Has the British scientific establishment made its biggest error in history?

The scientific establishment in this country has had a bad war. Its mistakes have probably made the Covid-19 epidemic, as well as the economic downturn, worse. Britain entered the pandemic late, with lots of warning, so we should have done better than other countries. Instead we are one of the worst affected in Europe and one of the last to begin to recover.

Not all the mistakes were driven by science. The decisions by Public Health England not to go out to the market for testing, protective equipment and logistics, to cease testing almost completely in March and to send people to care homes from hospitals affected by the virus – these were just bureaucratic bone-headedness. But the obsession with mathematical modelling lies behind other mistakes and continues to this day with the ridiculous fixation on a meaningless generalisation called R.

Expecting a typical flu virus, scientists were surprised by the explosion of cases in hospitals and assumed it signified exponential take-off of the virus in the community. In fact it was mainly the rapid spread of infection within hospitals, some of which probably started with staff returning from holiday in Italy and Spain. It was known in February that the virus is dangerous to the elderly and ill yet could be spread by the young and healthy. Was it therefore not obvious that infection control in hospital wards and care homes was vital? Apparently not if modelling an epidemic in a homogeneous “community” is your guide.

Government advisers became over-reliant on models that were both too complex and too simplistic at the same time, and failed to challenge underlying assumptions. The Imperial College model does not take into account high variability in social connectedness or susceptibility to infection among otherwise similar people. We now know that about 10pc of “superspreaders” cause 80% of infections, primarily because they meet many more people - which also makes them much more likely to become infected.

If you tell the models there is thus a correlation between susceptibility and infectiousness you get much lower forecasts of cases and deaths. Add that we now know that cross-immunity from common colds probably allows 40-60pc of the population to resist Covid-19, and the result is – as the work of Gabriela Gomes at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine indicates -- that herd immunity is probably reached when as little as 15pc of the population is infected, rather than the 50-60pc implied by Imperial’s model. Hence the epidemic is petering out in London despite crowded streets.

True, not all of this was known at the start, but that is exactly why it was a mistake to rely so heavily on models that were bound to have wrong assumptions. Modellers often come to mistake their models for the real world. There was an embarrassing moment in a press conference in April when a scientist was asked whether we could learn anything from Germany’s relative success in containing the epidemic and replied that our contribution was to lead the world in modelling.

We now know that outside the healthcare system the growth of the epidemic had ceased to be exponential before the lockdown. The peak of 3-day average deaths on 10 April implies that the peak of infections occurred around 20 March, before the country locked down, according to Professor Simon Wood of Bristol University. He argues that bans on large gatherings and voluntary social distancing would have been sufficient. The head of the Norway’s Institute of Public Health now says that the country’s lockdown was unnecessary.

The outcome of the epidemic in different countries or American states is pretty much uncorrelated with the severity of lockdown. Sweden, with no lockdown, did no worse than Britain and far better than the models predicted. By now the models say it should have had up to 40,000 deaths with a lockdown; it has had under 5,000 without. Had Sweden managed to keep the virus out of care homes and hospitals, as Germany partly did, it would have done much better than us despite no lockdown.

Reversing these mistakes will not be easy. Britain needs to get out of lockdown quickly, ditching the stable-door-locking policies like 2-metre distancing and travel quarantine before damage to the economy becomes terminal. And science needs to rethink its affair with models rather than data.

SOURCE 






Minneapolis' City Council president Lisa Bender defended the move to disband the city's police department on Monday

Minneapolis' City Council president is defending the move to disband the city’s police department following the brutal killing of George Floyd, saying that police can do more harm than good in some cases and expecting their help 'comes from a place of privilege'.

'What if, in the middle of the night, my home is broken into. Who do I call?' CNN’s Alisyn Camerota asked.

'Yes, I mean I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege,' Bender replied.

'Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done,' she added.

Bender noted the city council isn't starting from an empty slate, they've worked to reform the police system for years.

'We are not starting from scratch we have invested in community-based safety strategies…we’ve done an analysis of all the reasons people call 911 and have looked at ways we can shift the response away from police officers into a more appropriate response for mental health calls. So the groundwork is laid already in Minneapolis for us to work from that,' she said. 

When asked if she feared dismantling the police system is giving Donald Trump a good talking point for the upcoming election, she said it's a system that needs to be addressed.

'It starts with telling the truth. I think we’ve been afraid of those political dynamics, of what would happen in our city to have our police force hearing those type of words and that fear is what we have to work through,' she said.

'That’s the fear that we see from George Floyd’s family or the family of Jamar Clark or Justine Damond who were also killed by Minneapolis police who have told us they never want to see this again,' she said, adding, 'so we have to try something new'.

'Now the hard work begins for us to rebuild systems that really work to keep everyone in our community safe,' Bender said.

On Sunday nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city’s police department.

'We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,' Bender said.

With nine votes the city council would have a veto-proof supermajority of the council’s 13 members to dismantle the police force, Bender said.

However, 38-year-old mayor Jacob Frey objected to dismantling the police department. He does not have the power to veto the move after a three-quarters majority of councilors back it.

Mayor Frey was booed by protesters Saturday when he refused to commit to defunding and abolishing the city's police force and forced out of the demonstration.

He said he would rather see reform to police unions that would make it easier to fire racist cops and keep them out of the force.

'There are so many areas where mayors and police chiefs have been hamstrung because we have difficulty both terminating and disciplining officers and getting it to stick.

'We're going after the police union... we need the ability to discipline officers to begin with,' he said.

By law, Minneapolis must maintain a police force of at least 723 police officers. It currently has some 800.

To completely get rid of the department, the city charter would have to be amended - which would require a public vote or the full approval of all 13 council members, including the mayor. 

Minneapolis has been the heart of Black Lives Matter protests unfolding across the country.

Activists are asking to replace police with mental health responders to attend mental health crises, street outreach teams, more shelters and affordable housing to help the homeless and stop the homeless from being criminalized, community members to attend domestic violence calls and to help establish long-term safety for the individuals.

Other demands include specialized physical and emotional support for victims of sexual violence, investing in sex trafficking prevention measures, the legalization of marijuana to stop the incarceration for possession of the 'harmless' drug, and better handling of drug offenses to stop 'criminalizing of communities of color', the decriminalization of sex work and restorative justice meaning meetings between victims and offenders to deal with property crimes such as theft and burglary.

Disbanding an entire police department has happened in 2012 in Camden, New Jersey where the police department was replaced with a new force that covered Camden County and in Compton, California in 2000, shifting its policing to Los Angeles County.

SOURCE 






Affirmative Action: The Systemic Racism No One Wants to Talk About

Some Americans are discriminated against because of their race, but it is not who you think.

The clearest definition of “racism” is treating people differently according to their race. Systemic or institutional racism is racism “expressed in the practice of social and political institutions.”

Many American policies and laws are designed to ensure that people of all races, creeds, ethnicities, genders, and sexualities are treated equally, such as the Sixth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to “a fair and speedy public trial by jury,” the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting the denial of the right to vote based on race, the Nineteenth Amendment prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on the basis of gender.

President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, following up similar earlier orders by Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower, required government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” It established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (PCEEO). Title IX of the Education Amendments Act forbids unequal treatment based on sex (gender) in federally funded programs.

But everything changed with subsequent orders, such as President Johnson’s, that required “contractors with 51 or more employees and contracts of $50,000 or more to implement affirmative action plans to increase the participation of minorities and women in the workplace if a workforce analysis demonstrates their under-representation, meaning that there are fewer minorities and women than would be expected given the numbers of minorities and women qualified to hold the positions available.”

President Obama followed, and upped the ante, with “Executive Order 13583– Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce.”

Notice the transition from “without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin” to “increase the participation of minorities and women,” from color-blind to race and gender preferences. Between the Johnson and Obama directives, specification of qualifications—“qualified to hold the positions”—disappeared, and in its place, the unlimited instruction “to recruit, hire, promote, and retain a more diverse workforce.”

Today “underrepresented” is not based upon the pool of capable applicants, but in relation to the percentage of the general population. What this means in practice is that people of certain races and genders are given preferences and benefits, and are thus “more equal” than people of other races and genders.

During the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, “diversity and inclusion” became the guiding principle of governments, federal, state, and municipal, of industry, and of colleges and universities. It was an ideological tsunami, washing away the universalistic standards, such as the colorblind assessment of achievement and merit, in favor of racial, gender, sexuality, and ethnic preferences.

The Supreme Court refused to stand for principle, and waffled about educational benefits, allowing preferences to remain. Sixty-five percent of Americans disagree with this decision. Sixty-three percent of blacks and sixty-five percent of Hispanics disagree with the Supreme Court decision.

In Canada too, preferences and special benefits were justified for particular racial, gender, sexuality, and ethnic populations. While according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 15(1), “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

This principle is negated in the following section of the Charter, in the interests of preferred sections of the population, for whom special privileges and benefits are granted,

Section 15(2), “Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” Canada has Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals that prosecute any complaint about discrimination in housing, employment, and commercial service, and also suppresses any speech that offends someone.

What “affirmative action” and “diversity and inclusion” mean in practice is that in university admissions, hiring, promotions, funding, and organizational activities (living arrangements, social gathering, eating, and ceremonial activities), in government and business hiring, funding, and promoting, certain races and genders are given preference while others are low priority or excluded totally.

In a perfect example of the bigotry of low expectations, African American and Hispanic applicants with poor academic records are given university places, while whites and Asians with much stronger academic records are refused places. It is well established that in the sciences female hires are preferred, which of course means that male candidates are excluded. White male applicants and candidates, whatever their merits, are at the bottom of everyone’s list. For every “inclusion” based upon race and gender, there is an exclusion based upon race and gender. This seems a pretty clear case of official, systemic racism and sexism.

Americans dislike racial and gender preferences. According to the Gallup poll, “Americans continue to believe colleges should admit applicants based solely on merit (70%), rather than taking into account applicants’ race and ethnicity in order to promote diversity (26%).” Fifty percent of blacks and 61% of Hispanics say that college admissions should be based on merit alone. It seems likely that hiring, funding, and other functions would reflect similar views.

Previously marginalized minorities, who suffered under prejudice, discrimination, and legal restraint, are no longer welcome in the fields in which they excelled. Jews and Asians, highly “overrepresented” in medical, professional, and academic fields, are now no longer welcome. Jews today are deemed to be “white,” now that being white is regarded as a bad thing.

Asians, themselves people of color, have offended by being too successful, and have to be excluded to make room for preferred minorities. The new marginalization of Jews is reminiscent of the 1930s when elite universities excluded Jews through strict quotas, because they were not “Christian gentlemen” and they studied too hard. As for white men, you are the wrong sex and the wrong race, so good luck trying to get a place or post or funding in our feminist dominated universities.

What justifies the establishment of two classes of citizenship, the preferred and protected and the unpreferred and excluded? In one discussion of “systemic racism,” the justification is disparities regarding wealth, income, criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power and education, among other factors. The assumption is that “disparities” are unjust and intolerable, that we must jettison ideas of equality before the law and equality of opportunity in favor of equality of results and outcomes, so that every individual, group, and category of people is exactly the same.

Why are “disparities” unjust? According to race and gender theorists and activists, disparities are unjust because they are the result of prejudice and discrimination. Furthermore, these theorists and activists believe that no further evidence of prejudice and discrimination is necessary; the disparities themselves prove discrimination, because without discrimination everyone would be represented according to their percentage of the population.

There are many reasons that disparities–individual, group, and category–exist. People differ from one another, have different capabilities and interests. If people do different things, it is not usually because of discrimination. For example, Asian-Americans are “underrepresented” in the jobs of forest ranger, lumberjack, and truck driver, not because they are discriminated against in these occupations, but because they are motivated to pursue higher education and enter professions. Females are “underrepresented” in the jobs of fisherman, telephone and utility pole workers, and roofing, not because they are discriminated against, but because they prefer safer, cleaner, and more comfortable jobs in offices.

Females work fewer hours, fewer days, and fewer years than men, not because they are discriminated against, but because they prefer to spend more time with their children. Whites and Asian-Americans are heavily “underrepresented” in some professional sports, the NFL and NBA, not because they are discriminated against, but because African Americans have successfully competed for those jobs.

Females are “underrepresented” in engineering, the physical sciences, and mathematics, not because they are discriminated against, but because they prefer academic fields that deal with people, such as the social sciences, humanities, education, and social work, where they are vastly “overrepresented.”

Different groups and categories of people also have different community and family cultures and family structures. Some communities are highly education-oriented and push their children to gain educational attainment, while others are less so. Some communities have strong, two-parent family structures, while others have weak, one-parent family structures. Weak families lead to detrimental consequences for children in academic performance and risks of crime and incarceration.

To claim “discrimination” as an explanation for individual and group outcomes is to ignore individual and group differences. “Discrimination” becomes an excuse artificially to impose equality where no equality exists other than in basic humanity. The imposition of “affirmative action,” in which members of some categories of people are favored, and members of other categories unfavored and excluded, is a clear case of systemic racism and sexism. In this system, population statistics determine the outcomes, and no individual receives his due, what he has earned. They can call racial and gender preferences “social justice,” but there is no clearer case of injustice.

SOURCE 






Australia: Indigenous activist Jacinta Price slams 'virtue-signalling' Black Lives Matter protesters and says they 'aren't interested' in Aboriginal deaths - unless they are killed by a white man

Aboriginal activist Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has slammed Black Lives Matter protesters as ignorant 'narcissists' who don't understand indigenous problems.

'Just watching the footage of protesters and the conversations around white privilege makes me sick to my stomach,' she told Sky News.

'These are narcissists ... they don't have to do any hard work just appear as though they care.'

Ms Price, a Warlpiri woman and Alice Springs Town Councillor, said more Aboriginal people die outside of police custody than within it, with the majority of Aboriginal people killed and maimed by other Aboriginal people.

But because the violence is out of sight, out of mind, protesters don't care, she said. 'You don't care because the perpetrators are also black, and that's the big problem,' she said.

'People only care if there's seen to be a white perpetrator.'

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014–15 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, more than one in five or 22.3 per cent of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged over 15 had experienced physical violence or threats in the previous 12 months.

Half of all of those who had experienced physical violence over the 12-month period said that their most recent attacker was a family member. 

'This is the reality that goes on in the remote communities that these protesters care zero for,' Ms Price said.

'They do not care one bit. They stand there virtue-signalling and acting as though they're so terribly sorry for the racism that Aboriginal people are faced with.

'It's not racism that is sexually abusing our kids and it is not racism that is killing our people - it's the actions of our own people.' 

Ms Price's own nephew died on Friday - allegedly stabbed to death during a wild fight in Alice Springs.

NT Police said more than a dozen people had been 'fighting with weapons' at a home in the Central Australian town when the 36-year-old man was stabbed. He bled to death at the scene despite the efforts of ambulance paramedics and police officers to stem the bleeding and to save him with CPR.

There were more than 12 people involved in the mayhem but only two men were arrested, ABC News reported.

Ms Price said Aboriginal people are the most incarcerated people in the world - because of violent crimes and that if people were serious about protecting Aboriginal lives then they would focus on lowering the rate of family violence in indigenous communities.

'It's a horrible cycle that continues and the ignorance is gobsmacking,' she said.

'If you wanted to reduce the rates of incarceration then you would begin with being honest about the fact that almost 70 percent of Aboriginal people - men and women incarcerated - are incarcerated for acts of violence against their loved ones,' she said. 

Ms Price said for women it was largely because they were fed up with repeated beatings and had retaliated.

'On the other side of the coin we've got nasty individuals who think it's their right to hurt and maim and kill their own loved ones,' she said.  

SOURCE  


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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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