Follow the science is the drumbeat of the mainstream media and the political pundits regarding the so-called COVID pandemic and the need for the shutdown. Everyone throws the term science around very loosely as if they know what is meant by that term.
The only thing wrong with this dictum is that there is no science to be followed in this instance. I will offer one simple quote regarding science and its character: “If it cannot be expressed in numbers, it is not science, it is opinion.”*
Opinion is what we are seeing in our constant debate at the national level on the pandemic and the shutdown to constrain it. Informed opinion, yes, but opinion nevertheless. We are a long way from science. Science requires setting forth hypotheses, conducting experiments, testing the validity of those hypotheses, and revising those hypotheses as a result.
I believe that the shutdown that has been forced upon America is wrongheaded and misguided. The social and economic cost of the shutdown far outweighs, by several orders of magnitude, the deaths resulting from the virus.
The deaths are certainly horrific and those fatalities can be easily counted. However, on the other side of the ledger, we cannot even begin to understand the total cost of the shutdown. Only with the clarity of hindsight and some months, even years, to reflect, will we be able to comprehend what we have wrought. From my vantage point, I believe history will not be kind to those who were so cocksure regarding the necessity for shutting down America.
Links
Internal: https://whitebeardwisdom.com/the-lessons-of-the-lockdown/
External: https://theasianantiquarian.com/
Quotes
*This quote is a paraphrase of a quote that I borrowed from Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction writer and author of “Stranger in a Strange Land.”
“There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry . . . There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free, to ask any question, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.”—J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project