US COVID-19 Deaths = 1 Million+, Lessons Learned = 0?

Smithsonian Magazine recently had an article entitled "Six Lessons We’ve Learned From Covid That Will Help Us Fight the Next Pandemic." The items listed as "lessons learned" from COVID-19 are:

(1) "We need to rapidly scale up testing."

(2) "We need to leverage data more effectively."

(3) "We need to seek out a diversity of voices."

(4) "We need to continue making big bets on vaccines."

(5) "We need to actively crowd out bad information."

(6) "We need to infuse public health communication with vulnerability."

I rather doubt whether any of these statements list any of the most important lessons that should be learned from the COVID-19 fiasco. Item #3 sounds like something rather promising, but it is basically neutralized by Item #5.  The explanation of Item #5 gives us some language that indicates that the author has failed to learn one of the biggest lessons we should have learned from the COVID-19 fiasco, which is: don't demonize people you are trying to persuade to take a particular action. 

An article at the Yale Medicine web site lists these "lessons of COVID-19," none of which is any of the chief lessons of the pandemic:

Lesson 1: Masks are useful tools.

Lesson 2: Telehealth might become the new normal.

Lesson 3: Vaccines are powerful tools.

Lesson 4: Everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic.

Lesson 5: We need to take mental health seriously.

Lesson 6: We have the capacity for resilience.

Lesson 7: Community is essential—and technology is too.

Lesson 8: Sometimes you need a dose of humility.

We already knew before the pandemic that masks are useful tools during a pandemic, and that vaccines are powerful tools; and most of the other items are platitudes. 

Reading about ten different articles after doing a Google search for "lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic," I can find no sign that our authorities have learned some of the main lessons that should be learned from the COVID-19 fiasco. Below is my list of some of the lessons that should have been learned. 

Lesson #1: Don't recklessly experiment with the genomes of lethal viruses in laboratories lacking the highest possible security measures, and don't fund foreign experimentation with lethal viruses.

We still don't know whether the COVID-19 vaccine originated from some purely natural event or as a leak from a laboratory that was recklessly experimenting with virus genomes.  Referring to Intelligence Community elements (IC elements) such as the CIA, a US government document stated that "four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus," but that another intelligence community element concluded with higher confidence ("moderate confidence") that "the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology." A US Senate report favored the lab leak hypothesis. But the origin of COVID-19 is still an unanswered question. As long as there is still a  large chance that COVID-19 arose from a lab leak, the supreme lesson that must be drawn from the COVID-19 fiasco is a lesson to take every measure to minimize the chance that any genetic laboratory will release a pathogen in the future. All signs are that the scientific community has failed to heed this lesson. Apparently nothing has been done to improve security at gene-splicing labs, or to reduce the chance of future pandemics arising from scientific experimentation. 

Lesson #2: Pay the greatest attention to important-seeming novel phenomena, rather than ignoring such phenomena or trying to minimize their importance.

In the US we had the most enormous failure to pay attention to  COVID-19 when it was spreading in January and February 2020.  In a January 27, 2020 interview on Fox News, Anthony Fauci stated this about coronavirus spreading in the United States (at the 1:42 mark): "The risk right now in the United States is really low." Rather than raising a loud-and-clear alert to the graveness of the threat, Fauci said that in the interview "I'm saying don't worry, and don't be afraid."  He failed to alert the public health system to the coming danger on January 27 in any kind of noticeable way that would attract attention.  By mid-February it should have been all the more clear to any forward-thinking epidemologist that the United States faced a grave peril from coronavirus. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization had officially declared coronavirus a "global health emergency." But Fauci predicted on February 3, 2020 that there would be a "dampening down" of US coronavirus cases. And in a February 17, 2020 interview with USA Today, Fauci suggested that coronavirus was nothing much to worry about in the US.  In the USA Today article from February 17, we read: "Fauci doesn't want people to worry about coronavirus, the danger of which is 'just minuscule.' "  In a February 13, 2020 statement, the CDC issued an extremely weak statement about coronavirus that failed to attract much of any attention, saying nothing more alarming than this vague assertion: "There will likely be additional cases in the coming days and weeks." By February 26, 2020 the CDC had detected evidence that coronavirus was spreading in the US. But rather that issuing a very strongly-worded "scream bloody murder" warning that people would pay attention to, the CDC issued a mild-sounding statement failing to alert anyone of a grave public threat. 

A failure to pay attention to many types of novel important-seeming phenomena has been the most gigantic failure of most of the scientific community for a very long time. For more than two hundred years there have occurred a wide variety of paranormal phenomena, phenomena which are of very great importance in assessing such basic questions as whether humans have a soul or whether the human mind is purely the product of the brain. For two hundred years the policy of mainstream professors has been essentially "just ignore anything that doesn't fit in with my view as to how reality works." There have been disastrous intellectual and moral results of such a failure to pay attention to phenomena, with generations of people getting wrong ideas about the nature of themselves and other humans. But at least such failure to study things did not produce any medical disasters. Finally in the year 2020 the nation ending up paying for our scientist's long habit of being inattentive to important-seeming novel phenomena.  While our scientists were "asleep at the switch," COVID-19 spread all over the country between January and April 1, 2020. But no lesson has been learned here. The "ignore important-seeming novel phenomena" principle still seems to prevail in academia, where professors continue to ignore a host of important psychical phenomena they should be paying very great attention to. 

Lesson #3: When extremely important public health advice is to be presented to the public during a pandemic, make sure it is presented by figures of maximum credibility and consistency who have no record of error on the topic they are speaking about. 

When a pandemic occurs it is of the utmost importance to have the government's message being delivered by advocates of the highest credibility. If you want people to be wearing face masks and you want people to be taking vaccines, then the officials urging such things on our TV screens should be figures with the highest credibility and figures with an unblemished record of competence relating to the pandemic they are talking about. But during 2020 and 2021 the dominant TV spokesman on these topics was Anthony Fauci. 

By May of 2020 Fauci's credibility on COVID-19 had been severely damaged by at least two problems (I won't mention a third big issue that is widely discussed):

(1) Fauci's failure to properly alert the public about COVID-19 during early 2020, as shown by the statements of his I quoted above. 

(2) The bad advice about wearing face masks Fauci gave during March 2020, when he stated, "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask," at a time when COVID-19 was spreading like wildfire in New York City.

The US television coverage about COVID-19 during 2020 and 2021 seemed to be dominated by the appearances  of Anthony Fauci. Changing my channel between the 6:30 evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC during 2020 and 2021, I would often seem to see Fauci on all three programs. It quickly became evident that Fauci was a polarizing figure who many millions did not trust, and polls showed that fewer than 50% of Republicans trusted him. But it seemed that whenever the main television networks wanted to interview a government official, it was most often Anthony Fauci showing up on our TV screens.  We also often saw a surgeon general who had changed his advice about whether we should wear masks. 

The US airwaves should have been presenting us public health authorities who had always taught the same thing about COVID-19, and who had an unblemished record of advising us correctly on this topic. As you can see here, the death rate of about 332 per 100,000 in the US ended up being several times greater than in most of the world's countries, suggesting a massive failure of the government to persuade sufficiently. 

Lesson #4: Don't demonize people whose behavior you are trying to change. 

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 election, but lost the electoral college vote to Donald Trump. Part of the reason she lost was a big political mistake she made, referring to people supporting Trump as a "basket of deplorables." When you are trying to change the behavior of people (whether it is getting them to vote a particular way or to wear a face mask or get a vaccine shot), it makes no sense to demonize such people. Doing such a thing will backfire, making it less likely than ever that their behavior will be changed. In the mainstream's attempt to get people to wear masks and take vaccines, endless examples of demonization attempts occurred, in which various demeaning insults were hurled by authority figures at those people whose behavior such authority figures were trying to change.  This was very bungled politics. 

Nowadays the term "anti-science" is a demonization term. The term is not correctly applied to people reluctant to take vaccines.  Science with a capital S means facts established by observation. Science with a lower S means the process of determining truth through systematic efforts such as observation, experimentation and classification. A person who chooses not to take a vaccine he should be taking is a person who may be guilty of an ethical error, but it is groundless to call such a person "anti-science." Similarly, it is groundless to call a person who chooses not to purchase some particular technological product "anti-technology," and it groundless to call a person who declines to have some particular operation "anti-medicine." Nowadays many people in the medical and scientific communities are being extremely careless in throwing around the demonization term "anti-science" towards people who disagree with them on scientific topics, often applying such a term to people who are pro-science in the sense of being supporters of attempts to establish truth using observations and experiments. 

Lesson #5: When new pandemics are getting started, we need all the watchdogs and "eyes and ears" we can get, without such sources becoming "sleeping watchdogs" because of follow-the-leader timidity.  

The failure of the press at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was enormous. There was a failure by newspaper authorities, television authorities and internet information sources that could have alerted the US to enormity of the peril it faced in February and March 2020. In general such sources acted like "sleeping watchdogs" as our national house was invaded, maybe because of some timidity about "going out on a limb" by raising concerns that had not yet become "common wisdom." The post here documents the failure of one major science publication (the online Quanta Magazine) to properly alert the public to the COVID-19 peril in the spring of 2020.  The  post here documents the failure of another major science publication (the online version of The Scientist Magazine) to properly alert the public to the COVID-19 peril in the spring of 2020. The lesson for the watchdogs of the press is simple: as soon as you smell smoke, start barking loudly. 

Lesson #6: Don't forget that "never" can be much worse than "late."

There's an old expression "better late than never," and it applied during the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions chose to wait until quite a few millions had taken their COVID-19 shots, to make sure there wasn't any side effect showing up massively.  Once many millions had got their COVID-19 shots with few reported serious side effects, the "wait and see" rationale was gone, and there was little rationale for not getting a shot. Too many of the "wait and see" thinkers ended up never getting a vaccine. A "wait and see" rationale does not justify a "never" course of action. 

Lesson #7: Don't pretend to understand things you don't understand, and don't make knee-jerk dismissals of reasonable hypothetical explanations while unfairly characterizing supporters of such explanations. 

Perhaps the biggest blunder of today's scientists is their very frequent claims to understand things that they do not understand, such as the origin of human minds, the origin of adult human bodies, and the origin of mankind. COVID-19 gave us many further examples of such a tendency. For example, soon after COVID-19 appeared scientists immediately started making claims that they knew COVID-19 had a purely natural origin, at a time when they did not actually know how COVID-19 originated. Our scientists made knee-jerk dismissals of a reasonable hypothesis of a lab leak origin for COVID-19, while unfairly painting anyone supporting such a hypothesis as a "conspiracy theorist." The hypothesis of a lab leak origin was not actually a conspiracy theory, but a theory of human error and overconfidence.  A lesson we should draw from such a thing is: don't rule out reasonable hypothetical explanations of something while making mudslinging stereotype caricatures of reasonable people suggesting such explanations. That is very much a lesson our professors and experts have yet to learn; for they continue to haughtily dismiss many a reasonable hypothesis while making mudslinging stereotype caricatures of those presenting such ideas (the post here discusses one of many examples I could give of such behavior). 

"The Scientist" Magazine Poorly Advised the Public in the Early Months of COVID-19

In the post here and the post here I documented how leading health agencies such as the WHO, the CDC and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made crucial blunders during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar blunders were committed by the mainstream science press.  In the post here I documented how the leading online science publication Quanta Magazine failed to properly alert the public on how to protect itself during the crucial early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this post I will discuss how another leading online science publication (The Scientist at www.the-scientist.com) failed to properly advise the public in the crucial early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

People in the USA only began to hear about coronavirus (also called COVID-19) early in the year 2020. The first few months of the year 2020 were a critical period during which the "evil genie" of COVID-19 might have been pretty much kept in its bottle if the public had been well-advised, and the right steps had been taken. Thanks to the excellent tagging system at The Scientist site, it is possible to see exactly how The Scientist covered COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic. You can use links like this to find all the articles the magazine published on COVID-19.

https://www.the-scientist.com/tag/coronavirus

https://www.the-scientist.com/tag/COVID-19

Then you just use the pagination links at the bottom right to navigate back to the stories that appeared on COVID-19 in the first half of 2020. The two links above give almost identical results after about February 1, 2020, when almost all stories on COVID-19 in The Scientist had tags of both "coronavirus" and "COVID-19." 

The January 2020 stories COVID-19 stories in The Scientist are below:

• Cause of Viral Pneumonia Outbreak in China Unknown
• New Coronavirus Identified in Central China Pneumonia Outbreak
• One Dead in Pneumonia Outbreak from New Coronavirus in China
• Person-to-Person Spread of Novel Coronavirus Confirmed in China
• Scientists Scrutinize New Coronavirus Genome for Answers
• Where Coronaviruses Come From
• Australian Lab Cultures New Coronavirus as Infections Climb
• Going Viral for the Wrong Reasons
• Scientists Zero In on the Novel Coronavirus’s Incubation Period

None of these stories did much of anything to alert the US public to the danger that COVID-19 would spread massively in the United States. Below are the COVID-19 stories that The Scientist had in the first half of February 2020:

• Flu and HIV Drugs Show Efficacy Against Coronavirus
• Report of Asymptomatic Transmission of 2019-nCoV Inaccurate
• Test for Novel Coronavirus Approved for Wide Deployment
• Indian Authorities Propose Use of Homeopathy to Prevent Coronavirus
• Outrage and Grief Follow Death of Coronavirus Whistleblower
• Scientists Compare Novel Coronavirus with SARS and MERS Viruses
• Journals Open Access to Coronavirus Resources
• Coronavirus Test Kits May Yield Inconclusive Results
• Opinion: Scientists’ Obligations During the COVID-19 Outbreak

None of these stories did much of anything to alert the US public to the growing peril of COVID-19. The first article had a headline giving the inaccurate impression that there were drugs that could cure COVID-19, at a time in which no such drugs existed. The last article was one that attempted to argue that COVID-19 was not all that much to worry about. The February 14, 2020 article was written by a professor of biology (Loike)  who rather seemed to be raising hopes that COVID-19 would soon abate or that effective anti-viral treatments would soon be available for COVID-19. No such treatments appeared in the first half of 2020 (although by now they exist). The professor stated the following:

" Several reports have even presented data of potentially effective anti-viral treatments for this coronavirus. It is still too early to assess some encouraging news from China that indicates that the spread of this pathogen is abating in provinces other than Hubei, where it originated—a sign that the quarantine efforts in China may be working. People should be more concerned about the flu epidemic that typically kills between 10,000 and 50,000 people in the US each year."

The same gigantic blunder was made by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who told us about the same time that COVID-19 was not nearly as big a threat as the flu. In a February 17, 2020 interview with USA Today, Fauci said that the risk from coronavirus (COVID-19) in the USA was "minuscule." In the next 2.5 years COVID-19 would kill about a million people in the United States, more than twenty times the annual death toll from the flu. Professor Loike then stated this: "At this point in time, the CDC does not recommend wearing masks such as the N95 respirator type to avoid catching the virus, so people should not worry if stores have sold out."  This advice of the CDC (repeated in February 2020 and March 2020 by Anthony Fauci in TV interviews) was foolish and disastrous. The CDC recanted such advice about April 3, 2020, when it started telling healthy people to wear masks in crowds. If the CDC and people such as Fauci had given the right advice early in the pandemic (such as advice to wear face masks until a vaccine was available), most of the million US COVID-19 deaths would probably have been prevented. In the first three months of 2020, it was as if the US press and science establishment had basically appointed Anthony Fauci as a kind of "pope of COVID-19," and the priesthood of professors dared not defy this "pope."

Here are the articles about COVID-19 that The Scientist had in the second half of February 2020:

• The Latest Drug Trials for Coronavirus
• Senior Doctor in Wuhan Outbreak Dies From  Coronavirus
• How COVID-19 Is Spread
• Newer Vaccine Technologies Deployed to Develop COVID-19 Shot
• Why Some COVID-19 Cases Are Worse Than Others
• Coronavirus’s Genetics Reveal Its Global Travels
• Coronavirus Precautions Stifle Research
• As Global Coronavirus Cases Climb, More Areas on Lockdown
• First US Case of Apparent SARS-CoV-2 Community Transmission

None of these stories did much of anything to alert the US public to the growing peril of COVID-19. The "How COVID-19 Is Spread" article discouraged people from wearing face masks by saying, "The CDC only recommends these masks for people who are already infected with SARS-CoV-2." It made no sense for the article to parrot such ruinous advice, because the article had discussed how scientists did not know whether the COVID-19 virus was airborne.  At a critical time when many lives would have been saved if the editors and writers at The Scientist had challenged authority rather than kneeling to it, we merely had a parroting of the CDC's ruinous advice, which the CDC recanted a few weeks later. The article "As Global Coronavirus Cases Climb, More Areas on Lockdown" mentioned only countries outside of the US, without mentioning any cases in the US, and without mentioning the US or any of its cities. 

Here are the articles about COVID-19 that The Scientist had in the first half of March 2020:

• Second US Coronavirus Death Confirmed in Washington State
• How SARS-CoV-2 Tests Work and What’s Next in COVID-19 Diagnostics
• Italy Closes All Schools for Two Weeks as Coronavirus Spreads
• Life Science Conference Disruptions Due to Coronavirus
• Watch the Spread of COVID-19
• Theory that Coronavirus Escaped from a Lab Lacks Evidence
• Coronavirus’s Genetics Hint at its Cryptic Spread in Communities
• Global COVID-19 Cases Top 100,000
• Scientists Use Online Game to Research COVID-19 Treatment
• Studies Estimate Incubation Time, Infectious Period of SARS-CoV-2
• College Class Cancellations Skyrocket Amid Coronavirus Concerns
• RNA Extraction Kits for COVID-19 Tests Are in Short Supply in US
• SARS-CoV-2 Can Live on Plastic and Steel for 2–3 Days
• Modelers Struggle to Predict the Future of the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Chinese Officials Blame US Army for Coronavirus

None of these stories did much of anything to properly advise the US public about how to protect themselves from the growing peril of COVID-19. By this time the hospitals in New York City were starting to fill up with COVID-19 patients. The subways were spreading COVID-19 very efficiently, in subway cars where people were not wearing masks. But we still had no advice from The Scientist suggesting that healthy people wear masks. 

Here are the articles about COVID-19 that The Scientist had in the second half of March 2020:

• Clinical Trial of COVID-19 Vaccine Begins in Seattle
• Which Species Transmit COVID-19 to Humans? We’re Still Not Sure.
• Possible Biological Explanations for Kids’ Escape from COVID-19
• Journals, Peer Reviewers Cope with Surge in COVID-19 Publications
• Bay Area Researchers Close Labs Under New Restrictions
• Coronavirus’s Effect on Autism Research May Have Lasting Effects
• Image of the Day: How COVID-19 Spreads
• US Primate Centers Work to Protect Animals from COVID-19
• Opinion: Grad Students Face Uncertainty During the Pandemic
• Remdesivir Works Against Coronaviruses in the Lab
• Border Closing Strands Professors, Students in Peru
• Chloroquine for COVID-19: Cutting Through the Hype
• Opinion: Stop Private Speculation in COVID-19 Research
• After Conference Cancellations, Some Scientists Find a Way
• Lost Smell and Taste Hint COVID-19 Can Target the Nervous System
• Image of the Day: Coronavirus in 3D
• Locally Made COVID-19 Tests Help Meet Demands
• Relatively Stable SARS-CoV-2 Genome Is Good News for a Vaccine
• FDA to Allow for Plasma Therapy for COVID-19 Patients
• Universities Issue Hiring Freezes in Response to COVID-19
• Animal Facilities Make Tough Decisions as Pandemic Closes Labs
• EPA Protections Relaxed During Coronavirus Pandemic
• Africa Contributes SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing to COVID-19 Tracking
• FDA Gives Abbott Emergency Use of Five-Minute Coronavirus Test
• Cells’ Response to SARS-CoV-2 Different from Flu, RSV

During these two weeks, COVID-19 was spreading like wildfire in places like New York City, which would have thousands of deaths by the end of March, 2020. The public desperately needed publications like The Scientist to properly advise it. But The Scientist was asleep at the wheel. We still had no article from The Scientist telling healthy people to wear face masks. This was long before there were any vaccines for COVID-19, at a time when wearing masks was of the utmost importance to prevent the spread of the disease. 

It wasn't as if The Scientist was afraid at this time to be advising the public. In one of the articles above (Opinion: Stop Private Speculation in COVID-19 Research) The Scientist said "In our view, five policy actions are urgent," and listed five recommendations. But none of the recommendations were what the public needed to be advised at this time. The five recommendations were largely about how scientists could better profit from the pandemic. Among the "urgent" policy actions recommended were that "it is necessary to establish a system of public rewards for all researchers who share their knowledge, even partial, in the battle against the virus." That was bad advice, the type of advice that might have encouraged a COVID-19 researcher to withhold his findings if he was not paid for them. It would have been better for the The Scientist to have said: it is the moral duty of all researchers to share their findings about COVID-19, regardless of rewards they receive. 

Finally on April 3, 2020 there was a huge change in what disease control authorities were teaching about preventing COVID-19. On that day the CDC suddenly began advising us that it was very important for healthy people to wear masks to protect themselves from COVID-19. The CDC reversed and recanted the disastrous advice it had been giving throughout February 2020 and March 2020, that people did not need to wear face masks unless they had already been infected by COVID-19.

But The Scientist had a disastrous failure in this regard. None of its articles before April 3, 2020 advised healthy people to wear masks to protect themselves from the COVID-19 pandemic which was spiraling out of control in March, 2020. Moreover, once the CDC announced its reversal about face masks on April 3, 2020 (by suddenly telling us we should all be wearing face masks when we go out in public), The Scientist failed to publicize this extremely important announcement. The Scientist should have immediately issued an article with a headline like this:

We Goofed So Bad! Please Start Wearing Face Masks to Stop COVID-19! 

But no such article appeared.  Here are the articles about COVID-19 that The Scientist published in the first two weeks of April, 2020:

• HIV Researcher Gita Ramjee Dies of Complications Tied to COVID-19
• Some Coronavirus Researchers Are Running Low on Masks
• US Selects Two COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates for Huge Investments
• Blood Pressure Meds Point the Way to Possible COVID-19 Treatment
• Cats, Ferrets Susceptible to SARS-CoV-2: Study
• The COVID-19 Coronavirus May Travel in Aerosols
• Scientists Around the Globe Pivot Their Research to SARS-CoV-2
• Track COVID-19 Vaccines Advancing Through Clinical Trials
• Study Questions if School Closures Limit the Spread of COVID-19
• Lipid Expert and Babraham Institute Director Michael Wakelam Dies
• European Research Council President Resigns
• Opinion: Ethically Accessing Experimental Therapies for COVID-19
• Opinion: Lab Work Under Isolation
• Are Mesenchymal Stem Cells a Promising Treatment for COVID-19?
• Journal Publisher Concerned over Hydroxychloroquine Study
• The Effects of Physical Isolation on the Pandemic Quantified
• Logistical Hurdles Leave COVID-19 Test Kits Unused
• Scientists Scan for Weaknesses in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein
• How Scientists Can Volunteer To Help Fight COVID-19
• First Saliva Test for COVID-19 Approved for Emergency Use by FDA
• Discovered: Metabolic Mechanism of Cytokine Storms

It would be rather hard to imagine a more pathetic failure to advise the public than the failure of The Scientist during these crucial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the months when the CDC was issuing ruinous advice telling people only to wear face masks if they were sick (February 2020 and March 2020), The Scientist failed to produce any articles challenging such bad advice.  Then when the CDC completely reversed its position and started telling people that they needed to wear face masks even if they were not sick (on April 3, 2020), The Scientist apparently failed to even have an article bringing to its readers this incredibly important announcement. The Scientist acted rather as if it had some skeleton in its closet that it wanted to hide:  that it had failed to properly advise the public during the crucial early months of a pandemic. 

For the rest of April, 2020 and in May 2020 and in June 2020 there were no helpful articles in The Scientist primarily written to advise the public on how to prevent being infected by COVID-19. When the World Health Organization on June 6, 2020 made a very important announcement reversing its previous ruinous advice by telling healthy people to start wearing face masks to prevent COVID-19, there seems to have been no article in The Scientist covering this very important announcement. 

What went on at The Scientist during the first half of 2020 was not some rare fluke in which scientists acted in an uncharacteristic manner. To the contrary, the failure of The Scientist and so many scientists during this period was a textbook example of problems that have for very long plagued scientific academia, and continue to be a gigantic blight on the community of scientists. The problems are things such as groupthink, herding behavior, intellectual cowardice, lack of scholarly independence, and a tendency of scientific authorities to meekly kowtow to belief traditions, rather than independently judging matters based solely on facts, logic, observations, morality and mathematics. 

The sociological situation in scientific academia is illustrated by the schematic diagram below. Each layer believes as the layers above it believes, leaving some tiny group at the top (consisting of professors at the most well-known universities) largely controlling what millions believe. 

This situation is pathological and intellectually disastrous. Every scientist should be judging truth based on facts, observations, logic and mathematics, rather than just meekly parroting the opinions of other scientists. When some tiny group controls how everyone believes, there will be all too large a chance of the propagation of untrue beliefs and bad advice, in a sociological process that has been described as herding behavior, "follow the leader" and groupthink. 

In the case of the early pandemic, we saw an even more dysfunctional situation. The situation is described by the diagram below, which is a slight modification of the diagram above. In this version the difference is that there are very tiny little boards or committees at agencies such as the CDC or the WHO, represented by the tiny little red mark at the very top. Instead of independently giving advice based on facts, observations, logic and math, all of the layers are dancing to the tune played by some tiny little committees or boards at the CDC or the WHO. 

The tendencies of science authorities to "follow the herd" and to kneel to authority (rather than exercising independent judgment) was a gigantic disaster that helped to lead to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. If science authorities had acted properly, giving the right advice during the first months of 2020, more than half a million lives could have been saved. There was nothing the least bit inevitable about losing a million American lives by COVID-19 infection. An article in the New York Times was entitled "How Millions of Lives Might Have Been Saved from COVID-19."   We read  that Taiwan has suffered only 853 COVID-19 deaths, and that "if the United States had suffered a similar death rate, we would have lost about 12,000 people, instead of nearly a million." We are told that South Korea had fewer than 1000 COVID-19 deaths in 2020, and that if the US had responded as effectively, it would have lost only about 7000 in the year 2020, instead of losing more than 375,000 in that year. 

The world continues to suffer enormously because of groupthink and "follow the herd" tendencies in scientific academia, in which professors act like guardians of belief traditions rather than independent judges of truth. Innumerable millions are miseducated into believing irrational ideas that are in conflict with a horde of facts and human observations. Detailing fully the damage that has been done by scientist authoritarianism would require a very long additional essay that would mention things such as (1) the incalculable mental harm and physical risk that occurred because of the construction of atomic bombs and utterly unnecessary hydrogen bombs that put the very survival of civilization at risk; and (2) the incalculable moral and mental harm arising from evidence-ignoring materialist misrepresentations of the essential nature of humans, ideas deriving from boastful socially constructed achievement legends. 

Thankfully the COVID-19 death toll was kept from being twice as bad, mainly by the work of brave health care workers, ordinary people who took precautionary measures, and a large body of research scientists and other workers who worked to develop COVID-19 vaccines.  

There used to be a documentary television show called Seconds From Disaster. In each episode there would be a description of how some disaster occurred. I recall one episode that taught an important lesson. It seems that a pilot had mistakenly taken off a jetliner in the wrong direction, ignoring the sun in front of him which indicated he was flying in the wrong direction. As a result of the error, the jet crashed and many people died. A review board came to the conclusion that the co-pilot must have suspected the error, but probably avoided telling the pilot about his error, on the grounds that a co-pilot would be "out of line" to be suggesting his superior was guilty of an obvious error. 

In this jet crash case, meekly kneeling to authority led to the death of only dozens of people. The timid kneeling to authority that went on during the early months of COVID-19 helped lead to the unnecessary death of most of a million people in the United States from COVID-19, most of whom would probably have lived if authorities had taught properly from the beginning. Our science authorities have not learned the incredibly important lesson of this affair: that well-informed people should bravely stick their necks out and issue independent judgments and advice based on facts, logic, observations, morality and evidence, rather than just meekly "following the herd" and assuming that people above them in some pyramid of prestige have got things right. There are 101 reasons (sociological, cultural, financial and psychological) why people at the top of some pyramid of prestige may be teaching things that are dead wrong. 

The Smear Tactics of COVID-19 Origins Dogmatists Resembled Those of Human Origins Dogmatists

"What we have seen with the lab-leak controversy is experts responding to this state of affairs not with the kind of humility the situation calls for, but by forcing consensus to create the appearance of certitude in order to preserve their social and political authority. The misrepresentation of the state of our knowledge regarding Covid’s origins was therefore not simply a misstep or institutional failure. It was a perversion of the norms that scientific institutions and experts are supposed to uphold."  -- M. Anthony Mills, article in The New Atlantis

The COVID-19 pandemic began spreading worldwide early in the year 2020, after originating in Wuhan, China, the site of two major virus labs. In February 2020 a letter appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet entitled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19." The statement denounced as "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" suspicions that "COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."  It stated the following:

"The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

The authors suggested that "conjecture" on this topic should be repressed for the sake of "unity," stating, "We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture." 

What was going on here was what we may call a slander-steamroller. The elements were as follows:

(1) Those supportive of a reasonable hypothesis (the hypothesis of an accidental lab leak) were slandered as supporters of "conspiracy theories." In recent years accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist is a way of dismissing that person as being some wildly unrealistic fantasist whose thoughts should be ignored.  In this case the accusation was slanderous, because the hypothesis of a lab leak has no dependence on any conspiracy theory. A person can reasonably suspect that COVID-19 arose from some accidental lab leak that was the result of unintentional human error, not some conspiracy to create a new virus and send it out into the world. 

(2) The prestige of the Lancet was used as a kind of springboard to create a steamroller effect, in which discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis became unofficially taboo. 

The Daily Mail quotes a scholar of COVID-19 origins (Jamie Metzl) as speaking very unfavorably about the February 2020 Lancet letter orchestrated by Daszak:

"Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization's advisory committee on human genome editing and is a former Bill Clinton administration staffer, said Dr Daszak's letter was a 'form of thuggery'. He said: ‘The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation. By labelling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method.' "

Metzl was using a little hyperbole, as no literal thuggery (no literal physical violence) was involved, and mere words are never "the worst form of bullying," which is physical violence. It is rather hard to judge exactly how much of an effect the February 2020 Lancet letter had. But it did rather seem in early 2020 that the letter had "worked like a charm" to tell scientists that no heresy was allowed from the prevailing view on this topic.  Throughout that year scientists acted as if they were thinking, "We got the memo: it is a taboo to question the purely natural origin of COVID-19." 

But in the year 2021, things started to change. Article after article in the mainstream press began to treat respectfully the lab leak hypothesis as an alternate theory of COVID-19 origins. An example is the article here in the widely-read science review site Inference. In the press around the middle of 2021 we heard quite a few scientists say that in retrospect it was a mistake to brand those in favor of the lab leak hypothesis as "conspiracy theorists." The lab leak hypothesis is  mainly a theory of human error and human overconfidence, not a theory of some sinister conspiracy.  Quite a few scientists said something along the lines that going forward, there should be a calm scientific debate about the alternate ideas of a purely natural origin of COVID-19 and a laboratory-related origin, without people mudslinging those who took either of the positions. 

In 2022 a scientific paper was published, entitled, "A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus." Referring to a furin-cleavage site (FCS) that is a key part of the SARS-CoV-2  virus that causes COVID-19, the paper said, "We do not know whether the insertion of the FCS was the result of natural evolution —perhaps via a recombination event in an intermediate mammal or a human —or was the result of a deliberate introduction of the FCS into a SARS-like virus as part of a laboratory experiment."

Two developments have shown that there never was any good basis for unanimity about COVID-19 origins.  They are these:

(1) An official US government report (which you can read here)  stated the following, using "IC elements" to mean government agencies such as the FBI and the CIA involved with intelligence analysis:

"Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.  One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

So the result was: no conclusion on COVID-19 origins were made  with high confidence, and the only conclusion made with medium confidence was a conclusion in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.

(2) About two weeks ago the WHO issued a report on COVID-19 origins that was very inconclusive, and stated that more research needed to be done on the lab-leak hypothesis. An Associated Press story summarizes the report with this headline: "WHO: COVID origins unclear but lab leak theory needs study."

We read the following in the AP story:

"Over two years after the coronavirus was first detected in China, and after at least 6.3 million deaths have been counted worldwide from the pandemic, the World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame.

That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.

WHO concluded last year that it was 'extremely unlikely' COVID-19 might have spilled into humans in the city of Wuhan from a lab. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped into people from bats, possibly via another animal.

Yet in a report released Thursday, WHO’s expert group said 'key pieces of data' to explain how the pandemic began were still missing. The scientists said the group would 'remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.' ”

The slander-steamroller effect that occurred in the year 2020 regarding a far-from-settled matter of biological origins resembled another slander-steamroller effect that has long occurred regarding a different far-from-settled matter of biological origins: the matter of human origins. The second of these slander-steamroller effects has worked like this:

(1) Critics reasonably disputing the credibility of Darwinist accounts of human origins have long been unfairly slandered as "creationists," a term suggesting scriptural motivations, even when the arguments of such critics make no appeal to scripture, but are based only on the mountainous complexity of human bodies and human mental phenomena, and the inadequacy of Darwinist explanations for such wonders. 

(2) The social conformity engine that is modern academia has acted as a steamroller to suppress contrarian explanations and create groupthink, creating an "everyone must sing from the same choir book" environment in which reasonable critics advancing credible alternative explanations are labeled as heretics and painted as kooks, in an ad hominem sort of way. 

We do not yet understand COVID-19 origins, and we should not pretend that we do.  Those who advance the reasonable hypothesis of a lab-leak should not be slander-steamrolled through ad hominem smears such as calling them "conspiracy theorists." Similarly, we do not understand human origins, and we should not pretend that we do. Those who advance the reasonable hypothesis of teleology and design as a chief causal factor in human origins should not be slandered and smeared as thinkers who have scriptural motivations, when the main motivations of such thinkers are the mountainous levels of physical organization and information-rich complexity in human bodies and a host of hard-to-explain wonders of the human mind and spirit, all observed and studied long after any scriptures were written. 

The origin of about 20,000 types of fine-tuned human protein molecules, the origin of about 200 types of enormously complex human cells,  the origin of the mountainous levels of hierarchical organization in human bodies (not explained by DNA that does not specify such organization), and the origin of many human mind capabilities (not credibly explained by anything in brains)  are all unsolved problems thousands or millions of times harder to naturally explain than the "furin-cleavage site (FCS)" origin problem that so vexes scientists trying to explain the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.  So what sense does it make to be advocating intellectual humility and reservation of judgment about COVID-19 origins, while acting in an opposite way about human origins? 

There is an accurate term that can be used to describe those who believe or suspect that design or purpose were key factors in the origin of humans. The word is "teleologist." "Teleology" is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as  "the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena." 

There is no truth to claims or insinuations that proper scientists only find purely natural explanations for phenomena. There is no such rule in the world of science. Scientists such as archeologists ponder old things such as bones and stones and huge rocks, and are quite ready to choose either purely natural explanations involving no purpose or intention or explanations involving design and purpose and willful activity. For example, an archeologist may decide that some old chipped stone or some circle of large rocks arose after some purposeful intervention by a willful agent.  Similarly, astronomers analyzing radio waves from outer space are quite ready to announce the discovery of design and purpose as soon as they find some radio waves that sufficiently resemble waves that were transmitted by purposeful agents. And chemists analyzing some soil or meteorologists analyzing the atmosphere sure don't follow some rule of "always believe the causes were mindless and not designed." 

According to the AP article quoted above, "The World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame" for the origin of COVID-19. But when will our mainstream scientists start declaring that a deeper probe is required into whether Darwinist explanations can credibly account for human origins? They will probably long avoid such a declaration, because such a declaration would involve a gigantic scholarly commitment that they would prefer not to make.  That type of deeper probe should include a deep inquiry into what exactly are the capabilities of human minds, and what exactly are the human experiences and abilities that are hardest to explain (or impossible to explain) with conventional explanations or neural and genetic explanations. That type of inquiry would require scientists to start reading hundreds of important volumes that they have failed to read, and should have read before ever claiming to understand human origins. A small fraction of those volumes are listed in my post here.  

The topic of human mental phenomena is a topic of oceanic depth. Rather than plunge into that ocean and deeply explore it, the typical biologist has got away with a merely superficial study of the human mind, like someone who studies the ocean only by riding around atop the sea in a boat or wading at the shore. Will our biologists ever pledge to make a full study of the human mind and all its strange facets and hard-to-explain phenomena, like some student of the ocean pledging to do many hours of scuba diving?  Don't hold your breath waiting for such a pledge.  It's much easier to cling to unfounded explanatory boasts, and to claim that you understand the origin of minds that you have not studied a hundredth as deeply as you should before boasting that you understand how such minds arose. 

Just before publishing this post this morning, I saw a long article in the Guardian entitled "Do we need a new theory of evolution?" The "teaser" text below the title seems to mention another case of smear tactics being used by human origins dogmatists. It says this:

"A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology."

What we have in the article is kind of a portrait of an evolution "industry" (to use a term used by the article) in disarray and disagreement.  Below is one quote:

"This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading." 

We are told that when some contrarian scientists organized a New Trends in Evolution conference, they were fiercely attacked by fellow scientists: "the personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were 'shocking' and 'ugly', said one scientist." Why of course -- that's the same kind of smear tactics I mention in this post.  We hear quite a bit in the article about problems with the so-called "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology, but no mention of its central defect: its phony-baloney idea or insinuation that DNA (consisting of genes) is a blueprint for an organism, an idea that is just plain false. As discussed here, DNA has no specification of the structure of an organism, and does not even specify how to make any of the cells of an organism. The Guardian article has a link to a scientific paper saying this about the "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology: "proposing it as a master theory was premature, and claiming that it was established empirically was an exaggeration bordering on delusion." 

Postscript: A recent biology paper preprint is entitled "Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2."  The paper states this: 

"Both the restriction site fingerprint and the pattern of mutations generating them are extremely unlikely in wild coronaviruses and nearly universal in synthetic viruses. Our findings strongly suggest a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV2."

Cheap Shot: Scientific American's Recent Article on COVID-19

"What we have seen with the lab-leak controversy is experts responding to this state of affairs not with the kind of humility the situation calls for, but by forcing consensus to create the appearance of certitude in order to preserve their social and political authority. The misrepresentation of the state of our knowledge regarding Covid’s origins was therefore not simply a misstep or institutional failure. It was a perversion of the norms that scientific institutions and experts are supposed to uphold."  -- M. Anthony Mills, article in The New Atlantis

The COVID-19 pandemic began spreading worldwide early in the year 2020, after originating in Wuhan, China, the site of two major virus labs. In February 2020 a letter appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet entitled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19." The statement denounced as "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" suspicions that "COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."  It stated the following:

"The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

The authors suggested that "conjecture" on this topic should be repressed for the sake of "unity," stating, "We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture." 

The Daily Mail quotes a scholar of COVID-19 origins (Jamie Metzl) as speaking very unfavorably about the February 2020 Lancet letter orchestrated by Daszak:

"Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization's advisory committee on human genome editing and is a former Bill Clinton administration staffer, said Dr Daszak's letter was a 'form of thuggery'. He said: ‘The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation. By labelling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method.' "

Metzl was using a little hyperbole, as no literal thuggery (no literal physical violence) was involved, and mere words are never "the worst form of bullying," which is physical violence. It is rather hard to judge exactly how much of an effect the February 2020 Lancet letter had. But it did rather seem in early 2020 that the letter had "worked like a charm" to tell scientists that no heresy was allowed from the prevailing view on this topic.  Throughout that year scientists acted as if they were thinking, "We got the memo: it is a taboo to question the purely natural origin of COVID-19." 

But in the year 2021, things started to change. Article after article in the mainstream press began to treat respectfully the lab leak hypothesis as an alternate theory of COVID-19 origins. An example is the article here in the widely-read science review site Inference. In the press around the middle of 2021 we heard quite a few scientists say that in retrospect it was a mistake to brand those in favor of the lab leak hypothesis as "conspiracy theorists." The lab leak hypothesis is  mainly a theory of human error and human overconfidence, not a theory of some sinister conspiracy.  Quite a few scientists said something along the lines that going forward, there should be a calm scientific debate about the alternate ideas of a purely natural origin of COVID-19 and a laboratory-related origin, without people mudslinging those who took either of the positions. 

But mainstream scientists have been very bad about living up to such pledges. Soon after we heard such pledges, mainstream scientists returned to their bad old ways, and resumed techniques of stereotyping, smearing and weaponized psychology against those advancing the lab leak hypothesis. 

The latest example is an absurdly ad hominem article published in Scientific American.  The article has three authors: 

• a virologist who tries to make a case for the purely natural origin of COVID-19 (one that withholds a crucial piece of evidence);
• a climate scientist who is there so that a senseless comparison can be made between global warming denialists and those who are skeptical about whether COVID-19 had a purely natural origin;
• a cognitive scientist who seems to be the chief instigator in an application of weaponized psychology, which is when ad hominem psychology verbiage is used for the sake of "poison-the-well" defamation of someone who holds some opinion you do not share or made some observation you do not want to accept.

The article has the absurd title "The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth." The claim is not at all true.  The hypothesis that COVID-19 may have arisen from a lab accident has not done anything to make it harder for any scientist to seek the truth. 

The article repeatedly tries to draw illegimate associations between those who favor the lab leak hypothesis and various unrelated parties who the authors regard as unsavory. Specifically:

(1) The article again and again unfairly tries to paint supporters of the lab leak hypothesis as conspiracy theorists.  You need not believe in any conspiracy theory to think that COVID-19 may have arisen from a lab leak when overconfident scientists were not as careful as they should have been. A theory of human error and overconfidence is not a conspiracy theory.  

(2) By having a photo showing people opposing vaccine mandates, the article tries to link people opposing vaccine mandates and those who think COVID-19 may have originated when some lab leak occurred. These are two different unrelated opinions. 

(3) Most ridiculously, the article tries to link those disbelieving in man-made global warming with those supporting the lab leak hypothesis. Those two opinions have no connection, and in one sense are rather the opposite. A global warming denialist is often saying "it's all just natural, not man-caused" about global warming, while a lab leak theorist may typically say "it's not all just natural, it was man-caused" about COVID-19.  

Climate scientists do not enhance their credibilty when they author or co-author ad hominem attacks trying to smear people who have some opinion which has nothing to do with the climate, by making extremely strained and implausible comparisons between such people and global warming denialists, like someone trying to say parapsychology lab researcher professors are like tarot-card fortune tellers, or like someone trying to suggest critics of gene splicing research are like flat earth believers.  To the contrary, when climate scientists become involved in that type of unfair mudslinging,  such scientists may diminish their own credibility.  

Discussing the intelligence review of the lab leak hypothesis made by government agencies, the Scientific American article resorts to some deplorable information withholding. The article tells us only this:

"The so-called lab-leak hypothesis gained sufficient rhetorical and political force that President Joe Biden instructed the U.S. intelligence services to investigate it. Although the interagency intelligence report update, declassified in October 2021, dismissed several popular laboratory-origin claims—including that the virus was a bioweapon and that the Chinese government knew about the virus before the pandemic—it was unable to unequivocally resolve the origin question."

The report in question (which you can read here)  stated the following, using "IC elements" to mean government agencies such as the FBI and the CIA involved with intelligence analysis:

"Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.  One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

So the result was: no conclusion on COVID-19 origins were made  with high confidence, and the only conclusion made with medium confidence was a conclusion in favor of the lab leak hypothesis. What we needed from the recent Scientific American article on COVID-19 origins was a mention of the fact that is most relevant to discussing COVID-19 origins: that the only US intelligence agency to conclude with medium or higher confidence on this topic concluded with medium confidence that COVID-19 probably came from a lab leak. Instead of telling us this most relevant fact,  Scientific American has given us a fantasy: that the hypothesis of a lab leak is making it harder for scientists to seek truth. 

A page from the assessment on COVID-19 origins

Unfair stereotyping of opponents is one of the eight classic symptoms of groupthink. The authors of the recent Scientific American article seem like examples of what are called mindguards. In the context of groupthink, mindguards are people who try to prevent some group from being exposed to data or opinions that conflict with its prevalent opinion about something.  Besides stereotyping of opponents, the predominant tactic of mindguards is to suppress any mention of relevant facts or observations conflicting with the group's viewpoint. 

Scientific American has turned into such an "ideology shop" that by now a good principle is: never believe anything merely because you read it in a headline in Scientific American, unless you get confirmation from some other credible source. 

In the New York Times yesterday there was an opinion article with the headline "How Millions of Lives Might Have Been Saved from COVID-19." The article suggests that the entire global COVID-19 pandemic could have been prevented if there had not been a very early coverup conspiracy to suppress news about the politically embarrassing reality of the spread of a novel disease (one of many reasons it makes no sense to speak as if conspiracies never occur). Without naming any names of the bumbling officials guilty of the bungled US response to COVID-19, we get some startling comparisons between competent responses in small countries and incompetent responses in the US. For example, we are told that Taiwan has suffered only 853 COVID-19 deaths, and that "if the United States had suffered a similar death rate, we would have lost about 12,000 people, instead of nearly a million." We are told that South Korea had fewer than1000 COVID-19 deaths in 2020, and that if the US had responded as effectively, it would have lost only about 7000 in the year 2020, instead of losing more than 375,000 in that year. Thus far the COVID-19 deaths of the United States are about 400 times greater than in the attack at Pearl Harbor, but quite a few comparable to Admiral Kimmel have yet to be fired.