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Des Carne's avatar

Allow me to nail one single thesis.

It was immediately apparent to me by July 2020 when Professor John Ionnides published his analysis of the mortality index globally of the new respiratory disease (covid) at approximately 0.25%, less than the seasonal flu, and numerous countries reported that the average age at death was over 80, equal to or more than the average longevity for developed countries.

Now I had the advantage of being trained in my childhood and adolescence by my scientist father in the principles of the natural sciences, and being educated in Australia 60 years ago, of, together with my classmates, an irreverent instinct to untruths or absurdities told to us by our teachers. It's my firm view that any quick-witted child of 14, who has not been terrified into conformity, can figure out the emperor has no clothes on when such such results are portrayed as an "emergency".

Yes, a whole of government and a whole of society simulacrum of emergency is enormously persuasive, but a child certain on first principles of the absurdity of the proposition can never be disabused of its absurdity. With the benefit of later studies and interests, the absurd logic became even more apparent - masks cannot possibly prevent the transmission of viruses orders of magnitude smaller than the warp and weft of even surgical masks, which are worn by medical personnel for entirely other reasons, or that lockdowns and social distancing are going to make any difference to its spread.

The whole exercise was never based on science but on scientism, sciency sounding promulgations by unquestionable authorities that adults, who had shamefully forgotten their childhood awe of nature, naturally assumed the emperor was dressed and should be obeyed, whatever lingering doubts they may have had. Many who took the vaccines now live in apprehension of the long or slow consequences of their credulity and cooperation with political and pharma influenced medical authorities.

Being so thoroughly gaslit by public "authorities" claiming "science" as their mandate, many now are now far more likely to make a human, individual rights based response to any public mandate based on "science". And so they should.

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Henrik Nordborg's avatar

Excellent post and I totally agree. As Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers point out in "Order out of Chaos," the problem is that the Newtonian method was too successful. It made everyone believe in a mechanistic world order, where every problem could be solved. The truth of the matter is that science fails most of the time, which makes its undeniable successes even more important.

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