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Time to Screen ‘Experts’?
The ‘expert class’ failed us on COVID. Now, people who failed spectacularly (and even vindictively) are gathering to foist a new federal layer of technocratic rule to make sure that all states and local jurisdictions follow the same bad policy when the next pandemic arrives (or anything that can be used as a pretext for a declared health emergency like obesity or guns). (See, The COVID Ratchett Shows Up on the indispensable Powerlineblog.com) The chutzpah of these people is truly stunning. The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a National Public Health System (no, I had never heard of them before, either) naturally calls for federal control of all health “issues” because even more centralized control by malignant, self-interested, partisan buffoons must always be the right answer.
If we are going to have such a gathering, shouldn’t we insist at a minimum that the participants are among those who got it right on COVID? We ought to clean house anyway. The data was available from the onset of the pandemic. Studies have been abundant. But many “experts” served the command-and-control zeitgeist instead and thus betrayed both science and the American people. Shouldn’t they learn to code or make lattes instead of policy? Should we fund organizations that keep such people on staff?
If one is a credentialed professional and a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, I think one is automatically eligible for whatever emergent government advisory confab takes place. For everybody else, I have prepared a simple screening protocol:
- Please provide copies of all public statements, social media content, and/or articles written or co-authored by you regarding:
- The efficacy of lockdowns, closures, and restrictions on public gatherings or movements.
- The efficacy of school closures
- The efficacy of masks as a general suppression measure
- The efficacy of vaccines as a spread reduction measure
- The likely cost-benefit of any of the measures listed in a, b, c, and/or d above.
- The advisability of legal or other sanctions against individuals who refuse vaccination or mask-wearing.
- The Great Barrington Declaration
- The phenomenon of seasonality with respect to the spread of COVID-19
2. If you ever endorsed lockdowns and/or restrictions on movement and commerce, what was the date you acknowledged that these measures were entirely ineffective? (Which material(s) provided pursuant to Item 1 above document that claim?)
3. If you ever stated that masks would be measurably effective as a general suppression strategy when did you first acknowledge that the data does not (and never did) support that opinion? (Which material(s) provided pursuant to Item 1 above document that claim?)
4. If you ever stated or implied that the position taken by the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration was wrong, what was the date on which you conceded that their recommendations were in fact correct. (Which material(s) provided pursuant to Item 1 above document that claim?)
5. If you ever took the position that the vaccines would work to reduce spread and that justified sanctions on the unvaccinated, what was the date upon which you amended, corrected, or reversed this position. (Which material(s) provided pursuant to Item 1 above document that claim?)
6. If you ever endorsed the practice of making school children wear masks or endorsed extended school closures, what was the date upon which you acknowledged that these measures were not effective and actually harmed children? (Which material(s) provided pursuant to Item 1 above document that claim?)
One can be a public health expert on a government panel if and only if one of those who got it right or made a demonstrable, timely effort to get it right, and like a true scientist, quickly admitted it when the data proved one’s position wrong. Maybe what really need is a federal agency in charge of putting permanent large mandatory asterisks next to M.D. or Ph.D. after the names of people who flunk the screening test above because they were spectacularly wrong on COVID.
Why shouldn’t fake scientists be “canceled”?
What would you add to the screening inquiry above?
Published in General
While acknowledging the futility of attempting to bring accountability to the public sector “expert” class, I’ll make one addition to your sensible list of questions:
n+1. Do you agree that scientific integrity demands that dissenting opinions be tolerated and permitted, and that any attempt to censor the public expression of minority viewpoints on scientific topics is anathema to free and robust inquiry and contrary to the very nature of science?
Yep. When opposing opinions are censored, that is not science, it is Lysenkoism.
Plus how do we know who and what the minority is?
We have thousands of scientists, researchers, doctors and others who have been unafraid of expressing their opinions on issues ranging from Global Climate Crisis to the COVID hoax and the resulting faulty leaky vaccines.
What makes the public view these opinions as being “minority” is that the media now has been bought out and paid for by the BillGates/WEF/WHO end of things.
Now more than ever the public needs a robust media with actual journalists unafraid of revealing the truth.
But as Alex
BernsteinBerenson found out, if you express any viewpoint other than that sanctioned by the Overall Grand Poubahs Favored by The PTB, you will lose your spot at the New York Times, and go almost overnight from being a celebrated reporter to being a pariah.Excellent point. “Minority” has nothing to do with the number of people who support an idea; it has to do with the viewpoint that is out of favor with the PTB.
I believe Alex is pursuing a lawsuit against Twitter and the courts have agreed he can go forward in his suit. I need to check on the status of that.
As far as point 6, Facebook is now employing several formerly well placed executives from Pfizer to oversee content the normal consumer at FB might be providing.
Right now there is a big campaign to go after anyone on FB who present any posts and comments about how pointless masks are. Even actual studies, even studies touted by the New England Journal of Medicine, are not to see the light of day.
Because apparently keeping us masked up is one effective way to instill the idea that COVID, monkeypox and polio are abundantly present in the air we breathe, so we can’t spread about any ideas that masks do not work at all.
Berenson?
Yes. I heard him interviewed and he had kept Twitter informed on what he was going to tweet, and they said fine. Until they didn’t. And then kicked him off. Here’s a summary.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/30/twitter-loses-bid-to-toss-alex-berenson-lawsuit-00029131
He left the NYT well before reporting on the pandemic.
Yes! Thank you. Before my morning coffee hits, here in Calif, one name is as good as another!!
I did not state that he was booted out from any reporting he did on the pandemic.
My wording in the pertinent comment prior to my mention of Berenson was this: We have thousands of scientists, researchers, doctors and others who have been unafraid of expressing their opinions on issues ranging from Global Climate Crisis to the COVID hoax and the resulting faulty leaky vaccines.
I meant to do a search using yandex.com but was trying to get out of the house before the 100% heat hit this Am.
I just ran the search, and find many mentions of Berenson, including his summer 2020 Fox News acknowledgement of Sen Cotton, who became another pariah of the NYT’s.
In any event, I’d love to remember exactly why he was booted out of The Times. Anyone here know what it was?
I don’t think he was booted out. That was my point. He left and wrote novels and a book for parents on marijuana.
My problem with the “Experts” is the lack of introspection and self-correction. The beginning of COVID was charting unknown territory. I would have had more respect if the CDC had something like “We don’t know how this will go. We feel that best practice is masking and social distancing until we study and determine if those strategies are effective”. And then they would have time to study and revise. But they instead dug their heels in. Masking forever because were are experts and can’t be wrong!
Same thing with the vaccines. We were sold that they were effective and they weren’t as good as they thought. They insisted that the jab was just as good as natural immunity and it wasn’t. Fearmongering isn’t science, it’s control.
FIFY
Tom Nichols would weep at this post
Make him cry hard.
But one thing – they did know how it would go. That info is all there in the Event 201. (The event was sponsored in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)
What is chilling is that as much as that Event showed the public the draconian protocols that would be utilized, and specifics of what would go on, it also shows that it is not over yet.
The end date in the simulation is 2025.
To any here who would make the argument that Fauci was not part of that event – he is a proxy of Bill Gates. So he had to know, or else he is so obtuse that his resignation should have been tendered last year.
Any of us who bought: “The Real Anthony Fauci” a number one best seller by Robert F Kennedy Jr, were able to discover that far from being in unfamiliar territory, the COVID “pandemic” resembles to a great extent the AIDS “pandemic.”
Same manipulative crap employed in both “pandemics.”
One) having mass media eagerly disseminate – with nary a question – the fear porn Fauci requires for his pandemic to be a success.
Two) Utilization of the faulty, error-prone PCR test to be the testing standard. This is done despite the inventor of the PCR, one Terry Mullins, laying out in several interviews the test is to be used for cancer detection, not infection detection. (But the inaccuracies are necessary to propagate huge numbers of AIDS-infected and COVID-infected patients.)
Three) Dismissing the actual remedies for both infections as “being too risky and too ineffective.” So bactrim, a cheap and effective solution for AIDs was put aside for use with those patients, while Fauci ciortled away at how it should not be used as soon a “Gold Standard” would be tested and approved. The fact that 17,000 patients died before AZT came about was rarely reported on. Then with COV, patients were not offered HCQ w/ zinc or ivermectin, as doing that would have made it illegal for Fauci to proceed w/ negotiations with Pharma for a vaccine. (HCQ etc were both cheap effective remedies & nowhere at all near as risky as the killer vaxxes are.)