In recent posts, I have been speculating how my fantasy government would respond to this COVID19 crisis.  My fantasy government would be based on data instead of science and only enact short-lived policies in response to popular expression of urgency.   The distinction between data and science is this government has permission to act on correlations before there is scientifically accepted causal explanation.   This fantasy government acts quickly and decisively.  When it acts, it is far more authoritarian than most of the real-world governments.   But its action is limited in duration and triggered only when there is a sense of urgency among the population.

This fantasy government places primacy on data itself.   This is the justification for the extremes actions.   It prioritizes full liberty to gather unbiased data on unfettered human behavior.   The underlying assumption is that people learn from prior periods of more authoritarian rule when some urgency comes up.   Once people learn, there is no need to continue to have the rule in place unless the problem gets out of hand again.   The extreme authoritarianism of the rules that are in force encourages that learning and adaptation.

In addition, the priority on gather real-world data will guide some rules in place to gather well-controlled data to test some hypothesis instead of governing people directly.

In our current government, there are frequently proposed alternative explanations that get ignored because there is not sufficient scientific evidence to support the claim.   The government acts in a way the makes it difficult or impossible to collect that data.

A dedomenocracy would recognize the importance of gathering data to challenge a particular hypothesis having only popular support from a sizable part of the population.   If there might be some other cause of a particular complaint, one way to test it would be forcefully remove that cause from the environment to see if that changes things.   This would be especially justified for something new that coincidentally was introduced at about the time the new complaints arose.

In my previous posts, I conceded that a dedomenocracy’s initial response to the COVID19 urgency may have been identical to the responses we have seen from enlightenment-based governments.

I neglected to consider that dedomenocracy would have been even more authoritarian as I proposed above that it would naturally be.   When an urgent situation requires a new ruling from a dedomenocracy, that ruling will be as authoritarian as need to meet the objectives and one of the objectives is to collect data.

Coincidental with the new cases of unusually aggressive and damaging pneumonia is the recent roll-out of 5G wireless technology being deployed in major cities.   The timing is not perfect, but it is something new that wasn’t present earlier just like this particular virus strain is new.

In addition, there have been some credible descriptions of link between high-frequency pervasive radio saturation and cellular or sub-cellular level biology.   There has also be some evidence of animal die-offs near 5G towers.

To be clear, none of these observations have been tested scientifically to qualify as a scientific theory.  That is my point of bringing it up here.   An enlightenment-guided government must wait for the scientific approval of the theory.   A dedomenocracy would be free to act on mere correlations and coincidences.   A dedomenocracy can act in an authoritarian manner to test the proposed hypothesis.

This would have been  particularly justified in a period when government was already acting in an authoritarian matter to close down all non-essential activities enforced by law.   Given the newness of 5G, it could have easily been included in the non-essential activities.

A dedomenocracy would have shut down all 5G at the same time it shut down non-essential activities.   It may have shut down other recently introduced technologies as well, just to get them out of the equation as it further assess future actions.

We don’t know why this virus is particularly harmful compared to closely related viruses that generally don’t require medical attention.   We don’t know how the virus spreads person to person.  Meanwhile, there are other things that are new to our environment that may be amplifying the virus’s damages or the virus may be amplifying the harmful effects of the new thing we previously thought was benign.

5G qualifies as something to suspect as even an accomplice to the harm of the virus.

Enlightenment-based governments approved the 5G roll-out because it had adequate scientific data to show its being harmless.   As a result, it must continue to permit this technology (even though it is not essential) because there burden of scientific proof has shifted to show that there is harm.   Until such proof is provided, the government is stuck with continuing it, and even if there is a link it will take years to establish a scientifically proven link.

In contrast, a dedomenocracy is post-enlightenment and is more free to be guided by the availability of abundant and very recent data collected too soon to have any influence on scientific testing.   In addition, a dedomenocracy will want to collect data made possible by shutting something down without scientific justification.   The data itself is needed to make better decisions in the future one way or the other.

I expect that a dedomenocracy would have shut down 5G at the same time it shut down non-essential human activity.   We would have ended up at this same spot with evidence of a slowing down of virus transmission away from exponential growth.

The difference between the dedomenocracy and the enlightenment-based governments is it would have a very different situation to evaluate.

Did the decrease in growth come from the shutting down of 5G or of the shutting down of non-essential human activity?

A dedomenocracy has the advantage of putting 5G on the table as a possible contributor.   It may have contributed even when not explicitly shut down, because people staying in their homes would be less exposed to 5G than if they were moving around outside and especially in urban or shopping centers.   The enlightenment-based government will not be able to consider the possibility because it lacks the scientific basis to put it up for consideration.