I would like to offer some counter arguments/ alternate perspectives if I may.
You outlined 5 ‘conspiracies which graduated to fact’, but I wonder if you’ve considered the following…
Science is not truth, it’s evidence. When a question is put to science, at first there is no answer. Science will collect the evidence and after enough is gathered, it can be observed and will generally point towards a conclusion. That is all it can do and all it can claim to do. This is why science changes over time. If it DIDN'T change, we would know that it's BS.
COVID 19 is sometimes referred to as a ‘novel coronavirus’, and that’s because it was novel - it was new and unknown. When it first emerged, science had no answers to the urgent questions the world was demanding answers for. Almost four years later, we now have enough evidence to assert some reasonable conclusions based on the evidence science has gathered.
So, how about these conspiracies? Could it be that the appointed experts were simply doing what we demand and expect our appointed experts to do, which is to be cautious and give the best advice based on what they know at any given time?
For example, if we ask these appointed experts a question like ‘should we wear masks?’ They could shrug and say ‘we don’t know yet’, OR they could say something like ‘this virus appears to affect the respiratory system, as such, based on other respiratory viruses, there’s a good chance it’s an airborne pathogen and, as we’ve known for the last last 150 years or so, wearing a mask cuts down the likelihood of transmitting airborne pathogens, and since we still don’t know the effects or mortality of this virus, wearing masks is recommended at this stage”.
My view is this… when we’re all on the same ship and it begins taking on water and sinking, some will grab a bucket and begin to bail water, and others will simply stand back and criticize and accuse those bucket grabbers of nefarious motives. This is inevitable; it’s human nature (turbo charged by the internet). Standing back and criticizing is easy, anybody can do that. Those who grabbed buckets and got to work saved the lives of millions and millions of people. I support those who grab a bucket. They might make mistakes and they might get things wrong, but me and my keyboard have done less than nothing to help. The next pandemic might be a whole lot worse, and there will be a lot fewer people grabbing buckets after seeing what happened to the experts during the Covid crisis.
Yes, if they had phrased it like that, they may have had a better response. Instead, they mandated things that their science had already showed to have no effect and quashed the experts who said so. Is it surprising that people noticed this? And can you blame these people for not "grabbing a bucket" afterwards?
The Coronavirus wasn't really that novel, was it? It was pretty much like SARS, except that for some reason it hit the ground running, already fully adapted to humans. That part was new.
It's not about the science. That's the problem. The science was fine. It was about crafting the illusion of government knowing what they were doing, when in reality they were following the demands of teacher's unions (in the case of schools), and manufacturing a false "consensus" in order to silence their critics.
Much of what we "know" now, was already known before, we just weren't allowed to say it.
Masks don’t really do anything - The study you linked to basically says “inconclusive”, but wasn’t it a good idea to be cautious in the beginning? We didn’t know then, and we still don’t really know. Hardly a conspiracy.
If you’re asymptomatic, you’re not going to spread the disease - From the article, the only ‘conspiracy’ I can see here is that a test which the CDC funded, should’ve got more funding? (or something like that)
The Great Barrington Declaration - seems to be a group of experts who advise an approach similar to Sweden’s. This was a lively debate throughout the pandemic on which type of approach was better, there seemed to be plenty of voices on both sides. I don’t remember there ever being a cover up, or if there was, it wasn’t a very effective one. I also don’t think either approach was ever proven to be ‘better’, and probably never will be.
School closures are kind of like the Barrington thing, plenty of voices on both sides, not sure what the conspiracy is. I don’t think anyone would disagree that school closures were necessary early on, and I also think that teachers unions certainly should have a say in that debate.
The Chinese lab - again, we know stuff now that we didn’t know then. The consensus at the time was that it was a natural origin and it didn’t make sense in the midst of a global pandemic to be pointing fingers. As far as I’m aware, we still don’t know the origin, and likely never will.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I remember at the start of the pandemic, there was very little known about how dangerous the virus was, or could become. It’s killed an estimated 7 million people so far, and in a country like the USA, it’s killed more Americans than every war they’ve ever fought combined. That’s bad, but could’ve been a lot worse. Obviously governments had to make tough decisions, some of those decisions were good, some bad. We should be critical of bad decisions, and we should have high expectations from our leaders, but disasters, wars, and pandemics are the situations where human societies need good governance, it’s when the importance of centralized planning is most urgent and critical. My concern is that when the next pandemic comes around, there will be even fewer of the right people in the right position to make the best decisions because they saw what happened to those in charge the last time around. Sure conspiracy theories are fun, but when we have doctors and scientists fearing for their lives simply because they did a job that we asked them to do, I think we have to step back and look at our rhetoric around these issues.
Hindsight? One of my main points in this piece (which I maybe should've emphasized a bit more) is that there were many extremely knowledgeable experts who already knew this stuff early on (or were at least talking about it). The government simply refused to listen to them, the mainstream media gave them no time, social media companies shut them down, and their superiors shut them up.
There is very little we know now that we didn't have data on right off the bat. This is especially true of school closures, mask mandates, travel restrictions, not to mention "best practices" around general pandemic response. We've been through several pandemics and the responses to those have been evaluated and huge manuals had already been written.
Leadership hopefuls are right to be fearful of the responsibility that entails. If they're not, we get guys like Justin Trudeau in power.
As far as doctors and scientists and other professionals "fearing for their lives", the ones that were hit that hardest in that regard (by far) were the ones who were saying what I'm saying now after the fact. Those were the guys who were fired and "cancelled" for promoting ideas other than what was "acceptable" at the time - ideas that have now been largely vindicated. That undoubtedly had and has a considerable chilling effect on others who agreed but would rather keep their jobs than say anything publicly.
My concern for the next pandemic is that public trust in government, media, and public health has been so damaged by their recent response that it won't much matter what they say next time around.
In 1991, America’s FCC banned the use of cell phones on passenger planes, and global travel authorities followed. The reason was that it was believed the signals emitted by cell phones had the potential to interfere with the plane’s important communications systems and cause an accident. Did they know that to be true? No. Nobody knew for sure, and it would take many years of research to determine whether or not cell phones posed any real danger.
When you’re in a position of authority and you have different groups of experts telling you different things, and you don’t have years to conduct the necessary studies, then you err on the side of caution. You take a ‘just in case’ approach. It turns out cell phones pose no danger to planes’ communications at all. Does this mean that the FCC made the wrong call? No.
You posted a link about the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of covid and other viruses. The conclusion of that study was that we basically have no idea how effective masks are. So what should authorities do in such a situation when a new virus comes along? Some people will criticize mask mandates, others will criticize NOT having mask mandates. They can’t make everyone happy, but they had to make a choice. Masks have been used for well over a hundred years to stop airborne pathogens, and they have a somewhat intangible effect of reminding the wearer of the importance of hygiene. For example, when I wear a mask, I also find myself being more diligent with washing hands and not touching things (I live in Asia, where the majority of people are still wearing masks in public). The critics are going to shout conspiracy no matter what happens, but I think if you put yourself in the position of the authorities, they did what they believed was the most prudent thing at the time.
The mask issue has already been dealt with in 2006. The studies had been done. There was no "we don't know, so let's err on the side of caution," even though that's what they said. Canada's pandemic plan specifically did not recommend the use of masks at a community level because they didn't work well enough and they knew it would be way too hard to enforce. Our own chief public health officer literally wrote that book.
I think the reason for the mask mandates had a lot to do with the fear in the community (from government propaganda) and pressure from teacher's unions and activists. Not terribly scientific.
How could the studies have been done in 2006 when Covid-19 wasn’t identified until 2019? Sure you can call it ‘not very scientific’ if you like, and I might even agree with you, but that doesn’t make it a conspiracy. What would the purpose of this conspiracy be anyway? Do you think the authorities were receiving payment from surgical mask manufacturers? What it sounds like is that decisions were made which you didn’t like. There were probably decisions made which you agreed with but I didn’t. When we’re acting collectively, we don’t get what we want all the time. Have you ever played a team sport? There’s usually a captain and the team follows the captain, even if the individual team members disagree. There’s a time for individualism, and a time for collective action. A pandemic is a time for the latter. This is the problem with the ‘do your own research’ crowd, in my view. The next time there’s an emergency, once again we’ll have groups of people saying “my favorite YouTuber disagrees with your favorite podcaster, so I’m not cooperating!” I think that’s a very very bad thing.
I would like to offer some counter arguments/ alternate perspectives if I may.
You outlined 5 ‘conspiracies which graduated to fact’, but I wonder if you’ve considered the following…
Science is not truth, it’s evidence. When a question is put to science, at first there is no answer. Science will collect the evidence and after enough is gathered, it can be observed and will generally point towards a conclusion. That is all it can do and all it can claim to do. This is why science changes over time. If it DIDN'T change, we would know that it's BS.
COVID 19 is sometimes referred to as a ‘novel coronavirus’, and that’s because it was novel - it was new and unknown. When it first emerged, science had no answers to the urgent questions the world was demanding answers for. Almost four years later, we now have enough evidence to assert some reasonable conclusions based on the evidence science has gathered.
So, how about these conspiracies? Could it be that the appointed experts were simply doing what we demand and expect our appointed experts to do, which is to be cautious and give the best advice based on what they know at any given time?
For example, if we ask these appointed experts a question like ‘should we wear masks?’ They could shrug and say ‘we don’t know yet’, OR they could say something like ‘this virus appears to affect the respiratory system, as such, based on other respiratory viruses, there’s a good chance it’s an airborne pathogen and, as we’ve known for the last last 150 years or so, wearing a mask cuts down the likelihood of transmitting airborne pathogens, and since we still don’t know the effects or mortality of this virus, wearing masks is recommended at this stage”.
My view is this… when we’re all on the same ship and it begins taking on water and sinking, some will grab a bucket and begin to bail water, and others will simply stand back and criticize and accuse those bucket grabbers of nefarious motives. This is inevitable; it’s human nature (turbo charged by the internet). Standing back and criticizing is easy, anybody can do that. Those who grabbed buckets and got to work saved the lives of millions and millions of people. I support those who grab a bucket. They might make mistakes and they might get things wrong, but me and my keyboard have done less than nothing to help. The next pandemic might be a whole lot worse, and there will be a lot fewer people grabbing buckets after seeing what happened to the experts during the Covid crisis.
Yes, if they had phrased it like that, they may have had a better response. Instead, they mandated things that their science had already showed to have no effect and quashed the experts who said so. Is it surprising that people noticed this? And can you blame these people for not "grabbing a bucket" afterwards?
The Coronavirus wasn't really that novel, was it? It was pretty much like SARS, except that for some reason it hit the ground running, already fully adapted to humans. That part was new.
It's not about the science. That's the problem. The science was fine. It was about crafting the illusion of government knowing what they were doing, when in reality they were following the demands of teacher's unions (in the case of schools), and manufacturing a false "consensus" in order to silence their critics.
Much of what we "know" now, was already known before, we just weren't allowed to say it.
Masks don’t really do anything - The study you linked to basically says “inconclusive”, but wasn’t it a good idea to be cautious in the beginning? We didn’t know then, and we still don’t really know. Hardly a conspiracy.
If you’re asymptomatic, you’re not going to spread the disease - From the article, the only ‘conspiracy’ I can see here is that a test which the CDC funded, should’ve got more funding? (or something like that)
The Great Barrington Declaration - seems to be a group of experts who advise an approach similar to Sweden’s. This was a lively debate throughout the pandemic on which type of approach was better, there seemed to be plenty of voices on both sides. I don’t remember there ever being a cover up, or if there was, it wasn’t a very effective one. I also don’t think either approach was ever proven to be ‘better’, and probably never will be.
School closures are kind of like the Barrington thing, plenty of voices on both sides, not sure what the conspiracy is. I don’t think anyone would disagree that school closures were necessary early on, and I also think that teachers unions certainly should have a say in that debate.
The Chinese lab - again, we know stuff now that we didn’t know then. The consensus at the time was that it was a natural origin and it didn’t make sense in the midst of a global pandemic to be pointing fingers. As far as I’m aware, we still don’t know the origin, and likely never will.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I remember at the start of the pandemic, there was very little known about how dangerous the virus was, or could become. It’s killed an estimated 7 million people so far, and in a country like the USA, it’s killed more Americans than every war they’ve ever fought combined. That’s bad, but could’ve been a lot worse. Obviously governments had to make tough decisions, some of those decisions were good, some bad. We should be critical of bad decisions, and we should have high expectations from our leaders, but disasters, wars, and pandemics are the situations where human societies need good governance, it’s when the importance of centralized planning is most urgent and critical. My concern is that when the next pandemic comes around, there will be even fewer of the right people in the right position to make the best decisions because they saw what happened to those in charge the last time around. Sure conspiracy theories are fun, but when we have doctors and scientists fearing for their lives simply because they did a job that we asked them to do, I think we have to step back and look at our rhetoric around these issues.
Hindsight? One of my main points in this piece (which I maybe should've emphasized a bit more) is that there were many extremely knowledgeable experts who already knew this stuff early on (or were at least talking about it). The government simply refused to listen to them, the mainstream media gave them no time, social media companies shut them down, and their superiors shut them up.
There is very little we know now that we didn't have data on right off the bat. This is especially true of school closures, mask mandates, travel restrictions, not to mention "best practices" around general pandemic response. We've been through several pandemics and the responses to those have been evaluated and huge manuals had already been written.
Leadership hopefuls are right to be fearful of the responsibility that entails. If they're not, we get guys like Justin Trudeau in power.
As far as doctors and scientists and other professionals "fearing for their lives", the ones that were hit that hardest in that regard (by far) were the ones who were saying what I'm saying now after the fact. Those were the guys who were fired and "cancelled" for promoting ideas other than what was "acceptable" at the time - ideas that have now been largely vindicated. That undoubtedly had and has a considerable chilling effect on others who agreed but would rather keep their jobs than say anything publicly.
My concern for the next pandemic is that public trust in government, media, and public health has been so damaged by their recent response that it won't much matter what they say next time around.
In 1991, America’s FCC banned the use of cell phones on passenger planes, and global travel authorities followed. The reason was that it was believed the signals emitted by cell phones had the potential to interfere with the plane’s important communications systems and cause an accident. Did they know that to be true? No. Nobody knew for sure, and it would take many years of research to determine whether or not cell phones posed any real danger.
When you’re in a position of authority and you have different groups of experts telling you different things, and you don’t have years to conduct the necessary studies, then you err on the side of caution. You take a ‘just in case’ approach. It turns out cell phones pose no danger to planes’ communications at all. Does this mean that the FCC made the wrong call? No.
You posted a link about the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of covid and other viruses. The conclusion of that study was that we basically have no idea how effective masks are. So what should authorities do in such a situation when a new virus comes along? Some people will criticize mask mandates, others will criticize NOT having mask mandates. They can’t make everyone happy, but they had to make a choice. Masks have been used for well over a hundred years to stop airborne pathogens, and they have a somewhat intangible effect of reminding the wearer of the importance of hygiene. For example, when I wear a mask, I also find myself being more diligent with washing hands and not touching things (I live in Asia, where the majority of people are still wearing masks in public). The critics are going to shout conspiracy no matter what happens, but I think if you put yourself in the position of the authorities, they did what they believed was the most prudent thing at the time.
The mask issue has already been dealt with in 2006. The studies had been done. There was no "we don't know, so let's err on the side of caution," even though that's what they said. Canada's pandemic plan specifically did not recommend the use of masks at a community level because they didn't work well enough and they knew it would be way too hard to enforce. Our own chief public health officer literally wrote that book.
I think the reason for the mask mandates had a lot to do with the fear in the community (from government propaganda) and pressure from teacher's unions and activists. Not terribly scientific.
How could the studies have been done in 2006 when Covid-19 wasn’t identified until 2019? Sure you can call it ‘not very scientific’ if you like, and I might even agree with you, but that doesn’t make it a conspiracy. What would the purpose of this conspiracy be anyway? Do you think the authorities were receiving payment from surgical mask manufacturers? What it sounds like is that decisions were made which you didn’t like. There were probably decisions made which you agreed with but I didn’t. When we’re acting collectively, we don’t get what we want all the time. Have you ever played a team sport? There’s usually a captain and the team follows the captain, even if the individual team members disagree. There’s a time for individualism, and a time for collective action. A pandemic is a time for the latter. This is the problem with the ‘do your own research’ crowd, in my view. The next time there’s an emergency, once again we’ll have groups of people saying “my favorite YouTuber disagrees with your favorite podcaster, so I’m not cooperating!” I think that’s a very very bad thing.