Interesting take on the fact that there are basically no scientific facts for people who claim to support them.
A list of questions that should have been answered before any response was put in place.
What is the death rate per infection.
What is the asymptomatic rate in the general population.
What is the transmission rate for asymptomatic carriers.
A small army of less than 10k researchers sampling the whole population of the US at random would have been able to answer those questions in a week and we could have decided on an actual scientific response. Instead of whatever ideological response we get depending on who is in power at whatever level of the government.
It could be that letting the virus run wild as fast as possible is the best possible response. It could be that we need to take a note from China and weld people in their houses. We don't know, and no one wants to find out.
Anyone who says 'scientific facts' with a straight face when making a suggestion about the pandemic with the state of knowledge we have is at best clueless and at worst a charlatan and should be removed from whatever position they currently occupy.
After the hell years of Bush II I thought that a government that supported science would be by definition a better one. Instead we got a government under Obama that _said_ it supported science and ignored anything it didn't like. It took me years to realize that, no, there wasn't a long term master plan. His science posturing was a veneer of legitimacy on the same old policies, just as terrible but in different ways. Fracking being the one that finally woke me up.
After the nightmare of those two administrations we finally got to a science policy that has bipartisan support: pick whatever owns the other side the most and pretend it's science. Doesn't matter what it is.
A list of questions that should have been answered before any response was put in place.
What is the death rate per infection.
What is the asymptomatic rate in the general population.
What is the transmission rate for asymptomatic carriers.
A small army of less than 10k researchers sampling the whole population of the US at random would have been able to answer those questions in a week and we could have decided on an actual scientific response. Instead of whatever ideological response we get depending on who is in power at whatever level of the government.
It could be that letting the virus run wild as fast as possible is the best possible response. It could be that we need to take a note from China and weld people in their houses. We don't know, and no one wants to find out.
Anyone who says 'scientific facts' with a straight face when making a suggestion about the pandemic with the state of knowledge we have is at best clueless and at worst a charlatan and should be removed from whatever position they currently occupy.