And while I was composing my comment, Steph scored again:
– “The start of this exceeding tortuous discussion was initiated by Duck’s suggestion that perhaps the lower death rates in Asia might be accounted for by differing methods of recording. Perhaps he was right.”
Duck was pushing the conspiracy theory that there is no pandemic; it is merely a fiction produced by a vast international conspiracy of governments, scientists, doctors and statisticians, to rob the general population of their liberty. “Perhaps he was right”.
I already described a conclusive test for this; examine the various graphs for those Asian countries – general mortality against time, infection numbers against time, and covid-19 mortality against time.
– “Doubt is our product,” Michaels quotes a cigarette executive as saying, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” Michaels argues that, for decades, cigarette manufacturers knew that their product was hazardous to people’s health, but hired mercenary scientists who “manufactured uncertainty by questioning every study, dissecting every method, and disputing every conclusion”. In doing so the tobacco industry waged a campaign that “successfully delayed regulation and victim compensation for decades”
Doubt is Their Product – Wikipedia