While a narrow majority still support the "handling of COVID," by President Biden, it's becoming clear that soft science is replacing hard "science" as the dominant consideration in what has been going on with COVID. Unfortunately a soft science approach to a hard science challenge requires that stakeholders have a common goal unsullied by self-interest, politics and money.
There are hard sciences such as math, biology, physics and chemistry and there are soft sciences, psychology, sociology, political science.
The real crisis of COVID was about the apparent worldwide surfacing and spread of a virus. Unfortunately, most of the COVID crises have arisen from the soft sciences and unfortunately, with increased time the soft sciences have overtaken the hard science that addresses COVID.
It started with the designation of a worldwide widespread virus that qualified as a pandemic and was identified as COVID-19, hard science. The first step taken by governments was to capitalize their own power and ability to achieve population compliance by playing on the soft science human response of fear that resulted from that designation of a pandemic.
Instead of addressing the hard science math rigor of defining the number of cases that qualified as a pandemic AND the definition of the numbers that would indicate something less than a pandemic, the pandemic label persists. Instead of examining the definition of pandemic, the numbers used to identify a pandemic and other factors such as severity and deaths also used to define the term, we've all given into the perpetual crisis of a "pandemic" that has manipulated our fear reaction into a continued acceptance of government overreach, sloppy data gathering and inadequate solutions to a pandemic.
Without a number below which a pandemic is over, each variant of COVID is enough to trigger a pandemic fear response justifying breaching civil liberties, bypassing government rules and laws and yes, even overlooking the scientific method.
Any hard scientist should demand that pandemic be identified by numbers, severity and risk to life. Soft science fear of disease is not good enough for the perpetual POWERS of questionable government authorities, perpetual invasions of individuals' privacy, perpetual waiving of previous scientific methods and protocols.
Fear is not a hard science, but a reaction in the realm of the soft-science world to a real or perceived threat. So why are we keeping the fear up? Unfortunately it's a combination of seeking continued compliance with whatever whacky thing is advised,(whacky meaning an insufficiently supported approach to "handling" COVID and its variants,)and the second more dangerous goal of maintaining and making permanent the "temporary" emergency powers granted to government under the public health emergency powers, the "temporary" suspension and relaxation of scientific rigor granted to get some vaccine available for the population, the "temporary" subsidies provided based on a COVID diagnosis.
But back to pandemic, that pesky requirement for the persistence of all these new benefits to politicians looking for a compliant population as they reach into that population's wallets, their livelihoods, their very ability to go out among others as government plays on those original fears, the billionaire pharma companies that have found endless support for speedy approvals that bypass scientific rigor of drugs and more drugs based on the "emergency" of a pandemic, the funding provided to any number of COVID related hardships that depends on the continued pandemic labeling of COVID, even to death, where without testing, if a physician "believes" a diagnosis is justified, those COVID funds keep coming.
Yep, for many, COVID has incentivized maximizing the diagnosis of cases, the continued threat of variants, the continued management of a fearful population even though hard science has taken a virtual backseat to continued progress.
Before COVID we had Emergency use authorization for drugs which is distinct from FDA approval. That emergency use is supposed to have a closing date. Of course, like the numbers that will indicate the end of a "pandemic," the government omitted a closing date for the "emergency," bypassing FDA approval processes.
Even as the Pfizer drug got a real "approval," that approval was rushed. The FDA gave it a priority review meaning both time and energy prioritized delving into the vaccine and its research. Whether you believe it was a great job or not, you can't argue that the priority review could not fudge one of the most important procedures necessary for review, time. There has not yet been a sufficient period of time for analysis and with Pfizer's request to keep its research material secret until at least 2076, that information is a long time coming.
Scientifically should every COVID variant be counted as a case of PANDEMIC? There is no evidence this should be so based on severity and deaths from the omicron variant. The omicron variant is simply a puffing tool used to maintain fear and that suits our COVID policy that depends on fear for compliance just fine.
And how about those who were becoming less afraid or for a variety of reasons or who were concerned about taking the vaccine? That's where mandates came in. Instead of giving people CHOICE on what would be put into their bodies, their livelihoods, their ability to engage with others, suddenly depended on being vaccinated.
We now separated people into the vaxed and unvaxed. Even as those vaccinated were still capable of getting and transmitting COVID, we assigned an "other" status to the unvaxed. OK, but there was more, because remember, this is a soft science fear-dependent approach to compliance. It's only SOME of the unvaxed that put others in jeopardy.
The executive mandate from Biden doesn't cover the judiciary, the post office, members of Congress and their staff. They are the PERMISSIBLE unvaxed. The mandate doesn't cover millions of illegal immigrants. They too are the authorized unvaxed. As for those who have religious, medical or just common sense reservations about the new vaccines, THEY are the threat.
It should be pretty obvious this is not a hard science distinction, but a soft science distinction of politics and sociology and mob behavior. Hard science would never allow such a result. A virus doesn't exclude postal workers, Congress people and staff, the judiciary and illegal immigrants.
Then there's side effects. From Facebook to OSHA the occurrence of side effects has been downplayed and in some cases deliberately unreported. Still, many reports of serious vaccine side effects leaked through and were dismissed as so few as to not matter (unless you're one of the unlucky ones).
How did we get there? The government determined that the risk was not nearly as important as the benefit and while many agreed and opted into vaccines, the government decided that it would decide for everyone else by punishing those non-excused classes of unvaxed.
Again, in the soft science world of mob behavior, bullying, fear mongering and marginalizing groups of people, the vaccinated had a new enemy, those who CHOSE not to have the COVID vaccine and weren't members of the groups mentioned above.
And now there are boosters being implemented, one, two, two and a pill, any number of recommendations to address the hard science of waning efficacy of the original vaccines. The answer here is simple from the world of soft science leaders, if one vaccine is good, more vaccine is better.
This soft science answer absolutely ignores everything hard science tells us. Anything we put into our bodies from aspirin to vitamins has DOSAGE requirements and limits. Anything we put into our bodies from Tylenol to supplements lists side effects. Yet these two hard science requirements also seem to be being largely ignored as the CRISIS class beneficiaries push for more and more.
Using the imaginary status of ongoing "emergency" and "pandemic," because neither term is defined but is instead used to maintain fear, we get exposed to "interviews," like the one between Rob Finnerty and Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health when he spoke on Newsmax on 12/10/2021. https://www.newsmax.com/us/jha-booster-vaccinations-covid/2021/12/10/id/1048133/
The host, Rob Finnerty asked: Just a basic question, how much vaccine can the human body take in a very tight period of time? Because to me that seems like a lot.
Dr. Jha answered: I get it. Look, we give kids basically like up to a dozen shots in their first year of life, they do fine with it…Again, the body can actually handle this…The body manages to deal with this.
So, Dr. Jha, dosing doesn't matter in the new world of COVID? This ridiculously unscientific dismissal of the idea that there could be too much in whatever number of doses being advised for vaccines and boosters is yet another soft science scenario, some other entity weighing risks-benefits.
Rob Finnerty continued: Is it unhealthy to get that much inoculation in a short period of time?
Dr. Jha: I don't think so. I have no reason to believe it is.
Rob Finnerty: Does science support that?
Dr. Jha: Tell me why it would be unhealthy to get that much inoculation?
Rob Finnerty: Injecting myself with up to five shots in a 12-month period that just doesn't feel right.
Dr. Jha: There is no either biological basis or clinical basis to think somehow it's going to be bad for your immune system. It's just immune training. Your body gets immune training all the time, it's a different way to train your immune system.
In the world of pandemics defined without numbers, emergency use authorizations given without a definite end to an emergency, big pharma assuring us that their vaccines are the way to go while asking to keep their own research secret until at least 2076, where government is trying to get us all used to their new permanent "temporary" emergency powers, where silly people believe there is a connection between illness and political party, why should we expect anything besides the bizarre response of Dr. Jha to say, "Tell me why it would be unhealthy to get that much inoculation," as if dosing is irrelevant to medicine.
The COVID outbreak required a temporary suspension of our accustomed "normal." It is the sloppy, politically motivated, financially motivated goals of big government and big pharma that have manipulated the hard science of an outbreak into a permanent pandemic and as consumers, unless we demand hard science, the soft sciences of psychology, sociology and political science will continue to encourage a perma-pandemic for their benefit.
