Thread by @Coyoteblog

In response to Twitter's policy of banning heterodox opinions about the efficacy and relative costs of COVD-19 responses, I have one word to say:

Homeopathy

Homeopathy has got to be one of the dumbest, most ascientific medical theories that exists in the modern world (except perhaps from some shamanistic beliefs of an untouched aboriginal tribe in the Amazon).

Created in 1796, it is just absurd to imagine that diluting an active ingredient to ratios of approximately one molecule in a volume of water the size of an ocean has anpotential healing qualities beyond the placebo effect.

I have fun mocking it from time to time, but if I really wanted to get on my high horse, I could easily make the argument that it is wrong to tell people with serious, potentially life-threatening conditions that they can be solved with homeopathy. I could urge twitter to ban it

But I have not done this. In fact, one thing you have NOT seen most of the critics of homeopathy do is to advocate removal of pro-homeopathy messaging from social media as dangerous to public health. Like all this crap: #homeopathy. You deal with this stuff by refuting it.

But now, I find that Twitter is banning what I consider to be reasonable critiques of COVID-19 responses. I am not an expert, but there were a LOT of mainstream studies before 2020 essentially saying not to do exactly what we have been doing.

thefederalist.com/2020/10/18/whi…

Twitter's rational is that it is dangerous and a public health threat to undermine public trusts in COVID responses (lockdowns, meeting bans, masks, school closures, etc) and the public cannot be allowed to see blasphemous opinions that might undermine their faith & compliance

I don't agree. But I will say this to @jack and Twitter -- if this is really your consistent decision rule about discussions of medical care standards and public health, then I better not see another thing on this platform about homeopathy.

@boriquagato @ElonBachman

By the way, by including the #homeopathy hashtag I have guaranteed myself days of angry tweets about how someone's mother's aunt's gynecologist had some mystery condition cured by homeopathy. But let me at least say one thing -- homeopathy is not the same as natural medicine

I know a zillion people who get those two confused. It is fine to treat the prescriptions from doctors with some skepticism, and to be informed what you are putting in your body. But that is not the same as homeopathy. Look it up
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy

OK, I love homeopath math so here is an example. 1C dilution dilutes an ingredient 1:100, usually in water. Most homeopathic recipes call for much higher ratios. At 12C, the dilution is 1:1x10^24 or higher than Avogadro's number. Thus this is 1 molecule per about 18mL of water

But dilution ratios can go as high as 30C or even 300C, meaning we quickly get to ratios higher than 1 molecule diluted in a body of water the size of the Atlantic Ocean