RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/logic-the-first-casualty/

It is a fundamental principle of risk management that the benefits of any decision should be weighed against the costs. What is less often appreciated is that risk is an interactive phenomenon. Perceptions of risk often lead to people adjusting their behaviour in ways that reduce (or increase) the chances of a hazard occurring. Risk does not equal a hazard plus some fixed probability of it occurring.

University College London Professor Emeritus John Adams captured this with his idea of a ‘risk thermostat’, whereby we balance our propensity to take risks, risk perceptions and costs and benefits. Aaron Wildavsky perhaps captured this most parsimoniously in his aphorism that ‘the secret of safety lies in danger.’

But overestimating risk can lead to costly responses. In one famous example the 1976 Swine Flu epidemic in the US resulted in the rushed development of a vaccine that was far worse than the disease, causing many cases of Gullain-Barré Syndrome, a rather nasty immune system disorder. This was described in detail by Robert Formaini in his excellent book The Myth of Scientific Public Policy. Unfortunately, all too often, governments do not understand that public policy cannot be decided solely by scientific experts, because human conduct frequently undermines the intentions of policy-makers by exhibiting behaviour scientists did not anticipate.

The appropriate medical field for responding to pandemics is epidemiology, not immunology. As Nobel Prize winning immunologist Peter Doherty put it in an interview on Sky News on March 26, he’s a ‘lab guy’, not an epidemiologist. Good epidemiology should, of course, include a good measure of social science to cover this eventuality, but I once attended a conference on climate change where a prominent epidemiologist disavowed any knowledge of human behaviour, stating ‘I am not a social scientist.’ He went on to argue that the health of future Aboriginal Australians would be seriously harmed by climate change — ignoring the rather obvious point that the impacts of future climates projected by models rested on emissions scenarios that assumed massive increases in wealth; apparently none of this would find its way to Aboriginal communities, which would continue to wallow in squalor.

Which brings us to the current pandemic with the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19. The government policy response has seen some sensible measures adopted, especially in shutting down borders and requiring a degree of ‘social distancing’ in an effort to flatten the curve of infections sufficiently to allow the health system to cope. But has the National Cabinet gone too far?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15803/coronavirus-european-union-unravels

Faced with an existential threat, EU member states, far from joining together to confront the pandemic as a unified bloc, instinctively are returning to pursuing the national interest. After years of criticizing U.S. President Donald J. Trump for pushing an “America First” policy, European leaders are reverting to the very nationalism they have publicly claimed to despise.

Ever since the threat posed by coronavirus came into focus, Europeans have displayed precious little of the high-minded multilateral solidarity that for decades has been sold to the rest of the world as a bedrock of European unity. The EU’s unique brand of soft power, said to be a model for a post-national world order, has been shown to be an empty fiction.

In recent weeks, EU member states have closed their borders, banned exports of critical supplies and withheld humanitarian aid. The European Central Bank, the guarantor of the European single currency, has treated with unparalleled disdain the eurozone’s third-largest economy, Italy, in its singular hour of need. The member states worst affected by the pandemic — Italy and Spain — have been left by the other member states to fend for themselves.

The European Union, seven decades in the making, is now unravelling in real time — in weeks.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages through Europe — where more than 250,000 people have now been diagnosed with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and 15,000 have died — the foundational pillars of the European Union are crumbling one by one.

Faced with an existential threat, EU member states, far from joining together to confront the pandemic as a unified bloc, instinctively are returning to pursuing the national interest. After years of criticizing U.S. President Donald J. Trump for pushing an “America First” policy, European leaders are reverting to the very nationalism they have publicly claimed to despise.

Ever since the threat posed by coronavirus came into focus, Europeans have displayed precious little of the high-minded multilateral solidarity that for decades has been sold to the rest of the world as a bedrock of European unity. The EU’s unique brand of soft power, said to be a model for a post-national world order, has been shown to be an empty fiction.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/coronavirus-craziness-turkey-hugh-fitzgerald/

Many examples of conspiracy theories, inshallah-fatalism, and sheer craziness have been on display in the Muslim Middle East, as it tries to make sense of the coronavirus. A recent roundup of voices from Turkey at Memri.org offers views often contradicting one another.

Here is Memri’s summary of what the Turkish press and public have been saying:

Members of the Turkish press and public have reacted to the global spread of COVID-19, colloquially known as the Coronavirus, blaming it on Jews and other unspecified political actors and saying that the virus cannot be transmitted in mosques. On March 13, Turkish medical doctor Dr. Yavuz Dizdar claimed that 60% of the population of Turkey was already infected with the virus and that the Ministry of Health, in order to hide this fact, was not providing test kits.

If the Ministry of Health is not providing test kits, on what basis does Dr. Dizdar insist that 60% of the Turkish population is already infected? Is his dim view of the Ministry of Health warranted? Could it be that the Ministry does not have enough test kits due to the sudden explosion of the coronavirus, as has happened in many countries, and is merely incompetent, not malevolent, in failing to have enough of them? What Dr. Dizdar’s claim does show is a deep suspicion of the authorities, the belief that they would not hesitate to hide facts about spread of the virus if they felt it in their own interest to do so, by appearing to be more competent than in fact they have been.

“This Virus Serves Zionism’s Goals Of Decreasing The Number Of People”; “Anyway The Jews Are A Cursed Race”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/g-7-countries-agree-to-push-back-against-beijings-pandemic-disinformation-campaign-pompeo_3287077.html

The Group of Seven (G-7) economies have agreed to push back against Beijing’s sprawling propaganda campaign designed to deflect blame for causing the global pandemic, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on March 26.

G-7 countries discussed the Chinese regime’s “intentional disinformation campaign” during a virtual meeting held on March 25, according to Pompeo.

“The G-7 countries yesterday were unanimous in saying we understand that this is a risk, that this is a problem … to the EU and to the United States and the world,” Pompeo told The Hugh Hewitt radio show on March 26, in reference to the discussions. “They agreed to jointly work alongside us to push back against this disinformation campaign.”

He said Japan and the EU countries in G-7 (France, Germany, and Italy) understood that the Chinese regime was reshaping its narrative about the outbreak—disinformation that “the Chinese are actively engaged in, even as we speak.”

The regime has been “trying to defer blame, trying to claim that they are the solution to this, and … [that] they weren’t the nation that, at the very beginning of this, [was the] one country that had the opportunity and the data set that could have put this virus in a much better place than we are today and failed to do so,” Pompeo said.