11-18-2020, 08:10 AM
Atlas adheres to a very minority viewpoint. Sweden may be well respected as a country, but their response to COVID-19 was definitely not respected by most other experts. Even within their country they have a vocal group of scientists and doctors, and we're reading how they've been under attack and fired similar to what we are talking about in this thread. There are also large differences between Sweden and US including poverty level, obesity, access to medical care, and universal paid sick leave that was buttressed for COVID-19, so symptomatic would stay home. So both the morbidity/mortality and simple spread checks are different between the two countries.
Sweden does things differently than Atlas would have us do. They've always prevented mass gatherings (none over 50) while US has been holding football games with fans swarming fields. Atlas is on the air now talking about not isolating granny from Thanksgiving while Sweden banned gatherings of more than 8 people. So Atlas isn't even internally consistent since he's been saying how he wants the vulnerable protected yet has no plan of how to do so AFAIK. Despite Sweden's outsized death rate, they still are no where near herd immunity and so that aspect was a bust.
That Atlas initially held a minority viewpoint is one thing. That the paper he based his original opinions on were crap -- well that's actually an academic rigor thing. The problem is his inflexibility in re-examining his viewpoint after the accumulation of data and also taking into account what's actually happening. He should make things obvious by flying down to El Paso, stand next to the ten morgue trucks, and loudly declare that any attempt by the judge there to restrict personal freedoms is stupid.
People are fired or not renewed in academia all the time and for far less reasons. My favorite Computer Science prof at Stanford was beloved by hundreds of students (undergrads/grads) and was let go, not because he didn't do great work, but because he didn't do enough research and did too much teaching. So I'm far less sympathetic about feeling the need to protect Atlas's position given how he's actually a poor academic.
Sweden does things differently than Atlas would have us do. They've always prevented mass gatherings (none over 50) while US has been holding football games with fans swarming fields. Atlas is on the air now talking about not isolating granny from Thanksgiving while Sweden banned gatherings of more than 8 people. So Atlas isn't even internally consistent since he's been saying how he wants the vulnerable protected yet has no plan of how to do so AFAIK. Despite Sweden's outsized death rate, they still are no where near herd immunity and so that aspect was a bust.
That Atlas initially held a minority viewpoint is one thing. That the paper he based his original opinions on were crap -- well that's actually an academic rigor thing. The problem is his inflexibility in re-examining his viewpoint after the accumulation of data and also taking into account what's actually happening. He should make things obvious by flying down to El Paso, stand next to the ten morgue trucks, and loudly declare that any attempt by the judge there to restrict personal freedoms is stupid.
People are fired or not renewed in academia all the time and for far less reasons. My favorite Computer Science prof at Stanford was beloved by hundreds of students (undergrads/grads) and was let go, not because he didn't do great work, but because he didn't do enough research and did too much teaching. So I'm far less sympathetic about feeling the need to protect Atlas's position given how he's actually a poor academic.