This is a moment to celebrate. It is not quite the pandemic’s equivalent of V-E Day; after all, thousands of people are still dying around the world each day from a virus that, far from surrendering, may be endemic. But it could be the closest we get to a formal announcement from the federal government that, after months of death and sacrifice and ingenuity, something has been won. Call it normalcy.
I celebrate as well, but for perhaps different reasons. I suppose this is my personal Confirmation Bias, everyone suffers from Confirmation Bias by the way; they typically do not expect it in themselves. I digress, my celebration is the observation of statements like this that are the Masturbatory Self-Congratulations I expected to see from a certain set of individuals once the "CornHoleEbola Crisis" had reached its end.
From an experimental scientific perspective, the Social Experiment of the response lacked a significant "Control Group," what Scandihoovian was it that did not really engage in a "Lockdown," Sweden (fuck the Swedes)? And as far as I can tell, with my limited grasp of the maths, the difference between their outcome and the rest of the world on Case Fatality Rates &c was Statistically Insignificant.
This begs the question, in my mind anyway, would the outcome for the rest of the world have been the same/similar to Sweden's? We cannot know, the Social Experiment wasn't run that way. All we know is that the whole world (hyperbole there, apogees) did what they did and now the thing approaches its conclusion (seemingly).
If Sweeeden was the "placebo" control group, and the rest of the world the test of the Hypothesis and the Net result of both is statistically the same we have no way of really knowing that the Rest Of The World was also a "placebo" group. I.E. the mask is a great exercise in caution, as was Social Distancing &c but functionally might have just been a "placebo" as far as prophylactic measure.
Personally, I would not celebrate "too hard" based on the possibility that I might have just been wearing a funny pointed hat with the word "DUNCE" spelled out vertically upon it.
Which for all we know would have been just as effective at preventing the spread of this disease as a mask, social distancing &c.
I do not judge, I just note that among sets of people that suffer from the ubiquitous condition known as "Confirmation Bias" (myself included) there is a religious intensity associated with the individual sets of Belief about this all that is at minimum grounded on some VERY shaky "Science."
That is all, Carrie Anne
