In fact it was institutional science that gave anti-vaxers their biggest ever boost. And it is institutional science which will undermine the *trust* in medicine on which the take up of vaccines is predicated *way* more than the AV movement.
It was institutional science which decided -- abruptly -- that masks were effective, after having insisted for months that they were not.
Much of that evidence was produced by sociologists, without complaint from institutional science.
It is not hard to see the politics in it.
I don't know what a "climate hoaxer" is.
It is institutional science -- again -- which claims that anyone that disagrees with the Green New Deal is a denier of the claim that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
There is a pattern forming here, and NDGT should open his eyes to it.
To my knowledge, I have never even met a "flat earther".
I am beginning to think they do not exist.
Even if they do exist, their influence is immeasurable.
So why would they vex institutional science so much?
What problems do they cause institutional science and its mission?
I think institutional science is the biggest obstacle to science.
It needs serious reflection and reform.
Otherwise, scientists will be remembered for being nothing more than utter blowhard dickheads.
A reminder to NDGT: it was not "antivaxers" that published antivax hypotheses in seemingly respectable academic journals. It was not antivaxers that took over a decade to retract it. And it was not antivaxers who then staged a massive overreaction.
But they gained by all of it.
It was not "climate hoaxers" who have made a never ending series of dramatic prognostications, each of which have spectacularly failed to materialise, and have been proven 180 degrees out of kilter with reality.
And it was not "anti-maskers" who said that you must or must not wear masks.
It was institutional science which said BOTH.
NDGT really doesn't appear to know what he's talking about.
My advice to him is the same as to Brian Cox.
Stick to physics.
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Performances: The Whitty and Valance comedy show, featuring Boris Johnson. Matt Hancock putting on his serious face and low voice. All of broadcast news media pretending to be journalists.
Ritual: The obedience expected of us as society is shut down.
Opportunity: some are making a killing. Some have been thrust into the limelight. Others have expanded their empires. All on the back of countless bankruptcies, redundancies, unnecessary deaths, foreclosures & evictions...
I'm not sensing the wrongness he claimed to prove. The lockdown sceptic-sceptic is vague, uses the word 'dangerous' in place of demonstrating it, presupposes lockdown's effectiveness.
+ whenever the "it killed a 25 year old" (twice, it seems) argument appears, it's obvious bunk.
His reply to the sceptic talking point of "2017/18 excess winter deaths of 50,000" is "Many of those excess deaths will have been caused by things like circulatory diseases."
Right... Co-morbidities. At ~82. Same as with covid19.
He's messing about.
"Despite a lot of snipes at [Ferguson's] modelling, his group’s projections were broadly right. We’ll never know how accurate the Imperial death predictions were because lockdown stopped things from getting that bad."
The government -- all parties, in fact -- have not tested the public's willingness to put up with the policies.
It does not know how much it will cost to reach Net Zero.
It does not know how it will be achieved.
What will happen is that the government will continue to announce new policies in line with emissions-reduction targets. This will cause economic chaos as companies try to find ways to accommodate regulation. Many will go out of business. Skills & trade will be lost.
Imagine not understanding why a seemingly scientific injunction to suspend democratic norms, reverse and constrain economic growth and limit material freedoms might have "politicized" the issue.
But it's the "deniers" who are "ideological", right?
It's all hidden in the putative equivalence of the link between smoking increasing the incidence of cancer and the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere.
But global warming is not cancer. Global warming is not even a first-order problem, as cancer undoubtedly is.
It's the way, way, way downstream consequences of global warming -- nth-order effects -- which are the alleged problems. They are very far from the scientific "consensus". They are not part of it. Very many of them are political. Some are categorically mystical.
The New Climate Economy report produced by @NewClimateEcon, which is part of @WorldResources and chaired by Nick Stern is a project that cost the UK taxpayer £millions.
The idea that one doesn't develop immunity to a virus one has overcome seems patently absurd to me.
How does one resist or overcome it, if it is not by virtue of a functioning immune system?
Not by lockdowns, that is for sure.
The claims about cases of secondary infection seem poorly evidenced, far-fetched and anecdotal. And convenient to a power-crazed lunatic's mission, whatever it may be, but which I very much doubt the good faith of.
I'd rather take my chances with the virus than the government.