The speed of the science may have been extraordinary, but what about the quality of the science? I suggest it’s time to review these achievements at a more measured pace.

In an interview for South African media, Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Oganisation talked about the enormous rate of scientific progress in the current pandemic:

No more lockdowns: World Health Organisation warns that the price is too high

“The speed of the science on this has been extraordinary … we have tools right now that can prevent transmission and save lives,” Van Kerkhove said, referring to measures including tracing, widespread testing, equipping health facilities, physical distancing and wearing masks. “It isn’t one measure alone, all of the existing measures need to be used together. And it works. The reason we keep saying that it works is because we’ve seen this happen, we have seen countries bring these outbreaks under control.”

The most striking thing about that statement is that it does not really refer to the science, but to the technology. There is a difference. It’s true that the technology has dazzled the political world and the media, but let’s not allow the impressive speed of development to dull our critical thinking about the direction.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Bridges fall down when the technology exceeds the science. And here is the crucial point: if we measure the garbage out the same way as we measure the garbage in, we have no way of know if any of this works or not.

In particular, have any steps been missed out; such as actual purification of the virus, repeated not just a few times in China, but many times with many cases by different researchers worldwide? Without that, can we be sure we actually have a unique, novel and consistent causal agent, and not a statistical phantom? I think not. What we get is undue reliance on a test that is no better than tossing a coin.

Statistical phantoms, also known as ‘casedemics’ or ‘pseudo-epidemics’ are well understood phenomena where there may be lots of cases on paper, and even clinical cases: but those cases are misdiagnosed or reclassified, and in reality there is no change in anybody’s actual life expectancy. For instance, all-cause mortality is actually down in Victoria, Australia, even as the entire state remains under a radical ‘state of disaster’ (500 fewer registered deaths in Vic in July 2020 than in July 2019). On paper there are lots of cases, but the hospitals and mortuaries are no more busy than normal. If the situation is overstated it undermines any future response to an actual disaster, if and when it occurs.

Many famous world-threatening outbreaks in recent memory may in fact have been casedemics. For instance, bird flu was supposed to spread around the world and decimate human and bird life. But the fact is that, outside of a factory farm, the risks to humans, and even to birds, were tiny, since it is the living conditions of the animals and staff that cause sickness. A virus isn’t necessary to explain this problem. And as a result, it never became a problem: garbage in, garbage out.

Let us not forget the first rule of public emergency is not to spread panic, and the WHO have not been slow to cry wolf in the past. Same with the CDC: never forget that outbreaks are grist to the CDC mill. They developed techniques for predicting outbreaks in order to justify their continued funding. The question, though, is whether the outbreaks that they find are actually real or mostly casedemics – statistical phantoms arising out of their own predictions.

Then there is the aspect of using a PCR test as a diagnostic tool, when it was never intended as suitable for that purpose. The result is that is has poor diagnostic power and a high false positive rate. It’s specificity is extremely poor, and it flags up other viruses as well as various sources of inflammation or metabolic stress, including common colds, pregnancy and medications. Yet this is touted as the epitome of medical precision.

The area of testing in particular has received much criticism. One might rightly ask what is the PCR test actually a test for? A particular virus, or a more general state of stress? As it is so broad, and bears no relation to actual illness, does it have any actual clinical use at all? It is all very well identifying ‘asymptomatic carriers’, but if those people are not even sick, and they aren’t a risk to anybody, then what does this even tell us? If we don’t know what the test is for, then calling the result positive or negative has no meaning either.

So, while the science may have been progressing at a dizzying pace, it is not good science until it has itself received proper scientific review and validation. Alas, such is the investment and retooling involved in such a monumental and popular effort, that there is now a lot of money riding on the continued acceptance of the established narratives, right or wrong. If it turns out that the PCR test is essentially no different from reading tea leaves, then a lot of people will be out of work, and a lot of ordinary people who have lost everything will be very very angry indeed. Those involved in this effort are not exactly falling over themselves to validate their own working assumptions.

History shows us that the chances, of these narratives and the science underpinning them receiving serious objective review, are therefore low, and the chances of mistakes being repeated in future are high.

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