Sunday, October 18, 2020

Other outbreak oblocutors...


"You know nothing John Snow" is probably what he was told: John Snow, the British physician who 'first determined that cholera spread through contaminated water'; he wasn't sure how but he was right; he also had many naysayers and detractors.[{typo edit} Interestingly the sadly MIA blogger Raedwald mentioned him back in April:

"We must keep exposing the manifold failures of the central Whitehall machine. They are costing lives." 

 Anyhoo...the reason for John Snow the mention is that The Great Barrington Declaration has a rival: The John Snow Memorandum. A couple of days ago Lockdown Skeptics debunked a lot of it and today they ask "Who are the Real Heirs of John Snow in the Herd Immunity Debate?

"The conventional wisdom at the time – the view held by the scientific establishment – was the miasma theory, which held that diseases such as cholera and bubonic plague were caused by pollution or “bad air”. Instead of relying on this theory, Snow actually did some on-the-ground research, talking to local residents and analysing the pattern of infection. In this way, he was able to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump in Broad Street and end the epidemic. Snow’s discovery, which came about because he engaged in methodical, empirical research rather than relying on some divorced-from-reality theory, is regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology. For a group of establishment panjandrums to invoke John Snow’s name, given that their entire approach to the pandemic is rooted in abstract mathematical modelling, is almost laughably inappropriate."

That said, he did order the handle of the 'Broad Street Pump' to be removed so as to avoid the residents drinking the water; I suppose that could be construed as an early 'lockdown restriction' couldn't it? 

More good stuff  HERE from Robert E. Wright at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) ['What?' I hear you murmour...no worries, he's a historian].

"In case my fancy words remain unclear, I am saying that the public health officials who do not understand the correct policy response to covid, represented by the Great Barrington Declaration, fail to do so because they have not studied the history of science or even medicine in sufficient detail to understand the scientific method. They are too ignorant to be humble. Case in point, John Snow himself would have signed the Great Barrington Declaration, not the John Snow Declaration."
Finally, a few choice words from Dr. Atlas Scott [great name!], who when interviewed had some ghastly and wrrying statistics e.g. "[in the USA]...an astonishing 25.5 percent of people between 18 and 24 contemplated suicide in the month of June alone" WTF? Lockdown's a winner...NOT!
"History will record the faces of the public health expertise as some of the most sinful, egregious, epic failures in the history of public policy. They have killed people with their lack of understanding and their lack of caring about not just the impact of cases of COVID-19, a virus that the overwhelming majority of people do well in. They never cared to considered the impact of the policy itself, and the policy itself has been a complete epic failure, and honestly some people say a crime against humanity — these people should be held accountable for what they did."
Winter is Coming.

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