Fisman et al.’s recent paper is scientifically flawed, but one does not need to be a scientist to hear the alarm bells.

To prevent a slide into totalitarianism, scientists must work for the truth, not for dominance.

Some cultures have folk tales about a battle for dominance between winter and spring.  In those stories, it is time for winter to make way for spring as the cycle of the year progresses—but winter refuses to give up its icy grip over nature.  The war between winter and spring goes on well into what should have been a warmer time, depriving human beings and animals of their hard-earned “natural right” to enjoy the pleasures of melting snow, blooming flowers and sunshine. 

At a time when the COVID narrative is crumbling and should make way for a renaissance of truth seeking, Fisman et al. published the following paper, which persists in blaming “non-vaccinated” individuals for spreading disease, even though we know that vaccination does not stop transmission and that for most people COVID is not a severe health risk: “Impact of population mixing between vaccinated and unvaccinated subpopulations on infectious disease dynamics: implications for SARS-CoV-2 transmission.” 

https://www.cmaj.ca/content/194/16/E573

Through conversation with people who understand empirical and statistical research much better than I do, I have heard that Fisman et al.’s paper is scientifically flawed for reasons that I have listed at the end of this commentary, and which have also been written about by others.

But the point that I would like to make in this brief commentary is that Fisman et al.’s article should also be looked at from a cultural/historical and moral perspective that focuses on the potential harm inherent in concepts such as “population mixing” and “subpopulations”—whatever the scientific rationalizations for discouraging “population mixing” and pitting “subpopulations” against one another terms might be.

On Passover, people who celebrate the Seder are asked to imagine themselves as if they were slaves in Egypt.  The Holocaust (Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel was on April 28) creates a similar imperative.  Every person must ask themselves how they in their own peaceful way can reject the ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour that facilitated the rise of Nazism.

For scientists, struggling against the slavery of totalitarianism means ensuring that they work for truth-seeking, not for dominance.

If you were a non-Jewish scientist living in Nazi Germany, what would you do when your respected colleagues published materials that argued that Jews were responsible for the spread of typhus and other germs? How would you go about critiquing their papers and other materials?  Are there any critical-thinking skills that we should learn from the experience of pseudo-science in Nazi Germany?

https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/propaganda-poster-jews-are-lice-they-cause-typhus

The suffering caused by Nazi "ideology" was infinitely worse than what we have seen so far, but we have to be vigilant about all variants of totalitarianism. 

Also, we have to be vigilant about what the memory of Nazism can do to our souls.  It seems to me that there are two broad responses to Nazism:

The first reaction rejects pseudoscience and seeks to respond to the historical memory of cruelty with fairness and humanity: people who are repulsed by Nazism will try, in their own daily life and work, to pursue their own interests without creating unnecessary suffering.  They may enjoy the benefits of privilege, but they will take care to try to not seek dominance over others in dishonest ways.  This moral response to Nazism is easy to speak about publicly because it sounds high-minded and socially commendable. 

But there is another response—a battle that might be raging within some hearts affected by the memory of Nazism.  This emotional response is one that cannot easily be spoken about publicly and that, in civil society, seems to manifest itself mostly in masked forms and in hidden fantasies and urges.  The logic of this response is as follows: What we can learn from the memory of Nazism is that life is about dominance.  Therefore, the goal should be to live and work in such a way that would ensure one’s dominance and other people’s subordination.

There is nothing wrong in seeking to defend oneself against grotesque dominance; it is a moral obligation to do so.  However, it is terribly wrong to live and work as if life were primarily about dominance.  It is not a morally appropriate response to the Holocaust to try to ensure that, this time around, I am the one producing pseudo science instead of the one sadistically abused by pseudo science. 

The following article based on Israeli data showing  concern with vaccine adverse effects (and coincidentally published on Israeli Holocaust Day) is an example of what scientists should be doing to fulfil their moral obligation to seek truth, not pseudo-scientific dominance:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z

The ongoing work of the Israeli Public Emergency Council for the COVID-19 Crisis, a group of experts that has been challenging flawed narratives, is another example of truth-seeking work:

https://pecc-il.org/

When confronted, in contrast, with the work and opinions of Fisman et al., whether it is the recent article signaling out unvaccinated individuals as spreaders of disease or Fisman’s attempt to decode what he perceives as secret neo-Nazi messages (see below), we have the right to respond on moral grounds—not just on specialized scientific grounds—and to hope that the lessons from past cruelty be applied today to prevent the demonization of a “subpopulation.”

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/chris-selley-canadas-pandemic-failures-are-systemic-not-ideological

In addition, the following points, for which I am grateful to other people, should be kept in mind.

1.       The study is a modelling exercise, not a real-world study.

2.       The modelling exercise assumes that vaccine efficacy against infection and transmission is high and remains high.  Given this assumption and how the model works, one will get the result they did.  This is a standard case of “garbage in, garbage out.”

3.       The study ignores an abundance of real-world studies (e.g. a UK study that tracked individuals through time and how they spread or didn’t COVID to their household members) and observable data from Ontario, UK, Denmark, Sweden, etc.  that show that vaccination has only a transitory impact on infection and transmission.  It also ignores the fact the head of Pfizer and Bill Gates have both publicly stated that the vaccines do not stop infection and transmission.

4.       Why would one bother at this point doing modelling exercises based on assumptions when one can actually go out and do real-world studies?  The answer is that they will not like what they find if they look at actually what happens. and it’s just easier to sit in front of a computer and run models than actually interact with human beings.

5.       The sole aim of the study seems to be to vilify the unvaccinated and generate "media lines."  Might some people be addicted to being in the limelight and in a position of dominance?

After posting this commentary, I also read this brilliant analysis by Byram Bridle:

Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred

Image of tulips is from the following: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-snow-on-a-tulips-flowers-9881748/