one of the fascinating aspects of the response to covid is the manner in which all past knowledge and standing guidance regarding lockdowns and quarantines got tossed out the window and replaced with new, contradictory doctrine with no scientific backing.

quarantine is a 60 year old doctrine based in pseudoscience. there are no recent examples of it working.

the authors explicitly state that the consequences are so dire that it "should be eliminated from serious consideration".

hard to get any clearer than that.

everyone knew this did not work and the literature on it is robust and has been for ages. and pretty much all of it says that the response to covid should not have been lockdowns, travel bans, and shelter in place.

they all say it will not work

it's the same for social gatherings

and for schools.

everyone knew that the 3 foot rule (now apparently 6) had no basis in evidence (and there is none since)

it was generally dismissed as too intrusive/complicating of daily tasks

and that masks outside a hospital setting accomplished little (if anything).

this is all from one paper published in "biosecurity and bioterrorism" a journal not known for splash work or sensationalism, but rather, for dry, accurate facts for specific policy makers.

https://twitter.com/MaltedMemoirs/status/1280954022221004801?s=20

but it was hardly alone. the CDC guidelines say the same thing.

and the WHO.

so does the center for evidence based medicine at oxford.

the evidence is overwhelming and widespreadthat these strategies are not expected to work. it was in ALL global guidelines

yet instead of following this advice, we froze up, panicked, and did something else.

it was like watching a green private forget his training under fire.

most amazingly, folks like @T_Inglesby & @JenniferNuzzo who are literally the authors of the biosecurity paper that screams "don't do this" became champions of lockdown, distancing, & school closure on the basis of no new evidence at all.

this was a breathtaking volte face

how can this happen? my theory is that china responded to social panic as authoritarian regimes do: with lockdowns.

this set off panic elsewhere.

i remember 100 people saying "if this is no big deal, then why are they panicking!?!"

it becomes circular, panic justifies panic

and this sets of a herd impulse to conformity.

i remember reading the asch conformity experiment freshman year.

i thought, "no way this would work on ivy league students"

then we performed it on another section and it worked on nearly everyone.

ouch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

the basic premise is that they show you a line then 3 other lines. they ask "pick the ones that's the same length". it's really easy. ask anyone and they will get it right.

but if you see 7 people go before you and all pick the wrong line, odds are, you pick that one too.

the desire to conform and not be "odd man out" VASTLY dominates human rationality. it's disappointing, but it's true. i'm sure this was evolutionary selective at some point, probably around settling down for agriculture

so, here we are: herd animals

it's too powerful to fight

so on a societal scale, dominoes started falling and each country or state that lost its mind put even more pressure on holdouts to conform.

so we all forget everything we know about what do and run like a herd of sheep in a thunderstorm.

and then you get a new set of problems

the people who wound up in charge (epidemiologists etc) got a taste of power. so did governors and prime ministers.

now we're into the stanford prison experiment.

the guards get a taste for pushing people around and the exercise of authority.

(yes, i have heard the criticism the guards were coached, but can we seriously claim these leaders were not? such a thing would seem to make the comparison more, not less apt)

so now we have leaders pushing people around based on false premises.

this gets awful.

and when it falls apart and looks needless, leaders do not for the most part say "wow, we got that wrong!" their own cognitive dissonance leads them to count themselves heroes and the clearer the evidence they did harm becomes, the more they double and triple down on that.

it's a basic human need to feel like the good guy and justify oneself. and this is FAR more pronounced in the sort of narcissistic personality types that gravitate toward politics in the first place.

so they are going to lie, deceive you, deceive themselves, and revise history

they'll do this until they are the heroes. watch andrew cuomo. he's perhaps the most extreme example.

but also remember, this is literally a bunch of sheep who wet their pants and caved in to conformity pressure to violate every known fact about pandemic management.

do not let them convince you this was right or brave or noble. it was cowardly and stupid and needless.

it cost much and bought nothing.

and they WILL try it again.

and we will have to lead them, because obviously, letting them lead us is out of the question.

stay brave, think for yourself, and do not let the fact of panic be used as a justification for panic nor this bizarre revisionism that "quarantine is standard procedure" take hold.

it was a lie when they first told it and remains so today.

#DemandBetter

oh, and sorry, i pooched a link above.

i meant to link to the biosecurity study.

it can be found here.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552.1109&rep=rep1&type=pdf