The Epidemiologists Got It Wrong, So I’ll Trust My Barber
Hindsight is a hell of a drug!
The saga continues with increasing fervour to promote the contrarian “experts” telling us that COVID-19 is not as bad as they told us, is more widespread than we’re told, having insignificant mild symptoms, and its death rate is not as high as originally predicted, etc.
In fact, this whole thing is a global hoax, where governments everywhere hatched a plan with one common goal, epidemiologists made up fancy-looking graphs on Excel (because Bill Gates), infectious disease physicians and virologists collaborated to write a story on Word (again Bill Gates), ICU physicians in hospitals that were the hardest hit all colluded to share the same story and chest x-rays, neurologists are faking case reports about young COVID-19 patients…and anyone who dared to be a whistleblower against Hydra was eliminated before they could expose this whole thing for what it is. How do we know? Well, Dr. [insert name] talked about it in a video that YouTube/Facebook/Vimeo/TikTok is censoring, which is obvious incriminating evidence for their collusion because they don’t want people to know the truth.
Newscaster:
“Dr. [insert name], an emergency physician in [insert city] is here to challenge the official story we’re being told by the government. He’s in the field and treats patients in the emergency room every day who come to him and he’s seen COVID-19 up close. Doctor, please tell our viewers why you think the official story being told to us by the mainstream media is exaggerated and how this is used to take away our freedom.”
Doctor:
“Just to be clear, I’m not in the emergency room anymore. I have an urgent care clinic and I deal with patients from everywhere in the world. When this thing started I could smell from a mile away that something wasn’t right. But I stalked up my clinic with Vitamin C and I ordered boxes of tests. This COVID-19 is not that bad and I’m not worried about it. Patients come in with mild cold-like symptoms, I do the test, it comes back positive and I just give them an IV course of Vitamin C and they’re fine. I have a 100% success rate. Not a single patient of mine had to be ventilated or ended up dead. This thing is not that serious and Bill Gates wants to microchip us, and I WILL DIE BEFORE I LET THAT PSYCHOPATH DO THAT TO ME.”
Newscaster:
“Well, if what you’re saying is in fact true, and there’s plenty of evidence that it is, how come other doctors aren’t speaking out in mass, doctor?”
Doctor:
“I’ve been contacted by thousands of doctors who thanked me for speaking out. I have their letters. I can show them to you if you want. They’re afraid because they know what happened to their colleagues who did speak out. Some of them lost their jobs and some were even killed. I don’t care. This is about our freedom and the fact that…listen, Bill Gates, who’s not a doctor by the way, is not going to put a chip in me. I WILL DIE before that happens!”
Newscaster:
“My mind is blown. I want to thank you for coming on and speaking this truth. I admire your courage. Keep up the fight.”
Doctor:
“I’m not a hero. Thanks for having me.”
Nutella is part of a healthy breakfast!
The difficulty with talking about something unprecedented is that it’s…well, UNprecedented. This is akin to accounts of UFOs where many often forget what the “U” stands for before they give elaborate stories about extraterrestrials coming to earth. Then again, maybe it’s those shape-shifting lizard aliens coming to check on their comrades to see how their plans for mass control of humans are going. By the way, in case you forgot, the “U” stands for UNidentified. And on a side note, isn’t it odd how aliens always look like something we’re familiar with on Earth?
While the early predictive models of COVID-19, some of which were made before this disease even had an official name, painted a stark picture, it behooves us to recognize that they were using early numbers of infection, recovery, and mortality rates. These numbers came from various hospitals’ reports, as well as the results from some locations where testing kits were widely used but had variable accuracies and false-positive rates.
It’s not a big secret that models are as good as the assumptions built into them, and that small changes in those assumptions lead to big differences in their outputs. But one thing all early models had in common irrespective of their different predictions was that they were telling us how bad things would be *without* any behavioural intervention at a mass scale, i.e., social distancing at the very least and complete lockdowns if necessary.
So most of us had to accept a new “normal”, for now. Economies came to a halt, universities and schools went online, social lives came to a stop, and many of us are still trying to navigate this new terrain and deal with the anxieties of having to be still.
As time progressed, more became known about this virus and the disease it causes, and this continues to be the case every day. For those who have been keeping up with the medical literature instead of YouTube or random mainstream “news” articles about how this infection impacts patients, this is not “just the flu”. It doesn’t just hit the lungs the way the flu does. It doesn’t only kill the elderly, a comment that when dismissively made about it betrays a callous disregard for a segment of the population because of their age. It has a death rate that differs between countries, the explanation of which is still being explored. And no matter how desperately you want it to be, it’s not caused by 5G.
Every time we think we have a handle on what’s going on, anyone who does actual research in this area has to date and time stamp his or her declarations because tomorrow something new about it becomes known and it makes us look like idiots. This situation is…UNprecedented.
Where this becomes an issue is when the evolving conclusions by relevant experts based on wide-scale data that take into account multi-regional trends and the accumulative knowledge coming from multiple sources is equated with one or two emergency physicians holding a press conference to share their “findings” — findings that have not been validated, using methods that have not been adequately explained or fully published, on a population sample that is not representative, shared with a public that's not familiar with how to evaluate this kind of work but wants to hear those findings because they fit with their desires. It’s one thing for the layperson to make this basic error in reasoning, but quite a disappointing other to see some Muslims in the scholarly and intellectual sphere also doing the same thing in the name of “free-thinking”, a term connoting rebellion against any authority, including the authority of sound reasoning.
“Whoever takes on logic has become a heretic.”
- ibn aṣ-Ṣalah¹
Is the new coronavirus really as bad as they thought it was or did we overreact with all these public measures?
When all the dust settles and we look back, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to know the answer to this question with certainty. It could’ve been as bad as we anticipated or even worse, and the lockdown measures happened to be the reason for the privileged and arrogant declarations about it not being that bad.
Or, it could’ve been really mild and we overreacted. One could argue it’s better to look back and recognize you erred on the side of caution a bit too much than too little. Then again, if we did overreact, how should we have reacted in the face of overwhelmed hospitals and death tolls that happened in China, Italy, Spain, England, and the US to this “really mild” disease?
Our problem is not that we have a small vocal segment skeptical of experts and authority.
Our problem is that this segment genuinely believes that their skepticism is rational. They really think that the tentative conclusions and recommendations by experts coming from independent research centers based on available wide-scale data is equivalent to the musings of a couple of physicians conducting shoddy research in their backyards.
It’s one problem to not know what you don’t know. But it’s a whole other problem to not see that you don’t know and refuse to entertain the prospect that what you think is skepticism and free-thought might be sophistry and confusion.
- On the Limits of Religious Knowledge https://www.facebook.com/347684525261845/posts/2840999852596954/?d=n
Mohamed Ghilan earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2015 and is currently a 4th-year medical student. He is the founder of Al-Andalus Academy, an online learning platform delivering traditional Islamic teachings and an online book club where non-fiction books are explored and discussed through an Islamic lens during live webinars.
Visit Al-Andalus Academy to learn more about available programs and short courses.
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