Juno News - How Covid theatre destroyed public trust in science

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 it's funny when i talk about these issues which were i mean the dominant issues in the canadian

00:00:13.120 political landscape for uh the better part of three years they do seem like relics of a bygone

00:00:19.020 era and i think they are and i think it's a good thing that mandates are now just seen as so distant

00:00:25.280 and so past and so old that we're not going to bring them back uh the government of alberta

00:00:29.980 yesterday i got a bit nervous because i saw a headline that it was reimposing masking restrictions

00:00:34.640 in health care environments but then you look at the fine print and you realize they're really just

00:00:39.480 saying yeah but any individual hospital can come up with its own policy and override what was sort

00:00:44.700 of a baseline that alberta health services was putting forward now whether they should have

00:00:49.000 done it at all is something that you can discuss and debate but the whole point is is that we cannot

00:00:53.880 allow uh the very unscientific way government approach these things to stand without being

00:01:00.800 challenged and this is why i've been a proponent of an inquiry and this is not to besmirch the the

00:01:06.320 work that people involved with the national citizens inquiry are doing but the uh final product the

00:01:11.180 final report will really have no basis in law will not be a matter of the public record in terms of the

00:01:17.700 government's uh approach to this so i i think we do need to have these discussions still kenneth

00:01:22.880 green has done a tremendous job he is a uh senior fellow with the fraser institute and has a piece

00:01:28.960 out covet 19 hygiene theater masks and lockdowns solid science in quotation marks or science veneer

00:01:37.120 uh dr kenneth green joins us now it's uh good to talk to you again kenneth thanks for coming back on

00:01:42.240 good to be with you uh you know science is something that is not a one-size-fits-all solution i i think

00:01:48.880 it's a process and it's one that people will learn from and adapt and you bring in new evidence and

00:01:55.280 you revise your hypotheses and conclusions the scientific process though i'd say took a bit of

00:02:00.640 a bludgeoning over the last three years didn't it it did i mean and you put your finger on a very

00:02:06.000 important point which is uh people misunderstand what science is uh that we talk about the science and and

00:02:14.080 there is no such thing as the science any more than there is the flow of water it's a it's a process

00:02:20.560 right and so it's a process it really what it is it's it's trial and error formalized it's formalized

00:02:27.440 trial and error learning that is you you create a hypothesis you do an experiment you publish it

00:02:33.520 or you repeat it you test it you come to conclusions you publish it somebody else tests that

00:02:37.840 and it's a it's a integrated trial and error learning but it's not it's not a authority

00:02:43.280 authoritative voice at any given time in fact almost all of the studies that are being done will be wrong

00:02:50.880 right they'll be they will not be repeated and they will not be confirmed uh and so so when when

00:02:57.280 people invoke this this entity of that we're following the science uh that's not a thing that's a

00:03:04.080 they may construct in their mind what size is at any given moment but but it's not really a thing

00:03:09.200 and the thing is governments when they did this uh created a real problem because they they gave

00:03:15.760 people the illusion that there was this fixed body of knowledge where all people all scientists come

00:03:21.360 together and say vote and say this is reality and that and there and and that the government was was

00:03:27.600 just following that um but of course looking back if you actually look back at the literature that

00:03:32.640 existed at the time the the body of scientific literature which is a real thing if you looked

00:03:39.120 at that uh at the time that they were making their decisions to impose masking to impose social

00:03:43.680 distancing to impose stay home stay safe uh three months to flatten the curve you know three weeks

00:03:50.080 to fly the curve three months to flatten the curve three years to flatten the curve um if you look back

00:03:55.520 at the actual literature that was published at the time as the group called the cochran library has done

00:04:02.160 formally what you find is there was no evidence that any of those measures would reduce the transmission

00:04:08.800 of covid or the severity of covid uh or the the duration of covid um or which which parts of the

00:04:17.920 population were affected by covid um the the evidence was very very uh very very weak and and inconsistent um

00:04:25.920 but most and mostly negative mostly that the uh that is found as the biological common sense would tell

00:04:33.440 you uh viruses um are not affected by much viruses are a force of nature they're like earthquakes and and

00:04:42.720 tornadoes it's it's it's it's very difficult for humans to influence a virus that is passing through a

00:04:48.320 population of any kind uh and so um yeah so so yeah i think we have a problem with regard to and i

00:04:56.480 the issue of how governments portrayed what they were doing with regard to science because they

00:05:01.440 corrupted uh science they corrupted people's understanding of science they corrupted faith 0.98

00:05:06.880 or belief in science that that science is a good way of knowing uh and i think all that is all dangerous

00:05:13.280 uh because yeah science is that in my opinion i'm still i'm a scientist i have to you know have to

00:05:20.080 to give i've trained in the sciences my doctorate in environmental science and i still believe science

00:05:25.360 is the best way of knowing uh how the world actually works and and empowers us to to make or the world

00:05:32.480 better make our better place when you bring up the trust in science i think that's a key point here

00:05:38.240 is that it's not even like in the long run what the government did really helped it because i i think

00:05:44.240 even very dutiful diligent otherwise obedient people that wanted to follow whatever justin

00:05:49.520 trudeau and theresa tam were telling them will start to get suspicious when there can be a complete

00:05:54.720 reversal like i mean the ones that we've all talked about here are you know you don't need masks

00:05:58.880 don't worry about the mask don't wear masks to everyone wear a mask from you know border closures are

00:06:04.080 racist to we have to close the border to uh you know the vaccine will prevent transmission to no

00:06:09.120 no no we never said it like if they had approached this with a bit more humility and said we are

00:06:14.320 learning as we go this is what we think now and then we changed it because this came up there would

00:06:19.920 probably be a little bit more forgiveness there but we didn't hear that and in fact the the efforts

00:06:24.640 that uh official institutions went to to block dissent and criticism which as you indicated

00:06:31.520 kenneth is part of the process uh just completely erodes that they were really interested in real

00:06:36.800 science yeah i think that's right i think i think uh there was actually a breach uh a breach in the

00:06:42.880 wall of trust of science as an institution uh and particularly the idea of of scientific medicine um

00:06:50.240 i don't think we'll ever recover or or the the public health agencies the the cdc the centers

00:06:55.600 disease control u.s um environment can the the health canadian health authorities i don't think

00:07:01.920 they'll recover their reputation because it's what you said which is at a certain point you know

00:07:06.080 there's a saying which is oh they said somebody posted something on the on on twitter uh twitter x

00:07:10.880 whatever you want to call it and as people say they said the quiet part out loud and they shouldn't

00:07:16.800 have done that and um which is they revealed their inner truth which is that the government is not using

00:07:22.560 science uh and this the the people on who were coming out saying that they were the the were the

00:07:29.040 champions of science uh also were stating things that would be would be shown to be as you said 180

00:07:35.120 degrees wrong within such a short period of time that it's undeniable to people that they you point out

00:07:44.320 the window right somebody says it's raining out you you point out the window it's not raining there's a

00:07:49.760 certain point where people can't deny that they're being misled and i think that's happened that i

00:07:54.720 think covid was was a case in that um it was of that sort where where the the complete turnaround was

00:08:01.920 so obvious and when they when they were when they finally resorted to saying the science is changing day

00:08:06.800 by day even people who have no background in the sciences have to understand or know that science

00:08:14.000 because you have to do experiments you have to publish them you have to right do the and and so forth

00:08:19.680 can't change day by day just one one quick question in closing here kenneth i mean in politics there's

00:08:28.960 a desire to move beyond this and really not to live in 2020 2021 2022 which i i'm sympathetic to in

00:08:36.720 science is there still a bit of lingering curiosity have you have your colleagues in various fields of

00:08:42.080 science thought that you know maybe we should go and look back empirically did this work did this work

00:08:48.160 or have they sort of tried to move on as well well i'm i'm not embedded at a university or in the

00:08:54.800 institution of science uh these days i'm not in which is why you're so reliable

00:09:00.000 but those of us on the on the outside tangential side who are are analysts or or students of what's

00:09:06.080 going on in science certainly uh think something needs to be done and and and there are there are more

00:09:11.440 and more um polls and and things coming out showing that people just don't trust uh the science to the

00:09:18.400 science anymore i find that troubling and and i've said the same thing as you have or something similar

00:09:24.160 to what you have which is until there is some process of reconciliation some process of admission

00:09:32.080 by the agencies not just while we should have communicated better uh which is i think the highest

00:09:37.280 they've gotten uh at the u.s health agencies uh while we need to communicate more and better um

00:09:43.280 until there is is actually some sort of a process in which they admit we were making stuff up we were

00:09:48.960 arbitrary and capricious we did immense damage to people's lives literally probably much more damage

00:09:55.920 than covet did uh we're fired we're fired we're we're leaving we're leaving this field because we we

00:10:03.680 can't bring anything positive until there is some process of reconciliation um and the mission of blame

00:10:10.320 um there won't be any healing uh and and but but that this goes back a long way this goes

00:10:17.920 to climate change as well which we talked about in the past which is until there's an admission that

00:10:23.360 that the the process that the interpretation of actual scientific information was corrupted

00:10:28.800 and here's why and here's how and here's how we're not going to do this again you won't get a

00:10:35.280 restoration of trust um yeah that's i think that's all there is to it very well said the uh essay in

00:10:43.120 the fraser institute is a covet 19 hygiene theater masks and lockdowns solid science in uh air quotes or

00:10:50.400 scare quotes or science veneer and that is by dr kenneth green always a pleasure thanks for coming back on

00:10:56.000 oh it's good to be with you thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by

00:11:00.640 donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - October 15, 2023

How Covid theatre destroyed public trust in science

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