6 ms·

> But we don't. And the only way to expand what we know is to spend a ton of time doing things that we don't know. That can sound great, at least from a scient

> But we don't. And the only way to expand what we know is to spend a ton of time doing things that we don't know. That can sound great, at least from a scientist's point of view, the issue is that many times those "things the scientists don't know about" are taken as a given (i.e. closer to the "truth" compared to the things that non-scientists reason about) and they come back to bite us non-scientists, meaning the general public. This virus has proven just that, with scientists in many countries believing lots of different things (they still do, even after ~4 months since the whole thing has reached a new level), about which things it was obvious "they didn't know that much about", but it didn't matter, because most of the time their voices were heard louder compared to everyone else's and as such the powers that be decided to follow those scientists' lead/advices. In other words, it's ok that scientists don't know everything, but they should also be aware of that and they should let their "superiors" (government officials, people having the power to influence the lives of millions of other people) know about them not knowing everything. Going back to this virus, I've personally never heard an "expert" say out loud in the media something like: "we just don't know how this virus really works and we really don't know how best to fight it, we're really navigating in the dark here, we're asking you to stay locked-down in your houses because we think it's the right thing to do but we can't say exactly for how long because we really don't know".

pjkundert 6y ago
That's a great example; and, the instant we got 1 (one!) report that gave evidence of a significant percentage of the population having experienced the virus with few symptoms -- thus lowering the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) for that segment of the population to something near a low multiple of the normal Flu -- the "lockdown" hypothesis should have been discarded, violently, for that segment of the population! But, it wasn't; because these "falsifying" signals were ignored (or worse yet, stridently denied), and were certainly not actually tested -- we have yet to see even a single case of a country aggressively testing a random sampling of their entire population for immunity! This one example is an astonishing repudiation of the global response to Coronavirus. Its insane! Wholesale self-destruction of the global supply-chain and division of labor, because the political, medical and scientific elites just don't want to be shown to be wrong.
- guscost 6y ago
  The botched response to COVID-19 will bring the whole institution of modern science crashing down, when all is said and done. Maybe you don't want to believe that, but there it is: https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ By the way, I still have not heard of a single serosurvey being run in South Korea. Why is that?
  - pjkundert 6y ago
    Why, indeed. It's almost like people just don't want to know the CFR of this thing... Why wouldn't you want to know the CFR, in exquisite detail, down to groups refined by as many distinguishing details as you can possibly measure? But, surprise! You simply cannot know the CFR of Covid-19 without statistically valid immunity studies of the general population. Which nobody is doing! Just ... crazy. Its stunningly clear that outcomes for this disease are wildly variable. For some, its extremely risky, for other groups, its not even a passing thought! And yet, here we are -- global, carte-blanche "quarantining", to "flatten the curve" -- that big, ill-defined "curve" that means sudden death to our civilization if we get near it! And yet, here I sit in a community with virtually empty hospitals, but almost no progress toward herd immunity. But, with an undercurrent of well-distributed carriers -- because nobody is interested in testing the general population (for either infection or immunity). And, we're starting to "open up". Heaven help the elderly and immune-compromised -- they are just toast. In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time! I pray that this bungled, too-terrible-to-be-an-accident response to Covid-19 comes home to roost on those who should have known better. But, the truth won't be coming out from the criminally complicit "media". If only we had any "Journalists" to expose this thing! But, big-media is on the gravy-train of the politicians (here in Canada, at least), so there's no hope of that. Independent journalists need to step up, somehow run the gauntlet of our controlled Internet media outlets (say something contrary to WHO -- ban-hammer!), and expose this thing! Fortunately, evidence-based reality cannot be suppressed forever!
    - 6y ago

pjkundert 6y ago

That's a great example; and, the instant we got 1 (one!) report that gave evidence of a significant percentage of the population having experienced the virus with few symptoms -- thus lowering the CFR (Case Fatality Rate) for that segment of the population to something near a low multiple of the normal Flu -- the "lockdown" hypothesis should have been discarded, violently, for that segment of the population! But, it wasn't; because these "falsifying" signals were ignored (or worse yet, stridently denied), and were certainly not actually tested -- we have yet to see even a single case of a country aggressively testing a random sampling of their entire population for immunity! This one example is an astonishing repudiation of the global response to Coronavirus. Its insane! Wholesale self-destruction of the global supply-chain and division of labor, because the political, medical and scientific elites just don't want to be shown to be wrong.

guscost 6y ago
The botched response to COVID-19 will bring the whole institution of modern science crashing down, when all is said and done. Maybe you don't want to believe that, but there it is: https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ https://guscost.com/2020/05/12/pandemic-woo/ By the way, I still have not heard of a single serosurvey being run in South Korea. Why is that?
- pjkundert 6y ago
  Why, indeed. It's almost like people just don't want to know the CFR of this thing... Why wouldn't you want to know the CFR, in exquisite detail, down to groups refined by as many distinguishing details as you can possibly measure? But, surprise! You simply cannot know the CFR of Covid-19 without statistically valid immunity studies of the general population. Which nobody is doing! Just ... crazy. Its stunningly clear that outcomes for this disease are wildly variable. For some, its extremely risky, for other groups, its not even a passing thought! And yet, here we are -- global, carte-blanche "quarantining", to "flatten the curve" -- that big, ill-defined "curve" that means sudden death to our civilization if we get near it! And yet, here I sit in a community with virtually empty hospitals, but almost no progress toward herd immunity. But, with an undercurrent of well-distributed carriers -- because nobody is interested in testing the general population (for either infection or immunity). And, we're starting to "open up". Heaven help the elderly and immune-compromised -- they are just toast. In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time! I pray that this bungled, too-terrible-to-be-an-accident response to Covid-19 comes home to roost on those who should have known better. But, the truth won't be coming out from the criminally complicit "media". If only we had any "Journalists" to expose this thing! But, big-media is on the gravy-train of the politicians (here in Canada, at least), so there's no hope of that. Independent journalists need to step up, somehow run the gauntlet of our controlled Internet media outlets (say something contrary to WHO -- ban-hammer!), and expose this thing! Fortunately, evidence-based reality cannot be suppressed forever!
  - 6y ago