Peter St. Onge writes at Mise Wire The COVID-19 Panic Shows Us Why Science Needs Skeptics Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.
The dumpster fire of COVID predictions has shown exactly why it’s important to sustain and nurture skeptics, lest we blunder into scientific monoculture and groupthink. And yet the explosion of “cancel culture” intolerance of any opinion that doesn’t fit a shrinking “3 x 5 card” of right-think risks destroying the very tolerance and science that sustains our civilization.
Since World War II, America has suffered two respiratory pandemics comparable to COVID-19: the 1958 “Asian flu,” then the 1969 “Hong Kong flu.” In neither case did we shut down the economy—people were simply more careful. Not all that careful, of course—Jimi Hendrix was playing at Woodstock in the middle of the 1969 pandemic, and social distancing wasn’t really a thing in the “Summer of Love.”
And yet COVID-19 was very different thanks to a single “buggy mess” of a computer prediction from one Neil Ferguson, a British epidemiologist given to hysterical overestimates of deaths, from mad cow to bird flu to H1N1.
For COVID-19, Ferguson predicted 3 million deaths in America unless we basically shut down the economy. Panicked policymakers took his prediction as gospel, dressed as it was in the cloak of science.
Now, long after governments plunged half the world into a Great Depression, those panicked revisions are being quietly revised down by an order of magnitude, now suggesting a final tally comparable to 1958 and 1969.
COVID-19 would have been a deadly pandemic with or without Ferguson’s fantasies, but had we known the true scale and parameters of the threat we might have chosen better tailored means to both safeguard the elderly and at-risk, while sustaining the wider economy. After all, economists have long known that mass unemployment and widespread bankruptcies carry enormous health consequences that are very real to the victims suffering drained life savings, ruined businesses, broken families, widespread mental and physical health deterioration, even suicide. Decisions involve tradeoffs.
COVID-19 has illustrated the importance of free and robust inquiry. After all, panicked politicians facing media accusations of “killing grandma” aren’t in a very good position to evaluate these tradeoffs, and they need intellectual ammunition. Not only to show them which path is best, but to bolster them when a left-wing media establishment attacks.
Moreover, voters need this ammunition so they can actually tell the politicians what to do. This means two things: debate that is transparent, and debate that is tolerant of skeptics.
Transparency means data and computer code open to public scrutiny as the minimum requirement for any study that is used to justify policy, from lockdowns to carbon taxes to whatever comes next. These studies must be based on verifiable facts, code that does what it says it does, and the ensuing decision-making process must be transparent and open to the public.
One former Indian bureaucrat put it well: “Emergency situations like this pandemic should require a far higher—and not lower—level of scrutiny,” since policy choices have such tremendous impact. “This suggests a need for democracies to strengthen their critical thinking capacity by creating an independent ‘Black Hat’ institution whose purpose would be to question any technical foundations of government decisions.”
Even more important than transparency, debate must be tolerant of alternative opinions. This means ideas that are wrong, offensive, even dangerous, have to be tolerated, even celebrated. By all means, refute them—most alternative hypotheses are completely wrong, so it shouldn’t be hard to simply refute them without censorship. This, after all, is the essence of science—to generate hypotheses testable by anybody, not just licensed “experts.”
Whether we are faced with a new crisis, a new policy innovation, or simply designing a better mousetrap, groupthink and censorship are recipes for disaster and stagnation, while transparency and tolerance of new ideas are the very essence of progress. Indeed, it is largely this scientific tolerance that allowed us to rise up from the long, brutal darkness of poverty.
As Francis Bacon observed three hundred years ago, innovation and new knowledge do not come from prestigious “learned” insiders, rather progress comes from the questioner, the tinkerer, the skeptic.
Indeed, every major scientific advance challenged the “settled science” of its day, and was often denounced as pernicious and false, even dangerous. The modern blood transfusion, for example, was developed in the late 1600s, then banned for nearly a century by a hostile medical establishment, “canceling” tens of millions of lives at the altar of groupthink and hostility to skeptics.
It’s comforting to know that our problems are old ones, and also encouraging that our solution is both time-tested and simple: transparency and tolerance. After all, the very reason our culture elevates science is because it is built on a millennia-long evolutionary “battle of ideas” in which theories are constantly tested and retested in a delightfully endless search for ever better understanding.
This implies there is no such thing as “settled science”—the phrase itself is contrary to the scientific method. In reality, science is not some billion-dollar gleaming palace in Bethesda, rather it’s a gnarled mutant sewer rat that takes all comers because it’s been burned, cut, run over, crushed, run through the wood chipper, and survived. That ugly beast is our salvation, not the gleaming palace where we bow down to whichever random guy has the biggest degree in the room.
Only with free inquiry for the most unpopular, offensive, dangerous, and, yes, wrong ideas imaginable does that power sustain. And if we break that, we can expect a series of rapid catastrophes that, like failed golden ages of the past, return us to the nasty, brutish, and very short lives that have been humanity’s norm.
Whether pandemic, climate change, “institutional racism,” or whatever new crisis they conjure next, we have a fundamental right to tenaciously defend the transparency and tolerance that constitutes science itself so that it remains among humanity’s crowning achievements, and so that we preserve this golden age that would astound our ancestors.
via Science Matters
July 15, 2020 at 07:40PM
‘Shut up or you don’t get paid’. “Complete and brutal insanity.”
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Penelope
Summary of Statement of an Anonymous Hospital Worker in Surrey, UK
I am a consultant at a major, regional hospital in Surrey, had agreed to give an interview to an anti lockdown activist in which I would have revealed my identity.
Changed my mind because all staff at all hospitals have been warned that if they make any statements to press/social media we may immediately be suspended without pay. I have a family, dependents.
In my opinion, and that of many of my colleagues, there has been no Covid Pandemic, certainly not in the Surrey region and I have heard from other colleagues this picture is the same throughout the country. Our hospital would normally expect to see around 350,000 out patients a year. Around 95,000 patients are admitted to hospital in a normal year and we would expect to see around a similar figure, perhaps 100,000 patients pass through our A&E [Accident & Emergency] department.
From March to June we would normally expect to see 100,000 out patients, around 30,000 patients admitted, and perhaps 30,000 pass through A&E. This year (and these figures are almost impossible to get hold of) we are over 95% down on all those numbers. In effect, the hospital has been pretty much empty for that entire period.
At the start, staff that questioned this were told that we were being used as ‘redundant’ capacity, kept back for the ‘deluge’ we were told would come. It never did come, and when staff began to question this, comments like, ‘for the greater good’ and to ‘protect the NHS’ came down from above. Now its just along the lines of, ‘Shut up or you don’t get paid’.
Every single test (of the same person) counted as a new case
The few Covid cases that we have had get repeatedly tested, and every single test counted as a new case. Meaning the figures reported back to ONS/PHE (Office for National Statistics & Public Health England) were almost exponentially inflated. It could be that Covid cases reported by hospitals are between 5 to 10x higher than the real number of cases. There has been no pandemic and this goes a long way to explain why figures for the UK are so much higher than anywhere else in Europe.
They’ve been running empty ambulances during lockdown and are still doing it now. By this I mean ambulances are driving around, with their emergency alert systems active (sirens &/or lights) with no job to go to. When out of public view staff masks come off and distancing is not observed.
Masks are totally ineffective and dangerous
Indeed jokes are made about the measures, and I have heard staff express amazement that despite warnings on packets and at point of sales, telling people masks are totally ineffective and dangerous, the public still buy them, because a politician has told them to.
ALL elective surgery has been cancelled. Non-elective Surgery, this tends to be emergency surgery or that which is deemed urgent has been severely curtailed. People are at best being denied basic medical care and at worst being left to die, in some cases, in much distress and pain.
Staff that are responsible for death certification encouraged where possible to put Covid-19 complications as reason for death, even though the patient may have been asymptomatic and also not even tested for covid, grossly inflating the number of Covid deaths.
Remember Covid-19 itself can not kill. What kills is complications from the virus, typically pneumonia like symptoms. These complications are in reality incredibly rare but have featured in a large amount of death certificates issued in recent months. As long as Covid-19 appears on a death certificate, that death is counted as Covid-19 in the figures released by the ONS and PHE.
many death certificates, especially amongst the older 65+ demographic have been fraudulently completed
Many death certificates (appear to) have been fraudulently completed
I genuinely believe that many death certificates, especially amongst the older 65+ demographic have been fraudulently completed so as to be counted as Covid-19 deaths when in reality Covid-19 complications did not cause the death.
There have been Thursday nights when I stood, alone in my office and cried as I heard people cheering and clapping outside. It sickens me to see all the ‘Thank You NHS’ signs up everywhere and the stolen rainbow that for me now says one word and word only; fear.
There are many good people in the NHS and whilst I do not plead forgiveness for myself, I do plead for them. Most are on low pay, they joined for the right reasons and I did and have been bullied and threatened that if they don’t ‘stay on message’ they don’t eat. I know that if a way could be found to assure staff within the NHS of safety against reprisals, there would be a tsunami of whistleblowers which I have no doubt would help end this complete and brutal insanity.
I am finding it increasingly hard to live with what I have been involved in and I am sorry this has happened.
To end, I would simply say this. Politicians haven’t changed, the country has just made a fatal mistake and started trusting them without question.
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I’ve edited it down a bit. Original at
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/13/nhs-consultant-says-staff-are-being-silenced-over-covid19/
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via Ice Age Now
July 15, 2020 at 07:25PM
Three inches of rain per hour – Moe than 3 feet in 3 days.
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A week of torrential rain pounded southwestern and central Japan, triggering severe flooding and landslides that killed at least 68 people. Kumamoto prefecture in Japan’s southern island of Kyushu has been hardest hit, and over the weekend residents braced for more extreme weather. On Saturday some areas observed more than 80 mm (3.15 inches) of rainfall per hour and 1,000 mm (more than 3 ft) over three consecutive days. Strong winds, lightning, and tornadoes were also added to the weather warning. The Ministry of Land reported 282 mudslide disasters across 27 prefectures with the largest number, 52, in Kumamoto prefecture.
Eastern and western Japan are on high alert for heavy 24-hour downpours with a risk that rivers in Iwate and Aomori could overflow. New mudslide warnings have also been issued for Kyushu as past rain loosens the ground and damaged river levees inundate low-lying areas.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency says the atmospheric conditions remain unstable over a wide area from western Japan to Tohoku as a result of an active weather front and low pressure system extending over the East China Sea to the Sea of Japan. Local heavy rains are expected to continue for 12 to 15 days.
Thanks to Laurel for this link
“That’s some massive rainfalls,” says Laurel. “Hope they sorted out their backup generators OUT of basements after fukushima.”
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via Ice Age Now
July 15, 2020 at 07:11PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 