It shakes. It convulses. It casts off its old body. It emerges softer and more flexible.
Don’t kid yourself. It’s still a tarantula.
Clare Foges writes in the Times, “We need Big Brother to beat this virus”.
Hands in the air! Step away from the Easter eggs!” The Keystone Coppery of recent weeks has had some people muttering darkly that we are heading the way of a police state. Those who style themselves as defenders of ancient British liberties will soon have bigger fish to fry: the digital surveillance tools that government hopes to use to trace the infected. Prepare for dire warnings of state intrusion and an avalanche of Nineteen Eighty-Four quotes on social media warning that Big Brother is upon us.
Yet if we are to beat a path out of this pandemic without destroying our economy, overblown concerns about threats to our liberties must be countered by pragmatism. To recover some semblance of normality before a vaccine is found, we must accept the need for the state to access more information about ourselves, our health and our whereabouts — and not waste precious weeks arguing about it.
Look east to see how digital surveillance is an integral part of returning to “normal” life. Hong Kong has mandatory tracking wristbands for those in quarantine. In Taiwan the phone-tracking system is known as an “electronic fence”; those who are meant to be in isolation will be visited by the authorities if their phone is turned off. In South Korea the pooling of data from credit card use, mobile phones and CCTV cameras means that they can detail the movements of an infected citizen down to where they sat in the cinema and which bar they went for a beer in afterwards — and in less than ten minutes can trace and contact the woman who was sitting two stools down. Public support for these measures is high, for the simple reason that they are working.
That might also be, in part, because the people of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea trust their governments more than we trust ours — which is not entirely unreasonable in the case of Taiwan and South Korea when compared to the UK, New York, or California.
Apart from the sarcasm, there is nothing illiberal about checking that infected people stay in quarantine, as they do in Hong Kong and Taiwan, or indeed here in Estonia:
South Korea is a different matter.
Perhaps South Korea has gone too far. OTOH their approach made it possible to avoid a full lockdown while still keeping a low death rate. On the whole i prefer the Estonian approach to the Korean approach.
Evil bollocks in the Gladrag.
This Foges hag needs to be arrested and run through a soviet or chicom gulag for just 6 months. If she survives she should have been cured of her desire to lick tyranny’s ballbag.
The “Big Brother” total control of the population via force and fear (totalitarianism) policy has FAILED.
It has NOT saved lives – as is clear from comparisons of nations that have gone down the totalitarian “lockdown” road and those that have not. And is also clear from comparing those American States that have embraced totalitarianism (total control of the population by force and fear – known as “lockdown”) and those States that have not done so – even if allowance is made for the latter tending to be more rural than the former.
As for the Times – it has, like most of the newspapers (with the exception of Telegraph) been a handmaiden of tyranny.
It is now clear that the policy of tyranny has failed – that far from saving lives it will COST MANY LIVES (the lives lost by the economic collapse). Yet the Times still supports tyranny.
The British television stations (not just the BBC – but perhaps it is the worst) are also handmaidens of tyranny. No pro liberty television stations are allowed in this country.
There is no excuse, none, for continuing to support tyranny – people who do still support tyranny are scum, and they should be treated as the scum they are.
All the suffering and deaths that the economic collapse will cause – are upon their head.
The Times really is despicable – as in the 1930s Appeasement of Nazi Germany, it has gone down the road of supporting the “experts”.
If the government “experts” made the final policy move, actually making dissent a criminal offence, the Times would support that as well.
After all Professor Pigou (Cambridge – the so called moderate “orthodox” alternative to Keynes) argued that opposing higher taxes should be made a criminal offence. This is an even easier thing to argue for – as one can pretend that forbidding dissent will “save lives”.
I can see the argument now “arguing against lockdown will lead to deaths as people break the wise policy of the government – so to SAVE LIVES we must forbid dissent”.
Nor is the Times the exception – it is the NORM.
The “mainstream media” are produced by the education system – and the education system is rotten to the core.
The education system (the schools and universities) teaches “evidence based” totalitarianism.
The “New Atlantis” totalitarianism of people such as Sir Francis Bacon – whose “science” can best be understood by remembering that he wanted to forbid people from saying that the Earth went round the Sun.
That is the doctrine of no rights AGAINST the state – “evidence based” tyranny, when there is no evidence (but one is not allowed to say there is no evidence).
The doctrine of Francis Bacon, William Petty, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Jeremy Bentham – the doctrine of no rights (none) AGAINST the state.
@Paul Marks 12.12pm. ‘Paul Pigouu…argued that opposing higher taxes should be made a criminal offence.’
A citation would be welcome.
Until then I am going to remain very sceptical about this.
Paul: you don’t know what you are talking about. Let’s look at the facts.
–Sweden vs Denmark & Norway.
In Denmark & Norway, a lockdown was imposed when fewer than 5 people had died. In Sweden, there is no lockdown.
As of today, the deaths per million people from the CCP virus are 3 times more in Sweden than in Denmark, 6 times more than in Norway:
Sweden: 213 pm
Denmark: 70 pm
Germany: 69 pm
Norway: 37 pm
Estonia: 35 pm*
Finland: 32 pm
* with an early, but very partial shutdown which lets most people go to work, while all children attend online classes.
–Estonia: mainland vs Saaremaa.
In early March, a volleyball team from Milan played on the island of Saaremaa. As a result, at one point about 40% of the confirmed cases were in Saaremaa, with a population of 2.5% of the nation. The government cordoned off the island and eventually imposed a full lockdown on the island, but not on the mainland. (Hoping that a 40% reduction in future infections could be achieved with 2.5% of the lockdown.)
It worked: while the increase in the mainland has always been approximately linear, in Saaremaa it looked exponential before the lockdown, now it looks to be exponentially decreasing. (Look at the plot in this article.)
—Lombardy.
In Lodi, the lockdown was imposed on Feb.24. The result: a linear increase, as you can see from the plot at the link.
In Bergamo, the lockdown was imposed on March 9. The result: an exponential increase until about March 15, as you can see in the same plot.
–Italy as a whole.
A total lockdown was imposed when there were few cases in the South, and lo and behold, the South has not has anywhere as many deaths as Lombardy.
As you can see here, deaths in the South range from 41 pm to 95 pm in Southern regions, while they are 1302 pm in Lombardy as of today. Even yesterday, there were more deaths in Lombardy than in the whole of the South, by a large margin.
The evidence seems clear: EARLY and intelligent lockdowns work. As for LATE and stupid lockdowns, such as the Boris lockdown, the evidence is disputable.
Smited! It’s been so long since the last time!
The debate seems to be between full lockdown, enforced by police vs. voluntary measures or partial lockdown such as wearing face masks, hygiene, social distancing, no mass meetings (sports, concerts etc.), stay at home for vulnerable people (the old and sick).
Seems that total lockdown indeed results in somewhat less deaths.
The question remains if this reduction in death cases justifies the lockdown.
Note also that the economic harm or loss would occur in both cases, it’s mainly result of the plague and not of the government imposed lockdown. That is – the government lockdown is not the main reason for the economic catastrophe.
And then there is the need to prevent infected people to circulate freely and infect others. Sure, enforcing quarantine on infected people is justified.
It’s important to remember that when comparing results with lockdown against those without, we can’t just tally up the final numbers, for the simple reason that when the lockdowns were imposed, the potential risk was not fully known. Was this a mere flu or an historic plague? Looking back with clear sight is not the same as trying to peer into a murky future.
Therefore on the no-lockdown balance, we also have to add in the amortized risk that this virus could have killed millions or tens of millions of people. There is no point pretending now that we were absolutely certain that it would not. We were merely certain that it was unlikely to do so. But exactly how unlikely?
I am not arguing that this amortized risk of the unknown necessarily justified the economic self-destruction that we have witnessed, merely that in our post-pandemic analysis we have to remember to add it into the balance. Otherwise we end up sounding like those useless American media bints carping on about how Trump should have shut down the country last October.
Are the lockdowns preventing deaths or just spreading them out over a longer period? Presumably we won’t know that until the whole thing has run its course and we start to analyse the numbers.
@Snorri Godhi
Paul: you don’t know what you are talking about. Let’s look at the facts.
Perhaps if you look at the facts filtered through your lens of perspective. You notably list only countries that did better than Sweden whereas France, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK all did worse despite their brutal lock downs. The behavior of this virus is extremely odd, so the only thing to do is look at the data big picture.
As to US states, the data is plain and readily available, in fact, if your hypothesis is “do lockdowns reduce the death rate from Covid19?” it forms about as good an experiment as you can expect. Pull a spreadsheet with death rate per state and population density. Compare states with no lock down with those that have a lock down of similar density. You will see that those states without a lockdown actually have a lower death rate, not higher.
I heard this claim on the news and was utterly incredulous. So I pulled the data myself from public web sites. And was frankly gobsmacked with what I found.
Here are the numbers, look for yourself. This is all the states listed in increasing population density. The states with in bold are not in lockdown, the rest are all in lockdown. (First column is the state name, second column is deaths per million, third column is population density, people per sq. mile — or might be square km, can’t remember which I did.)
I chose density since that seems to be one of the primary factors for disease spread, but I imagine you can use other factors too.
If there is a good reason for the lock down (and given the total destruction of the economy, there had better be a DAMN good reason) then the states with similar densities should have much worse death rates. But that isn’t true, in fact exactly the opposite is true, generally speaking these states fared better, in some cases much better.
For example, the one’s with the closest density are Colorado (on lockdown) with 92 deaths per million, compared to three non lockdown states, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas that had 29, 43 and 15 deaths per million respectively. Or locked down Kansas with 38 deaths per million compared to non locked down Utah, which had 11. Or Nevada, locked down with 59, compared to not locked down Nebraska 22.
To me this is about as good an experiment as you can get. And the data does not at all support the cause of lockdown. I’m not saying lockdowns make things worse (though you could argue that from the data), I’m just saying there is little reason from the data to think they make things better. And the burden of proof, demands overwhelming proof that this total self immolating lockdown is without a shadow of a doubt necessary. Please note, I am not cherry picking the data here, this is the complete data from this experiment, and every single non locked down state fared better than comparable density locked down state.Every, single, one.
Columns are (State, Deaths Per Million, Density)
Alaska 12.00 1.10
Wyoming 10.00 5.92
Montana 13.00 7.27
North Dakota 19.00 10.78
South Dakota 10.00 11.47
New Mexico 34.00 17.25
Idaho 32.00 21.38
Nebraska 22.00 25.01
Nevada 59.00 27.86
Kansas 38.00 35.41
Utah 11.00 37.76
Maine 29.00 37.99
Oregon 19.00 42.87
Colorado 92.00 55.32
Iowa 29.00 56.07
Oklahoma 43.00 56.61
Arkansas 15.00 56.75
Mississippi 65.00 61.45
Arizona 33.00 63.85
…etc… (No other non lockdown states with greater densities)
There are absolutely no limits to the rights and freedoms that the state can abrogate in the cause of public safety; and what is worse, many people will thoroughly approve, and then demand even more restrictions. The desire for liberty is surprisingly unpopular.
“As to US states, the data is plain and readily available, in fact, if your hypothesis is “do lockdowns reduce the death rate from Covid19?” it forms about as good an experiment as you can expect.”
It might be if the choice of whether to lock down or not was randomised. As it is, you can’t tell whether the lock down caused the severity, or the severity caused the lock down, or some other factor caused both. Do you think it possible that when cases start ramping up alarmingly, that might *cause* a governor to declare a lockdown?
The fact that there are some cases that *don’t* fit the pattern, as Snorri shows, indicates there are other factors at work.
@Nullius in Verba
The fact that there are some cases that *don’t* fit the pattern, as Snorri shows, indicates there are other factors at work.
That is plainly true. One need only compare the results in CA and NY. They are so dramatically different you’d think is was a different virus, even though they aren’t. Moreover there seems to be research to suggest that smokers are less affected than non smokers, which is bizarre given that the disease causes mortality by reducing the capacity of the blood to take up oxygen, something that, obviously, coating your alveoli with tar also does. Which is to say the application of common sense here isn’t effective, because the behavior doesn’t seem to track with common sense.
But I think perhaps you are missing my point. I am not making the strong claim that lock downs make the death rate worse, I am making the much weaker claim that the data doesn’t support the hypothesis that it dramatically decreases death rate. Give the massive cost in terms of money and human lives of locking down the economy you had better have pretty damn good data to support that action. AFAIK, the evidence is not strong at all. The burden of proof is very much with those who would put the country under house arrest, and I’m afraid that King of the World Fauci hears every objection and bats it away as a “distraction”, as if he isn’t answerable to us. As if the fact that the public health authorities have been wrong, dramatically wrong, in pretty much every prediction they make, is not something to be embarrassed about, or something to cause self reflection.
Lock downs make sense, but, as mentioned above, this virus doesn’t follow common sense, so the best we can do is look at the data. And the data finds public policy wanting.
But we will find out soon enough. Georgia is unlocking. In the next couple of weeks we will see what effect that has. I would say that even if you think I am wrong, you should hope and pray that I am right.
Why does she trust Boris Johnson and his Tory minions with so much power?
I had to go back and check that I hadn’t wandered into a global-warming discussion here.
(To be clear – I agree with Fraser Orr in this, and merely note that the arguments and tactics in both controversies seem identical. “We must do X because there’s some small chance that catastrophe will result if we don’t.” And the only way to prove or disprove either position is by not doing X.)
“To be clear – I agree with Fraser Orr in this, and merely note that the arguments and tactics in both controversies seem identical. “We must do X because there’s some small chance that catastrophe will result if we don’t.””
In the space of four weeks, the USA went from 20 deaths per day to 2,000 deaths per day. All I can say is if the climate scientists had managed to show a temperature rise like that, there would be a lot more belief in climate change!
Hockeystick graph!
More hockeysticks!
We know that, and in the UK at least, the rational for the lock-down was to protect the NHS. They may have paid lip-service to protecting the vulnerable, but the actions of the health boards across the UK has been to leave the aged and vulnerable exposed and allow the virus to sweep through the ‘care homes’ with wild abandon.
The sensible course of action would have been to quarantine those residents in care homes and the people working in care homes. But no, a better idea, leave the care home residents exposed and lock down healthy people.
Coupled with the fact that every civil servant now wants to justify the lock-down, which results in anyone dying in a 50ft radius of a COVID-19 virion getting classed as dying of COVID-19.
Fraser Orr writes at April 25, 2020 at 5:29 pm, with surprise:
Doubtless the whole issue of effects is very complicated. This is especially time lags, effects across state and foreign boundaries, climatic seasonal effects and how they vary with latitude – and to a lessor extent other climate/seasonal factors such as continental/maritime and east versus west maritime. There are social super-spreading one-off events too, like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and some football matches in Spain, Italy and the UK and the Cheltenham UK horse race event. There is also the likely large effect of a transport system based particularly on underground railways – eg NYC and London UK.
However, surely lockdown is the decision that follows a high death rate (to try and stop it getting even worse), rather than the death rate being the consequential thing in any way except through the above sorts of complicated underlying factors (and population density) plus (very strongly) delay.
Keep safe and best regards
I know. Just imagine what higher level of faith people might now put in “Science!” had they not been faced with a decade of climate crap.
The AGW push has been rather costly for our reverence for scientific advocacy. Too many prostitutes spoil the soup, I guess.
Given that we have no cure and no vaccine, I don’t see how lockdowns are going to dramatically reduce the death rate. What mechanism is at work that achieves that? It will still be out there.
And while not having so much prevalence might reduce the final death toll by a little bit, it will be more than compensated for by all those people dying with heart attacks, delayed operations etc as a consequence of having shut up shop for so long.
Come out of lock-down, rates rise, and the call goes to lock down again? How long can you play that game for? Next really bad influenza season are we all going to lock down again? Are we going to reintroduce compulsory tracking via phones every new strain?
The problem with dramatic “solutions” is that they become the norm. They should be imposed with much more care.
I would be less resistant to intrusive emergency measures if I thought they would go away after the epidemic passes.
The concern was health care services would be so oversubscribed people who would otherwise survive with treatment will die from lack of care, something which happened in Northern Italy. In that case slowing down the rate of disease transmission would save lives. If you assume we a) have enough health resources for the very ill and b) won’t see a cure or vaccine until it’s all over anyway then indeed the lockdowns serve no real purpose. I’m not sure either of those assumptions are valid, particularly the second.
NZ is experimenting with isolating until there is a vaccine or cure. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out if none come along in the next two years.
It’s a long time to have no international tourism, trivial overseas investment in and out (who is going to invest when you can’t see your investment or meet the management?), greatly reduced international sports etc.
I’m picking it will be at least two years before we have a vaccine that is known to be effective and distributed around most of the world.
The New Zealand electorate will have a say on the course pursued on 19 September 2020. I suspect they’ll decline economic suicide based on GIGO pandemic models.
Very, very cautiously optimistic, but it seems that the Apple/Google tracking app uses the anonymised system I linked to a couple of weeks ago.
If we are to go down that route, then I can only hope that we use this system. I cannot imagine what justification can be given (/S) for any other system, given that this one will work on practically every smart-phone in the world.
Eric: “The concern was health care services would be so oversubscribed people who would otherwise survive with treatment will die from lack of care ”
But government being government, has shut down all other services in the medical sector in an attempt to ‘clear the decks’ for the COVID-19 onslaught.
The effect of that is that regular treatments are not being conducted, people with chronic conditions are not being treated. And the wards are empty, doctors and nurses are standing idle. In the US there is talk that some hospitals will lay off medical staff soon.
The most terrifying phrase in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.”
This is what i meant when i wrote that the UK lockdown was not only LATE but also STUPID.
But i must really emphasize LATE, repeat LATE, because some people here, e.g. Fraser, are not getting the message.
“I would be less resistant to intrusive emergency measures if I thought they would go away after the epidemic passes.”
I’d bet that some, maybe most, of them will – enough to convince most people that normality has returned – but the ratchet will click on another notch or two.
“Very, very cautiously optimistic, but it seems that the Apple/Google tracking app uses the anonymised system I linked to a couple of weeks ago.”
Yes. But one worry I’ve heard is that Google, at least, intends to build it into the OS itself, rather than offering an app.
“The sensible course of action would have been to quarantine those residents in care homes and the people working in care homes”
They did. Maybe not all of them, but I have a friend who manages a group of care homes across the South-West. They and their staff were quarantined, enforced by the police, after one confirmed case in early March (I’m not sure exactly when, because I don’t hear from her often, but I do recall it being the first quarantine I’d heard of, even before Italy).
In the US during 2017 the total number of deaths was 2,813,503, which works out at 7708.2 per day.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
In the UK (England and Wales) during 2018 the total number of deaths was 541,589 = 1483 per day.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2018
I wonder how this compares to the current situation and whether the current death rate would indicate that extreme measures are called for?
“I wonder how this compares to the current situation and whether the current death rate would indicate that extreme measures are called for?”
See the ‘hockeystick’ links I posted above. (I’ve not checked the source of the statistics, though.)
Yes, I’ve heard that too – I’m ok with that, on the proviso that data remains anonymised, and that it is still opt-in (which is my current understanding).
I think they have a big PR job to do, in order to convince people that it’s truly anonymous. I think a lot of people will be thinking “yeah, right…”, and that would be it’s death-knell.
This comment is in reply to Fraser’s criticism, that I “list only countries that did better than Sweden whereas France, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK all did worse despite their brutal lock downs.”
I listed Norway and Finland because they have population densities, climates, and cultures similar to Sweden.
I also listed Denmark because it has similar climate and culture to Sweden, and the only other metropolitan area in the Nordic countries comparable to Stockholm.
The other countries i listed, you can take or leave.
I listed Germany because it has greater population density than Denmark, let alone Sweden, and nonetheless managed to keep the number of deaths to a lower level.
I listed Estonia because i am there: call it smugness. (Estonia does have similar pop.density and climate, and a fairly similar culture.)
Meanwhile, your list of “France, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK” is highly biased, because, apart from Italy and Spain*, those are the only countries in the world with death rates (from the CCP virus) higher than Sweden. They also have pop.densities much higher than Sweden.
* I neglect San Marino and Andorra, but you could include New York, either city or state.
Furthermore, you totally ignore WHEN the “brutal” lockdowns (which in fact are in no way “brutal” in Belgium and the Netherlands) were imposed. Fairly mild lockdowns in Denmark and Norway were imposed when there had been less than 10 deaths, and in Finland when there had been no deaths yet. The important thing is to act EARLY, repeat EARLY.
Boris acted LATE and acted STUPIDLY, inter alia by leaving the border open, and not cordoning off London.
Why did he leave London open? Londoners don’t vote for him anyway!
Because Kurt Russell’s getting too old to do a third film.
The assumption I find bizarre is that an early lockdown confers perpetual immunity.
If you assume a lockdown is worthwhile, then it has to continue until a cure / vaccine is proven.
If you do what Sweden has done, you still have an economy to support luxuries like a health system by midsummer not a smoking hole in the ground.
Prof Ben Ami of Tel Aviv contends that lockdown makes little difference.
The other bizarre assumption is that Swedish cities are somehow less dense than UK or German ones, 80% + of population live in urban areas in all 1st world countries, population density in N York moors is very low as well.
The population density on the Diamond Princess on the other hand was sky high.
Evidence is tending more towards zinc deficiency in body as the major determinant of ability to fight.off virus.
That’s, um, not the assumption behind lockdown. Um. At all. Lockdown is predicated on the idea of not overwhelming the health services in various countries, not about conferring immunity (it may or may not the be the right approach, that’s still up for grabs).
The major issue is that we’ve undermined a belief in experts, through various fuck-ups, so that we have this bizarre thing where everyone is an armchair epidemiologist, despite having no qualifications whatosever.
The libertarian approach is neither, of course (Bakunin):
“Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.”
neonsnake
You make a comment like that, without knowing it to be true. I shall give your comments appropriate weight hereon.
Thank the AGW industry for that. Never has it been so clear that a scientific “expert” will say whatever serves his political or financial bent.
Bobby:
That is a factor, no doubt. But i’d think that, in the current crisis, a much more important factor were all the people, beginning with the ChiComs and the WTO and continuing with CNN, Boris, Sadiq Khan, DeBlasio, et al, telling other people that there is nothing to worry about; that it is racist to close the border; and that, in the US, it is “un-American” to close State borders to New Yorkers and Louisianans.
(The EU similarly tried to prevent restrictions to movement between member countries, but fortunately it was largely, if politely, ignored.)
Snorri:
I tend to agree with you, but I think it also goes deeper.
The people that you mention might have some “expert” component about them, but they are primarily political creatures. We expect them to lie to serve their own interests, and we have expected lies from such figures for centuries.
But there is also a different class of person out there – the true “expert” – the scientist who has devoted his life to the study of global temperature, or viral characteristics – in whom we have continued to have faith. These people have always been perceived to speak truth – fact – as a habit. We look to these people to tell us that the earth orbits the sun to the dismay of the powerful who believe differently.
But now, our faith in even this class of scientist has been shattered. We see the Michael Manns of the world, who spout nonsense and end up strangely rich afterwards. We see “scientific” opinions about Covid-19 that strangely support the political parties of the “experts” holding them.
We’re used to the Deblasios of the world blowing smoke up our butts. But now, the Copernicuses are doing it too. To me, this has been a sea change. And I think it started in seriousness with AGW.
As contraire, the lockdown boosters do not have an exit strategy, require perpetual closure of ports and quarantine of all people passing through them in order to achieve the objective of the lockdown.
The health industry has been underwhelmed in UK etc, death rates are within 10 year average variables and yet any time lossening the lockdown is suggested, the screeching is overwhelming.
Perhaps all paid from the public purse should have a 20% cut in pay & pension to help them concentrate on the economic effects of their advocacy.
That is disrespectful to Copernicus, who was in my view more of a Renaissance man than Leonardo: a pioneer in astronomy, but also in economics; a military leader, and also a physician of repute.
But basically, i agree. For me, the turning point was when Nature, Science, and Scientific American ganged up on Bjorn Lomborg (who did not even dispute that AGW is real!)
I was in a Comp.Sci. department in Denmark at the time, and my colleagues sided with Nature, Science, and Scientific American against their fellow Dane!
Still, i question whether that has much relevance to the current crisis.
I myself tend to be an alarmist wrt the CCP virus, but not because of any models: because i have looked at the numbers, and done a bit of modelling and stats myself.
At the opposite extreme, there must be lots of people who do not question the CAGW dogma, but do not feel like staying at home right now. (Not a problem for me, since here we are not required to stay at home!)
“But there is also a different class of person out there – the true “expert” – the scientist who has devoted his life to the study of global temperature, or viral characteristics – in whom we have continued to have faith. These people have always been perceived to speak truth – fact – as a habit. We look to these people to tell us that the earth orbits the sun to the dismay of the powerful who believe differently.”
They’re still there. Who on Earth do you think it was that exposed and opposed the AGW scandal so effectively? Steve McIntyre, Ross McKittrick, Nic Lewis, Judith Curry, Craig Idso, Keith Idso, Sherwood Idso, Roger Pielke, Anthony Watts, Andrew Montford, Sallie Baliunas, Tim Ball, Don Easterbrook, Nir Shaviv, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, Henrik Svensmark, Joseph D’Aleo, Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever, Richard Lindzen, Craig Loehle, Nils Axel-Morner, John Christy, Pat Michaels, Chris De Freitas, William Gray, Bob Tisdale, and thousands more. Around 25% of scientists were climate sceptics, and very few were climate activists. The vast majority kept their heads down, and didn’t get involved. As is proper if you haven’t studied a subject in depth yourself.
You can’t take it that because in a very small number of subjects with highly divisive political implications a small number of scientists became political activists and corrupted the science, that all science and scientists are the same. Climate science is to science as witch doctor is to doctor. At the same time, it is a salutary lesson in the basis of the scientific method itself – that you take nobody’s word for it. Experts have no authority. What experts can properly provide is a guide to the evidence, and it is the evidence that we should use to judge. Can it survive sceptical challenge? That is the only proper basis for scientifically justified belief.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” We are all susceptible to many biases and fallacies. Scientists are trained to know and recognise a lot of them, but they can fool themselves too. And one of the easiest ways to fool yourself is to turn your scepticism on and off depending on whether you like the conclusions. When we like the conclusion, we celebrate the wonders of science and engineering. When the conclusion is unwelcome, we suddenly remember all the past failures and errors of science and orthodoxy, the fallibility of scientists and authorities, all the reasons justifying disbelief. Copernicus, Galileo, Semmelweis. But that isn’t scientific scepticism. That’s just another variety of bias – of lying to yourself, and indirectly to other people. Scientific scepticism requires that you make the effort to be sceptical irrespective of whether you like the conclusions, and knowing of your own biases, that you take extra precautions against fooling yourself where you are most apt to be fooled.
It takes more than just a general suspicion of conclusions you don’t like, or that contradict your preconceptions. You have to do what Steve McIntyre did to Mann’s Hockeystick graph. He downloaded the data, reconstructed the code, traced the origins and methods used to generate the data, and showed in detail, with maths and graphs and explanations, exactly why it was wrong. McIntyre patiently answered the objections, the sceptical challenges, and his reasoning survived. That’s science. And in that sense, the AGW debate was one of the most perfect examples of the Scientific Method in action, demonstrating how an assorted bunch of retired analysts, interested amateurs, and principled outsiders with the Scientific Method on their side could take on the Academic Establishment, the political powers, big money, governments, vested interests, and some of the most virulent ideologies going and comprehensively win the argument. Proper science stopped the Climate Change movement in its tracks, to the point where they were forced to drop it and go silent for ten years, and only then try to revive it, hoping that the new generation of voters would have forgotten. Sceptics had no money, little political influence, and no organisation, but they had the Scientific Method, and that’s what won.
So yes, the Copernicuses are still here, and the AGW debate is the best possible demonstration of that fact. And that’s why you still need to present better evidence, and subject it to sceptical challenge, and not go fooling yourself. Because we’re all vulnerable to falling into the same trap the climate scientists did.
Educated people who have been around a while know a few things from harsh experience:
1) don’t trust experts with an agenda. WMD in Iraq, the “inevitable” Brexit crash, the population bomb, etc, etc, etc. As soon as political judgments are involved, experts are worse than educated people, who at least are hesitant in their opinions and willing to debate.
2) there are bedwetters and drama queens everywhere, especially if the risk in new. People who mountain climb are currently locked up at home in fear! People are crashing their cars due to excessive speed while wearing face masks. And panic spreads.
3) the media are unbalanced. They won’t run with a story that mostly people are getting PPE, preferring instead some activist in one spot who claims otherwise. When you add in TDS and Brexit anxiety they get even worse.
So when “experts” say things, we are forced to unpick their agendas. Just believing “experts” is foolishness of the first order.
Meanwhile the people I speak with are listening to those epidemiologists who are non-political and discussing the meaning of what they say. They don’t dispute the technical facts. They do discuss and disagree on the implications of them. Moreover the epidemiologists don’t agree either, so we are forced to choose between competing authorities.
I believe that that death rate without lockdown but with strict distancing measures will be about 0.2% nationwide. And there are experts who think that too. They are not the ones who get the most air and print time though, because the journalists are among the worse panickers.
As a voter it is actually my duty to keep myself informed. I’m not going to decide to allow my “betters” to make bad decisions for me unopposed because you don’t like the fact that people now have a strong interest in epidemiology. They should.
That was my own turning point as well – when the people to whom we the untrained-nonscientists could turn to vet the experts whose opinions we ought to respect lined up squarely behind those whose opinions I already didn’t respect. Most of us non-scientists need guiding lights to nudge us towards the correct scientific viewpoints, and those guiding lights are all being extinguished or outnumbered. There are facially-reasonable scientific pronouncements to fit most any side of scientific controversies that become political issues, and we the non-qualified can no longer tell the difference.
I agree with everything that you wrote. I know they’re still there. But I, and most people who are not STEM PhDs, simply aren’t qualified on our own to know which to believe. We end up having to take someone’s word for it, and so increasingly we end up migrating to those whose opinions are “on our side.” Which, as you say, is a horrible way to learn truth.
We’ve had sufficient time for the adequately curious amongst us to do some of our own amateur research on AGW, and so your list of heroes matches my own.
But we’ve not had that opportunity to self-improve regarding Covid-19, and so our acceptance of one viewpoint or another tends to be . . . without wisdom. It’s been made into a political question by people who profit by doing so, and our guiding lights – our “expert” classes – are contradictory, and thus dark.
“I agree with everything that you wrote. I know they’re still there. But I, and most people who are not STEM PhDs, simply aren’t qualified on our own to know which to believe. We end up having to take someone’s word for it…”
It’s a hard problem. All I can suggest is that you keep asking questions, asking for better explanations. But there’s no guaranteed road to truth, even for those with STEM PhDs!
I should, perhaps, add that contradictory experts is a good sign. If disagreement is allowed/encouraged, you’re more likely to be looking at a real scientific debate. Climate sceptics often disagreed and argued with one another.
Chester:
I’d think that even 0.2% is an over-estimate…
But it all depends on which nation we are talking about. Am i correct in my understanding that you are in New Zealand? Over there, as over here, it is quite feasible to have strict distancing measures without lockdown.
But do you seriously think that in NY City you can have strict distancing on the subway without a lockdown?
Seriously??
NOW they are the worst panickers, but only because there is a chance of blaming Trump. When the blame had to be put on the ChiComs, the media dismissed the risk.
We might have an interesting discussion here about rational ignorance, but right now i don’t feel like it. Let’s just say that you’ll have a more realistic picture if you think about your own survival, and the survival of people close to you, than if you think about the interests of society as a whole.
“I’d think that even 0.2% is an over-estimate…”
The error margins are quite broad on that particular figure.
But take the example of New York. The population is about 8 million, about 10,000 have died, and roughly 20% of the population have been infected. So 10,000/(0.20 x 8,000,000) = 0.625%.
However, the number depends on the age and susceptibility profile of the population (more older people, more diabetics and similar health conditions, more ethnic minorities, more AB blood groups, quality of health service, etc.) so will differ from place to place. I’ve seen estimates ranging from about 0.3% to 3%, which is why I generally use 1% as a ballpark figure in my own estimates, but the evidence on it is unarguably fuzzy. Personally, given New York, I’d say below 0.2% was possible but rather unlikely. But disagreement (especially coming with better data!) is welcome.
Yes, that’s the “these people have been wrong over and over, so clearly I’ll have to trust my own instincts” effect.
Chester Drawers: “So when “experts” say things, we are forced to unpick their agendas. Just believing “experts” is foolishness of the first order.”
Then there is the instance where for example, a left leaning propaganda operation like the BBC will wheel out it’s pet ‘expert’ who happens to be, but is frequently not identified as, an advocate for a Left wing charity or NGO, and the opinion solicited is presented as incontrovertible fact.
If we don’t believe ‘experts’ any more, it’s because there are too many snake oil salesmen calling themselves ‘experts’.
An esteemed colleague of mine used to characterize experts as; ‘ex’, as in has been, ‘spurt’, drip under pressure.
Nullius:
Yes, i arrived at a similar estimate for NY City.
The population fatality rate in Bergamo province was 0.57% in a recent estimate. Assuming that most people in Bergamo have been infected, this is in good agreement with the New York estimate.
But please note that Chester Draws wrote: “with strict distancing measures”. With strict distancing, it should be possible to keep the death rate below 0.2% until one of Trump’s treatments is proven to work 🙂 and becomes widely available. And a treatment does not have to be 100% effective: it is only necessary that it reduces the transmission rate as effectively as strict distancing. Or it could be that it’s enough to wear masks at all times. That would create problems in bars and restaurants, but maybe they can set up cubicles.
“With strict distancing, it should be possible to keep the death rate below 0.2% until one of Trump’s treatments is proven to work”
Surely that affects both numerator and denominator of the dead/infected ratio by the same amount?
Or are you talking about the dead/population ratio?
Yes. Population fatality rate.
In that case, I agree. If you can keep R0 below 1, there’s no reason you couldn’t keep the population fatality rate to below 0.02%.
I agree; that was the thrust of the second half of the paragraph I quoted.
Definitely; as you say partly because I think the information itself is contradictory and often counter-intuitive; and because of the different agendas floating around.
As best as I can tell, the basics are fairly consistent – it’s got higher a transmission rate than we’re used to dealing with, the 2m distancing thing seems more-or-less to be universally accepted.
The advice on masks has been very inconsistent, though, although it seems to be settling down in favour. And then then there’s just a whole bunch of technical stuff that no-one appears to know yet, which is affecting the political decisions being made.
Keeping R0 below 1 with strict distancing alone seems wildly optimistic with this virus.
A more realistic goal would be to keep R0 “low enough”, say close to 1, by using the measures least damaging to the economy. Which measures are least damaging, will depend on location.
OTOH if the percentage of people currently infected is very high, then bringing R0 below 1 might be advisable.
“if percentage of people currently infected is very high”
if the percentage is already very high, then you’re well past R_0_ and it’s going to go below 1 pretty sharpish all on its own as it runs out of people to infect…
James Strong – look it up for yourself.
Most certainly he did not use the words I used – but that is what Professor Pigou meant. He did not want people to be allowed to oppose taxes being at a certain “necessary” and “just” level.
That is very true but they comprehensively lost the University politics argument even as they comprehensively won the scientific argument. (For example, Dr Judith Curry was far from the first voice in public – I believe she raised issues privately for some time – and in that and other ways was far from the most irritating challenger in any sense, but she was rewarded by being driven from her university domain.) They lost the scientific argument but they did much better in the contest to control the institutions, the credentialling and the peer review.
This speaks directly to what bobby b and others are saying. When ‘expert’ means someone with a credential and a post in an institution, then the more you respect the scientific method, the less you respect ‘experts’. McIntyre et al won the scientific argument admirably – I began following them years before ‘climategate’ and that’s over a decade ago now. But credential culture merely hates them all the more for it. So, as bobby b says, anyone who lack a Ph.D. (gained in an older time of rigour) in a STEM subject and/or the time to do what McIntyre and others did, or even to follow them, finds the very rule of thumb that once said, “Trust the experts” now rightly says, “Distrust the ‘experts’ “.
“Most certainly he did not use the words I used – but that is what Professor Pigou meant.”
Most certainly. What words did he use, then?
“So, as bobby b says, anyone who lack a Ph.D. (gained in an older time of rigour) in a STEM subject and/or the time to do what McIntyre and others did, or even to follow them, finds the very rule of thumb that once said, “Trust the experts” now rightly says, “Distrust the ‘experts’“.”
But the rule ought to be “distrust everybody”, including yourself.
I note that former PM, Brown and Blair, have said we need a one-world government to beat the pandemic. Guys this plugged in have, it seems, figured that global warming is wrung dry. Won’t get them were they want to go–which is where the rubes fork over their money and freedom. So they need a new looming catastrophe.