Leana Wen Is Not Being Honest with You

Leana Wen Is Not Being Honest with You (Commentary by Noah Rothman)

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The science has changed,” declared Dr. Leana Wen. The George Washington University public health expert, columnist, and ubiquitous presence on CNN since the start of the pandemic buoyantly informed the network’s viewers that the receding threat posed by Covid-19 is an outgrowth of new scientific revelations about the virus.

What revelations? Well, first, the vaccines work, she said. Children now have access to those vaccines. If you want to mask up, you “the wearer” are protected. And because the Omicron variant is “milder,” we should not rely on case counts as a reliable metric to gauge the pandemic’s threat to public health. Accordingly, any masking ordinance “should shift from a government mandate” to an “individual responsibility.” That is especially true for young children because “there actually is a harm that we should be discussing of children continuing to mask.”

These are welcome admissions, but it is unclear what “science” has evolved to a point that now enables Wen is to articulate the same principles in the same language that critics of Covid-mitigation regimes have been stating for months. We’ve known for a long time that masking children has profound psychosocial consequences that are arguably not justified by the threat Covid infection poses to children. We’ve known that vaccines prevent serious illness in the overwhelming majority of cases. We’ve known that masking can protect the wearer from pathogens, though mask mandates do not necessarily protect the society around the wearer. We’ve known that case counts are a bad metric for gauging the threat to public health posed by community transmission. We’ve known that natural immunity conveys as many benefits as immunity acquired through vaccinations. The science hasn’t changed. The politics of the pandemic have.

In a February 1 Washington Post column, Wen all but acknowledges that she is guided by professional considerations as much as “the science.” Yes, she concedes, “new and possibly dangerous variants are likely to emerge. But it is precisely because of this future threat that we need to allow normalcy now.” The science doesn’t make an appearance in this sensible piece, but the doctor’s understanding of human nature and her industry’s need to preserve its credibility do feature prominently.

Throughout the pandemic, Wen has been a reliable conveyor of the conventional wisdom that prevails not within the public health community, per se, but among the political officials most committed to Covid hawkishness. That conventional wisdom has often been maddeningly mercurial, but Wen could usually be counted on to convey the consensus view among elite policymakers at any given time.

As early as April of last year, Wen relayed what she believed should be the country’s primary objective: promoting vaccination as “the ticket back to pre-pandemic life.” The chief obstacle to that objective being the states that prematurely lift mitigation protocols. “Because, otherwise,” she stipulated, “if everything is reopened, how are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine?”

This didn’t just advance a political goal of tarnishing states like Texas, which was in the middle of a...