If you were in a burning building and people yelled at you, “Get out, the building is on fire,” I assume Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan B. Peterson would call that “panicked fearmongering.”
It is the only conclusion I can draw from the ridiculous Trumpian article published under their names.
Stop the panicked fearmongering if we want to make the world better By Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan B. Peterson August 4, 2023, 6:31pm Updated
The meaningful exchange of truly diverse ideas and perspectives has withered over recent decades.
Unorthodox thinking is increasingly trashed or disregarded, even as the chattering class’s fear- and force-predicated approaches repeatedly prove inadequate to cope with the true complexities and crises of the modern world.
We need instead to foster and promote critical thinking and constructive discussion.
Here is an example of the “unorthodox thinking, ” “critical thinking,” and “constructive discussion” the authors seem to promote: Unorthodox, yes. Critical, huh? Constructive, no. Thinking. Absolutely no.
We are making every effort to ensure that our new Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an international coalition of politicians, business leaders, public intellectuals and cultural commentators, will help ensure that a broader range of perspectives can be heard globally.
It’s not the “range of perspectives” that is the problem. It’s the unscientific perspectives that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Consider the world’s response to the pandemic.
A panic-stricken lockdown orthodoxy far too soon took hold, and those whose policy proposals deviated quickly were labeled “COVID deniers.”
Governments that went the farthest were feted by public intellectuals and in newspaper opinion pages.
Thus, we saw increases of inequality in income distribution and wealth, widespread loss of employment, substantive declines in spending and general deterioration in economic conditions; serious declines in mental health and wellbeing, delayed and diminished access to healthcare, and record high levels of domestic violence.
The problems mentioned in the previous paragraph were due to people sickening and dying from COVID, not to “panicked fearmongering.”
There seems to have been insufficient “fearmongering.”
Too many people, especially Republicans, agreed with Lomborg and Peterson and did not take “orthodox” vaccine, mask, and crowd avoidance information seriously.
“Many experiments and facts have proven that masks are lifesavers for confined spaces with high population density and less ventilation.“
The education of children was particularly affected: School closures, on average, robbed children of more than seven months of education.
The huge impact on kids’ knowledge could end up costing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings, per research by the World Bank, UNESCO, and UNICEF.
Poor children, girls, and children with disabilities suffered the largest losses.
Sadly, school classrooms are the “confined spaces with high population density and less ventilation that have proved to cost lives.
The question became, Would you risk your children’s lives for seven months of education?
We need to have a serious conversation about our manner of response before the next crisis (pandemic or otherwise) to ensure that the cure is not much worse than the disease.
Consider, too, the alarmist treatment of climate change.
Campaigners and news organizations play up fear in the form of floods, storms, and droughts while neglecting to mention that reductions in poverty and increases in resiliency mean that climate-related disasters kill ever fewer people: Over the past century, such deaths have dropped 97%.
Heatwaves capture the headlines. Globally, however, cold kills nine times more people.
The higher temperatures arguably characterizing this century have resulted in 166,000 fewer temperature-related deaths.
Fear-mongering and the suppression of truly inconvenient truths are pushing us dangerously toward the wrong solutions: Politicians and pundits call en masse for net-zero policies that will cost far beyond $100 trillion while producing benefits a fraction as large.
We need to be able to have an honest discussion of costs and benefits — a true reckoning with the facts to find the best solutions.
The “honest discussion” already has been, and is being, held, and the consensus is that global warming can be an extinction event for millions of species, including ours.
The disingenuous, highly misleading comment that more people die from cold than heat does not recognize what is happening to the world.
Consider just one effect, the melting of Antarctic ice: 
The chart shows that if all the ice in the Antarctic were to melt, sea levels would rise by 187 feet (57 meters).
Do you live 187 feet above sea level?
Well, you may say not ALL the ice will melt. Maybe only 10% will melt, raising sea levels by “only” 18 feet.
Then again, we haven’t considered Arctic and Greenland ice.
Melting from the Arctic — and the Greenland ice sheet in particular — is the largest contributor to global sea level rise.
“If you look at where humanity lives, a great proportion of humanity lives at the coastlines worldwide.
“The megacities are along coastlines: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco.”
And that’s just sea-level rise. What about other problems?
The environmental conditions in the Arctic affect weather systems across the world.
The North and South poles act as the “freezers of the global system,” helping to circulate ocean waters around the planet in a way that helps to maintain the climates felt on land, Moon said.
“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.”
The jet stream, a band of strong winds moving west to the east created by cold air meeting warmer air, helps regulate global weather.
In the continental U.S., the jet stream forms where generally colder and drier Arctic air meets warmer and more humid air from the Gulf.
But as temperatures in the Arctic warm, the jet stream, fueled by the temperature differences, weakens.
Rather than a steady stream of winds, the jet stream has become more “wavy,” allowing hot temperatures to extend usually far into the Arctic and frigid temperatures further south than usual.
The variability in the climate in the Arctic, specifically the weakening of the polar vortex, keeps cold air closer to the poles,
It likely led to the Texas freeze in February that led to millions without power and hundreds of deaths.
The study cited an “increasingly frequent number of episodes of extremely cold winter weather over the past four decades” in the U.S., despite temperatures rising overall.
As though sea level rise, species extinction, and more extreme weather aren’t bad enough, we also should look at disease:
Mosquitoes and other biting insects transmit many of the most important, devastating, and neglected human infectious diseases, including malaria, dengue fever, chikungunya, and West Nile virus.
Economic development and cooler temperatures have kept mosquito-borne diseases out of wealthier Northern Hemisphere countries, but climate change promises to tip the scales in the other direction.
As temperatures rise, malaria could be coming to your neighborhood.
And then there’s food:
Recent research suggests that adverse weather has canceled up to 30% of the expected increase in European crop growth.
But it is worrying that the most pronounced changes tend to be in countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, that are at high risk of climate impacts on food availability and affordability.
This is particularly clear in the case of barley, maize, millet, pulses, rice, and wheat.
The countries most at risk of food shortages are also worst affected by rising temperatures.
This seems to bear out the finding from the world’s premier climate science advisers, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the higher average global temperatures and more extreme weather events associated with climate change will reduce the reliability of food production.
No, Messrs. Lomborg and Peterson, the warnings about COVID and global warming should not be written off as simply “panicked fearmongering.”
When you disseminate false information from such right-wing sources as Fox News, Breitbart, QAnon, Donald Trump, and the GOP, you not only stain whatever reputations you may have, but you endanger lives.
If you prefer to follow the anti-science, right-wing, unorthodox voices,, you have my permission to inject yourself with ivermectin, bleach, and hydroxychloroquine, and by all means, avoid vaccination.
But please stop writing harmful nonsense.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
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Apply your analytical skills to the climate change controversy. What if the glaciers are not melting faster, but are disintegrating more rapidly, due to the increased vibration of gravitational waves (whose job is to decompose, disintegrate, decay)? Let us suppose that the heliocentrical viewpoint is correct. Then, certainly the climate changes can and must be due to the fact that the distance Sun-Earth has changed, that is, it has decreased. As for Sars-Cov-2, it is a mycobacterium and not a virus (M. avium to be exact), the correct treatment was using antibiotics (especially clarithromycin and azithromycin) since it is a bacterial infection. The pathogenic agent comes from the atmosphere, an astrobiological source, that is why masks are useless. Let me tell you the true story behind the 1918 great pandemic. In 1910 comet Halley came very close to the Earth’s atmosphere. Then, in the autumn of 1910 (continuing to 1911) the great Manchurian plague occurred in China (the Himalayas constitute the first great obstacle for the jet stream which brought the pathogen to Earth), and the Chinese workers brought the disease to Europe (WWI). In 1915-1917, there was a worldwide “coronavirus” pandemic (actually M. avium), followed by the 1918 pandemic (M. influenzae and M. bovis or galloping tuberculosis). The catalyst was the eruption of the Katla volcano (12 October, 1918).
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Wow! In just the past two decades, gravitational waves (which make vibrations so small they require an enormous machine even to detect them), suddenly are vibrating glaciers so violently they are disintegrating.
And equally suddenly, the earth has flown toward the sun, and astronomers are not smart enough to realize this is making the earth suddenly grow hot.
And the world’s doctors are too stupid to realize COVID could have been cured with an antibiotic.
Interesting hypotheses. Now let me hypothesize that you are a Trump supporter whose favorite sources of information are QAnon and Fox. Injected any bleach lately?
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Each time you are detecting the Coriolis effect on a light interferometer you are dealing with gravitational waves. It is the gravitational waves which are being deflected, which in turn cause the light waves to exhibit a slight delay. If the heliocentrical system is true, most certainly mainstream astronomers are refusing to admit that the distance to the Sun has been modified. Doctors have been brainwashed that we are dealing with a virus, that is why practically the use of antibiotics was outlawed during the pandemic. I do not use Fox or Q, Trump (the real Trump) had disappeared from public view a long time ago, in 1989, he hasn’t been seen since.
I admire your articles which deal with monetary sovereignity.
Now, let me tell you what is going to happen next epidemiologically. Omicron, which is actually M. influenzae, had its prion domain inactivated in November 2021, and it has been regaining it ever since. The virulence of Delta was solely due to its active prion domain. Prion = beta sheet prions, in this case (there are also beneficial prions, alpha helix prions). The time interval for the pause is some 18 months: starting with September, we are going to deal with the activation of the prion domain of Omicron, mainstream epidemiologists and virologists will call it an “avian flu” pandemic, but it is not, it is still M. influenzae this time with the active prion domain. This flu in turn will become M. bovis, and if we are dealing with more pathogens with an astrobiological source, even Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) will emerge on the scene.
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And here I thought the Coriolis effect was caused by the earth’s rotation, which affects the wind and the tides, but it’s good to learn something new, actually brand new.
I’ll keep my eyes open for prions.
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The Coriolis effect can have two possible causes: either the Earth is rotating around its own axis, or it is the ether field which is rotating above the surface of a stationary Earth. The deciding factor is the Sagnac effect. Here is how it’s done:
https://www.academia.edu/94050975/New_Global_Sagnac_Effect_Formula
Coriolis effect and gravity:
Click to access THIERRYDEMEES-2012-12-30-Coriolis-Gravity-Theory.pdf
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=e092f4ed604cf4dc54e9071e94da8ac6694bd1fe
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/ab73c5/pdf
The formula which is thought to be the Sagnac effect, the one featuring the area and the angular velocity, is actually the Coriolis effect formula (the Sagnac effect is an electromagnetic effect, it displays the linear velocity):
https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/pram/087/05/0071
Prions had been discovered back in the 1930s by Wilhelm Reich, he called them T-bacilli. Beta sheet prions have a dextrorotatory form (that is, they absorb oxygen and vitality, hence the hypoxia symptoms in Covid-19 patients), while alpha helix prions are laevorotatory (they emit vitality). The original genome MN908947.3 is NOT that of Sars-Cov-2 at all: it is the genome from a sick Chinese patient, a sample was taken out of his lung and INOCULATED with Vero E6 cells (HeLa cells). HeLa cells, which had been discovered by Kurt Blome, a technology imported to the US in the 1950s, contain all imaginable pathogens and have contaminated all and each labs which deal with pathogens. Believe or not, the nCov-19 genome features sequences from M. bovis, M. tuberculosis, Nipah virus, B. anthracis, M. leprae, malaria parasites, and dozens of other pathogens.
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A perfect mishmash of incongruous buzzwords from physics and biology, that together are supposed to convey deep knowledge, but in fact, mean nothing. In one sense humorous, but not really funny. For example, Vero E6 are not HeLa, but the words lend false credence to utter nonsense.
I love this one: “Coriolis effect formula (the Sagnac effect is an electromagnetic effect, it displays the linear velocity).” Could you slip quantum chromodynamics into the mix?
And as for the “ether field” rotating about a stationary earth, puleeeeeze.
May the force be with you. No need to write further.
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I have to say, while I loathe Trump and strongly dislike Peterson, I nonetheless respectfully disagree with you in regards to Covid. The lockdowns were worse than useless and did fat more harm than good in the long run. Ditto for school closures as well. All pain and no gain, basically.
As for masks, the 2023 Cochrane Review (which was the updated version of the 2020 review), that was basically the final nail in the coffin. If masks don’t work in the real world, then they really don’t work, period.
I remember when you first promoted masks as a safe pathway out of lockdown in April 2020, and I agreed with you at the time. I believe you did so in good faith. But since then, it has become obvious that it was all a pipe dream at best.
And that’s *before* we even get into the vaccines issue, particularly the mRNA jabs. Let’s just say that the whole official narrative has since collapsed faster than formerly healthy young athletes on the field after being injected.
Sweden’s relatively low rate of cumulative all-cause excess deaths for the past 3+ years shows that they had the right idea all along. Their excess deaths were relatively high in the beginning, but in the long run they still ended up better than the European average and eventually even most of their vaunted Nordic neighbors. And even Australia and NZ ended up with worse excess deaths too eventually, albeit taking longer. I think Stockholm Syndrome should really be called Melbourne Syndrome, because #SwedenGotItRight.
Yes, the virus was bad, but really no more so than a “super flu” by itself. It was the iatrogenic response to it that killed more people than the virus itself. And while the use of ventilators and the censorship of HCQ and IVM undoubtedly killed lots of people, more fundamentally deadly than that was the withholding of antibiotics in cases of pneumonia when patients tested positive for Covid, the opposite of the pre-2020 standard of care. Also, a little-known Bangladesh study found that just three nutrients (Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc) in sufficient quantities would have been enough to reduce both case and death rates to below-pandemic levels.
And finally, as for climate change, it is a truly serious problem that needs to be solved, and I absolutely cannot stand the deniosaurs, as I like to call them. But unless we refute the pro-lockdown propaganda in regards to Covid, then far worse “climate lockdowns” will be on the agenda in the near future if the the Davos Gang gets their way.
Leftists in 2019: The world is overpopulated! We need a plague to reduce the excess population.
Leftists in 2020-2021: OMG it’s a plague! Shut everything down and put on your mask indefinitely! If it saves even one life, it’s worth it! Mask up, granny killer! And reopening is racist and eugenicist! (Or something.)
Leftists in 2022: (switches jerseys) Ummm….can we please have a “pandemic amnesty” for what we did? Both sides made mistakes, let’s just forgive and forget, shall we?
Leftists in 2023: OMG climate change is the new Covid! (But don’t even mention overpopulation, because that’s racist!)
Leftists likely in 2024: OMG we need a climate lockdown to flatten the climate curve! (But don’t you DARE touch my private jets, as I need them to fly to Davos.)
And by “leftists” here, I mean the neoliberal pseudo-left for the most part.
I still consider myself to be on the left, but as you can see I have become increasingly “politically homeless”
(Mic drop)
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Feel free to tell your surgeon he and his assistants do not need to wear masks during your next surgery. I’m not sure what a “super flu is. Is it a flu that kills 1,200,000 Americans and 7,000,000 world wide?
That compares to about 20,000 Americans dying from the flu. Sounds pretty “super.”
And feel free to send your child to a crowded schoolroom during the next COVID outbreak. They will join all the dumb Trumpers killed by COVID at Trump rallies.
I’m not sure what you are recommending. No masks and mingle with crowds the next time we have a contagious disease 50 times more deadly than the flu?
By the way, the COVID mask/avoid crowds precautions helped to dramatically reduce the incidence of flu.
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“Super flu” = on par with the 1957-1958 Asian Flu, the 1968-1969 Hong Kong Flu (during which we had Woodstock and put a man on the moon), the 1977 Russian Flu, or the 1993 Beijing Flu.
In any case, the data speak for themselves. And those high excess death tolls were mostly iatrogenic, as was also the case in 1918 as well.
According to Dr. John Ioannidis’s groundbreaking studies, the IFR of Covid is NOT 50 times deadlier than then flu, rather at worst two to three times worse than average, and still within the range. And with a very steep age gradient. Most cases had few or no symptoms and thus went undetected, hence the true denominator is much larger than for the naive CFR.
As for reducing the incidence of the flu, the pandemic countermeasures (though probably not the masks specifically) did temporarily reduce the global circulation of viruses, but by doing so it reduced the endemic viruses (like flu and rhino) that would have helped keep Covid at bay via “viral interference”. Instead, it drove the competition to temporary local extinction, letting the more contagious and virulent Covid spread more widely, and even selected for more contagious and nastier strains, which is literally the opposite of victory.
What would I recommend next time, in retrospect? 1) No lockdowns, or mask mandates. 2) Keep schools and businesses open. 3) Early treatment and prophylaxis, and plenty of vitamins. 4) Basic flu season type advice and use common sense. Wash hands, cover coughs and sneezes, stay home if sick. Vulnerable people should avoid crowds. 5) Better ventilation.
(Mic drop)
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Iatronic? Really? So the moral was, don’t go to the doctor?
“Wash hands”: Does nothing for COVID
“Cover coughs and sneezes”: An elbow is better than a mask??
Stay home and avoid crowds: Like avoiding crowded school rooms??
Better ventilation: How?
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(Comment thread above was getting too long and thin)
“Iatronic? Really? So the moral was, don’t go to the doctor?”
No, the moral is that doctors should have used early treatment and prophylaxis instead of censoring it, telling people to take Tylenol and stay home until they are literally choking, treating them far too late at the hospital and putting them on the ventilator of doom. And don’t even get me started about midazolam!
“Wash hands”: Does nothing for COVID”
Oh really? Works about as well as it does for cold and flu viruses, which is to say not very. But it’s better than nothing, and best of all, it’s low-hanging fruit.
“Cover coughs and sneezes”: “An elbow is better than a mask?”
Given how worse than useless masks are, YES. Though again, it’s a pitifully low bar to clear.
Stay home and avoid crowds: Like avoiding crowded school rooms??
Stay home if SICK, I meant. You know, common sense.
Schools were never really the problem, and kids were at very low risk overall. We knew early on who the high risk groups were (elderly, immunocompromised, and those with underlying conditions), but foolishly pretended that everyone was at equal risk. And in any case, temporarily staggered schedules and cohorting could help reduce overcrowding in classrooms without actually closing schools. Try again.
“Better ventilation: How?”
Opening the damn windows, for starters. Both in schools and elsewhere as well. Especially since the first wave happened in the spring and early summer when the weather was largely conducive to opening windows. And maybe using even a smidgeon of that massive freshly printed federal largesse for ventilation system upgrades while we’re at it, instead of using it as a slush fund for overpaid bureaucrats. But that would have made too much sense, of course.
In any case, there are no perfect solutions, only tradeoffs. But some tradeoffs are far, far worse than others.
(Mic drop)
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Is “better than nothing” tantamount to “do nothing”? As for waiting until you’re sick, COVID already has made several days’ progress before people know they have it. Many died in the emergency room with hours-old symptoms. You know about “an ounce of prevention” being better than a pound of cure. The masks and school closings were an ounce of prevention at a time when no one really knew what was best for saving lives..
Closing schools may or may not have been a mistake. But it was an err to the safe side. Death is not a do-over mistake.
The “slush fund for bureaucrats” is the common, all-purpose complaint about all government spending. COVID spending was no different from every other government program.
By the way, I hope you don’t have COVID making your hands shake. You keep dropping your mic. Be well. 🙂
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As for masks during surgery, that is to stop them from sneezing or dribbling right into the open wound (and even then they don’t work very well), not to stop airborne virus particles. Apples, meet oranges. Aerosols go right through and/or around those leaky devices.
Surgical, cloth, or “paper” plastic masks are to viruses as chain link fences are to mosquitoes.
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Ajax, kindly do not sneeze or dribble your droplets containing the COVID virus into my open nose and mouth. Thank you. 🙂
Why do you think the incidence of flu went down during the COVID lockdowns?
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Influenza’s R0 number is 1.1 to 1.3, as it is endemic, while the more novel Covid’s was between 2 and 3 for the Wuhan strain. So it didn’t take much to force flu below 1.0, while Covidstill remained high. In any case, thatbwas the opposite of victory.
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Common knowledge has it that the actions taken to prevent COVID prevented flu. If I read you correctly, you claim that COVID itself competed with flu, thus helping defeat flu. Is that your thought?
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“Common knowledge has it that the actions taken to prevent COVID prevented flu. If I read you correctly, you claim that COVID itself competed with flu, thus helping defeat flu. Is that your thought?”
Yes, it’s called viral interference, a well-known concept in virology. First of all, most viruses are too selfish to share the same cells at the same time with other viruses. Secondly, when one virus primes the innate immune system to be keyed up for action, it will then be ready fight the “next contestant” that much more.
According to Rintrah Radagast, studies have shown that viral interference actually favors flu and rhinovirus over Covid, not the other way around. But with a little help from lockdowns and antisocial distancing and travel restrictions, the less contagious endemic viruses were driven to local extinction while Covid was given far more of an advantage than it deserved,.so the balance of power reversed and Covid won the competition. And that spilled over to non lockdown countries as well. If no countries did such things, flu and rhino may have actually won out against Covid despite their endemicity.
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I love the theories, theories. Then there’s the guy who says we can kill COVID by giving everyone malaria. Really. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wta9YscrG6c&t=38s. Another guy wants to give everyone preventative radiation therapy. Gotta love it.
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Straw man much? LOL
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What we really DON’T want to see, and likely to do more harm than good:
https://www.greenmatters.com/weather-and-global-warming/climate-lockdowns#:~:text=When%20the%20pandemic%20first%20started,increasing%20at%20an%20intense%20rate.
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We all know what the road to hell is paved with:
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/08/06/ethical-failures-of-the-covid-19-era/
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The article says: Stronger interventions… are associated with suppression of the infection such that a second wave is observed once the interventions are lifted.”
(Or the Trumpian anti-vaxers can wise up and get vaccinated, in which case many lives would have been saved by suppression of the infection.+
When the interventions are lifted, there is still a large population who are susceptible and a substantial number of people who are infected. This then leads to a second wave of infections that can result in more deaths, but later.
(Or the Trump dummies can avoid crowds, wear masks, and get vaccinated so that the red states don’t have more deaths per capita than the blue states.)
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Did you read the rest of the article for context thought? The best such things do is delay the inevitable. Forest, meet trees.
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Has it occurred to you that even just delaying the disease gives more people time to do the right things and more doctors time to learn the right things? When it comes to disease, even just delay can save lives or at least extend lives, which is all we ever can pray for.
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