As I continue to retrace the steps of the full blown panic and subsequent policy disaster globally of the last 2 years, we revisit my April 5th, 2020 post, thanks to LinkedIn’s treasure trove of my past posts.
I’ve also decided to rename my new book, to make it more accessible to a wider audience. “The 10th Man: Why Acquiescence to Narrative is the New Slavery.” In Israel, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, they came up with “The Tenth Man” rule. In effect, in a room of 10 people, if 9 agree on the course of action, the tenth MUST make an alternate argument and support it with data as well as criticize the 9, assuming they are wrong, whether he agrees or not. The concept resonates with me and is, at the core, the reason censorship in the media is such a problem for society today.
Make no mistake - inflation is our fault. Supply chains are our fault. High energy and commodity prices are our fault. The policies we put in place that were purely political and not pragmatic are what got us here. Mistakes happen and can in fact be a rich source of growth, but only if we reflect and learn. Politicians and narrative pushers are now claiming new data supports abandoning ineffective COVID policies, but the data was clear from the beginning, we were just asked to ignore it for the greater good of (insert emotional justification here).
Narrative without consideration of data and the implementation of ineffective feel-good policies doesn’t need to be repeated. For example, the climate change narrative shouted into Greenpeace echo chambers should be balanced with consideration of the real life impacts of energy policy on affordability and reliability. When the negative effects come crashing down on energy users, the politicians will pretend we couldn’t foresee the impacts, but the warning signs are clear and ‘changed science’ is ‘fake news.’
More than IKEA and great hockey players.... see the attached article and quote from it.
But crucially, he isn't asking Swedes to trust him. Hospital data is published all the time, so Sweden's "experiment" is being conducted in the open. Every time a patient is admitted, the data is updated on a Covid live website in striking detail. Average age: 60. Those with diabetes: 26 per cent. With cardiovascular or lung disease: 24 per cent. With at least one other underlying health condition: 77 per cent. Sweden is also updating its statistics to say if someone died from Covid, or of something else, but with Covid. This might reduce the "death" figure by two thirds.
"Of" and "with." We did know. We knew a lot in April of 2020.
Circa George Orwell’s ‘1984’, the pace at which elected and unelected officials are running from their narrative and trying to replace it with “Omicron is different, the science has changed.” My goal is to highlight that WE DID KNOW then and that I (and many others) were highlighting this data. We should all be inspired to critically question our policies, consider data in light of feel good benefits, and welcome the counter-narrative.
Warning signs are everywhere, but they do no good if we fail to heed them.
Truer words were never spoken. Thank you David.
Well written, as usual. But my mindset got stuck on Whoopi being replaced. I haven't had time to sit and write on it but my blood boils. My Babcia was Polish Catholic, and was a slave to Hitler in Auschwitz. No one ever mentions the Catholics, only the Jews. When I talk about it to people, they are surprised there were Catholics that had been captured, tortured, and murdered there as well. A lot of my family was lost there. I won't go on a huge rant.. but the title got me started....