by Jeffrey A. Tucker
The American Institute for Economic Research
I’ve rarely seen it put so bluntly as I have in the video posted below, in an interview with epidemiologist Paul Elliott. However, I have begun to suspect that this error has crept into the thinking of the lockdowners over the course of the summer.
It seems that certain disease experts genuinely believe that they can game the reproduction rate of the virus to get it below 1, and thereby create a mathematical result that will make the virus go away. This seems to be their goal and the metric by which they measure whether and to what extent they have achieved it. The problem is that the reproduction rate (very difficult to discern precisely) is an effect – a measurement of an evolved condition – not a cause.
At first it seems crazy that such an elementary logical fallacy could be at the heart of the lockdown ideology.