Perhaps the most demoralizing aspect of the COVID pandemic is the way public health officials and political leaders have not just botched the science, but taken it out, beaten it, run over it, beaten it some more and then paraded the disintegrating corpse in an Iron Maiden.
The whole point of science is learning from observation, yet here we are, eight months into the outbreak and most public health figures are still acting like there is zero progress in treatment for the disease and instead we have to resort to medieval tactics like quarantine and societal shut down.
Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of people are dying from other causes. Just last week we learned that the several hundred thousand Americans receiving chemotherapy had their treatment interrupted, which will likely prove lethal for many of them who otherwise might have beaten the disease.
The same is true for those with heart conditions, depression, addiction, and a host of other maladies.
The notion that society can 'wait out' an easily communicable disease is completely without any scientific basis, and yet health department officials and their political masters have the gall to accuse anyone who questions their bizarre (and often contradictory) pronouncements as being "anti-science."
Another aspect is the constant fear-mongering by medical officials, who keep warning of "cases rising." This is a monumental deception. The increase in positive tests is the inevitable result of increased testing, not disease spread. It's like anything else - if you look for something you have a better chance of finding than if you don't look at all.
The tests are imprecise, and don't always indicate whether one is still contagious or even suffering any ill effects.
Last week Michigan was rocked by the news that hospitalizations are up 80 percent. Oh no! Lock it down!!!!
But wait, 80 percent of what? If there were only five patients and you get four more, that is in fact an 80 percent increase but not enough to justify massive societal disruption.
None of the hospitals are even close to capacity. Ingham County, for example, has been locking down dorms and frat houses with wild abandon, yet as I write this there is a single patient in hospital.
I'm sure some wag will say: "SEE, the lockdowns are working!" but far from containing the spread of the disease, these tactics virtually ensure everyone in the confined area will get it.
The president is right - COVID is something we have to live with, just we humanity lived with smallpox, cholera, and influenza. Hiding in one's basement until it goes away is a recipe for far greater harm.
It will conclude by noting that the stout resistance of the governors who allowed the disease to spread through nursing homes is also profoundly anti-science. Essentially they want to protect themselves from political embarrassment - and the also protect the professional reputations of their medical advisors.
This is also a blatant assault on good medical practices and it should not be allowed to stand. I'm sure they hope that such inquiry as does eventually happen will be soft-pedaled and reduced to "things were done, events happened" and be quietly ignored by an incurious media.
That's how 'science' works these days.
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