Trust the experts

[Fluminator]

https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/

Oof, in hindsight this seems so obvious but we really all were suckers during 2020/2021. The fact that nobody knew or predicted these things is embarrassing, but at least we can all learn for the next pandemic.

Perhaps the era of "trust the experts" leaves us too susceptible to manipulation. It's annoying because I don't want to waste time researching things that aren't my area of expertise, but what choice do we have now?

[CaptainFritz28]

Wait... the dangerous undemocratic evil conspiracy theorists were right about everything? No way...

[learnedSloth]

Perhaps the era of "trust the experts" leaves us too susceptible to manipulation.

I think people didn't just habitually trust the experts. They feared death.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Probably worth noting that, while many statements in the report strike me as fair and true, this is itself a political document written for political purposes and not really an objective summary of what went right/wrong during the pandemic.

[Jamiet99uk]

https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/

Oof, in hindsight this seems so obvious but we really all were suckers during 2020/2021. The fact that nobody knew or predicted these things is embarrassing, but at least we can all learn for the next pandemic.

Perhaps the era of "trust the experts" leaves us too susceptible to manipulation. It's annoying because I don't want to waste time researching things that aren't my area of expertise, but what choice do we have now?

Oof, look at this gullible stooge believing whatever the House Oversight Committee feeds him.

[learnedSloth]

It's annoying because I don't want to waste time researching things that aren't my area of expertise, but what choice do we have now?

Even so there are many things we can't control. Nevertheless we can behave wisely, if we consider the purpose it all serves, to wit, that men would come to salvation and inherit the everlasting life.

Seeing that it is the goal, I think that it is best to submit to God and seek his guidance.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Submission to God is in no way a substitute for thinking through what's true during a global pandemic. Even the Pope has an interest in knowing whether masks, distancing, or vaccines are effective.

[Jamiet99uk]

It's annoying because I don't want to waste time researching things that aren't my area of expertise, but what choice do we have now?

Even so there are many things we can't control. Nevertheless we can behave wisely, if we consider the purpose it all serves, to wit, that men would come to salvation and inherit the everlasting life.

Seeing that it is the goal, I think that it is best to submit to God and seek his guidance.

God isn't real.

[MajorMitchell]

Where do I start with my criticisms?
Fluminator creates this thread and:
Refers to a report on Covid from some political enquiry
He fails to provide some basic fkn information, such as, in which fkn nation, which fkn parliament?
Is Fluminator a Bible basher from.the USA? If so, would he please use a fkn Atlas to discover there are more countries than the USA & The Promised Land
Or is it a British parliamentary enquiry?

Don't expect me to look at some 500 page report Fluminator if you are too fkn lazy to provide us with a decent amount of information yourself.

You Fluminator had an agenda from.the start, to promote your religious beliefs with a bit of science bashing
Your claim that "we were all really suckers" might apply to you Fluminator but it does NOT FKN APPLY TO.ME!

Understand this simple fkn fact Fluminator, I am not a fkn cork brained clown
Your behaviours have me thinking that you might be that type of inferior specimen of the human primates.

Off you go Fluminator..
Explain to the readers, and explain to me the ways in which "I was really made a sucker".
Or accept that your generalised claim does not apply to me
Publicly acknowledge that I was not made a sucker by scientists, medical health professionals

Or fkn provide your evidence and reasoning, Without using Biblical sources please

.like you

[MajorMitchell]

What you should have titled this thread is
Trust God & do not trust scientists

That's your premise but like a fkn intellectual coward you flip.it the other way as a pathetic attempt to disguise your real.premis and real agenda, to promote your God.
If you want to go proselytising in our Bwave New Forum with More Decorum, may I suggest you Summon up the ethical courage, find the intellectual courage, discover the theological honesty you badly need...
And be honest with your threads.

You simply do not have the talent required in my opinion to be
Philosophically devious.

A Talleyrand Bishop of Autun you will never be Fluminator

I just adore the Evangelical Prosperity Churches in the USA
Bring the Moneylenders back into the Temple~Jesus Christ would be just LOVING that shit??

[CaptainFritz28]

Where do I start with my criticisms?
Fluminator creates this thread and:
Refers to a report on Covid from some political enquiry
He fails to provide some basic fkn information, such as, in which fkn nation, which fkn parliament?
Is Fluminator a Bible basher from.the USA? If so, would he please use a fkn Atlas to discover there are more countries than the USA & The Promised Land
Or is it a British parliamentary enquiry?

Don't expect me to look at some 500 page report Fluminator if you are too fkn lazy to provide us with a decent amount of information yourself.

You Fluminator had an agenda from.the start, to promote your religious beliefs with a bit of science bashing
Your claim that "we were all really suckers" might apply to you Fluminator but it does NOT FKN APPLY TO.ME!

Understand this simple fkn fact Fluminator, I am not a fkn cork brained clown
Your behaviours have me thinking that you might be that type of inferior specimen of the human primates.

Off you go Fluminator..
Explain to the readers, and explain to me the ways in which "I was really made a sucker".
Or accept that your generalised claim does not apply to me
Publicly acknowledge that I was not made a sucker by scientists, medical health professionals

Or fkn provide your evidence and reasoning, Without using Biblical sources please

.like you

His claim was obviously generalized. It was a literary device, I'm surprised you didn't recognize it as such. Goodness, people get touchy on the internet.

Also, Fluminator never referred to the Bible.

[CaptainFritz28]

What you should have titled this thread is
Trust God & do not trust scientists

That's your premise but like a fkn intellectual coward you flip.it the other way as a pathetic attempt to disguise your real.premis and real agenda, to promote your God.
If you want to go proselytising in our Bwave New Forum with More Decorum, may I suggest you Summon up the ethical courage, find the intellectual courage, discover the theological honesty you badly need...
And be honest with your threads.

You simply do not have the talent required in my opinion to be
Philosophically devious.

A Talleyrand Bishop of Autun you will never be Fluminator

I just adore the Evangelical Prosperity Churches in the USA
Bring the Moneylenders back into the Temple~Jesus Christ would be just LOVING that shit??

Gotta say I can concur with your disdain for the prosperity gospel preachers.

Other than that it's useless insults.

[kingofthepirates]

Perhaps the era of "trust the experts" leaves us too susceptible to manipulation. It's annoying because I don't want to waste time researching things that aren't my area of expertise, but what choice do we have now?

On the one hand yes, perhaps. No one is perfect, and on some level everyone has an agenda. is this manipulation? depends on the context, but in some cases I wouldn't disagree. Some 'experts' definitely take and weaponize that credibility to their advantage and lie, often at the detriment of the public.

However, theres generally a higher chance of success and safety if we follow the experts; they may have an agenda but they KNOW stuff and have studied it, that's why they're experts in the first place (ex. I imagine you'd trust an 'expert' mechanic who went to school over some random person on the street without any credentials on how to fix your car)! A few bad people shouldn't ruin everything, and I don't think theres convincing evidence that the majority of experts are trying to intentionally mislead the public.

At the end of the day though, it really does come down to your final question. either you trust the experts, or you disprove them with your own (scientific and sound) research (so pseudo science bs that's been disproven like a hundred times over doesn't count). Sitting on your ass saying "nuh uh" doesn't do anything.

So now I really wanna know, what's your solution? (and respectfully, please don't come in spouting raw bible verses and religious quotes, if you do that, at least explain it. preferably we can avoid it and stick to science and proven fact yk?)

[kingofthepirates]

Seeing that it is the goal, I think that it is best to submit to God and seek his guidance.

random tangent, but isn't this argument a bit circular (putting religion aside, like logically I'm actually kinda curious)?
Like the premise/goal (everlasting life and salvation) kinda already assumes the Big G exists (as I understand it, he's required to grant everlasting life and salvation in the first place). So you argue we must follow God and reach that goal. But like... without God, the goal itself doesn't exist and everything is crumbling down. idk personally it felt kinda circular.
Would enjoy input from those who know more than I do about logic and stuff :3

[learnedSloth]

Submission to God is in no way a substitute for thinking through what's true during a global pandemic. Even the Pope has an interest in knowing whether masks, distancing, or vaccines are effective.

Doesn't he pretend to substitute Christ? Then he just tries to actually do his job.
However, your reply suggests that you just missed the last 4 words of that which you react to: and seek his guidance.

Seeing that it is the goal, I think that it is best to submit to God and seek his guidance.

random tangent, but isn't this argument a bit circular (putting religion aside, like logically I'm actually kinda curious)?
Like the premise/goal (everlasting life and salvation) kinda already assumes the Big G exists (as I understand it, he's required to grant everlasting life and salvation in the first place). So you argue we must follow God and reach that goal. But like... without God, the goal itself doesn't exist and everything is crumbling down. idk personally it felt kinda circular.
Would enjoy input from those who know more than I do about logic and stuff :3

I wasn't arguing, but responding to Fluminator's concerns. Anyway, the existence of God has been discussed before:

1. Everything that exists must have a first cause.
2. The universe exists, therefore something or someone must have caused it.
3. That cause is God.
4. God is special and does not have a first cause.

Pillar #4 of this argument destroys pillar #1, so the entire argument is invalid.

I know that proponents of the cosmological argument would usually respond that you have misunderstood it, but to me disputing that objection seems unnecessary.

Causalities can be thought of as arrows of a directed graph. Then the points with outgoing arrows are causes, and causes without incoming arrows are first causes.

The only way to make first causes unnecessary is to permit cycles. Then there are groups of causes where any cause causes every cause in the group. Therefore causes in such a group are all or none, which permits lumping them together.

However, rendering such a group as a point would be misleading, because then only the outbound arrows would be visible. It would be indistinguishable from a first cause when all outbound arrows are outgoing. The internal arrows must be denoted somehow. I think a loop would be a quite natural way to mark it without introducing novel syntax. So the group is rendered as a cause that causes itself directly, reflecting that the causes in the group cause themselves at least indirectly. Calling the name of this construct self-cause seems natural enough.

Now the role of self-causes without incoming outbound arrows is similar to that of first causes. I think we can speak of first self-causes. There must be at least one. If I can wrap my head around it I might later explain why God of the Bible fits the bill.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Submission to God is in no way a substitute for thinking through what's true during a global pandemic. Even the Pope has an interest in knowing whether masks, distancing, or vaccines are effective.

Doesn't he pretend to substitute Christ? Then he just tries to actually do his job.
However, your reply suggests that you just missed the last 4 words of that which you react to: and seek his guidance.

So Christ gave you practical and factual guidance about whether the COVID-19 vaccine was safe and effective? The Bible was a useful tool for knowing how best to manage social distancing during the various waves of the pandemic? God could have told policymakers whether their economic stimulus was at risk of overshooting and contributing to inflation?

Maybe Christ could inform your values when you make judgement calls about these important issues. But at some point you would need to engage with the non-otherworldly facts of the health crisis if tou wanted to get things right.

[DougJoe]

...some of the things reported in the summary of the paper seem to be rather... contradictory which bothers me. Here's the two that I noticed the most:

OPERATION WARP SPEED: President-elect Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — which encouraged the rapid development and authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine — was highly successful and helped save millions of lives.

RUSHED COVID-19 VACCINE APPROVAL: The FDA rushed approval of the COVID-19 vaccine in order to meet the Biden Administration’s arbitrary mandate timeline. Two leading FDA scientists warned their colleagues about the dangers of rushing the vaccine approval process and the likelihood of adverse events. They were ignored, and days later, the Biden Administration mandated the vaccine.

...unless I'm reading all of this wrong, Trump started the ball rolling and is being praised for saving lives... but how would those lives have been saved if the FDA had never approved the thing (for which Biden is being *blamed*?) Trump's deadline seems to have been December of 2020 and I'm not sure how that is any less arbitrary than what the Biden Administration would have proposed. Also, from what I can find, emergency use of the vaccine *was* authorized in December of 2020 (after Biden was elected but while Trump still held office). So why is Biden being blamed for rushing the FDA when it feels like Trump must have been doing the same thing to some degree?

There's a lot to digest in the actual report. Trying to work my way through it.

[flash2015]

Probably worth noting that, while many statements in the report strike me as fair and true, this is itself a political document written for political purposes and not really an objective summary of what went right/wrong during the pandemic.

Agreed, but I am all for more discussion here rather than less.

Even though COVID is now is years in the past, leftists are STILL trying to shutdown dissenting opinions. In October there was a symposium setup at Stamford to discuss lessons learned from the pandemic (including speakers like Jay Battacharya and Anders Tegnell from Sweden - note that Sweden over the pandemic had one of the lowest, if not the lowest excess death rate over all of Europe even though they didn't do lockdowns):

https://healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu/events/pandemic-policy-planning-future-assessing-past

Because the symposium had some speakers that may have strayed from the one narrative the media went absolutely ape-s***. For example, here is an absolutely unhinged article from the LA times. They went "all in" on the most partisan rant imaginable:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-08-29/with-conference-on-pandemic-stanford-gives-platform-to-purveyors-of-misinformation-and-disinformation

Another one from the Nation. Many more like this. There were real attempts by activists to try and stop the symposium from happening at all:

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/stanford-covid-symposium-misinformation/

By all means analyze and criticize the arguments presented. Let's have these debates. But this idea that we shouldn't allow these people to speak because they stray from the one narrative is completely and utterly anti science and anti democratic.

It has been years now since the end of the pandemic. If we can't openly speak and reflect on it now, when can we do it?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Totally agree that debates about pandemic-era policies, even if they're politically inflected, are very useful and should probably be happening more than they are.

In my line of work as a public sector economist, I saw firsthand how a softly coerced "consensus" in favour of basically unlimited stimulus severely worsened inflation. This disproportionately hurt the poorest under the mostly-false pretense that these actions were needed to prevent an economic depression. Far too many experts in this space still defer to "how could we have known in advance?" as a defense for decisions made in 2022 onwards that were in fact taken with a lot of information available.

The reason to highlight the origin and nature of the House report is that it reads as exceptionally biased on several points, like the ones Doug Joe pointed out. The political right also had dogmas about the pandemic that were wrong or misleading and, if they had their way, the right would have been the ones to suppress or denigrate information that didn't serve their preferred narrative.

[flash2015]

The reason to highlight the origin and nature of the House report is that it reads as exceptionally biased on several points, like the ones Doug Joe pointed out. The political right also had dogmas about the pandemic that were wrong or misleading and, if they had their way, the right would have been the ones to suppress or denigrate information that didn't serve their preferred narrative.

I am not saying otherwise. Though at this point in time it is very hard for the right to do this because of the massive institutional capture by activists on the left. This is where the progressive left gets most of its power. Activists can launder their propaganda through institutions and the media to give it undeserved credibility.

The only real point of power at the moment for the right to suppress speech is on Israel...where even the slightest criticism of Israel is called "antisemitic". It is actually very interesting how similar the rhetorical tactics are for the Israel topic from the right and various social issues on the left to stifle speech.