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It’s the Accountability, Stupid
Does transparency matter without accountability?
People who are actual professionals are accountable through licensing or malpractice liability. Physicians, architects, dentists, and civil engineers, for example, are accountable for the quality and fitness of the services they deliver. Plumbers, electricians, auto service techs, and roofers are all subject to implied or express warranties and bond requirements.
In stark contrast, the entirety of federal policy and law enforcement is now the product of increasingly unaccountable people. The operant theory, that elected officials controlling funding and appointments will provide accountability and protect the public interest, is no longer the reality. Civil service protection, the cult of experts, the replacement of shared ethical values with partisanship, and the sheer size of the Leviathan has created a new reality.
Our national COVID-19 policy was produced by academics and bureaucrats who were not only immunized against career loss but could count on the expanding consortium of mediocrity to punish and silence the competent. The virologists who prostituted their credentials to deny the rather obvious origin of COVID-19 have not been banned from social media nor drummed out of the profession. The sheer idiocy of masking toddlers, closing schools, and the rest of the unfounded mandate mentality has not resulted in mass firings of the perpetrators. Idiots are about to reimpose mask mandates without first having to account for the irrefutable statistical truth that masking did not work to reduce spread anywhere nor required to explain why it will work this time.**
Shouldn’t the entire world be able to bring a malpractice action against the irresponsible attention addict Neil Ferguson, whose model overestimated likely immediate COVID-19 deaths by multiples and terrified the US and the UK governments in drastic, costly, futile actions? The model was considered suspect by qualified people at the time. Not content to get it wrong from jump, Ferguson later produced a model which said that lifting lockdowns would result in an enormous death rate even though lockdowns and all other NPIs were having near zero effect. He was removed from his undeserved government advisory position not for being spectacularly wrong but because he failed to observe social distance with a married woman.
Ferguson and Fauci are poster boys for the credentialed class that let us down yet somehow has gathered unto itself the power to make accountability and criticism out of bounds. We are not even at the phony Janet Reno mode of accountability. Washington oohed and ahhed when she said she took full responsibility for the Waco catastrophe—but did not resign.
The overt corruption at the highest levels of government, from the brazen abuses of Lois Lerner to the outrage of Russiagate to the global embarrassment of the Hunter Biden fix, has resulted in temporary bad PR but zero personal consequence. Not only should Weiss and Garland be out of a job, but there should be a serious examination as to whether they get to keep their law licenses. Instead, both will likely be welcomed with partnerships in prominent firms or highly paid positions on the faculty at Georgetown.
We need something like a Thomas Andrews standard. He designed the Titanic and was on the maiden voyage. When the iceberg ripped the hole and he realized the bulkheads would fail, he got as many as he could to lifeboats and remained on board while it sank. Those who design a policy Titanic should be prepared to have careers go down with the ship. There should be an expectation of honorable resignation and accountability, the larger the policy impact, the greater the implicit guarantee. If honor cannot be re-instituted, then there must be formal applications of pain. Lots of pain.
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**If you want to dispute that, first show that you understand that the reference baseline is the regional seasonality curve, then produce a jurisdiction with stricter controls whose case curve differed from the rest of the region. Or else simply explain how it was possible for Germany and Sweden to have identical rates of infection and identical case curves despite Germans deploying the tightest masking requirements in the world and Swedes doing none of that. I’ll wait.
Published in General
I’ve given up on getting accountability from anyone in any part of the government. And with no accountability, people are free to announce, mandate and spread lies whenever they are so inclined. What they don’t realize is that when people are not held accountable (because we’ve given up on trying) they have zero credibility. But do they care?
Twenty years or so ago, people would announce that they were “taking full responsibility” for whatever the screw-up was and would immediately after that say “now, it is time to move on”. Of course, they dodged any consequences, but today they don’t even take full responsibility.
Is the AMA (American Medical Association) a standards and accreditation board or a trade industry cartel? You know what I think.
And of course, “mistakes were made.”
It’s neither. It’s a “spokesman” organization for perhaps 40% of physicians. I have never belonged.
Just my point of view as a medical layman. The Corona Virus was a cold virus on steroids. The elderly and individuals with weak immune systems were at the greatest risk of serious, or fatal medical issues. Like any cold virus it morphs, and as far as I know there is no cure, or vaccine to prevent catching a cold. The covid vaccines did not prevent becoming infected or prevent infecting other people. Neither did masks.
Was the phrase vaccine confusing. It was if compared to the polio, smallpox, chicken pox, or measles vaccines. The covid vaccines could mitigate the symptoms, but nothing more than that. In some cases, the covid vaccines could cause more harm in certain indvidual’s unrelated to covid.
If my take on Covid is wrong, please feel free to throw a brick or two.
Pretty accurate.
In a couple of paragraphs you are way ahead of Fauci, Birx, Collins, Redfield and the entire health bureaucracy in about 40 states. They would all state or imply that the bug is deadly to everyone, that it is only transmitted by unmasked actively infected people coughing or sneezing on other unmasked people and that the vaccines stop the spread. COVID was not eradicated because some people were unmasked and many skipped the third booster. They were never wrong because they are The Science.
Many times during that pandemic I found myself amazed at the stupid comments I sometimes heard. More than one vaccinated person complained about those “damn unvaccinated people” and the threat they presented. One woman in particular said she was afraid to go anywhere because of the unvaccinated people out there. Let me get this straight: You have taken a vaccine that you think is effective. What possible threat do I present to you if the vaccine is really effective? You’ve been told that if as an unvaccinated person I get the virus, I’ll be home, incapacitated, with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin. I won’t be out there to threaten you.
Great and appropriate post
A huge part of the problem is the Supreme Court granted immense and almost unassailable power to the Administrative State agencies that are operating almost totally outside the restraints of our Constitutional system of checks and balances that give our system accountability.
Furthermore the bureaucrats within these agencies with the exception of cops on the beat of course were given almost blanket immunity from persecution which meant there were no legal restraints to restrain horribly evil and criminal behavior.
SCOTUS sure didn’t help by inventing “Qualified Immunity” for police out of nothing.
That is why congress investigations are complete propaganda to drum up money and votes there will be no change other than your blood pressure going up. The republican have no intention of actually being tough on lawlessness if you work for the government. Government officials are the new nobility of our time.
The executive branch can’t be trusted to police itself. And the judicial branch can’t be trusted to Judge itself. Congress needs to give its self judicial power over prosecutions of judicial officials, and policing power over the executive branch, so we can have real checks and balances. Right now there is zero checks let alone any balance.
No. It’s Congress. Like Dorothy Gale (of Kansas) all Congress needs to do is click its heels three times and say “There’s no power like Article 1 power.”
Why they don’t exercise their powers is the challenge.
Goodness, you don’t seem to understand the situation at all. You seem to think that a vaccine is either perfectly effective or perfectly ineffective.
With a partially effective vaccine, the concerns of the unidentified woman that you mention are valid.
Because it’s bound to make them unpopular with SOME voters, no matter what they do. Shifting blame to the executive or judicial branches gets them off the hook.
Literally fall on your sword –> figuratively fall on your sword –> apology tour –> admitted but faceless departmental error –> ‘old news’.