Coronavirus: Thread

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'Follow The Science': A Potent Source Of Authority For Politicians

https://www.theepochtimes.com/follow-the-science-a-potent-source-of-authority-for-politicians_4149874.html

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-brunswick-violates-human-rights-with-covid-19-order-to-ban-unvaccinated-from-groceries-jccf_4144800.html

https://brownstone.org/articles/who-will-be-held-responsible-for-this-devastation/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/scientism-democracy-and-totalitarianism_3993454.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-surgeon-general-urges-public-to-stop-buying-masks-amid-shortages_3255448.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/gop-governors-push-back-against-cdc-mask-guidance_3922874.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/pandemic-response-politicized-self-destructive-immunologist-steven-templeton_4109568.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/science-shaky-on-school-mask-mandates-while-harms-ignored_3999780.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/japan-to-ban-entry-of-all-foreign-nationals-amid-omicron-variant-fears_4128336.html
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.19.21257467v1.full.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFph7-6t34M&t=15617s
https://www.theepochtimes.com/senate-blocks-bidens-vaccine-mandate-for-private-businesses_4146930.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/live-q-swedes-unveil-covid-19-hand-chip_4140213.html
https://brownstone.org/articles/16-studies-on-vaccine-efficacy/

To hear the way some politicians talk, when it comes to COVID-19,
they’re all “following the science,” not to mention “the data.”

“Look at the data. Follow the science. Listen to the experts. Be
smart,” now-former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote on Twitter in May
2020, after “Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve” had fully transitioned to
“The New Normal.”

“We’ve been operating on facts and data and science from the very
beginning,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in a campaign ad titled
simply “Follow The Science.”

President Joe Biden has frequently appealed to “the science.” In an
executive order announcing a vaccine mandate for federal workers, for
instance, he said his administration used “the best available data and
science-based public health measures.” In an article criticizing
Biden’s move to push vaccine boosters in September, StatNews’s Lev
Facher described “Follow the Science” as “a mantra” for the
administration.

White House chief medical adviser on COVID-19 Dr. Anthony Fauci stands
at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., on Feb.
11, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

“The science” emerged long before 2020 as a potent source of authority
for politicians. Yet while the scientific method is a powerful tool
for advancing human potential, the belief that it alone can guide us
is an example of “scientism.”

Scientism is, in the words of public intellectual Scott Masson, “the
belief that moral or evaluative judgments are merely subjective and
that only the ‘hard’ sciences—think physics, chemistry, or
biology—furnish legitimate objective knowledge.” While few American
politicians would openly endorse this position, the actions many have
taken during the COVID-19 pandemic reflect scientism in deed, if not
in word.

Scientism lets politicians off the hook for their decisions. They
didn’t really make a decision—they merely “followed the science.”

As a scientistic credo, “Follow the science” doesn’t just abrogate
leaders’ accountability as decision-makers. It also does violence to
the nature of science, which seldom offers the clear-cut, politically
useful conclusions that politicians want.

People wearing face masks stand in line as they wait to be vaccinated
at the Sydney Olympic Park Vaccination Centre at Homebush in Sydney,
Australia, on Aug. 16, 2021. (David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)

A popular meme contrasts the “scientific method” with the “science
worshiper’s method.” While the former moves in a rigorous,
self-correcting way toward results that may or may not align with a
specific hypothesis, the latter constructs a model and then only
accepts the data that will confirm that model.

At its most extreme, “following the science” is inflexibly dogmatic.
When less inflexible, “following the science” can lead to sudden,
sharp changes in public policy, often in the face of other evidence
and goals separate from the COVID-19 response—for example, avoiding
other health problems or economic disruption traceable to such
policies.
Masking

In the case of masking, “following the science” has led to a series of
dramatic reversals.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams speaks to members of Congress in
Washington on Sept. 9, 2020. (Michael Reynolds/Pool/AFP via Getty
Images)

In February 2020, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams wrote on Twitter
that Americans should “STOP BUYING MASKS!” as they were “not
effective.”

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) maintained that
healthy individuals didn’t need to wear masks.

Yet as mask production ramped up in the United States, U.S. public
health authorities changed their tune. In early April, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that Americans
consider wearing cloth masks.

By June 2020, WHO recommended that healthy members of the general
public wear masks in situations where physical distancing wasn’t
possible, citing new scientific evidence on transmission.

A man enters the headquarters of the World Health Organization in
Geneva, Switzerland, on June 15, 2021. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

In 2021, the CDC repeatedly shifted on masking. In July 2021, it
reversed a May recommendation that vaccinated people need not wear
masks, drawing rebukes from Republican governors.

Some experts believe that such shifts mark a significant departure
from our understanding of masking before the pandemic.

“When it comes to the point of certain interventions that are sort of
weakly supported, and if you go back and look at everything that was
published before 2020, and come to this completely different
conclusion if you read the things that published later on in 2020,
about masks or the ability of lockdowns to stop and end spread
indefinitely—long-term lockdowns that have devastating collateral
damage—and that type of thing. And then you realize how politicized
this really has become,” immunologist Steven Templeton, a professor at
Indiana University, formerly with the CDC, said in an interview with
The Epoch Times’ EpochTV.

One of the most politicized issues is the masking of young children.
While advocates have argued that children could be major transmitters
of COVID-19, opponents have argued that children are neither major
vectors of the disease nor vulnerable to serious illness or death.
They have also pointed out the understudied developmental and
physiological risks of masking young children.

A pupil wearing a face mask attends a class in a file photo.
(JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AFP via Getty Images)

One 2021 preprint found no correlation between mask mandates and
COVID-19 case rates among students and faculty across schools in
Florida, New York, and Massachusetts, though the authors included
caveats about how well their findings could be generalized.

Still, for many schools, “following the science” has led to universal
mask mandates. Portland Public Schools, for example, requires the
masking of children at all times and places, indoor or outdoor, and
irrespective of vaccination status, “except when eating, drinking or
playing a musical wind instrument.”

    You realize how politicized this really has become.

    — Steven Templeton, professor at Indiana University

In one instance, guerilla footage showed kindergartners “eating” while
sitting outside on buckets in 40-degree weather while socially
distanced from playmates.

In cases such as these, “following the science” has the look and feel
of political theater.

Men wearing protective suits make their way at a bus stop at Narita
international airport on the first day of closed borders to prevent
the spread of the new Omicron variant amid the pandemic in Narita,
east of Tokyo, Japan, Nov. 30, 2021. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)
Omicron and Beyond

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 hasn’t yet caused a surge in serious
COVID-19 cases. Yet as soon as the new strain made international
headlines, governments across the world were ready to “follow the
science,” or at least take some sort of action in its name.

The United States, the UK, and other countries have banned travel from
many countries in southern Africa, where Omicron was first detected.
Japan, meanwhile, barred entry of all foreign nationals.

WHO and other scientists and physicians argued that these bans weren’t
warranted, in part because they would do little to slow the variant’s
spread.

As the new strain made international headlines, governments across the
world were ready to ‘Follow the Science.’

The CEO of Pfizer, too, has speculated that the variant could push up
the debut of its latest booster, telling CNBC, “I think we will need a
fourth dose.”

For now, however, the new variant appears to be mild. To date, Omicron
doesn’t seem to have caused a single verifiable death.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus attends a news conference organized by the Geneva
Association of United Nations Correspondents (ACANU) amid the COVID-19
outbreak, caused by the novel coronavirus, at the WHO headquarters in
Geneva, Switzerland, on July 3, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via
Reuters)

When asked by The Epoch Times if Omicron had led to a single confirmed
fatality, a WHO spokesperson sent its weekly epidemiological update
for Dec. 7.

According to that guide: “All of the 212 confirmed cases identified in
18 European Union countries for which there was information available
on severity were asymptomatic or mild. While South Africa saw an 82
percent increase in hospital admissions due to COVID-19 (from 502 to
912) during the week 28 November–4 December 2021, it is not yet known
the proportion of these with the Omicron variant.”

In addition, the WHO spokesperson said, “For Omicron, we have not had
any deaths reported, but it is still early in the clinical course of
disease and this may change.”

The CDC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The
Epoch Times on whether there were any confirmed Omicron deaths.

Other examples abound. For instance, while data show vaccinated
individuals are significantly less likely to die of COVID-19 than the
unvaccinated, “following the science” to preapproved conclusions may
prematurely foreclose or minimize serious concerns about vaccine
safety, particularly in relation to heart inflammation or other
cardiovascular disease.

In September testimony before the FDA in its evaluation of the Pfizer
booster, entrepreneur Steve Kirsch said that Pfizer’s vaccines kill
more people than they save, citing Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting
System (VAERS) data, among other information.

Just days ago, physicians and scientists in the UK reportedly warned
that post-pandemic stress disorder is driving a rise in heart attacks
and other cardiovascular issues, including among younger patients.

Some commentators speculated that the rise could be related to vaccines.

Candace Owens wrote on Twitter in response to the story: “I’ve just
learned that the sudden increase in heart-related illnesses is likely
due to **checks Big Pharma notes** Post-Pandemic Stress Disorder.
Nothing to see here!”
Following Science, Not ‘Following the Science’

While New York and New York City have pursued hardline policies,
including the city’s vaccine pass system applicable to children as
young as 5, the state of Florida has blocked mandates and prioritized
individual choice.

Today, case rates in Florida are lower than in New York, likely in
part because of the disease’s seasonality. Moreover, while Floridians
are on average older than New York residents, suggesting that they
should be more vulnerable to COVID-19, the death rate per 100,000 is
still lower in that state than in New York, according to NBC News. New
York City itself has had more than 34,000 deaths, due partly to major
early clusters in nursing homes in the city.

People visit Clearwater Beach after Governor Ron DeSantis opened the
beaches at 7 a.m. on May 4, 2020 in Clearwater, Fla. (Mike
Ehrmann/Getty Images)

The Senate’s Dec. 8 vote to block Biden’s OSHA vaccine mandate for
large employers, which came soon after the 6th Circuit Court overruled
the same mandate, could signal the resilience of checks and balances
against compulsion in the name of “the science.”

Elsewhere in the world, “following the science,” often in spite of
other scientific evidence, is leading to more draconian policies.

New Brunswick, Canada, has permitted grocery stores to exclude the
unvaccinated, violating the basic human right to food articulated in
Article 25 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as
Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and
Cultural Rights.

Canadian and American flags fly near the Ambassador Bridge at the
Canada–U.S. border crossing in Windsor, Ont., in a file photo. (The
Canadian Press/Rob Gurdebeke)

Numerous studies have raised questions about whether vaccination stems
transmission, with some suggesting that vaccinated people with
suppressed symptoms of the disease may even be major drivers of new
infection. Regardless, “the science” demands greater sacrifices by the
day.

Good science can and should inform our judgments as well as those of
politicians. But unthinking gestures toward “the science” don’t shield
any of us from responsibility—though as Jeffrey A. Tucker of The
Brownstone Institute points out, the bureaucrats whose banalities
enforce our new scientistic consensuses shirk any blame for its
self-evident failures.