Johan Hellstrom is a Swedish sport physiologist. Recently, he consulted the Swedish data bank concerning monthly excess mortality over the past two centuries. This is what he found…
Looks as if we should have shut down our economies about every second winter. That is, if the monthly excess deaths are acceptable as a criterion. What other criterion should one use? Public opinion?
The latter reminds Hellstrom of the medieval Miasma Theory. One of those many medieval insights that twentieth century science would eventually prove to be right!
It remains sad, though, that the public debate is still on the medieval level. I wonder whether that reflects the medieval spirit, too.
Let me put this more explicitly: as far as the independence of thought is concerned, the middle ages by far outperform our century. To prove my point, it suffices to study the phenomenon of religious heresies. More specifically, one can count the number of individuals who offered their lives for the right to express their opinion. If we have to believe modern historiography, there were plenty of atrocious butcheries in the middle ages. What heroes do we have today? You can count them on one hand. And the heroes we do have, are immediately forgotten. Who still speaks of Julian Assange?
Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over an allegation of sexual harassment made against him in 2010.