Posted by the Admin
In fact, people do tend to be more tolerant of bullshit than of lies, perhaps because we are less inclined to take the former as a personal affront. We may seek to distance ourselves from bullshit, but we are more likely to turn away from it with an impatient or irritated shrug than with the sense of violation or outrage that lies often inspire. The problem of understanding why our attitude toward bullshit is generally more benign than our attitude toward lying is an important one.Harry Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Princeton University, On Bullshit 1
We, as a nation, have experienced an astonishing array of dramatic social changes in less than a decade. Not only were there nearly 104,000,000 recorded deaths ion the US directly attributable to 2019-nCoV and its variants, but the extent of denial & rationalization was rampant (e.g. the deaths were only among the elderly who would have died regardless, or the accusation that people who died of peripheral circumstances - say, an auto accident - but were infected with 2019-nCoV were "charted as flu deaths," supposedly for a larger reimbursement). Social unrest around 2019-nCoV and the public health attempts to contain the virus were unseen in modern public emergencies: “air violence;” open parent-school conflict that led to violence; and a fundamental trashing of the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] and the Food and Drug Administration [FDA]. It is difficult to even imagine that what was most reasonably considered the world's leader in epidemiology, surveillance, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, on the one hand, and the protector and surety of the integrity of our system of pharmaceuticals & devices on the other, were under attack. "Google scholars" were everywhere, with even the most ignorant & unschooled feeling, literally, compelled to "challenge" experts within their respective fields who yet once corrected, predictably responded with "outrage" at the lack of acceptance for their unfounded, unsupported "opinions," and never, ever stood corrected or apologized for their inevitable error(s). They simply moved on to the next thread to attempt to impose themselves. We can only imagine - with chatGPT and openAI available at every turn - what the state of “expertise,” academic integrity, ethical “scholarship,” and misinformation/disinformation/propaganda and outright fabrication & lies will take. It is within the context of this background we begin our mission of standing to defend the integrity and correctness of evidence-based science and medicine.
Perhaps the single most misunderstood, and thus abused, concept is "evidence." Take for example the controversy surrounding the use of Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine [HCQ] for COVID-19. Both of these medications can lead to fatal cardiac rhythm disturbances, notably QT interval prolongation (i.e. the lower chambers of the heart take longer than normal to electrically "reset" between beats, which can lead to Torsades de Pointes, an irregular rhythm that can lead to a fatal ventricular fibrillation). The FDA granted emergency status to the use of these medications to be used with hospitalized Covid-19 patients who were unable to be enrolled in clinical trials, while clearly stating, they "have not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19." 2 Further, it was the conclusion of the premier group for the investigation of evidence-based medicine, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, that, "HCQ for people infected with COVID-19 has little or no effect on the risk of death and probably no effect on progression to mechanical ventilation. Adverse events are tripled compared to placebo, but very few serious adverse events were found. No further trials of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for treatment should be carried out." 3 This, of course, then, begs the question as to why there was so much public outrage & threats of congressional investigations and hearings.
This, then, led to the formation of a price-gouging, right-wing group labeled "America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLD)," who were willing to prescribe Ivermectin, classified by the FDA, orally, as a treatment for onchacerciasis (otherwise known as "river blindness" a parasitic disease that is caused by infection from the filarial nematode (roundworm), Onchocerca volvulus. Nematodes are transmitted from person to person by blackflies of the Simulium genus, which usually breed in fast flowing streams and rivers. The disease is the second leading infectious cause of blindness in endemic areas.4 Cochrane and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidance, "updated on 19 January 2022, describes 'insufficient data' to permit a recommendation for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID‐19 (NIH 2021), and the FDA published a consumer update warning people of the inefficacy and danger of toxicity when self‐medicating with ivermectin (FDA 2021). One statement in February 2021 by Merck, a manufacturer of ivermectin, describes the conclusions of their review of the evidence as providing 'no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or efficacy in patients with COVID‐19 (Merck 2021).'" 5
Further, research sources have examined the role of the "right-leaning" media outlets as unnecessarily contributing to the furtherance of disinformation and behaviours that led to intentions contrary to the public health intentions of vaccination, herd immunity, & other Covid-19 prevention:
"In general, sources of news perceived to be more right-leaning demonstrated a greater gap between non–evidence-based and FDA-approved interventions. Importantly, these models reflected associations after control for political affiliation—that is, the associations we observed are over and above any effects of political party. Our results here are consistent with a prior report suggesting that conservative media outlets were associated with endorsing COVID-19 misinformation,26 indicating that these outlets are also associated with nonevidence-based medicine use for COVID-19... In aggregate, our survey results suggest that the potential harms of misinformation may extend to prescription of ineffective and potentially toxic treatments, rather than simply avoiding health-promoting behaviors, such as vaccination. The extent to which combating misinformation or increasing trust in health care and science may impact choices about treatment merits further investigation, ideally in randomized clinical trials that can establish causation." 6
In the end, the shocking number of deaths, apparently, convinced Americans to at least seek out and follow the initial vaccination protocal when the President determined that benefit could be drawn from claiming responsibility - albeit greatly exaggerated - for financially "fast-tracking" development of at least one of the two most common vaccines that is believed to bring the worst aspects of the pandemic to a halt.
These are prime examples of the fundamental question of "evidence" in human medicine, such that an observed or conjectured "benefit" of a medication, procedure, or device that already exists is not an indication for its use, no matter how "significant" it appears. When these situations arise, they are instead always the indication for research in the form of clinical trials. On rare occasion, the FDA will issue "Emergency Use Authorizations," in these cases, for already hospitalized patients with access to emergency intervention. Obviously, in these cases, the problem was compounded by governmental officials who openly contradicted their own public health authorities 7, which not only encouraged public demand for unproven, unfounded "cures," but undermined the integrity of both the CDC and the FDA. We suspect that the reputation of both will be remain unjustifiably damaged for years to come.
1 Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey & Oxfordshire, UK, 2005.
2 "Man Dies, Woman Hospitalized After Taking Form Of Chloroquine To Prevent COVID-19," NPR, The Coronavirus Crisis, March 14, 2020.
3 Singh B., et al. Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for prevention and treatment of COVID‐19. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2021.
4 Abegunde, AT, Ahuja, RM, Okafor, NJ. Doxycycline plus ivermectin versus ivermectin alone for treatment of patients with onchocerciasis. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2016.
5 Popp M, et al. Ivermectin for preventing and treating COVID‐19. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2022.
6 Perlis, RH, et al. Misinformation, Trust, and Use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. JAMA Health Forum. 2023;4(9):e233257. doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2023.3257.
7 Niburski K, Niburski O. Impact of Trump's Promotion of Unproven COVID-19 Treatments and Subsequent Internet Trends: Observational Study. J Med Internet Res. 2020;22(11):e20044 doi: 10.2196/20044.