As you continue to follow this pandemic in the news and track the way our experts and political leaders are responding, I urge skepticism. Here are three things to keep in the back of your mind while consuming the news:
- The projections based on models have been unbelievably, embarrassingly bad. It’s like somebody threw a dart at Toledo and hit Bangladesh instead.
- Don’t give social distancing credit for the massive drop in numbers; all the projections included expectations of full social distancing and they were still astronomically off. We are being gaslighted right now.
- This is more of a framework item: What do you believe the role of government is? Should it protect us from ourselves, or protect our liberties and allow us to manage our own risk profiles? We’ve already seen major reductions in our liberties. Consider these questions:
- Traffic fatalities have dropped significantly during the quarantine (or, as I put it, house arrest). Would the government be justified to continue the shutdown in the interest of saving tens of thousands of lives from car accidents?
- There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of our annual flu numbers, but assuming the 60-80,000 annual death rate is accurate, why shouldn’t the government take similar measures to prevent those?
- Have you ever noticed that every time a crisis occurs, government asks for more power? They justify it as temporary, but their power levels never go down to the baseline. It’s a ratchet effect. Think the Patriot Act after 9/11. Governments all over the world are using this crisis as an opportunity to consolidate power and violate people’s rights. (link)
With those things in mind, here are some resources and additional voices that are worth paying attention to.
Knut Wittkowski, a biomedical statistician. He worked for 15 years with a leading epidemiologist on the HIV virus, and for 20 years he headed the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University, New York. He is currently CEO of a company which researches treatments for complex diseases.
Avik Roy, healthcare policy analyst and president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Ben Domenech of The Federalist interviews Roy about his newly-released plan to open the economy responsibly without having a vaccine, testing, or a cure for coronavirus. (link)
Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson), former NYT-journalist with an eye for data analysis and spotting BS. His tweet threads make for great reading.
Jonathan Geach, MD – He posted a very calmly and rationally piece to Medium, which was signed off on by multiple physicians, and Medium pulled it down because they thought he disagreed with the value of social distancing. After a couple of tweaks, he re-posted it and apparently it passed muster with the censors.
- April 11 article: “Eight Reasons to End the Lockdowns As Soon as Possible” (link)
- April 16 article: “Moving the Goalposts – Four Reasons it is Safe to Open America” (link)
- @jbgeach on Twitter
Steve Deace interview on the Cross Politic podcast, talking about the assumptions that inform the models and the most rational way to respond to the virus. His interview starts at the 18 minute mark. (link)
Ron Paul Liberty Report – lots of good content and commentary on the creeping authoritarianism of the state in response to this pandemic (link)
Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress is one of the clearest thinkers on the foundational issues in play with how societies should respond to natural disasters. His niche is looking at issues through the lens of human flourishing and fully understanding the myriad of trade-offs involved with any public policy. His book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” is just outstanding, one of the best books of popular level moral philosophy I’ve ever read. He’s articulate, compassionate, and reasoned. I’m linking here to an interview he gave to podcaster Tom Woods; Epstein is saying things about our response to this virus that I’ve not heard anywhere else. Highly recommended. (link)
An Evening with Michael Crichton (link) – this is not directly related to COVID-19, but it’s an extremely important and stimulating discussion of how an improper understanding of how the world actually works leads to grossly inaccurate conclusions.
I have been reflecting recently about what has influenced me over the years about how I understand and interact with the scientific establishment, the media, the pitfalls of data models, etc. I remembered reading a speech by Michael Crichton back in college, and how much it stuck with me. I dug it back up, and boy does it hold some incredibly wise and helpful insights for our current times.
I realize now that this speech was a significant red-pill moment in my intellectual development, especially in how to think about the complexity of our world and how foolishly we believe we can predict outcomes.
I HIGHLY encourage you to read it. It’s entertaining, gripping and paradigm-shifting. There’s even a Q&A afterward where somebody asks him about the next flu epidemic (this speech is 15 years old).
Obviously I’m not an professional expert on these topics. But I would ask you this: What is your frame of mind toward understanding the natural world? Do you have a simplistic, linear expectation of how everything works? Are you familiar with the scientific concept of a “complex system”? Are you aware of the scores of doomsday scenarios–from Y2K and overpopulation to power lines and magnets–that have been promised with total certainty by the corporate press and our scientific institutions staffed with experts? Are you aware of how often those predictions came to nothing? Zilch. Nada.
What it comes down to is this: you cannot predict what will happen in a world as immensely complex as ours. You cannot control complex systems; you can only try to manage them with humility. This speech is for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. (link)
