Science Hijacked Again

Unfortunately, science is taking another hit with the obscene politicization of the COVID-19 coverage. A growing number of health “scientists” (physicians, immunologists, researchers) are appearing on cable news shows, writing articles for the major news sites, filing whistleblower complaints, etc. With a few exceptions, these people have exited the realm of science and entered the realm of policy, punditry, and activism. The public images of those who have made this transformation are unfairly becoming the face of the entire health science community because they are appearing in headlines. If any of these experts say something having the slightest odor of disagreement with the President, they instantly achieve notoriety (and fame). Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is the poster child for this phenomenon. A false choice is intentionally setup by the media to side with either a clueless and stupid President (who they can’t control) or with credentialed and trusted scientists (who they can easily manipulate). The media subversives know full well that the brilliant but narrowly focused minds of these scientists are novices in the game of politics.

Let’s provide one example of the hit science is taking. The COVID-19 models, from both Imperial College London and the University of Washington, have become the bible for the news media and doomsday politicians. These models have been built up as unassailable bastions of truth even though they’ve been dead wrong. When asked, most of the health scientists proclaim their support and trust in these models, further enhancing their dogmatic standing. Because of the iron-clad, sycophantic casing being built up around the models, anyone who tries to question them is instantly viewed as ignorant or on the “fringe”. The familiar pejorative “denier” has even reemerged.

Thus, there is a lot of inertia to overcome even to pose the following simple question:  Are these models meaningful and useful? For example, the Imperial College London’s model projected the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. to be in the range of 60,000 to 2,200,000. The upper limit in this projection is 36 times more than the lower limit! This huge spread seems decidedly imprecise (one might even say recklessly imprecise). This range is so wide, it sounds to us more like a wild guess than the output of an extraordinarily complex scientific model.¹

The output from the models is being used to estimate the virulence (deadliness) of COVID-19, and because of that they play a big role in the level of public panic and the perceived legitimacy of the government response. But as time goes on, real-world data being collected on the virus appears more and more to invalidate the models. For example, two new variables now in play have made The Imperial College London and University of Washington’s attempt at calculating a mortality rate moot. Recent testing for COVID-19 antibodies in people in different parts of the country are showing that far more people have already been infected with COVID-19 than are being reported by the CDC. In these people, antibody tests indicate a past COVID-19 infection from which the person has recovered. The more these “asymptomatic” past infections are discovered, the less lethal COVID-19 is revealed to be. These asymptomatic and/or recovered past positives, currently ignored by the CDC in their official count of infections, MUST be added to the “active symptomatic virus” positives. That total, representing both past and current positives, should then be used as the denominator  in the mortality rate calculation (mortality rate is #Deaths/#Cases).²

In addition, the CDC and some state health officials have changed their guidance for how to certify deaths due to COVID-19 (the numerator in the above calculation). The latest guidance now permits “presumption” of death by COVID-19 even without a positive test for the virus. Also, as we mentioned in a previous article, some states are including in their COVID-19 death count ANYONE who dies of ANY cause and has the virus present in their body. This obscures the real multifactorial nature of a decedent’s illnesses and makes COVID-19’s intrinsic virulence appear far worse than it truthfully is. A cynic might say that both these changes in how deaths are reported were done purposefully to “pad” the number of COVID-19 deaths in order to validate the original, venerated model predictions.

Unless both these additional variables are accounted for (the total number of infections and the number of deaths truly due to COVID-19 and not other causes), any calculation of a mortality rate will be woefully inaccurate and will falsely elevate the reported lethality of COVID-19 (at least in the U.S.). However, it is clearly the case that the mortality rate is far lower than the worst-case estimates the Imperial College London/University of Washington models originally indicated.

It is uncanny how closely the political and media takeover of COVID-19 “science” mirrors what occurred with climate “science”. Climate pseudo-scientists employed by the news media, hired as advisors to politicians, and implanted in social media completely took over the climate change “science” narrative. Two warring clans emerged – the saviors and the deniers. The aggressive in-your-face posture taken by the saviors loudly predicted imminent annihilation unless the government imposed draconian restrictions and spent gargantuan amounts of money on the problem. Sound familiar? The scheduled climate annihilation, which had to be rescheduled into the future several times, never happened. And while there have been observable physical changes from a slight increase in the earth’s temperature, humans have adapted. We are still nowhere remotely close to the apocalypse predicted by the activist climate change saviors.

The climate change story line has been playing out over a period of many years. Every single candidate for President in the 2020 Democrat primary race has passionately spoken of the extreme life-threatening climate emergency now upon us (most often described as an existential threat). So far however, both Republican and Democrat administrations since the late 1990’s have not given in to the massive spending and restrictive lifestyle measures the climate saviors claim are necessary. Imagine how those climate saviors must be feeling right now. In just two short months they’ve witnessed every level of government (federal, state, and local) produce an emergency response to COVID-19 of the same magnitude and scope they have been seeking for climate change for more than two decades.

As we learn more about COVID-19, it is arguable (at least to us) whether the massive government response actually effectuated a correspondingly massive mitigation. Regardless, the government has now shown that it is quite capable of producing such a gargantuan response in an impressively short period of time (aided greatly by having a successful business professional as President). This will no doubt reenergize the salivating, money-hungry climate change zealots (saviors). In addition, a host of other crisis activists will demand commensurate action for their pet cause since it has just been shown that the scale/scope of their demands is within reach as well.

Regrettably, what also has been shown is that the side effects from this scale of attempted mitigation are at least as bad, if not much worse, than the problem being addressed. Just as with climate change, we believe the best course of action for COVID-19 should primarily be adaptation (like we do annually with influenza) as opposed to large-scale mitigation. Here are some examples of the downsides of the excessively large government mitigation effort for COVID-19. We would expect these same things to occur in any future crisis response on this scale:

• Several Governors and Mayors across the country have gone overboard with directives and executive orders, far out of proportion to the viral threat and unconnected to any “science” relating to COVID-19.
• Almost instantly, the US economy plunged into recession and is on the doorstep of depression. More than 20 million people lost jobs in only 6 weeks.
• The news media focused only on how deadly and contagious the virus was, and barely mentioned that most of those infected had mild to no symptoms at all. Nor did they provide any explanation or reasoning for why this level of panic was absent in their reporting on other virus outbreaks like swine flu in 2009 (61 million infections) or the unusually deadly strain of influenza in 2017 (80,000 deaths with a vaccine in use³). A large segment of the news media is now cheerleading for the virus to remain with us and get even worse. It sells.
• It only took a month for parts of the population to start rebelling by protesting in state capitols and refusing to abide by restrictive stay-at-home orders. Lawsuits abound regarding freedom of religion and the authority of Governors to declare entire industries “non-essential”. Citizens legally bearing arms protested (with vehemence but without violence) in the Michigan Statehouse.
• The massive number of predicted hospitalizations due to the virus did not occur. Nor did the similarly predicted critical shortage of ventilators. Most of the hastily assembled infirmaries in stadiums, parking lots, and navy ships have all been dismantled without ever having been used for their emergency purpose at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars.

In our view, these side effects resulted from two main problems. First, the unprecedented size of the government response far exceeded the severity of the crisis. Yes, we know the sentiment that every human life is worth saving. But the consequences of this life saving effort on the well-being of hundreds of millions of other human lives must also be part of the equation. Second, some politicians will always use a crisis as an opportunity to advance an ideology, agenda, or their scope of authority, well beyond the boundaries of their position (or the Constitution). That happened in spades with COVID-19, with “science” being used as the justification (see our previous article). Call it power hunger or simple human nature, but when these shysters in statesmen’s clothing are thrust into the spotlight, bad behavior will inevitably occur, adding anger to the emotions of an already tense citizenry.

Lastly, the news media took the opportunity to amplify the negativity inherent in the monstrously outsized response enumerated above to sell more of their product. In the process, they instigated a false panic and will do the exact same thing again if the opportunity presents itself in a future crisis. To try and control the messaging, they bypassed the Executive branch of government and elevated scientists and/or physicians to the position of highest authority. The same was done for climate change. Aggrandizing the talents of scientists to include policy wisdom in addition to their technical scholarship falsely legitimizes creating the false panic. Science experts are also people just like the rest of us and are unsuitable for crafting public policy. They have a deep understanding (often very deep) of a specific topic and can be a tremendous resource for a decision maker. However, they do not have an equivalently deep understanding of all the other non-scientific variables in play in a multi-factored public policy decision. This is why the President, Governors, and Mayors, who weigh all those variables together, make policy and decide on government action.

We are huge fans of science and want nothing more than to see it advance and flourish in all fields. At the same time, we think scientists who become activists and/or incorporate a political ideology into their “expert” advice, do a great harm to science and mankind in general. Every time we now hear or read the term “climate change”, the first things that come to mind are controversy, hype, and doubt. Climate science is way down on the list. We sincerely hope the same is not in store for the health sciences.

¹Needless to say, it is the horrifying upper limit of this range that has been seized upon by the media and clung to with a death grip. We are supposed to be convinced that social distancing, quarantining, and business/school closures are the only thing that has saved us from reaching that higher number. Some science “experts” and governors are telling us we must continue some or all of these measures indefinitely (or at least until a working vaccine is available) else we will be punished by that higher death count.

²Technically, this is known as the CAUSE SPECIFIC DEATH RATE. See: https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson3/section3.html

³Many health experts and media pundits tell us that COVID-19 is much worse than Influenza. Not only has this not been proven, evidence exists to the contrary. The “experts” consistently leave out the fact that when they compare death and infection rates for these two viruses, a vaccine is in use for Influenza and not for COVID-19. Also, there are treatments and chemoprophylaxis for influenza that don’t exist for COVID-19, further reducing the lethality of  influenza. Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison or proper use of “scientific method”. Another obvious case of “spin” peddled by pseudo-scientists.