Main Edition
US
FR
Are they following the science? Laura Lezza/Getty Images
I spent the last days of innocence before Trump and Brexit heavily pregnant. Like many first-time mums, I read a lot of pregnancy books, but the one I liked most was Expecting Better. Written by Emily Oster, an economist, the book sifts carefully through many of the dire warnings doled out to pregnant women about food, drink, birth choices, and so on, assessing the evidence for each.
On Monday, the same author published an essay arguing for “a pandemic amnesty”. We should, she suggests, move on from the conflict, fear, uncertainty, and doubt that roiled the pandemic years, and focus instead on the urgent issues of today. But while I can understand why Oster might wish to put all the Covid-era bitterness back into a box labelled “the common good”, her effort to do so has not been well received. And this is a consequence of the very policies which Oster would now like everyone to forgive and forget.
Reading avidly in the run-up to my daughter’s birth, it was already clear to me that many of the so-called “mummy wars” are proxies for class issues. Against this emotive backdrop, Oster’s book felt like a refreshing counterbalance. It’s astonishing, in fact, how recently it still felt possible to weigh competing claims on the evidence, and settle on something reasonable. But a great deal has changed since then. And it’s easier to understand why when you consider the difference between trying to settle the “mummy wars” via science and trying to agree upon public health policy during a pandemic.
If the “mummy war” is a class war writ small, Covid policy followed the same dynamic. It was, in fact, a class war writ so large it encompassed minute micromanagement of nearly every facet of everyday life, for years on end, and doled out material consequences for dissenters. And it was all justified with reference to the supposedly neutral domain of science.
This tracks a slow convergence of supposedly neutral governance with partisan class differences that was well under way before the virus, a phenomenon exhaustively documented following the two plebeian revolutions of Brexit and Trump. These events gestated concurrently with my daughter; I won’t rehash the debates here, save to note that they represented the first shot across the bows of the End of History belief that technocracy could be genuinely neutral, and based in objective evidence.
In questioning this doctrine, the mutineers dragged an incipient class war into the open, between what N.S. Lyons characterises as the “Virtuals” of the laptop class, and the “Physicals” whose work is more rooted in the material world. Amid this conflict, Oster’s plea for amnesty is unlikely to be heard, since under those appeals to neutral science much of Covid policy served in practice as a Virtual counter-volley to the 2016 uprisings.
In its most rarefied, de-materialised, Virtual form, the contours of that counter-volley are captured by a short series of declarations of faith. This text, a kind of Nicene Creed for Virtuals, first appeared in response to Trump’s election, and has multiplied across posters, t-shirts, tote bags, and (in America, where they do such things) signs stuck into the front lawns of the faithful.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeEverytime I have to talk about lockdowns, I realize I’m still angry. I don’t see myself offering any amnesty to the lockdown proponents anytime soon. I’m still trying to not let myself get upset when I talk about it. I want to move on with my life but it will be with a lot of people classified as a threat to my well-being.
Nor should we!
I feel exactly the same. There are many, many like us. We have to find some way to process our trauma but it’s very hard to do that when people simply won’t acknowledge what they did, what they got wrong, and try and work out why and how they allowed themselves to get so badly misled. They don’t even want to know about hard facts. You can’t just “move on” from and forget something like this without truth and reconciliation.
Very well put Andrew.
The same goes for so many topics today. I feel like we are living in a “post-truth” dystopia.
I bought 3 tubes of Horse de-wormer paste early on, long syringe like things with dosage for 1200 pounds. The plunger has a sliding ring which stops at any increment you want, so I set it to 225, my weight, and put that amount on my finger – it is like toothpaste in look and texture, and just eat it, a 1/2 inch long amount. Ivermectin –
Then take Qucertin, zinc, D, C, – the McCullough protocol, which is proven to reduce hospitalizations 85%, so only 15% of those hospitalized ever would have been if they had not banned early treatment.
Almost none should have died with early treatment – which they prohibited to force the vax – and because if treatments existed the emergency vax would have to be withdrawn.
Almost all covid deaths were preventable.
100%. It wasn’t “the unvaccinated” and the covid dissenters that were responsible for all those deaths. It was the people who suppressed Ivermectin and Vit D. 4,000 IU of Vit D/day alone will reduce your chances of dying of covid by 90%
Interesting but can you supply reliable evidence?
This has been well covered by many studies, and, no, Vitamin D does not have anything like this beneficial effect. See the Zoe Study under Professor Tim Spector (Kings College London)
Quite strange that back in 2015 when Ralph Baric and Shi Zheng Li were doing gain of function work on Classic Sars CoV they noted that vaccine and monoclonal antibodies therapeutics failed to inhibit the virus. But they said that Zinc with Ionospheres Quercetin /Flavonoids showed potential in stopping RNA viruses from replicating in human cells. Fast forward to 2020 and not a word about it from our Scientists.
Pfizer made billions
Now that is very interesting: especially with the evidence/ source stated.. I shall examine it further. Thank you…
The book is called “viral” by Alina Chan (et al) – a great read…
That is worth investigating: can you supply reliable evidence?
Let’s stick with the Mary Harringtons of this world and not a bunch of cranks who variously can’t decide whether covid was a scam, a dangerous disease that for some reason governments were deliberately suppressing effective treatments for (even though they were at the same time competing to reduce ‘covid deaths’), or lastly a deliberately introduced bio-engineered virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It is evidenced that gain of function on near identical virus to covid19 was underway from 2014. In case you missed it “Viral” by alina Chan. Not only scientifically rigorous, but a great page turner
I’m open minded on Ivermectin, but your claim is most certainly not ‘proven’. There have been many studies of the effectiveness of Ivermectin against covid, which certainly do not support your (extreme) claim.
Here is one:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869
Quite apart from the dubious ethical question about why recommending (I agree it should not be mandated) vaccines produced by Big Pharma is an evil anathema, but encouraging people to self administer large doses of an animal tranquilliser is just tickety-boo.
And why governments, who whatever else they did, who very aware of, and ‘competing’ amongst themselves on the numbers of ‘covid deaths’, would deliberately suppress a treatment as effective as the one you claim, you don’t explain.
Whatever the NEJM or other medical journals produce, the anecdotal evidence is strongly in its favor. Also see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35135310/
Dr Tess Lawrie is the world’s expert on Ivermectin in the treatment of the virus, having done an exhaustive meta analysis on the subject, whilst discounting the less valid studies. She determined it’s efficacy to be in the range of 60 to 70%, which compares very well to Remdesivir, with an efficacy of minus 3%.
The dictionary definition of ‘vaccines’ had to be changed to accommodate the new mRNA technologies, such that any comparison with other vaccines should be discounted. All vaccines can be questioned for safety when data concerning all cause mortality is considered, something Pharma never does for obvious reasons.
Many Governments (though not all, like Japan, Mexico, and India) didn’t consider effective treatments like Ivermectin, because they were being advised by health ‘experts’ in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. 85% of MHRA’s funding comes from Pharma for example, and Ivermectin, at a few pence per dose, was never going to be allowed to prevail against the bumper payday the jab delivered.
oh come on now. At least check out the Wikipedia article for Ivermectin. Don’t worry, Wikipedia is on your side, they also claim “not enough evidence” for COVID treatment. But at the very least get the facts right about what the substance is.
not a tranquiliser, its a weird miracle earth spore that seems to treat … everything. Used as a pet de wormer but clinically tested over and over and proven super safe. Read more https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/
Pontius Pilate said, “What is truth?”, long ago ushering in the “post-truth dystopia.”
With regard to the Wuhan flu abuses we need to remember there is no mercy without justice.
Pilate was a political functionary, so only carrying on the long tradition of nice differentiation within the meaning of words that have been the hallmark of politicos down the ages.
‘Truth’ is whatever keeps you in power and, therefore, safe from consequence.
Indeed. Though in the Gospels Pilate alone stands at the turning point, embodying subjective truth in the face of objective truth.
From a Machiavellian perspective yes truth ought to serve power.
I often wonder if the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:8) ought not to suggest the application of Machiavellian political principles.
He would have made a fine Jesuit!
So true. I used to be incredulous over the statements made by self righteous and arrogantly indignant leftists making bold statements that defy anything approaching truth let alone logic on just about any topic, not limited to covid, and exhibiting the same mind bending lies presented as truth.
Their problem syems from a desire for truth coupled with a naivety that it is possible to attain it. Rightwingers have little interest in truth which gives them a head start in the reality stakes.
Objective truth is absolutely possible, gravity is real, this table is made of wood, the Earth orbits the Sun, the Normans and not the Anglo Saxons won the Battle of Hastings etc. In our everyday lives we are very rational about reality. We tend for example to blame burglars and not poltergeists if we come home to find our windows broken and house trashed, and if our money is missing we don’t assume that demons have taken it or it has magically disappeared. Even the most religious or superstitious react this way.
Myths are not literally true but also may be illustrating a real understanding of human prehistory, psychology etc.
But the ravings of QAnon, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, believers that the Jews run the world, among many others are true in no sense at all. But tribalism and belief in the nefarious activities of often ill-defined enemies, trump whether something is true or not. The word ‘believe’ though doesn’t mean quite the same thing in those cases. Very few people put themselves in physical danger on the basis of untrue beliefs for example, making some rationalising excuse why they do not, though it is not unknown.
We are: and have been for a long time. Now everyone has their “own” truth which means of course actual truth no longer exists in the minds of the woke. It is, on fact beyond their capacity to grasp the concept. That comes from a mindset of entitlement, replete with rights and devoid of responsibilities.
Oster is essentially asking for forgiveness without repentance, excusing their actions as altruism based on the “science” of the time. Recent thought on forgiveness often considers repentance to be optional, but it seems clear to me from the pushback to Oster’s essay that human nature finds lack of repentance to be a major hurdle to reaching forgiveness. The literature also commonly points out that forgiveness does not require reconciliation nor does it preclude consequences for the offender. Without their repentance, I see no compelling argument to simply forget and move on.
Well said. Those who favored lockdowns and mandates caused irreparable harm…and they want no consequences for what they’ve wrought.
Unfortunately public opinion originally broke about 75% in favour lockdowns and 25% against. Governments knew this. People on the whole aren’t all that concerned with the freedoms of others, especially those they consider are doing harm. And, along with the huge economic costs of lockdowns, the changed position of the public (they are just completely exhausted by it) is the reason that, despite continuing high levels of covid, governments aren’t doing it again (I truly hope I am right on this!). Only in a totalitarian country like China is this disastrous policy going on it seems indefinitely, seemingly to protect Xi’s face as much as anything.
Especially after they repeatedly insisted that those who warned of or even talked about consequences were stupid and wrong and just “wanted to kill people.”
Same, that period traumatized me. I will never look at people I know who went along with this the same way, and I fear them being able to do it again. They would, too, without an unequivocal rejection of that approach.
I am experiencing the same thing—even with regards to some members of my own family! I just can’t speak to or even look at them; and yes, they would do it all again.
I supported the first lockdown because I didn’t know better and I gave our politicians and scientists the benefit of the doubt. However, it went on for way too long and every other lockdown afterwards was not needed. Absolutely criminal after that and we are paying for it now.
Same here. You speak for me.
Yes, pretty much on the money. Essentially what Sumption was saying. Early events in China notwithstanding, what was happening in Italy gave serious cause for concern; body bags piled up in hospital grounds is not a good look for any government. But once it became apparent that this was not black death 2.0, the reactions became utterly absurd.
For what is worth I never went along with it for the simple reason that by the time they got round to shutting the stable door the horse was past the post ne weighed in.
Wuhan airport has 14m passengers a year. The virus would have been round the world several times before we had even realised that their was a problem
In the interests of fairness, because we should be open minded on this forum, it should be said that several countries, Including Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia had orders of magnitude less covid deaths. An excellent track and trace system for the first and relative geographic isolation in the past two cases helped. But in North America and Western Europe, with their huge amounts of international travel, this was probably never an option, and it is certainly not a simple case of the stricter the lockdown the less the overall illness and death.
Africa performed best by a mile, with the lowest vaccination rates, but easy over the counter access to Ivermectin and HCQ due to the incidence of malaria and parasitic infections in the continent.
Yes, that’s how I feel. But even though I went along with it, I felt right from the outset that it was important to openly discuss the trade-offs, the different views and alternatives. I found it utterly shocking that this discussion was so forcefully suppressed and how those expressing other views were treated. The uniform lack of willingness to perform basic democratic tasks of debate – or even to think beyond one’s own point of view – was (and still is) terrifying.
Thank you for at least being reasonable about it. I was against locking down from the start, after reading about the potential for disastrous consequences. Just having a basic understanding of how supply chains work was enough for me to think it utterly mad to shut down an economy.
I still shake my head in disbelief at the then 2020 recovery trials whereby our Doctors?? trialled Hydroxychloroquine. They gave the drug too late and in initial dose of 2400 mg (near toxic levels) and then claimed the drug did not work. They clearly did not have clue how to use the drug. They didn’t even use zinc which would have been better. Trials in other Countries used 200mg over 5 days with zinc and an antibiotic with good results.
“They clearly did not have clue how to use the drug.”
Or had they been told that it must fail, or else?
I just read an article about that disastrous HCQ study. My understanding from the article was that they administered doses that absolutely were toxic; levels far beyond any amount that had ever been used in the normal course for diseases. Levels that “the science” decades ago had discovered were lethal.
And, strangely (!), levels far beyond what the proponents of HCQ were using in their treatment protocols.
Why hasn’t it been prescribed anywhere then, if it is so beneficial? This article is not to do with the claims for dubious medical treatments, and it is a shame you could not resist introducing your pet obsession.
In any case why I am supposed to be in the one hand to be immensely distrustful of Big Pharma and on the other to welcome various (inconsistent) treatments advocated in a suspiciously close minded way by people on the internet, I am not sure. Is it Ivermectin, or Hydroxychloroquine? You seem to impute malice or incompetence on a mass scale amongst doctors and researchers to justify your claims..
Malice and incompetence were very much subordinate to sheer greed during this pandemic, though incompetence did give greed a run for it’s money at Elmhurst Hospital, New York. The Recovery HCQ trial was nobbled because it threatened the Emergency Use Authorisation of the jab. Similarly, Ivermectin was sabotaged by Andrew Hill at Liverpool University, but his efforts were rewarded by Unitaid (financed by Bill Gates) to the tune of $40,000,000 for his employers. Vladimir Zelenko successfully treated over 3000 patients with HCQ (with only one death) during the pandemic, but he always maintained that the virus inhibiting action of zinc was the mainstay of his treatment. All you need to know is in the book, The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert Kennedy Jr. It’s been out nearly a year now, and still no sign of legal action by Dr Fauci – I wonder why?
If hydroxycloroquinine has no measurable effect at high doses, why would it have a higher effect at low doses?
Apples to oranges. Various doctors publicized the positive results of their specific treatment protocols with HCQ. The study then completely changed the protocols that they were supposedly testing to confirm or refute effectiveness—every aspect was changed.
It is as though the initial doctors who found success in treating infections with penicillin used a treatment course of ten milligrams in saline solution delivered every twelve hours, as soon as possible after infection is detected. But then these findings were “tested” by researchers delivering five hundred milligrams of penicillin in a glucose solution every four hours and only in cases where the patients already had advanced systemic infections. Surprise, surprise, there was no detectable benefit and some people even died from the penicillin alone.
IKR! I wanted to see if tylenol was good to use for pain, so I downed an entire bottle! It didn’t have any measureable effect on my pain, in fact I ended up DEAD. Why would it have a higher effect at low doses?
Exactly same with me, John.
Then thank the Lord that Rishi Sunak then Chancellor persuaded Johnson and the Cabinet who was in awe of the Scientists not to start another lockdown when the Omicron strain appeared. Sunak researched the new South African strain and noted it was much weaker in efficacy than the Delta strain whereas Johnson was the nodding dog of the scientists.
Was Bunter in awe of the ‘scientists’ or just happy to hide behind them?
I find that I’ve had to adopt the form ‘scientists’, since what they did was a long way from scientific and entailed abandonment of all their previous methods.
Indeed.
I can accept the difference of opinion (just about). It’s the silencing, criminalization of dissent and gross authoritarianism to accomplish these goals that I cannot.
It was never an honest debate, it was totalitarian technocrats jack-booting the rest into submission.
This I think seems to be the key point here. This most certainly was NOT a difference of opinion and it was straight totalitarianism. The number of people who simply can’t process that is utterly terrifying.
Think of it this way – had we had these scientific communities and these politicians and these social media in the early 1980s what would the response to AIDS have looked like?
Granted, the media (social and old) did give a number of people a wildly disporportionate profile and that is a very modern thing and that perhaps is an interesting aside.
What I think made it all the worse was how institutions supposed to be there ‘for us’ just bounced off each other. Once China, then Italy started down this path everyone else had to follow. I feel that the ‘herding’ is a rather understated aspect of the pandemic.
We are forgetting that there WAS a pandemic of sorts after the age of AIDS. It was BSE. And it was a terrible car crash. The same scientists with the same erroneous predictions. The same panicked reaction of dumb ignorant Executive. Lots of cows shot burnt and farmers ruined.v So we perhaps should have been better prepared when the danger moved to people. Some of the same dynamics returned. But Covid added too many new more powerful toxic elements to the brew. SM. An unacknowledged Leninist urge in the Remainiac ruling classes to use the pandemic to break and destroy the baby Brexit State. The frankly evil complicity of their Ministries of Propaganda – the BBC and the Health Industrial Complex in inducing panic and hysteria via lies and distortions. And the utter corruption, prostitution and meek groupthink of ‘Science’ as illustrated by their ongoing Climate Hysteria. This ongoing crisis again aided and abetted by the broadcasters who pride themselves in being champions, not interrogators, of that panic. No amnesty for the Net Zero/Climate catastrophists either.
‘Herding’ is a rather understated aspect of most issues, including science in general. Most humans are hard wired towards social conformity, and they don’t even begin to comprehend how it compromises their thinking. It operates at the individual level and every ascending level of organizational complexity magnifies those effects. Having Asperger’s myself, my social perceptions, queues, and instincts are underdeveloped. I’m not totally immune to ‘herding’, but I’m far less influenced by it than most people and I can perceive its influence a lot better than most. The amount of ‘herding’ in the modern world is truly staggering. Its effects are incomprehensibly massive and reach to about every aspect of human endeavor. That’s expected for a social species, and not very troubling by itself. What troubles me is that it’s gotten appreciably worse during my lifetime and it’s pushing civilization in some dangerous directions. The road to a totalitarianism is much shorter than most people realize. The Germans of the 1930’s didn’t wake up one morning and decide to kill six million Jews and start a war that would engulf the entire world. They just went along with the ‘herd’, a little bit at a time.
I cant help remembering Einstein’s quip on a regular basis these days “the only things that i know that are infinite are – the size of the universe, and the depth of human stupidity – and I am not 100% sure about the former ” ……………..
Yes. I have been saying the same thing since this whole fiasco with covid and the so called, “woke,” regime, which is a social but equally noxious virus, along with the biology bending wormholes we are being forced down began. The world is sideways and mad men are running it…
Absolutely – I should have read your post before I posted above as you have basically written what my opinion is – just with more fluency!
”Safe And Effective: A Second Opinion (2022 Oracle Films COVID-19 Documentary)’‘
A Must Watch video on the vaccine – British made, really interesting:
https://rumble.com/v1mc9z0-safe-and-effective-a-second-opinion-2022-oracle-films-covid-19-documentary.html
‘Safe and Effective’ is a brilliant documentary. Also worth watching is the Canadian documentary by Matador Films, which came out about a month before the above.
Well worth watching (though first 3 mins or so is an irritating story line that should have been left on the cutting room floor):
https://librti.com
/view-video/uninformed-consent
Spare a thought for the people in China. They are going through seemingly never-ending hell right now. Shame on the corrupt CCP, dictator Xi Jinping and his followers!
Believe it or not, in the state of Rhode Island (USA) we are still under a state of emergency (https://governor.ri.gov/sites/g/files/xkgbur236/files/2022-10/Executive-Order-22-34.pdf). Apparently we are never going to be out from under the thumb of an executive order for reasons nobody understands.
I find this a very interesting discussion. I find it interesting because everyone seems to have the same feeling even though they lived through different experiences in different countries with different consequences. I’ve been reading recently about Carl Schmitt’s theory of a State of Exception and how it can be justified to suspend the rule of law. The thing I find so fascinating is how easily you can create fear and how quickly that fear disables a society from challenging huge abuses of the democratic form of government we believe we hold so dear. I ask myself nearly every day, what did I do to try to debate or challenge the status quo. Very early on, I stopped feeling fearful about the virus for a variety of reasons but I still felt fearful about challenging the state. In Italy they liberally used the Decree to establish temporary but potentially endlessly renewable regulations. They were widespread and Draconian. But at a certain point people learned that no one who was fined was being taken to court if they refused to pay the fine. The state was fearful (what a turn around) that a successful legal challenge to the regulations was very likely and would then blow the whole thing apart. This led to a two level society – those who walked around and did what they liked with minimal fear or restriction and those who did the opposite (and paid their fines if they were ever rebellious enough to deserve one). I think it’s beholden on each of us to stop challenging the state or A N Other group that we think we have identified for the hardships that were forced upon us but ask ourselves honestly what we did to resist them ourselves. We might find this is where some of that trauma lies.
The emergency has to remain in place for the Emergency use authorization and its liability protections to hold. Once the product is on the childhood schedule ( which is in process) the protections will no longer require an EUA.
Correct. And lets ask – where was our bulwark against tyranny and authoritarian rule. Law. Justice?? We were assured – the lumpen European human rights codes would defend us all, not just islamists.
Just wait and see. It would stop.Corbyn siezing our houses! Wait and see…Well we waited. And what we saw was the our legal system is a dud, utterly corrupted poisoned and paralysed by the sick credos of the entitled illberal progressives. They did nothing. Nothing. In many East European states, the legislation was challenged. But not here. As with the BBC, Blob, NHS and Groupthink Science itself, we have seen them in a true light. A very harsh unforgiving damning light. No amnesty for any of these charlatans.
The plan from the beginning. Robert Kennedy Jr and his team talked about this as soon after the vaccine roll out.
On the federal level, we are still under a state of emergency. Biden says he might end it next spring. He says the pandemic is over, but he’s not letting go of those emergency powers. Who knows what else he might do with them before they’re given up.
He accidentally announced it was over a couple weeks ago, then his handlers walked it back. Oops. The Democrats are in a mess going into elections because one can’t claim COVID is over with an emergency still in place, and one can’t waste an emergency, either, when there’s money to spend.
Odd when our old Governer high-tailed it our of our little state for a big role in the Biden administration that our little new govener did not quietly recind the order… A very bad sign indeed…
Me too. I have fallen out with members of my own family. I have been mocked as a sad, stupid old woman by acquaintances and friends for not getting the vax. They gas lit me. They isolated me. They branded me selfish and dangerous. They banned me from events. But worst of all, they made me doubt my own judgment and competence. I can’t forgive them. Especially as they still have no idea what they did.
Me too. I lost my best friend of 33 years for warning her that the vaccines were probably going to turn out to not be as safe as our govt was saying, and to take Vit D instead. She called me a right wing nut job, and said she “wouldn’t debate the science” with me. I hadn’t asked her to “debate the science” with me. It wouldn’t be possible for her to “debate the science” because she has no capacity to understand the science. She has a commerce degree and works in marketing, while I have 20 plus years nursing experience and a masters in nursing. I’m also a communist, as my family has been for four generations, while her family are all conservatives!
Agreed!
It is a sad place to be, but I still wonder about your attitude. Why not be proud that you have stood by your judgement, and paid the price? You decided to back your judgment and competence and, (in Persephone’s case) your nursing degree, against the collective wisdom of governments and medical researchers worldwide, on a matter where people close to you thought you were putting their health and lives at risk. You acted according to your beliefs – and the people around you acted according to their beliefs. What did you expect?
If I may quote Rudyard Kipling:
‘The refined man’ (WWI epitaph).
I was of delicate mind – I stepped aside for my needs,
Disdaining the common office – I was seen from afar and killed …
How is this matter for mirth? Let each man be judged by his deeds.
I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed!
In the middle of the night one day last week, I lay awake crying in the dark. Why did it suddenly hit me? I think it’s because I realised they’d never admit what they’d done. The fighting has passed and they’re all going to move on and pretend it didn’t happen. You can see them looking around for things to attribute the damage to.
Just to put it on record that there is one reader of Unherd who agreed with the lockdown and thinks it saved a lot of lives
Is he, she or it still alive may I ask?
Agree with lockdown? Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. . .
Seconded
Angry is an understatement. In my case outrage surges into rage! I’m moving to the deep countryside now.
The most important lesson I hope people learn is that governments LIE. IF they lied about this what else have they been lying about? The first thing that pops to mind is Man Made Global Warming. All these failed prediction and canceling of people that disagree. Much of the EU faces a cold winter due to the failed green policy ideas Trump warned about and was laughed at for saying. There has not been one public debate on this topic because the priests of climate change refused to debate and a loyal press backed the spineless climate believers. Use this moment to seek out all the lies being pushed. Another would be no need for voter ID, There was no fraud in the 2020 election.
Oster seems to have been one of those covid cheerleaders who now worries about what her online record says about her.
Spot on. Kafkaesque authoritarianism, mass oppression, mass corruption, lies by government, the demonization of freedom lovers and free thinkers and a culture of police brutality and workplace persecution must never be forgotten or forgiven or they will return all too soon.
Can we forgive and forget when the paid Marxist/BLM/Eco rabble caused chaos across the West with the tacit approval of the police, whilst those who stood up for basic rights and freedoms such as bodily autonomy faced the full force of state sanctions?
Can we forget the great and brutal transfer of wealth from small businesses and the lower and middle classes to the international corporations and the billionaire class?
Especially when it is still going on thanks to the nonsense in Ukraine and many British people are sitting right now in cold houses thanks to the games of the international Billionaire class.
Globalism is dead and we need to stand up and say ‘Stuff the Great Reset’ – we need governance based first and foremost upon the actual needs and interests of the British people. No more nonsense.
Failure to forgive will affect you far more than any wrongdoers out there. It’s you choice but you will be the sole victim. I urge you to forgive purely for your own sake.
I concur with feelings of sadness and anger. The subject still fascinates me even though I am no longer identifiable as a social pariah. It has weaponised me somewhat as I believe that we can no longer control, influence or even take part in the narrative that leads the ‘Virtuals’ to impose a dystopian reality on us all. My vision of my own future has changed; I think I’m harder to convince than before. I have a wisdom & experience of hell on Earth that I didn’t expect to have. When it happens next time, I’ll be ready.
”But no “amnesty” will be possible that doesn’t acknowledge the class politics, the corruption of scientific process, the self-dealing, and the self-righteousness”
Oh, come on – this was a war against humanity, not a bunch of silly liberals trying to stop the plebs from killing granny; and overstepping the mark.
This was Murder, theft, corruption on a scale the world has never seen before, betraying every social convention from the USA Constitution to Nuremberg Trials laws on ‘Informed Consent’. This was destruction of business, jobs, education, mental health – and mostly, the seeds of the coming great depression looming. This is about to bring food poverty unseen in a century. Billions will slip from being poor, to full blown Poverty. This was the pensions of the working destroyed wile the .01% had their Wealth Double – and that all by the Governments saddling the future of all the working with that debt, debt which cannot be repaid, ever, so the currencies will be devalued by inflation to destroy that Government Debt – taking everyone’s savings with it.
And this was the attack on my personal freedoms, everyone’s,; an attack on the Religions, Family, society and the world of humanity its self. Watch a video on Sri Lanka – it is going to get a lot worse.
Sure, forgive and forget…After the full harms, and culpability have been assessed. Then after the guilt is shown, then it can be forgiven. This silly person you speak of is really saying – ‘Nothing to see here, move along, it is all OK, we just were doing our best….She wants NO accounting, and so she can be blameless…..
Agreed. They never said “oh this is a difficult problem and we’re going try this”. They not only failed to respond to criticism they actively suppressed it. And they remain in charge, without the slightest qualms about telling us what to do and spending our money.
The trouble with educated people is that they usually failed to learn the most important lesson and that is that education should teach you how much you don’t know.
You have a point here. In fact one conclusion I drew was the scientists are good for finding out things but less good at taking decisions under stress because we (I am ‘in science’ myself, like a waiter is ‘in the restaurant business’) tend to put too much faith in what we think we know. As it happens, my prime example of this is Tegnell and company in Sweden who were sure COVID was no different from the flu and never considered that they just might be wrong.
But, in fairness, it can take a very long time before you fully understand anything. In particle physics you just wait enough decades till the problem is sorted, but in public health you need to deal with the problem now, not in forty years. And in public health you need a high degree of compliance for any measures to work – and if you say ‘we do not know but let us try this’ no one will do anything. Worse, you can never convince everybody. The tobacco companies will never accept that we are really sure that smoking causes cancer, Donald Trrump will never accept that he lost the election, committed anti-vaxxers will never accept that vaccines save lives. There will always be criticism, and there will always be people who use that criticism as an argument for not believing the evidence. At some point you need to decide what is the best course of action given what we know, and then move on it.
When we do not yet know enough – but need to act – we should preferably come up not with a single answer, but with a number of alternative explanations and the probability of each. We should take all of them into consideration, but we should act, together, on what we find. Not leave to everyone to decide for himself that he believes most in those voices that lets him do what he wants to do.
I agree about scientists (generally) not being good at making decisions under stress, but it was not their job to do so during the pandemic, that was the job of polticians. All a scientist should (and can) say is “this is what we know at the moment”.
As far as what should have been done, I have come to a controversial conclusion – I don’t know. We certainly know what happened due to the decision made. but we don’t know what might have happened if any other decisions were made. I know that people will point to Sweden, but Sweden is very different from the UK (especially England) due to their demographics, international links and their households.
Exactly!
For the rest, I’d agree.
I am still convinced that vaccination was a very good thing to do.
Testing and quarantine still sound like a very good idea.
Masks? Well they do not cost much and might help, but how much is kind of unclear
I’d say that lockdowns, travel restrictions, reduced social contacts were definitely justified based on what was known at the start. To what extent they are good ideas in hindsight is extraordinarily hard to know, as you say.
As for assuming that the flu-based plan would do for COVID (as Tegnell did) I thought at the time that he might prove right, but he was taking an unacceptable risk. I still think so, but it is indeed hard to prove either way.
Masking is disgusting and weird.
More pertinently, it proved – rapidly, as it was probably known all along to be – epidemiologically pointless. It was just a ruling elite tool of social coercion.
Were there any serious data to prove that masking had any significant effect on the spread of the Covid variants? Particularly Omicron? The spread of Omicron and its swift displacement of earlier variants at a time that some people, at least, were still wearing masks, has made me very doubtful of their value.
We still have adverts on “Dragon Radio” from Cardiff talking about wearing masks in public places. I carry one of those blue things if I’m liable to be out on my trike after dark – some flying insects taste horrible when they are raw.
Clearly you have been on the side of Emily Oster for the whole of the pandemic, and you have been wrong on every single issue. For a scientist you clearly were never thought to think independently and critically. You have been consumed by institutionalism, and the authorities both in the US and UK were way off base and did an awful lot of damage. You have also consistently denied serious harms and adverse events of the Covid vaccine, despite all evidence to the contrary. Indeed, evidence that is personal for virtually everybody because everybody knows quite a number of people who had significant adverse events following vaccination, even if these didn’t require hospitalization. In truth you and your compadres have been part of the problem and not the solution.
Indeed. I refused the shot and haven’t had so much as a sniffle since 2015. Those whom I know have submitted to the injection and its boosters have had WuFlu multiple times, and two now have serious heart conditions. We have no idea what will happen to these people as a result of this poison. What was done here is criminal, and the Oster plea is a public admission. Those clinging to the “but we didn’t know at the time” excuse conveniently forget the many experts who recommended effective, inexpensive, and readily available treatments. They also forget the whole thing was a man-made disaster cooked up for absolutely no good reason in a crummy, unsafe, ill-equipped Chinese lab and funded by the NIH. Forgive? No. Prosecutions, yes.
Agreed. I will never forgive them.
Only a scientist could be that smug
There were many Germans who later said they didn’t actually participate in the genocide, but stood by and did nothing to stop it.
Sounds like you’re the only voice of sanity here. Harrington’s article is claptrap.
When it comes to Covid measures pretty much everyone here sings from the same hymn sheet. They may be right, but there seems to be no acknowledgement that they may be wrong.
Totally agree
This is where the Hippocratic oath comes in. “First do no harm”. It was developed for exactly this type of situation – where knowledge is incomplete and all available courses of action are based on best guesses. When the best guesses all involve doing terrible harms they are by definition unethical.
Not to mention illegal. In countries with constitutionally enshrined freedoms, the onus was on the state to prove the necessity of infringing rights. But nearly all of our courts effectively declared that the state’s ‘best guess’ was sufficient proof. In a short period for time, the very concept that a right was something the state could not arbitrarily take away was thrown into the dustbin of history. The damage these cowards have done has yet to be fully realized. But if you think you still have ‘rights’ and live in a ‘free country’, you have not been paying attention.
”Nuremberg Code Establishes the Principle of Informed Consent. Legal document. By: Nuremberg Military Tribunal Date: August 19, 1947 Source: Excerpt of the verdict in the case of U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al. (“Doctors Trial”), contained in Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10 (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949 ‘‘
There was NO informed consent – just it is ‘Safe and effective”
It seems the “safe and effective” phrase is now gradually being replaced by the “sudden and unexplained” meme.
I thought that they changed the spelling, replacing the ‘a’ with an ‘i’
covid is highly treatable – only 15% of deaths were unavoidable, if early treatment was allowed. Doctors lost their license if they tried using off label medications – which they do for everything else. McCullough Protocol, will save 85% of covid patients who went on to die, if begun early – the most googled thing on covid in the world – Rasmus – search it yourself. The Vax did NOTHING but harm. Same as all the response.
https://covid19.onedaymd.com/2021/11/dr-peter-mccullough-early-treatment.html
From your link:
That tells me all I need to know. We have a doctor here who comes up with a drug cocktail (heavily based on vitamins) based on nothing but his intuition, publicises it as ‘The McCullough Protocol’, and claims, without the slightest evidence, that his protocol could cure everybody if only the authorities would use it. We know this story. Di Bella did something similar in Italy. Some people who do this are charlatans. Others get carried away by following their own intuition, wishful thinking (they do want their stuff to work for their patients) and the amazing ability of the human mind to see the pattern you want to see. It takes discipline and rigorous controls to avoid this trap – which McCullough preferred not to use. Meanwhile people like McCullough are believed by the gullible, the desperate, and those who want to believe him for political or ideological reasons.
If he was on to something, the way to show it would be to do a proper trial (as they have done for other drugs). But the beauty of these complex, multi-drug, have-to-be-given-immediately treatments is that no trial will ever be enough to disprove them. You can always claim that the trial failed because it was not given early enough, or the combination or quantity of the drugs was not exactly right, or the patients in the trial were too sick.
I’m curious about you, Mr. Fogh Are you a contrarian for 1). the sheer cheek of it (I love a good contrarian if he’s cogent; RIP Christopher Hitchens), 2). do you really believe the nonsense you spew? or 3), you’re an UnHerd employee with a red stapler promised a cubicle upstairs if you get enough people to click here. Cool cool if you’re any one of those, since it would be harder to stomach that you really think the stuff you post.
Sorry to say so: I really believe what I am saying.
I am am here because 1) I like a good debate; 2) I sometimes learn something or see some new ideas, the articles are often really interesting, and it is useful to understand how people think even if you disagree; 3) Having to argue my case helps understanding things better; 4) I think it could be useful to remind people that there are people who think differently and (hopefully) that such people can be reasonably coherent and sensible even if you disagree with them. It is not good to let rampant misinformation pass in complete silence 5) It is quite satisfying when you manage to establish some mutual respect and understanding between people with different opinions, be it that I respect them or they respect me.
I used to debate on the Guardian, but left when the debate (or I) moved so far that even few people who could sometimes be convinced that I had a point now rejected me as too far out.
As for the nonsense, I too think that there are some people here who belong in an asylum, metaphorically speaking. I do not think I am one of them, but there is no point in discussing who belongs on the list.
No need to apologise for saying what you believe in. People like Allison are in such total denial they simply cannot have a debate. The blinker’s are superglued on.
Thanks for the support.
I agree 100%
The positivity of the vaccine far outweighed the negativity of it. Just like the Penicillin vaccine, or Polio vaccine, some people had allergic reactions to the drugs. In those days they didn’t shout self righteously from the rooftops or try to claim compensation.
The Swedes are people too first and foremost and share the same physiology as the rest of us. Don’t dismiss what happened there out of hand but examine it more carefully. I have yet to see a comparison of how they got on with how we got on. Not as statistical evidence but how people felt and got on with their lives.
I have a better answer as a springboard of what could have been done. Young healthy people who weren’t afraid of catching it should have continued to work – choosing to mask or not. Protecting at-risk people by quarantining them (rather than locking down healthy people) and supporting them with food deliveries, etc. Kids should have stayed in school. Some level of natural immunity would then exist in the population, protecting the vulnerable until a vaccine was available that was OPTIONAL to take.Each country should have assessed their demographic and health status as a nation and made individual decisions. The example of Sweden having a much healthier population than the US is fair to compare. All countries should not have followed the same protocols.
I could live with that it if it is followed by a “we really didn’t get it right and we badly overreached, but we found ourselves in n a tunnel and couldn’t find a way out.” Instead I can see zero self reflection.
You can plead ignorance for the first few weeks in 2020, NOT for 2 years.
Just tried to uptick you but it increased your downticks by 2 to 13! Sorry.
One of the most sensible comments I have ever read, Rasmus on this forever contentious subject.
We do have one living experiment in the UK of what happened when people acted on their own beliefs and that was January 2021.
In early December 2020 while the UK was recovering from its September / October wave there was plenty of messaging about “think carefully about what you are going to do this Christmas” – very Swedish style until Hancock, somewhat late to the game, applied Tier 3 restrictions to over half of England on December 17th.
Clearly, very few people took this on board because the NHS almost but didn’t quite fall over on January 11th 2021, even with all its extra surge capacity in place and a year’s worth of experience of dealing with the virus.
Remember, this virus can only transmit if people meet….over Christmas lunch for instance.
I attended a Christmas Party in the Alps in 2020. A ‘super spreader’ was present and we all got it ! (100% chop rate).
Everyone was ON the slopes the following morning, nobody died (although quite a few are well, past their sell by date).
Survival of the fittest perhaps?
It’s called luck, Charles.
‘Fortuna’.
Austria? Some families I know too.
Gosh, you’re not very popular! Actually, I have a lot sympathy for your view. Decisions are often made under great pressure with many unknown unknowns. As you said, the Swedish view could have been disastrously wrong.
But, it seemed to me at the time that it was evident quickly that the virus would kill the elderly and infirm who of course deserve protection but not without considering the costs on others.
Putting it callously the number of months of lives saved by locked is probably not so great.
There was a terrific arrogance by the scientists during this period. They should have realised how great were the costs and changed tack. They didn’t care of the harms less obvious than death.
It went on. To have considered forcing vaccines on people was outrageous. Frankly, inhumane. In the States, schools were forcing children to wear masks; cruel and useless.
I disagree – each individual should have been allowed to make their own well considered choices – to vax or isolate etc. Those who could not make choices due to health, dementia etc should have had very expensive isolation practices thrown around them – – still a bargain price compared to lockdown. People are either adults or they are large children – ALL were treated like large children (and most are) – and the adults were attacked. People need to be challenged to step up and think rather than be dumbed down – SURELY this is the basis of true democracy. Only the Swedes appear to have treated their citizens as adults – the rest of us were infanticized – is that not what ‘we know best’ fascist regimes do……………………………….
Wow! Did Karine Jean-Pierre write that for you?
Thank goodness someone speaking sense at last.
Agreed. There can never be an amnesty for what amounts to a criminal conspiracy. They knew what they were doing. The union mad dogs were baying for a lockdown of the children in their charge before covid had been arrived. They and many in the Blob and Leftist public health bureaucracy were at peak stage anti Brexit derangement. Like any good Leninist they WILLED the destruction of an Order they despised. One could feel it. Then all of the ghastly credos that drive the progressive Left and the liberal propetocratic metro classes coalesced to form a perfect storm; worship of a broken Socialist Monolith; instinctive anti capitalism (shown in their utter indifference to the fate of SMEs and private enterprise) and – often ignored – the Equality mania which led them to reject all proposals to protect the minority at risk – this was branded ‘eugenic’. They rejoiced in seeing the State activate the whatever it takes magic money tree, altering and corrupting forever public attitudes toward individual responsibility versus State authority and control. They can bleat – oh it was a panic situation!! But we know they are lying. They switched off the economy for two long years, enriched themselves with wfh. They think they have got away with it because the do not read Unherd. Dissent is still buried.
Even the truth that the virus leaked from Wuhan goes ignored by our MSM – despite 7 million deaths. Incredible But the deep class fissures they have carved and the mountains of excess deaths they are causing and the inflation and Great Depression they have conjured will all come to haunt them. They will escape justice for sure. They run the System. But this was a deadly criminal sabotage. We can never ever trust in their warped twisted Newspeak Science, the venal Blob, a legal system that turned its back on us in our time of need and the wicked evangelical propagandist BBC who to this day masks these bitter truths and its culpability. Never Ever Forget.
Absolutely correct, particularly the bit about willful destruction of a social order they despised.
Education doesn’t make you smarter – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Spot on! it was the biggest transfer of wealth ever. whole thing was a scam.
Whatever the root cause of it, it is impossible to “forgive and forget” while it is still going on – that would be like forgiving your wife for an affair while she is busy perfuming herself for a dirty weekend away with your next door neighbour!
The WHO is right now hashing out a “legally binding” treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations that will empower, at least on paper, its Communist leader to impose exactly the same kind of policies that have harmed people across the world. The one person who dared speak out against this at the WHO’s governing body, the World Health Assembly (Bolsonaro), has just lost an election. Big Pharma is ALL OVER it – they’ve been invited into subgroup meetings of the technocrats drafting the provisions and they go to the new big closed doors meetings 4 to 6 weeks before the World Health Assembly meets. The WHO’s “ethics committee” suggests that mandatory vaccinations might be justified on the grounds that not introducing them could do more harm than good. They have literally thrown the inviolability of basic human rights to bodily autonomy and conscience out of the window in the name of the “common good”. They have amnestied memories of the horrors of the Second World War.
In particular no-one seems able to even begin to acknowledge the gross harms that pharmaceutical interventions have done to *some* (not all, or even a very large proportion) of the people who were bullied into taking them against their own preference by the hysterical mob that drove government policies and societal norms. No-one wants to try and explain why excess deaths amongst the working age population across the western world remain elevated, and still little to try and do something about that. No-one wants to try and explain why the helpful, co-operative scientists working for a Chinese Communist regime that has a stated ambition to wreak revenge on the West for their “century of humiliation” over 100 years ago would hand the sequence for the Sars-Cov 2 spike protein to the West and then not inject it into their own population. No-one seems able to explain why a “pandemic” in which millions died of a pneumonia induced by a coronavirus simultaneously caused a precipitous, unprecedented and approximately offsetting drop in the numbers dying of pneumonia induced by influenza viruses. No-one wants to know why the WHO and other authorises pushed, and continue to push, tests for “covid” based on a protocol (eg cycle thresholds of up to 45) known to be fraudulent and certainly useless for the purpose of diagnostics. And let’s not even get started on the human and environmental harms done by the mass production and wearing of countless billions of masks.
So no, it is not time to forgive and forget. It’s time to stop, reflect, discuss, and try and really get to the whole truth of what went on, and why, so that we can reform our national and international institutions with the aim of never, ever, letting this happen again.
The liberal media in both America and the UK are so woke – so deeply corrupted politically – they still refuse to interrogate the origins of this, the greatest mass killing since the Nazi genocide. To their eternal shame, they still cling to the notion that this is a Trumpian conspiracy and so refuse to investigate it. Partygate? A leaving do; possibly tens of thousands hours across six months BBC. Wuhan Leak – maybe 10. Shut. It. Down.
So here’s a wild idea, and I really mean that, we are talking conspiracy here no proof just hunch, so this is just an idea. Our DEEP states American, Chinese, Russian, European conspired to cause the covid panic maybe deliberately released it (whatever) and shut society down, we know all sorts of money went into that Wuhan lab. They know they are gearing up for a big old fight over the global order, but they also need control of the populace while they wage this war. So they stress test everything, how people cope/ comply, how services, economies, markets etc. cope when society has to shut down on a global scale. If these things go to shit everyone looses government wise. So they needed a practice run. Because now we are facing an enormous energy crisis, we are facing black outs, supply chain crisis, covid narrative is now war narrative. Ukraine, Taiwan, Iran, North Korea are all powder kegs waiting to blow. China and Russia are about to launch their own gold back to directly compete with the dollar. They are going after America and they will not back down, its not going to be pretty. China will go for Taiwan. Warfare can be economic, cyber, infrastructure, resources. This time you’ll be stuck at home, but with no power. Schools won’t be able to open with no power. Shops will struggle to supply, keep freezers going etc. Big ques for shops, just like covid we will say. Covid got us used to the experience of the removal of the things we, in the west have taken for granted for the last 50 years or so, travel anywhere, buy anything, plenty of everything. Feels to me a bit like covid was a massive fire drill for what is to come. Part psyop to condition people into getting used to the removal of the services and freedoms we often take for granted, not because some sinister lizard King wants us enslaved or anything but because that is what this war with Ukraine and Russia is resulting in at the moment, and what a global war would inevitably result in, a severe curtailment of freedoms and plenty for everyone. Governments everywhere will need control to keep some form of society functioning as a whole. Whether you agree with the war or not, once we’re in it, we are in it, and if we want to win we will have to pull together and resist the urge to divide ourselves. Unrest at home will make us weak on the world stage, finding common ground is more important than ever. Or stopping the war now but that’s another kettle of fish, and looking less and less likely, russia accusing the UK of the nord stream is a dangerous change of rhetoric.
So cheer up guys covid could look like a picnic, take it as a lesson in preparation for what could be coming, and keep calm and carry on.
Feel free to tell me I’m a nutter, this is purely hypothesis. I could be way off the money?
not a nutter, you are right, this was a trial run, that went WAAAAAY better than any of them could have imagined. Those that now want an amnesty are those that abetted this superb trial run, As per the memes very early on in the pandemic: “now you know what you would have done in N**i Germany.”
I won’t phone the guys in white coats just yet then 🙂
That hypothesis could well be approximately right. It’s unlikely though that there is a complete alignment of interests at the very “highest” (if you see what I mean) political levels. Rather there is a bunch individuals with enormous egos, some of whom have a nationalistic chip on their shoulder (eg Xi), others – and that describes many in the Western sphere – have a saviour complex. Think Trudeau, Carney, or Gates. Some in that crowd think they know what’s best for the world but think that if they told everyone what the plan is their grand designs wouldn’t work so they don’t spill the beans, for their perception of the “common good” and to maintain order over chaos. It’s a modern version of the nineteenth century “white man’s burden”. Like the imperialists of the nineteenth century, many of them must be increasingly scared about what happens to them personally if the whole show comes crashing down.
Such a toxic combination of worldly means and power, glory-seeking, weaponised compassion, false senses of both responsibility and of impunity, and base, physical fear can make humans do crazy, harmful things. Bear in mind that in the early 1960s, the very top of the CIA signed off plans to terrorise and even murder Americans on their own soil in false flag operations in order to attempt to engineer regime change in Cuba (and this is a documented historical fact revealed in official papers – not a theory or a hypothesis). That was in an immediate post-war era in which a world, reeling from the horrors of totalitarianism and mass murder perpetrated by governments against their own people, drew up human rights declarations that sought to protect the sanctity of the individual human. Do we think the CIA and their ilk have become more or less ethical in this crazy multi-polar, post-modern, topsy-turvy, inverted world of our ours, where utilitarianism reigns and nothing, including facts and human lives, is sacred? Is it possible that they might conclude that doing something, or co-operating with or taking advantage of something, along the lines that you describe would serve their perceived interests? And if they could do it, would they do it?
First up thanks for the reply again, really appreciate it. Some really good points. And yes to all those questions 🙂 So. I’m going to try to take it little further then. Further hypothesis based on UK. Your point that it is unlikely there is complete agreement and complicity at the top I agree with completely, this is very important and that forms part of the next theory. Which I will attempt to hash out as best I can based on my own observations of the progression of covid. First, important distinction here between the deep state/ corporate elite and our elected officials. Obviously bear in mind one can corrupt the other, deep state/ elite are probably more powerful than elected officials right, they have more money and/ or hold their positions for much longer, stick with me. So at the start Boris was reluctant to lock down, but lots of mps were calling for it, media scares the shit out everyone, he walks the fine line between resisting lockdown and getting lynched for not locking down. Someone (deep state related) hits boris with a massive dose of covid to scare him into perpetuating the lockdown. Remember we had the fastest roll out, our lockdowns in the UK were actually much more liberal than parts of Europe I’m inclined to think that actually he didn’t do too badly considering the choices he was faced with, and globally everyone is promoting lock down. Also remember the media and the markets have not been on the side of our elected government, whether it was brexit, the budget etc. With boris and Angela rayner uk politics was starting to look like it should do again, Conservative posh kid, working class kid, meeting in the middle for the good of all. Brexit proved to me anyway that despite the pressure of the media etc. our democracy was still working, at least to a reasonable extent. I watched a lot of the parliamentary debates on ukraine, there were many calling for all out war, Boris was calling for moderation at the start, some mps wanted every Russian kicked out the country and some of their rhetoric was quite extreme and escalatory. Now boris has been removed, followed by liz truss both of them trying to uphold the free market, low tax brexit model, Boris was quite pro china until the whole Huawei thing, and rayner is being kept out of the top position she deserves (whatever you think about her, or labour, she represents it much better than starmer), both boris and rayner capable of representing the popular vote. The popular vote does not want war. Trump was also resistant to the covid hype narrative, and I think boris and trump are the kind of guys to do what they think is right (for better or worse) rather than be bullied by deep state officials into taking their line. You could perhaps make the observation that the media and deep state went after them both. I’d put money on rayner being the same stubborn breed.
I would like to think that there’s an almighty war going on in Westminster at the moment between these two factions, the elected mps that think for themselves and genuinely have uk interests at heart and the deep staters, desperate to let loose the military industrial complex for the benefit of their shareholders, and this is where we must be careful, everyone reading, because if we loose faith in our democratic system and see everyone as deep state conspirators and everything as an engineered conspiracy we will throw the baby out with the bath water. Remember there are people working for good too. And every leader faced with covid had to make the toughest of choices. I’m afraid no one will know what really happened for many years, and I urge caution on all hypothesis, especially this one.
Yes it is right to be cautious on all hypotheses. The reality is almost invariably murkier, more complex, and more difficult to describe than any short, neat paragraph can possibly hope to achieve. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to get one’s head around it.
I think all MPs, like almost anyone really, want to do their best for the people they represent. Even Hancock (well, probably). But some of them are more captured, knowingly or not, by vested interests than others. Some are much more self-aware than others. Some are greedier, lazier, and more avaricious than others. But even the worst of them has some degree of goodness in them. A handful of them might even be half-aware that they, like the rest of us, are in Plato’s cave. Rayner and Boris (and Charles Walker and Corbyn and co) may be less in thrall to the globalist utopians than Starmer and Sunak seem to be. But they seem to be stuck in their own narratives in which they play a starring role – if you’re Rayner, the plucky working class woman from Salford fighting for the rights of the downtrodden common people; if you’re Sunak, the highly educated beacon of stability, prosperity, and responsible stakeholder capitalism who is gong to restore the UK’s international standing. Both are just stories that they tell themselves and the public to help them and us to make meaning.
I would agree that we just not lose faith in our institutions. But it is only by vigorous, honest scrutiny and challenge from the outside that they can be held to account. That means that we need to be set out and test out hypotheses like yours, even if they turn out to mostly or even entirely wrong. The danger is if the institutions – and by that I include the media, the tech firms etc as well as government – try and shut down or silence opposing or sceptical voices, citing “harms” or public safety. That’s when political leaders can get dangerously lost deep in their own narratives, whatever they might be, and when they can start really doing harmful things in the name of good, including because they have made themselves so suggestible to anyone who can feed their egos and support their narratives, especially where they don’t (as many do not) have a deep religious faith through which they may order their moral universe. That’s what we saw with “lockdowns”. We see it with the climate catastrophists, and we see with all of angst about social justice. People desperate to tell themselves simple stories about a complex reality that they can’t control in which they are invariably on the side of the angels.
We all just need to let go a bit more, and let it be.
Indeed, agree with the let it go a bit more! Yes all good points, thank you. Would say what I’m trying to say about our politics is it works best when there is proper opposition, starmer did not oppose the lockdown or the aid for Ukraine if I remember correctly, proper opposition prevents one side going to far one way if you see what I mean?
I would like to add too, not to you directly Andrew but everyone that I see above on this same thread rasmus fogh is having a very hard time. His argument is just as valid as any on here, more so than mine for which I have no evidence, there’s so much information no one can say definitely this is what happened. Especially if this was a lab leak, we wouldn’t have been told for fear of inciting mass panic and if it was something out a lab not mass tested on humans they might not have had a clue what it could do and therefore the lock downs and vaccine may have been a good idea. Perfectly possible. Your point rasmus people will see patterns they want to see is a good one, I think keeping an open mind on this one is a good idea for now, we are only just coming out the other side of it.
OF COURSE they cry “amnesty!”. Chris Whitty is already howling “make Britain smoking-free by 2030”. Marxist agitator Susan Mitchie has been promoted beyond her wildest dreams.
Pretty much what I was going to say. I’ll be much more willing to forgive after I hear some mea culpas and “I advocated for this, now recognize the consequences made it a bad call, and offer these amends”.
Maybe we need a COVID Truth and Reconciliation commission to reflect on what happened.
Covid really highlighted who is and isn’t principled in our society. I think a precondition to forgiveness is that you stop doing harm. So until they stop pushing these vaccines on young people – and start seriously discussing and studying vaccine injuries – then any pleas for understanding should be rebuffed.
Absolutely spot on. And the failure of governments and many in the medical community and public health (e.g. the CDC) to even fully investigate openly and honestly the serious adverse events resulting from the Covid vaccines is a total and utter moral and ethical disgrace. It is nothing short of criminal.
the stance of “we didn’t know, sorry sorry” doesn’t fly.
They knew, or knew that they didn’t know (which is almost the same), but still pushed for arbitrary limitations of freedom. You cannot ask for amnesty, and hope to be trusted ever again. nor, as far as i am concerned, forgiven.
No way.
It might have taken twenty years to know for sure (and there would still be poeple who refused to believe uncomfortable conclusions even then). Would you really have preferred that nobody should have done anything for the first twenty years?
We knew damn well what the damage to the economy would be (and therefore, by extension, every other area of life) but disregarded it entirely. The ridiculous notion that the economy is just about wealth was being pedaled to justify this.
Quality of life for a generation has been destroyed, the very real possibility of famine is here. All of this was effected on the say of a truly terrible computer model by an “expert” who is neither an epidemiologist or software engineer (funny how expert credentials are only required if arguing for a certain outcome) with a track record of forecasts being incorrect by several orders of magnitude.
And finally, doing nothing vs lockdown is a clear false dilemma that virtually no one was arguing except for disingenuous individuals attempting to undermine skepticism of the policies that were forced on the populace.
The justification for lockdown was to “flatten the curve” and prevent health services being overwhelmed*. That didn’t happen in Sweden, Florida or South Dakota. Meanwhile, I said we’d get inflation and resource scarcity – and boy have we got both (and yes, both were happening before Putin’s foray into Ukraine).
*looks at NHS waiting lists – good job!
And don’t forget that Ferguson was so afraid of the virus that he spent a whole weekend f****** his married girlfriend before sending her back to her husband and children.
Having ‘infected’ her?
People on your side of the argument should try to explain why NICE formula of spending £30k per year of quality life on medical treatment, was not applied to 85 years old, obese, diabetics with many other medical conditions dying with covid?
Even if we assume that covid policy saved million lives, it is about £400k per life saved.
There were definitely many better ways of spending £400 billions.
An old comedy bit comes to mind as I read Oster’s article.
“Come on now, let’s not argue over who stabbed who!”
Another outstanding essay from Mary Harrington.
Somehow, I’m optimistic about the situation described in this article. As authors such as George Friedman, in his “The Storm Before the Calm”, have observed, the US, and by extension the West, is likely coming to the end of a social and economic era. These changes happen every fifty years or so (the last one being the Reagan revolution) and are marked by upheaval and the appearance of social disintegration. In Friedman’s optimistic view, a new order will emerge that better provides for the needs of ordinary people, although it’s impossible to know what that order will look like (it might not, for example, be current progressivism).
But the last days of the old order are brutal. In our present situation, the technocrats will desperately try to maintain their hold on power, such as through the censorship and moral posturing described in the current article. The harder they try, however, and more authoritarian they become, the stronger will be the counterreaction.
In Friedman’s telling, either the current US president, or the next one, will mark the last hurrah of the old order before a new one starts to emerge. But the new order will likely take a decade to establish itself. So the optimistic case appears to be upheaval for the next decade or so. I don’t allow myself to dwell on less optimistic scenarios.
If you’re right, it will be too late to be of much benefit to me, but for the sake of my little boy, I hope you’re on to something.
“The harder they try, however, and more authoritarian they become, the stronger will be the counterreaction.”
That is usually the outcome and my fear. In the U.S., the hard and swift left hand turn we took in 2020 might lead to an overcorrection in the other direction. But it will be caused by the lunacy that the left has imposed on us.
It took Carter to get Reagan elected. Hopefully, reasonable heads will prevail.
Much of this applies also to climate science.
It is a close parallel, yes. On one side we have people who try to find out what is happening and propose that we do something based on what they find. On the other side we have people who cannot accept having to do anything, and come with a ‘truth’ that justifies them doing what they wanted to do anyway.
Except your so-called truth is actually untruth. When the climate cabal fails to look at the real data, plays games with data by continually correcting the data such that the resulting data bear no resemblance to reality, one ends up with total nonsense. But only somebody like you, who believes in institutionalism and the correctness and infallibility of authority fails to see this. This may see overly aggressive but you need to be called out once and for all.
It is even worse. The media and politicians routinely say things that are not even supported by the IPCC reports. For example blaming extreme weather events on climate change. The IPCC report does not support that. So even though they all claim to be following ‘The Science’ – they routinely ignore it and contradict it.
Ditto the IPCC reports themselves do not always seem to be based upon what the real scientists are reporting.
We see the same sort of unfounded arrogance with climate science as we did with Covid. Take the bans on internal combustion engines. A popular measure by zealots who can claim that they are saving the world by following the science. But they do much more harm than good.
(I say this as someone who has worked on electric car technology for the past 20 years.)
There’s no need to provide credentials on this matter. One doesn’t have to be a scientist to understand the age of our plant, how it has changed over eons, and that human activity can’t be responsible for 99+% of that change.
You mean on one side we have people who are alarmists over data that has been collected for a minuscule percentage of time as compared to the age of our planet and have been completely wrong for decades. On the other side, we have people who are questioning what humans can really do to prevent the tectonic plates from shifting or changing the axis of the earth in order to change the global climate. Once we figure out a way to prevent an earthquake, volcano eruption or solar flare, then perhaps I’ll be more interested in “saving” the planet.
Keep going! Very much appreciate your efforts to keep this debate (these debates) grounded.
Exactly Rasmus.
Hence the Labour councils who used lockdown to introduce anti-car measures in cities. The middle class Labour councillors in Newcastle loved the fact that the working class locals were shut away on their estates, with the pubs and football ground closed, and the city centre reserved for cyclists from Heaton.
Exactly. That the world’s climate(s) is/are changing is irrefutable. But the theory that carbon dioxide is the only cause is just that – a theory. Correlation is not causation. Try inserting “heat” (the ultimate result of a change in any state of energy) instead of “carbon dioxide”. Heat – global warming. Geddit?. And anyway how do we explain the megadrought in eastern Asia between AD350 and AD370 which ultimately led to the invasion of, then overwhelming of the population in, Europe? Certainly not carbon dioxide. Nor, come to that, energy/heat. “Man fears most that which he cannot control”. Is that what really lies behind the holding of Cop 27?
And what about the movement of our continents over eons via the shifting of the tectonic plates? And the dinosaurs? And the ancient city of Alexandria being under water? And on and on and on. It’s sheer lunacy in a world where we can’t even prevent a rain shower during the World Cup!
Another fine article by Mary. It is certainly necessary for there to be an acknowledgment of the overreach involved in the whole lockdown saga by the laptop class before any amnesty. Truth and reconciliation in the post-apartheid fashion required an acknowledgment of the errors made and harm done. This will be difficult because this class still wishes to wield power and continue to push many unpopular policies that have scant scientific support. There is nothing scientific or kind in diversity discrimination and the promotion of the absurdity that intact males should be regarded for all purposes as women on their say so.These are only a few of the utterly unscientific ideological beliefs being imposed by the laptop class.
Some very disturbing observations from the Covid response:
Turns out basic human rights, liberty, freedom, freedom of speech, medical ethics and bodily autonomy don’t actually exist in many parts of the west, especially since they could so easily be removed by governments and technocrats declaring a “emergency”, without any legal protections for the public.
Mass hysteria driven by constant fear and propaganda could make people lose all reason and logic to go along with the narrative and inflict huge harms on society, themselves and others. Really does help explain how many ordinary people become complicit and involved in the worst atrocities in the 20th century.
Most of the MSM and Media are clearly now propaganda machines for the elites and Government and they now largely exist to help manufacturer consent for the prevailing narrative, not to question it.
It’s obvious we are entering a new era of Totalitarianism and the public have no real way to fight it legally or politically, short of a revolution. Does not bode well for the next declared emergency…
Very well put. However, the next declared emergencies are already here, and the Covid playbook is being refined and perfected to impose the required narratives on the Ukraine conflict and climate change.
Most of those who don’t read Unherd (i.e. 99.9% of the population) are still blissfully unaware of how they are being manipulated, so revolution in that sense does not seem on the cards. But when the combined consequences of these three emergencies have been visited on us this winter, and people do indeed have to choose between eating or freezing, we may well see some serious unrest.
Amen!
‘Unnecessary social contact’
There should be no amnesty for anyone who used that phrase.
The “Virtual creed” signs in our town in Kansas also have a line “Water is Life”.
I’ve toyed with the idea of an opposing yard sign which begins and ends the same way, but has very different import.
In this house we believe
Black lives matter,
Because all lives matter,
Even unborn lives.
Immigration should be regulated.
Science requires skepticism.
Eros is not agape.
Water is a commodity.
Kindness in everything.
That’s the best I’ve been able to come up with. I’d appreciate suggested improvements.
Eros is not agape? Explain…
Not an explanation, but a translation (of the Greek in question): “Unrestrained and thoughtless fulfilment of every passing whim just ‘because it felt right at the time’ and ‘because I can’ is not genuine, lasting community that offers future stability and long-term peaceable coexistence.” I admit you’d need a bigger lawn to get it on the sign.
From here in drought-ravaged California, I’d have to synthesize that Water is both Life and a Commodity. I find yard signs to be both vulgar and bullying. And sometimes one must be (apparently) cruel to be kind.
Do you think that ‘yard signs’ (blessedly rare if not unknown in the UK) are just an invitation which says “Please throw a brick through my window”
Which is precisely what I thought (and still think) when I see morons put a rainbow sign saying ‘protect the NHS’ in their window. The NHS is there to protect ME, not the other way round !!!!
Ask not what you can do for the NHS – ask what it can do for you. Because you are paying for it.
“The NHS is there to protect ME, not the other way round !!!!”.
Perfectly put, and it is about time they remembered that and stopped whinging and whining.
Thank goodness that trashy Americanism isn’t common in the UK. I agree. However considering the dedication of the underplayed doctors and nurses in the NHS offering altruistic services to people who consider themselves so self entitled. A small rainbow sticker is a tiny token of thanks that most Brits don’t find offensive.
I would replace Science requires skepticism, although that is true with “Follow the scientific method”. There is really no such thing as science what has brought us great benefits is the application of the scientific method of properly testing hypotheses and replicating those tests to determine how valid they are.
Indeed, what is most sad is that the supposedly educated now mistake the scientific method with an almost religious liturgy, and SCIENCE (TM) falls under this.
I have added, “Lust is not love”
Is lust lovely?
Until life sentences are handed out I’m not forgiving anyone.
The finger that Mary has on the pulse can also be used to point, and as per usual, she does so with precision. One might call it apt in the digital age espoused by the Virtuals.
A highly pertinent example is her calling out of the “fact-checking” mentality, rife in mainstream media. The “facts” are, of course, highly selective, to fit an agenda but cloaked in a sanctimonious guise of scientific provenance and assumed authority.
These buzz-phrases such as “fact-checking” will be the downfall of the Virtuals. No such phraseology retains it’s cachet beyond a certain period of time. (Just think about how the term “right on” is used now.)
But what would “the downfall of the Virtuals” look like? Laptops (the tool of their trade) are neutral instruments of communication, and will only be replaced by even more efficient iterations.
Nor will the technocracy abrogate it’s power. What’s needed is a revolution from within, but which as yet is difficult to envisage. For now, we should celebrate those whose words and actions, such as Mary, such as JK Rowling, point the way.
I agree about fact-checking. It started out as a positive apolitical idea. However, the fact checking has become selective and politicised.
Did you know that only once out of thirteen occasions did a Labour Prime Minister attend COP or that UK PM’s have only attended on 3 occasions?
You would think that Sunak’s non-attendance was the exception.
You mean Rishi Sunak’s now non-non-attendance?
Good article. Didn’t even need to touch on the infantile phrasing of the catchphrase, or the bizarre idea that science – whatever it is – can even be called “real.” What do they mean by science? Do they mean the facts that scientists test for and discover? Do they mean the process? The scientific institutions? It’s cringe-worthy.
I’ve noticed a significant rise in public displays of scientism from my right-on FB friends since 2020.
E.g. “Isn’t sciene wonderful!” (above some astronomical images)
As if ‘science’ is some sort or deity. What they should have said was, “Aren’t humans, employing the scientific method, wonderful.”
If I had a lawn sign, it might be something along the lines of:-
SCIENCE IS THE TESTING OF HYPOTHESES
Indeed. What we should be admiring is not Science which is a mere abstract but the scientific method. Semmelweis rather than the scientific establishment of the time is the route to follow.
It is telling to me that some covid lockdown proponents claimed to be following “the” science. Note that with abstractions in English we don’t generally use an article, whether definite or indefinite. To use an article with an abstraction indicates something. In this case I believe it implies a narrow use of the noun so that it no longer refers to the general findings or activity that we call “science,” but instead to a specific position which is cloaked with the status generally accorded to science as a broad activity. With this rhetorical ploy, a single position can be defended as part of a larger concept that is beyond criticism. I don’t recall hearing about “the” science until covid came along.
How about keep off the grass?
“Lawn sign priesthood” – that is excellent – and an excellent article. Covid really highlighted who is and isn’t principled in our society. I think a precondition to forgiveness is that you stop doing harm. So until they stop pushing these vaccines on young people – and start seriously discussing and studying vaccine injuries – then any pleas for understanding should be rebuffed.
Thankfully we have a governor here in Florida who is refusing the CDC’s “guidance” on adding Covid jabs to childhood vaccination requirements for school attendance. He has instructed the state of Florida Department of Health not to add that requirement. We love our gov.
De Santis is a rare beacon of hope in the corrupt wasteland of US politics.
The Covid response has been an interesting lesson in the arrogance of the tertiary education establishment and the graduate class.
Forecasting models have been treated as fact and not open for discussion. The outcomes of these models have been used to influence decision making almost to the point of blackmail with press leaks and shadow committees. In particular, the performance of ‘Ferguson’ forecasts in previous public health should have been considered.
It was known very early on that the risk of death was principally in the elderly and those under 30 were at low risk. Why was a blanket ban imposed rather than self-isolation of those at severe risk? Why were the elderly moved from hospitals to care homes without testing?
It was absolutely despicable that public debate was shut down.
Were vaccines misunderstood by the decision makers? Did they think they would stop transmission when, in reality, they have only ameliorated the seriousness of the illness.
The WHO statistics have been massaged when it appeared that the UK had a better outcome than Germany – ‘the algorithm has been changed to reflect prior year data’. It should be noted that the UK also had negative excess deaths in 2019 – there was an element of catch up in the UK as well.
Forecasting is not science in the true sense. Common sense indicated that some of the projections being made were totally unrealistic given the facts.
Commentators on social media were suggesting that the infection rates would naturally peak but were ignored. When lockdowns were imposed the acceleration rate of cases was already in decline.
Today Covid is still rampant in our society but the latest mutations are less likely to kill us. The latest wave has naturally peaked and is now declining.
The present generation of tertiary educators do not believe in history and that is greatly to their disadvantage. Previous lessons learnt in the Spanish Flu and the 1950’s US influenza outbreak would have formed a useful basis for planning. They may, in fact, have been considered in the pandemic plans developed for the UK but ripped up and only implemented by Sweden!
COVID was low risk to anyone under 70 who was in general good health.
Not 30 years old.
Correct. But worse. Anyone under 30 has had more chance of dying from the jab than the disease. As was proven months ago but some governments still pushing for CHILDREN to be “vaccinated”. As someone wrote above: no thought of forgiveness until life sentences start getting handed down to those responsible.
As far as I’m concerned; Emily Oster’s essay is nothing more than an attempt to give a (“Oh S**T, it may be time to pay the pipper for what WE did, but I don’t wanna”) meaningless BS “mea culpa”, and see if the unwashed buy it. Throwing crap on the wall and see if it sticks.
That’s one of the tactics many political operatives were trained on: Do things to get your way, and if it backfires, ask for forgiveness.
The problem here is that the damage has been way to great for this to work. There were PLENTY of highly qualified voices with infinite more knowledge of the science than she’ll ever have, that were demonized, censored and cancelled, by people just like her, for having a position that was NOT the “official” one. The sacred bond between Dr and patient was thrown out the window, when Drs were PROHIBITED from prescribing ANYTHING they thought could help treat the symptoms. Even pharmacists took it upon themselves to refuse to fill prescriptions. The directive from the “authorities” was “if you get sick, wait until you find it difficult to breathe, then go to the ER.” We all know how that worked out.
People DEMAND answers and accountability for ALL of the misery, economic devastation, untreated health conditions, emotional damage they were subjected to, even when plenty of data was available for things to be done differently. A “sorry, and let’s move on” won’t do.
Am I angry? You bet. Haven’t seen my daughters since 2020 because of this. Why? Because I chose NOT to be vaccinated. Forgive and forget?
Hell will freeze over first.
Why would anyone downvote this poster ?
For a series of events as (if not more) catastrophic as 9/11, we adopt a mantra first heard after the Towers came down — and as appropriate in the post-pandemic era as in 2001:
“We Will Never forget.”
Yes, we will never forget the totalitarian subterfuge of the CDC, WHO, NIH and their acolytes and what it cost us all.
No, we will never forgive-and-forget actions which were as nasty as they were intentional. And deadly.
If it killed anything, Covid most certainly killed the Public Trust in persons and institutions of higher learning, technology, medicine, “science” and political “benevolence.”
We. Will. Never. Forget.
Period.
The Tory-hating, Boris-loathing MSM have a great deal to answer for. Johnson started on the right track but the media hysteria (“Are you a mass murderer, Prime Minister?” at the daily press conferences) made the first lockdown politically unavoidable.
The media were determined that everything the Government did would be decreed to be wrong and therefore, once they had decided that lockdowns were the thing (cos, after all, that’s what the EU was doing), however much we locked down it could be never be enough.
The Deputy CMO said masks were not needed by the public but, because there weren’t enough to go round, which was thus a reason to criticise the Government, the media decided they were essential and eventually the Government caved in.
The MSM didn’t stop to ponder whether their political objectives might need to be parked during a national emergency and for that they should – but won’t – feel thoroughly ashamed.
Spot on. The savage and uneducated self-interest of the print and TV media destroys political common sense on a daily basis. No need for any deep state or conspiracy, just let the journos loose.
The Virtuals most certainly do not believe that ‘women’s rights are human rights’. They believe that ‘trans rights are human rights’ and that believing that a woman is a female human being is a ‘hate crime’.
They don’t “believe” anything.
As an ‘Old Deplorable’ I am still amazed that some of our (UK) senior politicians still can’t utter that simple fact – a woman is an adult human being. There – who, on Unherd, is going to call me a hate criminal.
“we should accept we both made mistakes” said the abusive husband as he noticed the bruises.
Good discourse on science and public policy. Too many scientists abuse their craft by pushing policies they favor but which their science does not support.
The Covid era has been a stark example of that, and Tony Fauci a textbook case of a terrible abuser of science. But Covid is largely over now and perhaps we should indeed move on.
What worries me is the climate change debate. Well-meaning policymakers have adopted bans that are just as counterproductive, harmful and unjustified as the Covid lockdowns and mandates.
Bans on fracking oil and gas. Bans on internal combustion engines. Bans on using natural gas for heating and cooking. Bans on plastic bags. Forced plastic recycling.
All in the name of science, but there’s nothing scientific about these policies. They do more harm than good. They stifle innovation rather than promote it. They need to be stopped.
Covid is *completely* over now and has been for over 18 months.
“Well-meaning policymakers”?
“All in the name of science”?
Get real. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Completely over? You mean nobody is getting it? Or the societal risks are at an end? Or what? At the moment I can’t actually smell the coffee, alas, as I have a very manageable case of C*v*d, which has however disappeared my senses of smell and taste.
This article is seriously wordy and slow to get to any kind of point – if indeed there even is one, hidden somewhere in the verbose rambling – but it’s hard to understand how the author can still get everything so half-baked:
Still believe that the lunatics who destroyed the world were “well-intentioned”.
Still think that any of this was a misunderstanding about “The Science”.
Still limit her interpretation to a reductionist “class war”.
Still be obsessed with looking backwards, at Trump and Brexit, while sleep-walking into the neo-Marxist dystopian hell-hole that the Covid and Climate lunatics have planned.
Still not understand that the ‘once in a century pandemic’ was on a par with the Asian and Hong Honk Flu outbreaks in the 1950’s and 1960’s – and that it was mostly over in most countries by March 2021.
Finally, still be seemingly utterly oblivious to the role that people like her (the ‘centrist grownups in the room’) have played in the decades leading up to this utter catastrophe.
March 2021? You mean May 2020, surely? The “second wave” of winter 2020 was a numbers game of ridiculous ‘positive tests’ and any death being attributed to ‘Covid’. If any politician ever dares look at who died and when, and of what, then we can begin a 2nd Nuremburg Trials. And it will be no less deserved than the first.
Yes – in the UK at least, ‘mostly’ over in May/June 2020, completely over by March 2021. I hedged a bit because I’m not so familiar with detailed scenarios globally – e.g. in the totalitarian communist regimes of Chinea, NZ, Australia and Canada, the lockdown loonies affected the natural evolution of the pandemic with their ‘zero covid’ insanity.
Another excellent article from Ms Harrington that manages to set out succinctly concerns which many of us harboured but were no able to express so articulately.
There was one issue where I am not clear. I did not think any vaccine prevented individuals from transmitting a virus save to the extent that it stopped them from catching the virus in the first place or, perhaps more accurately developing the illness caused by virus.
As I remember the original claim was that the vaccine would prevent you catching the virus. When this turned out to be false the claim was that it would prevent you spreading the virus. When this turn out to b false the claim became that it would reduce the severity of the illness for which I assume there is precisely no evidence.
As for Ms Oster’s plea for an amnesty, the article is spot on. it is no more than a slight of hand by her and here fellow travellers to avoid scrutiny for the devastation they have wrought which has to b resisted at all costs for all our sakes.
Ms Oster and her fellow travellers should be added to a list and banned from communicating publicly, not because they are evil but because their lack of judgment, their willingness to throw their weight behind hugely detrimental policies for which there was obviously no convincing justification, their lack of shame and their desire and ability to continue to be heard even after they have been discredited, makes them a danger to us all.
“… not because they are evil …”?
They are the very definition of evil.
Very good piece Mary, very worrying what the majority will accept if they feel scared.
The real question about science is not ‘is it real?’, but ‘what is science?’. We have psychologists and epidemiologists telling us that what they do is science. However, all they are really doing is observing data and drawing inferences, which may or may not be correct or even verifiable. Epidemiologists may see associations, they may see plausible explanations for these associations, but they can never be verified. Many psychological experiments from the 20th Century have been demolished because of poor technique or lack of reproducibility. The whole point of science is that theories are only worth it until they are disproved: they can never be proved.
The mistake politicians made was listening to psychologists about the effects of lockdown etc., and epidemiologists about the likely course of the pandemic, but not understanding that what they were listening to was best guesses, and in the case of Professor Ferguson that the worst case is not the most likely case. The media have not helped by being equally ignorant about science and seeking out scare stories for headlines.
The worst outcome of Covid for me is that people no longer trust science, politicians, or the media.
Of course people still trust science.
The worst outcome of Covid for me is that *most* people still trust politicians and the media – specifically, that they haven’t woken up to the cLiMaTe EmErGeNcY scam.
Well you obviously don’t trust them. Which sort of reinforces my point.
The only way your reply makes any kind of sense is if you are a climate cultist – in which case it makes no sense.
Better than Russel’s paradox….
Not really… it makes complete sense and only a person in denial would choose to not understand.
They are scared. Simple as that. The class you so well describe is afraid. Most of them are quite fearful people in truth. They avoid confrontation as it could end up badly for them. This class had done well out of the crisis . It has successfully increased it’s wealth and power . It has almost completely taken control of the media which in other days would have been a counterweight. I have been hearing youngish tradesmen and working class men speaking of them with such harsh contempt and judgement that I fear for the future.
The ‘virtuals’ as you call then should be fearful . That the men I listen to are non university and by their standards presumably unable to think clearly is a terrible error. There is a real stirring about. A pre revolutionary time if you like. I like others pointed out in early 2020 that covid was one of those events which would dominate the foreseeable future. That the effects would not really be felt until now and then only the start of them . That the people in power in 2020 would one by one vanish and that the real power would fall into the hands of men and women at present invisible. That this is what happens in our world and has done time after time. It could have been avoided by having sensible decision makers in power but we did not have this. Now what comes will come and be interesting to say the least.
I assume those who place their faith in a technocratic WEF type future based on the philosophies of the virtuals think they are going to use technology to control us. They are going to find out just how wrong they are. I am sure if that because nature and reality are on our side.
Thank you Mary. We have a glut of so called educated people who, if it hadn’t been for the neo-liberal globalist dream, would have been sewing buttons on shirts or shovelling coal somewhere. What do we do with them? Set them against those not signed up to the globalist illusion.
“science” is real.
“Science” (capital S) is class warfare. It is cloak to make the prevailing desires of the powerful appear objectively true and therefore inarguable.
As to Emily Oster’s theory of a pandemic amnesty… stick it up your ***. You and your ilk hurt thousands of people and destroyed millions of lives and livelihoods. Do I forgive you? Absolutely! Because forgiveness is about you not colonizing my mind. That’s why Christians are called to forgive, because grudges poison our relationship with our fellow man and with God. However, forgiveness doesn’t eliminate the need for consequences. The Emily Osters of the world must still pay for their misdeeds and crimes. Anything less would be unjust.
I would recommend Robert Kennedy Jnr’s book (and documentary) on this subject: “The Real Anthony Fauci”.
Kennedy is written off by the MSM and Wikipedia as a conspiracy theorist, which is precisely why I believe his well-researched views are worthy of consideration.
Fauci never sued RFK. Which says it all.
Very Interesting. The things that the virtuals continue to rule. Whatever the merits of Liz Truss’s budget, it seemed a different approach; it seemed like an attempt to move away from technocracy.
Whatever the wisdom of our current economic policy ideas, it is certainly a return to technocracy. I read this morning that while His Majesty’s Government intend raising taxes and cutting spending, they are to protect the sainted NHS. They know best how to spend the money we earn it seems.
The fascist advocates of lockdown should NEVER be forgiven. Indeed, they should be hunted down and made to pay for their crimes.
All politicians who supported lockdown should lose their right to hold public office permanently.
“Science, it turns out, is not always “real”.”
On the contrary, science is real and lockdown is mediaeval superstition, combined with apocalyptic fantasy then presented as science.
Science versus Junk Science.
Great article. Particularly noteworthy is the recognition by someone, finally, that science and scientists are not magically immune to human failings like peer pressure, politics, and groupthink. Unfortunately for the Virtuals, too many people on the other side of the debate, and worse for them, too many people who didn’t have a horse in the race, have begun to realize that what the establishment is calling ‘science’ is actually scientism, a religion that enshrines expertise as designated by the government, knowledge as designated by the government, ethics as designated by the government, and so on. Scientists, as designated, licensed, and approved by the government play the societal role once designated to priests, bishops, imams, etc. Covid policy put the corruption of science on full display. Now the toothpaste is out of the tube, and they’ll never get it back in there. Two hundred years from now, historians of the future will still debate the political ramifications of Covid and covid policy. The disease itself won’t merit a moment’s attention.
The lockdown criminals are asking us to forgive and forget. Their leaders, like Fauci, should obviously be locked up. Lesser aparatchiks should be made to learn science and logic to keep their jobs.
I’m no fan of Tony Fauci, but “locked up” for what? He committed no crimes. Not even close.
The hideous eating alive of beagle puppies alone, before his Mengele-inspired experiments on humans would certainly qualify.
excellent analysis, thank you. Sadly there are still many who believe vaccines were necessary ‘to protect other people’ and the idea that ‘science’ is partial and fallible and capable of being manipulated is just too disconcerting. I too don’t think we should draw a veil over the last 3 years. It could all happen again much too easily as simply not enough people are prepared to think independently.
I disagree with the author about this being a “class” war. This is a culture war and it is still in the early stages. COVID-19 was perhaps the first great battle of the war. Those who started this battle greatly underestimated the courage, ingenuity, and resolve of those who resisted. The offenders are in retreat, but they will regroup and attack again. It is no surprise that in the midst of being routed by the resistance, they want amnesty for everything they said and did to those who questioned the dogma and diktats spawned from their “superior minds and virtues.” The tide of shame needs to flow in the other direction now. If and when they own up to their offenses, then we can talk about forgiveness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y64uFPKqEbQ
That was a brilliant and powerful speech
Imo most of the nonsense was caused because the leftists saw and seized with both hands the chance to throw trump out of office. The more deaths they could blame him for the better their chances with it. Before anyone thinks this is far fetched remember that they have no compunction about abortion to the point of and shortly after birth; they don’t give a g d about human life.
Do not forget and never forgive, never. We will never be safe until the people who used COVID to enslave us feel safe. They will do it again. And let’s not full ourselves, the “experts” can still count on the millions of the “science is real” morons who even now have not grasped that the “science” these days is what Gates and Fauci and Burla are paying for.
There were some amusing elements to lockdown: in the abscence of sport, winding up coronaphobes was such fun, including wearing a full face welders mask in supermarkets, and reading that a coronaphobe who had not left her house for 2 years, stepped out onto the street for the very first time, so busy getting her covid app on her phone, walked straight into the path of a truck, and was ” brown bread” in an instant!
Gosh, you sound nice.
ooh thanks! I am
Yet there are still those who think their pathetic masks are protecting them.
There is no hope for these people.
Holy cow, this was a well thought out essay. It’s sort of sad how much a simple article makes me feel understood.
What is the deal with the down vote? Going to leave an uptick.
Science is always real. The covid response was not based on science. it’s the latest coup by our glorious leaders to subjugate us by pretending it is science based; proper science has been so successful that every power hungry elite fakes it to justify their actions.
The most important lesson I hope people learn is that governments LIE. IF they lied about this what else have they been lying about? The first thing that pops to mind is Man Made Global Warming. All these failed prediction and canceling of people that disagree. Much of the EU faces a cold winter due to the failed green policy ideas Trump warned about and was laughed at for saying. There has not been one public debate on this topic because the priests of climate change refused to debate and a loyal press backed the spineless climate believers. Use this moment to seek out all the lies being pushed. Another would be no need for voter ID, There was no fraud in the 2020 election..
Every life matters, particularly unborn children
If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country
Real science isn’t weaponized to silence dissent
Love and Kindness imply tolerance, not cancel culture
Insert “applause” and “crying” emojis here. Well done Mary.
A friend told me today she just had the combined booster/flu and has felt dreadful all week. Now? Still taking it? Really!! Lord knows what she has done to her immune system. This is how easy it is to control people who choose not to decide for themselves but follow the authorities and numb themselves with Strictly etc, etc. Gets harder to be “kind” every day.
Your articles are always so well written. So many people need to be brought before a live broadcast review into the effect of the Covid Policies on children for those who feed on BBC all day to watch and reflect on – usforthem posted this week on the gut wrenching increase in child sexual crimes during the pandemic. I heard a talk by the then Childrens and Family Minister Vicky Ford during the pandemic and she was being puppeted by the Teachers unions who were driving the policies – when I heard her speak I knew it was up to me to protect my children at all costs. And you know what – her political career continues – she is now the Minister of State for Development in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office!!
It is the Elites very own Conspiracy Theory, the technocrats and their MSM cheerleaders like the NYT and Social Media, actively suppressing debate, democracy and never following the science. Unbelievable.
In Australia, the government boasts almost the entire population has been at least double-jabbed. This includes around two million children aged 5-15 years, who were at little or no risk with Covid-19.
It seems Australia may be one of the most Covid-jabbed countries in the world, under mandates. What an appalling situation, mandated medical interventions in a supposed liberal democracy.
This is a most shocking situation, that likely millions of people were pressured, coerced and manipulated to submit to the Covid jabs, otherwise they would lose their livelihood, i.e. No Jab, No Job.
I thought Australia was a liberal democracy, but it has turned into a globalist/technocratic fascist state, where people can be detained in their homes, masked, tested, surveilled and jabbed on the whim of traitorous governments apparently serving the best interests of globalists and corporations.
While many ‘authorities’ have been a party to this treachery, one of the worst groups is the medical ‘profession’, who so easily discarded their ethical obligation to obtain ‘voluntary informed consent’ before a medical intervention, including vaccination. The medical profession has been atrocious, with doctors’ professional groups wholeheartedly supporting the governments’ ruthless Covid jab rollout, and ignoring pleas to acknowledge the conflict with the obligation to obtain ‘voluntary informed consent’.
So many people here have been coerced to submit to medical interventions they did not want, while others have lost their jobs for refusing to comply.
We’re sitting on a powder keg, waiting to see what happens when and if people discover they have been grossly misled and lied to, this is the biggest scandal of all time.
Why didn’t the people of Australia resist? I thought they would oppose the deportation of Novak Djokovic for being unvaccinated, for example. It was just the opposite, with huge public support for his unlawful ejection.
So why don’t we review the Swedish experience? Apparently they were against a lockdown because the British scientific predictions had been wildly off the mark.
While I don’t advocate violence, there is and should be a righteous fury over the authoritarian tactics in so-called Democratic countries, such as: lockdowns, mask mandates, social control apps for tracking and inclusion is social life and high pressure tactics to induce people to vaccinate (including in some countries mandates, like Austria).
Those who knowingly advocated these policies while having contradictory information (like knowing the vaccines didn’t stop the spread before it became public knowledge) should at the very least be removed from any potential positions of power as they have clearly abused those powers and acted in bad faith with regard to their public responsibility.
Inquiries about who knew what and when should also be performed because clearly there were a lot on the Big pharma money train here, despite having knowledge that the vaccines weren’t all they were being sold to be and actively suppressing treatment knowledge (ivermectin, vitamin D, Zinc etc.) from respected professionals. People found guilty of profiteering from an emergency should be prosecuted and thrown in prison and publicly shamed (if they are even able to feel a sense of shame). This would be no different than war profiteering in that people are benefiting from others misery.
I and my family refused and remain unvaccinated even though my profession is drug development in a pharma company (I have been directing the development of pharmaceutical products for nearly 20 years).because:
1) I saw very early on that data from Italy showed the average age of death was 81 years old and 99.2% of those deaths were from people who had 1 or more co-morbidities and those under 50 had very low chance of serious consequences. This data proved to be startlingly consistent in most countries.
2) The vaccines went from early development to market in under 1 year. As a 20+ year veteran in that industry I have never, ever, see such a rapid development. I told my wife that I did not trust that they had done all the needed long-term safety studies to verify that there are no longer term consequences. With a lot of the data coming out now about negative side effects of the vaccines I feed vindicated in resisting the pressure to vaccinate.
What reinforced my position was data from Israel, which demonstrated that vaccination also didn’t result in significantly less hosptializations and the revelations that spread wasn’t stopped from the vaccines either. Finally, there was significant data that indicated that whatever effectiveness there was waned in only a few weeks. Finally, there was a Danish study that showed there were higher infection rates the more vaccines you had!! Crazy stuff and totally debunking the efficacy of these so-called vaccines. Then it started coming out about blood clots, myocarditis etc. and a large surge in the VAERS database. Now, there is some indication that rare and aggressive cancers are on the rise…vaccine related?? perhaps…
In my country there were not mandates to vaccinate but there were social restrictions imposed if you did not. You could not go to public events (movies, restaurants, concerts etc.) unless you were vaccinated and later if you were recovered from an infection (both my wife and I had Covid twice). We were prepared to stay out of society out of conviction that vaccination was wrong but we should never have been in that position.
What this ultimately told me was that we are much further down the path to authoritarian regimes in the western world than I think any of us would have suspected before (although so-called “conspiracy theories” and, yes, Ed Snowden, told us we were already in) and that is a very scary reality for those who value freedom and privacy. The real goal seems to have always been profit for those in power that had financial interest in getting vaccines out globally and social control…every would be dictators wildest fantasy.
Ms Harrington has been a good deal more eloquent (and less profane) than my reaction to the Oster article. I was only a few graphs in when I started uttering things that would embarrass a Marine. I was heartily glad my partner was in another part of the house.
It is not a ‘strength’ to avoid profanities when discussing totalitarian neo-Marxist globalists and their useful idiots.
The terms of reference for the Enquiry have been chosen carefully to make the policy adopted by the government, the opposition and the vociferous media without fault, despite the fact that there was a considerable body of scientific opinion that questioned the rational of keeping people indoors in cramped conditions and vaccinating those who had acquired immunity..
The one good thing about the COVID charade was that it revealed that every position taken by the Democrat Party and their Press Catamites (“my body, my choice” and “no government between a patient and her doctor,” to name but two) was as disposable as a used condom if it got in the way of them acquiring more power. And, like a condom, they are always happy to pick up another one when they wanted to f**k us again.
I agree with your post but lets not just blame the Democratic Party. Liz Cheney and other Republicans were all in on this as well.
It’s not the Democrats on one side and the Republicans on the other. They are just different sides of the same coin.
It’s the Globalists on one side and the anti-Globalists on the other and when it came to Covid, the Globalists won.
“If the Virtuals have a problem now, it’s that their counter-volley to Trump and Brexit consumed the last vestige of trust in that shared political ground: our faith in science. “
Exactly. And here I thought Mary would have been one of the lawn sign women. Her best piece ever
Again Harrington takes no prisoners…
At the time I was for policy based consequences for those refusing vaccination and I would be again if it were in fact true that a given vaccine would materially reduce transmission of a true plauge. But I was wrong to continue that line of thought when the science proved otherwise.
It is amazing and sad to see how effectively the Virtuals have dressed religion up in the clothes of science.
love “lawn-sign tyranny”. Hate the smugness oozing off them.
We had some long and quite intersting discussions yesterday – and they have now all disappeared. it is hardly worth participating here when things keep vanishing. If this is the official moderation system, could we have some precise rules for what gets killed? If it is a misuse of the spam alert system, how about looking at the posts before they are (even temporarily) removed?
I am reading again at 14.00 CET and they seem to have been reinstated, Rasmus, but yes …. why bother if your comment is arbitarily removed – even one without a citation ?
As Jeffrey Tucker has written, “The ostensible reason for the sudden imposition of totalitarian rule was to control a virus with an infection fatality rate of 0.035% for people under the age of 70.”
We re-entered the Dark Ages in 2020, and will be in them for some time to come.
I still apply the social distancing… from people with beards.
Right.
But the bottom line is there has to be an investigation and capital punishment for those involved in virus engineering, funding, and related lies.
Bill Maher pointed out this week that a key aspect of proper democracy is the ability, within the system, to acknowledge that ‘we got that wrong, let’s try something/one else’. And this based upon empiricism of expertise, flawed though it is, rather than the shouting of blowhard populists. This is under threat, largely I think because of American style silo politics – MSM and SM merely reflect and amplify the underlying social dysfunction. Liberals may not consider (on pain on ex-communication) that: limits on abortions, such as over 16 weeks, is reasonable; that transwomen are not The Same as women; that Affirmative Action may do more bad than good; that a centrally controlled NHS will never be the best answer; or that the covid lockdowns were excessive. Whilst conservatives may not admit that Trump is the one lying about the election; Brexit is failing and was always likely to; and that there are hard and fast limits on the effectiveness of free markets, and of free speech, and the ‘right’ to bear arms.
Indeed. Populism is properly understood as a reaction to liberal overreach into the domains of private citizens and local governments, and a reaction to the capture of institutions like education and media by a particular political group and their use of these institutions to push their pseudo-religion. Unlike socialism, populism has no animating philosophy, no manifesto, no creed, or even firm policies. It’s an inherently destructive force focused as it is on overturning neoliberal globalism as it has existed for the past three decades. It is a chaotic, reckless push for change, ANY change. As stupid as this and other aspects of populism seem to intelligent people, though, It’s probably necessary because the power of the establishment is deep and and entrenched, and so far seems bent on resisting any substantial change to the global system. In order for an object to move, sufficient force must be applied so as to account for the inertia of the object and to counterbalance any existing counterforces that come into play. We need more sane voices like Bill Maher who are not so wedded to an ideology that we can recognize the need to change course, and actually do what is needed.
Good analysis. But it sounds like the same violent push for change, ANY change, that drove the communist revolutions, and that drive Extinction Rebellion. Are you really sure that smashing what you have without knowing what should replace it is a good idea?
Well, I wasn’t necessarily saying it would be good or bad. Revolutions can have relatively good endings, like American revolution, or the revolutions of 1991 in the formerly Communist nations of eastern Europe. They can also have horrific endings, like the Communists in Russia, Napoleon in France, etc. I was attempting moral neutrality and saying that for good or ill, revolution is sometimes needed to force change, sometimes nothing else will. I was also pointing out that populism is not ideological in nature. There is no Populist manifesto as there is for communism, nor is there an intense focus on environmental issues as there is with extinction rebellion. The directionless rage of populism is somewhat less dangerous because at the end of the day, they are unlikely to impose some grand system of oppression and control. They aren’t united enough in purpose or thinking for that. Not sure why your comment got downvoted, though. It’s a perfectly reasonable criticism. I upvoted to cancel it out.
What will be interested is what perspective the current UK public inquiry will take in dealing with the two attitudes expressed in the article. Will it start from the Virtuals position and concentrating on the issues of lockdown was too late etc. and the preparedness of the 4 UK governments, or will it address the issue of whether lockdown was the right response? And come to the conclusion that most of the world governments might be wrong. A lot will depend on whom the inquire hears. But are the terms of reference open enough for it to be wide ranging.
Brilliant article by Mary. Says how I feel better than I ever could.
Wow. My clipboard filled up with lines from this essay I thought to quote in this comment. This essay alone is worth the price of my subscription. Not the first time Ms. Harrington has provoked such thoughts either. Excellent writing.
Amnesty? They have not even apologized! I don’t like trump, but he never kept me from seeing my loved ones dying in the hospital. He never tried to manipulate me into a bogus vaccine. Amnesty, please. It’s one thing for the offended party to offer amnesty, it’s entirely different when the perpetrators want to brush it under the rug.
I can hardly believe how amazingly good this article is. The fake pious efforts to wriggle out of blame for the disaster created is just an unfunny joke! The pretence it was science amidst the banning of top
Medical experts who disagreed with the assertions and dictates & also warned of dire consequences was staggering! Now the ‘unexpected deaths’ that fall within the taking of multiple untrustworthy MRNA gene therapy pretending to be vaccines, are being ignored by media and all the guilty experts & politicians. The abuse of psychology to terrorise people into compliance & the attack on children’s lives and education was appalling ( as a retired teacher I was shocked by teaching unions ). I was luck my family were temporarily living with me and when they could move into their house I continued having normal granny hugs and helped with the home teaching. The hypocrisy of trying to use us as blackmail when they sent infected old people to care homes is sickening. I will never trust politicians and their media & other despotic allies again. Banning & demonising cheap effective drugs & using warped blackmail against people was shameful. NO MERCY from me. The should be prosecuted and punished!
And to date, we are still woefully short of solid, realistic masking data. The latest CDC study that I’ve seen showed that cloth masks were largely useless, yet that’s not what was reported. No one to my knowledge has studied the efficacy of masks as people actually wear them. If/when the next pandemic comes, it would be nice to have some decent studies from which to offer objective strategies.
There are so many lucid, insightful sentences in this article by Mary Harrington. What an excellent synopsis of the past few years. Thank you, UnHerd!
I understand everyone’s anger from a different point of view. I have been unaffected by the policies of the West or suffered any negative financial consequences.
Apart from a quiet few weeks in late April/May 2020, it has not touched me.
Just one statistic. Johann Gieseke indicated in April 2020 the death toll would be 3 to 1 flu.
New Zealand has 500 flu deaths a year. So 1,500 Covid. After two years the number of deaths is 3,101. What I found interesting is NZ had from March 2020 to March 2022 to prepare a strategy that saved lives when case numbers began to increase rapidly. Clearly whatever they did including a Vaccination program that reached 90% penetration no lives where saved.
Amnesty? Are you kidding?
No amnesty. I and many of us in America want investigations, hearings, trials, jail time and for people like Fauci, executions.
Too cruel and or violent you say? Look what these power hungry people have done to us around the world. They didn’t listen to the science and no dissent was allowed. In fact, it was covered up. People were banned from social media just for questioning the governments narrative.
People here in the US have had their lives and careers distroyed because of this. Reap the whirlwind you bastards.
I don’t even own a gun but I’ll gladly pull the trigger on any of these people who are culpable for what has been done. Save the “we didn’t know” BS as you did but you didn’t want to hear it.
These are the same people who were saying you were a killer for not wearing a mask that we knew all along didn’t work. The same people who wanted our kids, who were never really at risk to stay home. What could possibly go wrong?
To top it all off these are the same people who’s actions flooded big pharma and big box stores with profits while wiping out small mom and pop businesses.
And to think there are still sheep that will continue to vote for these thugs.
Amnesty is an escapism, like excuses. The only thing which counts is lessons learned. Only then covid and how it was handled was a meaningful experience and will not be repeated in one way or the other.
I agree with the general thrust of this essay. In fact, I think it’s really, really good. However …
“myocarditis is a recognised side-effect of the vaccine”
The research to which this comment links shows that myocarditis is less likely following vaccination than it is following infection.
I took a look at the figures and you’re looking at incidences of one in hundreds of thousands to a million and zero for Oxford AZ.
Brilliant article, many thanks!
Thinking that I was about to read an article about the lockdown and how the perpetrators should be dealt with, I got as far as “the last days of innocence before Trump and Brexit” (i.e. the first sentence) and then – naturally enough – stopped reading.
Trump, for all his faults, had a much saner attitude towards Covid than most other Western politicians, by the way. And as far as Brexit is concerned, I suggest the author does a little research into just who was nominated (none of these people are ever democratically elected) to lead the EU Commission and just who her husband is (Heiko von der Leyen is actually the medical director of “Orgenesis”, a pharmaceutical company involved in the production of mRNA “vaccines”, and which is closely linked to Pfizer).
Those lawn signs should say instead ‘person of low intelligence and integrity lives here.’
That Covid is overwhelmingly likely to have been CAUSED by “the science” (an accidental leak from the SARS coronvirus lab in Wuhan) is the exocet which ought, by now, to have destroyed the prevailing public narrative.
So it’s unsurprising that mainstream media resolutely refuses to report on it, and a bit frustrating when commentators like Mary fail to acknowledge that Covid is probably an iatrogenic calamity.
I’m not quite sure what it means in practice to have an amnesty in this context.
Why have so many comments been deleted ?
Very well said Mary! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Thank you for this.
By calling for an “amnesty”, Oster is at least acknowledging that crimes were committed. That is a welcome first step.
The crimes committed have been – and still are – so heinous that a simple amnesty will not wash. First, there must be change, both in policy and personnel, with trials for the key racketeers. Then a full reckoning in the sense of a truth and reconciliation movement for the lower-level functionaries.
What crimes do you think were committed? I can’t think of any, heinous or even trivial. Please tell me what crimes I’m missing.
And Emily Oster was not using the word amnesty in the sense of forgiveness for crimes. She’s asking that people not be accusing others of malice and evil when at worst they simply made a mistake. She’s saying we can more easily learn lessons by objectively looking at what happened and what mistakes were made without doling out punishment and assigning blame.
And I think she’s right. We were in the panic of a pandemic and people had to act without the benefit of the data we have now. The past is past and we should not dwell on it, but instead learn lessons for the future.
You’re an apologist for crimes against humanity. And a clown.
No. The state acted as it did because it could count on willing enforcers. It was an exercise in coercion. The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. I knew it was wrong as did millions of others. We are now living in the mess these people created and we did not deserve it.
No forgiveness.
https://off-guardian.org/2022/11/02/pandemic-amnesty-its-just-more-narrative-reinforcement/
Many feel that these purveyors of fake science must be punished. MSM needs a bloody nose and their ‘owners’ need some jail time.
Absolutely spot on, non hysterical analysis, as usual from Mary Harrington, whom I consider the best and most considered UnHerd contributor.
‘Let’s move on’ – from those people who don’t in any way accept they did anything wrong, abused critics, including such reasonable and conscientious scientists as Jay Battycharya, themselves very abused scientific reasoning, took little or no notice of the huge costs of lockdowns, not to mention the egregious distribution effects of which groups paid the price, is simply not good enough.
Why are the “Virtuals” always debating the fate of the “Physicals”? Do you know when the people who can’t avoid the physical world moved on? March 2020. If you insist on making these arbitrary divisions which lead to some kind of online, eternal verbal war, I guess you’re going to need an amnesty at some point. Or you could be Italian about it. Keep your head down until things sort of fix themselves again. That was most people’s advice to me here when the worst abuses of, in particular, vaccine mandates were in full force. I don’t wish to minimise anyone’s suffering which has been viscerally real but living in a virtual fight where no one is prepared to stand down, take a breath and maybe learn something from how we ALL behaved, seems to me to be a futile and circular solution.
Excellent article outlining how our Authoritarian Fascist brethren have grabbed power and control through virtuous Cause Warrioring.
And yes we can forgive over time, but we will never forget what they have done and attempted to do.
Well written article! Keep’em coming!
It looks in retrospect as if we were on a ‘war footing’, where any disagreement with what the authorities decided (however fatuous their decisions looked) were regarded as traitorous.
We’ve (en masse) become so lazy and so entitled that we won’t know what our freedoms were ’til they’re long gone.
The chattering classes that cheered on the Covid nonsense will be among the first that the globalists will happily do without, but they’re so smug in their cozy little lives that they don’t see it coming.
It’s an anger that no nice high school student will speak of. But what they feel, with sturm and drang fervor, exceeds sentiments of this article.
For all your burbling, you fail to get to the heart of the matter. Where are our £37 billion? Why are the media not up in arms about them? There should be no amnesty whatsoever for that public theft.
COVID-19, The Nuremberg Code + The Question of Amnesty
6 Doctors and legal analyst on crimes against humanity discuss where they are at in the move to address this and why it must be done.
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/events/covid-19-the-nuremberg-code-the-question-of-amnesty/covid19-the-nuremberg-code–the-question-of-amnesty/?utm_source=salsa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=chdtv&utm_term=chdtv&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=634979c2-786b-4ab0-b78d-e8d1e342493f
“…(N)ow-familiar efforts to weaponise the appearance of neutrality and common purpose, in the interests of one side of that conflict.” Beautifully put, capturing the Left’s long, long practice of pretending to be “moderate” even as it in practice advances the most radical of social engineering horrors.
Harrington makes some good points but boy, does she go over the top.
A couple of comments – The linked NYT article was in relation to Omicron, which the original vaccine didn’t affect (that’s since been rectified.) Second, the oft-Tweeted post of Oster referring to “shaming” as in July, six months before the article, and having looked it up, it appears it has been altered.
Are we still too close to what happened and what we experienced for full perspective to emerge? A number of Public Inquiries have just started and will provide further illumination of how decisions were made. Of course some won’t be pacified by these and will already be tuning them out, but real reflection is a task of herculean proportion for all of us. The decisions that were made did not have the benefit of hindsight nor much time to ponder. It is easy to critique decisions, much more difficult to make them in the midst of a storm. My sense is decisions were made in general for noble reasons, but clearly not all proved correct.
The on-going experience in China continues to act as a stark comparator with the West. We had nothing like their lock downs and theirs’s still on-going with frightening rigidity. Why is a question we should ask as it’s almost a ‘test-case’ comparison. It suggests we got alot right, but nobody would argue everything.
There is one benefit to an Amnesty namely that evidence (crucial to learning lessons) will be much more forthcoming. That must be balanced against the self-righteousness and glee of dumping on the wrongdoers/ mistake makers. Fir me the former is preferable. There will be other pandemics and if we fail to fully learn from our mistakes that would be a tragedy.
..furthermore it will be difficult if not impossible to distinguish between mistake, misguidance, misunderstanding and deliberate misuse (of science). We are all wise in hindsight.
…I will make one exception however: the vaccination of children it seems to me was never justified given their almost zero death rate, the failure of the vaccine to prevent transmission and the high probability of (untested) side effects. In that balancing act I cannot see how the scant benefits of vaccination could possibly have outweighed the obvious risks.
Good points. I agree with you that distasteful as it is to let the smarmy Tony Fauci and others off the hook, we should. That is the only way to learn.
Good point on the vaccines as well. Luckily in the US vaccines for young children have never been mandated and parents have overwhelmingly chosen not to have those children vaccinated.
God Mary is verbose
We humans struggle with complexity. A complex system is one in which cause and effect are not clear. One in which we cannot always predict how effective an intervention will be. One in which our intuition tends to mislead us into finding simplicity where there is in reality none.
Science is the tool we use to understand our world, but the many complex systems that exist in our world cannot be fully understood using traditional scientific methods (if they can be fully understood at all). Science has always been reductionist, where you simplify a system down to models or equations. That usually doesn’t work with complex systems, since they cannot be accurately simplified in many respects.
The pandemic has brought the problem to the fore. Our bodies burst with complex systems, and our immune system is one of the most complex and hard to understand. Immunology, as the saying goes, is where intuition goes to die. Public health, involving the study of the complex systems of biology and society, is doubly complex.
In the pandemic, too often our leaders tried to fight the virus while ignoring the complex systems involved. They used models to make bold and high-impact decisions. They relied on statistical correlations and associations, on personal judgment, on intuition, on experts, on observations, on “scientific consensus”. And they said, in doing so, that they were following the science.
But none of that is science. The scientific method is to form a hypothesis and then to test it using experiment or prediction. Apart from the vaccine clinical trials, little science was done. There was not time and there was limited ability to experiment.
The pandemic is now over, and I see little benefit in doling out punishment or blame. That’s not going to help. Why argue over whether there should be an “amnesty” or not?
What will help is to learn lessons on how to deal with complex systems better. We do need to do better because more and more our problems arise in complex systems.
Climate change, for example, involves complex systems where any interventions we make will result in tradeoffs and effects that we will not be able to predict in advance. Yet our leaders say they are following the science in imposing harsh and harmful bans. No fracking. No internal combustion engines. Net zero. No gas heating or cooking in homes.
If they really followed the science, they would replace their hubris with humility. They would rely on the scientific principles of causal inference (pioneered by people like Judea Pearl) rather than fallacious statistical analyses and expert opinion.
But most of all our leaders should realize that science cannot provide the answers to policy questions, but can only (in rare cases) aid. They need to make decisions themselves, and they need to take small, hesitant steps if they take any steps at all. They will make mistakes, so their mistakes need to be small enough not to matter much.
We need to choose leaders who know this. The difference in approach was evident in the 2020 elections in the US. Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren thought she had all the answers. Pose a problem and she had a solution. “I’ve got a plan for that!” was her catchphrase.
Republican Donald Trump had the better approach for dealing with problems in complex systems like the economy or foreign relations. He spoke in hyperbolic generalities, proposing no plans. But when he went to work, he used the best tool we have for understanding complex systems — trial and error.
Instead of proposing an untested big leap, he would take a small step, look at the results, and then take another step. His catchphrase was “we’ll see what happens”.
Unfortunately, we have lots of Elizabeth Warrens and very few Donald Trumps.
“We humans struggle with complexity.” I agree with your statement but why look for complexity where there is none. I didn’t see bodies piled high in the streets. Anyone I knew who had Covid soon recovered. In fact, I only knew one person who died of it and he was 84 and already in poor health. With these simple observations it was a simple matter to conclude that we weren’t dealing with a deadly disease at all. Armed with this knowledge it was a simple matter to conclude that any reporting to the contrary could not therefore be true. It was also a simple matter to conclude that for healthy people, at least, a vaccine was unnecessary.
Thanks for a thoughtful and useful comment. However I would take one small (maybe not so small?) issue. You say ‘The pandemic is now over, and I see little benefit in doling out punishment or blame.’
If we are in the future to avoid the problems that you correctly identify arising from the manifest inability to deal with the complexity, whether of health or climate policies, it is important to identify and demonstrate where we went wrong. This will inevitably imply that those individuals who had most to do with the suppression and corruption of the science (such as it was) and freedom need to be shown up and ridiculed. No need for punitive action; merely the public disgrace will be sufficient. We all know who most of them are.
It should hopefully give pause to the authoritarian greedy and malignant people, who unfortunately comprise much of the political/bureaucratic class, from pandering to their worst instincts in future.
A very well written piece, proving once again that the comments on Unherd are often more interesting than the articles.
I agree with your opening statement that we struggle with complexity. Our world is becoming more and more complex, and so therefore are the problems we need to solve. But people want simple answers to complex problems, which is the underlying reason for the failure of our political system to deal with them.
Pressured by the desire of the electorate for simple answers, politicians feel they must “do something’, even if the best course of action is to do nothing, or, as you suggest, take small, incremental steps by trial and error. This is Nassim Taleb’s theory of naive interventionism, where the unintended consequences of political decisions are not properly thought through, and the subsequent negative effects outweigh any possible benefits of the original decision.
This unfortunately is one of the many downsides of democracy, the worst possible form of government……apart from all the others.
Much truth to this. But the obvious, big problem is that your approach can never, ever, do anything fast about an urgent problem. You do small, humble steps that will not have much effect and wait however long it takes till it is clear how it all works. Meanwhile the hospitals get overwhelmed by COVID patients, Putin conquers Ukraine, your allies desert you because they cannot rely on your support, and the sea levels rise five meters through global warming. You can argue that this is science, and that science is slow, but in that case science is insufficient, and we need something else, with a different name. Something more effective than cautious inaction.
Some writers on Unherd have been pushing a different approach. Work out different alternatives, estimate their consequences and likelihood, using science as best you can, and then act on the probabilities – boldly if necessary. This led to suggestions like “If we estimate a 10% risk of a deadly pandemic we should take some appropriate measures to avoid it, and accept that there is 90% chance we will not need them. This time.” Of course you should keep different possibilities in play and adjust course as you look at the results. But the only way to be reasonably certain whether a catastrophe might happen is to wait till it is too late to do anything about it.
Every major loss of human freedom in the modern era, as well as a goodly chunk of gulags, camps and mass murders can be defended in precisely the same way.
“What if there’s a 10% chance those kulaks really ARE reactionary counter-revolutionaries…”
That’s why a society that values liberty must always err on the side of freedom.
If the west succumbs to totalitarianism, it will be in the name of “keeping us safe”, rather than the appeals to the “blood and soil” of the last century .
You may argue that I’m being hyperbolic, and maybe I am. But, I prefer to think about it as an excess of caution.
After all, “for you own good” dictatorships are way more common in recent history than are doomsday pandemics.
You’re right. I say that we should be careful not to oversimplify complex issues, yet in my comment that is just what I do (not to mention that I confusingly conflate science and public policy). The result is that my suggested approach does not make sense in some cases.
But I don’t think my further comment here would add much. Books have been written on this topic (some of which are really good, like Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned). Read those if you want to better understand what I am talking about.
(I’m writing a book myself that touches on the topic. At least I should be writing it, but instead I am commenting here. “Two men are talking in a bar. One says, ‘I’m writing a book.’ The other says, ‘Neither am I.'”)
“We humans struggle with complexity”
Speak for yourself.
In the UK the stated purpose of the lockdowns was to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. If you look at the graphs of hospital admissions and mark the points where lockdowns started and ended I think it succeeded but only just. Would it have been acceptable to the general public for very sick people to be turned away from hospital?
I’m just asking the question. I’m in two minds about lockdowns.
The shapes of the graphs have nothing to do with lockdowns, but carry on.
You think it’s just coincidence John? I’m looking at hospital admissions from the governments own website.
At the end of 2020 admissions were rising.
First lockdown started 5nov2020
admissions peaked 12Nov2020 and started falling.
Admissions reached minimum on 1dec2020
lockdown removed on 2dec2020 and admissions immediately started rising.
The second lockdown started 6jan2021
Admissions peaked 10jan2021 and started falling.
I don’t think that’s coincidence. You don’t need science to tell you it’s true, just common sense. Without the second lockdown admissions would have continued rising beyond 10 jan 2021.
How do you explain it?
If it happened again any government would do the same thing. It would have been unacceptable to the general public for sick people to be turned away from hospital as happened in some other countries I believe. You can rant and rail about your civil liberties being infringed as much as you like but I’m still right.
You are correct Steve.
While I agree with most of the sentiments here, I think the debate about vaccines has been unbalanced. While I can see how many might think that vaccinations are being pushed to hard given the evidence, the sad truth is that the evidence is poorly presented. What is absolutely crystal clear from all the studies in vaccines is that the benefits of being vaccinated far outweighs the risk. It is not even close! Sadly the impression given by the way that vaccine data is presented is that in fact it is reasonable to choose not to be vaccinated as the risks and benefits are evenly balanced.
This is the result of the medical professionals and other public health officials treating harm caused by the vaccine as vastly more serious than harm caused by the disease. The ratio used is effectively about 100 to 1. In other word 1 person dying from the vaccine is considered to be the same as 100 people dying from the disease.
I think if this was explained to people they would be able to make better choices. Only a complete idiot or someone with a ideological objection to vaccines would prefer to take their chances with infection than a vaccine.
Delusional. Present some evidence if you expect to be taken seriously for posting such indoctrinated tripe.
Only a complete idiot would insist that mass populations, including children, submit to a medical intervention against a disease it was known from the beginning wasn’t a serious threat to most people.
Except when it comes to Covid, they aren’t vaccines and we were lied to about the numbers as many people who died WITH Covid didn’t die FROM Covid.
If you had read my post you would know that the deaths in New Zealand began after everyone had been vaccinated and at the same rate as Sweden and most of Europe pre vaccination in otherwords the first year.. Most people I know have been vaccinated in the UK and all of them have had the Virus and those who have had it pre and post Vaccination withe same degree of severity.
Sadly the majority here are too idiotic to understand
Those who touted the vaccines and mandated them were wrong. They never had any scientific evidence to support a vaccine mandate.
But there is scientific evidence that the approved vaccines are safe and effective. That’s why it bothers me when people claim that the vaccines are responsible for the excess deaths we see in many countries.
That may be true, but so far that’s just rank speculation with no scientific evidence to support the claim. Those making the claim ought to be upfront about that, but they are not.
OK, we both live on the same planet, and we both (sometimes) pay attention to evidence. I shall read you with more attention in the future.
On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the vaccines are neither safe nor effective.
Post-Pandemic Excess Deaths in England
Exactly.
You do provide evidence in your interesting and informative paper, but no scientific evidence. In scientific terms, you provide opinion and hypothesis, but no proof.
There are some minds that will never be changed.
At this time, the weight of the evidence clearly shows the “vaccines” are neither safe nor effective (although you need to define those terms). Perhaps the best evidence of my claim is that almost no one wants these “vaccines” or boosters anymore. Even our hospitals are throwing in the towel – they are not mandating COVID boosters for employees, and they have the strongest case to do it.
People took the authorities at their word when they claimed the “vaccines” were safe and effective. But now most people know from their personal experience or their own research, those claims were false. The argument is over among reasonable and honest people.
I keep an open mind, particularly to scientific evidence.
The Covid vaccines were tested and approved by the FDA in the US, the MHRA in the UK, and the EMA in the EU. These agencies and their predecessors have more than a hundred years’ experience overseeing and evaluating clinical trials to determine whether a new drug is safe and effective. They decided these vaccines were safe and effective, and they have the evidence to back their decision up.
Randomized controlled trials like these are one of the best scientific tools we have. And billions of people were vaccinated, with the results mirroring the results of the clinical trials.
That said, the vaccines were oversold. They don’t seem to provide any more protection than a previous infection. They don’t seem to reduce transmission. Their effectiveness wanes over time and they don’t do much against the new variants. And they do have side effects, which in some cases have caused severe illness and even death.
Myself, I also believe that Covid vaccinations are no longer helpful. That doesn’t mean that they are not safe and effective. And anecdotes and internet research seem to me to be worth little.
Pfizer applied for patent on its vaccine in under three months of the disease even existing. Does that sound OK?
they were approved, they are still not tested. They do NOT have the evidence to back that up.
“…with the results mirroring the results of the clinical trials.”
I agree, more people died in the trial group…oh you didn’t know?
By the way, it’s not a vaccine if it doesn’t stop infection or transmission. It is nothing more than a therapeutic agent, and as such, the risk-to-benefit profile was dreadful. We had far superior therapeutics available before the vaccine was approved for emergency experimentation (superior in so far as they were (are) safer and more effective than the “vaccine”).
Perfectly stated
You do not have the first idea what “scientific evidence” means.
And whatever I do or don’t “provide”, you provide nothing but hot air and a nauseating sense of your own self-importance.
On the contrary, you are the nauseating self entitled one commenting here
It isn’t rank speculation.
The truth is coming out now although the MSM and the government are trying to hold the lid on this.
You’ll come around eventually.
exactly, btw, you had a down vote, my up vote just cancelled it out but clearly someone, presumably Carlos, can’t face the truth.
Oxford Study Finds Negative Vaccine Effectiveness Against Covid Hospitalisation and Death
By Amanuensis
Back in spring 2021 the U.K.’s health agencies were in full swing, trying to get everyone in turn to take their free Covid vaccine. Back then, many people still believed that Covid was a serious threat to all of us, and as a result initial take-up was rapid and even younger age groups eagerly awaited their turn to take the elixir that would offer salvation. Back in those simple days there wasn’t much need to explain the details of how exactly the vaccines would offer salvation – Covid was a serious disease and as such you really didn’t want to catch it at all, and vaccines clearly would offer the necessary protection because of ‘antibodies’.
As time went on, however, it appeared that some ‘foolish’ people weren’t in mortal fear of Covid, despite the best efforts of the nudge units to make it appear that Covid was killing a large proportion of healthy individuals. So the agencies changed tactics. If people weren’t going to clamour for the vaccines, they’d use emotional blackmail and appeal for people to take their dose to ‘protect granny’ and to help our country reach ‘herd immunity’ so that we could eliminate Covid from our shores.
This encouragement to get vaccinated for the good of us all remained for a few months, until, around summer 2021, the message started to shift towards taking the vaccine to protect oneself from hospitalisation or death. And, once it was realised that people still didn’t care that much, to once again use peer pressure to embarrass people into getting vaccinated ‘to reduce pressure on the NHS’. It might have been a different country, but President Biden’s statement in mid-December 2021 is an excellent example of that propaganda at work:
For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death – if you’re unvaccinated – for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.
But there’s good news: if you’re vaccinated and you had your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death – period.
Of course, authorities worldwide had to change their message from protection from infection to protection from serious disease and death. By autumn 2021 it was clear that Covid was spreading widely in the vaccinated and that the vaccines weren’t offering anything like the protection from infection that had been promised only a few months prior. Note that our authorities never apologised to those who got vaccinated ‘to protect granny’ and neither did they ever state how lucky they’d been that the vaccines appeared to offer some benefit (protection against hospitalisation) despite their initial hopes of herd-immunity being dashed in such a short period of time. Instead they pretended that they’d always intended for the vaccines to protect against hospitalisation and death and that ‘protect granny’ never existed (I’m sure that politicians worldwide hate the way the internet permanently stores their various proclamations).
And so we get to our position today, where our authorities are surely breathing sighs of relief that the vaccines at least offer some protection from serious disease, if not infection and transmission.
Which is just one reason why a recent paper from Oxford, Edinburgh and Swansea universities in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the risk of serious Covid or death by vaccination status is so very important.
The paper analyses hospitalisations and deaths related to Covid in the populations of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, comparing the impact of one or two doses of vaccine with the remaining unvaccinated population. It is quite a nice paper, and unlike most other epidemiological studies to date uses the ‘Target Trial’ study design. This data analysis method attempts to calculate what results would have been found had there been a full randomised trial undertaken at the initial vaccine rollout. Because the study was based on population-wide data there are many hundreds of thousands individuals’ data in the analysis, even after attempts to match the characteristics of the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Given that there were no large-scale studies into the safety and effectiveness of the Covid vaccines when they were first given in large numbers during 2021, this type of ‘emulation’ of such a study is possibly as good an approach as we’re going to get.
The results of the analysis are, quite frankly, astounding.
The study found that the effectiveness of the vaccines at preventing hospitalisation and death maintain a level of protection for some weeks following their administration, and then go negative at around 60-80 days post-vaccination. That means within two to three months, the vaccinated experienced a higher rate of Covid hospitalisation and death than the unvaccinated.
surprise, surprise
This is not exactly new information. Reported on, with just as many confounders taken in to account by PHE in September 2021 – and much easier to read, I might say :
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1017309/S1362_PHE_duration_of_protection_of_COVID-19_vaccines_against_clinical_disease.pdf
Also, it looks as though you omitted to look at the supplementary tables S4a – d which actually give the rather more important bottom line :
Event rates for hospitalisation and death / thousand person years in England for those vaccinated at least 14 days before these events :
Unvaccinated 11.24
2 dose ChAdOx1 0.50
2 dose BNT162b2 0.76
…but all deaths of those vaccinated less than 14 days prior are considered unvaccinated…look at the deaths after vaccination, 80-90% are within the first two weeks: most within the first week (remember healthy people were vaccinated, odd they should suddenly die). Great way to hide lethality.
Indeed! It’s just a massive coincidence. And the adverse (serious) events (not ‘oh my arm hurts’ but serious life-changing, debilitating or disabling ‘events’ and even deaths, multiple times more than decades of all other vaccines’ adverse events added together)…and happening only in highly vaccinated countries. And death peaks that correlate with each new jab and booster, but hey, no worries…we’ll wait for evidence.
…look over there, a squirrel! WAKE UP!
“There was, for example, no rationale for mandatory vaccination once it became clear that … vaccines didn’t prevent virus transmission”
The rationale for mandatory vaccination is that the vaccine greatly reduces the risk of death or serious illness from the virus and thus helped to prevent the collapse (in the UK) of the publicly funded healthcare system.
In a country where each person paid for their own hospital treatment and hospitals were at liberty to turn away patients then the mandatory aspect would be difficult to sustain. But that doesn’t apply in the UK.
Also, I believe the evidence shows that vaccines reduce virus transmission significantly, even though they don’t eliminate it. Which is another good reason for making them mandatory.
We have a lot of experience with vaccines, and resistance to vaccination. Vaccine mandates have failed in practice. Forcing people to take a vaccine against their will has been counterproductive in most cases, resulting in fewer vaccinations than if persuasion were used instead of force.
The UK in particular has never mandated vaccines, even with Covid, and the NHS did not collapse. People generally make pretty good choices with their health (with some exceptions). You didn’t need to force people to get the Covid vaccines to get a vast majority of the people to take them.
And your belief is wrong — there is no evidence that the Covid vaccines reduce vaccine transmission significantly. They might, but there is no evidence that they do. Certainly not enough to justify a vaccine mandate.
” …there is no evidence that the Covid vaccines reduce vaccine transmission significantly. They might, but there is no evidence that they do.”
Yes there is
Nice, simple, plain English narrative review in the BMJ here with a decent reference list :
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o298
or if you prefer an updated systematic review you could try this :
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35482308/
I am not in favour of vaccine mandates, myself for this particular disease as it has not proved to be as lethal as SARS or MERS. This does of course mean that one ignores the possible effects of extra transmission on that portion of the population in the UK who remain clinically extremely vulnerable even with our current number of previously infected / vaxxed / boosted individuals. According to the Actuaries this is around 1.8 million. The Friday Report – Issue 67 – COVID-19 Actuaries Response Group (covidactuaries.org)
The studies you cite are interesting, and they do counter my statement about evidence. But when I wrote “evidence” I was thinking “scientific evidence”, such as from clinical trials. I think that scientific evidence is needed to justify a mandate, and statistical studies like those reported in the BMJ are not that.
Governments do not approve vaccines based on statistical studies, but insist on clinical trials (RCTs). The same should apply to mandates, in my view.
Why are statistics not scientific? You may say that population statistics are weaker than controlled trials, but that does not invalidate them – you just need more of them, and more careful analysis. In fact I think dividing evidence in ‘scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ is dangerous – it could lead to believing too much in clinical trials and unjustly ignoring other kinds of evidence. ‘Stronger’ and ‘weaker’ (and ‘useless’ of course) would avoid the kind of ‘all-or-nothing’ approach you get with ‘(non-)scientific’.
As an illustration, are you aware of any clinical trials that prove that smoking or asbestos cause cancer in humans? And if the answser is ‘no’, does that mean that there is no scientific evidence for either proposition?
Have you ever heard that “correlation does not imply causation”? That is why statistics are not scientific evidence. Finding a statistical correlation (or more accurately, association) between two variables does not show that one causes the other.
Most people know this, but many people don’t take it to heart. When you ask them for their evidence of a causal link, all they produce are statistics, and that is not proof. That’s why I always emphasize the point: statistics are not scientific evidence of causation.
(See a good cartoon on this at https://xkcd.com/552/.)
Government agencies are some of the worst offenders in touting statistics as evidence of causation. The CDC and the WHO blithely do it all the time. But they are wrong to do so.
In the scientific method, observation and statistics are useful for creating hypotheses, but not for proving them. For scientific evidence, you need data from experiments or predictions, not data from observations.
You ask, how then do we know that smoking causes lung cancer? That’s a good question, but there’s no simple answer to it. We know that smoking causes lung cancer from applying the principles of causal inference, a still developing discipline that I find fascinating (but most people don’t).
A simple introduction to causal inference is at the Carnegie-Mellon machine learning blog: https://blog.ml.cmu.edu/2020/08/31/7-causality/. If that whets your appetite instead of killing it, try one of Judea Pearl’s books. His book The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect is ghostwritten, and an easy, breezy read that has no real rigor. His brilliant book Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference is a weighty tome that will be deadly to the casual reader.
Judea Pearl is best known to the public as the father of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, beheaded on video by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002, but he is well known to computer scientists as the 2011 Turing Award winner for his work on causal inference.
The discipline of causal inference grew out of a debate on whether there is a causal link between smoking and lung cancer that took place in the 1950s between Ronald Fisher (the father of modern statistics) on the one hand and Richard Doll and AB Hill (both later knighted for their efforts) on the other. This history is a fascinating story of both science and human flaws and foibles.
For instance, on February 12, 1954 British health minister Iain Macleod held a press conference to announce that the government accepted that smoking causes lung cancer. He chain smoked throughout the event.
I wish I had the time and the space to tell more of the story here.
You say many right things, but I think you are going too far. You are right to throw out the bath water, let us say, but you are throwing out too many babies. My contribution would be that all of science (all!) is about probability. You can get to very high probabilities, but outside of mathematics there is strictly speaking no such thing as ‘proof’. Bayesian reasoning, basically. On the specifics, clinical trials have confounders, just like population statistics; the clinical trials are better controlled , but they still give probability, not proof.
I note that I find your link to the machine learning blog quite hard to digest. Clearly it is written by and for a person whose mind lives in an abstract world of mathematics and software. The quote below shows as much:
My mind works differently, and I would never even think about whether you need someone who understands what is going on before you can determine what causes what. Of course you do. Maybe the strict distinction between scientific and non-scientific evidence feels more compelling to mathematicians?
The distinction I am making is between inductive and deductive reasoning. There is no bright line between the two, but the distinction is still a useful one. Knowing the limitations of inductive reasoning has been crucial ever since David Hume posed the “problem of induction” in 1739.
In the scientific method, inductive reasoning helps formulate a hypothesis or theory, but cannot be used to test it. Opinion, modeling, intuition, Bayesian reasoning, observation, consensus, statistical analysis all can play a role.
Deductive reasoning tests a hypothesis. Here, the tools are experiment, prediction, and (more recently) causal inference. How much these tools tell us depends on many things, like how skillfully they are used. That’s why there is always debate in science and theories are never conclusively proved.
It’s hard to get scientific evidence from deductive reasoning that supports a hypothesis. So many people instead try to sell their hypothesis based on inductive reasoning. We should not let them.
In the Covid pandemic panic, I have seen some scientists be among the most unscientific people I know. Same with climate change.
It’s a shame.
Interesting discussion. I disagree with you, though. As I understand it, *all* science is inductive reasoning. Using a theory to make predictions, you can do deductively, but by the time you compare those predictions to reality you are back at induction.
In general terms, deduction means using logic to go from a set of (assumed) premises to a conclusion; it allows you to build enormous, logically consistent, but abstract systems. Science is a matter of generalisation; going from individual data points – always a small subset of all possible data points – to general rules that are supposed to be valid also for the cases that you have not (yet) looked at. That cannot be done deductively, because there is no logically safe way to conclude from the cases you have looked at to the cases you have not. Which is why even such a heavily supported theory as Newtonian mechanics could in the end be proved wrong by the theory of relativity (that would have been impossible if it had been proved right by deduction). Or, if you prefer, no amount of observation that all swans are white will prove to you that they might not be black somewhere else (like in Australia).
How do you see it?
The way I see it is that science is deductive, not inductive. The scientific method is to use inductive reasoning only to formulate a hypothesis (or theory), and deductive reasoning to test the hypothesis. That is, you go from specific cases to a general rule to get a hypothesis (induction), and then you test that hypothesis against specific cases by experimentation or prediction (deduction).
Take the Covid vaccines as an example. There the scientists at the drug companies used their experience and expertise to synthesize vaccines that they thought would work against Covid (induction). Then they conducted clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of the vaccines (deduction).
I think this is as far as we can get. But I still disagree. The most general argument I can get is that if a theory is proved by deduction, it is guaranteed to be true. You cannot later disprove it. But all scientific theories can in principle be proved wrong, and replaced by a more all-encompassing theory (like the move from Newtonian to Einsteinian mechanics) if new data come up. Ergo, scientific theories are not proved by deduction.
The only way out I can see if you say that a hitherto ‘proven’ theory is disproved if one of its premises is proved false. But for that one to fly, you would have to take as a premise of your deduction the assumption that the data you are validating against are correct, complete, and representative. Which smuggles induction in by a very large back door; you are no longer deducing that your theory is true, but only that it would be true if there were no unknown data that proved it false.
But at least it is now clear what we disagree about, which is probably the best we can do.
Well put
No. In Canada, one of the highest preventible costs to our healthcare system is obesity; yet nobody is suggesting a person show their FitBit before being able to enter a dessert shop. If a public healthcare system is in danger of collapse you have some systemic issues you need to work on ( funding, staffing, more public parks for exercise, etc.) Depriving people of their right to refuse medical interventions isn’t the answer.
“… the vaccine greatly reduces the risk of death or serious illness from the virus and thus helped to prevent the collapse (in the UK) of the publicly funded healthcare system.”
No one can seriously be that delusional, after 2 years of contrary evidence. What you “believe”, based seemingly on nothing but propaganda, is irrelevant.
Richard, you are very wrong. The vaccine efficacy drops below zero (vaccinated people become more likely to catch covid, not less likely) after about 65 to 90 days. There is now evidence emerging that they (the vaccines) also do little to nothing to reduce either the deaths or hospitalizations of covid sufferers.
Further, the mRNA vaccines can do a huge amount of harm to many people and have even caused deaths of young healthy people.
There is no possible way any government can defend forcing these vaccines, none of which underwent proper testing and due process, on the population.
This was the biggest scam ever perpetrated on humanity.
It is vitally important that you research the facts for yourself.
Thank goodness some sense at last
It is surprising to see Mary Harrington (of all people) give so thoroughly up on truth. If it is all about class war anyway, we might as well stop doing science and leave the management of the next pandemic to reddit and twitter. At the least, she has a very one-sided view of those debates. For instance:
Vaccination does not prevent transmission, granted. I would assume it reduces transmission, which would be a perfectly good reason for mandatory vaccination. Does anyone know the science on that (assuming that anyone cares)? A lot of the COVID questions and arguments about side effects, alternative therapies, worldwide conspiracies etc. were, scientifically, rubbish. No milder description will suffice. Many people making those arguments were not trying to find out what was happening. They were wedded to a political point, and trying to conjure up any argument that would have justified the choices they had already made, with no regard for rationality or truth. The anti-lockdown side was no less religious than the anti-COVID side. And spreading false or unsubstantiated ‘facts’ to convince people to follow a most likely harmful course of action is not debate so much as black propaganda. What would have been the negative consequences of a laissez faire approach, I wonder? Would people now be outraged at the many deaths no one had tried to prevent? Or would we all be happy, seeing as the dead were dead and had nothing to say, and the living did not have to live with the indignity of having been forced to do things they did not like?
I would not deny the ‘class war’ aspects of this, Or the negative consequences of the past few years. But if we want to actually do anything about what happens in the world, we need to at least try to find out what is really happening and act on that. The scientists have tried. The anti-vaxxers have not. We cannot get rid of the class war aspects, but we can get in as much truth as we can manage. How about trying to move back to doing some of that together? Does Mary Harrington really prefer class revenge and the ‘dictatorship of the unvaccinated’?
Vote me down.
Not seeing one single sentence in this entire piece where MH has given up on “truth”. Or as no doubt you would have it “the truth”.
Fair comment, but I thought Rasmus was broadly right here, and normally I’m a massive MH fan. The essay felt polarising & even a little inflamatory – though maybe I’m judging too quickly.
Adam, I for one welcome MH’s shift, as I see it, from tragic acceptance that the machine and the enablers will rule, to latter-day Joan of Arc. Time for dithering is past. Each of us, I believe, must heed the call and claw back agency.
There is a feel of ‘J’accuse!’ to the article, but it’s needed. Its all very well for Rasmus to say “A lot of the COVID questions and arguments about side effects, alternative therapies, worldwide conspiracies etc. were, scientifically, rubbish” – and yes they absolutely were. But so were plenty of the official stances of our technocratic rulers.
My issue is those who put us in this mess are not being accused enough.
Do you recall how those renowned biomedical experts Macron and Merkel trashed the AstraZenca vaccine? Followed by the subsequent mouse-squeak of a backtrack?And not a word of debunking that rubbish out of the European scientific community at the time. In truth the vaccines rollout was greatly accelerated as a calculated risk, because typically new vaccines are tested for years before being released. But it was sold as a literally a religious position with no skepticism allowed. To me none of that was any different from the crassness of Trump – just because the European leaders projected a performative political persona of sobriety and expert competence wasn’t a reason to attribute more weight to their pronouncements. They cannot even claim their words were not responsible for actual unnecessary deaths, exactly the same as Trump’s uncoordinated and chaotic response to the virus was. Do you recall all the advice about face-masks in the first quarter of 2020, when the precise same experts who rolled their eyes when people suggested face-masks might help against the virus, who all then flipped en-masse, upon a papal decree, to a new orthodoxy precisely the opposite three months later. Resulting first in a po-faced disapproving righteousness towards any who didn’t wear face-masks, then evolving to threatening anyone who decided to abide by the old orthodoxy instead of the new orthodoxy, with, wait for it, actual law.
To me, that all is Cultural Revolution stuff.
Yeah, I agree with most of that. I still find the article lacks MH’s usual balance. I might return to say why if I get the chance to give this some thought. Maybe I’m missing if you agree with MH here so strongly.
Totally agree, the result is that a large proportion of the population will now not trust anything public health people, or the government tell them. It’s sad but I cant really blame them.
My perception is that MH’s essay was primarily to counter Oster’s essay, not to provide an unbiased response. I found it to be a breath of fresh air compared to the majority of the one-sided material from the MSM in the USA.
According to the CDC Covid vaccines do not prevent or reduce transmission. Nice attempted sleight of hand there.
Yeah right. If you can post a link showing that CDC say that without qualification I’d be amazed.
Yes they do.
Nice, simple, plain English narrative review in the BMJ here with a decent reference list :
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o298
or if you prefer an updated systematic review you could try this :
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35482308/
Thanks!
Now that “it is all over bar the shouting” I think we all can agree that the whole COVID episode was an unmitigated disaster, and will turn out to be on a scale similar to WWI & WW II.
For a mere 200K UK deaths was it rally worth it? Particularly as the average age of a UK COVID death was a staggering 82 (more than UK life expectancy itself). Additionally those with ‘self inflicted wounds’ such as the fat also seem to have been disproportionately culled.
I look forward to the ‘next time’.
I only actually knew of 10 or so people who got covid amongst my acquaintances… An outside life and smoking seemed to help?
Being fat,black, and old, certainly didn’t help, but I had missed the efficacy of smoking.
An ‘outside life’ in say the pursuit of blood sports, is to be highly recommend. No doubt the adrenaline rush has something to do with it.
I won’t vote you down, because I think it’s important to have this discussion. But your first point really says it all. Our governments, health authorities, pharmaceutical manufacturers, scientists etc. knew from the outset that the vaccines had not actually been tested for their effectiveness in reducing transmission. But they did not tell us that. Vaccination therefore became a moral issue, whereas it should have been a purely personal matter based on each person’s assessment of his or her own risks. The resulting loss of confidence in “science” and the laptop class who insisted that we “follow the science” (while at the same time withholding vital information) has been far greater and far more serious than the supposed harms caused by the so-called “anti-vaxxers” (who in most cases are not anti-vax at all, see Bret Weinstein et al.).
Well, thorough testing of those vaccines might have taken five years – by which time eveybody would have caught COVID. I still have to see an authoritative reference that says that the vaccines have no effect at all on transmission (we know they are not perfect), but th normal assumption would be that they would reduce transmission (not to mention the load on the hospitals). Do you really think that we should have waited for certainty while we let the disease run, and people (potentially) put others at risk?
Perhaps you should get a grip of reality. Everybody is going to get COVID eventually. You can play Russian Roulette once and get away with it, but play every day, and it doesn’t matter whether the six-shooter has 1 or 3 bullets in it, you will end up shooting yourself.
The truth is that the vaccines could easily have been tested properly on those most at risk, without mandating vaccination of those where Covid was of minimal risk (anybody under the age of 60 with no significant co-morbidities). The initial Pfizer and Moderna trials were entirely bogus because their end point was a poor surrogate (any mild symptom with positive PCR) for what really counts: hospitalization and death which were never investigated. In fact in the Pfizer trial more people died in the vaccinated arm than the unvaccinated one. And significant safety concerns were already clearly apparent in the trials when that information was released as a consequence of a FOIA and a brave federal judge as both the FDA and Pfizer/Moderna wanted to keep all that information under lock and key for 75 years!!!!
The irony of this whole business is that Rochelle Walensky, the CDC Director, was boosted for the 3rd time (i.e. a total of 5 shots) with the bivalent booster, and lo and behold became infected with COVID exactly a month later, when supposedly her antibodies to the spike antigen should have been at their peak. One might have thought that a light bulb might have lit up in her tiny little head and realized that the vaccines and boosters simply were not performing. As for adverse effects, there have been so many, that anybody with a brain should realize that a vaccine that is many fold more reactogenic than any other vaccine on the market (with perhaps 50% suffering sufficiently that they had to take a day off work) is going to have a significant fraction of severe adverse events.
And as for the marketing of Paxlovid and claiming that rebound was rare (only 5%), it should be remembered that Paxlovid was only trialed on unvaccinated individuals and only shown to be of benefit to those at high risk – they had to shut down the trial for those at low risk as Paxlovid was entirely useless for them. How about carrying out a trial on the vaccinated? Didn’t it occur to them that the vaccinated and unvaccinated differ significantly in their immunological makeup towards COVID. Didn’t any light bulbs go off when so many who were doubly boosted and then treated with Paxlovid had rebound. In fact for something that was only supposed to have 5% rebound, all I can say is that everybody I know who was doubly boosted and then infected and treated with Paxlovid suffered from rebound.
The truth is that the populace at-large was gaslit by the virtual class, the public authorities, and useless politicians who were incapable of thinking critically, all the while censoring and canceling anybody who went against the narrative, including those such as Peter McCullough, mentioned in Mary’s article, who just so happens to be one of the most highly cited highest impact cardiologists in the world (with an h index well over 100 and over 600 learned publications).
This is getting tiresome. You claim that I have no brain, have no grip on reality, generally that anyone who thinks like me is (at best) an utter idiot who slavishly follows somebody else’s master narrative, and that anything you say is so obviosuly true that there is nothing to discuss. That is all fine – I have my own opinion about you, too – but on principle I never discuss who is or is not an idiot. And you do not seem to have anything else to offer.
I thought that covid only affected the lower middle classes?
Fat,black, and old were ‘its’ preferred targets.
Is that why a continent with a population of more than a billion black people had drastically smaller number of deaths than the UK, Europe and the Americas combined.? Stop being sarcastic and check the facts.
Rasmus, your stance throughout is as a Flat Earther taken into space and shown the planet – but saying that proves nothing as all you can see is a disk.
Show me some evidence to change my mind, then. Insults won’t do it. A lot of people are shouting that vaccines do not help, are not safe, and do not reduce transmission. Elaine G-L sends 2-3 links that prove the opposite. If you want to convince me, just come up with some information that is better and more reliable than hers.
Science is about data, no?
Not so simple, those links are about Alpha variant and do NOT prove the opposite of the comment she was replying to, present tense, not 2021.
The original statement was categorical:
“Covid vaccines do not prevent or reduce transmission“. Nothing was said about which variant, or which year. If he did not mean what he said, he should say what he means.
E G-L’s links show that vaccination *does* reduce vaccination for *all* variants, though most for alpha and least for omicron.
Anyway, if Aaron James or anyone else want to change my mind, they need to provide some evidence that is at least as reliable and convincing as (for instance) those E G-L links. So far no one has come even close. And I do listen. The evidence on a lab origin for COVID, for instance moved me from ‘highly unlikely’ to ‘at least 50%’ with space for more to come.
I agree Rasmus, he is tiresome and an absolute bore
Surely Mary’s key point is about the weaponisation of objective knowledge, thereby rendering it subjective.
I agree decision makers were in an impossible position and had to do something, but gainsayers seem, to you, to be random nut jobs on the internet.
There were plenty of those but there were also highly credible voices like the signatories to Gt Barrington, the WHO cancer lead she cites, the chap who holds the patent for mRNA technology, who were absolutely silenced.
I remember attempts to justify the BLM riots, when all other gatherings were strictly verboten, on the grounds racism was a pandemic!
As always, Mary has skilfully described a rough sea and provided a different angle from which to view the deeper currents that might have created the waves.
That those who so wilfully damaged scientific credibility in pursuit of a political agenda should be held to account seems reasonable to me.
Which lot do you mean? It could be applied to either side.
In a way ‘objective knowledge’ was never as objective as it says on the flyer. With all its imperfections it is still what has brought us the moon rocket, the contraceptive pill, the microprocessor and all the other modern wonders of the world. People, including scientists, get wedded to their own theories, jump to conclusions, fish on the margins to prove what they want to prove etc. It is not new that small groups go with rebel theories, or that a few highly credited voices gallop into the wild blue yonder (as it were). Scientist are people.
I’d say that the Barrington group had different ideas on how dangerous COVID was – they were they ones who published analyses showing that they thought we were almost at herd immunity already at an exceedingly early stage, and expected the epidemic to burn itself out shortly. Hardly the most prescient predictions those. Others (I could not mention names) could be people who are naturally prone to discard current knowledge and accepted wisdom and follow their hunches, and who had already found at least one important discovery that way. Not unnaturally they would tend to believe their own intuition over the current consensus – only even those who can make a living betting on outsiders will still lose more bets than they win. Another group worth remembering were those public heath scientist in Scandinavia who told us that COVID would never amount to anything much, and if it did it would never get to Europe, and if it did that, not many people would get sick. In Sweden the government gave these people their head, in Denmark (fortunately, I would say) the government made a better estimate of how uncertain those data were, and started acting.
These subjectivities were always there. What saves the whole science project, and makes it so fantastically useful is that scientists collectively agree that to get the truth you should follow expereimental data, and more or less what are the right ways to analyse them. And the fact that at some point the consensus settles on an answer and leaves the refuseniks behind. If you keep giving equal time to the rebels, you will never know anything useful and never be able to act. Early in the COVID epidemic no one knew enough to be sure, but it was still necessary to act. A sensible approach would be to attach probabilities to all the different theories and act on the sum of that. Individual scientists may not be good decision makers here, being too sure of their current theory, but collectively they could provide a consensus on the probabilities.
I’d say that, Barringtoners or not, there developed a scientific consensus on COVID at the start, and that following that was the right thing to do – even if a better accounting of probabilities for various scenarios would have been better. In less urgent debates dissenters would simply be ignored and refuted in the internal scientific debate, unless they could provide enough evidence to reinforce their views. With the high public profile of COVID, giving equal time to the proponents of Barrington, Ivermectin,(with or without zinc), natural good health or (in the case of AIDS) beetroot juice, would simply make it impossible to execute any kind of health policy.
The initial consensus on COVID may or may not have been correct (I’d say the jury is still out on the details), but it was still better to act on it than to wait till we were sure. You are quite right that using ‘objective knowledge’ as a cudgel is generally wrong, and ‘follow the science’ is something only a politician would say. Yet we still get much the better results by finding and following a scientific consensus and ignoring a limited number of dissenters until they have convincing evidence. It is a messy process in many ways but it has been shown to work. Excellently. How do you square that circle?
Politicians “followed the science”. In this case, it looks suspiciously like the science followed the money.
By allowing people to decide for themselves. I was annoyed by mask compliance just as I was annoyed with those who derided others for wearing them. We were told we were wrong and evil over and over again by those who openly flouted lockdown rules themselves.
The real danger, however, is this: the next time a real pandemic strikes fewer people will take it seriously which will no doubt result in a greater loss of life. This has been the greatest debacle in my entire lifetime resulting in great personal loss of trust in academic, scientific, and medical institutions.
There is an important concept in medicine and public health that you are probably unaware of as you have been hoist by your own petard for over 2 years: “FIRST DO NO HARM”.
e.g. if one thinks that masks might be a good idea, the first thing one might do is review all the RCT literature on masks in the context of influenza carried out ever since 1918, and one would have realized that masks in the community were useless. Then, if one still wasn’t convinced, it would have been easy to organize some fairly well designed trials to find out whether masks had any impact in the community. Indeed, the DANMASK trial early on showed that surgical masks had no significant impact on becoming infected (i.e. not protective). The remaining question then was whether masks could serve as a method of source control (i.e. you wear a mask to protect me, I wear one to protect you). Apart from the fact that this concept was founded on the misconception of asymptomatic transmission (which was always complete nonsense as is evident to anybody with a brain and any knowledge of viruses and infectious diseases), it should have been immediately evident after the imposition of mask mandates that masks had absolutely no impact on the rise and fall of the successive COVID waves. But yet the authorities and people like you who blindly followed authority hung on to this belief with religious fervor.
Former Supreme Court Judge, Lord Jonathan Sumption (KS) said as much on Day 1 of this fiasco, only to reviled.
Thus the reputation of Science, and the Medical Profession in particular, been IRRETRIEVABLY tarnished for eternity, as it so justly deserves.
“Yet we still get much the better results by finding and following a scientific consensus and ignoring a limited number of dissenters until they have convincing evidence.”
The point is that your term “scientific consensus” is meaningless. Science has nothing to do with consensus. There is no voting in science. Rather, as Richard Feynman said, “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”. Data and experiment rule, not opinion.
What does that mean in real life? With the vaccines, it means no mandates unless you have scientific evidence that the vaccines will end the pandemic. Otherwise, you present the scientific evidence you have and let people make their own decisions whether to take them.
Instead, we get policymakers who arrogantly believe, like Tony Fauci, that they are science. Or people like you who say “It is a messy process in many ways but it has been shown to work. Excellently.” Really? Where’s your evidence? I don’t think that process worked in the Covid pandemic, as Mary Harrington and others so convincingly argue.
The problem with ‘data and experiment rule’ is that Data and Experiment are not people we can ask for opinions. How do you find out *what* they rule? In practice, how are you going to find out what is the right understanding of cosmology, or pandemic prediction, or Egyptian history? Even if that is your life’s work, no individual has time to go through all the data and all the experiments in detail. And if you are from a different field, or in a different business, you certainly cannot. The best you can do is to check for a consensus, and look rapidly at some of the main arguments to check. Or, from the other side, if you have a very strong belief on some specific point, how are you going to check whether you are right, or may suffer from some kind of bias, or motivated reasoning, or may have made a mistake? Individuals make mistakes, you know. The best you can do is to see if you can convince others. If you are the only one who can see the elefant in the room, there is a risk that the elephant may not be there after all.
Richard Feynman may be one of the extremely few people who can put his own judgement up against a planet full of experts and win, but for the rest of us it is a collective endeavour. Science is not a democracy, no, but the only way you can find out what it says is still to ask around and see what various knowledgable people have to say. Fortunately, with all the resulting imperfections the microprocessor, contraceptive pill, atom bomb, etc. prove that it works in the end.
You miss my point. Science is a method for discovering truth. It’s a difficult process that takes time and effort, and for that and other reasons science rarely helps us make public policy decisions. That’s not what science is for.
I’d slightly disagree with that (and, yes, I did miss that point). The truth, once found, should hopefully be useful, but indeed, the necessary time and effort is often not available when you need it for policy decisions. Mind you, the same reasoning (Bayesian) should work to proovide probabilities even for fast, underinformed decisions, but admittedly scientists are less proficient in that kind of work.
“Richard Feynman may be one of the extremely few people who can put his own judgement up against a planet full of experts and win, but for the rest of us it is a collective endeavour.”
Yes, but it sure would be nice if the Feynman’s of the world were allowed to be heard when their views run counter to the “consensus” which can often occur more from groupthink or ideological, financial and political pressure. You can observe this out-of-hand dismal of people who have spent most of their lives assembling and anlyzing climate related data that doesn’t conform to the consensus. Likewise, some of the most noted mask efficiency experts were completely ignored, including Dr. Sergey Grinshpun at the University of Cincinnati who very simply stated that surgical masks do not filter out tiny aerosolized particles. Period. This guy has been studying the performance of respiratory protective devices for more than 30 years. With over 10,000 employees at the U.S. CDC, you would think someone would have thought to rely on this “scientist” for some advice.
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” — Richard Feynman
The problem is that you will always get a small number of people who refuse to believe what everyone else thinks is true. Some of them can be highly qualified – Albert Einstein never really accepted quantum mechanics, for instance. And even today there are people who at least try to sound scientific who refuse to believe in the theory of relativity (accepted for a century) or the germ theory of disease (a century and a half).
If you have 99 knowledgeable people who all agree on one thing, and one person who believes the opposite, how do you decide that the one person is a genius and right and the others are all mediocre groupthinkers? Ultimately it will be decided through arguments and data, and a majority will be won over. Only that takes time, and you will never get rid of the last few hold-outs.
‘I remember attempts to justify the BLM riots, when all other gatherings were strictly verboten, on the grounds racism was a pandemic!’
Oh yes, along with ‘fiery but mostly peaceful protests’, this one must not be forgotten.
I would love to see all those crazy Politicos who ‘Took The Knee’ for BLM – to have done the same before a giant syringe – in symbolic display of them worshiping it….
I upticked you because I am with you on this.
It’s such a pity that you continue to spout total and utter nonsense while giving the impression of being knowledgeable. You hav called yourself a scientist but you inability to think independently, to be skeptical and to actually look at the data as opposed to relying on authority simply reveals the truth about you.
The unfortunate facts are that the current vaccines prevent neither infection nor transmission, nor do they reduce transmission or symptoms. Once that was known in mid-2021 mandates and thought of mandates should have been thrown out the window.
As for various medicines that you have deem quack. Perhaps you should realize that many medical practices and drugs, if not the majority, pursued with full conviction in current modern western medicine actually do not work when put to the real test of a properly designed RCT that actually addresses and assesses the proper endpoints as opposed to some meaningless surrogate. This has happened time and time again.
I very deliberately do *not* ‘call myself a scientist’. I said
Which is true – I know something about how it works (never mind my exact job description), but I do not claim any particular authority. Unlike certain other people who think that their MD, PhD, and IQ entitle them to win arguments when their actual arguments are not sufficient. Judge me by my posts.
Fauci thinks he, himself, IS Science.
We do not think you go that far, but you do present as being able to represent the science.
But one does remember the many disastrous drugs which had terrible side effects.
If this Dangerious and Harmfull, and completely useless vax had undergone the testing it should have it would have been found to be much more harmful than helpful – and withdrawn, and MANY lives would have been saved. That is how it should have been.
It is interesting how the most rabid pro-Putin commenters overlap with the most rabid anti-science and anti-medicine commenters. Something about the relationship to reality?
I’d the say the threat of nuclear annihilation is as “real” as it gets.
But you’re right…there IS a relationship. People who “go with the crowd”, conform, and need to feel trendy generally defer to elites, and adopt whatever postures or behaviors those elites prefer.
On the other hand, people used to thinking for themselves quickly realize that the average westerner has zero stake in what happens in Ukraine, AND that DaVax offers little benefit outside of high-risk individuals.
It can be put differently: People who feel a need to be smarter than the average herd and/or feel paranoid about conspiracies by the elites will choose to reject the mainstram view and latch on to anything that opposes it. Some sheep go with the flow. Other sheep go against it. Neither group has any claim to being the only ones who think.
I agree it shouldn’t be about revenge, even though those who were most adamant about vaccinations and lockdowns were very vocal about arresting, fining, and firing those who argued against them. However, there should be some form of formal acknowledgement from those who wanted to lock up and force-vaccinate others. I don’t mean commentators like you, but those with institutional power like journalists, politicians, and scientists. Two years of lockdown have caused massive back-ups in the economy, the global supply chain, and student learning. Most sinister of all, they have exposed us to the authoritarian tendencies of those who preached kindness and told us hate has no home here.
Those who persecuted others by all the ways we know they did – they should carry a permanent record of their abuses, and so be forever excluded from having any authority over others ever again.
The moment you employed the pejorative “anti-vaxxers”, you slipped out of sheep’s clothing and, as it were, grinned a very toothy grin.
Many people who are strong proponents of “Vaccination” were not persuaded that the rushed EUA shots referred to as ‘vaccinations’ were safe (let alone effective). With good reason, as it turns out.
Changing the classical definition of “Vaccine” in the midst of the mandated shot program did nothing to assuage public suspicions vis-à-vis the shot, motivation$ of Pharma, or intentions of the Totalitarian class issuing the mandates.
The Covid-19 debacle and disastrous collective policy quagmire enacted by “elites” was a world-class cluster from the get-go.
“I would assume it reduces transmission, which would be a perfectly good reason for mandatory vaccination.” I would assume random home inspections by the police would reduce cases of domestic abuse; are you ok with no longer requiring warrants to enter your premises? The fact that *you* might find a medical procedure reasonable, doesn’t mean that others do. That’s the whole point of right to consent and refusal. And as for your musings about what might have been the consequences of not coercing people or locking them down – I could wonder about how many munitions factories would have been sabotaged during WWII if we didn’t take the ‘reasonable’ precaution of putting all the Japanese Canadians in camps. It’s reasoning like yours that leads to atrocities.
Rasmus just watch the video
” Safe And Effective: A Second Opinion (2022 Oracle Films COVID-19 Documentary)”
https://rumble.com/v1mc9z0-safe-and-effective-a-second-opinion-2022-oracle-films-covid-19-documentary.html
get the info you wish to have – and it is very watchable, and British…
For information there is text – videos are for exercising your emotions. It is too much hard work to concentate on ignoring the emotional effect of backgorund music, clipping, emotional images etc., extracting the actual information offered and claims made from the stream, making a note of weak points to be checked, etc. – all with an ongoing stream that is awkward to stop. I may be old-fashioned, but if you want me to get information, please can you provide some text?
Rasmus you are preaching to the Trump supporting self righteous crazies here. Not sure why you bother.