Jeff Flyer and I wrote some articles critical of this early in the pandemic saying that we need to listen to scientists or different points of view and we need to think about all the negative consequences of lockdown.

We had data from China very early on that it essentially had no lethality in young people.

I mean, there is a rate of death in people

under the age of 18, but it is so fleetingly low,

it makes no sense to restrict their movements

and restrict their school given the value of school.

But the bigger point is that it seems like Monday morning quarterback because the people who

set the policy squelched all attempts at any dissenting opinion and did not allow the public

to hear the points of view of people who

disagreed at the time.

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. About five years ago I read the free body problem, the wonderful Chinese science

fiction novel by Kaisian Liu. And like many other people I have been watching the Netflix adaptation over the course of the last weeks I have one episode to go.

The pivotal moment of the early part of the series,

and I promise that this is not much of a spoiler,

comes when Wenje-Yee is working at a Chinese research observatory, which is scanning the skies from messages from extraterrestrial life and even though she is

warned not to respond in a message they do in fact intercept from outer space from something I'm a pacifist in this world

You're lucky that I am the first to receive your message. I'm warning you do not answer if you respond we will come your world will be conquered do not answer

Wenger responds that the aliens should come.

We cannot save ourselves.

I will help you conquer this world.

This is of course a science fiction dramatization,

which is much unlike anything that would happen in reality.

...