About COVID vaccinations, everyone should be "following the science" and not political opinion. Is this really a true statement and what science are we talking about?

True science uses the scientific method which proposes a hypothesis, principle, or assumption. Then science proceeds with experimentation. Then science sometimes yields repeatable identical results to prove the hypothesis is true. This is followed up with a rigorous mathematical equation or a known proven chemical product for experimental chemical reactions which is what vaccine development science is all about. Science proves clear cause-effect relationships between variables or factors.

What pseudo-science is is statistics or percentages which show the probability or odds of results based on initial conditions or factors which may or may not be related to the final results or conclusions. Statistics and probabilities really do not experimentally prove any cause-effect relationships between the variables or factors being assumed to be related. A perfect example is voter polling statistics which depends largely on who is selected for the test sample and in what format the questions are asked. The predicted voting results vs the actual voting results can be off by as much as 10% or more if the voter polling is intentionally biased to begin with.

Statistics is really just collecting data or information without experimentation and coming up with conclusions about what the collected data often subjectively means or implies. You may randomly select a test sample of 100 students from your community and find that not one has contracted COVID. Based on this relatively small test sample you may erroneously conclude that all students in your state or even all the country have not contracted COVID, which would be a false conclusion. Inadequate or erroneous test sampling is just one of the many major drawbacks of statistical analysis.

Even worse is to make assumptions and conclusions without any experimental evidence, especially with humans who can’t easily be experimented with under controlled laboratory conditions. Human variables or factors are extremely complex since humans are widely different physically and biologically, have different diets and lifestyles, live under a wide variety of conditions, and there are so many humans numerically speaking. All these and other almost never ending human factors can potentially alter any statistical analysis of the population in general and lead to faulty statistical conclusions often expressed as percentages.

Here is a typical statement about covid with no clear cause-effect or any experimental evidence: “Percentage wise slightly more obese humans die of COVID than humans who are not obese, especially the morbidly obese.” One may erroneously conclude from this that being obese is a direct cause of covid death which it is not. A vast majority of obese individuals do not die of covid so one can realistically ask whether diet, lack of exercise, medications, lifestyle, metabolism, etc. is really a contributary cause of increased deaths or mortality from covid for everyone including the obese.

No experiment has been performed and no data has been collected to test for differences in diet, lack of exercise, medications taken by the obese such as diet pills, lifestyle, metabolism, etc. so there are no verified results to show all the true probable but unproven causes of COVID deaths. Or is the real reason that obese humans die slightly more from covid because some obese are slightly more unhealthy than the rest of the population?

This is a sample hypothesis – “All students must wear masks in class because all students are potential spreaders of COVID.” If this is a mandate then it hasn’t been proven scientifically with experimentation and proven results. No experiment has been conducted to show that mask wearing will significantly impact the spread of covid in the classroom. No student sample size anywhere was selected for the non existent experiment. The masks worn by students are not standardized so no one really knows which masks are more effective percentage wise. Some students breathe out more COVID viruses than others. The spread results for COVID may be different if only one student is a carrier or if more than one student is a carrier in the classroom.

As you can see there is no experimental evidence or proof to answer any of the effects of these contributing factors so the mask mandate is unproven to be scientifically effective. Wild seat of the pants guessing, ball park assumptions, and political grandstanding is what supposedly passes for COVID mask “science” these days.

Statistics are not true science at work and merely percentage assumptions about likely outcomes given some initial often poorly defined conditions. One size fits all is a faulty assumption for COVID vaccine mandates since some have survived a COVID infection and have natural immunity, some are immunocompromised, others are too young for safe vaccination, others have religious objections, and still others simply don’t trust the medical companies to develop safe vaccines with long duration healthiness.

Experimentation takes time for human related problems and it will take much research for many years to gain a true understanding of how effective COVID vaccines are, how healthy COVID vaccines are, and what realistic workable measures should be taken to mitigate a covid outbreak. The statistical information backed by experiment for all these questions is just not presently available.

No scientific experiment was performed to test the difference in the spread of covid indoors vs outdoors. No experiment was performed to test the efficacy of spread prevention among the hundreds of different mask materials. No experiment was performed to prove what distancing rule works and where it works. No experiment was conducted to compare the COVID spread of carriers of COVID vs. COVID-infected individuals. No experiment was conducted comparing the efficacy of one vaccine type vs another type of vaccine. No experiment has been conducted to show the long range bad side effects of a COVID vaccine. No experiment has been conducted to show how long COVID vaccines last. No experiment is possible to show the actual death rate from COVID since many deaths were recorded as COVID but had other illness causes. In effect, none of the COVID anti-measures have been scientifically investigated and proven and no statistical samples have been analyzed so there is no real science to follow at the present time.

Follow the science? There is no COVID science to follow unless it is the result of a scientific experiment with proven results gotten by using the scientific method!

*I conclude this article with a bonus for those who like and perhaps know some science. COVID mitigation, psychology, political science, and social science are really not sciences at all since they do not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly or accurately defined.

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