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Joe Biden says if he’s elected, he’ll put scientists in charge of the country — 43 Comments

1. “I would listen to the scientists” is a shibboleth. It means “I’m one of the smart, cultured, sophisticated people.” It’s a statement to the elite and the elite adjacent that “I’m one of you and we’ll be in charge again.”

   I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I wouldn’t mind Trump losing if the people who lost in 2016 had learned anything the last four years. But they not only haven’t learned anything, they’ve become even more militantly ignorant.

   Mike

2. The whole ‘mask’ thing is a farce as shown by studies in the size of the virus particles which are so minuscule that they can pass right through most masks.

   However, masks are being required virtually everywhere and are ruining everything. I refuse to wear one and am disgusted when I see people wearing them incorrectly (not over the nose), wearing them outside where there are no people anywhere in sight, wearing them when driving their cars alone, etc. I am incredibly depressed by this.

   I am a retired teacher who taught students from Saudi Arabia. They finally allowed the women to become educated, BUT they had to cover their faces essentially erasing their humanity. Masks do the same thing.

   WHEN will this end?

3. Scientists in charge? Like Dr. Mengele? 🙂

4. There was a time where I would have said that the people will not go for it. They will revolt. But after the last six months I think most people will just shrug and do as they are told as long as the government sends them cash which of course they would in this scenario.

   It was said at the very beginning that once government realizes they can do something then they will do it again, and again. Incredibly stupid and everyone involved should be ashamed.

   Oh, and do we have any legislative branches of government in this country? I’m so damn sick and tired of these tyrannical governors, mayors, and health bureaucrats just issuing these edicts that have never been passed into law and yet the bodies responsible for passing laws at every level just shrug and do nothing.

5. Most of the Dems I interact with, even if they say they don’t like the masks thing, are perfectly ok with shutting everything down for the virus. They express such fear, and keep citing the bogus “cases!!”. For these “lower level” Dems, it’s fear that’s driving them, not a power quest….the useful idiots.

   This statement, one would hope, is another Trump ad writing itself.

6. Every state legislature controlled by Republicans needs to pass legislation greatly curtailing governors emergency powers as soon as possible. Put some sort of time limit or require the governor to go back and get his order reauthorized by the legislature. This garbage will never end otherwise.

7. The scientists who created Aricept

8. The stupid part is that Joe would do what “the scientists” say.

   The frightening part is that he thinks the President has the power to shut the country down. How? Martial law?

   The sad part is that there are many who think the President has such power.

   But . . . I hope he keeps saying it.

9. I am a retired teacher who taught students from Saudi Arabia. They finally allowed the women to become educated, BUT they had to cover their faces essentially erasing their humanity. Masks do the same thing.

   This is a nonsense statement.

10. Sounds like a perfectly sensible statement to me. I see it every day in our current dystopic society. Everyone is just a faceless mask or worse a threat to the super paranoid.

11. Believe what you will Francesca. I don’t think anyone has the final answer on masks, but I know of two MDs who specialize in epidemiology and infectious diseases at different first class medical facilities, who are on the front lines of treating this thing. Both advocate strongly for masks. I wear my mask when I am around people; and I wish that those I encounter would as well. But, everyone makes their own choices. I certainly don’t want Biden making mine.

    M. Bunge, I really don’t know what you mean by that statement. The people who lost to Trump will never learn. They don’t need to learn because they are the superior ones. It is the people who voted for Trump who need to learn, or be marginalized. As to this particular election I cannot fathom the consequences if Trump loses. The first thing I would do is leave the stock market, and hope that I made it in time. Then I would try to figure out how to mitigate any further impact on my life. Finally, I would say a sad farewell to the Republic as I knew it.

    Wonder if anyone heard Trump’s speech to the Conservative group on Friday? What a contrast. He was relaxed; he was on message; and when he at his best, he can be naturally funny. I thoroughly enjoyed it; and hope it was a preview of his acceptance speech. Naturally, it got no media coverage.

12. I agree with Francesca that the face coverings on Muslim women are dehumanizing.

13. On Biden: Which scientists? Just today Dr. Birx said voting in person is just as safe as Starbucks.

14. Griffin:

    The executives have discovered they can pretty much ignore the legislatures. Obama really showed the way on that one.

15. neo,

    Take them to court. It worked in Wisconsin and last I heard they weren’t all dead from COVID. Obviously won’t work in some places but let’s put some of these judges to work that we’ve heard so much about for the last four years

16. Dr. Frankenstein? Though someone already one-upped me with Dr. Mengele.

17. Dr. Mabuse and Dr. Moreau.

18. Top. Men.

    Science at best can tell you if you can do something and how. It cannot tell you what you SHOULD do.

    For example, that deaths from coronavirus are worse than deaths from the consequences of how we’ve deal with coronavirus. At best science could tell us how to minimize those deaths–it’s not there yet because not enough is known–but it can’t make the consequences of that action go away, or tell us how to value the deaths that follow from the actions we’ve chosen.

19. Just remember: for every PhD, there is an equal and opposite PhD

20. yara, that’s the funniest comment I’ve seen in a long while! Thanks!

21. If God forbid Joe is elected, my guess is these scientists who now want the country to still be shut down will, by January 20, 2021, miraculously find that shutdowns are no longer necessary.

22. MBunge: Bingo.

    If I’m elected (on the Know Nothing Ticket, obviously), my first act will be to put Scientologists in charge of the country.

    The year 2020 wouldn’t be complete without it anyway.

23. OldFlyer:

    There’s enough circumstantial evidence from East Asia and the few bits of SE Asia that have their @#%^ together that surgical masks worn in crowded public spaces do their bit at the margin to protect some of the more vulnerable from serious complications. It’s posited that they do this by reducing the inhaled viral load… Practically impossible to stop it completely, of course. This more by catching exhaled viruses than blocking inhaled viruses.

    Seems simple enough, but there’s enough subtlety in there to confuse at least half the population who have trouble juggling more than one concept at a time.

    For sure though they are annoying to wear. I wouldn’t call them dehumanizing, but there is something definitely missing from interactions when unable to see people’s full faces. Baked in evolved stuff.

    Little point in wearing the things driving by oneself in one’s vehicle or when walking on a beach or in a park. That’s just stupidity. Even then though, I suppose from a public policy perspective when you have to deal with people who can’t process this kind of logic (again, at least half the public and probably 2/3 of people working in public policy hehe)…

24. Addendum:

    Scientologists with Lasers.

    I for one welcome our Operating Thetan Overlords!

25. Zaphod:

    I’ve heard that criticism of people wearing masks when alone in the car. But I think some of them are probably going from errand to errand, on fairly short trips. So why take your mask off? You have to handle it each time (perhaps after touching things and interacting with people in stores), find a clean place in the car to put it, and then handle it and put it on again. If you have a comfortable mask, why bother?

    As for walking or jogging in a park or on a beach – you might be alone at a certain moment, but someone can come close to you, and again you would have to take the mask off and on, off and on, with no place to put it and handling it every single time. If you don’t wear the mask and someone walks along a path towards you, they might reprimand you.

    I don’t wear a mask when outside at all. I do in stores, and I take it off in the car because I hate wearing it. But I’m aware of why someone else might keep it on.

26. @Neo:

    Makes sense.

    Until mask wearing outdoors became mandatory in HK about a month ago during a second wave, was common to see people walking around in the great outdoors unmasked but wearing their elastic loop disposable surgical masks on their non-dominant forearms. Not great for keeping the thing sterile (not that it probably ever was), but it’s there for when you need it ***and everyone can see that you’re on the team***.

27. Zaphod on August 22, 2020 at 8:00 pm said:
    I wouldn’t call [masks] dehumanizing, but there is something definitely missing from interactions when unable to see people’s full faces. Baked in evolved stuff.

    I am surprised someone has not already come out with either 1) clear plastic + filter versions, or 2) used partial facial photos superimposed on the outer surface layer of cloth (via screen printing or whatever).

28. Someone should ask Joe if he supports “gain of function” research on animal viruses. Dr Fauci was supporting that kind of research in China. Had a liberal mocking me about that then I dropped a link on that very subject from non conservative Newsweek from earlier this spring and I have not heard back from him. https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741

29. R2L, I thought someone had done the first one. A quick search shows me some with partial windows that are being marketed as especially handy for people who spend time around the deaf. I thought I remembered seeing some that were almost entirely window, but don’t remember where and they’re probably expensive anyway. Here’s another odd-looking thing that popped up, a transparent surgical mask: https://youtu.be/Rn6BAB6umqU

30. The diameter of Covid virus is about 120 nm which is about 1/40 the diameter of a red blood cell (@5microns). It is thus going to go thru the pores of any cloth easily and probably pulp paper, but because each virion is forced to converge towards a single pore—or the lateral edge of the mask—as it gets close to these exits, it meets some viscosity and slows down, just as water slows down as it flows towards a small hole. Further, each viral particle may or may not be attached to a mucus droplet. I don’t think this stuff has been determined precisely and it probably has wide variation. If transmission is primarily from droplet nuclei, these are usually about 5-300 microns in diameter and would be stopped by the mesh of the mask. Now, however, it has been found that viral particles are sometimes free and not within droplet nuclei. But exhalation and inhalation are not symmetrical because exhalation drives the air out of small ports—the mouth and maybe nose—and so the velocity of air hitting the inside of the mask is higher because the area of impingement is smaller. The air coming in from inhalation is coming from many directions and tends to also go around the edges of the mask more. Thus the percentage of air molecules that are filtered is probably less on inhalation. But the speed of the molecules is probably higher on exhalation. All this is extremely complex especially as masks are different and how people breath is variable. But you can see that exhaled air is more thoroughly filtered…and we are treating others better than we are treating ourselves. Masks are therefore an altruistic act.

31. Dnaxy,

    Good points which back up my understanding for the reason why we’ve seen masks worn, even pre-COVID in Asian countries. That is that the sick are obliged to wear masks to help prevent spreading germs to others. Those not wearing masks are healthy; those wearing masks are ill. I suspect that it is a cultural thing that we might want to appropriate here in the U.S.

    My wife is very susceptible to picking up airborne germs spread by others, well before COVID, due to life-long asthma. In one instance she was sitting in the waiting room at her doctor’s office when an unthinking person let out a sneeze in her direction. She said she could feel droplets on her face. Three days later she was admitted to the hospital for a week-long course of intravenous steroids.

    The other side of the argument which demands all people wear masks, even the healthy, is founded on hysteria. They want us to believe that every one of us is a modern day Typhoid Mary. I don’t buy it. At this point my question is rhetorical: Why are our lives dictated by the paranoia of a few?

32. We are mostly alive here in Wisconsin. But our Governor is doing his best to kill our economy. He takes his marching orders from the DNC.

33. dnaxy, interesting comment there about the viral transport mechanism. I’m surprised, though, about the matter of viruses existing independently of a surrounding matrix in the air. I would imagine droplets would have been almost a requirement, else how is there meaningful hydration of the protein shell? Denaturation of the surface receptors, etc.

    After all, I don’t picture this type of virus as being able to encase itself in a… oh, drat, I’m suddenly forgetting the technical term for this kind of mechanism in bacteria… let’s call it a cuticle. In fact, given the nature of the viral genome and thinking that if such a cuticle were going to be possible for any virus, it would have to be provided for in the genome in advance for (re)production in all copies of the shell, I’d think that pretty much impossible; viruses can’t, it seems to me, adapt to their environment as can bacteria. I mean, sure, the protein shell might experience local chemical changes due to external bulk conditions (temperature, pH, etc.), but that would not be adaptation as generally understood, that’s just a chemical reaction.

    So I take for granted that there is always going to be some minimal hydration sphere at least, though maybe it could be pretty thin. Have there been measurements of this? I wonder what the best way to measure the thickness of a really thin hydration shell would be.

34. Hi, Brian. That’s a pity what happened to your wife getting sneezed on like that. I wonder, was it a child or adult or what? Maybe one of the simpler things society could do for situations like this pandemic would be just to train people on a few very simple public-health-relevant things, such as sneezing into elbows instead of just spraying into the open; hand-washing technique (I found the little posters at work surprisingly helpful, having really never thought about certain details before); things like that.

    The mask-wearing business… I’ve not been out and about much myself since this all began. I wear a mask out of an equal-parts mix of two motives: the one being that I think they do help in the larger picture, and the other that I would rather put people around me at ease than make folks nervous. But if I get out hiking, as I hope to before the season is over, I’ll be declining to wear one out on the trails, as it would probably impede my breathing a bit and I can’t see how having a mask will help anything in the wilderness where no one’s around and we’re outdoors anyway.

    I’ve been avoiding my local bike trail because if I’m on my bicycle for exercise, I wouldn’t wear a mask then, but I would expect to be criticized for not doing so. I’d rather wait to go bike riding until the pressure for mask-wearing in any and all situations relaxes, and have reconciled myself to missing certain opportunities to keep fit as a consequence.

35. Another name for communism…
    Scientific socialism is a term coined in 1840 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his Property is theft! to mean a society ruled by a scientific government, i.e. one whose sovereignty rests upon reason, rather than sheer will:

    Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government, — that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism.

    Later in 1880, Friedrich Engels used the term to describe Karl Marx’s social-political-economic theory.

36. Philip Sells, the unthinking person was a full-grown adult male who let out a sneeze as he walked past my wife.

    Artfldgr, an interesting point about scientific socialism. As I’ve mentioned on this forum multiple times I started life as a liberal. I had heard of scientific socialism and I remember at a young age being excited about it. I came from a long line of engineers so I thought about the power I could wield by knowing the “truth”. I would save man from himself! I’m glad I grew out of that phase but how many other people don’t?

37. Brian – the adults are the worst offenders at assault sneezing.
    Kids have taken very well to the “cough and sneeze in your elbow” gambit, of which I approve. However, we never learned that in my childhood, for whatever reason, although we did sometimes carry handkerchiefs.

38. Some people remember, or were taught about, President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address. Few probably remember and ever fewer are taught about his warning about the scientific-technological elite.

    “Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

    The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

    Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

    It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”

39. Hi Cynthia,

    I’m a bit too young to have heard Ike’s farewell address live but I’ve seen it multiple times on tape.

    I’m afraid that there isn’t much low-hanging fruit for the lone tinkerer to grasp anymore. I’m a software engineer. The field has changed dramatically in the past 20-30 years. It used to be that a person could write a useful program and make a decent side income, however, these days expectations of consumers is so high that it is nearly impossible for a lone programmer to manage. Many notable large-scale projects are open-source that rely on the contributions of dozens of engineers to bring to fruition, all working with no compensation because they love what they do. They have a day job but at night and on weekends they immerse themselves in their passion with other like-minded individuals.

40. Ooooooo – a technocracy. Just what we’ve always wanted.

41. Hey, Zaphod, I was wondering what your thoughts are on the Scientology thing in view of the catastrophic conditions in NYC. I presume business at those little thetan-scanning stations that they run outside the Port Authority and places like that is suffering a little bit right now. What do you think they should do about that? The poor things….

42. Cynthia – wow, that bit from Eisenhower is interesting. I love the fact that it’s the underrated political figures from the heartland who can figure this stuff out. I suddenly remember my copy of Jean Edward Smith’s biography of him. You’re inspiring me to get it out and re-read it – unfortunately, I was in the middle of re-reading Washington’s life last week when I spilled wine all over it – that kind of thing qualifies as a tragedy in my household. What senseless destruction!

    Therefore, I’m going to open up this book on Eisenhower in its stead. I notice that, in the brief discussion of his farewell address, the passage you cite is not presented in full, which is a disappointment.

43. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

    It isn’t difficult to avoid this prospect, it’s just that politicians build patron-client relationships with rent-seeker sectors lining up for the federal goodies.

    1. Have federal agencies conduct research in the furtherance of their institutional mission with their own employees. They can pick the brains of university-based researchers with term-limited fellowships that include an indemnity to the home institution for the loss of the faculty member’s services.

    2. Limit the erection and maintenance of federal agencies whose raison d’etre is research to data collection services like the Census Bureau, scientific sectors which require assembling a great deal of capital e.g. space exploration (NASA) or high-energy physics (the National Laboratories); scientific sectors which have to be regulated by treaty (the Office of Polar Programs); and crown jewels (the Smithsonian, the National Archives, the Library of Congress &c).

    3. Limit state agencies devoted to research to statistical collection services and crown jewels like state libraries and archives.

    4. End public subsidies to research conducted at private institutions of higher education.

    5. End state and federal appropriations for research at public institutions. Instead, incorporate at each public institution a research foundation whose endowment income would finance the research of the institution’s faculty. The foundation could receive private donations and bequests. The only public donation would be derived from episodic bond issues authorized through referenda. A statewide issue would be distributed among the state’s institutions according to a fixed formula. A county issue or multi-county issue would be distributed among institutions in these counties according to a like formula, with the responsibility for the issue distributed among the participating counties according to population.

    6. Have business corporations finance their own research with their own resources, which research would be conducted with their own employees.

    7. Philanthropic foundations would finance research through their endowment income. However, stand-alone endowments not encompassed by a brick and mortar institution at their foundation would be compelled by law to liquidate within 90 years of their foundation. Brick and mortar institutions would, after a transitional period under a self-regenerating board, would have to be placed under a board elected by stakeholders in ballots supervised by state boards of elections.

    8. Require research contracts let out by governments to business corporations, stand-alone centers, and institutions of higher education be won via sealed bids.

    9. Debar corporate philanthropy. Individual shareholders and individual employees and individual customers of said corporations can donate and bequeath. No more generosity with other people’s money.

    10. End federal scholarships to aught but a slim clientele (federal employees as part of their training, veterans, reservation Indians &c). Limit state financing of students’ tertiary education to voucher issues redeemed by a dedicated fund whose global receipts do not exceed a fixed proportions of a state’s personal income.

    Ideally, higher ed apparatchiks who show up in Congress and in state capitols to hustle bucks are told, ‘you’ve already been provided for, go away’. Even if scientific and technical research has to be undertaken in collective endeavours, you can certainly foster decentralized financing and governance.

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