It has become popular amongst statist mini-Mao government officials issuing COVID-19 anti-freedom regulations to proclaim that they are just "following the science."
Don't believe it for a minute.
I have had email exchanges with local officials and federal officials concerning COVID-19 regulations. Whenever I ask innocuous questions, they respond quickly. But the minute I ask for "the science" behind a regulation, there is never a response. (See, for example, Has OSHA Even Tested to Determine If Mask Wearing is Safe?).
There is always the question of whether science is ever settled or always progresses in a straight line upward.
Murray Rothbard has written on the topic in the context of economic science:
The Whig theory, subscribed to by almost all historians of science, including economics, is that scientific thought progresses patiently, one year after another developing, sifting, and testing theories, so that science marches onward and upward, each year, decade or generation learning more and possessing ever more correct scientific theories.
On analogy with the Whig theory of history, coined in mid-nineteenth century England, which maintained that things are always getting (and therefore must get) better and better, the Whig historian of science, seemingly on firmer grounds than the regular Whig historian, implicitly or explicitly asserts that ‘later is always better’ in any particular scientific discipline.
The Whig historian (whether of science or of history proper) really maintains that, for any point of historical time, ‘whatever was, was right’, or at least better than ‘whatever was earlier’. The inevitable result is a complacent and infuriating Panglossian optimism. In the historiography of economic thought, the consequence is the firm if implicit position that every individual economist, or at least every school of economists, contributed their important mite to the inexorable upward march. There can, then, be no such thing as gross systemic error that deeply flawed, or even invalidated, an entire school of economic thought, much less sent the world of economics permanently astray.”
But the mini-Maos are worse in their abuses of science when they state they are issuing statist orders because they are following the science. They are really just making things up with little scientific justification of any kind.
The claim of following science made by government officials is the weaponization of the concept of science to terrorize and demand obedience.
The words "follow the science" when said by government officials means "follow our orders or we will force you into submission with the full power of the state behind the submission."
-RW
You might find this twitter thread interesting. They are literally doing the opposite of following the science as it was agreed upon thru 2019...
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1309949969651191809
David B
While I think that RW's point is generally true, more often I am troubled by the fact that, where there is debate among the relevant scientists, the politicians are making a choice for all of us as to which scientists to follow. In other words, the best that can be claimed is that "We're following SOME experts." Yet what politician is truly skilled in choosing who among differing experts to follow, and what gives them the right to force their choices upon us? (I leave aside the point that many of these politicians have been caught not even following their chosen experts when they think that no one is watching.)
ReplyDeleteThere really is no battle of the “scientists”. The basis of the various determinations about the Covid-19 virus must be the medical reports, studies and clinical experiences of the medical professionals and the scientists. Based upon those sources, there is absolutely nothing to support the lockdowns or the mask mandates.
ReplyDeleteI turn 70 next March so I guess I’m one of the “elderly”. For the two weeks prior to the Super Bowl, I had a dry cough. Right after the Super Bowl, I experienced what I now believe to be the Covid coated slimy lung syndrome (ARDS) which killed so many old folks. I had been reading almost all of the blog posts on lewrockwell.com by Dr. Brownstein and Dr. Mercola over the years. I just happened to read Dr. Brownstein’s blog post on January 29, 2020 wherein he proposed that Covid-19 would be treatable just as other corona viruses had been treatable, with vitamin therapy and his special nebulizer formula of vitamin and minerals. When my lung attack occurred, I had a good supply of Vitamin C and D and zinc supplement pills. I took large doses of all three. I also had five strong antibiotic pills in my freezer from 2011. By the next morning I could breath. In three days, I lost 15 pounds but I was recoverying nicely.
From February to May, Dr. Brownstein published video testimonials from his patients about how his therapies had cured them of Covid-19 especially ARDS. I got into many fights with nitwit Democrats when I explained that the nebulizer therapy was similar to Trump's hypothetical lung disinfectant. In May, the Federal Trade Commission ordered him to cease and desist from promoting his therapy at which time he erased his blog and his entire youtube channel which contained the patient testimonials and his description of his treatment.
He decided to publish a study of this results, 105 people cured with the therapy. The media has been silent and he apparently is still forbidden to publicize his treatments.
It is clear to me that anyone who seeks to publicize any good news about Covid preventatives or treatments or who criticizes the lockdown and mask regime will be immediately silenced. There's your "science".
https://tinyurl.com/ydhqyf9f
I was blocked by Facebook for 30 days for twice linking to the very successful Univeristy of Wisconsin School of Medicine ARDS protocol and once to the official study of the Swedish health ministry which found that children did not contract Covid-19 or spread it to their teachers.
ReplyDeletehttps://bobroddis.blogspot.com/2020/09/i-get-banned-from-facebook-for-30-days.html
Perhaps the veil of silience is lifting because the Fox TV websites announced this week that an Ocala, Florida hospital was successfully treating Covid with a protocol that sounds very similary to the Wisconsin protocol which includes vitamin C and steroids. (You will get a Facebook strike for claiming that Vitamin C acts as an anti-viral agent).
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/covid-19-treatment-underway-in-florida-has-near-perfect-success-rate
BTW, I've had my posts taken down by the locak Detroit NBC station which merely quoted verbatim the conclusion of studies describing a successful Covid treatment and a link to the study without any editorial comment from me. Back in April, I was censored for asking why the station refused to publicize the existing studies which showed that dark skinned people and people in nursing homes were notoriously deficient in Vitamin D. At the time, the Gannett paper in Detroit was noting that a majority of the Covid deaths were occurring among black people. Gov. Witchmer later determined that this was due to systemic racism among Michigan medical professionals and required them all to take a special course to combat white racism. No mention was ever made to encourage dark skinned people and people in nursing homes to take Vitamin D, much less zinc with a zinc ionophore.
"Follow the science" - really means "follow our preferred set of quasi-scientific agency bureaucrats" and "ignore any non-scientific instiutional or public choice factors that may bias their advice."
ReplyDeleteIt also means "do not perform cost benefit analysis" and "do not attempt to balance priorities from competing areas of concern". 'The scientists' (i.e. public health agency senior bureaucrats) are not able to rule on the psychological, social, legal or economic implications of the policies they advocate. It is up to elected officials to bring these balances to bear. "Just follow the scientists" means to prioritise one chain of advice from one perspective over another.
'The scientists' and the public health bureaucrats have to date even failed to deliver a numeric assessment of the non-Covid related morbidities associated with locksdowns. Yet their field is supposed to be epidemiology.
There is data that indicated the US had experienced 13,000 (non-Covd) excess alzheimers deaths this year and the Alzheimers Society of the UK says Alzheimers' deaths are up 52% this year. These deaths, tragically, would be a "side effect" of the "Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions" applied around access to nursing homes etc. There are, of course, other deaths associated with "NPIs" - for example the likely deaths from higher rates of cancer, heart disease etc from people who have been deterred from attending hospitals and medical practitioners for scans etc due to covid-phobia. If epidemiologists can apparently model projected deaths for virus etc they should be able to generate projections for these sources of death as well.
The other strange thing is the apparent belief in "NPIs" - Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions - as if they are a panacea. Have various NPI policies been subject to independently performed, verified Randomly Controlled Trials (RCTs)? Why is the "gold standard" of RCT insisted upon form some responses but not others, and almost never for NPIs?
State supported measures almost never require a double blind study? How about just plain never? I knew this was a scam when they ran the college kids off the hot sunny beach in Clearwater, Florida back in March. As a victim of the endless 7 month sunless Michigan winter, I've been treating myself to the health-providing March Florida sunshine since 1960. I specially asked a lockdowner STEM college professor where to find the double blind study that suppported this idiocy, running the kids off the beach. He stated that we were in an emergency and there was no time for such a study.
ReplyDeleteOver Memorial Day, the MSM were in a tizzy because 700,000 drunk rednecks were paryting at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri without their masks or social distancing while swimming, drinking and baking in the sun. Two weeks later, CNN managed to discover that this resulted in TWO positive tests.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/12/us/ozarks-missouri-party-coronavirus-positive/index.html
In the spring, Ron Paul ran an interview with Dr. Robin Armstrong who was in charge of a nursing home in Texas. 37 of the staff and residents had contracted Covid-19. He gave them the Z-pack protocol and 35 recovered. While this actually happened, it did not even amount to the slightest bit of evidence in support of zinc and HCQ and it can never even be mentioned because it wasn't a double blind study. So said the STEM professor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QKKAKIaEL0
Science like most disciplines has become increasingly specialized. This is a double edged sword. The edge that cuts the wrong way is the building of theories in a particular specialty based in part on theories in another specialty which has most likely relied on theories from other specialties. In the context of C-19 if the techniques to isolate Sars-Covid-2 are not sound this will lead to test that are designed to detect the wrong virus and or fragments of a virus.
ReplyDeleteSpecialization makes it more likely that the broader more overall science has not detect past mistakes. Case in point is the current discussions in astrophysics with theories based on “proven” science but they are still baffled by comets and the solar “wind” and have to include dark this and black that to keep their theories alive.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2015/12/08/blindness-stupidity-and-speculation-2/