The Individual Mind

We are drowning in it. There are printed and spoken words, images, and video crashing down upon us constantly. We control some of that flow, but to much of that input we are simply the passive recipients… if not victims. Inputs arrive in the forms of conversation, news, radio, internet, advertising, podcasts, articles, blogs, books, frequent and distracting text messages, and an endless array of entertainment platforms delivered across screens whose sizes vary from many thousand square feet stadium videoboards to IMAX to television to computer to handheld and wristband. Topics may be social messaging, politics, medicine, science, tech, history, finance, religion, popular culture and surely much more.

The external pressures to receive and be influenced by data are ridiculous. Regardless of source, each communication is sent with purpose – the origins of which may be healthy, productive and informative or which may have goals of persuasion, marketing, monetary gain, manipulation or control. All of these messages are sent (and received) through filters, bias, experience-determined and individualized perspective, beliefs, preferences, personality and world views. Some of us are more adept at crafting messages. Some are more skilled in processing them. Some are challenged as both sender and receiver. These processes are complex and may have far-reaching consequences.

To imagine a “Communication History of the World” timeline which chronologically plots the number of messages received by the average person on a daily basis, we could envision that very low, horizontal line starting in the era of grunting then proceeding to verbal speech to written language to the printing press to electronic telegraph to radio to television and to include internet communication today. That graph would show minimal change for millenia then a massive explosion of messaging which continues exponential growth today. It is now the norm for children in developed nations to practically be born with an electronic device in their hands, streaming incessant data and input to their brains.

How will humanity adapt to these constant external inputs? How do we appropriately filter these information flows to avoid drowning,… or deception? How do we determine which data has value? Which is accurate? Which is persuasive? How has it been sourced,… or biased? What is the purpose or agenda of its sender? Which flows should be turned off entirely, and which data summarily dismissed? How do we find a balance between appropriately being informed yet experiencing peace of mind, calmness and joy in life? How do we recognize our own and others’ (even “expert”) limitations to know what is real and true? Perhaps just recognizing all of this as background and challenge is a significant start towards awareness and improvement.

This topic recently re-surfaced for me as I listened to a Joe Rogan podcast with Tristan Harris as they discussed the latter’s social media and tech expertise which was showcased in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. There are many worthwhile topics in their conversation and the documentary, to include the psychological effects of social media, Big Data collection on users, and the manipulation of information.

Mr. Harris ended the podcast by reading from author Neil Postman’s introduction to his 1980s era book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Although Postman primarily took issue with the distractions culminating in television, his premises can only be found to be even better supported in the Age of the Internet, which would emerge in the following decade.

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we at least had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s Dark Vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief, even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will become overwhelmed, overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity or history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we’d be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.”

I have read, reflected on, and for years been familiar with, Aldous Huxley’s and George Orwell’s dystopian writings. The Rogan/Harris conversation led me to a new find, and to audiobook, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death… twice. Well worth the read or listen. Of course, he does better justice to these topics that I can. Rather than attempt to summarize the many points made throughout these books and conversations, I’ll just list some questions that I am pondering myself. I don’t have the solutions, which will be different for any of us as we all have different situations, value judgments and goals. Considering questions like these may be a good start to bringing the issues out of the subconscious background chatter and distraction, and into the foreground for a more transparent analysis. Grab that loud, obnoxious, distracting troll by the neck and pull it screaming and kicking into the light for a good look.

• How much of the data, images and “information” that we entertain is of no real use to us,… of no value to help us make decisions about important matters of interpersonal relationships, employment, useful learning, psychological and physical health, financial decisions, life purpose,….?
• How much of what we process, or of what consumes our time and attention, is empty distraction,… meaningless and low value entertainment,… simply time and resource-destroying drivel? How much of my time SHOULD I permit myself to be mindlessly entertained? How do I choose to allot my time?
• How much of what we see on television, social media and other sources has a clear bias,… or a hidden bias? How do we keep those likely biases and intentional persuasions in conscious view in order to appropriately filter information? How likely is it that I am unconsciously swayed and affected by external biases and intentions? How often do I fall into that trap? And how do my own biases and worldviews unintentionally filter how I receive realistic and truthful data?
• What are the sources of information for the sources of information that I see? Can those sources be traced back to reliable primary and principal data, or at least honest and transparent discussion? What does “reliable” mean? Does it require a course or degree in statistics to understand probabilities of accuracy, rates of error, random occurrence and how powerful data is, or is not? Are the “experts” truly non-biased experts with protected access to difficult to comprehend knowledge? Even in that case, does their expertise extend to anything beyond a very narrow field? How well can they contemplate and opine on the broader perspectives, costs and consequences of their recommendations?
• How much of what we receive, or even emit ourselves, is based more on emotion, subjective values, preferences, and anecdote rather than on logic, reason, and dispassionate analysis? Does a non-biased analysis tend to threaten our comfort level – psychologically, emotionally, financially, politically, religiously,…? Am I able to view a subject from a broader and less impartial perspective that offers greater context of consequences, history, economics, society and other individuals? Does my communication reflect that perspective?
• As a society, how is disinformation, unfavored opinion, and nonconformist communication best approached? Through anger, controls, censorship, cancel culture, threats, de-platforming, vengeful “doxing” (sharing an individual’s private documents and data on the internet in an attempt to shame and intimidate, if not character assassinate), or by designating truth dissemenators and fact checkers as information gatekeepers? Who checks the checkers? How likely is it that such gatekeepers will be immune to bias, groupthink or even purpose-driven agenda? How likely is it that an agenda-driven individual would seek just such a position,… as do politicians?
• In this Age of Information, would it not be an individually and societally enlightened approach to teach early and often how to deal with information, rather than to attempt to control its flow? As children are now practically born with electronic devices in their hands, continually bombarded with images and data into their brains, would it not be of extreme benefit to teach them very early and continually how to discern information, discriminate data, research assertions, investigate sources, filter information flows, teach themselves, forever learn, entertain nuanced topics, and communicate ideas in collaborative rather than confrontational ways? Could this be one of the most important subjects to be taught in formal education settings, as well as at home?
• Under what incentives and purposes do governments, corporations and individuals operate who prefer to control information and drive opinion rather than to facilitate open sources, transparency and broad discussion? What is the future of our world, if those Controllers dominate information flows and communication?

Were Orwell, Huxley and Postman very far off the mark? Are we already there?

It’s fun (and sometimes disturbing) to trace how you end up down some rabbit holes. I recently read Japan’s Infamous Unit 731: Firsthand Accounts of Japan’s Wartime Human Experimentation Program by Hal Gold. Illuminating and horrifying. Horrifying in the sense of mass murder and torture, not necessarily in the current vernacular that might depict the trauma of receiving the wrong flavor latte from your barista or even having been micro-aggressed against by a suspicious glance or an unkind word. (Yes, if you’re already triggered, then you may choose to move on to another blog that reinforces your preferred victim status and protects your hyper-sensitive, undeveloped ego – oblivious to the historical perspective and perpetrated atrocities that make our current civil discord and tantrums look petty, childish and imminently self-absorbed in comparison to millennia of misery throughout human history. Buckle up, because this is the real sh*t.)

As background to the Unit 731 pursuit, my brother-in-law, Nate, and I frequently engage in interesting (if not darker) conversations about history, cycles of Empire, economy, politico-social currents and the like… with more meaningful reach than your present-day circus performances of political theatrics, media hysteria and general societal psychopathology. In recent months he had loaned me his copy of John Toland’s The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. At 875 pages, however, I chose to audio-book that one on my commutes and dog walks. Well worth the time investment for the historically curious, particularly if imperial and military histories interest you. That book’s journey opened up other tangents of discussion and inquiry.

The path led me to read The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang. Now, I’m not hating on the maligned Japanese, per se. There’s plenty of disruption, death and destruction to be found at the hands and in the dark crevices of governments the world over – the US and her allies certainly being no exception. The Japanese history discussed here is just my most recent trail of exploration, particularly engaging to me because I knew nothing about either the destruction of Nanking and her population or biological warfare experimentation.

On the basis of victim count, the Nanking Chinese and their compatriots were far exceeded numerically by German atrocities of the era, however, the Japanese were no less brutal. In some aspects, perhaps the Asian counterparts, on a prisoner per capita basis, surpassed the racism, de-humanization, hatred, vengeance and blood-thirst perpetrated by the Germans upon their perceived lessers, the unclean, the “cockroaches.” While emaciating concentration camps and homicidal gas “showers” cannot be considered benevolent in any sense, the Japanese were arguably more skilled individually in personalized and ongoing violence, rape, torture and mass murder of their enemies. The Japanese soldiers were likely more directly involved in their nation’s atrocities, lacking the well-developed systems and machinery of their ally’s mass incarceration, starvation and murder, which may have permitted the German soldiers more of a depersonalized distancing from their deeds – both physical and psychological.

On to Unit 731. In the Japanese military’s quest to reduce its own soldiers’ battleground illnesses and wound complications, it sought to better understand pathogenic microorganisms, like the Vibrio species that spreads cholera in contaminated drinking water. In that endeavor, military leaders recognized the opportunity to turn those pathogens on its enemies – both civilian and military – by weaponizing these pathogens into biologic warfare (BW) systems. To scale these techniques to the genocidal levels necessary to have military impact required research. Accurate research on the pathogenicity, efficacy and delivery of deadly microorganisms apparently required human experimentation on a large scale. One of the primary investigative BW bodies of the Japanese military was the secret Unit 731.

Headed and populated by the nation’s top medical scientists and physicians, Unit 731’s research included using political and war prisoners, and at times entire unsuspecting Chinese villages, for experimentation, pathogen inoculation, gassing, water torture, bayonet practice, BW bombing, starvation, water and food contamination, vivisection (dissection of the living – with or without anesthesia – until dead), frostbite experiments until skin and tissue fell from the bone,….

The term that the staff used for their human study material referred to inanimate objects, specifically wood logs – “maruta.” Incinerators disposed of the logs after their usefulness was expended. Maruta were not permitted to survive. If they happened to live through an experiment, other research would be carried out on them until they did not.

Many of the experiments of Unit 731 centered on culturing bacteria and viruses for cholera (V. cholerae), typhoid fever (Salmonella typhi), plague (Yersinia pestis), Shigella dysenteriae, and viral hemorrhagic fevers (of multiple etiologies). Insects and rodents (particularly fleas and rats) were bred as pathogen vectors. For instance, plague was spread among some Chinese and Soviet areas by dropping bombs filled with plague-infested fleas. As another example, dogs fed with diseased pork were infected with cholera and unleashed in populated areas where they would vomit and expel diarrhea. Other dogs and animals would eat the vomit and spread the disease, ultimately contaminating people directly as well as infiltrating the human water supply.

The number of victims of these BW experiments and operations is unknown but can only be guessed to be well into the tens or hundreds of thousands. It has been claimed that as many as 20 million were killed in these programs and attacks. In a single account in the book, one army captain testified that a two-week cholera mission he was involved in resulted in the death of 20,000 Chinese.

The author, Hal Gold, estimated that the personnel involved in Unit 731 and its similar outfits numbered in the 20,000 range. These would include not only the well-trained medical and scientific staff, but many military and civilian support staff, to include university students and vocational trainees. Part of the servicing of these staff was providing the males with access to “comfort women” – usually of Chinese or Korean origin. These coerced, and typically prisoner status, prostitutes formed a well-established system of brothels, not only for keeping the staff satisfied, but they also served as sources of research for venereal disease – particularly syphilis. It is documented that the offspring of prisoner females were used in human research, as well.

In August 1945, as Japan surrendered to the WWII Allies who were at the cusp of physically occupying their island country, the facilities of experimentation units were destroyed in their retreat – along with any remaining prisoner-witnesses. The US government (including military leadership and the presidency) was aware of the war crimes committed by the Japanese military in its BW and torture programs. However, at the end of WWII, the US and the Soviets were already engaging in the developing Cold War, positioning themselves in this next power struggle.

The US was complicit in covering up these Japanese war crimes for its own benefit. Its leadership wanted the research knowledge from the experiments, as well as the secret intelligence that the Japanese held on the Soviets. It was also adamant in keeping this data and power out of the possession of the Soviets who wanted the Japanese military leaders to face war crimes tribunals. The US government denied the Soviets that information, publicity and justice in order to pursue its own interests. Those war criminals were granted immunity and were ultimately integrated into Japan’s medical, academic and government leadership.

For myself, my interest in this type of history is multi-fold. It is important to understand the mistakes, lies, abuses, power plays and victimizations of the past in order to recognize, expose and hopefully abort in early stages any similar trends in the present and future. Institutions of power and secrecy cannot be trusted to operate to the benefit of humanity. I appreciate this observation from the author: “Anyone familiar with life in a bureaucracy – especially a large and ponderous one – realizes that a large part of its total energy is expended to protect and enhance individual members’ own roles in the organizational machinery.” He might have added: “… to the detriment of human beings and society.”

Additionally, historical perspective SHOULD encourage today’s population to better appreciate the comforts, food, shelter and safety that few of our forebears could have known or imagined. While many today decry the injustices and inequalities of their existence, may we put into appropriate perspective our current state juxtaposed with the often miserable, tortured and murderous history of humankind. May we value, preserve and improve upon this progress through our own work, reading, self-education, demanded transparencies and civil discourse.

Put the COVID Lockdown hysteria in perspective. Cut through the hype, the pseudoscience, the voo doo, the cultism. Tom uses logic, data, science, and the opinions of expert immunologists and epidemiologists to enlighten on the broad, destructive and deadly consequences of the myopic political response to the virus.

Tom Woods is a Harvard trained historian who shares a daily podcast on topics across the spectrum of politico-economics, and really anything else of interest to him and his libertarian-leaning audience. He’s created over 1700 episodes since 2014. Without a doubt, you can find plenty to educate and enlighten there. This is his recent speech at the Mises Institute Supporters Conference. (Listening at 1.5x is just about right if you’re time-limited.)

The novel coronavirus 2019 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the U.S. by the President on March 13, 2020. Far along the timeline, we’re now just a few weeks away from the 6-month mark here. So much was unknown at that time. Fear and anxiety were the rule… and seem to be, yet. Models were estimating over 2 million US deaths without lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing. (These numbers were later shown to be based on Neil Ferguson’s “unreliable” computer code, although that’s been a hotly debated and politicized topic, as well.)

“Flatten the Curve!” became the crying call across media and politics. The argument was that via heavy interventions, the spread of the virus could potentially be slowed. A massive peak might be avoided. Otherwise, the nation’s health care capacity would be overwhelmed and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans would be left without care. Also, by slowing the spread and flattening the peak of cases, more time would be allowed in order to bring down the death toll from over 2 million to maybe 250,000. That would also allow time for herd immunity and vaccine development.

As the situation was looking better, perhaps by June, by July there was a “second wave” feared as virus numbers and deaths began to increase again. In retrospect, it doesn’t appear that this was another wave of a returning viral infection, but the movement of the virus from the coasts (especially New York) towards more central states. My home state of Texas, especially Houston, faced fears of overwhelmed hospital and ICU capacity. As Texas had done very little mandatory social distancing or masking, this was seen by the media and lockdown advocates as justified punishment for lax behaviors. I heard as much in talk from staff and doctors in my own hospital environments in Pittsburgh, PA. Fortunately, Texas had a quick peak at the end of July that lasted a week or two, and has slowly trended downward. Houston’s ICUs reached baseline capacity at that time, but never experienced stress on their Phase 2 overflows nor did Texas cities require use of any makeshift facilities for patients.

At the six month mark, the original calls and mandates for a few weeks of curve-flattening lockdowns have extended in many ways until today, with no foreseeable return to normalcy. The expectations of case flattening and hospital capacity preservation have morphed into a demand for zero positive tests. Masking mandates are the norm. Some schools are opening with hybrid online and in-person classes. Many classes are entirely online and/or remain in various stages of uncertainty. Parents are caught between figuring out child-care, education, their role in supervision or homeschooling, their own work options, and navigating new financial situations caused by the economic turmoil of lockdown.

Many will argue for the appropriateness of these measures, and potentially even call for stricter enforcement. There have been, after all, 180,000 deaths attributed to this virus in the US, to date. That’s a big number, and it isn’t over, yet. Bad flu seasons here may hit 60,000 to 70,000 deaths. People die from this – primarily the elderly and otherwise ill – but many young and healthy people are afraid of contracting or spreading the virus. The numbers, testing and risks can and have been debated everywhere, with little consensus anywhere. I’m still a proponent of Sweden’s low intervention model that isolated the sick and ill, leaving much of society to function with caution,… but that opinion is sure to ignite a heated debate!

What has been reinforced to me throughout this period is less about the behavior of viruses and more about the nature of humans. We all have different risk tolerances, reading affinities, personality traits, isolation tolerance, employment needs, life experiences, political and world views, sets of biases, vulnerabilities, baseline health status, levels of regard for experts and authority figures, tendencies towards logical fallacies, and different intelligence levels – although this last may be among the least influential. All of these factors, and certainly more, contribute to our personal attitudes and responses. I work with a lot of presumably intelligent physicians and professionals, and their opinions regarding the risks of the virus and the costs of the societal interventions are as polarized as those of the general public. Does that mean that we’re all seeing different data? Or that many are misinterpreting it? Or are too stupid to understand it? Or just that our personalized calculations and subjective value sets lead to us all to divergent opinions and choices?

In our increasingly polarized (or at least electronically amplified) society, some may believe that my comparatively reduced concern for viral risk is callous, cavalier, poorly reasoned, even perhaps “murderous.” Simultaneously, I may look at some of the die-hard lockdowners as simple-minded, automatons, catastrophists, incapable of broader perspective and cost analysis. Where is the consensus to be found? I think the answer is: there is none. Our views are often irreconcilable. And the more that enforcement, shaming and threats are utilized to coerce others to comply with our views, the greater the animosity, disregard and division. Of course, this dynamic is clearly extrapolated across political, cultural and religious spectra. So, what is to be done to find some peace and unity?

For one, self-aware adults can realize that we are often wrong in our assumptions and “certainties.” Our impressions and convictions can be (and often are) incorrect. We all have information biases and knowledge deficits. We misunderstand probabilities and likelihoods. We cannot humanly contemplate or predict the breadth of consequences for ourselves and others. We all have many individual factors that influence our opinions. Recognizing these imperfections and variations can provide room for understanding, or at least tolerating, others.

Of course, the entire role of politics and media is to exacerbate then exploit myriad differences towards emotionalized polar extremes, rather than to foster calm, discourse and understanding, which would do little to drive the machinery of ratings, money flows, votes and power distributions. So, secondly, maybe a healthy move that could save and value more lives than lockdowns (especially in the realm of foreign interventionism) would be to turn off the media and the political circus.

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P.S. Of note, (pre-dating our most recent iteration of discord,… which really is nothing particularly new over the centuries) here are some interesting works that I’ve audiobooked this past month. These touch on the biases and the flaws in our thinking, which should make us all less certain of our “convictions.”

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis. “Forty years ago Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred systematically when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’ own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms.”

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. “Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell…. Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains: System One is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System Two is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Examining how both systems function within the mind, Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities as well as the biases of fast thinking and the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and our choices.”

Memorial Day to honor those who served and lost their lives in that service.

As always, I support the troops. My divergence from most Americans is that I wouldn’t have sent them to die in bullsh*t wars in the first place. I don’t validate or provide cover to government sponsored and/or forced tragedy with a chest-thumping, misplaced, nationalist pride that mirrors the emotional and unquestioning obedience of religion.

While many would find this view offensive, it is not merely an inflammatory statement to invoke a moment of shocked contemplation. It has the deepest of implications. Those who believe and validate the manufactured premises, the white-washed histories, the overly simplified and distracting rationales, the promoted nationalist sentiment, the subservience of mind and body to the State,… they are a danger to humanity.

Many will point to the necessity of war in some circumstances. I don’t deny that here. What I will argue is that since the founding of the United States, it is unlikely that any of its wars have been necessary. Lincoln could have purchased slaves’ freedom, as every other developing nation did in their paths out of slavery. Was it morally superior for 600,000 soldiers to die in that war and to burn and pillage much of the South, as Sherman did in his March to the Sea?

WWI was hardly a US necessity. As a result, WWII likely would have never seen the German aggressions had not WWI’s Treaty of Versailles left that nation in a state of starvation and in search of a fanatical savior. Were the US not involved in China and blockading Japan’s imports of oil and commodities, the latter would have had little interest in Pearl Harbor or in debilitating the US in the Pacific.

All of the Cold War and its splinter wars (as well as the bloody, clandestine interventions) of anti-communist fervor, especially in Korea and Vietnam, would have been unfounded had FDR, and then Truman, not been the friend to Stalin, providing him a WWII win, increased power, and control over large swathes of Eastern Europe. (Realize, too, that Stalin killed tens of millions through starvation, political murders, genocide, and labor camps. Numerically, his level of mass murder could only have been dreamed of by the German with the little mustache.)

As what may be considered by many to be the most offensive thought in this post, please also realize that since WWII, had the US not been interfering, controlling resources, occupying nations, and overthrowing governments around the globe – typically without US citizen, and often even Congressional, knowledge – the invaders that came to attack in 2001, would have had no vengeful reasoning to do so. They attacked because their lands were occupied, they were being controlled, and there was no diplomatic avenue to address that resentment. None of that is to absolve the guilt of their offense, but for Americans to believe that persons from across the globe made the trip, efforts and ultimate personal sacrifices merely because they hated another nation’s prosperity, freedom and differing religions is a collective failure of reason. That failure is the result of purposeful ignorance and nationalist emotion. Certainly, that is the prevailing background of all wars throughout history.

While we must all be saddened by the loss of military lives, rather than validate governments’ and leaders’ misuse of its citizens, diverting attention and emotion from cause to effect, a more useful expenditure of energy would be to spend Memorial Day reading about these wars, their inceptions, the benefits elicited by these Authors of Destruction, the alternatives that were rejected, contemplating the costs, the disruptions, the societal upheavals, the unintended and little recognized downstream consequences, considering perhaps that our embedded worldviews might not entirely align with actual events and circumstances, and determining how to avoid these mistakes and misconceptions in the future.

I invite you to peruse the list of books on these pages for a relevant title. With a broadened perspective and a healthy dose of skepticism, perhaps we can make it more difficult for the Authors of Destruction to create the casualties that might be mourned on future Memorial Days. The best way to honor fallen soldiers is to stop creating them.

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Addendum, the day after.

For a little levity, I’ll add the absolute silliness of our dogs at their Dogtopia home-away-from-home, where the spirit of the holiday was apparently in full force. This is embarrassingly adorable.

The COVID lockdowns continue, although many states are phasing back into permitting many businesses to open under conditions of masking, distancing, reduced patrons, etc. Some states are still heavy in their controls. For example, there was a protest in Michigan this week where barbers and stylists (still forbidden to work) cut hair on the capitol lawn in an act of civil disobedience. They were ticketed by state police, referred to the DA, and could face fines up to $500 and up to 90 days in jail, and lose their professional licenses for their “illegal operation of a business.”

In another example of abject silliness, San Francisco has allowed some parks to open, but in one park, placed social distancing circles on the ground. It is unknown what law enforcement measures will be taken against the non-compliant.

Meanwhile, criticisms of lockdowns, of government measures, and of the media’s general unquestioning approach and promotion of the same, have attracted censorship, shaming, conspiracist labels, de-platforming, verbal threats and even job loss. One source of criticism that I read today (from the American Institute for Economic Research) led me to a 2006 paper, which is the title of this blog.

Although government and media would have the public believe that concerns and responses to pandemics are novel, uncharted territory, and must be heavily managed by government interventions lest society be ravaged and overwhelmed by disease and death, these situations have been considered by experts and opined upon for years. D. A. Henderson, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist (who died in 2016), is considered the “eradicator of smallpox.” He and his co-authors wrote about disease mitigation in a pandemic 14 years ago. They reject the measures that have been forced upon us all. They find those measures without proven efficacy and to have significant social and economic consequences. Although they specifically considered an influenza, COVID behavior is the same: a viral pathogen that follows biologic and epidemiologic principles.

Some of their recommendations: Wash hands, isolate the sick, support the vulnerable at home as needed with food and financial assistance, offset potential high hospital demand with alternative care sites (e.g. converted gyms), vaccinate once an immunization is available. The other social distancing, economic shut down, long-term school closures, mass “quarantine” (modified house arrest), even general masking measures, are not supported by evidence, and are not advisable.

So, if these measures have been previously discussed and modeled, and much of the official and media response disproven, rejected, OR AT LEAST NOTED TO BE DEBATABLE(!), what is the source of the current approach and controls? How did these measures become accepted, and even bullet-proof to debate? How did science and evidence become usurped by political pressures and unified media programming? How did one set of “experts” become untouchable, immune to criticism, given constant media promulgation… while others are vilified, silenced, intimidated, shamed, slandered? Who benefits? Who controls the levers of power, communication, public relations, the marketing of allowable opinion? Which poorly-evidenced and damaging precedents are now set for the next public health threat? What are the boundaries for minimum death tolerance? Will society be shut down if the promoted modeling shows that a thousand people will die? How can a cost-benefit analysis be considered by those that bear no costs, that have perpetual power and/or uninterrupted income?

Although treated as social pariahs for speaking out, despite the threats to their careers and reputations, there are a number of physicians, epidemiologists, scientists, economists and politicians that provide reasoned opposition to the extreme social and economic lockdowns of governments’ CV-19 responses. In an attempt to turn up the thought and turn down the emotion, I’ll list some that I come across, in no particular order.

Video upload 29 April 2020. This Austrian politico is great! Reminds me of some of British Nigel Farage’s parliamentary rants against his governments’ idiocy over the years. “On April 22, 2020, before the Austrian government, former Minister of the Interior Herbert Kickl openly denounces the fear-based manipulation built on catastrophic forecasts, helped by the media, to establish a strict confinement, presented as the only possibility for avoiding a coronavirus mass death. However Sweden, judged irresponsible for not having applied lockdown, had neither mass death, nor destruction of its economy, nor freedom restriction of its citizens.”

Freddie Sayers’ UnHerd article and video interview on 02 May 2020, with Michael Levitt, “professor of Structural Biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for ‘the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.’ With a purely statistical perspective, he has been paying close attention to the Covid-19 pandemic since January…. [H]e thinks indiscriminate lockdown measures [are] ‘a huge mistake,’ and advocates a ‘smart lockdown’ policy, focused on more effective measures, focused on protecting elderly people.” Some of the numbers that Levitt uses in the interview seem way off because I think he is using a “per 100,000 population” metric rather than total numbers. Regardless, his points are well made.

Opinion piece in the NYPost, 27 April 2020, by Daniel G. Murphy, MD, – chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at St. Barnabas Hospital in The Bronx. He says that his ED and hospital experienced 2 weeks of the worst medical situation that he has seen in his career. That peaked on April 1, 2020, and quickly declined. He calls to open the economy and the hospitals, to get on with suspended medical care. He reports that the virus is much more prevalent in the community (and subsequently has a much lower fatality rate) than is appreciated. He cites that 43% of people in his area test positive. The public’s fear is excessive. Natural herd immunity is developing. Get back to work!

The Bakersfield, California, doctors. May 4, 2020. “Perspectives on the Pandemic – Episode 6: When Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi held a press conference on April 22nd about the results of testing they conducted at their urgent care facilities around Bakersfield, California, the video, uploaded by a local ABC news affiliate, went viral. After reaching five million views, YouTube took it down on the grounds that it ‘violated community standards.’ We followed up with the doctors to determine what was so dangerous about their message. What we discovered were reasonable and well-meaning professionals whose voices should be heard.”

Zubin Damania, MD (ZDoggMD) interview from 17 March 2020. “Is Our Cure Worse Than The Disease?… Legendary vaccine scientist and rationalist Dr. Paul Offit and I discuss the current response to the COVID-19 epidemic, relationships to influenza and RSV, absolute vs. relative risk, which populations we should target most for social distancing, the fecal-oral spread of this novel coronavirus, comparisons to norovirus and rotavirus, and a deep dive into vaccine development and its challenges.” Dr. Damania has some other related interviews at his site.

One of several interviews by Journeyman Pictures with Stanford epidemiologist, Prof. John Ioannidis, who “discusses the results of his preliminary studies, including his latest, which shows a drastically reduced infection fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2. (Several study links are listed.) He also gives an insight into the Swedish approach to the crisis and gives a possible explanation for the escalated situation in New York City. Furthermore, he highlights the importance of remaining rational, analytical and aware of the potentially fatal consequences of the measures. Prof. Ioannidis advises we calmly and rationally consider which measures work and which don’t.” He says that no one should be blamed for being scared and reacting strongly to the unknowns of the virus, initially. However, science has given us the information to make adjustments to our approach. Deaths are on the order of a severe flu. Lockdowns do not have any evidence of superiority over the non-draconian approaches used elsewhere (like Sweden, Taiwan, S. Korea). Significant bad consequences are on the horizon for continued lockdowns.

Another great Journeyman Pictures interview, “Perspectives on the Pandemic Episode 5” with, Knut Wittkowski, a professor of epidemiology for 15 years in in Germany, who then worked for 20 years in NYC at the Rockefeller Institute as the head of the Dept of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design at the Center for Clinical and Translational Science. There was apparently a big media push to discredit this previous Professor of Epidemiology, that he was not so titled at the Rockefeller Institute. In this follow up video interview, he clarifies that he never represented himself as such. His true credentials are above. Sad that media and public ad hominem attacks have to be employed to attempt to discount and discredit him because his information cannot be refuted. He “says his initial claim has been vindicated: The lockdowns – always a dubious proposition for a respiratory virus – came too late in the U.S. and elsewhere, and were therefore even worse than useless. By turns emotional and darkly comic, Wittkowski ranges across all the essential topics of the crisis, and gives answers you are unlikely to see in the major media. Not to be missed.” Journeyman Pictures YouTube channel link. And their website with a host of documentaries and interviews. And here is Dr. Wittkowski’s pre-print study: “The first three months of the COVID-19 epidemic: Epidemiological evidence for two separate strains of SARS-CoV-2 viruses spreading and implications for prevention strategies.”

A study out of Univ of Rochester Med Center, April 2020. “The Potential for Antibody-Dependent Enhancement of SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Translational Implications for Vaccine Development.” The lethality of COVID is associated not so much with the direct effects of the virus, but rather the body’s massive immune response. Antibodies from previous infections or those produced by previous vaccinations may play a role in harmfully ramping up an immunopathology. This Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) may cause greater disease severity due to an excessive immune reaction that causes host harm and/or death. ADE is “linked to the development of cytokine storm syndrome, which occurs in the most severe cases of MERS, SARS and COVID-19 infection.” “… we may produce vaccines that enhance, rather than protect against, severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.” Study by Jiong Wang MD, and Martin S. Zand MD PhD. Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology, and Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY USA. Here’s the downloaded .pdf if the link is not available.

2012 UTMB-Galveston immunology dept study with SARS vaccines. They led to infiltrative eosinophilic pulmonary disease. “Immunization With SARS Coronavirus Vaccines Leads to Pulmonary Immunopathology on Challenge With the SARS Virus.” Additional studies are referenced at the site. There is a big rush to develop a COVID vaccine. If previous vaccine attempts for corona viruses have had significant side effects, precluding their advancement to safe use in humans, I, for one, want to see some long term safety studies. Let’s make sure there is evidence that benefit outweighs risk. (Authors: Chien-Te Tseng, Elena Sbrana, Naoko Iwata-Yoshikawa, Patrick C Newman, Tania Garron, Robert L Atmar, Clarence J Peters, Robert B Couch. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas.)

Professor Peter Collignon from the Australian National University medical school, interviewed by his local newspaper, 02 April 2020. The extreme government reactions and lockdowns are based on panic, not data. “You are safer outside than inside.” He also “took aim at modeling that suggests hundreds of thousands of deaths, saying the same models were used for the SARS, ebola and swine flu epidemics and had been wrong.”

16 April 2020. YouTube video. “Unlike its European neighbors and much of the rest of the world, Sweden has chosen to avoid a lockdown in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Cato Senior Fellow (and a Swede) Johan Norberg explains why Sweden is keeping its country open and allowing so much economic activity, and why its approach may prove to be superior from a public health perspective.” He says, “Sweden isn’t the experiment. The rest of you are. No one has ever taken such drastic measures.”

17 April 2020, UnHerd interview with Swedish epidemiologist and consultant to EU and WHO, Johan Giesecke: “Why lockdowns are the wrong policy.” Professor Giesecke explains Sweden’s more reasoned approach: socially isolate the elderly and ill, encourage adults to work and study from home without police enforcement, *hygiene*, kids still go to school, people can shop, people practice distancing, groups under 50 in number are permitted. He says the models have been unreliable and based on highly variable guesses, that the draconian lockdowns have no scientific basis, that governments have no viable criteria from which to back down from the lockdowns because there is no achievable goal (when deaths are zero for a month?), that this will likely be on the order of a severe flu season, that many millions of people have already had the virus and mostly been low to asymptomatic, that although typically the virus will take months of life from the elderly and ill it is the living that will deal with the aftermath of societal disruption and government excesses (especially the dictatorial trends of Eastern Europe), that even if lockdowns have an effect at slowing spread that ultimately the final death count will be relatively unchanged, no matter what you do this virus is a tsunami that will roll across the globe, fear and political gain drive the response rather than science, a major epidemiologic difference in COVID transmission and influenza is that the latter is driven by children whereas the the former is uncommon to affect the younger population,….

17 April 2020, Spiked Interview with British pathologist Dr. John A. Lee. “There’s no direct evidence that the lockdowns are working” Some of Dr. Lee’s quotes: “Unfortunately, the media have tended to reinforce the initial ideas about what this disease was like which have not necessarily been borne out by the numbers since then. …other places which are doing different things seem to have similarly shaped graphs. It is only an assumption that the lockdown is having a big effect on the virus spread, but this is not a known scientific fact…. It seems incredible to me that we are not equally as interested in the effects of the lockdown on lives and livelihoods as we are in the actual virus itself. I think we are guilty at the moment of being a bit monomaniacal and focusing only on one thing, and really not focusing enough on the consequences that are coming out of what we have done to face this one thing.”

Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic. Thomas Meunier. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Falmouth, Massachusetts. Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education, Ensenada, BC. April 23, 2020. Abstract: This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France, Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.

Addendum 09 May 2020: On May 6, 2020, US Senate video round table led by Pat Toomey – PA (R) with expert witnesses for epidemiology, health policy, economics and physician leadership. Some of my interpretations: it is safe to allow phased and gradual opening of schools and workplaces while continuing to increase targeted testing and screening surveillance; nursing home and hospital patients and staff need high levels of testing as potential hot spots for resurgence; much of the rest of the country’s population can receive “representative testing” samples with more focused testing and isolation in response, which can be accomplished with fewer than 1 million tests per day; the country is in a much better position than a few months ago and has proven a high health care capacity, especially considering that the very high original estimates for morbidity and mortality were inflated; the “new normal” may include retaining changes in our social patterns of interaction (e.g. no more hand shaking, comfort with greater distancing,…) and delivery of health care (like telemedicine); the health care, economic and social costs of lock downs have been and may still be severe and must be balanced against realistic health benefits; the vulnerable will still need to be isolated and protected; as phased opening occurs, any identified areas or venues of increased will need modification;….

Addendum 12 May 2020: This past week it came to light that the computer modeling code used by Neil Ferguson is basically garbage, or sh*tcode. In Mark Jeftovic’s article: “It was an Imperial College computer model that forecasted 500K deaths in the UK (and 2.5 million in the US) should policymakers pursue a ‘herd immunity’ approach (a la Sweden), that influenced them to reverse course and go full lockdown instead. The model was produced by a team headed by Neil Ferguson, (who recently resigned his post advising the UK government when it surfaced that he was himself violating lockdown directives by breaking self-isolation for dalliances with a married woman). The source code behind the model was to be made available to the public, and after numerous delays and excuses in doing so, has finally been posted to GitHub.” A former senior Google software engineer reviewed the code here and calls for an immediate retraction of any publications based on it. A reddit thread entitled Code Review of Ferguson’s Model calls for review and commentary by professionals in the field, and is scathing.

Washington Post, May 9, 2020: The recurring mantra is to trust the “experts.” “… in this COVID-19 atmosphere, where scientists and researchers and medical professionals and scholars have taken over much of the control of U.S. politics and government and how American citizens are supposed to now behave and function — it’s more important than ever to remember this: Scientists can be wrong, very wrong. Moreover, scientists can lie. And very often, as history shows, they do.” (Article and links duplicated at RPI, if placed behind pay wall.)

Lockdowns continue in most of the world. While some states in the US are moving towards phased opening of businesses, others have extended lockdowns to as late as July 5, 2020. The economic fallout continues with record unemployment and underemployment (including in the health care sector), $trillions in new federal debt this quarter, disruptions and massive spoilage in food supplies, people are being fined and even arrested for violating local laws against commerce and associations,….

There continues to be much emotional and political argument about correct approaches. There is fear that phasing out the extreme distancing laws and guidelines will lead to increased viral transmission and death – second and third waves which could yet overwhelm. Lockdowns and social distancing are treated by many as religious tenets, not to be breached or challenged, regardless of logic, reason and/or scientific data. It is socially unacceptable to introduce information and opinion contrary to government and media guidance. Social media and Youtube have censored, deleted and de-platformed opposing opinions, articles, interviews and videos, labeling them as fake or false information, placing themselves as arbiters of truth.

Not all countries have followed such extreme distancing and lockdown measures. Sweden has been one that has mostly allowed life to proceed without forced economic and social shutdowns. There are distancing measures, like reduced capacity in restaurants, encouraging distance between persons, limiting gatherings to fewer than 50 people, encouraging hygiene, isolating the elderly and ill, etc. But, their kids go to school and people are permitted to work. They don’t fine and arrest for violations of commerce or association.

Sweden’s fatality rate from the virus has been higher than some countries that have enforced draconian lockdowns, but lower than some other countries. No country or person is protected 100%. There is risk. Sweden, however, has also seemed to better analyze the costs of their approach, avoiding the economic devastation that the US, in particular, has imposed upon itself. Perhaps needlessly. Or criminally.

Following Sweden’s case fatality rate shows that their curve seemed to have peaked two weeks ago, around April 23, per worldometers.info’s Sweden CV-19 page today. The entire “flatten the curve” social distancing/lockdown paradigm that most of the world has pursued was based on an avoidance of overwhelming the capacity of health care resources, hospitals, ventilators, ICU beds, personal protective equipment. Well, there ya go. Sweden accomplished that without devastating the 99.8% of the population who didn’t die of COVID. Sure, this is just one country for comparison, but it is information, evidence, data.

Maybe the COVID hysteria was and is misplaced. Maybe it was correct to take extreme measures against an unknown, initially. Maybe as reasoning human beings there is a duty to consider new information, to have a high degree of skepticism for those actions (like lockdowns) that cause significant harm to persons and society, to look outside of stringent paradigms for other answers and approaches. Maybe the high emotion is interfering with discourse, processing, adaptation. Maybe we have become too dependent on politicians, media and systems of perceived authority for our information, opinions and direction. Maybe it’s okay to question, to push back, to ridicule the ridiculous.

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Addendum: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan have also been less restrictive in their approach. Per Business Insider and multiple other sources, “South Korea successfully flattened the curve on COVID-19 in 20 days without enforcing extreme draconian measures that restrict freedom and movement of people,” although they did track the infected with cell phone location to assure quarantine cooperation. That would surely bother many civil libertarians. Regardless, aside from public school and some high density business location closures (like gyms), people have been able to work and move about. Korea focused on broad testing, communication with the public about areas of exposure, and isolation of the at-risk and ill. Worldometers’ data shows Korean deaths peaked around March 28.

*Of note, I have not followed “number of cases” diagnosed. Testing rates have been too unstable to rely upon for disease spread. Deaths are a bit more definitive, and can be trended more accurately. Of course, at least in the US, a positive COVID test is not even required for the disease to be listed as a cause on the death certificate.