RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/18/how-blind-faith-in-scientific-expertise-wrecked-the-economy/

Greta Thunberg, of all people, was asked to opine about coronavirus for a CNN panel in the latest episode of our bizarre purgatory. Everyone can imagine what she said: “People are starting to realize that we are actually depending on science and that we need to listen to scientists and experts.”

This is the perfect representation of the Twitter take artist: totally out of her element, with banal and worthless takes, but still trying to be provocative and relevant. In the late 1930s she would have reminded us there’s a global scientific consensus that intelligence can be measured by skull shape and different parts of brains have different emotional locators.

The phrase “settled science” is a classic oxymoron. There can never be science that is settled, and science cannot or should not be the only determinant of policy, especially on things related to the economic direction of the planet.

This is important due to two observable phenomena. One, this pandemic has highlighted how much of our public and social media are full of mindless drones. Two, it has highlighted just how much of our scientific consensus is flawed, and still worshipped as if it consists of matters of faith instead of evidence.

Consider the first one. One of the most important noticeable recent phenomena has been the mushrooming of take artists. They are not scientists, or qualified in matters of economics, history, strategy, or policy. They are random individuals whose sole purpose is to remind us that we should have faith in “science and data.”

Obviously, they don’t understand having “faith” in science is in itself a fallacy of scientism. Scientism is a faith in the idea that all social problems have only one answer, through the process of science. It is a fallacy because scientists are humans and have their own biases, as well as flawed methodologies, which is why science is constantly scrutinized and measured alongside historical and economic questions.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/18/jared-polis-slams-cdc-inaccurate-reporting-on-covid-deaths/

Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis is pushing back against data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), disputing how the agency counts death from COVID-19.

According to the CDC, anyone who tested positive for the coronavirus during their time of death is counted as a COVID-19 death. Polis claims people want to know who died directly from coronavirus instead of those who happened to test positive after another cause of death.

Polis joined Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday after reports found 300 fewer people died in Colorado from the coronavirus than initially reported.

“One of the reasons we wanted to make sure we reported it out in a better way is to inspire confidence so that it wouldn’t be politicized, Chris. These are deaths that should not be politicized,” Polis said.

Polis explained how the CDC counts death by coronavirus in a different way than the state of Colorado.

“The CDC criteria include anyone who has died with COVID-19. What the people of Colorado, the people of the country, want to know how many people died of COVID-19. In our state about 900 have died from COVID-19 on their death certificate or from the attending physician. 1,100 have died with it. Those 200 in the middle might have been a contributing factor, but it wasn’t deemed the sole factor or the only factor in their death,” Polis said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/trump-removes-the-state-department-inspector-general/

It would be better to reserve judgment until we know the reasons.

President Trump has ousted another inspector general, the fourth IG in the last six weeks. This time, Steve Linick of the State Department was cashiered. The White House says the president has his reasons for no longer having “the fullest confidence” in IG Linick. Perhaps . . . but it is curious how these removals always seem to happen late on Fridays, when administrations do things they’d prefer you didn’t notice.

I am not a fan of the institution of inspector general because it is constitutionally suspect, to say the least. An IG works in the executive branch, and is therefore subordinate to the president, yet reports to Congress. This is a hybrid that flouts separation-of-powers principles. Predictably, it has deleterious effects. Congress has become too dependent on the in-house IG at executive departments and agencies, atrophying its oversight muscles. The existence of the IG makes it harder for department and agency leadership to deal swiftly with misconduct. And because the IG answers to dual constituencies in political minefields, IG reports often suffer from on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand syndrome.

All that said, the institution is not going anywhere anytime soon, just as the administrative state’s distortion of the separation of powers seems to be a permanent feature of modern government — and modern governmental dysfunction. We should try to make the system work as well as it can, though its design flaws may make it increasingly irrelevant.

The Trump administration says that Linick was insufficiently aggressive in investigating the State Department’s role in promoting the bogus reporting of Christopher Steele, the former British spy and primary author of the Democrat-sponsored “dossier” that the Obama administration peddled to the FISA court and on Capitol Hill, while the Clinton campaign peddled it to the media. Trump critics counter that Linick was investigating whether Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had directed a State Department official to perform personal tasks for Pompeo and his wife; and that Linick had incurred the administration’s wrath by focusing on alleged retaliation by Trump political appointees against career officials.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/18/pandemic_power_grabs_143222.html

Most policy discussions about the pandemic focus on the agonizing trade-off between public health and economic survival. That’s understandable — those are the central issues — but they have overshadowed two other major questions: Is the crisis shifting more power to Washington, D.C.? Is it undermining essential legal protections and, if so, for how long?

National crises often lead to more centralized power. But everything about this one is unusual, including President Trump’s decision to let state and local authorities make nearly all decisions about daily life and business activity. Washington provides expert advice, policy guidance, backup supplies, emergency personnel, and massive funding. It has not issued national mandates. Trump has refused to shift more power to the central government.

Trump’s approach contrasts sharply with Washington’s one-size-fits-all response to the oil crisis of 1973-74. To save gasoline, Congress passed, and Richard Nixon signed, a bill setting a new national speed limit, 55 mph, to be applied everywhere in the country. It wasn’t popular everywhere, particularly in the sprawling and sparsely populated West, but the feds had a hammer for states that didn’t want to comply: no 55 mph limit, no federal highway money.

Washington planners also demanded every state let drivers turn right at red lights.  The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 required it if states were to receive any federal energy-conservation money. That rule, like the national speed limit, fit some locales better than others. In Boston, for example, politicians initially resisted the idea. They knew local drivers considered stop lights little more than “suggestions.” Permitting right-on-red would only add to the chaos. No matter. They buckled rather than lose Washington funding.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/498180-were-risking-national-suicide-if-we-dont-adjust-our-pandemic-response

By now, everyone recognizes Dr. Anthony Fauci. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the most cited immunology researchers of all time and unquestionably one of the most acclaimed. As specified in his own bio, his deep expertise is in research of immune-mediated and infectious disease, particularly their basic mechanisms and treatments. During this COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci has been a central figure, a key adviser to President Trump and a man to whom the entire country, indeed the world, looks for wisdom and expertise. 

However, our elected representatives, the public and the media misunderstand his focused role and even his expertise as a scientist. Basic science underlying a viral pandemic is absolutely critical. But now is the time for the design of sound public policy — and that involves a far broader formulation than a single-minded focus on stopping COVID-19 at all costs.

Policymakers and the public have not received several key messages that are critical to alleviate fear and guide a safe reopening of society. That has led to a gross failure in policy at the state level:

There has been a failure to remind everyone that the stated goal of the policy – total lockdown and whole-population isolation – has been accomplished in most of the United States, including the epicenter of New York. Specifically, two curves, hospitalizations per day and deaths per day, have flattened. The goal was to prevent hospital overcrowding and, aside from a few in the New York area, hospitals were not overcrowded. Today, most hospitals stand under-filled, necessitating layoffs of personnel. More importantly, it was never a policy goal to eliminate all cases of COVID-19. That is impossible, unnecessary and illogical, when 99 percent of infected people have no significant illness from it.