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Quote of the Day: Dishonorable People
“One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.” — Thomas Sowell
This statement by Thomas Sowell is almost a truism to many of us; anyone who studies the political scene might roll his or her eyes in response. Can we trust anyone on the political Left?
But if we move beyond the obvious, we realize that our trust of some people that we thought we could trust must, at the very least, be viewed with skepticism. As sincere as Dr. Fauci, Dr. Brix, medical authorities, and model makers may be, we must now question the validity of their statements, challenge the way they interpret the data, and how they communicate their views to the public. Those of us who like to give education, authority, experience their due now must ask, “Are all those credentials enough for us to trust anyone?”
Who are the people on the COVID-19 scene and in the public sphere whom you can trust?
Published in Group Writing
Your are right it – it is partly true. The money went to the “Echo Health Alliance”, but not all of that went to the Wuhan lab. The research was to investigate the spread of CoronaVirus in bats. This article in the Business Insider has some information – Business Insider
Interestingly, the article includes to a Snopes investigation. I really don’t trust Snopes, but this seems like a pretty reasonable summary:
This is how I interpret the manner in which President Trump continues to deal with Chinese and North Korean leaders for example. Many in the media act as if Trump’s continuing to describe Xi and Kim as friendly nice fellows means he won’t call them when they act out of bounds. I don’t think that at all when Trump praises these leaders.
Can you suggest one or more valid reasons? It seems that might depend on why that research was banned here.
I am not familiar enough with the subject to know the answer. I am only open to understanding why someone thought it was a good idea. We do other investigations in Bio 4-level labs where we are not questioning the need for/value of the research but where the failure to follow safety protocols could also have tragic outcomes. So Dr Fauci should be afforded the opportunity to explain why he thought the research was necessary to be carried out, why he picked Wuhan for that research, and why he thought that safety protocols were adequate? I can imagine I could be persuaded by his response to the first proposition, less for the selection of Wuhan and possibly not at all by the third.
Just to be clear, the quotation is not from my comment, but from Hoyacon’s.
It looks to me as if “trust,” which implies that we’ve given some thought to the matter, and that we’re looking to find individuals who meet certain criteria which we think define them as “trustworthy,” is something that an awful lot of people don’t care about anymore. We seem to be in a reactive world (largely driven by social media and traditional media) in which we wait, tongues hanging out, for the next “expert” (doesn’t matter who it is, or where he’s from) to show up on TV or in print and say something vaguely along the lines of what we want to hear (and of course, people on different sides want to hear different things), and at that point the feeding frenzy begins, with all sides lining up behind the last person on their side that they heard from, and off they go, yelling themselves blue in the face until the next time.
When you “trust” someone, it also implies that you will give careful consideration to their opinion even when it doesn’t closely reflect your own, or even when it is in opposition to your own. That’s what “trust” means. But rarely, these days, does it seem that “trust” survives the moment when those we “trusted” yesterday say something we don’t like, today.
We’re all flawed. And we all make mistakes. Maybe that renders all of us untrustworthy. Or all trustworthy. In an age when a person’s stupid and immature prank in high school can almost derail a presidential campaign decades later, but an accusation with some supporting evidence of sexual misconduct by a sitting United States Senator gets a pass, in both cases solely because of politics, I just don’t know anymore.
I “trusted” Charles Krauthammer. I can’t think of too many more people in public life that I trust, and I can think of almost no current politician that I trust. Tom Cotton and Dan Crenshaw seem trustworthy enough, but I can’t say I really know all that much about them. (Trust, for me doesn’t necessarily imply knee-jerk agreement with every position or utterance, as I said above.) I trust very few people in my personal life too. Because I’ve learned over the years that trusting the wrong person, depending on one’s investment in him or her, can have devastating and even disastrous consequences.
The question that often occurs to me is why certain people, especially politicians whose lives are an open book, and whose words and actions are a matter of public record, can possibly believe that they deserve the trust of anyone at all.
PS: All pronouns with the exception of “I” (with which I’m speaking for myself) are representative, and not directed at anyone in particular, let alone any of “us,” or “you.”
Excellent comment, @she. All of these comments are causing me to assess what trust is for me. I think that generally I will experience a conditional trust with someone I don’t know or know well. (There was a time when I simply didn’t trust anyone.) Over time, the trust either grows or becomes compromised. And if it becomes severely compromised, it’s very hard to ever get it back; I may maintain a relationship with a person who has disappointed me for limited, relatively unimportant situations. But never go deeper.
I also find that on an initial meeting, alarms may go off when I meet a person. If the alarms are loud enough, I steer clear; if there is some reason I’m willing to pursue the relationship, I will proceed with caution.
Folks, I think that the Fauci/Wuhan lab story was basically fake news. It’s disappointing if Laura Ingraham pushed it.
This was discussed last week at this post by Ontheleftcoast. The story didn’t even connect the research to Fauci, just to NIH funding, and Fauci’s organization being affiliated with the NIH. It wasn’t an attempt to modify a bat virus, it was studying the transmission of a coronavirus from bats to pigs. At least, this is what was reported in the articles misleadingly linked from the main article — the one I considered to be “fake news” — which was in the Asia Times. Their article was not even supported by the other articles that it linked.
I cannot be 100% sure that this story is fake news. It was not substantiated in this source, and the linking of other articles supposedly supporting its assertions, when they did not remotely provide such support, led me to conclude that it was a strange propaganda piece.
:: nods vigorously ::
Answering the question in the OP: At the moment, I generally trust Mendel, Rodin, Locke On, VDH, Heather MacDonald, the Daily Wire guys (Shapiro, Klavan, Knowles), HR McMaster, Peter Robinson, Richard Epstein, Dr. Bhattacharya, and Mike Pence. This does not mean that I think that they are always right.
Edited to add Steve Hayward.
I have decent trust for Niall Ferguson (not Neil Ferguson), President Trump, and Dan Crenshaw. I would tend to trust Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Lindsay Graham based on past performance, though I haven’t seen anything that they have said about the virus.
Edited to add: I mean no disrespect to any Ricochetti not mentioned. Mendel, Rodin, and Locke On have exceptional knowledge in these particular circumstances.
I wish that I could trust him, as I agree with his conclusion. I found his methodology, in the first 6 minutes, to be so dreadfully flawed that I stopped watching.
Sincerity is overrated.
Good intentions are dangerous.
Trust no one especially if he calls himself an expert.
Is there anyone who understands human nature better than Tom Sowell? Maybe Adam Smith?
I have heard good things about Dr Fauci but he has been a DC bureaucrat for too long.
There is no vaccine for bureaucratic dysfunction.
I’m sure there is, but I’m certain the person is not as articulate!
I accept him for who he is, tweets and all. His exaggerations have grown on me. America will be the king of ventilators! Made me laugh out loud.
Even his approach to North Korea is funny yet effective.
Lying to oneself is part of the human condition. In order to succeed you have to believe your own hype to some extent.
The fact that youtube took down the video is proof that Erickson was more right than wrong. A lof of the criticism directed at Erickson by some members of Ricochet were unfair imo
You’re being too harsh… even if his methods were flawed let’s not judge him on 6 minutes alone… if you read the transcript your judgement may change slightly
Steven Pinker?
Victor Davis Hanson?
Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe.
Yes, and beyond domestic politicians and generations of bureaucrats and lobbyists in his field, he has had to work with international entities, most prominently the WHO. That explains his vouching for their leader and the work of the WHO a month or more into this pandemic. He has a lifetime habit of accommodating the imperfections of an organization through which he must work, absent alternative international arrangements. President Trump is now saying we will seriously consider bypassing the WHO to get better results, unless there is serious reform.
I like what you present in your comment but it addresses primarily opinions and what the person says. This, of course, is known well not to be a proper view of Trump insofar as developing or validating ‘trust’. Look at what he does.
I agree about the need for an honest, free-speech alternative to Google/YouTube.
I also think you are right that there are a number of Ricocheteers, all of whom I respect as bright and well-intentioned, and much needed by the conservative resistance movement–who are attacking us critics of
The CA docs pointed out that, unlike them, who have each spent the last twenty-odd years as physicians, Dr. Fauci has not seen any patients in that time. They claim that his lack of hands-on awareness of this bug, and daily exposure to the victims of this unprecedented quarantine-of-the-healthy (kids being abused by stuck-at-home, forcibly unemployed parents, suicides, etc.) and his isolation in the ivory tower, has affected his ability to understand the nature of the disease and give sound political advice.
Interesting. As someone who could be perceived as being in the well-intentioned category, I’m wondering how many is “a number” (IMO, about a half dozen) and what constitutes an “attack.” It seems pretty clear that those critical of the orders and their alleged effect on human rights are in the considerable, considerable majority here. (did I say considerable?).
There is evidence to suggest that.
I’ve seen a lot of references to Dr. Dan Erickson in this thread. I was not familiar with him nor his video that was taken down from YouTube. So I got curious and looked it up and watched it here.
I largely agree with his assessments about opening up society and letting the less vulnerable achieve herd immunity while protecting the more vulnerable, however, Arizona is right about some glaring flaws in his methodology, and here is the main one.
Early in the discussion, Dr. Erickson extrapolates the wider public’s infection rate to be exactly the same as the infection rate gleaned from the Covid tests done on patients. Since Covid testing in his California County has come up positive in 6% of people tested, he assumes that all of his county is infected at 6%. I had to back up the video and listen again to make sure I was hearing that right.
He leaves out the monumental caveat that they are only testing sick people. This is pretty much true everywhere in America and most of the World, with very few exceptions. The number of tests is limited by World-wide manufacturing capacity so most places can only test people who actually have symptoms. Presumably you will get a totally different result when testing random people, rather than people who have the known symptoms of the disease. His reasoning would be like a doctor who has ten people show up at his office complaining of flu symptoms and eight of them test positive. He then concludes that 80% of all Americans must have the flu.
The Dr. cites that 40% of New York State is infected with the virus because that is the rate that shows up on their Covid tests. However, New York tells you right on their website that only people with the most severe symptoms are referred for testing. Everybody else is told by their doctors to simply go home and recover in solitude just in case, as there are not enough tests to confirm their staus. The recent antibody tests on New York State residents gave a starkly different infection rate of 13%, though there are questions about the accuracy of those needle-stick antibody tests.
I hope I can trust him to get himself re-elected in six months, but I’m not sure. Because I do believe that, in addition to what he does, his re-election will depend, at least to some extent on the votes of quite a few people who may be concerned about what he says. Therefore, what I’d like him to “do” sometimes is be a little more careful about what he “says.” This is no time for self-inflicted wounds, even superficial ones.
Mark, I do not find this convincing. I don’t see anything about being a practicing doctor that would give a greater awareness of these problems. I do not see any reason that Dr. Fauci would be more aware of these concerns if he had been treating patients recently.
I think that their points are correct. They are simply unrelated to any medical expertise. Every single one of us is an “expert” on how disruptive these extreme lockdown measures have been. It is not an area in which expertise matters.
Knowledge of how epidemics spread is an expert issue, and I would expect Dr. Fauci to have more knowledge and experience on this issue than a typical ER doctor. However, Dr. Fauci’s expertise does not mean that he should be making decisions for the rest of us. We should be listening to his advice, inside his area of expertise, and then making up our own minds.
I had that same question about his statement. I wasn’t sure if he was approaching the question assuming people understood that caveat (and therefore the unspoken question is, since the only data they’re giving us involves testing symptomatic people, this is the only conclusion we can come to, and how can we be making these economy destroying decisions with poor data?). This has been my big complaint regarding our state’s requirements for reopening businesses the state has deemed unworthy to survive. No, wait, . . . what’s the word they use? Oh, right. Non-essential. But ‘unworthy’ also fits.
Anyway, our state says that in order to allow the peasants to go back to work, we must have the capability to test 12,000 people a day. Right now we have the capability to test 7,000 people a day. Right now we’re only testing about 1,200 people a day, because we’re only testing the symptomatic. It makes no sense to require the capacity to increase when we’re far below the testing capacity that we need already. But dictators gonna dictate.