Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Who Said This?

Guess the sources of these statements: Worst case scenario planning encourages counterproductive overreactions in which law-enforcement techniques and drastic anti-civil liberties measures are used as the first resort, rather than the last resort. “the law enforcement/national security approach” to fighting a pandemic “converts the exception into the rule by treating everyone in the general population as a potential threat who warrants coercive treatment.”  we must ‘trade liberty for security’ is both false and dangerous A conservative media personality? Right wing blogger? Radical libertarian? No, no, and no. They are from the ACLU’s 2008 report “Pandemic Preparedness: The Need for a Public Health—Not a Law Enforcement/National Security—Approach.” Because the ACLU saw this coming, they were prepared. Which is why it is Read More ›

Government is a Blunt Instrument

Government is good at imposing overarching regulations. Making finely tuned (or even roughly tuned) adjustments to fit particular circumstances? Not so much. This is nowhere more apparent than in the government’s decision to shut down “elective” procedures everywhere, even though the need to so so varied in the extreme from place to place. This article provides some details on the fiasco. a friend who works in a cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) in rural Virginia called recently and told me about how they had reorganized their entire system around caring for coronavirus patients. They had cancelled most “non-essential” procedures, imposed furloughs and pay cuts, and created a special ICU ward for patients with COVID-19. So far, they have had only Read More ›

Paper: So many exceptions to sex chromosome evolution

From the paper: “Finally, the remarkable turnover of sex chromosomes in many systems, as well as variation in the rate of sex chromosome divergence, suggest that assumptions about the inevitable linearity of sex chromosome evolution are not always empirically supported, and the drivers of the birth-death cycle of sex chromosome evolution remain to be elucidated. ” Read More ›

Dr Raoult in his own voice on HCQ, with English sub-titles

Jerry has again hit gold, and so here is Dr Didier Raoult, in his own voice, with English sub-titles: Let us view and discuss. U/D: it will be helpful to take time to follow this video also, where others have a say. (As time permits, I will put up some screen captures as updates below.) Let us view and let us think together. END F/N: Let me stack screen shots, first, who and what we are dealing with: Next, the study: Note, for reference, its approval: Research protocol approved by the ANSM [= “Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament et des Produits de Santé (ANSM)”, i.e. National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products] and the Île-de-France CPP Read More ›

Poor, Poor Darwinists!

A new study is out trying to find the LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). Needless to say, things got even worse for those who place their belief in Darwinian thinking. Because the Concluding Remarks section is so devastating, I’m blockquoting the whole thing: Our work furnishes a new variable for the assessment of protein family evolution which compliments previous approaches based on conserved presence and phylogenetic topology. Using phylogenetic tree based approaches of the type used here, only limited information can be gained about the LUCA, leaving specific details on physiology largely speculative. Analysis of proteins such as the reverse gyrase, hydrogenase, and nitrogenase discussed here and elsewhere (Boyd et al., 2011a, b; Catchpole and Forterre, 2019) does not support Read More ›

What is Unthinkable for Some, is very Thinkable for Others

There is an Internet meme going around concerning a statement attributed to Trey Gowdy. In the statement the following question is asked: Is it a mere coincidence that China unleashed the corona virus on the world just before the U.S. presidential election, especially in light of the fact that we are in a global trade war with China brought on by Trump? The obvious rejoinder to that question is the Chinese people have suffered as much, if not more, than anyone else. How could a government intentionally unleash a virus that was sure to wreak such havoc on its own people? In answering that question, take this into account: Xi stands in direct linear succession to Mao. Mao once said Read More ›

When is Data not Data?

When Orthomyxo says so of course. In a recent exchange I asserted that COVID-19 deaths may be overstated. Orthomyxo got red in the face, stamped his rhetorical feet, and petulantly insisted that no COVID-19 numbers are without the slightest doubt understated. There is strong evidence, however, that they are overstated, and when he asked me for data to support that claim, I gave him data in the form of this statement from the scientific advisor to the Italian Minister of Health: “On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two Read More ›

Joe Biden’s Health Advisor: The Lives of the Elderly Have Less Utility

Joe Biden has just tapped Ezekiel Emanuel, the chief architect of Obamacare (and brother of “never waste a crisis” Rahm Emanuel) as an advisor on healthcare issues. Ezekiel is most famous for insisting that healthcare must be rationed, and the elderly must perforce get the short end of the rationing stick. The reason: he has a strictly utilitarian view of life, which takes no account of the inherent value of human life as such. He is also Jewish. Does anyone else find it tragically ironic that a Jew of all people would advance policy prescriptions that are in all but name based on the Lebensunwertes Leben principle? To be sure, Ezekiel has not advocated for outright euthanasia as the progenitors Read More ›

The Problem of Beauty

This is an excellent primer on the problem of beauty from a Darwinian perspective. Why Extravagant Beauty is Evolution’s Most Persistent Problem. It seems more reasonable, as Wallace believed, that extravagant beauty is likely to eject creatures from the gene pool. It requires more energy to develop and maintain and makes one highly conspicuous and attractive to predators. A quibble: I am not sure this is Darwinian evolution’s most persistent problem. There are so many candidates for that title, it is hard to keep count, much less come to a definitive answer as to which problem is the worst.

Dr Zelenko’s HCQ-based ALT-ernative to the near-Business As Usual (n-BAU) approach

Jerry drew our attention last night to a radio interview by Dr Vladimir Zelenko. In this interview, he summarises his approach and rationale, giving results and making several announcements. (Unfortunately, the media cannot be embedded at UD as it is not YT. Kindly, go here; and make sure your browser has no active ad blocker.) On listening last night, here are my first observations on highlight points: Brazil and Israel are doing his early treatment, clinical diagnosis (backed up by nasal swab test), outpatient-oriented dosage for vulnerable patients protocol, ALT-1. He has treated 405 in that profile and sees 95% reduction on the expected death rate for the n-BAU baseline. He points out that the Raoult [by implication] protocol, which Read More ›

Depressions Have Unpredictable Consequences in Lives Lost

Some of those who oppose loosening the draconian restrictions the government has placed on economic activity argue that the restrictions are necessary because they will save lives.  That argument — while it may be made in good faith — is nevertheless profoundly blinkered and shortsighted, because the heartbreaking reality is that China’s criminal recklessness has put us between the Scylla and the Charybdis when it comes to the question of saving lives.  Lives are going to be lost no matter what we do.   We can continue stifling economic activity and maybe lives will be saved (though the science on that question is far from settled).  But there is a price to be paid for stifling economic activity.  We are Read More ›