Jeffrey D. Sachs was on the Lancet Commission for Covid-19. He is an economics professor at Columbia and is Director of the the Center for Sustainable Development, so not likely to be a conservative attack dog. He is very careful to stay in his lane and not (quite) comment on whether a lab leak was possible, even though he has been on previous epidemic commissions as well. Yet he feels he is very much in his lane to point out the evasiveness and dishonesty of the commission and other major players, as he had a front row seat. He notes the evidence that the Wuhan knew something was up and the Chinese government imposed silence as early as September 2019, and Western authorities, including American, were also hushing up those parts. He repeatedly notes that authorities kept doubling down when they should have been allowing more discussion. Physicist Steve Hsu, also no conservative shill, interviews him at Manifold. Transcript at the link. I was no better at prediction than anyone else in these matters, but will note that my belief that an earlier version of the virus escaped and gives us false positive readings outside of China remains in play even after listening to this account.
Sachs goes on to relate this to secrecy in general in American government and how long this has been going on for things powerful agencies (more than the politicians, who are often just going along on their best guesses) believe would be dangerous for the public to know. He does not comment further on other Covid controversies, though he does hint just a bit.
I think I first heard Richard Hanania interviewed by Razib (might've been Tyler) and didn't like him much, thinking that he was making some of the usual cultural assumptions about conservatives that come close to being disqualifying for me. But I have very much come around on him in subsequent hearings and interviews. There are still liberals out there that I like. He is the director of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, which he started because he wanted to get out of academia despite being there for years, needing more ideological freedom. If you like that sort of thing his credentials are top shelf. He mentioned research done by Philippe Lemoine which appeared in the Wall Street Journal, on Covid responses by governments, with particular focus on the statistical analysis. Lemoine, similar to Sachs, above, takes what I believe is a very proper scientifically cautious attitude about what he reports, being very careful to stay in his lane and note at every turn the limitations of what his data is saying. Yet that eventually becomes his major point, that governments and their agencies (he focuses on UK, France, US, Sweden) were not properly cautious and pretended to a level of certainty that was impossible. He was interviewed by Institutionalized podcast (Manhattan Institute editor and Free Beacon writer are the principals there) and is sometimes so set on pointing out the limitations of studies that it gets frustrating. But I'd rather have that.
To give you just a few of his points, he notes the strong nature/nurture comparison influencing what type of responses both individuals and governments preferred. Those who felt there wasn't much that could be done, the virus would spread anyway favored behavior that matched that; those who thought managing was possible heavily favored managing. But both were right, both were wrong, yet everyone was quite certain about their conclusions - and he relates this back to their original assumptions. In measuring how well a restriction or a relaxing of restriction worked, the voluntary behavior of the public immediately changes the picture. When deaths rise people restrict themselves, regardless of what the mandates are. Yet they also quickly return to cultural norms, even if the data does not support it. They will only temporarily restrict. Then the nations or cultures with high interpersonal contact will return to that, and you will not see much difference across borders, even when the borders are closed and the mandates different. I felt vindicated by this, having previously noted that the areas of Canada below the 47th parallel were not that different from the places across the closed US border (there were exceptions), and neighboring European countries would have similar statistics, including that the extremely low-contact Scandinavians had better numbers, while Mediterranean countries would inch bak up even after restriction. People go back to life as usual.
He also spent a good deal of time talking about how researchers have to make choices repeatedly in what they are going to call similar mandates or legislation versus different. Are they going to make three categories or four? Are they going to call this level of closings the same or separate them? We see the same in comparing state and national gun regulation. John McWhorter jokes accurately that you can enter any cocktail conversation by listening for a few minutes and then asking "But where do we draw the line?" because that's what discussion is usually about, at least superficially.
I will note that I did not agree with Sachs or Lemoine or the interviewers entirely, but mostly thought they were very solid.
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