By now, people should be wondering, has “science” lost the plot? What, exactly, is it for?:
A new bombshell article from the New York Times claims that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been withholding massive amounts of data relating to COVID-19 from both the general public and state and local officials. If true, this story ought to be a major scandal…
What’s the CDC’s justification for hiding this information from the public as well as state and local officials? CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund told the Times that “it’s not yet ready for prime time.”
But it turns out that this explanation may not be the real answer after all:
John G. West, “Major Scandal: New York Times Reports CDC Withholding Massive Amounts of COVID-19 Data” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 22, 2022)
No, of course not. The real explanation is, as quoted by West from the source, “The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public, the official said, because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.”
Well now, why might anyone think that?
And, inimitably, “Some outside public health experts were stunned to hear that information exists.”
From West again:
Again, this is scandalous if true. For the past two years, we’ve heard government officials complain ad nauseum about the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19. Well, misinformation and conspiracy theories rise in inverse proportion to good data. If you really want to combat misinformation, you shouldn’t be hiding the data collected by the government. When data is hidden or missing, people start trying to fill the gaps by speculation. You pretty much guarantee misinformation and conspiracy theories when you withhold data.
John G., West, “Major Scandal: New York Times Reports CDC Withholding Massive Amounts of COVID-19 Data” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 22, 2022)
He goes on to point out other instances. The big question is, has secretiveness, deception, and a resulting hunger for authoritarian rule based on “science” has become a way of life in the upper echelons of a high-tech society?
And then the biggest questions looms: What to do about it?
At one time, it was just Darwin gibber in the schools and such-like stuff. Now it is getting more serious.
With any luck, what will come out of the COVID-19 crisis is a massive rethinking of what “science” is and what — when publicly funded — it is supposed to do.
You may also wish to read: Royal Society: Don’t censor misinformation; it makes things worse. While others demand crackdowns on “fake news,” the Society reminds us that the history of science is one of error correction. It’s a fact that much COVID news later thought to need correction was in fact purveyed by official sources, not blogs or Facebook or Twitter accounts.