> We have robust science about climate change for decades now and yet it is pushed against all the time.
There's economic incentives against the politicial policies interwoven with climate change studies, so of course there's pushback. But how is this relevant to covid?
> Is germ theory a "dogmatic truth" for you?
Why would it be? I'm allowed to ask any questions I want about germ theory, and there are no shortage of answers. Nobody is asking me to just believe in germs, I can look in a microscope and see the lil' critters with my own eyes.
> Scepticism is just a gateway drug to nihilism, were nothing is ever true.
That's a category error. The skeptic position is until demonstrated otherwise, things are not known. Nihilism is the position that all values are unfounded and nothing matters. One makes statements about what is known, the other about how we should act. That is not the same.
As if there hasn't been any economic incentives during COVID... If you want to debate, do it in good faith. I will reply to your other points, but I am not going to go any further when you aren't honest.
>I can look in a microscope and see the lil' critters with my own eyes.
That's not the proof of germ theory, as spontaneous generation will pretend those "little critters" appeared after the illness, aren't the cause for it.
And how does that work for viruses? There is AIDS denial at the higher levels of science (like Duesberg, or the very "inventor" of PCR, Nobel prize Kary Mullis) who argue that aids is caused by "lifestyle" and antiviral treatment, not by HIV. Have they not "seen" HIV in electron microscopes?
>The skeptic position is until demonstrated otherwise, things are not known.
And then doubt any "demonstration" ad infinitum. Sceptics just answer any proof - any data that would shut down their doubts - with more doubt, until it is all a planetary conspiracy by the New World Order.
> As if there hasn't been any economic incentives during COVID... If you want to debate, do it in good faith. I will reply to your other points, but I am not going to go any further when you aren't honest.
Sure there were some economic incentives, granted, but it's pennies in comparison. Covid policy became such a hot potato because it became strongly associated with controverisal political figures. It was really a proxy war for an entirely different conflict.
> That's not the proof of germ theory, as spontaneous generation will pretend those "little critters" appeared after the illness, aren't the cause for it.
Even so given it's possible to take a sample of bacteria, expose a subject to the sample, and the subject will become ill; and this can be repeated many times reliably, making it hard to defend spontaneous generation.
> And how does that work for viruses? There is AIDS denial at the higher levels of science (like Duesberg, or the very "inventor" of PCR, Nobel prize Kary Mullis) who argue that aids is caused by "lifestyle" and antiviral treatment, not by HIV. Have they not "seen" HIV in electron microscopes?
Well so what if a scientist questions a theory? Einstein was an outspoken skeptic of quantum physics, this sort of doubt is a central part of the scientific process.
Being wrong about things is in many ways the default epistemilogical state as a human being. It's ok to be wrong. I'm wrong about things. You're wrong about things. We're all wrong about things all the time. Even acclaimed scientists get things wrong.
This is why we should hold our opinions about things tentatively. That, not nihilism, is at the core of being a skeptic.
> And then doubt any "demonstration" ad infinitum. Sceptics just answer any proof - any data that would shut down their doubts - with more doubt, until it is all a planetary conspiracy by the New World Order.
Nothing is certain therefore this one particular conspiracy theory is a given? I don't think this sounds particularly skeptical. I'll grant many self-proclaimed skeptics are only skeptics with regard to things they do not already believe, but this practice is not a fool's skepticism.
> we don't relitigate everything all the time. E.g. is germ theory a "dogmatic truth" for you?
Sure. Germ theory is incomplete. This became obvious during COVID, but the incomplete version of it was indeed taken as dogma. Things ordinary germ theory does not successfully explain:
1. Why did SARS-CoV-2 variants immediately exterminate each other instead of coexisting side by side for the long term? And why did flu apparently disappear during COVID?
2. How did around 80% of people appear to have pre-existing immunity to a supposedly novel coronavirus, as measured by household transmission studies?
3. Why is it possible for people on isolated Antarctic bases to spontaneously get sick from a cold, when there is nobody to get sick from?
4. Why are respiratory viruses seasonal to the extent that influenza outbreaks start everywhere at once rather than spreading from an index case like COVID did (there are lots of ad-hoc folk explanations for this kicking around, none of which are obviously derived from germ theory).
5. If germ theory is correct, why do epidemiological models that implement it never correctly predict the course of epidemics? (and they don't, even though epidemiologists like to pretend they do).
What we're looking at here is likely to be similar to physics pre-Einstein. We have a theory, it sometimes yields very accurate predictions, and we have lots of evidence for it. But there are cases that it fails for. The theory must therefore need refinement. Non-dogmatic scientists would be intrigued by this and even excited to explore it, but if you look at the public health literature you don't see this kind of excitement. Instead you see lots of papers that ignore all the questions above and just sort of assert that the theory side is done, so here's our predictions Mr Health Minister.
How does ordinary germ theory not explain what happened with flu during the pandemic?
The measures people took to reduce the spread of COVID would also reduce the spread of flu, and because flu is less infectious and infected people do not spread at for as many days those measures would be even more effective against flu.
If the flu season without COVID would have just been an average flu season instead of some particular infectious strain then it would not be hard for the measures taken for COVID to push the effective R value for the flu that year to under 1, which would mean it would not spread.
That's the explanation public health departments like but it's inconsistent with the data. Much more likely to be the same phenomenon that caused other variants to disappear as well.
> And why did flu apparently disappear during COVID?
Because they stopped tracking it to give resources to tracking SARS-CoV-2, nothing more. The CDC had a note at the bottom of their site explaining why their graphs flatlined, and despite it people used those graphs as evidence it really did disappear.
It disappeared because of social distancing. Influenza is less transmissible than SARS-CoV-2, so the measures used to keep SARS-CoV-2 under control were even more effective at shutting down transmission of the flu.
Also, we don't relitigate everything all the time. E.g. is germ theory a "dogmatic truth" for you?
Science doesn't work on scepticism but on zeteticism. Scepticism is just a gateway drug to nihilism, were nothing is ever true.