SACRAMENTO – A few friends have asked me to watch a video from a renegade doctor who claims the federal government is using the COVID-19 crisis to enrich pharmaceutical companies. I haven’t watched it, and probably missed my chance after You-Tube reportedly removed it and other coronavirus-related “misinformation” that contradicts the pronouncements from government health agencies.
I have little tolerance for elaborate and fanciful theories, beyond some morbid fascination. I watched the TV series declaring the lunar landing to be a hoax, but for fun. I’ve tried untangling various claims made by truthers of all persuasions. These theories are like giant hairballs. You pull one strand, but it’s impossible to unravel. There’s a cottage industry that promulgates and debunks such nostrums.
As someone who has reported on government for many years, I’ve rarely found any grand conspiracies but have seen an amazing number of cover-ups, injustices and deceits. I’ve written about enough Child Protective Services and police-shooting cases to realize that the truth often is somewhat different than what ends up in the official report.
Many intelligent people will believe bizarre, alternative takes on world events because they don’t trust official accounts, sometimes with good reason. It’s not simply because these theories are readily available on the Internet. Predictably, the coronavirus shutdowns have created a dichotomy between those who tend to trust whatever the authorities say – and those who don’t seem to trust any official information at all.
It’s not even slightly conspiratorial, however, to question the forecasts, data and presuppositions of those officials who are driving these policies. They have shut down society, forced us to stay at home, driven businesses into bankruptcy, caused widespread misery, and suspended many civil liberties. Dr. Anthony Fauci seems to be a fine immunologist, but his pronouncements aren’t the Ten Commandments. He has his biases.
My favorite COVID-19 story involves epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, an architect of Great Britain’s strict stay-at-home orders and whose data has influenced policies across the globe. He recently resigned his government position after allegedly violating social-distancing rules by having a visit from his girlfriend, as the British press reported. This is more than a story about how rules apply differently to leaders and plebes.
In the early days of the crisis, Ferguson’s computer models forecast a potential 500,000 coronavirus deaths in the United Kingdom and 2.2 million in the United States if governments didn’t act immediately. “Ferguson’s figures, his graphs and models, his worst-case scenarios, were the godly pronouncements upon which this historic disruption of society were based,” wrote Brendan O’Neill, in a recent Spiked column.
“Anyone who questioned the wisdom of the lock down, or merely suggested it should be very brief, would find themselves being battered by Ferguson’s figures” and it “became tantamount to blasphemy to question these models,” he added. O’Neill’s main point – and the point of this column – is that politicians “bow too cravenly to experts and outsource political authority to them.” It rarely dawns on our leaders that experts can be wrong.
It’s not hard to come up with examples of overheated projections by scientific experts that later proved to be, well, overheated. I’ve heard from countless people who say that we should just believe the “science.” I’m all for science. But it is “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment,” as a dictionary explains. What passes for science isn’t always right.
Scientists have differences of opinion. Their opinions evolve. Scientists should inform public policy, but not dictate it (unless they are elected to office). Those who simply say, “I believe in science” are the equivalent of fundamentalists who say, “God says.” Maybe He does, but there are lots of valid interpretations, open questions and mistaken beliefs. It’s not heretical to challenge what the high priests happen to say.
A 2014 New York Times article reported on CDC predictions that two African countries with 21,000 Ebola cases could have 1.4 million within four months. Officials said “many cases go undetected” and estimated “there are actually 2.5 times as many as reported.” That sounded plausible, but their final numbers weren’t even close. More recently, the United Nations World Food Program projected that 260 million people are “marching toward starvation” because of coronavirus. It could happen, but it might not.
Broadly speaking, the reaction to official COVID-19 reports and data has divided between progressive-minded people who tend to believe them and those on the libertarian and conservative sides who are more skeptical. That’s not surprising. Progressivism has always been about rule by experts. Progressives have had some good ideas over the years, but also embraced eugenics and Prohibition.
So, while I always counsel against wasting one’s brain cells on conspiratorial rubbish, I find myself more sympathetic to my fellow citizens who are at least questioning the official party line than I am of those who blindly accept it.
Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.
