[ajross]

I don't see how that follows at all. Academic arguments about the structure of the heavens are irrelevancies except to the people in the argument (and those threatened by it). Sure, absolutely: you don't censor opinions about astronomy just because they seem "probably wrong" or demand blind adherence to the best available theory. You do the science, because sometimes scientists are wrong.

But pandemic advice isn't about doing good science, it's about risk management. If your goal is to keep as many people alive as possible, you bet on the consensus science because it's probably right. And it was.

[mayd]

The scientific method is the only method of enquiry that is valid if you are doing science. In science, skepticism of every theory, new or old, is expected, encouraged and valued, because, according to the scientific method, every theory is potentially falsifiable.

Skepticism and consensus are conflicting concepts. Consensus has no place in science as method of determining truth. You cannot form a scientific conclusion based on socially or politically manufactured consent.

Never has this been more clearly demonstrated than during and after the recent Coronavirus panic. Facts were ignored, or even suppressed, "settled science" and "scientific consensus" were used as weapons to silence dissenters, by trashing their reputations, or threatening their jobs.

We are living in an age of Cargo Cult Science. Richard Feynman must be rolling in his grave.

[ajross]

Meh. Distancing works. Masks work. Vaccines work. Hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. Herd immunity never happened. Seems from my perspective that "science" did its job pretty well. Were individuals wrong about stuff? Yup, happens all the time. But I don't see any lack of understanding in hindsight.

You seem to be making an argument about public policy, not science. And I refer to the comment to which you replied: different things, with different goals.

[smsm42]

> you bet on the consensus science because it's probably right. And it was.

Was it though? As I am seeing now, some early policies were flat out murderous (such as hosting COVID patients together with healthy people in nursing homes), some were practically useless mortality wise (like lockdowns) and some are very minimally useful or not useful at all (like mask mandates and mass-firing unvaccinated people). Some were flat out fraud (like claims that consensus existed about COVID origins). For some, I understand, the jury is still out (like, how efficient exactly are the vaccines, compared to natural immunity). So I am not sure which part "it was" it is referring too, and pretty sure there were a lot of losing bets made in those years.

[anonymouskimmer]

Many of those policies didn't follow any science. And a bunch of them not working well is likely due to conflicting talking points from various of the powers that be.

> some were practically useless mortality wise

If any of the advice decreased the rate of infection spread they were likely to decrease mortality through the simple effect of making work easier for health care workers.

Actual lockdowns worked for a long time in China, as well as travel lockdowns in countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

Masking works. Mandates don't work if huge chunks of the population don't follow them (i.e., if they aren't actually "mandates").

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580811/

> Average COVID-19 mortality per million was 288.54 in countries without face mask policies and 48.40 in countries with face mask policies. In no mask countries, adjusted average daily increase was 0.1553 − 0.0017 X (days since the first case) log deaths per million, compared with 0.0900 − 0.0009 X (days since the first case) log deaths per million in the countries with a mandate. A total of 60 days into the pandemic, countries without face mask mandates had an average daily increase of 0.0533 deaths per million, compared with the average daily increase of 0.0360 deaths per million for countries with face mask mandates.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8287197/

> Twenty one articles were identified that analysed ecological data to assess the protective effect of policies mandating community mask wearing. All studies reported SARS-CoV-2 benefits in terms of reductions in either the incidence, hospitalization, or mortality, or a combination of these outcomes. Few studies assessed compliance to mask wearing policies or controlled for the possible influence of other preventive measures such as hand hygiene and physical distancing, and information about compliance to these policies was lacking.

[smsm42]

> Many of those policies didn't follow any science. And a bunch of them not working well is likely due to conflicting talking points from various of the powers that be.

Virtually all of them were sold by "trust the Experts" crowd, and supported and promoted by people that literally declared "I am the Science". We've got as close to experto-cracy as we could be without abandoning the democracy completely. So telling "this wasn't true science" has a large whiff of "true socialism has never been tried". I'd say we tried as much as we, as a society, could possibly do. If that didn't work, then the problem is not that we need more experts and have to trust them harder.

[anonymouskimmer]

I have never heard any medical expert say that contagious patients should be kept in nursing homes.

There was a lot of cross-communication during the early days as politicians made statements that contradicted the CDC and other organizations, or were based on expensive interventions not available to the regular patient (such as the intra-bronchial tube UV light treatment promoted early on by Trump).

And yes, sometimes those organizational figureheads said stupid things (e.g. no evidence that masks are a good idea for healthy people, back in the era of the mask shortage, instead of legally mandating that masks be reserved for medical personnel) that were rightfully contradicted by other experts.

Social distancing and masking were both good ideas from the start, based on prior scientific knowledge.

[smsm42]

> said stupid things (e.g. no evidence that masks are a good idea for healthy people, back in the era of the mask shortage

That wasn't "stupid", that was a cynical lie. I.e. if you believe masks worked, that would be a murderous lie, designed to sacrifice "less important" people to the advantage of "more important" ones. As I remember, it was admitted as such (a deliberate lie), though I remain unconvinced it actually had any effect at all in reality.

[ekianjo]

> , you bet on the consensus science because it's probably right. And it was.

Which consensus exactly?