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When the history of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is written years from now, one of the most notable consequences might prove to be the damage done to science by scientists or those who profess a belief in science.
Since the pandemic began, the pontificating of too many of them has been doing a great job of making the same wreck of science that mainstream journalists made of journalism, and pretty much everyone knows what happened there.
PBS was the only actual news organization polling over 40 percent positive, and then just barely. The major TV network news shows came in second best at 37 to 38 percent. The New York Times, once considered a pillar of American journalism, was at 36 percent with Democrats (63 percent believers) and Republicans (86 percent disbelievers) widely split and the non-partisans skewing right.
Journalists effectively used their rush to judgment, know-it-allism to piss away their credibility in the eyes of most Americans. And scientists, who should know better, have fallen into the same trap.
Case in point:
That was Dr. Jonathon Reiner, a regular CNN talking head, a professor at the George Washington School of Medicine & Health Sciences and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, Tweeting away on April 19 after a federal judge struck down the mandate for masks on commercial airlines.
He took a guess on the future, and he guessed wrong.
A wiser man, knowing no one can predict the future, might have had the sense to couch the prediction in more sensible (dare one say ‘scientific’) terms by observing, for instance, that “it is possible that in the coming weeks we could see large numbers of canceled flights.”
But such a reasoned statement isn’t going to get all the clicks and shares that feed the egos of Twitterati like Reiner. Yelling that the sky is falling is so much more dramatic.
The sky isn’t falling
‘Yesterday, May 1st, cancellation percentages were as follows,” he reported:
- Southwest 0%
- Frontier 0%
- United 1%
- American Airlines 0%
- Delta 1%
- Jet Blue 4%
“So far today, thru mid-afternoon eastern time, cancellations were nearly identical:
- Southwest 0%
- Delta 0%
- Jet Blue 0%
- Frontier 2%
- American Airlines 0%
- United 0%
“For Sunday, the average cancellation percentage for those six airlines was 1 percent.
“So far today, it’s 0.33 percent, and a grand total of 52 flights have been canceled out of thousands of scheduled trips.
“Another easy method to check if flights have been canceled en masse is to visit Google and check for recent news reports,” he added.
Anyone can do that. If you did it on Sunday, you would have found headlines about Alaska Airlines flights canceled as the company struggles to deal with disgruntled pilots, British Airways flights canceled because the airline is having trouble hiring enough staff to ramp up operations, and this from Time magazine:
“Why So Many Flights Were Canceled or Delayed This Weekend?”
That story is old news. The headline topped a report dated April 5, about two weeks before the mask mandate was lifted on the order of a federal judge. But there are so few other canceled flight stories being written now that the story is still in the Google rotation.
It did report that in early April “more than 10,000 U.S. flights were canceled or delayed, according to flight tracker FlightAware, with another 5,085 delayed and 779 canceled on Monday….”Southwest (Airlines) alone canceled 920 flights between Saturday and Sunday, with 43 percent of its scheduled Saturday flights delayed. On Sunday, JetBlue canceled 25 percent of its flights.”
Those cancellations would qualify as “massive,” but they had little to do with Covid-19. The cancelations were weather and technology related.
Masked infection
Not that there haven’t been pandemic-related cancellations. Citing a federal report, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday reported that “severe disruptions caused by the January COVID-19 surge” persisted into February.
“Airlines canceled 4.5 percent of their domestic flights in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, after canceling 6.3 percent of their flights in January, during the height of the omicron variant.”
Again, this was before the mask mandate was lifted. Since then, the problems caused by Covid-19 appear to have only lessened.
The Federal Aviation Administration says there are about 45,000 flights daily in the U.S., so 80 cancellations would equal about 0.2 percent of all flights. Based on FAA flight numbers and flight cancellations numbers compiled by the data-crunching website Statista, the national average cancellation rate over the last 20 years would appear to be somewhere around 0.5 percent.
The evidence makes a mockery of the predictions of Reiner and others who panicked in the wake of the judge’s decision and started predicting doom.
This is not to say that Covid-19 problems won’t arise among the unmasked on airlines. They almost certainly will, given that it is inevitable that another wave of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus will come just as the waves of flu have come year after year since the Spanish flu in 1918.
One would be a fool to make a prediction that this won’t happen. Such a prediction would be even more foolish than declaring that removing masks while traveling in well-ventilated airlines would automatically drive a surge in Covid-19 infections.
And that is the problem.
Scientists are supposed to be people who know what they are talking about when it comes to science. When they make bold, know-it-all predictions that don’t come true, they undermine both their own credibility and science.
In theory, the “listen to the scientists” mantra is good, but why would any reasonable person want to listen to scientists if too many of them are talking gibberish?
Categories: Commentary, Media, News
Great Subject!
The hi jacking of science and distortion of its meaning or implications.
Ah yes, still, wait until the “Mkd-Term” variant. Fauci and all his lying glory again..yay!!!!
“Several top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, including Commissioner Robert Califf, admitted that Americans will now have to accept COVID-19 as another respiratory virus, comparing it to influenza.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock, and top vaccine official Dr. Peterk Marks wrote for the Journal of the American Medical Association that COVID-19 will be around for the foreseeable future while suggesting that it will require yearly vaccines targeting the most threatening variations of the virus.
“Widespread vaccine- and infection-induced immunity, combined with the availability of effective therapeutics, could blunt the effects of future outbreaks,” the officials said, referring to another name for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. “Nonetheless, it is time to accept that the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the new normal.”
The virus “will likely circulate globally for the foreseeable future, taking its place alongside other common respiratory viruses such as influenza.”
https://mb.ntd.com/fda-americans-should-treat-covid-19-like-the-flu_776629.html
The problem with science, is that knowledge continues to evolve. That is the very nature of science. In the case of Covid-19, at first there was very little information, just a lot of speculation. Witness the first flight of diplomatic personnel into Anchorage. All kinds of precautions were taken because of speculation that this was another great pandemic like the Spanish Flu. That was shown on Ice Airport Alaska. As more information came down the line, less fear was present, except in Anchorage and Fairbanks where democrats who kept screaming for a state-wide lock-down that made no sense were successfully resisted by Governor Dunleavy. Still, we have Dr. Fauci who I wish would retire, and whose institution funded the research. Yet, he is still giving speeches and is still in charge. I have to think of him as one man who is not helping medical science one bit. Regretfully, as some of the commenters have shown, he is not alone.
Ditto Nuclear Winter/Global Warming/Climate Change. The now official climate terror campaign will continue to evolve until the Second Coming of Christ.
Too much dogma, not enough nature in science these days.
What does it mean to follow the white rabbit? Well, for starters it means rejecting the tripe which corporate media is only too happy to plate up for you.
Most of those who have said “follow the science” aren’t scientists and didn’t actually follow the science. While this “follow the science” mantra has been recited by those who have no actual interest in following the science, it will or has already very likely done major harm to actual science or at the very least how science is perceived by those who are unwilling or unable to actually follow the science. People who think the media reports “the science” are woefully incorrect.
We really are seeing the movie Idiocracy play out in real time.
As a professional scientist I prefer to say I accept scientific findings (when sound with the acknowledgement scientific knowledge evolves). I do not “believe” in science.
Future predictions is a separate flask. A classic example “Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover “appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models”, which call for an ice free (arctic ocean) summer in 2013.” or any earthquake or volcanism predictions.
Anyone who accepts predictions based on available knowledge as fact might be interested in purchasing some lottery numbers that are predicted to be good ones. Take fish predictions. Last year the copper river king return was predicted to be 37,000 and 28,000 returned. This does not mean science is flawed, but the audience might need more education on the limits of scientific predictions. Often that education bit is lost in the sound bites that the media and public enjoy. TLTR…To Long To Read being the education climate of the day.
The only thing certain is uncertainty.
I don’t think it is as much practicing actual science as it is stirring mass hysteria and influence. I was watching the news not to long ago and they were talking about dropping the mask mandate in DC. One of the last places to do so. It is 98% Democrat. Those gullible vax nannies were practically in tears wanting the mask mandate to remain forever. So much mental illness amongst us. Scary.
Most every time scientists answer a question, the answer raises 2 or 3 more questions, and the process continues.
There are far more unanswered scientific questions than answered ones. Unsettled science is much larger than settled science.
Good scientists have the humility to understand and accept that reality.
Humans appear to have a desire for certainty and an even greater desire to have others agree with us about what the certainty is.
I think it is built into the nature of what humans are. Maybe someday scientists will be able to tell us if that is true or not.
Ken, I agree.. Real “settled” science tells us, (of course I didn’t need to be a scientist, but I am playing along), that there are ONLY 2 genders. I mean, that science was settled thousands of years ago. Yet here we are with Facebook “scientists” telling us there are 56 genders and a female Supreme Court nominee who can’t define what a woman is because she isn’t a Biologist. It is all confusing as hell in todays “scientific” day.