- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
A page or two ago, someone brought up 'Nam as an example of why technocracy isn't the end-all-be-all answer as to governance, since it's clear that even "experts" can get it horribly wrong. I hope the Wu Flu goes down the same way.
The fact of the matter is, when you devote your life to becoming an expert on a subject, it's almost a guarantee you're making yourself an idiot on everything else. There's only so much time in your life to learn, after all, so any time spent on studying your field of expertise is time not spent on anything else. I know I've seen the subject of Ph.D's being complete fucking morons on here before, so I'd say this is fairly common.
In the case of the Wu Flu, we got basically no info from China as to what the hell kind of virus they'd unleashed on the world (either because they were deliberately withholding information to hurt everyone else or they were so incompetent even they didn't know). So epidemiologists and virologists and every kind of -ologist had to come up with something quick, and the result was this completely ludicrous and unrealistic prediction of millions dying from a virus that turned out to be no more fatal than the seasonal flu. The only way to stop it was to shut down the global economy and have everyone cower in fear for a few months, a plan that was completely unfeasible to anyone with half a brain. Yet we still tried to do it anyway, because "we gotta do something!" And let's not forget the back-and-forth about mask-wearing and the well-documented cases of deaths being attributed to the virus just because someone had it in their system when they died, to say nothing of the sheer lunacy of declaring racism a bigger health concern than the virus when people pointed out that rioters were clearly not following the health guidelines.
I don't doubt that a lot of these epidemiologists and such are very smart about their field (except that Neil Ferguson asshole, fuck him and his stupid virus model that started this whole mess, hope that pussy you were having an affair with was worth sneaking out and breaking lockdown orders for, you fucking hypocritical douche), but they're so myopically focused on the case/fatality numbers that they really don't understand why shutting down the economy is a really bad idea, or why suddenly forcing large amounts of people to isolate suddenly can cause mental health issues, or why scaring people so much that they avoid going to the doctor will have long-term ramifications on health by delaying medical care for other problems. The fact is, there are so many facets to the pandemic that turning all decisions over to the "experts" is guaranteed to cause problems that they couldn't see coming.
Bob doesn't even have the luxury of being an expert to use that as an excuse for his ignorance of this fact. He's just retarded.
