At one of the early White House COVID press briefings Trump was riffing on his desire and intent to open the economy back up quickly. The press corps kept repeatedly asking if he would listen to what the scientists told him, refusing to accept his clear answer that he would "listen to a lot of people...including scientists, business people, economists..." etc...
He was, typically, quick to pivot off to some of his homemade "information" that obscured the basic sanity he was trying to sell, and the regime media was typically disinterested in letting nuance get in the way of their narrative.
I was watching this in real time (I think it was mid April 2020) and knew right then that we were in big trouble if Bad Orange Man gave in to the mob. He did and we were.
Reminded me of a video of three scientists explaining to a group of Canadian Senators why the global warming narrative was a hoax. Like many scientists, they made the mistake of talking in scientist lingo. At the end of their hour long presentation, one of the Senators said (paraphrasing) "We don't understand this stuff so we must listen to the scientists making the most noise". For politicians ignorance is bliss. For the rest of us their ignorance it is hell.
What's so shockingly ironic is that Vallance was (and likely still is) so preoccupied with massaging his own alleged big brain and ego that he, not only makes insulting remarks about his own PM's IQ, but he also never even considers that it is him who doesn't understand his own "science" well enough to teach it to another adult. "If you can't teach it to a 5th grader, you don't understand the subject matter."
There needs to be a rigorous postmortem on USA response to the pandemic but in our hyper-partisan society it is unlikely.
Retiring Pres. Eisenhower's farewell speech also warned about a scientific-technological elite that might have undue infuence on government and impair democracy. We saw that in the Covid-19 response and it is ongoing regarding climate issues. Rational debate on both has been and is being suppressed.
"There needs to be a rigorous postmortem on USA response to the pandemic..."
I'd like to see a postmortem devoted exclusively to USA nursing homes. The advantages of that to trying to look at the whole U.S. are:
1) Nursing homes are far more homogeneous with respect to the population: the people are all approximately the same age and in same physical condition:
2) We know much more about what people were doing, with respect to where they were--or were not-traveling, and whether they were--or were not--outside.
3) We also know much more about the housing conditions...what the ventilation systems are like, what people are in which rooms, what other people they come in contact with.
4) Nursing homes were affected *far* more than the U.S. population as a whole. Per Bard AI (which has been known to smoke funny cigarettes ;-)), the U.S. nursing home population is less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. population, but almost 25 percent of deaths from COVID-19 through January 2022 were nursing home residents.
I have noticed that those who cannot do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense. Worse still, all too large a percentage of the people who gravitate towards politics are functionally innumerate. Not illiterate; some of them are brilliant speakers and writers with a gift of gab and a way with words. Just can't handle things like compound interest, fractions, percentages and time and distance problems. Such folk are easy marks for manipulation by an "expert" with a confident manner and some one-lunged computer model worked on a hand-held calculator. The UK has quite a long list of such debacles. Mad cow disease projections, repeat crib deaths, and yes, projections of deaths from COVID in lieu of lockdowns. More cautionary tales than success stories.
Well put. Thomas Sowell has been my go to guy on many subjects for a long time. His clarity and use of empirical evidence has helped me understand many aspects of economic, social, political, educational and racial issues. If only our leaders would read his writings and leave the “expert “ opinions alone. Of course he often points to the politicians as the problem.
Great analysis Roger. This descriptor: "The result was a group with narrow technical expertise that was providing freelance policy guidance well outside their capabilities" — likely applies to 90% of climate, energy, environmental, emerging technology, and bioethics advisory committees in the US over the past two decades [including the recent NAS Accelerating Decarbonization report.] It would be interesting and useful to develop a framework and rubric by which to assess and compare major/influential advisory committees, the institutional, ideological, and political factors that influence composition and selection, and ways to address. Let's add it to the list of collaborations!
Either you have already hired an editor, or you are getting much better at proofing your own copy - I couldn't find a single nit to pick. congratulations!
Makes me think of Brian Wynne's Science’s hermeneutic imperialism;
“After seamlessly extending from informing policy, to justifying resultant political commitments, science now plays a further role … as de facto author of public meanings, thus also of proper public concerns”
Wynne, Brian. 2014. “Further Disorientation in the Hall of Mirrors.” Public Understanding of Science 23 (1): 60–70.
Roger, your analysis certainly shows shows that the information provided to our leaders was not helpful. What is more interesting is how virtually all Western nations moved in unison to adopt extreme measures seldom contemplated before - probably driven by social media, not expert opinion.
In fact driven by orders from above, we know the World Bank and IMF were dictating policy to governments in exchange for huge grants and loans. This was planned economic destruction, wealth transfer to the uber-rich and from SMEs to giant multi-nationals and more onerous oppression of the rights and freedoms granted to us since even the Magna Carta. Violations of even the Nuremburg code were declared acceptable. Supportive expert opinion was bought and paid for, contrary expert opinions were suppressed with criminal sanction, widespread censorship and career destruction. What happened was the epitome of True Evil, and with the new W.H.O. plans to entrench this outrage.
If the costs of projected warming are in line with mainstream economic assessments, the expenditure of World War sums of resources chained to 2° hard targets and below water on benefit for cost at some level of price per tonne of CO2 mitigated may add up to the greatest bamboozlement in history
We're living in it. Get the economists to the table
At least WW2 had actual beneficial results to show for the horrific costs of life and treasure. The climate imperialists are not even zero sum. They are imposing costs that are "winter eith no Christmas".
A cautionary example about letting scientists give policy advice comes from the Manhattan Project. About 50 of the world's leading physicists signed a letter advocating giving nuclear secrets to Stalin.
Brilliant scientists often have terrible judgement outside of their specialty.
A recent court ruling in Canada regarding a ban on single use plastics was written by a judge with a B SC. and a Masters in biochemistry. She wasn't fooled by the specious arguments about their toxicity and wrote a damning ruling against the ban essentially calling out the junk science.
We need more jurists and politicians with strong scientific backgrounds on these complex scientific matters such as plastics, climate change, etc. For that matter, we need journalists with the same background to call "b.s." when they see it.
It will happen again, even worse. Now they are solving the problem by taking all decision making out of the hands of national governments and putting it in the hands of the 100% corrupted W.H.O. a "stakeholder" run operation lead by a war criminal. So our elected politicians will just defer to the W.H.O. rather than make policy as they were sworn to do.
Not fair. Al Gore took a science class! He got a C- but he is clearly qualified to become a subsidy billionaire and buy a house on the beach. Some scientist is going to give HIM advice?
The error here is to assume the politicians give a shit about anything except themselves.
At one of the early White House COVID press briefings Trump was riffing on his desire and intent to open the economy back up quickly. The press corps kept repeatedly asking if he would listen to what the scientists told him, refusing to accept his clear answer that he would "listen to a lot of people...including scientists, business people, economists..." etc...
He was, typically, quick to pivot off to some of his homemade "information" that obscured the basic sanity he was trying to sell, and the regime media was typically disinterested in letting nuance get in the way of their narrative.
I was watching this in real time (I think it was mid April 2020) and knew right then that we were in big trouble if Bad Orange Man gave in to the mob. He did and we were.
Reminded me of a video of three scientists explaining to a group of Canadian Senators why the global warming narrative was a hoax. Like many scientists, they made the mistake of talking in scientist lingo. At the end of their hour long presentation, one of the Senators said (paraphrasing) "We don't understand this stuff so we must listen to the scientists making the most noise". For politicians ignorance is bliss. For the rest of us their ignorance it is hell.
What's so shockingly ironic is that Vallance was (and likely still is) so preoccupied with massaging his own alleged big brain and ego that he, not only makes insulting remarks about his own PM's IQ, but he also never even considers that it is him who doesn't understand his own "science" well enough to teach it to another adult. "If you can't teach it to a 5th grader, you don't understand the subject matter."
There needs to be a rigorous postmortem on USA response to the pandemic but in our hyper-partisan society it is unlikely.
Retiring Pres. Eisenhower's farewell speech also warned about a scientific-technological elite that might have undue infuence on government and impair democracy. We saw that in the Covid-19 response and it is ongoing regarding climate issues. Rational debate on both has been and is being suppressed.
And I love the sound of "bamboozled" !!
Nice work RP.
"There needs to be a rigorous postmortem on USA response to the pandemic..."
I'd like to see a postmortem devoted exclusively to USA nursing homes. The advantages of that to trying to look at the whole U.S. are:
1) Nursing homes are far more homogeneous with respect to the population: the people are all approximately the same age and in same physical condition:
2) We know much more about what people were doing, with respect to where they were--or were not-traveling, and whether they were--or were not--outside.
3) We also know much more about the housing conditions...what the ventilation systems are like, what people are in which rooms, what other people they come in contact with.
4) Nursing homes were affected *far* more than the U.S. population as a whole. Per Bard AI (which has been known to smoke funny cigarettes ;-)), the U.S. nursing home population is less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. population, but almost 25 percent of deaths from COVID-19 through January 2022 were nursing home residents.
I have noticed that those who cannot do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense. Worse still, all too large a percentage of the people who gravitate towards politics are functionally innumerate. Not illiterate; some of them are brilliant speakers and writers with a gift of gab and a way with words. Just can't handle things like compound interest, fractions, percentages and time and distance problems. Such folk are easy marks for manipulation by an "expert" with a confident manner and some one-lunged computer model worked on a hand-held calculator. The UK has quite a long list of such debacles. Mad cow disease projections, repeat crib deaths, and yes, projections of deaths from COVID in lieu of lockdowns. More cautionary tales than success stories.
Well put. Thomas Sowell has been my go to guy on many subjects for a long time. His clarity and use of empirical evidence has helped me understand many aspects of economic, social, political, educational and racial issues. If only our leaders would read his writings and leave the “expert “ opinions alone. Of course he often points to the politicians as the problem.
Great analysis Roger. This descriptor: "The result was a group with narrow technical expertise that was providing freelance policy guidance well outside their capabilities" — likely applies to 90% of climate, energy, environmental, emerging technology, and bioethics advisory committees in the US over the past two decades [including the recent NAS Accelerating Decarbonization report.] It would be interesting and useful to develop a framework and rubric by which to assess and compare major/influential advisory committees, the institutional, ideological, and political factors that influence composition and selection, and ways to address. Let's add it to the list of collaborations!
Why do all of these scientific graphs look like a hockey stick? It is the instrument which is used to prod politicians into making bad policy.
That is the purpose, yes.
Decision based evidence making at its finest.
A nice turn of phrase. Still laughing.
Would love to say I came up with that one but alas, no.
Not that smart.
Whoever coined that should get a special place in science and politics.
Roger,
Either you have already hired an editor, or you are getting much better at proofing your own copy - I couldn't find a single nit to pick. congratulations!
Ha!
You have me on my toes ;-)
:)
Makes me think of Brian Wynne's Science’s hermeneutic imperialism;
“After seamlessly extending from informing policy, to justifying resultant political commitments, science now plays a further role … as de facto author of public meanings, thus also of proper public concerns”
Wynne, Brian. 2014. “Further Disorientation in the Hall of Mirrors.” Public Understanding of Science 23 (1): 60–70.
And, of course in the USA, the Great Barrington signers, experts in both epidemiology and policy,were suppressed by the government.
Roger, your analysis certainly shows shows that the information provided to our leaders was not helpful. What is more interesting is how virtually all Western nations moved in unison to adopt extreme measures seldom contemplated before - probably driven by social media, not expert opinion.
In fact driven by orders from above, we know the World Bank and IMF were dictating policy to governments in exchange for huge grants and loans. This was planned economic destruction, wealth transfer to the uber-rich and from SMEs to giant multi-nationals and more onerous oppression of the rights and freedoms granted to us since even the Magna Carta. Violations of even the Nuremburg code were declared acceptable. Supportive expert opinion was bought and paid for, contrary expert opinions were suppressed with criminal sanction, widespread censorship and career destruction. What happened was the epitome of True Evil, and with the new W.H.O. plans to entrench this outrage.
If the costs of projected warming are in line with mainstream economic assessments, the expenditure of World War sums of resources chained to 2° hard targets and below water on benefit for cost at some level of price per tonne of CO2 mitigated may add up to the greatest bamboozlement in history
We're living in it. Get the economists to the table
At least WW2 had actual beneficial results to show for the horrific costs of life and treasure. The climate imperialists are not even zero sum. They are imposing costs that are "winter eith no Christmas".
A cautionary example about letting scientists give policy advice comes from the Manhattan Project. About 50 of the world's leading physicists signed a letter advocating giving nuclear secrets to Stalin.
Brilliant scientists often have terrible judgement outside of their specialty.
A recent court ruling in Canada regarding a ban on single use plastics was written by a judge with a B SC. and a Masters in biochemistry. She wasn't fooled by the specious arguments about their toxicity and wrote a damning ruling against the ban essentially calling out the junk science.
We need more jurists and politicians with strong scientific backgrounds on these complex scientific matters such as plastics, climate change, etc. For that matter, we need journalists with the same background to call "b.s." when they see it.
Yes
And the government immediately announced they would appeal, this time finding an appropriate innumerate liberal judge to give the right decision.
So important to look back and analyze mistakes. Otherwise, it’ll happen again.
It will happen again, even worse. Now they are solving the problem by taking all decision making out of the hands of national governments and putting it in the hands of the 100% corrupted W.H.O. a "stakeholder" run operation lead by a war criminal. So our elected politicians will just defer to the W.H.O. rather than make policy as they were sworn to do.
Not fair. Al Gore took a science class! He got a C- but he is clearly qualified to become a subsidy billionaire and buy a house on the beach. Some scientist is going to give HIM advice?
The error here is to assume the politicians give a shit about anything except themselves.
Al Gore flunked out of Divinity school.
Too bad. There's big money in some of those preacher operations.