Credentialed public health "experts" are just like martial arts styles, fakes and frauds that cannot face real questions that challenge base assumptions.
This was a good read, I highly recommend it.
Some great quotes:
it took team reality 3 months to go from “never looked at this before” to basic parity with public health and in 3 more, it had overrun the discipline.
And later:
the “experts” have had a REALLY bad 2 years. their credentials and lazy appeals to authority did not stand up to the arena. and they stopped wanting to talk to us at all and adopted epithets like “denier” and stances like “the science is settled.”
Where have we seen that language used before?
Oh yea, climate science. Funny, isn't it, how the credentialed always do the same thing when the amateurs pull their fancy pants down to their ankles?
There's been a definite black belt inflation over time, not helped by the normal American habit of basically grabbing the black belt and saying 'I'm done' and then bragging about it years later.
It's always interesting to listen to my Sensei and all the older guys in the dojo make critiques of current trends of passing/failing for black belts.
There's also the problem that different karate styles have different rules for sparring. I forgot which style in particular is the one that doesn't allow for head-punches in sparring... but kicking them in the head is perfectly fine? And this is one of the primarily Japanese styles, keep in mind - either Shito-ryu or Goju-ryu, I forget which.
Bringing this back to OP's article, this is one of the issues with comparing various combat styles - they all have different rules of what's allowed. You throw someone unfamiliar with the rules into a ring that benefits their opponent and declare their style 'fake' when they don't instantly win? C'mon.