“Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
–Will Rogers, The Illiterate Digest, “Defending My Soup Plate Position” (1924)
The price of that ignorance, of course, depends upon the subject and the circumstances.
The following video from Stanford’s Hoover Institution helps reduce the degree of our ignorance regarding covid-19, its mortality rate, and the economic consequences of mitigation actions. The decisions regarding restarting the economy by reducing isolation and social distancing cannot be intelligently made without a reasonably accurate knowledge of that mortality rate. Herein, Stanford Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya helps lift the veil of ignorance that obscures ‘Wuhan Virus Pandemic’ reporting and decision making:
If our decision makers would pay more attention to the likes of Dr. Bhattacharya, perhaps extricating ourselves from this mess would be less emotionally and morally excruciating. Attempting to absolutely minimize casualties from Wuhan will maximize casualties from economic collapse. Some greater number of persons will die by re-starting the economy sooner rather than later. But how many more will not die by doing so earlier? No one has that crystal ball, but you can bet the Dems will damn Trump whichever choice he makes.
As the days go by, it seems evermore likely that the covid-19 virus escaped from one of the two virology labs in Wuhan, China, so the moniker “Wuhan Virus” is becoming evermore appropriate. Here’s what Tucker and Gordon Chang had to say on the subject evening last:
Assumption questioning is always a good policy. Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman was intensely sensitive to the issue as it related to his personal integrity as a scientist:
… Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.
As well as “Cargo Cult Politics”