A World of Tragic Buffoons

From a comment by our reader Maurice McCarthy

Dear Maurice, thank you for your excellent comment on our post Clearing the Air Around Influenza -Transmission or activation?

We are delighted you read Sir Christopher Andrewes’s book and found some explanation for what you have observed, which is similar to Dr Garvie’s, and over the years, there have been so many other similar episodes.

Outbreaks after isolation have fascinated us as without a latency hypothesis they are impossible to explain. And yet, for every activation example, we have another suggestion for person-to-person spread. 

Recently one of our readers threw us back 150 years or more suggesting a miasmatic viral cloud hanging over our heads. A return to Chadwick, Nightingale, Parkes, Snow and Max Von Pettenkopfer.

John Snow, Asiatic Cholera and the inductive-deductive method

These hypotheses are partially explanatory so they could be partly right and partly wrong.

We have summed up this weakness citing the historian Ackernecht in our

John Snow, Asiatic Cholera and the inductive-deductive method - republished

In today’s world, no one is thinking of transmission. Those who do are silenced and ignored or called names.

However, dear Maurice, you have seen how much thought has gone into the issue. How much care and humility from Andrewes, a co-discoverer of what they called the influenza virus, and could rightly pride himself on the achievement.

Our point is this: right, wrong, half right or half wrong it does not matter in science. Recognizing doubt, ignorance, and issues of uncertainty matters because they are the engines of science and discovery. The story of Eilean nan Ron is a good example.

Consider the certainty merchants, that follow the mantra of “a simple solution to a complex problem, do as I say or else” or  “I can see the future” and the comparison with Shope in his SS Bremen cabin or Andrewes producing his nasal washings to infect ferrets, or to Max Von Pettenkopfer who blew his brains out because he felt responsible of thousands of cholera deaths through his lousy advice. 

We live in, a world of buffoons: arrogant, ignorant, authoritarian and ultimately dodgers of responsibilities. The harm done by the lockups (not by the SARS-CoV-2) is enormous, not least because they will linger and are much greater than the financial damage. That is the tragedy of their buffoonery.

In the TTE office we try to steer by the stars, instead of the lights of each passing ship.

This post was written by two old geezers who are in debt to Omar Bradley for the last line.

Readings

Andrewes, C. H. (Christopher Howard). The Common Cold. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.