Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 167

[ecosophia]

We are now in the fourth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary more than three years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health are anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; public health authorities government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Comments

[ecosophia]

Perhaps you have an alternative suggestion, then. The current situation is unsustainable; if the current tide of scientific fraud continues, the cultural consensus that supports paying for research out of public funds will shatter -- it's already cracking, and not just at the edges -- and we'll be back where we were in the 19th century, when the only people who carried out scientific research did it out of their own pockets. Do you have a proposal for cutting back on research fraud?

[(Anonymous)]

No, I don't have an alternative suggestion or solution, but the fact that I don't doesn't make my point or my experience any less valid.

I do think we may already be at the point where in many subject matter areas (not all areas) the only people who do real scientific research, have to do it out of their own pockets, which in most cases means it doesn't get done (though I know a few that do). Or alternatively they contort their conclusions, even though if you read the actual article it indicates otherwise. My thought is that it's probably worse to get institutional and academic support for science that's been bought by big corporate interests then it is to just let the system fall apart.

Monochrome Impudent Turtle

[scotlyn]

I think the problem here is the capture of systems of regulation by the new Magisterium. This does not give me insight in HOW to deal with it.

But if it is not so much the research that is flawed (although much of it is), but the systems (public and private) that fund it, produce it, and regulate it thoroughly captured and corrupt, then any punitive new regulations aimed only at researchers at the bottom of that feedtrough, will fulfill the functions of regulation everywhere. They will give the capturers of the regulatory system more weapons to aim at smallfry they find annoying, while continuing to be permissive towards those that feed the magisterium.

How does one fight a Magisterium... and win?

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP, but given that the current system seems to have caused a lot of the corruption, led to some disastrous public policy (such as the horribly distorted food system in much of the Western World), and there were plenty of great scientists before (Newton, Galileo, Haley, Darwin, among others), maybe it's not worth trying to salvage at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I put some thought into designing a political system of grant money allocation using three-fold options or three channels of funding. I tried out several polarized forces of inquiry inherent in class interests as a counterweight method – that is, using oppositional force as a system of checks and balances.

Such as
1) alternately funding women’s health vs. men’s health,
2) appointing one research team’s bitter foes the power to oversee and fine any infractions of method or mathematical manipulations;
3) using divination or randomized selection, letting the gods decide;
4) letting student bodies decide one year and faculty the following year;
5) letting the taxpayers vote on where they want their money to go;
6) assigning all teams a non-science activity to compete in as a public spectacle (a bake sale or building a useful item from junkheaps and woodpiles) such that their competence and teamsmanship can be judged by non-experts. The teams’ performance in the assigned task would be awarded funds proportionally by a vote of taxpayers, students and teachers (votes of the three deciders being weighted differently for each year of the competition – sometimes public opinion is more heavily weighted, other times, the ‘experts’ have more influence).

The more I thought about it, the more I judged that the systems I proposed could be broken or corrupted easily by rich men north of richmond. So instead, I settled on a less colorful project involving the tedious task of clearing out the Augean Stables that contain some 80 years worth of putrified and petrified bovine byproducts pooped out by moola muddled corruption in the fields of science.

In order to receive funding for any new research effort, each team applying for public money must first demonstrate their competence by replicating exactly at least two widely cited but never replicated studies.

Or by compiling a thorough meta-analysis of studies on a controversial environmental subject affecting public health and welfare, such as tobacco (bee-killing pollinator poison AND ACE-2 receptor-occupying defense against common viral respiratory infections); drinking water quality in the U.S and the world; maternal and neonate health worldwide; processed vs whole foods, ‘silver bullet’ pills with isolated single active components vs. whole herb and terrain theory healing modalities. You see my biases here, of course, but every Aggie College and Ivy-towered institute will have their own biases to prove as well.

Thus, over the next 30-50 years much of the backlog of bullsheets can be cleared from the Sciences’ Stables and a less shaky foundation be laid for the future of the method.

After that, the Big Money will largely be dried up and pure science will have to take its chances among the pressing concerns of starvation, privation, pollution, and revolution.

Still, if Science can improve each shining hour, prove its ability to put its badly soiled house in order, and hereafter stick to the proof, the whole proof, and nothing but the proof, it may yet survive intact.