Neil DeGrasse Tyson And Compounded Ignorance

The PhD-credentialed scientist doesn't have a clue about how to analyse Covid data - an intelligent mind is not a wise one

Neil DeGrasse Tyson And Compounded Ignorance

The PhD-credentialed scientist doesn't have a clue about how to analyse Covid data - an intelligent mind is not a wise one

Rav Arora

Celebrity astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has entered the contentious Covid vaccine discussion after the publication of his new book Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.

Grabbed by the snappy video title, I decided to watch a recent heated discussion Tyson had with podcaster Patrick Bet-David.

I had heard Tyson say some mildly leftist things in the past, but I expected him to offer some semblance of the best case for mRNA vaccination - which is possible for some to make, for the most vulnerable groups.

I was wrong.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s pseudo-sophisticated understanding of ‘cost-benefit analysis’ in the Covid realm was embarrassingly fallacious.

As a reputedly intelligent scientist, he compares statistical rewards versus risks in his argument but seems to have absolutely no idea about the respective Covid and vaccine risks themselves.

If corporatist dissemination of Covid data was accurate, Tyson’s risk-reward analysis would be correct. But his sources are clearly skewed and his positions are nonsensical as a result.

Since many of his statements are widely believed in the mainstream, I thought it would be worth breaking them down.

1. Claim: vaccine mandates make sense because individuals have the right to not be infected or contaminated because of other people’s decision to not get vaccinated.

What?

It was clear as early as September of 2021 — when I first spoke to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — that vaccines weren’t very effective at curbing infection or transmission.

Radical Media reports 16th January 2022 from the BBC:

Early data from Israel, Qatar, and other countries showed vaccine effectiveness approached 0-20% within a few months.

2. Claim: MRNA Covid vaccines were rigorously tested and approved. The scientific method in place is a robust system that prevents dangerous and ineffective medical interventions from being approved.

Again, Tyson doesn't know what he’s talking about. All other vaccines have been tested for several years and decades. Covid vaccines were developed in several months (‘operation warp speed’) under Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) regulations which allows for cutting corners in the face of an emergency.

Moreover, there were several issues with the original safety testing as Fraiman and colleagues’ vaccine safety re-analysis showed last year. They found mRNA vaccines carried an unacceptably high 1 in 800 adverse event rate (other vaccines in the 1-2 per million range).

The current “system” in place, that Tyson speaks so highly of, annually produces 139 FDA-approved drugs that get pulled off the market for deadly side effects. On aggregate, 4,500 drugs are pulled every year for a broad range of adverse events and injuries.

Drug Watch reports:

At the current moment, not only are Pfizer, the CDC, and the FDA pushing the new bivalent booster shot, but the White House is pushing this shot on everyone as young as 5 months old — without the bare minimum qualification for myocarditis in young men (CDC official Dr. Sara Oliver: we anticipate a “similar risk” of myocarditis in the bivalent vaccine).

Is this a sign of the current system working? Clearly, Tyson does not have very high standards for drug regulation and safety testing if he knows this information.

3. Claim: If you have a 3% chance of dying from Covid if you get it, of course you should take the trivially small risk of heart problems (and others) from the vaccine. Costs and benefits must be compared before making a rational decision.

Eh?

3%? I’ve critiqued Dr. Nicholas Christakis for recklessly saying 1% of people were dying of Covid on Sam Harris’ podcast. 3% is an extremely high figure rooted in no data whatsoever. Tyson should check his sources. Even if he’s loosely estimating, 3% is way too high. You can read my Radical Media piece on the Covid infection fatality rate, which was 0.035% before vaccines and Omicron, not 3% for crying out loud!

Covid's Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) Has Always Been Similar to the Flu

Secondly, the people dying of Covid are very different from the people suffering from myocarditis and heart attacks post-vaccination. The people dying are obese, elderly, and immunocompromised. The people suffering from cardiac problems from the vaccines are overwhelmingly young men under 40.

So a 75-year-old woman’s cost-benefit analysis is completely different from a 36-year-old man’s. Tyson doesn’t understand this basic reality. You can’t generalise based on population-level data. You have to look at age/gender/health-stratified risks. No one lives in the average, people exist as individuals with their own set of conditions.

Tyson makes several other egregious errors in his analysis, but these fallacies alone make it painfully clear that a reputedly intelligent man like Tyson has taken the corporatist line on Covid without any critical thinking.

That is fine if he keeps his views to himself. But when he is going on large platforms to share his wisdom, he is actively embarrassing himself and undermining his scientific credibility. Worst yet, he is sowing even more skepticism of “science” — whether immunology, epidemiology, or his own field of astrophysics —and forcing people to “do their own research” as a consequence.

An educated, societally credentialed mind is not a wise one. Unfortunately, the former has the most power — as the latter was stripped of his God-given rights in the course of the pandemic.