What “The Science” Really Says about the Coronavirus Pandemic

The answer is not much – at least, not yet.

While advocates of lockdowns and masking mandates claim to be invoking “the science,” science by its very nature can’t provide short-term answers to the efficacy of such measures. The scientific method demands extensive data gathering and testing, which generally take longer than the duration of a pandemic. An abundance of scientific evidence does exist for the effectiveness of vaccination, but whether vaccines can completely eradicate the coronavirus is an open question. Social distancing as a preventive measure is also on firm scientific ground.

Lockdowns have been used for centuries as a way to slow the spread of disease, including the Black Death plague in the 14th century and the Spanish Flu in 1918-1919. But all they do is initially reduce transmission of the virus, and to claim otherwise is scientifically disingenuous.

The primary purpose of slowing down the spread of a contagious and deadly disease is to prevent the healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed. If more people get sick enough to require hospitalization than the number of hospital beds available, some won’t get adequate treatment and deaths will increase. However, lockdowns also have a devastating effect on a society’s economic and mental health. Studies have shown that negative socioeconomic impacts greatly limit the effectiveness of lockdowns over time.

In some countries such as Taiwan and Australia, death rates from COVID-19 are very low so far after repeated lockdowns, causing lockdown supporters to link the two. But other nations with small populations such as Israel have much higher mortality rates despite continued shutdowns. So there’s no correlation and, in fact, many other factors influence the death rate.  

The science behind masking, shown below in use during the Spanish Flu pandemic, is muddier yet and has been badly contaminated by politics. Unfortunately, the gold standard in medical testing – the RCT (randomized controlled trial) – isn’t the basis for evaluating the benefit of mask-wearing by institutions like the U.S. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) or the WHO (World Health Organization).

In an RCT or clinical trial, participants are divided randomly into two identical groups, with intervention in only one group and the other group used as a control. Neither the researchers nor the participants are told which group the participants are part of until the very end. Such double-blind trials are therefore able to establish causation.

For masks, just 14 RCTs have been carried out across the world to study how well masks guard against respiratory diseases, primarily influenza. Nearly all the trials tested so-called surgical, three-ply paper masks, rather than the N95 respirator style. Of the 14 trials, just two investigated the claim that wearing a mask benefits others who come in close contact with the mask wearer, while the other 12 tested the combination of benefit to others and protection for the wearer.

A recent analysis by a prominent statistician of all 14 RCTs, which include the only trial to test mask-wearing’s specific effectiveness against COVID-19, reveals that masks have no significant effect on either the wearer or those in close proximity, although some trials were ambiguous. There was no strong evidence that N95 masks performed any better than surgical or cloth masks. Exactly the same conclusions were reached in two independent analyses of 13 (see here) and 11 (here) of the same RCTs.

The CDC, however, relies on observational studies conducted since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, not RCTs, in issuing its masking guidance. An observational study is less scientific in being unable to assign a cause to an effect; it can only establish association.

Vaccination against infectious diseases, on the other hand, has a solid scientific basis. Pioneered by Edward Jenner at the end of the 18th century, vaccination has eradicated killer diseases such as smallpox and polio in many countries, and drastically curtailed others such as measles, mumps and pertussis (whooping cough).

Nevertheless, the science underlying vaccination against COVID-19 is incomplete. In the past it’s taken several years to develop a new vaccine, but the COVID-19 vaccines currently available were brought to market at lightning speed. Although such haste was seen as necessary to combat a rapidly proliferating virus, it meant shortening the RCTs designed to test vaccine efficacy, leaving questions such as long-term side effects and duration of effectiveness unresolved.

And barely understood yet is the greater protection against infection acquired though natural immunity – the result of having recovered from a previous COVID-19 infection – than from vaccination. This complicates calls for vaccine mandates, as those with natural immunity arguably don’t need to be vaccinated.

Moreover, the coronavirus is an RNA virus like influenza and so frequently mutates. This means that mandatory vaccination for the coronavirus is unlikely to be any more effective community-wide than a mandated flu vaccine would be. Regular COVID-19 booster shots will probably be needed, just like the flu.

That’s where science stands on the coronavirus. But rather than following the science, most decisions on lockdowns, masking and vaccination are ruled by politics.

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Weather Extremes: Hurricanes and Tornadoes Likely to Diminish in 2021

Despite the brouhaha over the recent record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific northwest and disastrous floods in Europe and China, windy weather extremes – hurricanes and tornadoes – are attracting little media attention because they’re both on track for a relatively quiet season.

Scientists at the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA (the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) don’t anticipate that 2021 will see the record-breaking 30 named storms of 2020, even though they think the total may still be above average. However, of last year’s 30 storms, only 13 became actual hurricanes, including 6 major hurricanes. The record annual highs are 15 hurricanes recorded in 2005 and 8 major hurricanes in 1950.

Hurricanes are classified by their sustained wind speeds on the Saffir-Simpson scale, ranging from Category 1, the weakest, to Category 5, the strongest. A major hurricane is defined as one in Category 3, 4 or 5, corresponding to a top wind speed of 178 km per hour (111 mph) or greater. NOAA predicts just 6 to 10 hurricanes this year, with 3 to 5 of those being in the major hurricane categories.

Hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, which has the best quality data available in the world, do show heightened ac­tivity over the last 20 years, particularly in 2005 and 2020. This can be seen in the figure below, depicting the frequency of all Atlantic hurricanes from 1851 to 2020. But researchers have found that the apparent increase in recent times is not related to global warming.

Rather, say the scientists who work at NOAA and several universities, the increase reflects natural variability. Although enhanced evaporation from warming oceans pro­vides more fuel for hurricanes, recent numbers have been artificially boosted by a big improvement in our ability to detect hurricanes, especially since the advent of satellite coverage in the late 1960s. And global warming can’t be the explanation, as the earth was cooling during the previous period of increased activity in the 1950s and 1960s.

Prior to that time, most data on hurricane frequency were based on eyewitness accounts, thus excluding all the hurricanes that never made landfall. What the researchers did was examine the eyewitness records, preserved by NOAA workers, in order to calculate the ratio of Atlantic hurricanes that didn’t come ashore to those that did, both in the modern era and in the past. The observations of non-landfalling hurricanes before the early 1970s came primarily from ships at sea.

Then, using a model for the radius of hurricane or major hurricane winds, the researchers were able to estimate the number of hurricanes or major hurricanes going back to 1860 that were never recorded. Their analysis revealed that the recent hike in the hurricane count is nothing remarkable, being comparable to earlier surges in the early 1880s and late 1940s. In the U.S., the past decade was in fact the second quietest for landfalling hurricanes and landfalling major hurricanes since the 1850s. Hurricane Ida was the first major U.S. landfalling hurricane this year.

Tornadoes, which occur predominantly in the U.S., have been less violent and fewer in number than average so far in 2021. Like hurricanes, tornadoes are categorized according to wind speed, using the Fujita Scale going from EF0 to EF5; EF5 tornadoes attain wind speeds up to 480 km per hour (300 mph).

Up to the end of August, 958 tornadoes had been reported by NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in 2021 – of which 740 had been confirmed, according to Wikipedia. These numbers can be compared with the January to August average of 1035 confirmed tornadoes; the yearly average is 1253.

The annual incidence of all tornadoes in the U.S. shows no meaningful trend from 1950 to 2020, a period that included both warming and cooling spells, with net global warming of approximately 1.1 degrees Celsius (2.0 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time. But the number of strong tornadoes (EF3 or greater) has declined dramatically over the last half century, as seen in the next figure illustrating the number observed each year from 1954 to 2017.

Clearly, the trend is downward instead of upward. Indeed, the average number of strong tornadoes annually from 1986 to 2017 was 40% less than from 1954 to 1985. In May this year, there wasn’t a single strong tornado for the first time since record-keeping began in 1950. Although there’s debate over whether the current system for rating tornadoes is flawed, 2021 looks like being another quiet year.

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