> we don't relitigate everything all the time. E.g. is germ theory a "dogmatic truth" for you? Sure. Germ theory is incomplete. This became obvious during COVI

> we don't relitigate everything all the time. E.g. is germ theory a "dogmatic truth" for you? Sure. Germ theory is incomplete. This became obvious during COVID, but the incomplete version of it was indeed taken as dogma. Things ordinary germ theory does not successfully explain: 1. Why did SARS-CoV-2 variants immediately exterminate each other instead of coexisting side by side for the long term? And why did flu apparently disappear during COVID? 2. How did around 80% of people appear to have pre-existing immunity to a supposedly novel coronavirus, as measured by household transmission studies? 3. Why is it possible for people on isolated Antarctic bases to spontaneously get sick from a cold, when there is nobody to get sick from? 4. Why are respiratory viruses seasonal to the extent that influenza outbreaks start everywhere at once rather than spreading from an index case like COVID did (there are lots of ad-hoc folk explanations for this kicking around, none of which are obviously derived from germ theory). 5. If germ theory is correct, why do epidemiological models that implement it never correctly predict the course of epidemics? (and they don't, even though epidemiologists like to pretend they do). What we're looking at here is likely to be similar to physics pre-Einstein. We have a theory, it sometimes yields very accurate predictions, and we have lots of evidence for it. But there are cases that it fails for. The theory must therefore need refinement. Non-dogmatic scientists would be intrigued by this and even excited to explore it, but if you look at the public health literature you don't see this kind of excitement. Instead you see lots of papers that ignore all the questions above and just sort of assert that the theory side is done, so here's our predictions Mr Health Minister.