If millions of people died because research into preventing a pandemic created the conditions for starting one, that is the most important lesson we could learn from covid. Getting the answer right, one way or the other, is the only way to prevent this all from happening again.
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I'm not asking anyone to believe the evidence we have right now is adequate. But I wish commentators like Rather would stop conditioning their beliefs on the consequences of one answer or the other being right, and stop attacking the question itself as somehow harmful.
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The one thing that science is supposed to be best at—updating beliefs based on new evidence—is something we've consistently failed at all through the pandemic. The mantra of "believe the science" revealed itself as just an argument from authority dressed up in a lab coat.
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Replying to @Pinboard
My own perception has been that the science has been updating CONSTANTLY due to new evidence over the course of the pandemic. Policy changes have lagged of course but the pace of scientific discovery and the updating of scientific consensus has been astounding.
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Replying to @AstroKatie
There has been incredible foot-dragging on the scientific side, for example on the issue of aerosol transmission. The institutional rot goes deep.
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Replying to @Pinboard @AstroKatie
I think you’ve misunderstood science vs public policy. It takes a long time for science to prove things. Health public policy should probably have moved ahead of the science. They aren’t remotely the same thing.
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Replying to @jandersen @AstroKatie
I'm not confused about the distinction. It takes very little time to disprove something, and we had early and compelling evidence disproving the accepted model of transmission. That was ignored for reasons that implicate the scientific community, not policymakers.
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Replying to @Pinboard @AstroKatie
Weird how you learned all this from journaled publication but “science” suppressed it. Who is this community that should be implicated?
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Replying to @jandersen @AstroKatie
A nice writeup of all of it is here:https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airborne-transmission.html …
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Replying to @Pinboard @AstroKatie
That’s a great article about why the WHO and CDC took a long time to accept the empirical findings of scientists. The policy makers were slow. I ask you again, who is this scientific community that sat on data or research?
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Who do you think works at CDC and WHO? The article is about a failure of science, not policymaking.
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Replying to @Pinboard @AstroKatie
CDC and WHO are policy making institutions with PhD holders. They structure guidance to nations to make choices. That guidance is policy. There is no part of science that ever resolves to “you should wear masks and maintain 6ft distance.”
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