Politics is polarizing. It has gone exponential in the last six years or so. So much so that many people tuned it out. Fully justified…but also problematic.
While the best example, that’s not the only place that has seen dramatic increases in polarization.
We’re told to listen to the experts. Are you a virologist? Are you an epidemiologist? Are you an economist? No, then you shouldn’t be talking about this stuff.
Yet, the experts have lied to us over and over and over again.
Truthfully, we’re left on our own trying to figure it out ourselves…or grabbing onto whatever experts we decide are telling the best version of the truth.
I’m honored you’ve chosen me! 😉 But please note that I’m asking you to think for yourself, not automatically buy anything I say as gospel.
This is dizzying. Can you be an expert in everything? Absolutely not. Can you adequately wade through the BS put out by experts? It’s damn near impossible in in our world of hyper-specialization.
Because the truth is there are experts on both sides of any and every issue. Some experts are paraded as examples of the people that are right. They get endorsed by other experts!
But are they right? Meanwhile other experts are shunned and derided…by other experts.
We’ve got fact-checkers now, but who fact-checks them? Who watches the watchmen?
Watching the polarization play out on social media about the virus is fascinating.
Can you make sense of this thing?
There is tons of information to say that this virus is extremely serious.
There is tons of information to say that this virus is widely overblown.
Who do you believe?
Do you believe the experts because other experts say you should listen to them?
Do you strive to further validate your own viewpoint?
Do you ever attempt to falsify your own view by looking at the other side?
Again, I still have not made heads or tails of the virus itself. I see one thing that makes me believe its hype…then I read another that makes me take it more seriously.
For instance, there was this post that I originally saw on Medium. https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/evidence-over-hysteria-covid-19-1b767def5894
It has since been censored on Medium, but you can still find it here. (A website that was banned from Twitter completely recently because of questioning the official story.) https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-evidence-over-hysteria
They begin the article with a refutation of the article. Look at the article. Look at the refutation. Who do you believe? Just reading each thoroughly and seeking to understand them will probably take an hour. If you go and vet out the sources for yourself, even longer.
But is there a refutation of the refutation? I liked what one person on Twitter had to respond: “Does anyone have any facts to dispute the author or are we supposed to just defer to people claiming they know better?” Good question!
According to some scientists 99% of the people dying in Italy, now the hardest hit place, are those that are old (median age 79.5 years) and suffering from one or more other diseases. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says
That means this virus is all just a bunch of hoopla…but there’s also plenty of articles like these coming from doctors and the like saying it’s really bad. https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_701fcccc-6b7f-11ea-a78e-4b0eb098d207.html
Or this piece saying hospitals are overrun in Madrid, with people laying on hospital floors. https://nypost.com/2020/03/23/coronavirus-patients-spotted-lying-on-floor-at-overrun-madrid-hospital/
One thing is clear. We do not have good data from which to be making decisions. Ioannidas points that out in this article here. We are making economy shattering decisions based on bad and incomplete data.
“If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.”
If you’re not familiar, Ioannidas is the guy that basically told us that at least 50% of science is wrong for a wide variety of reasons (difficulties replicating, peer review, p-hacking, etc.). But yet should we pause making decisions just because the data isn’t in? Another good question.
You can see this play out in the question of the origin of the virus. The virus is bioengineered weapon scream multiple countries leaders and even scientists! There are some unusual things that went on between biological weapons labs in several countries. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coronavirus-canada-and-weaponize-it
But in a new paper other expert scientists have said that it is natural. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9?sf231597135=1
In the abstract, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
But if you actually read that article it seems to just be an opinion of these scientists that it can’t be manipulated because they would have done it differently. Of course, I’m not a geneticist or virologist so what do I know? Who am I to question their authority?
These scientists have received the official stamp of approval. They don’t explain its origin, but they do explain away the bioengineered theory.
One thing is pretty certain. The official story of it coming from bat soup in a Wuhan market falls apart quickly when you realize that many of the first patients didn’t go to that market. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext
And did you know it’s mutating and there are two viruses? https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwaa036/5775463
That will trip up all of our stats and information about this thing even further…
The only thing I can say for sure is our information ecology is broken!
Watch out. That will be something that must get fixed from this whole situation. I just fear that it’ll take the form of Big Brother telling you everything you need to know. We need the one official world-wide agency to give us the truth.
If such an agency was in good hands that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
If such an agency was in bad hands then that would be a very, very bad thing.
The caveat here is that absolute power corrupts absolutely…so which side is more likely? Oh I guess I’m guilty of polarizing here.
That all being said, with persistent effort to dig through everything you can get to the truth. I think it may be too early to effectively do this with the virus. But we can look at some things this virus will lead to, by looking in the past. I’ve done so in one such area, which I’ll talk about tomorrow.