Moore on the China Virus
This remark by Joseph Moore in our comments merits the spotlight as its own guest column. The objections raised here are wise and clear. Would that the greater mass of common folk had heard voices like this.
The words below are his.
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While a certain amount of trust is needed in all human interactions, the glory of formal, modern science properly so called is that the rules of the game require:
- you show all your work – no hiding or fudging data, no secret steps involved;
- you answer your critics – all legitimate questions must be addressed;
- other people have be able to reproduce the results you got using the same or similar methods;
- you must tell us what you are counting (science, as our host points out, is the study of the metrical properties of physical objects). If spelling out exactly what you are counting seems easy or pedantic to you, then you are scientifically illiterate.
Do these things, spell them out in your paper or study, and you have my provisional trust. I will take the claims of your work seriously.
Neglect or refuse to do any of the above, and you’ve surrendered any claim to be doing science, and lost any claims on an honest man’s trust in your work.
I read about a dozen papers that came out at the beginning of the COVID panic, and a couple more over the next year. I stopped reading studies at that point, because, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, every last one of them violated two or more of the principles outlined above.
On a purely scientific basis, the studies that supported the panic and subsequent breach of law and civil rights must, as in MUST, be rejected with extreme prejudice.
A few examples:
Ferguson’s model, the one used to gin up panic in the first place, was a joke:
- Methods were not spelled out – no one other than Ferguson had access to the actual math involved. Since models only tell you what you tell them to tell you, this is a damning breach.
- The data were not clearly defined. To this day, nobody really knows who died of what in the early days of covid, because that critical piece of information was left out, and questioning it got you labelled a terrorist.For example, in early 2020, many elderly Italian nursing home patients died, and had their deaths attributed to the virus. A quick glance at the underlying data shows they represented the bulk of all early deaths in Italy.Yet, these poor souls are in nursing homes in the first place because they are very ill. So, the two perfectly reasonable questions: how sick were they? and did covid actually kill them, or was it simply one cold too much given their condition? were never answered.
- Counter-evidence, such as the experiences on the Diamond Princess and the USS Roosevelt, were either ignored or downplayed in order to generate a more terrifying picture.
Later, when masking was introduced, a large group of studies were released at the same time, supposedly supporting the claim that masking reduced the spread of the virus. An historical note: Starting 100 years ago after the Spanish Flu, a bunch of studies were done on the efficacy of masking in the general population. All these studies showed what common sense would indicate: cloth or paper masks simply do not slow the spread of airborne respiratory viruses. So new studies had to be produced to counter the old studies.
I read the first 5, at least up to the point where their claims became patently ridiculous – usually not much past the abstract. Cherry-picked data. Tiny percentage differences, well within any reasonable margin of error, touted as proving something. Use of models which were instructed to say what the modeler’s funders wanted to hear.
And so on.
I announced my unwillingness to get the jab not due to any suspicions about the jab’s safety or effectiveness, but simply because I, as a reasonably healthy man, had such little chance of getting seriously ill from the virus that taking an untested, experimental gene therapy drug* in order to prevent it was an unreasonable ask.
The utterly nonsensical claim that I needed to take it to protect other people merely strengthened my resolve.
In January of 2021, I probably got the bug, was sick for 2 weeks – bad cold, bad flu range, which everyone in their panic seems to have forgotten – and took another couple weeks before I was back at 100%. Kind of like he old days when you caught a bad flu. Everyone around me got it, too.
The only serious case: 84 year old grandma, with multiple serious health issues. Like 80-90% of such elderly, sickly people, she, too, got over it. She’s still with us.
I’ve only looked at a couple “vaccine” studies, but they were every bit as poor and misleading as any of the earlier studies. Since then, it has become clear that, whatever other problems there may be, the jab doesn’t do any of the things one takes a vaccine for, was not tested as usual protocols demand, and was not tested at all for long term effect or efficacy. Hard no thanks.
Bottom line: While we do need trust in our lives, science gives us a way to check in applicable circumstances. But few are scientifically literate enough to just read the papers, and so are reduced to trusting talking heads, bureaucrats, and people who happen to own a lab coat far, far more than is warranted. It was clear within a week or two of the panic that science and evidence had nothing to do with it.
Certain people wanted a panic (Ferguson is a notorious panic-monger, for one) and said and did whatever it took to get one. With that foundation, I refuse to believe anything this clown posse of panic mongers says about anything.
* calling mRNA gene therapy ‘vaccines’ is another Newspeak moment that does not raise my trust.
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Mr. Moore continues in a related comment:
It is the hallmark of scientific illiteracy to fail to recognize how crucial it is to define what you’re measuring and show how you are measuring it. So, ‘case’, ‘death’, ‘infection’ – whenever I tried to find out what definition was being used, and what method of counting, I found:
- Gross inconsistencies. Symptoms (common to colds, flus, and other diseases) used without reliable tests; tests used without symptoms; unreliable tests used inappropriately;
- Insane generalizations: you have symptoms (again, common to all sorts of diseases. And remember how flu deaths miraculously disappeared during the covidiocy?) and die? Covid! You test positive but have no symptoms and die? Covid! You’re 80 years old diabetic undergoing cancer treatments and die with cold symptoms? Covid! You kill yourself with a drug overdose but test positive for covid? (This was the actual 2nd covid death recorded in San Barbara county in California) Covid!
- Insane variations over time and space: what was counted as what in, say, England, versus what was counted in China or Italy or France was different and changed over time.
Yet the panic mongers confidently lumped ALL this together, such that we had daily updates of cases and deaths aggregating data from around the world. And the dudes in the lab coats, who one might assume would know better, said nothing – or, worse, were cast into the outer darkness to wail and gnash their teeth for pointing out the insanity.
We send our children to school and have them taught to do what teacher says to do – and then we have adults whose self-image is threatened by any hint that the people in authority, people handed out all those pats on the head, gold stars, and participation trophies, are hind-quarter-kissing liars.
If THAT’S true, why maybe I’m not such a smart boy or girl after all…. And so we get the cornered animal reactions when we point out simple facts
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
