How To Deal With Coronavirus Part 4: The Experts Have Already Failed Us

Mar 14, 2020

I have not had kind things to say about the legacy media and their insistence on publishing fear porn rather than useful data and information. In any crisis, information flow is what prevents panic, prevents unhelpful and even dangerous actions, and is what drives ultimate resolution. When hype and hysteria replace reason and evidence, the community is made less safe.

As I said at the beginning, we must follow the data. We must listen to the data, divining for ourselves what it means, what courses of actions it recommends. Beyond a basic technocratic level, we must stop listening to the "experts" and start listening to our own common sense.

Know The Limitations Of "Experts"

I should elaborate on this point somewhat. It would be foolish to discount the knowledge and learning of a virologist when discussing matters of virology. It would be foolish to discount the knowledge and learning of the microbiologist when discussing matters of microbiology. This is--or should be--intuitively obvious.

It is, however, equally foolish to give weight to someone with knowledge and learning in one area as he comments on matters outside of that area. Expertise in virology is not expertise in public policy, nor expertise in disaster recovery and business continuity planning--and vice versa. To infer expertise in one area because of stated or claimed expertise in another area is a logical fallacy, known as the appeal to authority Simply put, presuming that something is true merely because someone else says it is true is flawed reasoning--the sort of reasoning that may lead one into very bad outcomes.

Merely saying something is a fact will not make it a fact. Reliance on such statements, on testimony, is not and can never be "fact based" logic. As others have noted, "a testimony is not an argument and it is not a fact."

No expert, regardless of his education or brilliance, has the power to turn his words into facts. I myself claim expertise in business continuity disaster recovery planning, and yet my words will likewise never become facts. The same holds true for every virologist and every epidemiologist cropping up everywhere in the media.

At a fundamental level, there really are no true "experts". There are merely people with particular knowledge and experience.

"Expert" Opinions Only Matter If Logic And Data Agree

The merit of the expert and his or her opinion is that of efficiency. It is quicker and easier to take the digested analyses of the expert, who we hope will summarize the research and data acquisition necessary to reach a particular conclusion. The expert's worth is one of convenience, neither more nor less.

For this reason, every expert opinion must be constrained by logic and data. An expert opinion should be regarded as a summarized logical conclusion. Opinions that do not match logic and data can never be trusted. When opinion and data do not match, the data must win, every time. In logic, there is no second option.

The Data Does Not Fit The Experts' Claims

In one of his earlier press briefings, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization Director General, claimed it was "impossible" to know where COVID-19 would erupt next.

What elevates this statement to the level of utter absurdity is the history--the very origins, in fact--of the modern science of epidemiology: with less data and less understanding of disease than we have today, Doctor John Snow tracked a cholera outbreak in 1854 London to a particular contaminated water pump, and by first disabling and later replacing that pump, arrested the spread of the disease.

Like John Snow, we have maps--and a good deal more data. We know, for example, from where and to where people fly when they get on a plane. We can see the traffic patterns of this travel. We know, by direct consequence of medical history, that diseases will go where the people go. If there is significant travel from China to Iran, we should expect to see disease in Iran--and we have. If there is significant travel from China to Italy, we should expect to see disease in Italy--and we have.

Yet Dr. Tedros cannot anticipate where the disease will head next? This lay person finds that claim unsubstantiated by the facts.

In another briefing, to justify the WHO's refusal to declare COVID-19 a pandemic until very recently, Dr. Tedros asserted there was no "uncontained global spread" nor "widespread death". At the time of that statement there were epidemics of COVID-19 in China, South Korea, and Japan, and the humanitarian calamities of Italy and Iran were just beginning. At the time of that statement, there had been over 2500 deaths worldwide. With similar spread of H1N1 influenza, the WHO declared the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak to be a pandemic.

It is not injudicious to say of Dr. Tedros' execrable assertion he decided COVID-19 was not a pandemic because not enough people had died. This lay person finds Dr. Tedros assertion unsupported by logic (and did so at the time).

The CDC has persisted in perpetuating the now disproven theory that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan live animal market. They perpetuate that theory even now. They perpetuate this theory despite a growing body of data indicating the involvement of Wuhan's biomedical research labs, sufficient even for the derelict legacy media to notice.

The CDC is not updating its findings to reflect all the emerging data. The data does not agree with the CDC opinions--therefore the CDC opinions must be called into question.

FEMA has sought a declaration of national emergency, for a disease with approximately 2600 cases and 50 deaths after approximately two months of community spread within the entire United States. Two months into the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic there were an estimated one million cases in the US alone. President Obama did not issue an emergency declaration until the following October, a full six months into the pandemic. There was little media scrutiny at the time, and certainly no assertion that President Obama was tardy at the time.

If a national emergency over H1N1 did not exist 2 months into that outbreak, this lay person wonders why the experts feel a national emergency exists over the demonstrably smaller COVID-19 outbreak. Have they revised their emergency declaration criteria? If so, what are the new guidelines? If they have not, the data does not match their claims of crisis.

We HAVE A Crisis--But Which One?

There is no doubt that COVID-19 is a public health concern. In some parts of the US it is already a crisis, and in other parts it will become a crisis soon enough. One need only examine the Weekly Influenza Report from Washington State to see they have significant increase in infectious disease in the Seattle region, or read the New York Times piece describing the extent to which Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland is overwhelmed by coronavirus to see the public health impacts of this disease. One need only review the influenza data from California, Ohio, or New York City to see there are multiple states with "community spread" of COVID-19. One need only follow the path of the disease from its origin in Wuhan's virology labs around the world despite the best efforts of many nations outside of China to conclude this disease will continue to spread.

Yet the disease itself is only part of the challenge. As businesses and public health officials grapple with responding to the disease, they are confronted by the blunt reality of cost. An overarching reality of all crisis response is summarized by author Robert Heinlein's memorable acronym, "TANSTAAFL"--"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Every quarantine carries a cost. Every lockdown ordered by government carries a penalty. Regardless of the justifications provided for China's draconian lockdowns, or Italy's national quarantine, there is no escaping the wreckage these actions have inflicted upon global financial markets and the whole of the global economy.

Will the jobs lost be worth it? Will the businesses ruined be a fair price to pay for the lives saved? Do the numbers we see today--2600 cases across the US, 500-600 cases in Washington State--warrant extreme response?

COVID-19 is not merely a crisis of disease. It is also a crisis of economics. It is now virtually certain there will be a worldwide recession, the severity of which cannot yet be determined. It is equally certain the catalyst for the recession will not have been the disease, but our responses to the disease. China chose to quarantine Wuhan, chose to shut down almost the whole of their economy, chose to disrupt supply chains across the globe. Italy has followed suit (albeit to a lesser degree), and even the United States' travel restrictions come at economic cost.

The data does not give a clear answer: the disease metrics are real, the fatality metrics are real, but so too are the market declines, the shortages (beyond those created through panic buying), and the layoffs. However long we are saddled with COVID-19 itself, we will be saddled with the economic costs of our choices for far longer.

I will not be so arrogant as to pretend to know with certainty the answer. I do know, without being arrogant, that the "experts" in the media and in the government are not giving nearly enough attention to these questions. I do know that hype and hysteria are the order of the day in the legacy media. I do know the totality of the data we have before us does not match the projections and conclusions of the "experts"--and they are not taking the time either to explain these variances or explore why they exist.

I know they should be doing both. I know that they likely will not.

I know we have a crisis, but I also know it may not be the crisis we are being told it is.

I know that the people we have empowered to analyze the data and give us reasoned, logical, fact-based conclusions have failed utterly in their charge, and I know that it will fall to ordinary people to correct their mistakes.

How To Deal With Coronavirus Part 4: The Experts Have Already Failed Us

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