A frequent phrase used these days is that we need “to trust the science.” But I have found that often “trust the science” really means “trust the model” which is not the same thing. Computer models are used to predict everything from the climate to the economy. Often, they are inaccurate. Asking legitimate questions about these models and their assumptions is appropriate and not “anti-science.”

When I was in graduate school, many of us worked with professors who had developed computer models attempting to understand more about the environment. These models helped me learn two valuable lessons.

First, you need good data for the model to accurately predict the future. No doubt you have seen the word GIGO that stands for “garbage in, garbage out.” If the data you have for a pandemic model comes from China or Iran, you may not have good data.

Second, a good model also needs to be based upon accurate assumptions. If you don’t account for the impact of mitigation procedures, you are going to come to scary conclusions about the infection rate and the death rate.

Should we have some skepticism about the models used to predict the future? The climate models that were developed back in the 1990s predicted rising temperatures. Instead, we had a “warming hiatus” that lasted for nearly a decade and a half. Global temperatures essentially remained flat.

The Congressional Budget Office is given the responsibility of estimating the impact of legislation on federal revenue but often limited in the assumptions they can use. For example, if a tax reform bill reduces taxes, the CBO score assumes that lower taxes will mean lower tax revenue. But individual investors and consumers react to lower taxes by investing more and spending more. Lower taxes might actually generate more revenue.

Often “trust the science” really means “trust the model.” But we have lots of evidence that sometimes the models are wrong.

Governors and mayors have been clamoring for more testing kits and testing stations. I suspect they know that more testing isn’t a panacea, but don’t have much else to say. Therefore, they blame other political leaders and the medical establishment because they don’t have enough testing.

First, let’s inject some reality into this discussion. President Trump would like his public-private partnership to produce 5 million tests a day. That isn’t going to happen, for many logistical reasons. Even if we could achieve that unlikely goal, we had 157 million Americans in the workforce before the pandemic. At best, that would provide one test per month.

Second, let’s also consider what these tests really tell us. If you take the rapid test for the coronavirus and get negative results, what does that tell you? You might not have the virus. You may have the virus but have not shown symptoms. Or, you might currently have the virus, and the test is flawed.

If you doubt the last possibility, consider the fact that when the rapid test was used on 239 known positive samples at the Cleveland Clinic, the test came back positive 85 percent of the time. Put another way, it was wrong 15 percent of the time. That means 15 percent of people who actually were infected could leave not knowing they have the virus.

In the real world, it appears that the problem is even worse. One scientific paper (not yet peer-reviewed) concluded that the real accuracy of some of these tests was closer to 60 percent. The problem isn’t just the test, but the way its administered. Sometimes people don’t shove the swab stick far enough up their nose to get an accurate sample.

It is time to inject some reality into this discussion of testing. The mantra from so many politicians that “we need more testing” sounds good until you look at the numbers.

Yesterday and today I wanted to talk about the expanding role of Big Tech in the midst of this pandemic. Yesterday I talked about surveillance and privacy. Today I want to focus on censorship.

The problem of Big Tech censorship has been around for more than a decade. But the current climate makes it even easier. For example, Facebook announced it was removing posts intended to organize rallies that would be protesting government stay-at-home policies in a number of states. At first, a spokesperson said it was doing it because it was directed to do so by the government. Hours later, it clarified that it would independently remove posts if it assumed the gatherings “do not follow the health parameters established by the government.”

Google announced that it would remove information that it deemed “problematic.” And perhaps the most visible example was when YouTube (a Google subsidiary) removed a viral video by two California front-line doctors who criticized the lockdown. They held a press conference to release their conclusions from over 5,000 COVID-19 tests they conducted.

Victor Davis Hanson noted that nearly every model that has been cited usually “erred on the side of exaggerated morbidity. But to suggest that in public is deemed heresy.” He also found that questioning the “notion that everyone who died with COVID-19 died because of it” is considered taboo. And we were “not to question the weird formula of assessing a virus’s morbidity by dividing the number of deaths only by the actual number of those who at any time has tested positive for an active infection.”

There are certainly good reasons for removing posts and videos that prescribe quack treatments for the virus. But when material is removed simply because it asks good questions about policies and treatments, we are heading toward a censorship society.

For the next two days, I want to talk about the expanding role of Big Tech in the midst of this pandemic. Today I want to focus on surveillance and privacy.

In other countries, the citizens have been willing to submit to increased surveillance. In South Korea, the government has used credit card data, cellphone location data, and surveillance camera footage to track citizens They even announced that infected individuals might be required to wear electronic wristbands.

Rachel Bovard thinks it is “unlikely US citizens would tolerate such intense and mandatory measures. But that’s where Big Tech comes in.” Seton Motley noticed something when he reread George Orwell’s book, 1984. Orwell’s fictional government “was extraordinarily competent in its totalitarian imposition of technological power.” But no government is that competent and would need help. “Enter private sector Big Tech.”

Google has already been sharing aggregate user location data with governments. Cell phone companies have developed tracking apps for their phone. Databases are collecting everything from GPS location data to medical data. Government bureaucrats and medical personnel have even talked about creating “immunity passports.”

Americans assume that there is some level of security of their personal health data. This is supposed to be protected by HIPAA, the nation’s health privacy law. But the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it might relax enforcement of this law.

Often a crisis changes our attitude towards privacy. After 9/11, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act that authorized massive surveillance of Americans. One security expert commented that “the effects of COVID-19 will be more dramatic than the effect of the terrorist attacks of 9/11.” What may have been unreasonable a year ago, might be set in motion if we don’t resist this dangerous trend.

In a recent column, Dennis Prager argues that we are seeing a dress rehearsal for a police state. Although I think he makes a convincing case, I am intrigued by people’s response to it. Some people see it, while others do not. It is like watching people look at an optical illusion. Some people see it; others do not.

Prager argues that our country is closer to a police state than ever before. And he hastens to add that “police state” doesn’t mean “totalitarian state.” We still have freedoms as evidence by the fact that he could write his column. But he says there are four hallmarks of a police state.

First are “draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.” Over the last few weeks, I cannot even count the number of times I have talked about “draconian policies” or “extreme policies” issued by governors, mayors, and judges. Americans have been banned from going to work, meeting in groups, and going to beaches and parks.

Second, is a “mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.” We see that in the harsh reaction to asking questions about the value of certain policies and the decision by Big Tech to remove posts considered “misinformation.”

Third, is the use of police. We have seen people being handcuffed for playing ball with their children in a park or beach. We have seen people being fined for sitting on the beach or listening to a sermon in their parked cars with the windows rolled up.

Fourth, is the presence of snitches. One governor even set up a snitch line so you could turn in your fellow citizens.

As I said, many see these as police state tactics. Others, however, respond that these are merely temporary and pose no threat to our liberty. That may be true, but it is shocking how willing Americans have been to conform to what might not even have been allowed a few months ago.

The latest issue of Harvard University’s magazine has an article by the faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program blasting homeschool as “dangerous.” She documents what she sees as the “risks of homeschooling” and is disturbed that parents can exercise “authoritarian control over their kids.”

It might be tempting to merely write this off as just another radical professor expressing an opinion that isn’t necessarily shared by others on the faculty. But consider that the Harvard Magazine cover features this article and that the university is hosting a conference in June of “experts” who will be raising the alarm of the dangers of homeschooling.

One guest to my radio program talked about how this would progress. State legislators would introduce bills to control homeschooling. Then they would point to the Harvard conference and academic articles warning about homeschooling in order to win over fellow legislators and governors.

The article in Harvard Magazine argues that parents want to homeschool their kids in order to isolate them “from ideas and values central to our democracy.” Actually, surveys done of homeschool parents find that “a concern about school environment, such as safety, drugs or negative peer pressure” was the number one reason. The number two reason was “dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools.” And a “desire to provide religious instruction” was the number three reason.

Over the last few weeks I have argued on air that the current lockdown that requires students to stay home have shown parents two things. First, how hard their kids’ teachers have to work to educate their kids. Second, how much better their kids’ behavior is when at home and away from some of the negative influences in public school.

Some of those parents might conclude that homeschooling is better for their kids, which is why some educational elites are starting to warn about the dangers of homeschooling.

As we go forward on removing restrictions from the lockdown, how should we make rational and intelligent decisions? Andrew McCarthy brings us back to our legal system that places the burden of proof on the government.

He recognizes that trying to make reasonable decisions about the pandemic during an election year is difficult. Everything, including science, has been politicized. Of course, it was politicized even before the election season arrived. But now it is worse. That is why he says government should bear the burden of proof.

“Day after day, the system pits the government’s compelling interest in public safety against our most fundamental freedoms — l¬iberty, property and, in capital cases, life itself.” By contrast, the argument from authority “has no place in the justice system.” We don’t deprive people of their fundamental freedoms merely because an expert or a professional says that should be limited.

Our judicial system requires that the government bear the burden of proof. Accused Americans are presumed innocent. They are entitled to their fundamental liberties and do not need to prove their entitlement.

In the current case, the public-safety side and the liberty side get to examine scientists and even summon their own scientific witnesses. And their assessment can even be subjected to cross-examination.

Consider another issue: whether a business is essential or non-essential. “It is not an American’s burden to prove that his or her job is ‘essential’ rather than ‘non-essential,’ as some government official subjectively defines those terms; it is the government’s burden to prove that the job in question cannot be performed safely under any conditions.”

These are the rules we use in court. “No one wants to see infectious disease spread. No one wants to see the economy destroyed.” Let’s apply these centuries-old principles as we move try to return the country to normalcy.

Today is the National Day of Prayer. It is a vital part of our American heritage. The first call to prayer happened before the American Revolution. In 1775, the Continental Congress called on the colonists to pray for wisdom as they considered how they would respond to the King of England.

Perhaps one of the most powerful calls to prayer came from President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. In 1863, he issued a proclamation for a day of “humiliation, fasting and prayer.” Here is some of that proclamation:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand, which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”

In 1952, Congress passed and President Harry Truman signed a resolution that declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, President Reagan signed into law a bill that designated the first Thursday of May as the time for the National Day of Prayer.

It is estimated that there have been more than 130 national calls to prayer, humiliation, fasting, and thanksgiving by presidents of the United States. There have been 60 Presidential Proclamations for a National Day of Prayer because every president has signed these proclamations.

Today is the National Day of Prayer. Please pray for this nation and its leaders.