If there is any justice to come from this pandemic, it will be that our “expert“ culture – the browbeating, anti-scientific version of it that has appropriated the notion of “science“ among so much of our “elites“ – will take a crippling kick to the delicates.
Because they certainly deserve the opprobrium:
The simple, elite explanation for all our problems during the pandemic has been that the public failed to trust the experts and didn’t “follow the science.” This, they argue, is the result of tolerating too much skepticism, which is an ordinary feature of scientific debate. Instead, elites have openly embraced the notion that the public is better served by exaggeration, downplaying uncertainty, or even deception (such as in official estimates of herd immunity).
This disdain for healthy skepticism, a normal part of functioning science and democracy, is corrosive to public trust and impedes the accumulation of knowledge. A climate of overconfidence makes it both more likely that we will adopt bad policy and harder to fix our missteps. Reversals of conventional wisdom are, for better or worse, inevitable in science. We have had many reversals of official positions on COVID-19—from the usefulness of masksto which medications work to guidance about school openings—and will likely see more as evidence continues to come in. The problem is that our current climate locks us into polarized mindsets, which makes it harder to recategorize “misinformation” that winds up being correct.
Among the major victims have been, of course, children – who’s mental health is taking it got shot in the past year.
As it may have all been for nothing:
By June 2020, the evidence was fairly clear on one unusual, but fortunate, aspect of COVID-19 when compared to many other respiratory diseases: It was orders of magnitude less dangerous to children. That’s why even the American Academy of Pediatrics, usually known for its caution, came out in favor of in-person learning in June. Thus, there were two main risks left to consider in reopening schools: the effect on teachers, and the effect on community spread. (On both, evidence was already mounting that schools were not especially risky.) On the flip side, there were risks to consider of children not being in school—their education, mental health, and so forth—which in many cases were drowned out by exaggerated, politically driven coverage of the direct risks of the virus for children.
The entire article is very much worth a read – and worth passing around.
Another article attacking the authority of dcience from the Left:
https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/anti-anti-anti-science
Note that it is written by a historian, not a scientist.
This is the fourth such article I have read in lefty intellectual publications in the last few months, all of them written by non-scientists.
The problem that all of these articles identify is that the scope of science is too narrow for the author. They want to describe things like psychology and social science as capital-S science, so that it can declare its findings as a feature of the real universe, like the speed of light or the mass of an atom.
In this article, the author says that humanists, not scientists, should define what science is and is not.
In totalitarian states, “science” is a servant of the rulers. Psychiatry served as a useful tool in the Soviet Union to imprison dissidents.
The politicization of climate science and now public health in our country threaten to produce the same kind of mindless obedience and suppression of debate.
Interesting how the title of the article reads “America’s Smug Elite Is Harming Our Kids” while the link talks about “americas-ham-fisted-elite-harming-kids-wrecking-scientific-debate”. The problem for me is that regardless of the innuendo, both imply good will on the part of the so-called elites except for being ham-fisted or smug. Both are common attributes of elites and have been in the past.
But let’s get something straight, there was no good will. Once the System decided that the Kung flu might be useful to get rid of Trump, nothing else then mattered. It literally happened overnight. The media was given the job of selling the Great Masked Lockdown: make people suffer and sell the notion that if the commies come into power, it will all get better. The ham-fisted smugness was a feature, not a bug (this is fine).
And now comes the gas-lighting and the “well, maybe”s and the rest of the excuses – designed to foster the response “oh, well, it was all for a good cause”. It never was.
The problem is that science is designed to remove human opinion and value. The falsifiability requirement has always been present, but unspoken. It is really just the repeatability requirement respoken.
The range of science is therefore very narrow. “Poverty” is not a feature of the natural world, it is a human idea. Science has nothing to say about it. “The common good” is not a scientific term, science has nothing to say about it.
What some on the Left would like to do is replace “hypothesize, experiment, analyze, modify hypothesis, repeat . . .” with the “contingency, compromise, consensus” model of bourgeois social rule making.
The thing is that one never “trusts” the science but verifies the science. Science should be replicable. If it cannot be replicated, it is not science.
There has been speculation that the “pause” in the J&J mRNA bug juice was not because 6 women got life threatening blood clots days after getting juiced (1 died), but to look into cases of vaccine shedding.
Not a lot of factual information, but the synchronized outrage and boiler plate talking points coming from the reprobate media makes the thoughtful observer cautious.
There’s no doubt new side effects will continue to be “discovered” for years to come. Hell, maybe we’re on the cusp of a new species of human.
Political science seems to have been priority one in Minnesota:
https://alphanewsmn.com/prior-to-youth-sports-pause-state-officials-admitted-to-lack-of-evidence-emails-suggest/
You will not find a more skeptical populace than the Russians, or those who lived under Soviet rule in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Nobody believed the government, but nobody “disagreed” because you’d be sent to a gulag. And doesn’t that sound familiar.
doc hit it out the park. Science™ is but a tool of the proletariat. Real scientific results and achievement are normally stolen form the real scientists (see USSR and China).
As the parent of three children whose track season was stolen last year due to this, a hearty one finger salute to Tim Walz and the DFL. Well, two fingers if you count both hands.
Keep in mind as well that getting out of the house and getting exercise is one of the most powerful ways to avoid serious consequences from COVID. Dumb, DFL, dumb.
True life triumph of science.
I have a loved one in a nursing home. They’re finally letting residents go outside for visits, so I went to visit today at lunch. The receptionist took my temperature (cool as a cucumber), and then waved a little face diaper at me.
I explained I don’t wear depends on my face, and that the CDC has issued new guidance that says no one has to wear maskies of any type outside anymore (not even leftist idiots, I didn’t add), further, our Governor has issued new guidelines that pretty much open nursing homes. She said the diaper was corporate policy…so I asked to see the manager (the Director, actually).
I told her I’d put a bandana on (I keep one handy in the truck for impromptu bank jobs), but not a face diaper. Asked her to show me where the diaper was more effective. She handed me a set of rules, which stated, and I quote “Cloth masks of any type are not acceptable.” I said A. that was not a scientifically based explanation, and B. picked up the diaper and observed “is this not cloth?”
She asked if I’d wear a plastic face shield until she could get clarification from upstairs, and I agreed.
Science, friends. Science.
Only idiots wear diapers on their faces.