Great Barrington Declaration co-author Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an outspoken opponent of coercive public health measures and controls on scientific speech, has been awarded the 2024 Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
October 24, 2024 - "Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya was awarded the Zimmer Medal, and Brian Conrad was awarded a 2024 Barry Prize, by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (the Academy). The Zimmer Medal, which honors outstanding courage in the defense of intellectual freedom, was awarded to Sir Salman Rushdie last year.... The awards were conferred last night by Academy President Donald W. Landry of Columbia University and Board Chair Sanjeev R. Kulkarni of Princeton University in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C....
"'Last year we were delighted to honor Sir Salman Rushdie alongside other top minds of our time, and this year we are delighted to honor Jay Bhattacharya and a wonderful group of outstanding scholars,' said Academy President Dr. Donald Landry, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Hamilton Southworth Professor of Medicine at Columbia University.
"'Like other academies, we honor intellectual excellence, but our Academy is distinguished by a special accent on intellectual courage. All our new members this year reflect the independence of mind we strive to honor.'
"The Robert J. Zimmer Medal for Intellectual Freedom is presented annually to a public thinker who displays extraordinary courage in the exercise of intellectual freedom. The award is named in honor of the late University of Chicago President, who led the creation of the Chicago Principles, the gold standard of academic freedom that has been adopted by 110 colleges and universities.
"In 2023, the inaugural Zimmer Medal was awarded to Sir Salman Rushdie, in recognition of his extraordinary leadership in the struggle for human freedom....
"Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. His research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. His recent research focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic. His broader research interests encompass the implications of population aging for future population health and medical spending in developed countries, the measurement of physician performance tied to physician payment by insurers, and the role played by biomedical innovation on health. He holds an MD and a PhD in economics, both earned at Stanford University....
"The American Academy of Sciences and Letters promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. It encourages the fruitful exchange of ideas within academia and society at large by sponsoring occasions for scholarly interaction and providing platforms for the presentation and dissemination of scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. An independent 501(c)(3) non-partisan organization, it offers public programming, supports promising young scholars, and promotes traditional liberal arts ideals and standards of intellectual excellence."
A U.S. Senator has raised the alarm over U.S.-Chinese bird flu research funded by the US Department of Agriculture that reportedly includes gain-of-fuction experiments. But the USDA and scientists involved insist there is no threat to people.
February 16, 2024 - "A U.S. senator has thrown a political spotlight on yet another U.S.-Chinese research collaboration that critics suggest includes dangerous experiments that could create 'superviruses' capable of sparking a pandemic. But contrary to assertions raised by Senator Joni Ernst (R–IA), none of the U.S. funding for the project goes to foreign researchers, and scientists who are part of the collaboration challenge other concerns she raised. And the U.S. funding agency she questioned this week issued a blistering response.
"Prompted by information given to her by a group that opposes animal research, the White Coat Waste Project, Ernst on 14 February sent a letter to the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that said she was 'troubled' to learn about an avian influenza study its researchers are conducting with scientists at the United Kingdom’s Roslin Institute and China’s Institute of Microbiology. USDA approved the $1 million grant in 2020 to better understand the evolution of newly emerged avian influenza viruses.... The letter focuses on experiments in the study that repeatedly pass viruses through birds and laboratory cell cultures, which Ernst writes is a '"gain-of-function" technique that can create a pathogen that can more easily jump species.'
"For more than a decade, debates have focused on defining what constitutes a gain-of-function study, and the question has recently heated up because of unproven assertions that researchers working with bat coronaviruses created SARS-CoV-2, the pandemic coronavirus. Ernst [who] sits on an agriculture committee that oversees USDA ... explicitly links the USDA study to U.S.-funded work with bat coronaviruses that took place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. She notes some U.S. intelligence experts contend SARS-CoV-2 escaped, or leaked, from the facility.... 'Alarmingly,' she adds, the 'Biden USDA' grant is funding a Chinese researcher who is affiliated with WIV.
"In an email, a USDA spokesperson said, 'USDA’s funding is only being committed to the specific components carried out by our own team located in Athens, Georgia, and is not any way contributing to research taking place in the U.K. or China.' What is more, the spokesperson added, 'what Senator Ernst lays out in her letter is far off base from what’s actually transpiring, and on top of that is based on approval decisions that predate this Administration.' If the senator has concerns about USDA research, the spokesperson advised, 'she should reach out to us directly before putting misinformation in a press release or public letter.'
"The collaboration’s Chinese partner, Liu Wenjun, is with the Institute of Microbiology, and though he was part of a multi-institution project with WIV, Liu says that has ended. 'The purpose of three countries collaborating is to exchange the research data through the surveillance and transparency to combat this global infectious virus transmission,' Liu said in an email. 'We hope the public understands the purpose of our collaboration is to control global diseases.'
"Roslin virologist Paul Digard, the lead U.K. investigator in the collaboration, says there are several other misleading details in the letter. 'Not only is there no transfer of money between the countries, there’s no transfer of reagents or materials,' Digard says. As important, Digard says the collaborators are not attempting to passage viruses to make them more transmissible in birds or mammals, ... he says. 'This is very much focused on transmission from wild birds to poultry, and how the long-range dynamics of that reflects the sequences of the virus.' The researchers are also evaluating the impact of influenza vaccines on poultry.
"Ernst’s letter focused on one experiment that uses Japanese quail, an unusual avian species that has receptors for both human and bird flu viruses. The quail, the researchers note, can be an 'indicator species' of the potential a flu virus has to jump into mammalian hosts. Digard says concerns about the quail studies are misplaced as the critics confuse the dangers posed by different types of flu viruses, only some of which can cause serious disease. The quail studies only involve flu viruses with so-called low pathogenicity.
"Critics of gain-of-function research, however, say the intent of an experiment isn’t the key factor. If an experiment could create more dangerous viruses, they contend it should be subject to intensive review before being allowed to proceed."
November 14, 2022- "As the number of adolescents who identify as transgender grows, drugs known as puberty blockers have become the first line of intervention for the youngest ones seeking medical treatment. Their use is typically framed as a safe — and reversible — way to buy time to weigh a medical transition and avoid the anguish of growing into a body that feels wrong.... But as an increasing number of adolescents identify as transgender — in the United States, an estimated 300,000 ages 13 to 17 and an untold number who are younger — concerns are growing among some medical professionals about the consequences of the drugs, a New York Times examination found. The questions are fueling government reviews in Europe, prompting a push for more research and leading some prominent specialists to reconsider at what age to prescribe them and for how long. A small number of doctors won’t recommend them at all.
"Dutch doctors first offered puberty blockers to transgender adolescents three decades ago, typically following up with hormone treatment.... Since then, the practice has spread to other countries, with varying protocols, little documentation of outcomes and no government approval of the drugs for that use, including by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But there is emerging evidence of potential harm from using blockers, according to reviews of scientific papers and interviews with more than 50 doctors and academic experts around the world....
"The drugs suppress estrogen and testosterone, hormones that help develop the reproductive system but also affect the bones, the brain and other parts of the body. During puberty, bone mass typically surges, determining a lifetime of bone health. When adolescents are using blockers, bone density growth flatlines, on average, according to an analysis commissioned by The Times of observational studies examining the effects. Many doctors treating trans patients believe they will recover that loss when they go off blockers. But two studies from the analysis that tracked trans patients’ bone strength while using blockers and through the first years of sex hormone treatment found that many do not fully rebound and lag behind their peers. That could lead to heightened risk of debilitating fractures earlier than would be expected from normal aging — in their 50s instead of 60s — and more immediate harm for patients who start treatment with already weak bones, experts say.....
"Many physicians in the United States and elsewhere are prescribing blockers to patients at the first stage of puberty — as early as age 8 — and allowing them to progress to sex hormones as soon as 12 or 13. Starting treatment at young ages, they believe, helps patients become better aligned physically with their gender identity and helps protect their bones. But that could force life-altering choices, other doctors warn, before patients know who they really are. Puberty can help clarify gender, the doctors say — for some adolescents reinforcing their sex at birth, and for others confirming that they are transgender.
“'The most difficult question is whether puberty blockers do indeed provide valuable time for children and young people to consider their options, or whether they effectively "lock in" children and young people to a treatment pathway,' wrote Dr. Hilary Cass, a pediatrician leading an independent review in England of medical treatments of adolescents presenting as transgender. On her recommendation, England’s National Health Service last month proposed restricting use of the drugs for trans youths to research settings [see video]. Sweden and Finland have also placed limits on the treatment, concerned not just with the risk of blockers, but the steep rise in young patients, the psychiatric issues that many exhibit, and the extent to which their mental health should be assessed before treatment....
"[I]t’s increasingly clear that the drugs are associated with deficits in bone development. During the teen years, bone density typically surges by about 8 to 12 percent a year. The analysis commissioned by The Times examined seven studies from the Netherlands, Canada and England involving about 500 transgender teens from 1998 through 2021. Researchers observed that while on blockers, the teens did not gain any bone density, on average — and lost significant ground compared to their peers, according to the analysis by Farid Foroutan, an expert on health research methods at McMaster University in Canada....
"Many doctors caring for young trans patients are reassured by the rebounds seen in the children who take blockers for unusually early puberty. In most cases, their bone strength fully recovers after they stop the drugs at about age 11 and resume full puberty, which can last up to five years. But patients identifying as trans take the drugs later, interrupting their normally timed puberty and limiting that crucial period of development....
"So far, only two small studies, published by Dutch doctors, have tracked the bone development of trans patients from beginning blockers through early hormone treatment. In both studies, dozens of patients started blockers at 14 or 15, on average, and began estrogen or testosterone at 16. The participants, followed in one study through age 18, and in the other through age 22, saw their bones strengthen, on average, once on hormones. Still, most patients continued to lag behind their peers; trans men neared average levels, but trans women fell far below."
February 3, 2024 - "The world is growing greener and greener thanks to carbon emissions, researchers have found. The global greening continues despite increased drought stress since 2000 reads the article's title, published in Global Ecology and Conservation in January. The study, which was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province, wanted a more accurate read following recent studies that found both greening and browning trends.
"'CO2 fertilization along with land management determined that greening is dominant. However, recently global browning signals due to drought stress have also been widely reported,' the researchers explained. 'We used the four latest leaf area index (LAI) datasets to explore this controversial topic, and found that global greening continued from 2001 to 2020. Greening acceleration occurred in 55.15% of the globe, while browning acceleration occurred in only 7.28%.' The accelerated greening was mainly concentrated in India and the European plains.
"The researchers, four of whom are affiliated with universities in China and one in Australia, said both climate change and carbon emissions were helping the greening and that in some places it was occurring despite drought.... 'Combined with meteorological variables, we found that CO2 change dominated the LAI trend, while climate change largely determined the LAI growth rate trend. Importantly, our study highlighted that drought trend did not necessarily trigger vegetation browning, but slowed down the rate of greening'....
"Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is the difference between the amount of moisture that's actually in the air and the amount of moisture that air could hold at saturation. 'A growing body of research shows that vegetation growth is enhanced by moisture constraints due to increased VPD and decreased soil moisture caused by climate warming,' the researchers said. A 'drought trend could not lead to global browning as it could not overtake the positive effect of CO2 fertilization that contributed to global vegetation. Our study explains the rise in VPD offsets only a small fraction of the increase in productivity caused by warming and CO2 and gross primary productivity is still increasing globally.'
"Although the changes weren't uniform across the globe, positive trends dominated growth and acceleration of growth. This was borne out in two different kinds of analyses.
We counted areas with the consistent trend and growth rate trend in four LAI datasets, 60.29% of the areas in the globe were inconsistent, however in the consistent areas, 64.06% of the areas showed accelerated greening, mainly distributed in India, the European plain and East Africa. The areas that browning was accelerating was only 2.07% and most of them were distributed in Eastern area in Brazil....
We further took the mean of the four data sets as a reference and analyzed the trend and growth rate trend. Greening was accelerating in 55.15% of the globe, among which the greening acceleration of India and European plains was the most obvious, while the greening of China and North America plains was slowing down.
Only 14.44% of the globe was browning, with the accelerating (7.28%) and slowing down (7.16%) roughly equal.....
"The study is not the first to find potential upsides to climate change and carbon emissions. A 2018 study published in Nature found that global warming could make substantial new swaths of land able grow crops in the northern hemisphere, with Canada and Russia being the biggest winners."
April 29, 2023 - "Meat is crucial for human health, scientists have warned, as they called for an end to the 'zealotry' pushing vegetarian and vegan diets.
"Dozens of experts were asked to look into the science behind claims that meat eating causes disease and is harmful for the planet in a special issue of Animal Frontiers. They warned that it is difficult to replace the nutritional content of meat, arguing that poorer communities with low meat intake often suffer from stunting, wasting and anaemia driven by a lack of vital nutrients and protein.
"In recent years, there has been a widespread societal push towards plant-based diets, with schemes such as Veganuary and meat-free Mondays encouraging the public away from meat. The major Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factor Study, published in The Lancet in 2020, also suggested that a diet high in red meat was responsible for 896,000 deaths worldwide, and was the fifth leading dietary risk factor.
"But researchers argue that unprocessed meat delivers most of the vitamin B12 intake in human diets, plays a major role in supplying retinol, omega-3 fatty acids and minerals such as iron and zinc, as well as important compounds for metabolism, such as taurine and creatine.
"In one paper published in the issue, experts found no good evidence to support red meat being dangerous below intakes of 75g per day, and argued that the link between red meat and disease vanished when part of a healthy diet, suggesting it was the rest of the diet that was fuelling health problems. Dr Alice Stanton, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, one of the authors of the review, said:
The peer-reviewed evidence published reaffirms that [the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Risk Factors Report] which claimed that consumption of even tiny amounts of red meat harms health is fatally scientifically flawed. In fact, removing fresh meat and dairy from diets would harm human health. Women, children, the elderly and low income would be particularly negatively impacted....
"The new edition includes a declaration signed by nearly 1,000 scientists across the globe arguing that livestock farming was too important to society to 'become the victim of zealotry'. The Dublin Declaration includes signatories from the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bristol, Belfast, Newcastle, Nottingham, Surrey as well as several scientists from Britain’s world-leading agricultural and farming university Harper Adams.
"'Livestock-derived foods provide a variety of essential nutrients and other health-promoting compounds, many of which are lacking in diets even among those populations with higher incomes,' the declaration states. 'Well-resourced individuals may be able to achieve adequate diets while heavily restricting meat, dairy and eggs. However, this approach should not be recommended for general populations.' The researchers warned that those who need to eat animal products included young children, adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, women of reproductive age, older adults and the chronically ill....
"The intervention was welcomed by the National Farmers Union (NFU) who were this week promoting Great British Beef Week. Richard Findlay, the NFU livestock board chair, said: 'This peer-reviewed research confirms what we’ve always known – that red meat is a quality, nutritious protein that plays a critical role in a healthy, sustainable balanced diet.'"
January 27, 2022 - "Today’s plans to decarbonize global energy systems center on a massive expansion in the use of solar, wind, and battery technologies, with the goal of these becoming the dominant means to power society. But scaling up these energy sources entails a radically heavier materials footprint than is associated with fossil fuels.... The unavoidable scale of materials demand will have significant impacts on commodities markets and prices, as well as on the environment. Most policy formulations fail to account for these implications. The country is long overdue for thoughtful and realistic planning that honestly acknowledges the tradeoffs and consequences arising from the materials needed to accelerate what is being called the energy transition.
"It has long been known that building solar and wind systems requires roughly a tenfold increase in the total tonnage of common materials — concrete, steel, glass, etc. — to deliver the same quantity of energy compared to building a natural gas or other hydrocarbon-fueled power plant. Beyond that, supplying the same quantity of energy as conventional sources with solar and wind equipment, along with other aspects of the energy transition such as using electric vehicles (EVs), entails an enormous increase in the use of specialty minerals and metals like copper, nickel, chromium, zinc, cobalt: in many instances, it’s far more than a tenfold increase.... Installing so much wind and solar generation capacity worldwide has profound materials implications, not to mention land requirements.... Replacing the energy output from a single 100 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired turbine (producing enough electricity for 75,000 homes) requires at least 20 wind turbines, each about 500 feet tall and collectively requiring some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, ... requir[ing] 10 square miles of land. And although a solar installation would require one-third as much land as wind, the aggregate tonnage of cement, steel, and glass used is about 150% greater than wind.
"Scaling up solar, wind, and batteries also means scaling up the mining of the refined minerals they require. There is a significant environmental impact associated with the sheer tonnage of earth that must be moved and processed to produce these refined minerals. To produce one ton of a purified element, a far greater quantity of ore must be extracted and processed. Copper ores, for example, typically contain only about 0.5% by weight of the element itself: roughly 200 tons of ore are dug up, moved, crushed, and refined to produce 1 ton of copper.... Cobalt (used in most batteries) occurs at a grade typically lower than 1 ton of the element per 1,500 tons of ore.... The IEA [International Energy Agency] ... estimates that an energy plan more ambitious than implied by the 2015 Paris Agreement, but one that remains far short of eliminating the use of fossil fuels, would increase demand for minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, and cobalt rare earths by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900% and 700%, respectively, by 2040.... The IEA report is not alone in pointing out that the required mining and processing infrastructure capacities don’t yet exist to meet the demand for essentially every category of mineral necessary for the transition path.
"In a recent report from the Geological Survey of Finland, researchers considered the minerals implications for ... using solar and wind to electrify all ground transport as well as to produce hydrogen for both aviation and chemical processes. They found the resulting demand for nearly every necessary mineral, including common ones such as copper, nickel, graphite, and lithium, would exceed not just existing and planned global production capabilities, but also known global reserves of those minerals. A recent analysis by the Wood Mackenzie consultancy found that if EVs are to account for two-thirds of all new car purchases by 2030, dozens of new mines must be opened just to meet automotive demands — each mine the size of the world’s biggest in each category today. But 2030 is only eight years away and, as the IEA has reported, opening a new mine takes 16 years on average....
"Another area of concern for these new technologies is their future cost.... Today, future plans for solar, wind, and battery technologies assume costs will continue to fall significantly, as they have over the last decade. But the implications of record-breaking demands for mineral commodities suggest the reverse is more likely. Consider batteries.... Numerous estimates ... suggest that commodity materials comprise 60 to 70% of the cost to produce a battery. Thus, modest increases in commodity prices can wipe out gains in the smaller share of costs associated with assembly, electronics, and labor, leading to overall higher costs.... In fact, 2021 saw high material costs lead to overall lithium battery prices declining by only 6%. That was a dramatic slowdown from the decadal trend, and less than half the decline rate in each of the prior two years. Although EVs comprise only 5% of the market for automobiles, the price index of EV battery metals has already increased by more than 200% over the past two years....
"There is, in short, no escaping the fact that the astonishing scale of global materials production needed for proposed energy transition plans will almost certainly place severe limits on aspirations for expanding the use of wind, solar, and battery systems. But even before those limits are reached, the pursuit of a materials-heavy energy infrastructure will cause economic impacts that ripple beyond energy markets, inflating the cost of nonenergy uses for the same minerals in computers, conventional manufacturing equipment, everyday consumer appliances, and more. Beyond economics, there are also the practical and geopolitical challenges arising from realignments of energy material supply chains..... Finally, there are the social and moral implications associated with a radical shift in the types and locations of environmental impacts that comes from replacing drilling (for fossil fuels) with a massive expansion in mining, much of which will occur in emerging markets and fragile ecosystems....
"Based on today’s physics and technology, the only path to an energy system with a material intensity lower than hydrocarbons would be one focused on nuclear fission.... Nuclear fission offers a potential hundredfold reduction in material intensity over combustion, and a thousandfold reduction over solar and wind. Here too, though, even if policies are implemented that are conducive to a nuclear renaissance, meaningful expansion will take decades longer than the rapid transition timelines popular today.
"The material realities associated with solar, wind, and storage technologies do not obviate an expanded, or even a substantial, role for these energy systems. However, believing that such technologies make possible a rapid and wholesale replacement of fossil fuels ignores the underlying physics, engineering, and economics. Even more troublesome, putting so much effort and money into those technologies will lead the world down a path that won’t meet targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but would cause massive collateral damage to economies and the environment."
April 2012 - "For decades scientists thought they understood what happens in the brain during testing or a battlefront firefight. In recent years a different line of research has put the physiology of stress in an entirely new perspective. The response to stress is not just a primal reaction affecting parts of the brain that are common to a wide array of species ranging from salamanders to humans. Stress, in fact, can cripple our most advanced mental faculties....
"Older textbooks explained that the hypothalamus, an evolutionarily ancient structure lodged at the base of the brain, reacts to stress by triggering the secretion of a wave of hormones from the pituitary and adrenal glands, which makes the heart race, elevates blood pressure and diminishes appetite. Now research reveals an unexpected role for the prefrontal cortex, the area immediately behind the forehead that serves as the control center that mediates our highest cognitive abilities — among them concentration, planning, decision making, insight, judgment and the ability to retrieve memories.... The new research demonstrates that acute, uncontrollable stress sets off a series of chemical events that weaken the influence of the prefrontal cortex while strengthening the dominance of older parts of the brain. In essence, it transfers high-level control over thought and emotion from the prefrontal cortex to the hypothalamus and other earlier evolved structures....
"The prefrontal cortex is so sensitive to stress because of its special status within the hierarchy of brain structures. It is the most highly evolved brain region, bigger proportionally in humans than in other primates, and makes up a full third of the human cortex. It matures more slowly than any other brain area and reaches full maturity only after the teen years have passed. The prefrontal area houses the neural circuitry for abstract thought and allows us to concentrate and stay on task, while storing information in the mental sketch pad of working memory.... As a mental-control unit, the prefrontal area also inhibits inappropriate thoughts and actions.
"The neurological executive center functions through an extensive internal network of connections among the triangular-shaped neurons called pyramidal cells. These neurons also send out connections to more distant reaches of the brain that control our emotions, desires and habits.... Keeping this network firing as it should can be a fragile process — and when stress hits, even small changes in the neurochemical environment can instantly weaken network connections. In response to stress, our brain floods with arousal chemicals such as norepinephrine and dopamine, which are released by neurons in the brain stem that send projections throughout the brain. Elevated levels of these signaling chemicals in the prefrontal cortex shut off neuron firing, in part by weakening the connection points, or synapses, between neurons temporarily. Network activity diminishes, as does the ability to regulate behavior. These effects only worsen as the adrenal glands near the kidneys, on command from the hypothalamus, spritz the stress hormone cortisol into the bloodstream, sending it to the brain....
"Our research clarifying how easily the prefrontal cortex can be shut down started about 20 years ago. Studies in animals by one of us (Arnsten), along with the late Patricia Goldman-Rakic of Yale University, were among the first to illustrate how neurochemical changes during stress can rapidly switch off prefrontal function. The work showed that neurons in the prefrontal cortex disconnect and stop firing after being exposed to a flood of neurotransmitters or stress hormones. In contrast, areas deep within the brain take a stronger hold over our behavior. Dopamine arrives at a series of deep-brain structures, collectively called the basal ganglia, that regulate cravings and habitual emotional and motor responses. The basal ganglia hold sway not only when we ride a bicycle without falling but also when we indulge in addictive habits....
"After dopamine and norepinephrine switch off circuits in the prefrontal area required for higher cognition, enzymes normally chew up the neurotransmitters so that the shutdown does not persist. In this way, we can return to our baseline when stress abates. Certain forms of a gene can weaken these enzymes, making people more vulnerable to stress and, in some cases, mental illness. Similarly, environmental factors can increase vulnerability; for example, lead poisoning can mimic aspects of the stress response and erode cognition.
"Still other research focuses on what happens when the assault on the prefrontal cortex lasts for days or weeks. Chronic stress appears to expand the intricate web of connections among neurons in our lower emotional centers, whereas the areas engaged during flexible, sustained reasoning — anything from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant to calculus — start to shrivel. Under these conditions, the branching, signal-receiving dendrites in the primal amygdala enlarge, and those in the prefrontal cortex shrink. John Morrison of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and his colleagues have shown that prefrontal dendrites can regrow if the stress disappears, but this ability to rebound may vanish if the stress is especially severe.... This chain of molecular events makes us more vulnerable to subsequent stress and most likely contributes to depression, addiction and anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress....
"One question that still perplexes researchers is why the brain has built-in mechanisms to weaken its highest cognitive functions. We still do not know for sure, but the triggering of these primal reactions may perhaps have saved human lives when a predatory wild animal was lurking in the bushes.... Absent our slow, deliberate higher-brain networks, primitive brain pathways can stop us on a dime or ready us to flee. These mechanisms may serve a similar function when we face danger in the modern world — say, when a reckless driver cuts us off and we need to slam on the brakes. If we remain in this state, though, prefrontal function weakens, a devastating handicap in circumstances where we need to engage in complex decision making about a loved one’s serious medical condition or organize an important project on a tight deadline."
September 8, 2021 - "The crisis caused by the lethal COVID-19 pandemic and by the responses to the crisis have made billions of people worldwide acutely interested and overexcited about science. Decisions pronounced in the name of science have become arbitrators of life, death, and fundamental freedoms. Everything that mattered was affected by science.... One problem with this new mass engagement with science is that most people, including most people in the West, had never been seriously exposed to the fundamental norms of the scientific method. The Mertonian norms of communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism have unfortunately never been mainstream in education, media, or even in science museums and TV documentaries on scientific topics....
"Indeed, change did happen — but perhaps mostly for the worst.... Lack of communalism during the pandemic fueled scandals and conspiracy theories, which were then treated as fact in the name of science by much of the popular press and on social media. The retraction of a highly visible hydroxychloroquine paper from The Lancet was a startling example: A lack of sharing and openness allowed a top medical journal to publish an article in which 671 hospitals allegedly contributed data that did not exist, and no one noticed this outright fabrication before publication....
"The pandemic led seemingly overnight to a scary new form of scientific universalism. Everyone did COVID-19 science or commented on it. By August 2021, 330,000 scientific papers were published on COVID-19, involving roughly a million different authors. An analysis showed that scientists from every single one of the 174 disciplines that comprise what we know as science has published on COVID-19.... At first sight, this was an unprecedented mobilization of interdisciplinary talent. However, most of this work was of low quality, often wrong, and sometimes highly misleading. Many people without subject-matter technical expertise became experts overnight, emphatically saving the world.... Many amazing scientists have worked on COVID-19. I admire their work.... However, alongside thousands of solid scientists came freshly minted experts with questionable, irrelevant, or nonexistent credentials and questionable, irrelevant, or nonexistent data.
"Social and mainstream media have helped to manufacture this new breed of experts. Anyone who was not an epidemiologist or health policy specialist could suddenly be cited as an epidemiologist or health policy specialist by reporters who often knew little about those fields but knew immediately which opinions were true. Conversely, some of the best epidemiologists and health policy specialists in America were smeared as clueless and dangerous by people who believed themselves fit to summarily arbitrate differences of scientific opinion without understanding the methodology or data at issue.
"Disinterestedness suffered gravely.... During the pandemic, ... conflicted entities were raised to the status of heroes. For example, Big Pharma companies.... Other potentially conflicted entities became the new societal regulators.... Big Tech companies, which gained trillions of dollars in cumulative market value from the virtual transformation of human life during lockdown, developed powerful censorship machineries that skewed the information available to users on their platforms. Consultants who made millions of dollars from corporate and government consultation were given prestigious positions, power, and public praise, while unconflicted scientists who worked pro bono but dared to question dominant narratives were smeared as being conflicted.
"Organized skepticism was seen as a threat to public health. There was a clash between two schools of thought, authoritarian public health versus science — and science lost.... Honest, continuous questioning and exploration of alternative paths are indispensable for good science. In the authoritarian ... version of public health, these activities were seen as treason and desertion. The dominant narrative became that 'we are at war.' When at war, everyone has to follow orders. If a platoon is ordered to go right and some soldiers explore maneuvering to the left, they are shot as deserters. Scientific skepticism had to be shot, no questions asked. The orders were clear....
"This is a dirty war, one without dignity. Opponents were threatened, abused, and bullied by cancel culture campaigns in social media, hit stories in mainstream media, and bestsellers written by zealots. Statements were distorted, turned into straw men, and ridiculed. Wikipedia pages were vandalized. Reputations were systematically devastated and destroyed. Many brilliant scientists were abused and received threats during the pandemic, intended to make them and their families miserable."
August 29, 2021 - ""Herd immunity is a fascinating observation that you can trace to biological reality or statistical probability theory, whichever you prefer. It is certainly not a 'strategy' so ignore any media source that describes it that way. When you get such a virus and fight it off, your immune system encodes that information in a way that builds immunity to it. When it happens to enough people ... the virus loses its pandemic quality and becomes endemic, which is to say predictable and manageable. Each new generation incorporates that information through more exposure.
"This is what one would call virology/immunology 101. It’s what you read in every textbook. It’s been taught in 9th-grade cell biology for probably 80 years.... And the discovery of this fascinating dynamic in cell biology is a major reason why public health became so smart in the 20th century. We kept calm. We managed viruses with medical professionals: doctor/patient relationships. We avoided the Medieval tendency to run around with hair on fire but rather used rationality and intelligence.
"One day, this strange institution called the World Health Organization [WHO] – once glorious because it was mainly responsible for the eradication of smallpox – suddenly decided to delete everything I just wrote from cell biology basics. It has literally changed the science in a Soviet-like way. It has removed with the delete key any mention of natural immunities from its website. It has taken the additional step of actually mischaracterizing the structure and functioning of vaccines.
"Here is the website from June 9, 2020. You can see it here on Archive.org. You have to move down the page and click on the question about herd immunity. You see the following.
"That’s accurate overall.... However, in a screenshot dated November 13, 2020, we read the following note that somehow pretends as if human beings do not have immune systems at all....
"[T]his note at the World Health Organization ... ignored and even wiped out 100 years of medical advances in virology, immunology, and epidemiology. What’s even more strange is the claim that a vaccine protects people from a virus rather than exposing them to it. A traditional vaccine works precisely by firing up the immune system through exposure. This has been known for centuries. There is simply no way for medical science completely to replace the human immune system.... By ruling out exposure, the WHO seems even to be rejecting the methods of J&J in favor of Moderna and Pfizer, which use mRNA strategies. Talk about picking winners and losers in technology!
"Finally on January 4, 2021: WHO has changed it[s] definition yet again, to incorporate the obvious reality of natural immunity.
"This claim that vaccines for the population rather than exposure is overall better is stated here as a matter of dogma when in reality this is an empirical question. If the vaccine does not deliver immunity in a way that is long lasting and broad – and cannot do so in a way that assures the population of its safety – the dogma pushed by WHO is potentially false.
"For a year and a half, the media has been telling us that 'science' requires that we comply with their dictates that run contrary to every tenet of liberalism, every expectation we’ve developed in the modern world that we can live freely and with the certainty of rights. Then 'science' took over and our human rights were slammed. And now the “science” actually deleted its own history, airbrushing over what it used to know and replacing it with something misleading at best and patently false at worst. Let there be no mystery why public confidence in public health is at a low....
"The science has not changed; only the politics have. And that is precisely why it is so dangerous and deadly to subject virus management to the forces of politics. Eventually the science too bends to the duplicitous character of the political industry."
June 19, 2021 - "Early last year, ... the lockdown lobby relied on argument by intimidation. They know about viruses. You do not. They know about public health. You do not. They have precise and complex models. You do not. They have university appointments and positions of power. You do not. People who would normally favor the primacy of liberty, property, and law fell silent, as if intellectually outgunned. The public, lacking knowledge too, acquiesced to lockdowns. The politicians panicked, throwing out everything they thought they knew about good governance....
"Thus did I embark on a long journey to learn about the history of pandemics, the cell biology of viruses and their interaction with the human population, the relationship between pandemics and the eventual endemic equilibrium, herd immunity and vaccinations, and all of the other features of infectious disease that have become so heavily debated this year.... I’ve lost count of the number of books I’ve read, including even medical school textbooks on viruses (what a slog!) as well as countless papers, in addition to probably one hundred hours of lectures online....
"I just finished one book that stands out, and that I wish I had read a year and a half ago. It’s brilliant, erudite, precise, evocative to the point of being visionary, and capable of completely shifting one’s view toward pathogens and the social order. It is a work of genius.... The author is the legendary Oxford University theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, one of the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. The title of the book I find rather regrettable because it sounds coldly clinical rather than literary: Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts.... Dr. Gupta, I suspect, wrote this book to familiarize readers with the normalcy of pathogens, and to explain why it is not likely that an entirely new and deadly disease will arrive to wipe out large swaths of the human race....
"With computer viruses, the way to deal with them is to block them.... One exposure could mean data loss, identity theft, and even machine death. Despite what Bill Gates seems to believe, our bodies are not the same. Exposure to milder forms of germs works to protect us against more severe forms. The cell memory of our body is trained through experience, not by blocking all bugs but by incorporating the capacity to fight them off into our biology. This is the essence of how vaccines work, but more than that, it is how our whole immune system works. Pursuing an agenda of zero-pathogenic exposure is the road to disaster and death. We did not evolve that way and we cannot live this way. Indeed we will die if we take the route.
"I hesitate to put any words in Professor Gupta’s mouth but I will try to summarize the one major lesson of this book. Pathogens will always be with us, their forms always changing, and thus the best protection we have against severe outcomes from those that threaten us is immunities built by exposure to milder forms of them. She explores this idea in great depth, applies it to past pandemics, and examines the implications for the future....
"The applications of this general principle are wide. Why was the Spanish flu so virulent against young people while mainly sparing old people? She speculates that there had been a whole generation of young people who had lacked exposure to influenzas. The records indicate that for the 20 years prior, there had been no major flu outbreaks, so when this one hit following the Great War, it was particularly cruel against those with naive immune systems, most of whom were between 20 and 40 years old. By contrast, the elderly had been exposed to a flu earlier in their lives that imbued them with natural immunity from this more deadly one.
"Does this mean that with every new pathogen we can and must expect widespread death before its harms are minimized? Not at all. With most pathogens, there is a negative correlation between severity and prevalence. Viruses with unimpressive performance kill their host quickly and thereby do not spread – Ebola is the classic case here....
"However, widespread death isn’t necessary before the pathogen population collapses and dies — there will come a point in the natural course of every epidemic when a non-immune host will become very hard to find, and most infections will have been cleared before they’ve had a chance to transmit. This is because the density of susceptible hosts will have fallen, either because they are now immune or dead. And so the epidemic will start to diminish and will eventually burn itself out. Once the disease has run its course, the host population can start to recover and attempt to return to its original density. In time, the proportion of susceptible individuals in a population becomes high enough for the disease to make a comeback, but — unless a disease does not revisit a population for a very long time — the second epidemic will always be smaller, and the third time, smaller still. This is because much of the population will still be immune each time another epidemic occurs. Eventually, an equilibrium is reached where the infectious agent kills a constant number of individuals every year, which is a very small proportion of what it could achieve in ‘virgin soil’. At this stage, the disease is said to be ‘endemic’ rather than epidemic.
"To be sure, the reaching of this endemic equilibrium does not mean that the virus is no longer a threat. When a virus encounters a generation or a tribe or a territory where immune memory is unprepared, it can indeed be wicked once again. The struggle between us and the bugs is unending but our bodies have well equipped us with huge advantages, so long as we are wise about its biological management."
December 29, 2020 - "As a former National Institutes of Health fellow, I have a profound reverence for Anthony Fauci, MD, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.... At the same time, ... statements by Fauci raise a thorny and important question for scientists, doctors, and public health experts: Is it acceptable to distort the truth to get people to do what you want them to do?...
"Fauci told the New York Times that new science had changed his thinking on the herd immunity threshold.... Specifically, the fraction of people who would need immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (either through vaccination or recovery from prior infection) to extinguish the spread of the virus was initially estimated to be 60% to 70%. In recent weeks, Fauci had raised the percentage: from 70% to 75%, and then to ... 80%, and 85%. Allow me to quote verbatim from the article, titled 'How Much Herd Immunity Is Enough?':
"When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," Fauci said. "Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."
"Of course, the herd immunity threshold is just an estimate, and the precise figure is contingent on population mixing and a host of other assumptions.... But, the two undeniable admissions in the Times article are 1) Fauci is, to some degree, basing his statements on what he thinks the public will accept, and to what degree his rhetoric might help vaccination efforts, and 2) this is the absolutely stunning part, he is admitting this openly to a reporter for the New York Times!
"This is not the first instance when Fauci made a public statement while considering, in part, what he believed people would do with the information. The first instance concerns masks and occurred during an interview on 60 Minutes in March.... Fauci would later clarify that his words were chosen to prevent a run on masks -- so that healthcare workers would get first priority -- but some have used this interview to question his veracity.
"Irrespective of your feelings in these specific cases, the core tension in both examples is whether we want scientific advisors and public health experts to report just the facts, as they see them, or do we want them to make the additional calculation of what the public would do with those facts, and use that to shape their comments, aiming to maximize the greater good? I believe that in 2020, scientists and public health experts can only report the complete, unvarnished truth, as they believe it to be. We cannot and must not attempt to distort our ideas in an effort to generate responses we think might occur. I hold this position for four reasons.
1. The information gap no longer exists. Experts are not inherently smarter, more analytical, or logical than members of the lay public. Perhaps in the past, they preferentially had access to certain types of insider information. In the modern world, due to the internet, this information gap no longer exists ... because too many in the public can directly interrogate the source material.... If an expert seeks to distort their view of the science to further a behavioral change amongst the public, the risk of detection is high -- at least by some in the public. As such, it runs the risk of immediate backlash and the ensuing loss of credibility.
2. It is not an easy game to play. Human beings are masterfully complex, and not easily predictable.... Fauci's messaging in March may have been intended to prevent a run on masks, but it also may, to some degree, have contributed to masks becoming one of the most polarized issues of 2020, and, in many quarters, fostered a deep suspicion and distrust of Fauci.... Admitting openly that you are selectively presenting your view of the herd immunity threshold based on your reading of what the public is ready to hear, and the way in which that percentage might affect vaccine uptake is a bold and unprecedented statement....
3. Loss of trust is incalculable. Once it is revealed that any individual has presented information selectively to get the listener to change their behavior -- that person will forever be viewed through that lens.... The moment the public believes that you might be withholding, selectively presenting, or distorting information to get them to behave a certain way, they will immediately put your comments through a translator. He might be saying this because it's what he believes, but what if he is saying it to change my behavior.... The moment you enter this state in a relationship, there is no path back, it is over. Trust is irrevocably broken. A new spokesperson is needed.
4. Distortion steals power from the people and gives it to scientists. In a prior column, I argued that 'Follow the Science' is an incoherent message. That's because science can tell you what might happen in varying scenarios, but science cannot tell you what to value. Science is necessary for sound policy, but it is not sufficient.... This means that scientists must not distort their view of a situation to get you to do the right thing... A scientist must always and only and indefatigably tell you the scientific truth, as best they see and understand it, but we all -- every last one of us who votes and participates in society -- we alone get to decide what the policy should be.
"As I stated at the outset, I have profound respect for Fauci for his career of service, and like many, I am a fan of his clear public speaking. Yet, these two events force us to ask whether fact manipulation is acceptable. I believe it cannot be. The public will not trust us, and should not trust us."
15 May 2021 - "An unexpected side effect of the [COVID19] pandemic was the rapid and sustained development of a new set of grassroots checks and balances counterbalancing official scientific health narratives.... This may prove be one of the enduring legacies of the pandemic as its potential is much wider than a single area of concern. Apart from anecdotal evidence of this development there is now some research evidence ... in a preprint paper by Lee, Yang et al. of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) entitled 'Viral Visualisations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online'....
"The Lee, Yang et al. paper 'investigates how pandemic visualisations [of data] circulated on social media, and shows that people who mistrust the scientific establishment often deploy the same rhetorics of data-driven decision making used by experts, but to advocate for radical policy changes'. It refers to the opponents of lockdowns, social-distancing and face masks as 'anti-maskers', which is rather unflattering shorthand, but ... clearly shows that a mix of traditionally educated scientists and researchers, along with data specialists and interested members of the general public, have begun to work together systematically....
"The study provides good evidence to believe that, at least in some cases, a new collegiate form of narrative is emerging ... which is neither non-scientific nor pseudo-scientific but simply an alternative scientific narrative. Alternative, that is, to the one provided by official government-scientific and mainstream media sources.... There is room for alternative viewpoints because
'data ... is not a neutral substrate.... Quantitative data is culturally and historically situated.... [T]here is no such thing as dispassionate or objective data analysis. Instead, there are stories: stories shaped by cultural logics, animated by personal experience, and entrenched by collective action....
"Furthermore, Lee, Yang et al. observe: 'Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.' That is precisely the point and nature of the scientific method. They add:
'While academic science is traditionally a system for producing knowledge within a laboratory, validating it through peer review, and sharing results within subsidiary communities, anti-maskers reject this hierarchical social model. They espouse a vision of science that is radically egalitarian and individualist. This study forces us to see that coronavirus sceptics champion science as a personal practice that prizes rationality and autonomy; for them, it is not a body of knowledge certified by an institution of experts.
'Having said this, we might submit that the study has also discovered characteristics which suggest that, whilst the more developed groups are egalitarian, they also mimic "institutional type" checks and balances on their members’ output. One might go so far as to say that they actually are a new form of "collective peer review" ... so far as they are providing critiques which are supported by the data. That is both internally, within the way this type of group operates, and as an "external examiner" of the work of others outside the group. This should naturally be differentiated from less considered groups which pluck ideas out of nowhere and generate mere propaganda. Some trained scientists and traditional institutions are more open to debate and other engagement than others. It is plausible to suggest that those who choose to engage, in an informal or more structured way, with the more developed groups might find it a positive process rather than a distraction to be avoided.'
"In the most scientifically/data literate groups, the following characteristics were observed by Lee, Yang et al. which, while linked to visualisations, have much wider application:
There is a commitment to quality: 'we find that anti-mask groups on Twitter often create polished counter-visualisations that would not be out of place in scientific papers, health department reports, and publications like the Financial Times'....
There is a commitment to openness: 'Among other initiatives, these groups argue for open access to government data (claiming that CDC and local health departments are not releasing enough data for citizens to make informed decisions), and they use the language of data-driven decision-making to show that social distancing mandates are both ill-advised and unnecessary'....
There is an emphasis on ‘Critically assessing data sources’. 'Even as these users learn from each other to collect more data, they remain critical about the circumstances under which the data are collected and distributed. Many of the users believe that the most important metrics are missing from government-released data'....
There is a recognition of context: 'Even when local governments do provide data, however, these users also contend that the data requires context in order for any interpretation to be meaningful.... Ultimately, anti-mask users emphasise that they need to apply this data to real-world situations'....
There is an attempt to identify bias and politics in data: '[Anti-maskers] are… mindful to note that these analyses only represent partial perspectives that are subject to individual context and interpretation.... One of the things which the pandemic has revived interest in is the broad subject area of research bias which includes issues around reporting (or not reporting) and the nexus with the media'.... [gd emphasis]
"Overall, while still at a relatively early stage of development, this points to a new shape for the mounting of ever more credible challenges to the ‘new orthodoxy’ of lockdowns, social distancing, mask mandates in schools, business closures, and so on. It is a form of inquiry that is not predisposed to cover-ups and will not be restricted by the terms of the promised official public inquiry, or the one after that. It is science as dissent."
April 13, 2021 - "People infected with the U.K. variant of the coronavirus didn't experience more severe symptoms and weren't more likely to die from this particular strain, according to a new study of hospitalized patients published Monday. The strain, called the B.1.1.7 variant [later renamed the "Alpha variant" - gd], remains more contagious than original strains of the virus however, according to the study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
"The U.K. strain is believed to have first emerged in England in September 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is now the most common strain in the U.S.
"Researchers for The Lancet study collected samples from patients at the University College London Hospital and the North Middlesex University Hospital between Nov. 9 to Dec 20, 2020. The samples were collected just prior to a surge in hospitalizations in England and Ireland due to the rapid spread of this particular strain of the coronavirus.
"Scientists sequenced samples from 341 patients and found 58 percent were positive for the B.1.1.7 variant. The other 42 percent were infected with a different strain, according to the study. Researchers compared the severity of symptoms between the two groups and found those with the B.1.1.7 strain were not particularly worse off than those with other virus variants.
"Patients who tested positive for the the B.1.1.7 variant also reportedly had higher 'viral loads,' or greater amounts of the virus in their bodies."
January 29, 2021 - "Of the countless attacks on freedom of thought we have endured this past year, the concerted assault on scepticism by journalists and politicians is the most disturbing.... Hostility toward anyone who questions the scientific orthodoxy, even if they are scientists themselves, has become the norm. According to mainstream media, sceptics recklessly deny ‘irrefutable facts’ (Emily Maitlis, BBC Newsnight). They are ‘dangerous’ (Neil O’Brien, Tory MP for Harborough). They are the ‘anti-lockdown brigade’ (Piers Morgan) bent on sabotaging the sacrifices of others. According to the Guardian, which recently took wanton bias to a new low, sceptics are no better than a ‘robot zombie army’.
"Whether they doubt government health policy, human-caused climate change, vaccine safety or news-media motives, sceptics are charged with disseminating ‘unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus’ (Wikipedia). To their critics their motives are ... designed to ‘foment public distrust of official advice and encourage dangerous risk-taking’ (Guardian).....
"It is hard to explain how horribly distorted this outbreak of condemnation has become. Quite contrary to the name-blackening from people and organisations who really should know better, scepticism IS science. Scepticism is a thoughtful, open-minded approach to life. It does not deny truth, it seeks it. It categorically refuses to accept handed-down authority, no matter how powerful the authority and no matter how personally dangerous it might be to question its validity.... It is faith in the importance of thinking for oneself, of coming to one’s own conclusions about the evidence, as a free person.
It looks as if the Earth is flat. But a sceptic needs to know if it really is. In the tenth century, Abū Rayḥān Al-Bīrūnī, a pioneering Muslim scientist, used the sun at noon, shadows, sticks and trigonometry to calculate the circumference of the Earth to within 200 miles.
It looks as if the sun orbits the Earth. But a sceptic needs to know if it really does. Hoping to explain an increasing list of anomalies, ... Copernicus (1473-1543) postulated that if the sun is assumed to be at rest and Earth to be in motion, the remaining planets fall into an orderly relationship.... Consequently in 1616 the Catholic Church placed Copernicus’s case for a heliocentric universe, De Revolutionibus, on its index of banned books.
It looks as if the world is composed of solid, permanent objects. But a sceptic is driven to look beyond human senses, to question appearances. This is so fundamental to scientific investigation that Rene Descartes founded the entire scientific method on doubt, advocating a systematic process of scepticism about every belief.
It looks as if ‘causation’ is as real as rock. It looks as if value-judgments are facts. But both David Hume and Sir Francis Bacon disproved the apparently obvious, advocating scepticism as a means of avoiding biases of perception and other human predispositions.
In school textbooks it looks as if scientists conduct experiments to verify their theories in perpetuity. But Sir Karl Popper showed how this assumption relies upon unprovable induction, arguing that open-minded scientists should embrace scepticism by trying to falsify rather than prove their theories.
"Not only is scepticism the basis of all scientific exploration, it is the token of thoughtful human inquiry in general. In criminal trials, when buying a car, when interviewing job candidates, caveat emptor is the motto of the wise. We must establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, we must test drive, we must seek references – we cannot take matters at face value. Those who are currently turning their venom against scepticism not only show an astonishing lack of erudition, but they are not brave enough to question what they are told, preferring the refuge of conformity to the freedom of disruptive doubt....
"Experts disagree. Policies change repeatedly. Data are open to different interpretations. The number of children admitted to hospital for mental health reasons in the pandemic outstrips those with physical conditions. The government won’t say when restrictions will be lifted because it is unsure of their effectiveness, but at the same time it insists they work. It makes no sense. In the face of such a shambles, scepticism is the only intelligent option.
"We need dissenting voices. We need sceptical data analysis. We need to question and question, and then question again. We need diversity, controversial ideas, insights, new possibilities – we need open, scientific, social and ethical debate. And when we act, we need to do so conservatively, never with such sweeping disdain for civil liberties.... We can no longer accept narrow judgments from a cabal of experts who refuse to engage in sceptical discussion."
January 20, 2021 - "A former chief medical officer of health in Ontario sent an open letter to Doug Ford on Monday, criticizing the province’s lockdown strategy and backing up ousted MPP Roman Baber. Dr. Richard Schabas held the senior position from 1987 to 1997 and served as chief of staff at York Central Hospital during the 2003 SARS crisis.
"'Lockdown was never part of our planned pandemic response nor is it supported by strong science,' Schabas wrote.
"Schabas says that the COVID-19 modelling the province is working with is faulty and that fatality rates have declined as doctors and scientists have learned more about the disease. 'Reasonable estimates of the infection fatality rate from Covid have been declining as we learn more,' he said. 'Models that predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid in Canada were badly wrong because they used incorrect, exaggerated inputs.'
"Schabas also voiced his support for the anti-lockdown letter that Baber sent to Ford last week — a letter that resulted in his expulsion from the PC caucus on Friday. 'MPP Roman Baber sent you a public letter calling on your government to change course on Covid,” said Schabas. “[He] made five key points and I believe he was correct on all five.' Baber’s letter called Ontario’s lockdown 'deadlier than Covid,' while claiming it’s caused '…an avalanche of suicides, bankruptcies, divorces, and takes an immense toll on our children.'
"Schabas’ letter goes on to say that the cost of lockdowns outweighs the benefits compared to more moderate public health measures. '…there are significant costs to lockdowns – lost education, unemployment, social isolation, deteriorating mental health and compromised access to health care,” Schabas wrote. 'We will be paying for lockdown – in lives and dollars for decades to come.'"
January 6, 2021 - "Covid-19 patients who recovered from the disease still have robust immunity from the coronavirus eight months after infection, according to a new study. The result is an encouraging sign that the authors interpret to mean immunity to the virus probably lasts for many years, and it should alleviate fears that the covid-19 vaccine would require repeated booster shots to protect against the disease and finally get the pandemic under control....
"The study, published January 6 in Science, contrasts with earlier findings that suggested covid-19 immunity could be short-lived, putting millions who’ve already recovered at risk of reinfection.... But the new study suggests reinfection should only be a problem for a very small percentage of people who’ve developed immunity — whether through an initial infection or by vaccination.
"In fact, the new study does show that a small number of recovered people do not have long-lasting immunity. But vaccination ought to offset that problem by ensuring herd immunity in the larger population.
"The new paper studied blood samples from 185 men and women who had recovered from covid-19 — most from a mild infection, although 7% were hospitalized. Each person provided at least one blood sample between six days and eight months after their initial symptoms, and 43 of the samples were taken after six months. The team that ran the investigation measured the levels of several immunological agents that work together to prevent reinfection: antibodies (which tag a pathogen for destruction by the immune system or neutralize its activity), B cells (which make antibodies), and T cells (which kill infected cells).
"The researchers found that antibodies in the body declined moderately after eight months, although levels varied wildly between individuals. But T-cell numbers declined only modestly, and B-cell numbers held steady and sometimes inexplicably grew. That means that despite decreases in free-flowing antibodies, the components that can restart antibody production and coordinate an attack against the coronavirus stick around at pretty high levels. Crotty adds that the same mechanisms that lead to immune memory after infection also form the basis for immunity after vaccination, so the same trends ought to hold for vaccinated people as well.
"And ... it’s worth looking at what happens in people who recovered from SARS, a close cousin of the virus that causes covid-19. A study published in August showed that T cells specific to SARS can remain in the blood for at least 17 years, bolstering hopes that covid-19 immunity could last for decades.
"The new study isn’t perfect. It would have been better to collect multiple blood samples from every participant. 'Immunity varies from person to person, and uncommon individuals with weak immune memory still may be susceptible to reinfection,' Crotty cautions. And we can’t make any firm conclusions about covid-19 immunity until years have passed.... Nonetheless, this latest result is a good indication that if the vaccination rollout goes well (a big if), we might soon be able to put the pandemic behind us."
Read study: Jennifer M. Dan1, Jose Mateus1, Yu Kato1, Kathryn M. Hastie1, Esther Dawen Yu1, Caterina E. Faliti1, Alba Grifoni1, Sydney I. Ramirez1, Sonya Haupt, April Frazier, Catherine Nakao1, Vamseedhar Rayaprolu1, Stephen A. Rawlings, Bjoern Peters1, Florian Krammer, Viviana Simon4, Erica Ollmann Saphire, Davey M. Smith, Daniela Weiskopf, Alessandro Sette, and Shane Crotty, "Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for up to 8 months after infection," Science, 06 Jan 2021:eabf4063
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