You criticize Dr. Ioannidis and the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration for their tactics in saying that Covid had a lower IFR than the ridiculous early estimates used to justify lockdowns, and for saying that lockdowns have negative societal consequences, respectively. Yet you give little credit to these claims for being no…
You criticize Dr. Ioannidis and the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration for their tactics in saying that Covid had a lower IFR than the ridiculous early estimates used to justify lockdowns, and for saying that lockdowns have negative societal consequences, respectively. Yet you give little credit to these claims for being not only correct (as time has shown) but also rather obviously correct even at the time, appearing controversial only due to the intensely political nature of Covid policy. You criticize dissenters for being "hasty" yet the mainstream scientists were given *months* of essentially opposition-free time to impose unprecedented, near-total lockdowns on society. I wish the dissenters had been hastier. You talk about scientific quality, but ignore that the CDC regularly churns out non-peer-reviewed advocacy of the mainstream agenda on its MMWR channel, that gets picks up as "science" by the entire media apparatus. Finally you emphasize the importance of "scientific" debate, which is 100% needed, but most Covid policy is only marginally about science at all. Maybe cloth masks are 0% useful or maybe they are 10% useful, that's a scientific question, but in either case should they be mandated? That's a social and political question.
I am glad you are arguing for more vigorous and structured dissent in science and we do need it. But the dissenters on Covid were brave souls taking on a thankless task against a global hegemon. They were censored and shunned. Nitpicking their tactics is fair but kind of an odd thing to prioritize.
Agree that the broader consequences of school lockdowns were underestimated, but complaints of nitpicking? The ends of bad science (Ioannidis) and value judgements being passed of as scientific facts (GBD) do not justify the means.
Love the idea of the science court, but recommend that an inquisitorial procedure be used (more likely to get at the truth) than an adversarial procedure (perceived as more fair). In the case of science, truth may be more important than fairness.
Dr. Fauci, who holds more hard & soft power than all the dissenters combined, literally said on national TV that when people criticize him they are really criticizing Science, because he represents Science. Talk about passing off something else (credentialism I guess?) for scientific analysis!
The authors of GBD were subject to a full-on coordinated behind-the-scenes smear campaign by Fauci and the NIH - the "'There needs to be a quick and devastating take down" email.
Major social media sites colluded with the government to censor all sorts of dissenting opinion, from the effectivenss of masks to the side effects of vaccines, for two years now.
Under these conditions, no, I can't understand focusing on some mistakes of the dissenters versus the horrific mistakes and poor judgement of the "orthodox."
Do you think an institution that provides a more official avenue, outside of the press or obscure scientific journals, would likely help dissenters? I get that you disagree with which examples the author chose to hold up to criticism, but what do you think of the underlying idea?
My take is something similar to Michael Berkowitz's above: we have some mechanisms available to us today that should be able to function as the author describes, at least to some significant extent. Why didn't they?
One, the GBD came out before there was even a vaccine , and promoted a herd immunity approach to COVID. Two, Dr. Francis Collins (who wrote the 'take down' email, and was then the head of NIH, not Dr. Fauci, who leads one institute of the NIH) believed that the premises of the GBD were simply wrong and would result in more deaths than not. Why would he NOT want a vigorous response to that, at that time? Three, speaking of coordinated efforts, the GBD was sponsored by the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, part of a Koch-funded network of right wing politico-ideological 'free market' and fossil fuel advocacy groups. Four, this article doesn't mention the competing John Snow Memorandum, originating in the UK. It would have been worth mentioning. Fifth, there was no 'suppression' of the GBD. It -- and the controversy around it -- got widespread media coverage, including hearty and wholly predictable endorsement by the Wall Street Journal.
I was really enjoying the article until this point. It's absolutely clear looking backward that nobody was making their decisions purely based on evidence, but based on judgement. And the authors of GBD were proven to have much better judgement than the actual policymakers.
You criticize Dr. Ioannidis and the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration for their tactics in saying that Covid had a lower IFR than the ridiculous early estimates used to justify lockdowns, and for saying that lockdowns have negative societal consequences, respectively. Yet you give little credit to these claims for being not only correct (as time has shown) but also rather obviously correct even at the time, appearing controversial only due to the intensely political nature of Covid policy. You criticize dissenters for being "hasty" yet the mainstream scientists were given *months* of essentially opposition-free time to impose unprecedented, near-total lockdowns on society. I wish the dissenters had been hastier. You talk about scientific quality, but ignore that the CDC regularly churns out non-peer-reviewed advocacy of the mainstream agenda on its MMWR channel, that gets picks up as "science" by the entire media apparatus. Finally you emphasize the importance of "scientific" debate, which is 100% needed, but most Covid policy is only marginally about science at all. Maybe cloth masks are 0% useful or maybe they are 10% useful, that's a scientific question, but in either case should they be mandated? That's a social and political question.
I am glad you are arguing for more vigorous and structured dissent in science and we do need it. But the dissenters on Covid were brave souls taking on a thankless task against a global hegemon. They were censored and shunned. Nitpicking their tactics is fair but kind of an odd thing to prioritize.
Agree that the broader consequences of school lockdowns were underestimated, but complaints of nitpicking? The ends of bad science (Ioannidis) and value judgements being passed of as scientific facts (GBD) do not justify the means.
Love the idea of the science court, but recommend that an inquisitorial procedure be used (more likely to get at the truth) than an adversarial procedure (perceived as more fair). In the case of science, truth may be more important than fairness.
Dr. Fauci, who holds more hard & soft power than all the dissenters combined, literally said on national TV that when people criticize him they are really criticizing Science, because he represents Science. Talk about passing off something else (credentialism I guess?) for scientific analysis!
The authors of GBD were subject to a full-on coordinated behind-the-scenes smear campaign by Fauci and the NIH - the "'There needs to be a quick and devastating take down" email.
Major social media sites colluded with the government to censor all sorts of dissenting opinion, from the effectivenss of masks to the side effects of vaccines, for two years now.
Under these conditions, no, I can't understand focusing on some mistakes of the dissenters versus the horrific mistakes and poor judgement of the "orthodox."
Do you think an institution that provides a more official avenue, outside of the press or obscure scientific journals, would likely help dissenters? I get that you disagree with which examples the author chose to hold up to criticism, but what do you think of the underlying idea?
My take is something similar to Michael Berkowitz's above: we have some mechanisms available to us today that should be able to function as the author describes, at least to some significant extent. Why didn't they?
One, the GBD came out before there was even a vaccine , and promoted a herd immunity approach to COVID. Two, Dr. Francis Collins (who wrote the 'take down' email, and was then the head of NIH, not Dr. Fauci, who leads one institute of the NIH) believed that the premises of the GBD were simply wrong and would result in more deaths than not. Why would he NOT want a vigorous response to that, at that time? Three, speaking of coordinated efforts, the GBD was sponsored by the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research, part of a Koch-funded network of right wing politico-ideological 'free market' and fossil fuel advocacy groups. Four, this article doesn't mention the competing John Snow Memorandum, originating in the UK. It would have been worth mentioning. Fifth, there was no 'suppression' of the GBD. It -- and the controversy around it -- got widespread media coverage, including hearty and wholly predictable endorsement by the Wall Street Journal.
I was really enjoying the article until this point. It's absolutely clear looking backward that nobody was making their decisions purely based on evidence, but based on judgement. And the authors of GBD were proven to have much better judgement than the actual policymakers.
Have they now, really? Can you provide and estimate of what the toll would have been if the GBD plan had been followed in the USA?