Bret sees himself in a heroic struggle against demonetization and demonization, but what he's actually doing is building a powerful "just asking questions" brand of conspiratorial musing.
Excellent article! Not just government agencies but the Infectious Disease Society of America. The American College of Chest Physicians defers to the NIH. For at least 20 years, more and more research has revealed flaws in evidence for medical practice. Relying on best science has become complex and nuanced. Academics devote careers to this. COVID-19 has led to massive demonstration of these difficulties compressed in time. Bret and his devotees seem to believe they can understand evidence because they understand the vocabulary and many or most of the concepts, despite lack of context. Many adopt the attitude- if the establishment or government says A, then notA MUST be true. On some of his political musings, I agree with Bret, but on COVID and his pursuit of victimhood he's gone off the rails.
"if the establishment or government says A, then notA MUST be true."
Typical Establishment straw man.
The fair take on the critics' position would be
"if the establishment or government says A, then the burden is on the establishment to defend its claims in a fair debate, not one rigged by a stenographic media."
If Bret and his followers say or imply notA, the burden of proof is on them. In the case of IVM, the IDSA makes their case. Haven't checked, but I'd bet WHO and NIH do as well.
Not clear you understand a straw man argument.
But glad you tacitly agree with the rest of my comments.
Why don't you challenge their sources, not engage in ad hominems and (weak) guilt by association? The IDSA cites sources. Bret is mistaken about vaccines and IVM. Sorry.
Since when is it "ad hominem", to be suspicious, of an author's propensity to cherry-pick/ misrepresent sources (e.g. in his/ her implied claim, that s/he was faithfully representing the totality what those sources actually say)?
“The IDSA cites sources.”
So did Dr. Goebbels.
But, when his students "cite sources", you're damn right I'm going to voice suspicion of these citations (esp. if I lack the expertise, to assess the context from which the quotes were drawn, or the time to meticulously scrutinize every single quote).
Until we have Goebbels under oath (he at risk of prosecution for perjury), I'll demand the right to deploy what you call "ad hominem".
And, I'm sure that (if you stay consistent with you’re here-espoused conception of "ad hominem") his students would have a gas, cramming your conception of "ad hominem" down your throat (to protect his students’ shrewd agitProp from legit scrutiny).
All forms of *testimony* (incl. about “researched facts”, by High-Social-Status “academicians”) are *always* fair game for sharp scrutiny.
Only if I were to dispute the *logic* of a *particular* line of argument, would the charge of ad hominem apply here.
(E.g., “If Adolf claimed that 2=2=4, then 2=2=4 is now so much more suspect” *is* an ad hominem.)
"Ad hominem" is one of the most abused of Latinisms, esp. by today's slew of pseudo-educated.
All of us *always* have the right, to be suspicious, of anyone styling themselves to speak with authority (esp. when we know that they have so much institutional power at their backs).
I quite hope that, if readers get nothing else out of this thread, it will get them to think deeply on what “ad hominem” is, vs. what it is at times purported to be.
(It is not for *you * to *interrogate* what I do, until you manage to get [Big Pharma-owned?] Fed’l agencies to point guns at my head.)
"under the boots of the CCP, Collins etc"; you compare me and the IDSA to Nazis, elsewhere you accuse interlocutors of being shills.
As it happens, I'm an MD. I've been following issues around bias, conflicts of interest and poor, inaccurate research for the past 10-15 years. I'm not an academic but I've more expertise and experience than you or Weinstein. I defer to trusted experts like the IDSA. Of the FDA approved treatments one is very cheap; all show effectiveness only in limited circumstances. None are wonder drugs.
By your argument, any deference to an expert or expert panel is an argument from authority.
The central question is why aren't you suspicious of Bret? He styles himself as speaking with authority which he does not have.
there's a lot of attention seeking going on here. Just enough truth to seduce people in. I do have a problem with him being demonitized however, what needs to happen is articles like this and then people can evaluate themselves. Quite good research for this article, well done!
I also want to add that I worked in the pharm industry for five years and all these claims that the FDA is in the pocket of pharma are dubious. In what way and where's the evidence? The FDA, when it is not being accused of being in the pocket is accused of holding everything back. They are constantly caught between those two dilemmas. Look at the criticism of them not getting on vaccine approval fast enough. Now they are being criticized for being too careful about Ivermectin. That is not being in the pocket, Pharma would make oodles of money if they did what Weinstein is suggesting, approve Ivermectin.
I am (what is now called) a data scientist. I routinely write programs to glean actionable data from terabyte-sized databases. (Note that others work with petabytes ...)
I played around with publicly available Covid data and eventually gave up. It's too unreliable and inconsistent to admit of firm conclusions -- and this is what gives Weinstein (and others) room to play around in, and justifiably so.
The three biggest issues in Covid data are:
1. Deaths and hospitalizations "with" vs. "from" Covid.
2. The extraordinary sensitivity of the PCR test most often used to "find" Covid. Note that the fellow who won the Nobel Prize for developing PCR said that anyone who knows what he's doing could find anything in any sample.
3. The conflation of IFR and CFR. That is, while it's of some interest to track infections (those who have Covid antibodies), cases (those who are hospitalized because of a Covid infection) is the more important criterion. Cf. the flu, which has a very low IFR and a significantly higher CFR.
These issues are rarely mentioned (much less addressed) in journalistic coverage of Covid. While the scientific community is (mostly) aware of them, this knowledge rarely makes it into policy decisions or WHO or CDC guidelines.
Yeah; it's the latest (and probably last) stop in my checkered career.
I'm looking forward to CDC mortality data for 2021 and 2022 (available, probably, in 2024) to help sort things out.
The basic problem is this: Say you have serious heart disease, get Covid, and die. That could be either "with" or "from," and different physicians may well come to different conclusions. As a data guy, I would like to see a nice quantization of symptom severity to make that decision in software, but that may not be possible.
Many who die have co-morbidities, often several. If someone who has 4 chronic progressive illnesses has a massive brain hemorrhage, sepsis from a kidney infection, a fatal heart attack, those are what we list first- as required- as the cause of death. There is no motive for treating MD's to over-represent COVID as cause of death. You may as well rely on a counterfactual proposition- "If this patient didn't have COPD, ESRD, chronic CHF, diabetes and was much younger than 85, they wouldn't have died when they contracted COVID and went into severe respiratory failure".
"Rogan was incredulous at this neat summary of staggering malfeasance and manipulation." When Joe Rogan thinks your conspiracy theory is nuts it's time to reevaluate your life decisions.
I want to a small, liberal arts school in the '90s that was in some ways similar to Evergreen. My instructors were, on the whole outstanding, brilliant, experts in their fields. I would be reluctant, however, to recommend many of them to the wider public as thought leaders. Gifted academics are often unwilling or unable to accept that brilliance in their chosen field does not necessarily translate into other areas of expertise. I suspect that may be the case with Bret.
"the National Institutes of Health (NIH)... reports that there’s “insufficient data … to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of Covid-19.”
Would that be the NIH run by Francis Collins, known to have been shilling for Fauci/ China, and smearing those who expressed suspicion along these lines?
OK, the bio shows him to be part of the Bulwark crowd, which is known, among those not enslaved to Establishment thought, to shill for NeoCon warmongers (e.g. w/ Kristol & Charen among its editors).
If this site is primarily also such a shill, I erred in subscribing to it.
That was written by Varad Mehta. That's the thing about our site: it's an avowedly pluralist publication. You'll enthusiastically agree with some of our articles, you'll find areas of agreement in other ones we post, and you'll positively hate still other ones we publish. If you're not looking for something like that, no hard feelings. But we make no apologies. Thanks for reading.
Excellent article! Not just government agencies but the Infectious Disease Society of America. The American College of Chest Physicians defers to the NIH. For at least 20 years, more and more research has revealed flaws in evidence for medical practice. Relying on best science has become complex and nuanced. Academics devote careers to this. COVID-19 has led to massive demonstration of these difficulties compressed in time. Bret and his devotees seem to believe they can understand evidence because they understand the vocabulary and many or most of the concepts, despite lack of context. Many adopt the attitude- if the establishment or government says A, then notA MUST be true. On some of his political musings, I agree with Bret, but on COVID and his pursuit of victimhood he's gone off the rails.
"if the establishment or government says A, then notA MUST be true."
Typical Establishment straw man.
The fair take on the critics' position would be
"if the establishment or government says A, then the burden is on the establishment to defend its claims in a fair debate, not one rigged by a stenographic media."
If Bret and his followers say or imply notA, the burden of proof is on them. In the case of IVM, the IDSA makes their case. Haven't checked, but I'd bet WHO and NIH do as well.
Not clear you understand a straw man argument.
But glad you tacitly agree with the rest of my comments.
"the burden of proof is on them."
No it isn't.
I too will bet, that "WHO and NIH do as well", seeing that they're under the boots of the CCP, Collins etc.
You have no basis, other than wishful thinking, to assume that I tacitly agree with the rest of your comments.
Why don't you challenge their sources, not engage in ad hominems and (weak) guilt by association? The IDSA cites sources. Bret is mistaken about vaccines and IVM. Sorry.
Since when is it "ad hominem", to be suspicious, of an author's propensity to cherry-pick/ misrepresent sources (e.g. in his/ her implied claim, that s/he was faithfully representing the totality what those sources actually say)?
“The IDSA cites sources.”
So did Dr. Goebbels.
But, when his students "cite sources", you're damn right I'm going to voice suspicion of these citations (esp. if I lack the expertise, to assess the context from which the quotes were drawn, or the time to meticulously scrutinize every single quote).
Until we have Goebbels under oath (he at risk of prosecution for perjury), I'll demand the right to deploy what you call "ad hominem".
And, I'm sure that (if you stay consistent with you’re here-espoused conception of "ad hominem") his students would have a gas, cramming your conception of "ad hominem" down your throat (to protect his students’ shrewd agitProp from legit scrutiny).
All forms of *testimony* (incl. about “researched facts”, by High-Social-Status “academicians”) are *always* fair game for sharp scrutiny.
Only if I were to dispute the *logic* of a *particular* line of argument, would the charge of ad hominem apply here.
(E.g., “If Adolf claimed that 2=2=4, then 2=2=4 is now so much more suspect” *is* an ad hominem.)
"Ad hominem" is one of the most abused of Latinisms, esp. by today's slew of pseudo-educated.
All of us *always* have the right, to be suspicious, of anyone styling themselves to speak with authority (esp. when we know that they have so much institutional power at their backs).
I quite hope that, if readers get nothing else out of this thread, it will get them to think deeply on what “ad hominem” is, vs. what it is at times purported to be.
(It is not for *you * to *interrogate* what I do, until you manage to get [Big Pharma-owned?] Fed’l agencies to point guns at my head.)
"under the boots of the CCP, Collins etc"; you compare me and the IDSA to Nazis, elsewhere you accuse interlocutors of being shills.
As it happens, I'm an MD. I've been following issues around bias, conflicts of interest and poor, inaccurate research for the past 10-15 years. I'm not an academic but I've more expertise and experience than you or Weinstein. I defer to trusted experts like the IDSA. Of the FDA approved treatments one is very cheap; all show effectiveness only in limited circumstances. None are wonder drugs.
By your argument, any deference to an expert or expert panel is an argument from authority.
The central question is why aren't you suspicious of Bret? He styles himself as speaking with authority which he does not have.
https://quillette.com/2021/07/06/looking-for-covid-19-miracle-drugs-we-already-have-them-theyre-called-vaccines/
This Mr. Carter hurled at me an Argument from Authority, and when I questioned these Authorities’ cred, he hurled “ad hominem” at me.
Quite worthy of Dr. Goebbels.
there's a lot of attention seeking going on here. Just enough truth to seduce people in. I do have a problem with him being demonitized however, what needs to happen is articles like this and then people can evaluate themselves. Quite good research for this article, well done!
I also want to add that I worked in the pharm industry for five years and all these claims that the FDA is in the pocket of pharma are dubious. In what way and where's the evidence? The FDA, when it is not being accused of being in the pocket is accused of holding everything back. They are constantly caught between those two dilemmas. Look at the criticism of them not getting on vaccine approval fast enough. Now they are being criticized for being too careful about Ivermectin. That is not being in the pocket, Pharma would make oodles of money if they did what Weinstein is suggesting, approve Ivermectin.
I am (what is now called) a data scientist. I routinely write programs to glean actionable data from terabyte-sized databases. (Note that others work with petabytes ...)
I played around with publicly available Covid data and eventually gave up. It's too unreliable and inconsistent to admit of firm conclusions -- and this is what gives Weinstein (and others) room to play around in, and justifiably so.
The three biggest issues in Covid data are:
1. Deaths and hospitalizations "with" vs. "from" Covid.
2. The extraordinary sensitivity of the PCR test most often used to "find" Covid. Note that the fellow who won the Nobel Prize for developing PCR said that anyone who knows what he's doing could find anything in any sample.
3. The conflation of IFR and CFR. That is, while it's of some interest to track infections (those who have Covid antibodies), cases (those who are hospitalized because of a Covid infection) is the more important criterion. Cf. the flu, which has a very low IFR and a significantly higher CFR.
These issues are rarely mentioned (much less addressed) in journalistic coverage of Covid. While the scientific community is (mostly) aware of them, this knowledge rarely makes it into policy decisions or WHO or CDC guidelines.
I didn't know you were a data scientist, Fred.
Do you have a resource that you've seen that best untangles the "with" vs. "from" issue?
Yeah; it's the latest (and probably last) stop in my checkered career.
I'm looking forward to CDC mortality data for 2021 and 2022 (available, probably, in 2024) to help sort things out.
The basic problem is this: Say you have serious heart disease, get Covid, and die. That could be either "with" or "from," and different physicians may well come to different conclusions. As a data guy, I would like to see a nice quantization of symptom severity to make that decision in software, but that may not be possible.
Many who die have co-morbidities, often several. If someone who has 4 chronic progressive illnesses has a massive brain hemorrhage, sepsis from a kidney infection, a fatal heart attack, those are what we list first- as required- as the cause of death. There is no motive for treating MD's to over-represent COVID as cause of death. You may as well rely on a counterfactual proposition- "If this patient didn't have COPD, ESRD, chronic CHF, diabetes and was much younger than 85, they wouldn't have died when they contracted COVID and went into severe respiratory failure".
Great article
"Rogan was incredulous at this neat summary of staggering malfeasance and manipulation." When Joe Rogan thinks your conspiracy theory is nuts it's time to reevaluate your life decisions.
Great! Thank you for this article.
I want to a small, liberal arts school in the '90s that was in some ways similar to Evergreen. My instructors were, on the whole outstanding, brilliant, experts in their fields. I would be reluctant, however, to recommend many of them to the wider public as thought leaders. Gifted academics are often unwilling or unable to accept that brilliance in their chosen field does not necessarily translate into other areas of expertise. I suspect that may be the case with Bret.
"the National Institutes of Health (NIH)... reports that there’s “insufficient data … to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of Covid-19.”
Would that be the NIH run by Francis Collins, known to have been shilling for Fauci/ China, and smearing those who expressed suspicion along these lines?
See e.g. https://www.newsweek.com/nih-director-dismissed-wuhan-lab-leak-1596765 .
Is there anything that he could do, which would at all dent his cred in the eyes of this Matt Johnson?
BTW, who is this Matt Johnson?
Why is there no bio info here on him?
There is a brief bio provided for every writer we publish. You just have to click on their names.
OK, the bio shows him to be part of the Bulwark crowd, which is known, among those not enslaved to Establishment thought, to shill for NeoCon warmongers (e.g. w/ Kristol & Charen among its editors).
If this site is primarily also such a shill, I erred in subscribing to it.
But, Cathy Young's mockery of the MSM (on Cheney) today gives me hope, that his site may not be such a shill.
That was written by Varad Mehta. That's the thing about our site: it's an avowedly pluralist publication. You'll enthusiastically agree with some of our articles, you'll find areas of agreement in other ones we post, and you'll positively hate still other ones we publish. If you're not looking for something like that, no hard feelings. But we make no apologies. Thanks for reading.
You're right about Mehta, I had a brain cramp.
Much of Ms. Young's stuff is *quite* worth reading.
I was drawn to here, by another site/s comparison of this one with Aero, etc.