Dr. Robert Malone

[Empty_of_Clouds]

Define substance.

I am not being snarky, it's a serious question. Particularly as I take the view that the goalposts get moved around quite a bit for convenience here.

[dneal]

No, good! Let's just change the topic a little here, since the other three pages are just trash-talk.

Here's what I think:

Everything about this is political. It's not just political, it's dangerous. We can have a discussion on that alone, but that's kind of what the 3 minute video of Heather Heyer and Eric Weinstein are talking about. It's a bunch of morons meddling around with the scientific process for whatever gain. Viewers or "clicks", notoriety, politics, etc... there's a million of them (figuratively). I'm included in that too, as are you (no offense); but that's what we laymen are supposed to do. Mumble amongst each other and try to figure it out on a level we understand.

This is how absurd we have come as a society, summed up in a meme. The humor is in the truth, and it's a really funny meme. It makes me sad for society when we can't even agree on what is true. We cannot have media that says their side is sunshine and the other is rain. The Australian version of Sky, or whatever market Rupert Murdoch(?) is trying to take over is obscenely partisan and near dangerously inciteful. The left has theirs too.

That's sincere, and enough for now. I would appreciate your thoughts.

-meme deleted. pic WAY too big-

It said:

So hold on a second... They have Fact Checkers that know all the facts?
Why not set up a channel on TV and just give us the facts?
We can call it "The News"

[Empty_of_Clouds]

Look, I totally agree on the damage and ongoing danger that is the result of politicizing situations like this. It really grinds my gears.

When it comes to health matters my opinions have as a foundation years of being trained as a trauma specialist, even more years in biomedical science, and now a further decade+ in health research. On top of the education side of this are the observations of human behaviour. Now, this is not an appeal to authority. The last thing I am going to do is claim to be an expert. If anything I consider myself a generalist. However, I want people to understand what influences have shaped my thoughts.

With that in mind I came to the conclusion (and it may be changeable, as science requires) that there are definitely situations where people are never properly informed*, and would do far better to simply accept the collective advice of experts and do as required. It goes without saying that I grew up with a paternalistic healthcare system, so I am a bit swayed by that too.

I have no problem with people questioning things, but I do have a problem when that questioning doesn't stem from any evident attempt at critical thinking. We end up with, what if this, what it that, ad infinitum.

So this ties in with what is going on now, where we have government expert agencies doing their jobs and creating a response to the pandemic with the tools and data they have (accepting that this may change at any time), and their time and efforts are being wasted, in the main, by people who little to no understanding of the situation but are prepared to cite an independent source or a questionable group/movement.

There has always been a degree of distrust of governments, but in recent times there has been systematic attempt to further erode that trust.


The video with Malone presents a specific problem for those who are fashioning a public health response to the pandemic. While he is technically correct regarding when to vaccinate a population for maximum effect, it is somewhat irrelevant because the pandemic is here, now. Unless, and this would be dangerous reading between lines interpretation, he wants to suggest that we remove all mitigation methods, let the chips and bodies fall where they may, and once it's all over we start vaccinating the future offspring of the survivors. [The survivors now being immune due to being survivors, as it were]

I would be interested in hearing of other viable approaches to globally dealing with this pandemic, but that such ideas are not forthcoming from govt. agencies suggests that options are already limited. An uncharitable view would be that public health people are fixated on one strategy, but my experience says this is unlikely to be the truth.




*by not properly informed I mean not understanding the information as presented, as opposed to simply not having the information, though the effect is often the same.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

I appreciate that this is only a news report but it does touch on a lot of points raised in this thread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...emic-politics/

[Chuck Naill]

After more than one topic, I am convinced one member wants to believe something and will camp there regardless of whether other information exists. And, if it exists, has no interest in learning information that would either change his mind or at least moderate his thinking.

So, whether the topic is epidemiology or "critical race theory" the result is the same. This is what occuring in Florida more than DeSanta's lack of leadership. So, EOC, just like Floridians will refuse to at least mask or more usefully vaccinate, they would rather risk sickness, death, or financial ruin due to hospitalization than even consider to think differently. However, those same people would be outraged if denied a spot in the ICU, just as the member here has dramatically demonstrated.

While I do appreciate your efforts EOC, I suspect you will eventually tire. There are some for which knowledge and wisdom is wasted.

And then you have Laura Reihbold, Republican senator from Alaska, being banned from an airline for refusing to wear a mask.

[dneal]

Chuck - you're assigning motive. Can't we do better?

@EOC - I'm going to start with a slight digression, and reiterate / clarify some points I've made in other posts/threads.

Narratives. The U.S. DOD had two categories of information operations: Psychological, and Public Affairs. The first is directed at influencing enemy troops. The most famous examples were used against us - Tokyo Rose, for example - and we use leaflets, broadcasts, etc... There are cultural anthropologists assigned to each theater that help develop effective messaging. The second is Public Affairs. They provide information to the American Public about the DOD. This is the "press release" bunch that publicizes things the DOD does.

There is a third one though. Neither of the first two target local populations, an important piece to counter-insurgency. So now we have Information Operations - basically propaganda designed to influence a different and specific population. I was fascinated by it, and almost changed branches. I worked with the IO school for the last three years before I retired, as part of developing a concept for large scale combat operations and incorporating all sorts of new techniques and technologies. Forget counterinsurgencies, and think about the U.S. v Russia or China (Russia isn't nearly the threat it's made out to be, btw... China is).

By the way, it is illegal to conduct PsyOps or InfoOps on the American public. It is illegal for Public Affairs to mislead.

Anyway, Information Operations. One commercial that was developed and broadcast in Iraq was an older Iraqi being snatched off the street and taken to a dark room where he was beaten. Before each blow, the interrogator would ask "Sunni or Shia". The man would not answer and would be struck. Maybe after the 3rd blow, the man looks up with a bloody and swollen face, and answers the "Sunni or Shia" question with: "Iraqi..." It was very effective, and would invoke tears from viewers.

At some point during the American political insanity we've watched for the last 20 years, I started looking at everything through a lens of "narratives". IO guys think primarily in those terms. "What is the enemy's narrative?" "What is our counter-narrative?" "What is our narrative?", all in the context of the local population. Do you see a narrative in Sky Australia? I don't know what the other "side" might be in that part of the world... but do you see their narrative too?

When people only see one of the narratives, they are usually under the influence of the other. It's obvious by speech. "Obama is a Communist" is clearly a right-leaning person who has listened to the American conservative narrative. "Trump is a...(choose your favorite)" is really no different. Several people here literally could not discuss Trump policies absent "Trump" and narratives (usually involving motive, but more on that in a minute...). In more conservative leaning boards, it's the same narrative crap but a different person. Biden. Harris. Pelosi. etc... On the liberal boards it's an assortment of conservative politicians. As an aside, for those that complain about the liberal bent of this board; it's nothing. There are boards with political forums so rabid (left or right), it's pointless to participate. This place is very tame in comparison, which is why I've always wanted better discussion here (but we've beaten that horse...)

The narratives have invaded almost every aspect of our lives, and everyone is trying to use them. Politicians, media, marketers, Russian Troll-farms, etc... It's not new so much as the techniques have been refined. There is no shortage of opportunity to influence populations through traditional and social media, and people are obviously capitalizing on it. There's a lot at stake - the U.S. Presidency itself being one of many things. We have reached a point of insanity. Douglas Murray's "The Madness of Crowds" is insightful. Listen to the interview John Anderson conducted with him a year or two ago. I'll post a link if you like.

So now we come full circle to COVID. American society was told their side's particular narrative, and we've been shouting it at each other for a year and a half. It was used to attack Trump politically. The current POTUS and VP questioned the vaccine publicly, for political purposes (and now there are many "fact-checks" to control the damage...). That's not unexpected from politicians, and "we" (pick a political side) have always wanted "old people to starve" or are quite happy with "bankrupting future generations". But that was before narratives became so widespread and toxic. Any inconsistency creates doubt and fuels the other narrative. Fauci's changing mask standards? His poorly considered statements like "we'll probably be wearing masks for another year..."? The reasons are lost in the shouting. Frankly, he should resign and let someone else be the face to the public for the greater good; but his replacement would be subject to the same treatment. One mis-step and the new person's credibility would be ruined.

We watch politicians lecture what we "should" do, and then see them act differently. Again, pick your party but the hypocrisy exhibited by both sides undermines their credibility. It erodes public trust. Curiously, each echo-chamber only distrusts the other side. They nearly completely trust their own. Polls show this party-centric view pretty regularly, on most political topics.

That mistrust is as bad as I've ever seen it. We (society) are now "fact-checking" doctors. We are now attempting to censor credible experts holding opposing opinions. It doesn't matter which side they come from, although each side's arsenal and preferred weapons vary. Our media is infested with politicos. Bush Jr's press secretary is a regular on FOX. Bill Clinton's narrative developer (George Stephanopoulos) is on ABC and interviews Presidents. He even moderated a Republican Presidential debate. There are a lot more. I don't have a problem with those kind of people as the "talking heads" on political "debate" shows. We already know their bias toward their political party. I do have a problem with them being near-"anchors", or considered "journalists". There is too much reason to be skeptical about their objectivity. But I'm getting off point (again, sorry...). Point is that it has been going on for 20+ years and it has eroded trust to the point that each side has retreated to their camp with this new topic - COVID.

CNN's insistence on the term "Horse wormer" or whatever version they're using is a perfect example of narrative, and it's effectiveness. The "horse laugh" is about as dismissive of a rhetorical retort as there is. Irrational, but highly persuasive. Look how often it is used just here. Now crank that up to Twitter or Facebook (or international news channel) levels of distribution. It's a wonder the conversation here has been as civil as is, comparatively speaking. But look at the result of "horse wormer" and the politicization. Ivermectin is a near "wonder drug" - even characterized in professional articles as such. Not only is it anti-parasitic and anti-microbial, it appears to have anti-viral properties too, and has been used to treat Dengue, Zika, Chikungunya, etc... It has a decades long safety record. Maybe it will have some effectiveness against COVID, maybe not, but we should let doctors try, just like they did with other maladies. We have no experience treating COVID with ivermectin or any of the other "forbidden" drugs, so there's really only preliminary data (and that's the problem I have with Cochrane, not the methodology). We simply do not know one way or another at this point, given the limited evidence. But in the middle of a pandemic, narratives have led us to not try and shout "trust the science" at the same time. I've never seen anything like it.

[dneal]

I stumbled across this today. Not a bad read.

Publication: Tablet Magazine
Article Type: Opinion
Author and Credentials: John P.A. Ioannidis is Professor of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health, as well as Professor (by courtesy) of Biomedical Science and Statistics, at Stanford University. His complete COVID-19-related publications can be found here.
Title and link: How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science

Excerpt

IIn the past I had often fervently wished that one day everyone would be passionate and excited about scientific research. I should have been more careful about what I had wished for. The crisis caused by the lethal COVID-19 pandemic and by the responses to the crisis have made billions of people worldwide acutely interested and overexcited about science. Decisions pronounced in the name of science have become arbitrators of life, death, and fundamental freedoms. Everything that mattered was affected by science, by scientists interpreting science, and by those who impose measures based on their interpretations of science in the context of political warfare.

One problem with this new mass engagement with science is that most people, including most people in the West, had never been seriously exposed to the fundamental norms of the scientific method. The Mertonian norms of communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism have unfortunately never been mainstream in education, media, or even in science museums and TV documentaries on scientific topics.

Before the pandemic, the sharing of data, protocols, and discoveries for free was limited, compromising the communalism on which the scientific method is based. It was already widely tolerated that science was not universal, but the realm of an ever-more hierarchical elite, a minority of experts. Gargantuan financial and other interests and conflicts thrived in the neighborhood of science—and the norm of disinterestedness was left forlorn.

As for organized skepticism, it did not sell very well within academic sanctuaries. Even the best peer-reviewed journals often presented results with bias and spin. Broader public and media dissemination of scientific discoveries was largely focused on what could be exaggerated about the research, rather than the rigor of its methods and the inherent uncertainty of the results.

Nevertheless, despite the cynical realization that the methodological norms of science had been neglected (or perhaps because of this realization), voices struggling for more communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism had been multiplying among scientific circles prior to the pandemic. Reformers were often seen as holding some sort of a moral higher ground, despite being outnumbered in occupancy of powerful positions. Reproducibility crises in many scientific fields, ranging from biomedicine to psychology, caused soul-searching and efforts to enhance transparency, including the sharing of raw data, protocols, and code. Inequalities within the academy were increasingly recognized with calls to remedy them. Many were receptive to pleas for reform.

Opinion-based experts (while still dominant in influential committees, professional societies, major conferences, funding bodies, and other power nodes of the system) were often challenged by evidence-based criticism. There were efforts to make conflicts of interest more transparent and to minimize their impact, even if most science leaders remained conflicted, especially in medicine. A thriving community of scientists focused on rigorous methods, understanding biases, and minimizing their impact. The field of metaresearch, i.e., research on research, had become widely respected. One might therefore have hoped that the pandemic crisis could have fostered change. Indeed, change did happen—but perhaps mostly for the worst.

Lack of communalism during the pandemic fueled scandals and conspiracy theories, which were then treated as fact in the name of science by much of the popular press and on social media. The retraction of a highly visible hydroxychloroquine paper from the The Lancet was a startling example: A lack of sharing and openness allowed a top medical journal to publish an article in which 671 hospitals allegedly contributed data that did not exist, and no one noticed this outright fabrication before publication. The New England Journal of Medicine, another top medical journal, managed to publish a similar paper; many scientists continue to heavily cite it long after its retraction.

The hottest public scientific debate of the moment—whether the COVID-19 virus was the product of natural evolution or a laboratory accident—could have been settled easily with a minimal demonstration of communalism (“communism,” actually, in the original Merton vocabulary) from China: Opening the lab books of the Wuhan Institute of Virology would have alleviated concerns immediately. Without such openness about which experiments were done, lab leak theories remain tantalizingly credible.

Personally, I don’t want to consider the lab leak theory—a major blow to scientific investigation—as the dominant explanation yet. However, if full public data-sharing cannot happen even for a question relevant to the deaths of millions and the suffering of billions, what hope is there for scientific transparency and a sharing culture? Whatever the origins of the virus, the refusal to abide by formerly accepted norms has done its own enormous damage.

[TSherbs]

I appreciate that this is only a news report but it does touch on a lot of points raised in this thread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...emic-politics/

Thanks for this. Written well, and an interesting read.

My state has actually developed the highest rate of positive cases per capita in New England (still low, on the national scale), and we voted for Biden. But of course, there is a large GOP contingent in my state and a good bit of income and educational disparity that also correlates with party-affiliation and vaccination rates. Maine is a complicated state that bears even closer scrutiny in order to understand.

[dneal]

Brace yourself, because the world may stop spinning, but...

... I agree with TSherbs.

The only real issue I have with the piece is that it assigns motive at the end, and the overgeneralization. Hell, Republicans can't even agree on Trump or that agenda; and are firmly divided in two camps (although the pro camp is much larger than the anti). Anyway, to categorize them all is disingenuous and foments more of the disgust each side has for the other. There was no need for that and politics really has no place.

Note I'm an equal opportunity discriminator. That Ben Shapiro kid and his page just got the axe. It's unfortunate, because I find him to be very sharp, quick minded and quick witted. Most of his arguments are well thought out, and his debate skills are excellent. But it has become nothing but "you won't believe what happens next...", "libs get owned" and that bullshit. So he got the axe with a bunch of others left and right. If you're to the left of CNN, you're a crazy person. If you're to the right of Fox, you're a crazy person (figuratively, in both cases); because I'm not wasting my time listening to noise. Newsmax is replacing Fox it seems though. I get the narratives from there (CNN, Fox and Newsmax), and look for actual news and information in other places.

I do enjoy Eric Weinstein and Heather Heyer's commentary on the going's on of the day, and watch their 10 minute daily clip of I suppose yesterday's show while I row in the morning. Their credentials are without question, they do a good job of pointing out when they are treading out of their expertise, they have many friends with a variety of expertise they can call on, they're what we now call "classical liberals"; although the crazy people on the left will spin the wheel of ad hominem and start shouting. They're calm and objective. They are what scientists/professors are supposed to be. If you disagree, I would be curious to know why.