June 8, 2020

Don’t Ridicule Virus Science Just Because It’s Not Perfect

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This is from Wesley Smith over at NRO:

Well, well. The World Health Organization now says asymptomatic people with COVID infection rarely spread the disease.

Pardon my whiplash. So, now that we know COVID is not as dangerous as was initially thought, will those calling for mandatory vaccines and mask-wearing retract their advocacy?

I’m not especially picking on Smith here. This is just an example of an attitude that I see all too often: Ho ho ho, they changed their mind, they must be idiots. And sure, I get how frustrating it is that every bit of advice we get seems to be tentative and subject to change. But SARS-CoV-2 is a brand new virus and it acts in some very unusual ways. The science is moving at light speed right now, and as more cases are studied and more countries are compared we keep learning more. It’s inevitable that advice from the experts is going to be contingent for at least many months, and maybe longer.

CDC and WHO have made some mistakes, but they’re still the best advisors we have on the epidemiological side of things. Regardless of how the virus is spread, a vaccine is still the only way we’ll truly get rid of it, and mask wearing still seems to be important even if we don’t know precisely why.

So settle down, folks. Researchers are compressing what would normally be years of work into a few months. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

POSTSCRIPT: On the other hand, apparently WHO was vague about the difference between asymptomatic (no symptoms now or ever) and pre-symptomatic (no symptoms yet, but there will be eventually). The former is only 20 percent of all cases, so it doesn’t matter much how widely these folks shed virus. What matters are the pre-symptomatic cases. And how can you tell them apart anyway in real time? This appears to be a pretty horrible job of public communication from WHO, and they certainly deserve plenty of criticism for that. Keep wearing those masks, people.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

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That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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