Originally Posted by
IlPrincipeBrutto
Sir,
This story has been punctuated by many instances of bad data and bad science. There was the review article that concluded that HCQ was ineffective and dangerous, published in a hurry by The Lancet and found to be based on a lot (not a totality) of data that was just not there.
The White House CoVid Task Force recommended mask mandates on the strength of a hair salon study with less than 150 clients, a third of which were not even followed properly (Scott Atlas MD relates this story in his book A Plague Upon Our House).
A communication based on one single case (not followed properly either) suggested asymptomatic transmission was possible and important, and changed overnight the status of every man on earth from "healthy, until proven sick", to "Sick, unless testing negative".
Doctors refused to see their patients.
Doctors who proposed and offered treatment alternative to the prevailing guidelines were hunted down, hounded, threatened to be struck out. Dissenting voices were ridiculed, silenced, treated as lunatics and a-scientific. Even people like Luc Montagnier were shouted down and accused of senility.
Having doubts was not possible; this is the antithesis of what the scientific method stands for.
Most people can't debate the specific merits of most of the material related to CoVid; but everyone can recognise methodological errors as gross as those perpetrated during this story. I think an enormous damage was done to Science in general, and medicine in particular, by the way a part of the medical profession conducted itself. Whether this was by design, incompetence or other reasons, it's by now immaterial; the damage has been done, and mending it will take a very long time. And let me be clear; the fault lies on one side only, the one that was supposed to provide reasoned expertise, and didn't.
I think, therefore, you can't really blame people on this board for not trusting what they are told, and thinking data is manipulated; there have been too many instances of bad science in this story, all of them, *crucially*, going in the same, one direction. Genuine errors should fall either side of the dividing line in a debate; when they all aggregate on one side, I think it's more than legitimate to suspect that something is crooked.
It this correct? Probably not entirely. But, imho, you seem to fail to appreciate how badly your profession has behaved during the CoVid crisis in the eye of a lot of people, and how bit the effort is going to be to convince them; once bitten, twice shy, times one hundred in this case.
IPB
PS
I can provide references to the articles I quoted, if needed. I didn't want to make the text denser than it already is.