Hi everyone, exciting stuff.
Please excuse me for interrupting the flow of science to emphasise what I feel is an absolutely vital point from xrayspex...at the risk of preaching to the converted...
well they said people could send in greivances etc Should we send in that concern about Fauci, because weren't they saying at that meeting that Straus and Fauci had worked on behalf of CFS? I imagine those guys don't know the history, the govmt guys at the meeting yesterday. I want to make sure Collins knows.....what I can't figure out is if its better for us to highlight the past to them or let it slide....
My answer is: having been invited to send in grievances, send in those grievances! Yes of course: lay it all out. That's not to say that the fears over Fauci's involvement should necessarily be cause for concern, I'd echo Cort's positive assessment of that situation. But this is the time to register all concerns. As I may have said before, remain calm, speak the truth...etc - just tell it like it is.
.one thought is how sometimes its good to give people an out if you want things to change.
Very, very important point. Being in a situation where the consensus you need demands that a whole load of people commit a 180 degree turn and recognise and admit that they were wrong...my advice would be that
this is not going to happen very quickly if you are telling them that as soon as they do admit they were wrong they are going to be crucified.
This seems to me to be a point that a few people still haven't grasped.
If you surround people and back them into a corner, and give them no way out, then don't be surprised when with nowhere to go, they don't move.
So register the concerns regarding Fauci and whoever else, lay out the facts, register that there is concern, explain why, calmly, and don't go on to add that you demand his head on a stick - leave that part up to others to resolve.
That all applies on every level; it applies with family and friends too. Sadly, once it is established that the theory (I emphasise,
theory) of psychosomatisation was wrong in this case, those who embraced or entertained that concept - which includes the vast, vast majority of people - are still going to say "well it
could have been true...you can't blame me for being uncertain". Others will say "well
those people weren't psychosomatising, but we still don't know about all
these people over here".
The way forward is not to concentrate on the blame game, but to concentrate on the philosophical and ethical problem with an unfalsifiable premise: dust off your Popper and explain why there are some questions that simply should not be accepted as legitimate hypotheses. Explain why to imagine that you can peer into somebody else's mind (us), or their soul (them), and thus to cast doubt on the integrity of another's reality, is simply a widespread human error that we
all need to learn, together, to put an end to. There are big, big lessons here for
everyone to learn.
