What happens when “science” is speaking with dozens of different voices, each a momentary flash of Truth unto itself?
Recently, some interesting facts came to light from Canada about who is really affected by COVID-19:
The National Institute on Aging says that as of May 6, 3,436 residents and six staff members of long term care settings had died of COVID-19, representing 82 per cent of the 4,167 deaths reported as of Wednesday…
Last fall, the National Institute on Aging warned long term care homes were plagued by conditions that increased the risk of spreading infections: people living in close quarters in residences faced with chronic shortages of staff, with little space or ability to enforce proper physical distancing measures, where poorly paid employees often work on a part-time basis at multiple facilities, increasing the risk.
The pandemic has borne out those fears.
Tonda MacCharles, “82% of Canada’s COVID-19 deaths have been in long-term care, new data reveals” at Toronto Star
I (O’Leary for News) recall being told explicitly months ago that COVID-19 mainly killed old and/or immune-compromised people. It must be so, at least in Canada, where there have been very few deaths among healthy young people.
So why close schools, throw young people out of work, shut down and maybe destroy their businesses, make it nearly impossible for young families to move, let heart patients die because their surgeries are postponed…
Do we need Albert Einstein to figure this out?: We know where the people in long-term care are. They’re in licensed government-inspected or -run facilities. If we had simply moved to address the problems outlined above and protect them, instead of sucker-punching young people’s lives, we might have saved many seniors, prevented much loss and damage, and weathered the storm much better.
But then we’d need to ignore the pack howls from “science.”
Once we climb back out of the hole we have so furiously dug for ourselves, let’s start thinking more about ignoring the pack howls from “science.”
After all, how many more of them can we afford?
See also: But IS there such a thing as pandemic science? Or is it just panic science? The problems that Lenzer and Brownlee identify in their screed as wrong science are normal components of a panic in a crisis. What it all really shows is that we aren’t as much smarter than our forebears as we think.