Comment by mike_hearn
3 years ago
It's probably best to leave it here, because you seem to just be arguing the position that I was describing ("If the PCR test correctly reports the presence of viral RNA ... then that's not a false positive").
This thread is sufficient to prove my point - the idea that PCR tests have very low or even zero false positive rates is essentially misinformation spread by scientists who are unwilling to consider anything about how the tests are actually used. Your whole post boils down to, "we only did PCR tests for statistical purposes so FPs didn't matter as long as they didn't affect the trend, if governments used them for other things well that has nothing to do with scientists".
Sorry, but like hundreds of millions of other people I simply don't accept this perspective. We don't think politicians had much agency because they just followed instructions from scientists at every point. Therefore the science community owns the COVID response. They don't get to now dissemble and engage in blame deflection when people point out what a catastrophe it was.
> We don't think politicians had much agency because they just followed instructions from scientists at every point.
No matter what your desired policy, you could find a scientist to support it--some scientists were advocating for Chinese-style lockdowns, while others were drafting the Great Barrington Declaration. So how do you think the politicians chose which scientist to listen to, or to promote in the mass media? It's not like they took a poll--the vast majority of scientists expressed no policy opinion at all, and simply concentrated on their actual work.
Politicians are the ones with the power to make laws, and direct the police to enforce them, if necessary with physical violence. It's amazing to me that their attempt to cloak their policy decisions in "trust the science" worked so well on you that you've absolved the people with actual power of their actions, instead directing your anger at some abstract "scientists".