The Fog of War: Public-Health Scientists and the Creation of Ignorance in the COVID-19 Crisis

Description

The goal of public health is to improve “the health of populations by assuring the conditions in which people can be healthy”; public health science, consequently, aims to provide the epistemic conditions necessary to meet the practical goal. This paper argues that public health scientists have missed their epistemic aim in the COVID-19 crisis by a long shot: instead of increasing knowledge they have engaged in the creation of ignorance. To show this, I will go through three sets of data, which are uninterpretable and therefore cannot provide the basis for scientific analyses, let alone freedom-limiting policies: ‘cases’, ‘deaths’, and ‘suspected adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines’. I conclude with some proposals for resolving the crisis in the light of deep uncertainty concerning key facts.

Period	09 Sept 2021
Event title	Science, Heath, Economics and Society
Event type	Conference
Location	ItalyShow on map