shamed for making the best decisions they could at the time, and it contributes to an atmosphere that makes pandemic response more difficult. – Acccumulation Nov 09 '22 at 22:38
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    @Acccumulation Sweden and Italy had the same information about the virus but took two different approaches. So clearly there was executive decision making involved, not just a single possible decision based on the information at the time. Governments admit mistakes all the time, I’m not sure why the pandemic response should be exempt. – JonathanReez Nov 10 '22 at 02:20
  • You're presenting a false dichotomy, that either there was one single possible decision, or some decisions were "mistakes", to justify a straw man. It's possible for multiple decisions to be reasonable based on the information at the time. – Acccumulation Nov 10 '22 at 04:53
  • Are you looking for decisions about individual actions, e.g. the Scottish government has apologised for putting patients with COVID in care homes without proper testing/protocols? (And there's an answer about German Kindergartens.) Also, are you interested in national governments or regional/local governments, because in many places such as Germany and parts of the UK, health policy is largely devolved. – Stuart F Nov 10 '22 at 09:57
  • @StuartF any level of government is fine but the mistake should be admitted about a substantial decision, not something minor like “we should’ve had better communication about the virus” – JonathanReez Nov 10 '22 at 13:16
  • @JonathanReez, Italy deployed the military to mountain villages in February to help with timely burials because the infrastructure there could not keep up with the excess deaths. These villages were heavily exposed because they are tourism hotspots. The lockdowns in March were a direct consequence of that (i.e. an emergency, not a policy decision). – Simon Richter Nov 10 '22 at 13:45
  • @SimonRichter it was still an executive decision. Italy could’ve chosen to keep the economy going forward no matter what. – JonathanReez Nov 10 '22 at 13:46
  • @JonathanReez, the economy in the affected areas is tourism and agriculture. Tourism was done for the year, no one wants to stay in a place where there's convoys on the street carting off the dead, and agriculture is unaffected by lockdown. – Simon Richter Nov 10 '22 at 14:02
  • @SimonRichter if no one was going to come anyway, then by definition a government enforced lockdown was not necessary. – JonathanReez Nov 10 '22 at 14:07
  • I think you should be more careful wording here. I \think even USState and Federal governments (with our highly charged politics) has noted that certain Covid policies could have been handled better (were 'flawed' or 'imperfect'), but that's a far cry from 'mistaken' or 'incorrect'. Governments implemented their Covid policies because they believed them to be necessary to control the pandemic, and time has proven that to be true, so 'mistaken' and 'incorrect' are pretty much off the table. – Ted Wrigley Nov 10 '22 at 14:41
  • @TedWrigley sure but then shouldn’t countries like Sweden come out and admit that they’ve made a mistake by being so lax? My question works both ways. – JonathanReez Nov 10 '22 at 14:51
  • @JonathanReez: I don't think it does work both ways, pragmatically speaking. There's a big psychological difference between over-reactions and under-reactions. Saying "I shouldn't have made my kid stay home, but I was afraid he would shoot up the school" is comparatively easy. Saying "I shouldn't have bought my kid the AR-15 he used to shoot up the school, but he really wanted it" is quite a bit harder. The first implies overprotectiveness; the second guilt by association. – Ted Wrigley Nov 10 '22 at 14:59
  • @TedWrigley “no, governments never admitted anything of this sort” is also a valid answer – JonathanReez Nov 10 '22 at 15:23
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    @Acccumulation: IMHO the question is sensible in that "the decision was wrong, but we couldn't have known that back then" is likely the type of wrong decision that is easiest to admit for a government: wrong, but not their fault. "It was wrong, we could have known it, so it's our fault" is even more unlikely to happen in practice. (It may be pointed out by opposition, press, courts, or independent commissions, of course) – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 10 '22 at 19:20

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Just one week ago the Germany minister for Health Lauterbach presented a scientific study conducted by among other the Robert-Koch-Institute (the leading German scientific advisor during the pandemics) about the situation of kindergarten facilities (children care from age one to six) during the pandemics.

The study concludes that forcing the kindergarten facilities to close for months (in April-June 2020 and January-April 2021) was wrong and according to this scientific results shouldn't have been done because they weren't locations of increased infection risk of Covid 19. Additionally, the study says that socially disadvantaged children and families have suffered especially under this measure. The minister promised that there won't be such shutdowns anymore (during this pandemics I guess).

In a joint press conference with the minister of Family Affairs on Nov 2nd 2022 the Minister of Health, Professor Karl Lauterbach said:

Kitas waren keine Infektionsherde...

Somit muss man sagen, nach dem Wissen von heute kommt man klar zu der Erkenntnis, dass die Kita-Schließungen zu Begin der Pandemie nicht nötig gewesen wären, sie waren also unnötig aus der Sicht der Wissenschaft von heute...Das Schließen von Kitas ist medizinisch definitiv nicht angemessen...und wäre nicht nötig gewesen.

Kindergartens were no source of infections...

Accordingly one has to say, from the knowledge of today one has to come to the conclusion that the Kindergarten closures at the beginning of the pandemic would not have been necessary, they had been needless from the view of science of today...Closures of Kindergartens are definitely not medicinally adequate...and were not necessary.

Minister of Family Affairs Lisa Paus said:

Trotz all dieser Anstrengungen wissen wir, dass die Belastung von Kindern und Jugendlichen in der Pandemie deutlich zugenommen haben, und das gerade bei denjenigen, die shon vor der Pandemie belastet waren. Deswegen ist es eben nicht überrraschend, aber um so bedrückender, dass die Pandemie die soziale Ungleichheit schon bei den Kleinsten, schon bei Kindern in der Kita verschärft hat. Laut der Kita-Corona-Studie tragen die Kinder, die am meisten von frühkindlicher Förderung profitieren können, besonders schwer an den Folgen der Eindämmungsmaßnahmen.

Despite of all efforts made we know that the strains on children and adolescents were significantly rising during the pandemic, and especially for those that had been under pressure even before the pandemic. Therefor it is not surprising, but even more depressing that the pandemic aggravated social inequality already among the youngest, even among children in daycare. According to the Kindergarten-Corona study the children that can profit the most from early childhood assistance, are suffering the most from the consequences of containment measures.

NoDataDumpNoContribution
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    You overtook my answer, which would have been more or less the same. But since I made the effort to translate some quotes from the press conference, should I add them to your answer in an edit? – ccprog Nov 09 '22 at 20:55
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    The decision is still correct, because the study had not been conducted at the point the decision was made. The study also shows that these were indeed sites of increased infection risk, just lower than sharing a household -- the key driver behind the pandemic, however, is not a single site, but the exchange of different cohorts at multiple sites (work -> family -> school -> family -> work). – Simon Richter Nov 09 '22 at 22:09
  • @ccprog Sure, go ahead. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Nov 09 '22 at 23:49
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    @SimonRichter "The decision is still correct" The decision was not correct, only they didn't know at that time so they kind of excused although would they have done it differently it would have been better. They were kind of unlucky but it can also be seen as a wrong decision that will hopefully be corrected in the future. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Nov 09 '22 at 23:51
  • If I see someone breaking in to my neighbour's house and call the police but it turns out it was their nephew who they were letting stay there while they were on holiday who had lost his key did I make a mistake by calling the police. Some people would say yes, but they'd be wrong. – Eric Nolan Nov 10 '22 at 10:58
  • @EricNolan Analogies always only go that far. For example: If you call the police every single night because you might have heard something but there is nothing really, that might indicate that there is still room for improvement. For this improvement it's important that you in a first step admit to yourself that this actions may not have been that effective. Maybe you were prejudiced in some way or something else. These retrospectives can tell a lot about the state of the world and about oneself. You can learn from them. – NoDataDumpNoContribution Nov 10 '22 at 11:30
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    A few side notes: Lauterbach was not minister of health back then, government/coalition changed last fall so one may argue that a new government "admits" the old government made mistakes - though his party was member of the government coalition back then as well; and he publicly spoke in favor of closures. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 10 '22 at 17:42
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    @SimonRichter: among evidence that is only available now and in hindsight, the study discusses also a number of indicators that were available also back then. For example, at the onset of the covid waves, infections in that age group lagging behind infections in young adults. For the wild-type/original variant, only ≈ 1/3 of the cases in outbreak events in kindergardens were kids. That fraction later increased to 62 % and then decreased again to ≈ 45% - the study points to the effect of vaccination of the staff. For comparison, for influenza 83 % of the involved cases were kids... – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 10 '22 at 17:56
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    ... Incidence in kids was generally lower than in other age groups - for other types of respiratory viruses, it is known to be much higher (by a factor of 5, for Covid this factor was 0,8 - 1). Not in the study (school rather than kindergarden) the public health office Frankfurt/Main studied the situation rather in detail directly after summer holidays 20 were finished. They published first results pointing out that schools did not cause particularly many infections in December 20 (https://www.aerzteblatt.de/archiv/217182/COVID-19-in-Schulen-Keine-Pandemie-Treiber) – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 10 '22 at 18:14
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Sweden used quite relaxed policy with comparatively comparatively limited restrictions. I am not sure if they are very sorry overall on this but anyway Swedes admit to making some mistakes, particularly in nursing homes, where the death toll was staggering.

Stančikas
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    The NYT has always been biased against Sweden when it comes to their Covid approach. Would it be possible to instead link to direct official statements by Swedish officials on this matter? – JonathanReez Nov 10 '22 at 13:14
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Such a declaration would be nonsensical.

"If we had the same information two years ago that we have now, we would have decided otherwise" deals with a hypothetical scenario that cannot ever come to pass, because we cannot see into the future.

The measuring stick for past decisions is "with the same information as the past decision-makers had available, would we decide the same thing now?"

In addition, the state as sovereign cannot rely on external or higher entities to come to its aid, and reaction to crisis will be oriented along whether the crisis has the potential to damage that sovereignty. That calculation will look different in Sweden than in Singapore or Taiwan, so direct comparison between countries is also difficult -- a policy that works in Italy could fail in Sweden, or vice versa.

Third, a lot of the things that didn't go wrong did so because of prevention programs that were already in place years before the pandemic, and the state's reaction to the crisis contains both long-term and short-term components, and it is difficult to evaluate these separately. Measures interact with each other as well, for example a mandatory mask policy also created supply chains that allows healthcare workers to exchange their masks more frequently.

Simon Richter
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    You noticed the question includes the qualification "incorrect in hindsight"? – ccprog Nov 09 '22 at 21:07
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    This qualification makes the entire question pointless, that's what I'm saying. We are dealing with unknowns in a developing situation, still. Any decisions have been and will be taken with incomplete data, and we cannot learn anything from hindsight because it will not be available for the next decision that needs to be taken based on incomplete data. – Simon Richter Nov 09 '22 at 21:43
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    It's not just about "what information we have today vs. what we had then", it's also about "what information we've cherrypicked back then to arrive at our policy". I.e. South Korea published estimates of death rates from COVID per age bracket as early as February 2020 that were pretty accurate. But there was also WHO mortality estimates that was wildly off. – JonathanReez Nov 09 '22 at 21:45
  • Yes, but the "incorrect in hindsight" qualification specifically asks about information that was not available at that time, because for decisions that were incorrect in light of the available information, no such qualification is needed. – Simon Richter Nov 09 '22 at 21:54
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    No, you can't just excuse any and all government action by claiming info was lacking. Some will have just been boneheaded. Some will only in medical retrospect be wrong. Some resulted in outcomes that could have been predicted despite the lack of medical data. But there's nothing really wrong with saying "we screwed up, let's do better next time". Unless you live in such a litigious society that admission of failure opens the state to mass action lawsuits. This counts for over-reaction and under-reaction wrt covid. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 10 '22 at 01:54
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    The corollary to this answer is that no public inquiry into the responses made by a government should be made. Or, if that inquiry shows any serious deficits: cover it up. Dunno about you but I'd rather not live in that type of country - learning from mistakes is too important. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 10 '22 at 01:57
  • That's why the "in hindsight" breaks the question -- that's exactly my point. All of the reasons for wrong decisions you mention are valid points of criticism, and I would love to see an answer where that is actually the case, but answering the question as asked gives exactly something we cannot criticize the government for. – Simon Richter Nov 10 '22 at 02:13
  • I agree that the wording "in hindsight" almost dismisses the fact that no country could see the future and yet the response was not uniform. Clearly some countries saw something that others didn't. If a report was constructed around the facts a country had at the time and their reason for the response a criticism of their planning could be built off that. However, I don't think the question intended to ask if anyone was building criticism around a lack of clairvoyance, its just badly worded. – Lio Elbammalf Nov 10 '22 at 09:29
  • I think it's a lot simpler than that. In Italy, the military was deployed internally in the month before the lockdown to help smaller tourism-focused (so heavily exposed) villages with timely burials. Both this and the lockdown were uncontroversial and largely welcomed, because these communities had immediate experience with a breakdown of infrastructure. In Sweden, villages are isolated, outbreaks happened in urban areas with better infrastructure, and many of the dead were elderly in care facilities, so there was no public pressure to act. – Simon Richter Nov 10 '22 at 13:35
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    IMHO there are several different questions: Was a decision wrong considering information that was available back then? (i.e. wrong and the politicians were at fault) Was a decision wrong in hindsight? => The decision was within the range of decisions that are OK to take with the back-then available information, but we nevertheless learn for the future. I.e., the decision was factually wrong, but that does not discredit the politicians. (Was the uncertainty of the decision correctly communicated?) Was the decision wrong because information lacked that should have been available? => ... – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 10 '22 at 18:59
  • ... (Famously, the high admininstative court of Lower Saxony made a press release end of last year scolding the government about still not bringing (or at least initiating studies) relevant information to defend the necessity of their measuresn after the court had pointed out this requirement several times) – cbeleites unhappy with SX Nov 10 '22 at 19:03
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Governments have admitted it implicitly every time they changed their guidance. The change of guidance, before the pandemic subsided, amounted to admitting that the previous guidance was sub-optimal.

wrod
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    Not necessarily. Changing the guidance can also be justified by change in circumstances. That does not imply that the previous guidance was wrong for the circumstances as they were at that time. When a government removes restrictions with lower case numbers and better availability of PPE, vaccines and therapy, then that does not mean they admit that their restrictions were unjustified while the situation was different. – Philipp Nov 11 '22 at 08:57
  • @Philipp I did say "before the pandemic subsided." Changing it to "during the period in which no significant changes to the spread of the pandemic were observed" would only invite a debate about whether some change was or wasn't "significant." The truth is a lot of the guidance was experimental because they weren't sure what would and what wouldn't work. And trying a new behavioral approach would be something that they would do when the old one wasn't getting the job done. It didn't depend solely on whether they thought the guidance was working, but also on whether it resulted in compliance. – wrod Nov 12 '22 at 01:15