On Fraud and Covid-19

Lies our media brings us

My Substack has my picture dating from just prior to Pandemic lockdowns when my wife and I were walking on Clement street in San Francisco and stopping by a window an artist is using to entertain pedestrians. If you enlarge the picture you have a sort of metaphor. A boot above the Chinese warrior stepping on a Gumby. I gaze on the window with a sardonic smile. At that time naturally news from China was informing the world that a virus was ravaging the country.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/24/how-the-disinformation-industrial-complex-is-destroying-trust-in-science/

Much has changed in science since the pandemic and much of it is change for the worse. The pandemic has highlighted the loss of credibility of the public health establishment and the often toxic nature of current public discourse. John Ioannidis stands out as perhaps the best example of a fine scientist who was smeared and denigrated mercilessly both online and in the literature. There was also a flood of fraudulent papers and badly flawed studies. This made claims that we should follow the “The Science” almost laughable, given the extremely poor quality of much of the science. The use of coercion was inexcusable when there was no rigorous basis for it.

John Ioannidis was perhaps the most famous victim of a broad ranging culture of censorship and suppression. As [1] summarizes:

“The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences and responses of highly ac- complished doctors and research scientists from different countries who have been targets of suppression and/or censorship following their publications and statements in relation to COVID-19 that challenge official views. Our findings point to the central role played by media organizations, and especially by information technology companies, in attempting to stifle debate over COVID-19 policy and measures. In the effort to silence alternative voices, widespread use was made not only of censorship, but of tactics of suppression that damaged the reputations and careers of dissenting doctors and scientists, regardless of their academic or medical status and regardless of their stature prior to expressing a contrary position. In place of open and fair discussion, censorship and suppression of scientific dissent has deleterious and far-reaching implications for medicine, science, and public health.”

Epidemiology

One of the first things that became obvious to me during the pandemic was that viral epidemiology was a primitive science dominated by crude mechanistic explanations that lacked quantification. One article that led me to this conclusion was [2]. I reproduce a part of the abstract here.

“The epidemiology of influenza swarms with incongruities, incongruities exhaustively detailed by the late British epidemiologist, Edgar Hope-Simpson. He was the first to propose a parsimonious theory explaining why influenza is, as Gregg said,”seemingly unmindful of traditional infectious disease behavioral patterns. Recent discoveries indicate vitamin D upregulates the endogenous antibiotics of innate immunity and suggest that the incongruities explored by Hope-Simpson may be secondary to the epidemiology of vitamin D deficiency. We identify – and attempt to explain nine influenza conundrums:

• Why is influenza both seasonal and ubiquitous and where is the virus between epidemics?

• Why are the epidemics so explosive?

• Why do they end so abruptly?

• What explains the frequent coincidental timing of epidemics in countries of similar latitude?

• Why is the serial interval obscure?

• Why is the secondary attack rate so low?

• Why did epidemics in previous ages spread so rapidly, despite the lack of modern transport?

• Why does experimental inoculation of seronegative humans fail to cause illness in all the volunteers?

• Why has influenza mortality of the aged not declined as their vaccination rates increased?”

It is blindingly obvious that the spread of viral epidemics is riddled with unknowns, is a badly ill-posed problem and models will all be wrong, and mostly badly wrong. Yet modeling played a significant part in motivating the policy response to Covid19.

https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity