AN ANOMALY CAPABLE OF FRACTURING THE THEORY OF GENERAL RELATIVITY?

I don't know whether or not Albert Einstein actually did quip about a single experiment being able to show him in error.  I do know that there is likely all sorts of prestige to be conferred on the physicist that finds such an anomaly, and the quest for one has extended to the edges of the known universe.  It's also likely that reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics will continue to engage fertile brains for a long time to come.

The point behind such concepts as "data driven" and "science based" is that sufficiently many anomalies ... sometimes, as in the Michelson-Morley quest for the ether wind, a single anomaly ... places people claiming to base their actions on evidence are under some obligation to ... revise their priors in the presence of sufficiently strong evidence to the contrary.

That's the message Eric Hovde, a candidate for public office in Wisconsin, is sending to the state governor Tony Evers (D - Public Instruction, the first "E" is long) in this.

The initial predictions were equally scary in Minnesota, and the evidence going on two months into the house arrests is similar.

Our political leaders now find themselves trapped. Along with the experts on whom they relied, they have invested heavily in their narrative. There is little evidence they have carried out the kind of objective, data-based cost/benefit analysis that is indispensable to responsible crisis management. But having started down this road, they can’t change course without acknowledging that they have made a vast miscalculation.

Today, the shutdown appears to be a tactic in search of a strategy. The government has moved the goalposts. Now that we have enough ICU beds and ventilators, we are told testing and contact tracing are crucial before the economy can fully reopen. But this approach will not stop the virus, in part because of the high incidence of asymptomatic carriers. Until we have a vaccine or effective therapy, policies that prudently facilitate the development of herd immunity are the best way to counter the threat we face. Ironically, the shutdown is making that more difficult to achieve.

Minnesotans have been herded into a massive new regime of political control over the details of ordinary life. They have been pummeled by apocalyptic propaganda that pressures them to comply. Those responsible include political leaders intent on extricating themselves from the disastrous steps they have taken, without acknowledging and reversing their mistakes, and a complicit media that refuses to criticize or ask hard questions.

Yes, the political leaders DID have a way out, on toward the end of March or the middle of April, which was to thank the citizens for their cooperation in getting the case loads well in hand, and offering some immediate opportunities for people to resume their lives in a responsible way.  (The editorial board of Chicago's Tribune suggested that opportunity is present about NOW in Illinois, but governor J. B. Pritzker (D- Chicago) is offering those opportunities in the most arbitrary and condescending way.)

I'm more worried that all the shutdown theater will make the return of the Wuhan coronavirus in the fall, should that be in the cards, nastier.  A number of the models I'm looking at do raise the possibility of a bigger second wave, heterogeneous agents and reduced susceptibility among the initial super-spreaders notwithstanding.  That's going to put the public officials in a bad place, as the lockdowns are likely to become moot by common consent, somewhere between Memorial Day and Independence Day, and the warnings of public officials for constituents to become more prudent after Labor Day might be, shall I say, downplayed on the basis of previous experience.