Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder contended in Lost in Math that no fundamental progress has been made in physics in the last forty years.
Instead of advancing an understanding of the building blocks of the universe, we are simply working out the details of what we already know.
Chris Rock in 1999 chided the medical community for a similar lack of progress. The rise in autism in children and our lack of understanding COVID suggests medicine has become as baffling as physics.
“Same diseases as when I was hanging out as a kid.
What’s the last shit a doctor cured? Polio! Do you know how long ago polio was? That was like the first season of Lucy. Shit. Fred had an Afro with finger waves.
Have you ever met anybody with polio? Anybody feel a little polio around you? No, that’s right. They don’t cure shit. Same diseases have been hanging out since I was a kid.
Sickle cell anemia, bronchitis, cancer. Jerry’s Kids still limping around. I’ve been watching a Jerry Lewis telethon for probably about 15, 16, years now. Not one stitch of progress whatsoever. C’mon, man, lie to me Jerry, lie to me!”
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I mention all of this because the effort to cure mental illnesses is as slow as our efforts to resolve major physical ailments. No progress. With autism, we’re going backwards.
Unlike Chris, I’m old enough to have known someone who limped because of polio as a child. And I once met Dr. Salk who was kind enough to answer a few questions for me when I was editor of my Junior High school newspaper. If you want to know why we’re losing the fight against COVID, look at Dr. Fauci and the people around him. They would not have been able to conquer polio. Not in forty years.
