The Covid-19 Infodemic: Manufacturing Precision

A recent article in Washington Times states:

“In fact, COVID-19 will go down as one of the political world’s biggest, most shamefully overblown, overhyped, overly and irrationally inflated and outright deceptively flawed responses to a health matter in American history…”

We are infected, but infected with fear. Thanks to the corrupt mainstream media, that have been brazenly spreading this sinister covid-19 nonsense, our governments have created panic, destroyed millions of jobs, ruined millions of small and medium enterprises and established a very dangerous precedent. They have shown us how little it takes to put hundreds of millions of citizens under house arrests or how to track, with impunity, their movements via smartphones. They have shown us how little it takes to lead to the dissolution of the mind and mental surrender, exploiting the immense reservoir of credulity of the unsophisticated public. Only great civilizations can afford decadence. But collective irrational behavior is only possible in a gullible and intellectually bankrupt society. You can be great and be decadent but our civilization is certainly decadent and definitely not great.

Whatever one may think of this ignoble covid-19-induced crisis, the situation that has emerged is indubitably one of immense complexity. The entire global economy is being seriously affected, hundreds of millions of people are going to suffer consequences, geopolitical equilibria are being disrupted. The European Union is facing serious fractures at its very foundations. Irrespective of how this charade started, the crisis that it has originated is multifaceted and hugely complex and resembles an almost theocratic encroachment on society.

The state, in its apparent thirst for danger, and our politicians exigent for uncritical praise, have, however, made a fatal mistake, which exposes the masquarade. Any fair minded person will recognize how overly articulate and melodramatically precise has the response to the crisis been. We can travel, but only within well specified distances. Children can play in parks but must be accompanied by well defined numbers of adults, of rigid age ranges, and only withing certain hours of the day. People, of specific age, may leave their homes but must comply with precisely defined hours of the day. They must maintain a well calculated and specific distance from each other. We must wear masks but only of a very specific type. Everything we can and cannot do is specified with scientific precision and rigid well defined rules. It all seems to come out of a set of equations. In certain cities in Italy when you go out for a stroll you must stay within 200 meters of your home, while in other cities within 500 (by the way, how do you calculate that?). In other words, our governments, in an attempt to appear credible, competent and in control, have fabricated a precise response to a highly imprecise problem. The response is in fact so precise as if the covid-19 were a recurring issue, which has manifested itself for decades and which recrudesces with clockwork precision, making it possible for scientists to accumulate extensive experience on the subject and for governments to deploy a precise response.

Manufacturing precision where there isn’t any is precisely what exposes the deception

In a misguided attempt to appear competent, the unsophisticated amateurs who engineered this pantomime have fallen into the trap of the Principle of Incompatibility. The Principle postulates that:

high precision is incompatible with high complexity

In other words, if something is highly complex like, say, society, politics, climate, economy, human nature, or the covid-19-induced crisis, it will not be precise and talking of it in precise terms is preposterous. Another way to express this principle is this:

in higly complex situations, precise statements are irrelevant and relevant statements are imprecise

Example of an irrelevant precise statement: by 2050 the ocean levels will rise by 1.24 feet

Example of relevant imprecise statement: tomorrow it will probably rain.

In different circumstances Nature allows only that much precision – it is not something that can be decided arbitrarily by an observer. At particle level it is the Heisenberg Principle of Indeterminacy, at our macro level, the Principle of Incompatibility bears a similar message.

So, our governments have first created a hugely complex, naturally imprecise problem and then crafted a highly precise and articulated strategy to solve it. Suppose you have a math model that crunches input data which is precise to the first decimal, but the output it produces is precise to the sixth decimal. Where did the additional 5 digits come from? How has the increment in precision been created? It can only have been manufactured. Intentionally. Only a process of premeditated manipulation can produce additional precision out of thin air. It is somewhat similar to creative fiddling with Balance Sheets. The response to the crisis that the state has forced upon societies is possible only thanks to ingenious accounting, deliberate warping and manipulation of conveniently imprecise data. To what end will become apparent further down the road. The immediate results are, however, already palpable: suspended democracy and reduced personal freedoms. It won’t be easy to get them back.

The Principle of Incompatibility tells us that in a complex scenario it is impossible to make predictions. Only rough estimates can be attempted. It is also impossible to isolate “the cause” as everything is linked to everything else and there is no single cause. And yet, we’re already being told of a potential second wave. Certainly, thanks to some very precise mathematical models and simulations. It appears that not only the media are corrupt. The machination of fear and paranoia is only possible with the connivance of certain progressive scientists.

It appears that in Italy, the country which has imposed upon itself the most severe and suicidal of lockdowns, there were (March 27-th, 2020) 11.2 million infected individuals (source). Of the 29000 reported deaths until the time of writing (May 6-th, 2020) according to the Italian Health Institute (ISS), 96% are elderly citizens with an average of 2.7 chronic diseases. This leaves a total of 1160 deaths due to the virus itself, and a Case Fatality Rate of 1160 divided by 11.2 million.

One man with courage is a majority  – Thomas Jefferson