The most surprising lesson learned from the Covid pandemic is how little we've learned from the Covid pandemic.

When did reasonable people begin to distrust those who speak for “science”? Perhaps from the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when public officials presented educated guesses as “settled science”? Or was it when they went a step further and offered patently political opinions as scientific facts?

“Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More than Social Distance,” Politico reported on June 4, 2020. Those who had followed strict instructions to avoid even outdoor church gatherings were told, by the same spokesmen for science, that Black Lives Matter marches were not only permitted, but even helpful. Did the abashed virus acknowledge the justice of the movement? Or had it suddenly turned out to be less deadly?

“We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” declared Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist. “In this moment the public-health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.” This view, Politico reported, “was echoed by media outlets and some of the most prominent public-health experts in America,” such as the “former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests.”

Even if racism is seen as a threat to public health, that is surely not a conclusion belonging to epidemiology. It is not settled science because it is not science at all. Neither, for that matter, is the assumption that marches against racism will reduce it, let alone save more lives than suspended disease-prevention measures. What calculations were involved?

“Science” had evidently become a magic word used as a substitute for argument. As medieval thinkers forestalled objections by claiming a revelation from God, their modern counterparts invoke science.

One might ask: did Drs. Nuzzo and Frieden estimate how many lives might be lost during the next public-health crisis when people would no longer credit those who have betrayed their trust? “Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More than Social Distance,” Politico reported on June 4, 2020. Those who had followed strict instructions to avoid even outdoor church gatherings were told, by the same spokesmen for science, that Black Lives Matter marches were not only permitted, but even helpful. Did the abashed virus acknowledge the justice of the movement? Or had it suddenly turned out to be less deadly?

“We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” declared Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist. “In this moment the public-health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.” This view, Politico reported, “was echoed by media outlets and some of the most prominent public-health experts in America,” such as the “former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests.”

Even if racism is seen as a threat to public health, that is surely not a conclusion belonging to epidemiology. It is not settled science because it is not science at all. Neither, for that matter, is the assumption that marches against racism will reduce it, let alone save more lives than suspended disease-prevention measures. What calculations were involved?

“Science” had evidently become a magic word used as a substitute for argument. As medieval thinkers forestalled objections by claiming a revelation from God, their modern counterparts invoke science.

One might ask: did Drs. Nuzzo and Frieden estimate how many lives might be lost during the next public-health crisis when people would no longer credit those who have betrayed their trust? As the boy cried wolf, the epidemiologist cried science. [My bold for emphasis]

Experts who betray the public’s trust do especially great harm because they weaken the bonds on which society rests. It is one thing for a paymaster to take a bribe, quite another when a judge does. When judges are corrupt, justice itself suffers. One reason Russia remains impoverished is that corrupted courts render property rights insecure, which is why when large Russian companies sign a contract, they sometimes specify that disputes will be resolved in a British court.

When lawyers steal from their clients or doctors purposely harm their patients, they commit an offense not only against their victim but also against their profession and the public’s regard for it. That is why professional associations may take action. By the same token, when scientists go beyond the evidence or represent their social opinions as scientific facts, science itself comes into disrepute. All scientists are obliged to speak up. Very few do. [My bold]

Religious believers might be diagnosed with “schizophrenia with religious delirium.” That diagnosis was especially likely for people who had come to God as adults. In their authoritative study Russia’s Political Hospitals: The Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union, Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway cite a psychiatrist’s explanation for one convert’s incarceration:

“Everything that you have just told us confirms us in the view that illness lies at the root of your “conversion.” Of course, you yourself cannot understand this; but you must have confidence in us; we are specialists. If you had grown up in a religious family or had lived somewhere in the West, well, then we could have looked at your religiousness in another way. . . . But you were educated in a Soviet school, and were brought up in a family of non-believers. . . .You are an educated person; I am ready even to admit that you know more about philosophy and religion than I do. . . . And suddenly . . . wham! . . . you are religious! . . . It’s very odd indeed . . . and makes one wonder if some abnormal processes were not already developing in you in your youth, which later on brought you to religion.

You must have confidence in us; we are specialists: these are the words of experts everywhere.

When I first visited for a week in December 2016, several of us were walking around the French Concession area in Shanghai and our guide pointed out (rather casually) the building where Mao Tse Tung first began lecturing and officially started the CPC – the Chinese People’s Congress. The building was rather… nondescript. In fact, it was indistinguishable as the birthplace of Chinese communism and posted a sign indicating “hours from 8-4, closed on Sundays, etc…” There was one sleepy-looking officer walking around trying to find something to do.

Not exactly what I’d expected from “communist” China. Something about the scene piqued my curiosity, so I turned to our host and guide:

“How much education do you get in school – like middle and high school – about communism?” He thought seriously about it for moment.

“Not much,” he said. “Maybe…” I could see him trying to calculate the time in his head, “…an hour?”

My colleague and friend Brian, who was walking with us, jumped in: “Come on!! An hour?!?” He laughed good-naturedly as he said it, but he was obviously calling booshit.

Our Chinese host turned to him seriously:

“Brain -” (whenever the Chinese try to say ‘Brian/Bryan’ it comes about as “brain” and I don’t know why, but I get a giggle every time I hear it. It’s never NOT funny, which tells you a lot about what a high school sophomore I still am).

“Brain -” he began patiently, “China’s history is… large -” He held his arms as far apart as they would go. “Communism takes up…” and now he held his right thumb and first finger apart about an inch, “a very small part of it.”

Whoops.

On the other hand, you would be amazed at how much less you have to bitch about when you get to keep a bigger chunk of your money and are free to earn without impediment by the government. I hadn’t realized just how over-regulated the US was until I came to China. And it makes perfect sense: you can’t possibly regulate 1.4 billion people. You’d have to have a bureaucracy of 500 million… And so the Chinese are largely left to earn and keep as they can. I walk around neighborhoods all the time where the local version of the copy shop is a tiny, tiny hole in the wall with a fax machine or two, a computer and printer, and an old Xerox copier. Some local person has cobbled it all together to serve that neighborhood. There is no gleaming “OfficeMax” or “FedEx.” I can guarantee you that not a single government official has been consulted in the setup of that business. I assure you that there is no certificate of occupancy issued or other maze of regulations that impedes people from starting a business to serve their local fellows and make a buck.

The same is true of most little tea shops and restaurants. There is no sign assuring the locals that the health inspector has been there or that the myriad of regulations that stand between the poor and their own business have been complied with. Now, some of you are thinking, “OMG! B-but, but – how will they know that the food is safe?!” To think that a certificate on the wall guarantees food safety, however, is to prove just how brainwashed we are in the US. No certificate on the wall guarantees you won’t eat bad food. It happens all of the time in the US, notwithstanding all of the USDA and other regulators we have. And the same is true of financial markets and every other thing that is hyper-regulated. (Covid vaxes, anyone?) There were 37 regulator on the floor of all of the major trading houses when the financial markets shit themselves in 2008. Afterwards the bureaucracy added another half-dozen or so useless eaters who didn’t understand the products they were regulating.

Let’s suppose we have two restaurants, one that has complied with every single law and regulation and health inspection and one that has not. How would we know the difference? In other words, forget about the certificate on the wall and the false confidence it gives you for a moment. In real, concrete terms, how would anyone know that something was “wrong” in food quality, cleanliness, etc. (in either place)? The answer is identical in either case – no one would know until someone gets sick enough and can trace that sickness back to the restaurant. But that would be true whether you had the “certificate” or not. In other words, the certificate doesn’t prevent anyone from getting sick. It’s a false assurance. I could comply with all of the regulations and then decide that the costs were too much to continue to bear and start cutting corners and no health inspector is going to come in there and “catch me.” They come by – if at all – once a year for inspections. Maybe.

Yet the most direct feedback – and the most deleterious thing for a small shop owner – is not a health inspector: it’s the locals who frequent it. If the people in the local area are getting sick, they will tell everyone else that you make food that makes people sick. You couldn’t survive in a small neighborhood for more than a few weeks to a month (I would bet even less) if you were a small shop owner in one of these tiny neighborhoods selling crappy food.

And so we have to ask ourselves: at what cost health inspectors and regulators and bureaucrats? Because the costs that are associated with all of those things are born disproportionately by the poor. It takes vast (excessive) amounts of capital to open a small restaurant in the face of all of those regulatory requirements and minimum wages and labor laws and OSHA reqs on and on.