The Dangerous Illusion of Scientific Consensus
Science is the process by which we learn about the workings of material reality. Though modern innovations—built on the fruits of science—would look like magic to people living only decades ago, they result from the time-tested scientific method. Contrary perhaps to media portrayals of science, the scientific method depends not on the existence of a mythical consensus but rather on structured scientific debates. If there is a consensus, science challenges it with new hypotheses, experiments, logic, and critical thinking. Ironically, science advances because it believes it has never arrived; consensus is the hallmark of dead science.
One of us is a college student with an unpremeditated career in alternative indie journalism. The other is a professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine with an M.D., a Ph.D. in economics, and decades of experience writing on infectious disease epidemiology. Despite the wealth of differences in our backgrounds and experiences, we converge on foundational scientific and ethical principles that public health authorities abandoned during the COVID pandemic. Principles like evidence-based medicine, informed consent, and the necessity of scientific debate serve as the bedrock on which the public can have confidence that science and public health work for the benefit of the people rather than regardless of it.
The illusion of scientific consensus throughout the COVID-19 pandemic led to disastrous policies, with lockdowns the primary example. It was clear even on the eve of the lockdowns in 2020 that the economic dislocation caused by them would throw tens of millions worldwide into food insecurity and deep poverty, which has indeed come to pass. It was clear that school closures—in some places lasting two years or longer—would devastate children’s life opportunities and future health and well-being wherever they were implemented. The emerging picture of catastrophic learning loss, especially among poor and minority children (with fewer resources available to replace lost schooling), means that lockdowns will fuel generational poverty and inequality in the coming decades. And the empirical evidence from places like Sweden, which did not impose draconian lockdowns or close schools and which have among the lowest rate of all-cause excess death in Europe, suggests that lockdowns failed even narrowly to protect population health during the pandemic.
The illusion of consensus around the proper use of the COVID vaccines was another major public health disaster. Public health officials everywhere touted the randomized trials on the COVID vaccines as providing complete protection against getting and spreading COVID. However, the trials themselves did not have the prevention of infection or transmission as a measured endpoint. Rather, the trials measured protection against symptomatic disease for two months after a two-dose vaccination sequence. Prevention of symptomatic infection is obviously a distinct clinical endpoint from prevention of infection or transmission for a virus that can spread asymptomatically. In the fall of 2020, Moderna chief medical officer Tal Zaks told The BMJ, “Our trial will not demonstrate prevention of transmission … because in order to do that, you have to swab people twice a week for very long periods, and that becomes operationally untenable.”
Despite these facts, public health officials botched the public health messaging surrounding the COVID vaccines. Based on an illusion of scientific consensus, public health authorities, politicians, and the media pushed vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and vaccine discrimination. Prominent officials, including Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, told the public that science had established that COVID vaccines stop transmission. CNN anchor Don Lemon advocated for “shaming” and “leaving behind” unvaccinated citizens from society. Meanwhile, neuroscientist Sam Harris—who has built a well-earned reputation of intellectual honesty and ethical integrity—openly demonized the unvaccinated male waiters at a restaurant as deranged conspiracy theorists in a 2021 episode of his podcast, Making Sense. Countries such as Italy, Greece, and Austria sought to punish their unvaccinated citizens with heavy financial penalties of up to $4,108. In Canada, the government stripped unvaccinated citizens of their rights to travel anywhere via plane or train and their ability to work at banks, law firms, hospitals, and all federally regulated industries.
The premise was that only the unvaccinated are at risk of spreading COVID. An illusion of consensus emerged that getting the shots was a required civic duty. Phrases such as “It’s not about you, it’s to protect my grandparents” became widely popularized. Ultimately, as people observed many vaccinated people around them contract and spread COVID, the public trust in these authorities collapsed. Early last month, the Biden administration extended its foreign traveler mRNA vaccine requirement to May 11th (which is now coming to an end) after the restriction was set to expire on April 11th. None of these policies ever had any scientific or public health rationale or epidemiological “consensus” to support them—and they certainly do not in 2023.
Related errors are overstating the necessity of the COVID vaccine for the young and healthy and downplaying the possibility of severe side effects, such as myocarditis which has been found mainly in young men taking the vaccine. The primary benefit of the COVID vaccine is to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death upon COVID infection. There is more than a thousand-fold difference in the mortality risk from COVID infection, with children and young & healthy people facing an extremely low risk relative to other risks in their lives. On the other hand, the mortality risk for older people from infection is considerably higher. So the maximum theoretical benefit of the vaccine is meager for young, healthy people and children, while it is potentially quite high for elderly people with multiple comorbid conditions.
Institutional public health and medicine ignored these facts in the push to vaccinate the entire population, regardless of the balance of benefits and harms from the vaccine. Public health appropriately prioritized COVID vaccines for the most vulnerable groups—the elderly, the immunocompromised, and others. Meanwhile, public health should have cautioned young and healthy people regarding the uncertainty regarding vaccine safety for a novel vaccine. For the young and healthy, the small potential benefit does not outweigh the risk, which—with the early myocarditis signals—turned out not to be theoretical in nature. A rigorous independent analysis of Pfizer and Moderna’s safety data shows that mRNA COVID vaccines are associated with a 1 in 800 adverse event rate—substantially higher than other vaccines on the market (typically in the ballpark of 1 in a million adverse event rates).
To maintain an illusion of consensus, public health authorities and media thought it necessary to suppress these facts. In June 2021, for instance, Joe Rogan stated healthy 21-year-olds do not need the vaccine. Despite his correct medical judgment which has indisputably stood the test of time, all sectors of the corporate media and social media platforms unanimously pilloried him for spreading “dangerous misinformation.”
Worse, many people who suffered from legitimate vaccine injuries were gaslighted by the media and medical personnel about the cause of their condition. One of us has devoted the past several months interviewing victims of the illusory scientific consensus that COVID vaccines are on net beneficial for every group. For example, there is a 38-year-old law enforcement officer in British Columbia who was coerced into vaccination against his conscience to keep his job. Nearly two years later, he remains disabled from vaccine-induced myocarditis and has been unable to serve his community. National data from countries in France, Sweden, Germany, Israel, and the United States shows a substantial rise in cardiac conditions among younger populations after the distribution of the COVID vaccine.
The illusion of consensus surrounding COVID vaccination—wrongly viewed in the same light as hand-washing, driving within speed limits, or staying hydrated—has led to greater political divisions and discriminatory rhetoric. The failure of the traditionally well-regarded public health agencies like the FDA and CDC—with perverse influences from pharmaceutical companies in tandem with the powerful forces of censorship on social media—has destroyed trust in public health institutions. Disillusioned with the “illusion” of consensus, a growing number of Americans and Canadians are distrustful of scientific consensus and are beginning to question all things.
The project of science calls for rigor, humility, and open discussion. The pandemic has revealed the stunning magnitude of the political and institutional capture of science. For this reason, both of us—Rav and Jay—are launching a podcast devoted to investigating the concoction of pseudo-consensus in science and its ramifications for our society.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-dangerous-illusion-of-scientific-consensus_5243068.html
*************************************************Why all the unexpected deaths?
Late on Friday 28 April, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released its Provisional Mortality update. It’s a time-honoured practice known in media circles as ‘taking out the trash’ although in this case it should probably be called ‘burying the bodies’.
Why the ABS bothers hiding the bad news is a mystery since the mainstream media’s reflex response is to avert its gaze from anything that challenges the official Covid narrative. This is understandable if inexcusable. Nobody likes to admit they were wrong. The mainstream media has spent the last two-and-a-half years repeating the government mantra that the Covid vaccines are safe and effective and still supports vaccine mandates even though it is blindingly obvious that the vaccines failed to end the pandemic, prevent people from getting ill or dying and have caused injuries and death.
This week even the Biden administration announced that it would the drop its Covid vaccine mandate from 12 May for healthcare workers in facilities certified for Medicare and Medicaid services, federal employees and contractors, and international air travellers. It is the last Western nation to ban unvaccinated visitors apart from micro nations such as Puerto Rico and Palau and bastions of liberty and science such as Pakistan, Libya and Turkmenistan.
As for the latest ABS data, it quietly reveals some deadly truths. The best that can be said of it is that mercifully there weren’t as many deaths this January as last January, although even that isn’t true for women aged less than 45. Their death rate was higher this January than last. Overall, deaths were more than 12 per cent above the baseline average. That’s a 10.5 per cent improvement on January 2022 but still 1,605 deaths more than expected and only 731 of those people died of Covid. Were these deaths part of a pandemic of the unvaccinated? Nobody has mentioned that phrase for more than a year so it seems safe to deduce that there is no evidence supporting that assertion.
What about the other 874 people who died unexpectedly in January? This is where it gets interesting. The ABS has created a whole new category called ‘other cardiac conditions’. Deaths in this group were 18.2 per cent above the baseline average in January 2023. That’s only 1.4 per cent below the number recorded in January 2022.
And what sort of deaths do you suppose were included in the new group? They look like vaccine deaths; healthy people who died suddenly and didn’t have chronic cardiovascular disease. The deaths were caused by acute myocarditis and pericarditis which are both recognised side effects of the Covid mRNA vaccines. They also include deaths caused by cardiomyopathies, cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure all of which can be caused by myocarditis – inflammation of the heart – if it is left untreated. Unfortunately, it often is left untreated because people may feel fatigue, shortness of breath or chest pain or they may feel nothing at all. Yet even when myocarditis is asymptomatic it can still cause heart failure, heart attack, stroke, arrhythmia and sudden cardiac arrest particularly after strenuous exercise or in the early hours of the morning while sleeping. Ever since the vaccines were rolled out professional and amateur athletes have been dropping dead in disconcerting numbers as have other seemingly healthy young people. Now there is an ABS category that captures that group with heart failure the number one cause of death killing 264 people in January and cardiac arrhythmia in second place, responsible for 206 deaths.
Deaths due to dementia are more than 14 per cent above the baseline average. Deaths due to Lewy body dementia and fronto-temporal dementia have been added to the category to reduce the number of uncategorised deaths, increasing dementia deaths by 3 to 4 per cent. One explanation for the rise in dementia deaths is that the vaccine-induced spike protein can cross the blood brain barrier causing neuro-inflammation and releasing pro-inflammatory cytokines that can accelerate disease progression in Alzheimer’s, Lewy body dementia and fronto-temporal dementia.
Cancer deaths – the biggest single disease group in the report – are up by 4.3 per cent above the baseline average. What might explain this? Dr. Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St George’s University of London wrote to the British Medical Journal last November reporting that he was seeing people with stable cancers rapidly progress after being forced to have a booster, usually so they could travel. He dismissed the notion put forward including by the TGA that this was simply a coincidence since the same pattern is being reported in the US and Germany as well as Australia. Rather, he hypothesised that the suppression of the innate immune system which occurs after Covid mRNA vaccination is allowing blood and lymph cancers and melanomas to progress that are normally held in check by the immune system. And that is before consideration of reports that the spike protein, produced in large quantities by the body post-vaccination can inactivate the p53 tumour suppressor protein allowing cancers normally controlled by that protein to emerge or re-emerge.
Dalgleish is calling for the vaccines to be withdrawn immediately saying the link between vaccines blood clots, myocarditis, heart attacks and strokes are now well accepted as is the link with myelitis and neuropathy which he and colleagues predicted in an article in June 2020. That may be so but governments are dragging their heels in admitting that vaccines cause so many injuries.
World-renowned British cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra will tour Australia starting on 27 May also calling for the suspension of all Covid vaccines pending a full investigation into vaccine injuries. He is supported by the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society, a non political union representing doctors who want to reclaim medical ethics and the primacy of the doctor patient relationship, many of whom are still unable to work due to vaccine mandates.
In the the US, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has appointed a committee to determine the relationship between vaccines and adverse events. It will assess causality and inform injury compensation recommendations. Unfortunately, the report won’t be published until March 2024. How many more bodies will be buried by then?
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/burying-the-bodies/
**************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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