One Pandemic, Two Interpretations, and the Unbridgeable Chasm that Separates Them

Explaining the Contemporaneous Emergence and Evolution of Two Impossibly Divergent Narratives From the Same Pandemic Experience

This is a reworked version of an article that I originally worked on months ago.

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Introduction

One of the most vexatious aspects of the covid pandemic is the extreme balkanization along an axis that heretofore had a relatively low profile– the sources and methods for determining fact within medicine - and was certainly not among many people’s top ten balkanizing factors within an already balkanized country. Society has essentially sorted itself into two camps over the pandemic, the mainstream medical institutions and its adherent practitioners (hereafter “establishment”) and those who believe that the establishment is essentially, in a word, illegitimate (“skeptics”). Each has its own set of facts, hierarchy of evidence, and even logic for interpreting current events and policies as they experience them. But most importantly each has its own epistemology, and this makes it practically impossible to converse across the divide.

This is palpably manifest even in ordinary everyday conversations, where a pro-establishment person might try to appeal to the CDC, unaware that citing the CDC to a skeptic comes across in much the same way that citing a bona-fide conspiracy theorist comes across to a member of the establishment. Or a skeptic might try to cite analysis from RationalGround, which to an establishment proponent is indistinguishable from an “anonymous internet hoaxer” or Alex Jones.

Somewhat surprisingly, this self-sorting does not closely adhere to any of the myriad established class/ethnic striations (although it does to some extent breakdown along political philosophy lines), as you will find representation within both of its groups accounting for almost every other balkanizing demarcation in society today. If politics makes for strange bedfellows, covid makes for downright bizarre allies, such as passionate Trump supporters aligning with ardent BLM advocates in opposition to vaccine mandates supported (whether openly or covertly) by the establishments of both political parties (yes, both parties), to pick one example.

The article itself is a list of the primary or fundamental starting assumptions of both the establishment and the skeptics. Such a list can hopefully impart a better understanding of what both sides believe regarding most of the salient dimensions of the covid pandemic, and maybe even how and why they came to such beliefs and positions. It is organized into 2 parts (so far) – the first concerns the sources and methodology for deducing covid fact from fiction/arriving at an educated guess where the data is insufficient, and the second concerns factual assumptions that have crystallized in the minds of the respective sides as self-evident baseline truths (ie did facemasks reduce transmission or not). I am leaving out vaccine related points for the most part for now, as positions regarding vaccine related issues and data are far less uniform within both factions than are the rest of these, and I think that’s it’s instructive to see the prior worldview and factual assumptions prior to the vaccine rollout in order to understand the different reactions and beliefs about the covid vaccines. (And this is already way too long.)

Note: There are a few disclaimers that I placed at the end because this article is already too long as it is.

Basically, this is a list where the same thing is experienced, interpreted, and/or understood by each side differently where the two views are utterly irreconcilable.

Part 1 - Relating to Covid Epistemology

1. The constantly and profoundly evolving state of covid facts and data

2. The scientific accuracy/literacy of anti-covid advocates and policies

3. The competence and literacy of the establishment advocates and policies

4. Doctors think independently from the establishment and the masthead medical community/govt institutions

5. The quality standards of the top medical journals

6. Do experts have relevant expertise (aka are we relying on the right experts, meaning those whose expertise is best situated to understand covid)?

7. Are Experts Political?

8. What do government and public health agencies want to accomplish?

9. Do experts admit when they’re wrong and are they accountable?

10. Dr. Anthony Fauci: well-intentioned expert doctor or twisted Machiavellian sociopath?

11. Experts and expert Consensus

12. Medical Community advocacy of covid policies & complicity in covid policies that exceed their underlying medical justifications

13. The character, justification, and scope of covid policies

14. Lying/overly broad policies for the greater good

15. Censorship

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Part 1 - Covid Epistemology

Part 1 is basically legitimate vs illegitimate sources/methods for determining fact from fiction, and ethical considerations in policymaking, pretty much everything that isn’t a factual dispute about epidemiology or the effects of a policy intervention.

1. The constantly and profoundly evolving state of covid facts, data, and policies:

Establishment: The explanation for the constant and ever-growing litany of “evolutions” in the mainstream establishment positions regarding pretty much every aspect of covid is simply that a novel pandemic means that by definition we are sort of flying blind, relying on our best judgement, wits, and common sense to assimilate and organize a dynamic and rapidly morphing epidemiological landscape into a coherent picture, so it is expected that we would be constantly updating our “best knowledge to date”. Specifically, this is a mark of intellectual honesty, that we adjust our positions based on the rapidly evolving evidence, and are not unreasonably tethered to our prior assumptions even when it is somewhat embarrassing to admit publicly.

Skeptics: From the beginning, the scientific/medical establishment has consistently, willingly and deliberately rejected all of the fundamental bedrock tenets of epidemiology and public health, and has compounded this by replacing accumulated conventional medical wisdom and experience with automatically presuming the absolute worst-case scenario as the default until the evidence base against any specific position had grown to the point that it was practically self-evident to even a reasonably intelligent layperson. (And even then, very often they have persisted despite being soundly refuted, like vaccine mandates for those who already had covid.) Furthermore, even as the evidence has accumulated, they have consistently adopted positions soundly and overwhelmingly refuted by the contemporaneously available evidence. To them, one of the most obvious clues that the “science” has not been adjudicated via the scientific method but rather by political considerations (save for that the establishment remains the most (only, really) trusted source of scientific information) is precisely this “evolution” to the skeptics’ initial presumptions on issue after issue.

2. The scientific accuracy/literacy of anti-covid advocates and policies:

Establishment: The vast, vast majority of people who disagree with the establishment are either quacks or conspiracy theorists, or get their information from quacks or conspiracy theorists. Especially concerning is the ascendance of the formerly almost fringe anti-vaccine movement among those who identify themselves as being against the establishment, which has seized upon the general climate of confusion and discord to take advantage of people who lack the capacity to discern between truth and nonsense theories & are therefore especially vulnerable to being proselytized.

Skeptics: While there is no denying that there has been a proliferation of conspiracy mongering nonsense, the establishment is wrong in their characterization of those opposed to them in the following ways:

• There is a sizable % of highly intelligent and/or highly educated people – although difficult to quantify (remember that the establishment has no basis for their claim either) – that reject the “establishment science”.

• The most influential anti- “establishment science” intellectual leaders among the educated anti-establishment people are genuine and credible subject matter experts that possess as much if not greater expertise than anyone that the establishment has, and most critically, are able/willing to think critically and independently.

• The establishment, by being so brazenly dishonest and deceitful, has made skepticism of everything they say rational. To quote a maxim from a prominent “skeptic” radio host, “assume you’re being lied to”.

MIT (somehow) published a study that testified to the incredible science and data literacy of the anti-establishment-policies people on social media, who by and large are the activists who are the most influential for the anti-govt side in their communities.

3. The competence and literacy of the establishment advocates and policies:

Establishment: All of the bedrock scientific and medical institutions that have served the country and the world for more than half a century are populated by some of the greatest subject matter experts, and they all back the establishment consensus (more on that in a bit). Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of research produced throughout the pandemic has been explicitly supportive of or endorsing the establishment positions generally. Furthermore, there has been a surprising degree of agreement between almost all of the Western world’s countries regarding covid policies, despite widely differing cultures and norms that one would think should affect this.

Skeptics: The vast, vast, vast majority of so-called experts who have opined on covid policies are people with zero (relevant) credentials, and more importantly, zero experience and knowledge of the germane subject matter. A very prominent example of this is facemasks, which is entirely an issue of physics and data, two subjects outside the competency of almost every single doctor in the world, who are assuredly untrained in physics and obviously are lacking in data analysis skills. Furthermore, it is a rare sight indeed to find an establishment expert who is actually genuinely well-versed (in their public persona, anyway) in the subject upon which they are opining. Furthermore, the absolutely abysmal track record of experts, where their predictions and analysis have been not just wrong but clearly utterly divorced from any semblance of reality, testifies to their profound illiteracy. Finally, the unjustifiable yet unqualified reliance on junk-science toting quacks (such as Neil Ferguson who had a long and rich history of delusional epidemiological predictions) to inform consequential policy choices that destroyed the lives of millions and millions of people around the world unequivocally proves that the establishment lacks any sort of scientific (or even rational) judgement whatsoever.

Another pertinent point here is that the establishment embraced one of the most brazen conspiracy theories yet regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2, despite being absurd on its face and at best being wildly unpredicated speculation, which portrays their expertise as the proverbial emperor’s clothes.

4. Doctors think independently from the establishment and the masthead medical community/govt institutions:

Establishment: We encourage you to trust your local doctors and medical personnel, because they understand the science, data, and facts better than you do. Local doctors/medical professionals agree with the establishment as a result of their own concurring judgement from looking at the same research and data, and aren’t merely rubberstamps for whatever the establishment promulgates. Their concurrence adds credibility to the establishment’s positions (and the doctors certainly seem to believe that they do indeed understand the science better than invading non-medical interlopers).

Skeptics: Doctors at best don’t have time to read through mounds of research papers published at a frenetic pace. Doctors at worst are intellectually lazy and don’t want to think for themselves, and they are anyway strongly incentivized to “toe the line”, so their concurrence with the establishment’s positions is indeed irrelevant.

5. The quality standards of the top medical journals:

Establishment: Prestigious medical publications follow rigorous standards for accepting and publishing any submission. It is because they adhere to such high-quality standards that we can trust what is printed in their pages. At the same time, mistakes are inevitable, which is why they retract papers that are subsequently discovered to be less qualified than originally thought or containing errors material to the discussion and conclusions of the study. It is critical to remember that because of the pandemic, there was a considerable imperative to allow for the dissemination of emerging literature without the usual lengthy review processes, in order to deal with the pandemic in real-time as best we could without being hamstrung by situationally unreasonable bureaucratic roadblocks that are normally a core element of peer review. The notion that there is systemic failure to properly adhere to these standards, let alone widespread corruption, is unfounded and a particularly egregious libel levelled by evilly-intentioned conspiracy theorists.

Skeptics: Prestigious medial publications/platforms/institutions, like the rest of the medical/scientific community, have been incorrigibly politicized, with predictable results. A journal whose president is forced to resign because he dared to say that doctors aren’t inherently racist cannot possibly be trustworthy or credible, because they lack objective judgement and are not a neutral party regarding the political consequences of the policy choices they are inveighing upon. The medical establishment is so radically anti-science that they push gender-affirming hormones and surgery for confused kids, and think that men can become pregnant, which is more profoundly irrational and insane than Flat-Earth theories.

Additionally, there is clear and convincing evidence of systemic corruption at the highest levels of the most prestigious journals. The Lancet published a hoax study on HCQ that was literally fabricated out of whole cloth, despite containing enough red flags to paralyze a rampaging bull, because they never reviewed the data at all, revealing their intense and burning desire to refute the efficacy of HCQ. This in itself is a searing indictment of the medical community, that they are caught so openly rooting against a drug working. The Lancet also published a propaganda letter that successfully cast any speculation that covid may have escaped from the WIoV’s labs. The top journals also consistently refused to publish top-notch quality papers about other covid treatments, most notably Ivermectin, without any coherent or legitimate basis.

Ultimately, the situation is so bad that the only viable solution is to found new medical organizations that can replace the CDC/WHO/NIH etc functionally to provide sound medical advice.

6. Do experts have relevant expertise (aka are we relying on the right experts, meaning those whose expertise is best situated to understand covid)?

Establishment: Yes, of course they do. Especially the ones who are involved in crafting and advising on policies to mitigate the damage and harms of covid. Experts from every subdiscipline have weighed in on covid and they have overwhelmingly supported the establishment positions and policy prescriptions.

Skeptics: The ones that matter the most seem to have the least expertise:

• Public Personalities: These are the ones who are the public facing communicators for the establishment. They are an assortment of random doctors and medical professionals who for whatever reason became TV’s go-to docs to bring on to explain covid news and developments and policies, or the select high-profile docs on social media, particularly on Twitter. Collectively, they say the most insane stuff sometimes, and are often straight up evil and tyrannical and feel as though they would fit in comfortably under Stalin. Their pedigree and occupational specialties however often have literally nothing to do with any salient subject to covid. TV Exhibit A: Dr. Leanna Wen. Twitter Exhibit A: Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding.

• Govt agency leaders or prominent govt scientists. They have acted in such an egregious manner that it is often difficult to believe that they were ever genuine doctors or medical professionals. They certainly do not ever seem to know what they’re talking about, and often say outlandish and cartoonish statements that feel designed to provoke us just to get us mad and flex their muscles.

• Local community docs/medical professionals who for whatever reason assumed the role of being the local covid interlocutor between the community and the govt/health officials. While a local pediatrician with 20 years under his belt has valuable clinical intuition and expertise for recognizing and treating childhood maladies, he is not an immunologist, vaccinologist, data analyst, biostatistician, or public health expert, and assuredly is as illiterate as his accountant in the physics of hazardous particle filtration. Yet despite their assuming the mantle of expertise on all of these subjects lacks even the veneer of legitimacy, it doesn’t hold them back from not only weighing in on but routinely promulgating sweeping definitive pronouncements that are often even more crazy, radical, stringent or pessimistic than even the official establishment position of the moment.

All in all, the experts who seem to wield the most influence upon policymaking seem to also bring the least amount of genuine expertise and intellectual rigor to the table.

7. Are Experts Political?

Establishment: Everyone has political and other biases. But the real experts, like the CDC director/NIH director/etc, do not make nakedly political calculations when trying to make sense of the data and chart a public policy course. People think that they are political because they have prior beliefs – conspiratorial theories really - about political control of the medical community. This unfortunately leads them to reject common sense policies and clear data because it conflicts with their politics.

Skeptics: The so-called “experts” are politicians as much as any elected officials are. It is precisely because of their political prowess that people such as Dr. Fauci got his job and held onto it for decades. What they say and do are dictated by their political and financial ambitions. Most of them are also deeply corrupt. This is such a basic and routine part of govt that there is a name for this in academic literature: “regulatory capture”. Furthermore, most of them have such massive egos that they might be primarily guided by the need to avoid public humiliation and responsibility for any horrible missteps that maybe caused lots of people to die and untold many more to have their lives ruined. And some of them are card-carrying ideologues, just look at the statements of so many medical organizations about BLM riots after George Floyd’s death.

8. What do government and public health agencies want to accomplish?

Establishment: Public Health agencies, whether in or out of government, exist to support and improve public health, and are staffed by scientists and experts whose primary and overarching desire is to help as many people as possible.

Skeptics: Public health agencies both in and out of government are political organizations that exist to push “public health” ideology that is centered not around the individual but the “collective”, pretty much straight tout of Marxist ideology. They are used as a tool by savvy politicians to dress up their political agenda under the guise of “public health”. One of the go-to excuses or justifications for every aspiring tyrant attempting to consolidate his dictatorship in order to placate a sufficient % of his citizenry to assent to relinquishing their rights is “public health emergency”. The people and scientists/medical professionals who staff these agencies, especially the newer ones, were brainwashed by their universities and medical schools in all of the “woke” ideologies, particularly the balkanization along class/race/ethnicity/sexual lines. As such, they do not particularly care about what happens to any particular individual, what matters are societal impacts, such as disparities in health outcomes between racial groups. Thus, the CDC could actually entertain triaging vaccines (in the beginning where there weren’t enough for everyone who wanted) by racial status, despite the fact that by doing so, not only would more people die from covid (per their estimations of vaccine efficacy), but more black people would die too as a result of shifting vaccines from older blacks more at risk to younger blacks not at risk. And the minority of staff in these organizations who aren’t ideologues usually are either naïve about the real agenda of their agency and therefore join in, or recognize the truth but are unwilling to risk losing their job or worse in order to stand up and resist, for sure in the eye of the public. Skeptics assume that the public health agencies have at minimum different priorities than they do, and that PH sees itself as against the skeptics, whom they think of as backwards luddites and uneducated rubes.

9. Do experts admit when they’re wrong and are they accountable?

Establishment: Of course experts can be wrong, and when we’re wrong, we admit that we got something wrong. Just look at how often we changed our guidance on covid as new info became available that challenged our prior beliefs. And experts are accountable through processes like peer review and the scientific process/dialogue, where colleagues from around the world challenge each other’s arguments and biases to arrive at the most accurate and closest to objective understanding of something.

Skeptics: Experts rarely admit that they got something wrong, and there is certainly no accountability for what they say and do whatsoever. Just look at economists, they’re always predicting things, and they’re always wrong, and nothing ever changes. (Some skeptics: or look at climate change proponents, all their predictions are consistently wrong, and their models even more so, yet no one dares challenge them.) And even when they’re forced to change their position in light of incontrovertible evidence that they were wrong, they never actually step up and admit it openly. And not only do they not admit that they were wrong, but they usually try to rewrite history and pretend that the new position is what they always thought all along, or at least downplay the definitiveness of their prior stance so as to minimize the magnitude of their “error”. This is very manipulative, which is a disgusting personality trait to have, and is very revealing about their general lack of ethical character. And experts never get fired or sanctioned for anything they say or do, no matter how egregious. Neil Ferguson is still considered polite company in the elitist academic circles despite him being a delusional quack who violated the very lockdown he was the driving force behind in order to commit adultery with another man’s wife. Anthony Fauci still not only has a job, but continues to enjoy his status as America’s “top doctor/medical personality”.

10. Dr. Anthony Fauci: well-intentioned expert doctor or twisted Machiavellian sociopath?

Fauci has been a lightning rod that produced particularly incorrigibly divergent views even for this list whether to regard him as transcendent hero or one of history’s most wicked villains:

Establishment: Dr. Fauci has been a stalwart public servant with an incredibly distinguished career who has taken the slings and arrows from all directions as the public face of the pandemic response. He is as human as the rest of us, and has had to update his positions as new data and information became available. He has become unfairly politicized as the pandemic wore on and people became increasingly disenchanted with the covid restrictions, so he was the natural target for everyone who wanted to end all the covid policies regardless of whether it was smart or prudent to do so.

Skeptics: I’m going to have to cover this in broad strokes to keep the length in check:

To begin, Fauci has a long and checkered past of being a craven politician with a narcissistic ego that rivals Trump. He has from the beginning been deceitful, whose opinion is always and reliably supportive of whatever the politically ascendant powers want. This is exacerbated by his sudden and often extreme shifts on critical facts or issues that seem to be a product of political savviness and acuity and not anything scientific. He has become increasingly blatantly political as time (and administrations) have passed, to the point of singling out Republican voters for criticism while refusing to state the obvious self-evident fact that the Floyd protests were the most egregious violation of the establishment’s medical guidance that even small outdoor gatherings were too dangerous to be allowed.

Regarding ethics, Fauci (more so than anyone else with any degree of national prominence) is a pathological liar who is comfortable with saying literally anything that advances his positions and standing. He has even brazenly and repeatedly perjured himself in front of Congress(!!). He furthermore has seized upon his newfound celebrity status resulting from the pandemic to promote himself in a manner unbecoming to a public servant, who is not supposed to benefit, especially from a situation where so many of the citizenry whom he purports to serve have died or are suffering horribly, especially those whose misfortune was a direct result of his policies. This is also an immense conflict of interest, whereby Fauci benefits immensely in his personal prestige, power, finances, and (perhaps most critically) relevancy and immunity from facing any accountability for his myriad corrupt and evil abuses and actions, so long as the covid pandemic continues to be a national emergency.

The ultimate indictment of Anthony Fauci, and the one that he should be best known for, is that he is one of the most prolific mass murderers in human history. His lockdowns and treatment guidelines together are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the US alone, and millions around the globe as lockdowns led to the reemergence of diseases that were under control, mass starvation, and a number of other easily foreseen consequences that were brusquely brushed aside if they were even entertained at all. Additionally, he bears considerable responsibility for the pandemic itself, as SARS-CoV-2 was produced by the institution and research he was instrumental in enabling through funding and more importantly by using his position to be a pivotal driving force behind gain-of-function research on deadly viruses and pathogens. Indeed, a twisted Machiavellian sociopath in every sense of the phrase.

To cap it all off, Fauci does not even come across as a prolific expert. Nothing about him bespeaks penetrating clarity, depth of understanding, easy fluency, and a capacity to convey complex points in laymen concepts that are the hallmarks of true experts of any field, much less the humility that is a crucial trait especially for experts who in particular are easily led astray by their own inflated sense of personal infallibility.

Anthony Fauci is an abomination who is unqualified for the office he holds, much less the influence he wields and prestige he enjoys, and his continued presence on the national stage is deeply offensive and an affront to common sense and basic decency.

(For anyone reading this who is on the establishment side, I am not using this as an opportunity to bash Fauci under the guise of “understanding how they feel”, people genuinely think of Fauci as an evil fiend.)

11. Experts and expert Consensus

Establishment: In today’s world, the sheer depth and scope of human knowledge has made it practically impossible for anyone to truly master multiple subjects. Everything in the world we take for granted was only possible because of granular expertise from expert engineers, scientists, architects, and so on. You would never dream that you could design a skyscraper or an assembly line for a complex novel molecule to treat a previously untreatable condition without spending years being educated in the field. Thus, it is undeniable that subject matter experts fill a vital role in providing expert counsel to people from world leaders to ordinary Joes so they can benefit from utilizing the gains in collective knowledge and wisdom from all disciplines. Expert consensus exists on almost all of the key issues of covid and covid policies. Expert consensus on something is a valuable indicator that something is true with a high degree of confidence, and is especially good at discerning conspiracy theories from plausible conjecture.

Skeptics: Skeptics reject experts in general, and regard expert consensus as basically akin to excrement masquerading as chocolate (this is a very apt and accurate illustration that captures how skeptics intuitively see or feel about experts/expert consensus):

• Firstly, politicians and public health officials that claim expert consensus are almost definitely lying. This is because politicians and public officials claim “consensus” as a means of silencing opposition to a political agenda, and to make their own claims sound more credible and definitive.

• Secondly, even where there is a public consensus of experts on something, it is also almost definitely unrepresentative of the views of many of the experts who are included in the supposed consensus, because they are afraid to speak openly and honestly against the perceived consensus for a variety of reasons.

• Thirdly, genuine expert consensus has been demonstrated throughout history to be repeatedly wrong to the point that had it been allowed to stand, transformative technological breakthroughs wouldn’t have been allowed to manifest. For example, hand washing as a means to disinfect the hands of physicians was spat upon and dismissed as witchcraft, and but for the persistence of its originator, it may well not have caught on. The role of bacteria in ulcers is another.

Expert consensus regarding covid is a combination of lies, censored dissenting experts, and mindless groupthink on the part of the experts (who even are legitimate experts). Invoking “expert consensus” to the skeptic feels like invoking a class of elitist snobs, who know nothing, are at best corrupt and at worst evil, and this in a naked attempt to control their lives and “reeducate” them from their values and culture.

12. Medical Community advocacy of covid policies & complicity in covid policies that exceed their underlying medical justifications

Establishment: The severe and restrictions enacted to mitigate a covid apocalypse were generally necessary and saved countless hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. Unfortunately, public policy for an entire country must necessarily be overly encompassing, because once exceptions start being made, as a practical matter the policy will be effectively undone in practice, especially in the current political climate where every random ignoramus fancies him/herself an expert in every discipline related to these public policies. But there hasn’t really been ad hoc policymaking for purely political purposes, or even much gratuitous overreach. And people tend not to appreciate that benefits of these policies accrue also to those whose need doesn’t rise to the level where we would address it at a public policy level, such as low-risk people.

Skeptics: The medical community has stood by silently as covid policies became contorted and exaggerated well beyond what even a moderately superstitious person could reasonably buy into or were downright dangerous. Drivers wearing masks in their cars without passengers. Masks in showers. Masks while engaged in strenuous exercise. Their silence is interpreted as either tacit agreement with the policy choice or at minimum a tolerable way of achieving their preferred policy objectives (which are probably distinct from anything to do with covid).

Then there’s the pathological fear that has been inculcated into society, with devastating consequences for mental/emotional health. And the dangerous changes in people’s habits, behaviors, and diet that is going to be manifest in a health calamity that we haven’t seen since who knows how long ago. This in addition to the depressing effect of the collective immune systems of the population from being cooped up all day without exercise or exposure to natural pathogens that keep the immune system in peak shape. Also revealing is that the medical establishment did not protest incredulous policies devoid of any rationale, such as governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan banning the purchase of arbitrarily designated “non-essential” goods, like gardening tools, even in a store that you were there already to purchase more “essential” stuff, like food. Or the sheriff who had a surfer arrested in California, despite him being the only person in the water.

More ominously, the medical community has stood silently by as covid morphed into a cudgel to engage in a [rapidly hardening] soft medical apartheid between first those who adhered to the various cockamamie policy prescriptions and now against those who dare refuse the almighty jab.

Worse, the medical community has to some degree participated in perhaps the most egregious institutionalized violations of the Nuremberg Code, where hospitals have gone to court to uphold their right to deny ventilated dying patients Ivermectin for whom they had nothing left to offer (except perhaps a recommendation to terminate life support (!)), the vast majority of whom subsequently recovered after the hospitals were ordered by the court to allow Ivermectin to be administered. Furthermore, there are horror stories of patients being forcibly treated with Remdesivir against their explicit wishes, a shocking violation of the principle of informed consent.

The upshot of this is that to skeptics, the medical community has tacitly supported policies and mandates with an overtly religious character, pursued with the zealotry and myopic focus of cultist fanatics, and devoid of the ubiquitous nuance and logic that define the very nature of scientific reasoning and its translation into policymaking. Additionally, they either participated or stood silently by as colleagues - either medical professionals caring for patients or administrators/govt bureaucrats - killed thousands of patients through denial of effective treatment and administration of ineffective and dangerous treatments, especially ventilation. This disqualifies the entire medical community as complicit in irrational religious zealotry, the polar opposite of scientific rationality. And to many, the medical community has now come to be regarded as imbued with some degree of Nazi-like depravity.

13. The character, justification, and scope of covid policies

Establishment: The pandemic presented us with a horrific choice between allowing covid to kill millions and potentially collapsing the healthcare system (particularly hospitals), and enacting extraordinary restrictions that would be unacceptable under normal circumstances but were critical to ensuring that the pandemic remained a manageable crisis.

Skeptics: There was never any solid basis for any of these interventions (and to some, there was definitely no basis for any of the NPI’s, ever). Critically, there have been countries, notably in Europe, that eschewed the very policy prescriptions claimed to be indispensable by the establishment, without suffering any negative repercussions, something we are routinely informed is impossible. Thus, the most rational explanation of American covid policymaking is that what seems to have started out as a genuine panic by the coastal and political class quickly morphed into the mother of all crises to be exploited per the famous advice of one politico, “never let a crisis go to waste”. The pandemic policies evolved from opportunistic chance to pass coveted agenda items to a vehicle for full on societal transformation that is still being pursued today. These policies have nothing to do with any science whatsoever, and everything to do with craven politicians cementing evil political agendas and social transformation upon society, especially conditioning society to accept the loss of their fundamental rights and liberties.

14. Lying/overly broad policies for the greater good

Establishment: Public policymaking has to take into account the facts on the ground in the real world, which present a far bigger mess and challenge than an idealized view of a harmonious society able and willing to implement critical public health measures. If for instance we say facemasks need to be worn indoors in smaller areas or without adequate ventilation, half the country will disregard masks entirely because they consider themselves sufficiently “expert” to determine when they need to wear a mask (if at all). Public policymaking therefore has to be overly broad and encompassing, in order to ensure that the policies are implemented among the necessary jurisdictions, demographics, and for the requisite amount of time. This same logic applies to keeping information out of the hands of the public that could similarly be detrimental to the proper implementation of crucial health measures.

Skeptics: The public health response is epitomized by irrational and unjustified policies that lack any sort of nuance and often even elementary coherency. Even if we grant that some of the policies, like masking or social distancing, are warranted and justified by a risk/benefit analysis for specific circumstances (which we don’t), they have been universally applied way past any sane notion of what could possibly be justifiable based on the exigent pandemic circumstances. There is a difference between overextending the scope of a policy a little in order to avoid mass defections by people who don’t understand why the line was drawn where it was, and universally mandating absurd and incredibly harmful restrictions because of a few well-defined situations that are obviously unique. It is an insane overreach to lockdown an entire economy because of a virus that is only a threat to a demographic of whom the vast majority are retired.

More importantly, the establishment is pretending as though there is no downside to their policies, which is brazen gaslighting. The lockdowns, masking, etc are all incredibly harmful and dangerous to physical, mental, and emotional health. These policies already have probably killed more people than the number of people who genuinely died because of covid, and that’s not even taking into account the future effects of these insane and demonic abominations. Overapplying harmful public policies is like mass distributing chemotherapy drugs indiscriminately to prevent some of the cancer patients from choosing not to take the chemo (and with cancer, at least the chemo has real efficacy for those who need it).

Vaccine mandates stand out as perhaps the most egregious in this regard, where the establishment is still systematic disregarding natural immunity, something which is both confirmed by numerous studies and data and able to be confirmed clinically by lab tests.

Lastly, the notion that universally applying policies even well beyond any defensible scope somehow increases public compliance and acceptance of public health policies and advice is ridiculous. This sort of behavior breeds mistrust and resentment, and especially among precisely the people who are more inclined to not blindly follow anything that public health officials say in the first place, thus undermining the purported justification for overbroad policy scope.

Regarding lying by health officials, they are not lying because of any sort of higher purpose (justifiable or not), they are simply liars who are pursuing their own agendas, including avoiding any sort of accountability or oversight of themselves.

Ultimately, skeptics view lying by public health officials and the overreach of public health policies as the manifestation of blatant corruption and a powerful indicator that the covid response (and public health generally as a discipline) has nothing to do with “science” or public health whatsoever.

15. Censorship

Establishment: There has not been meaningful widespread censorship of legitimate scientific discourse. However, there have been various attempts to limit the proliferation of conspiracy theory nonsense that is dangerous to the national polity and society, but that is an entirely distinct phenomenon that has had no so-called “chilling effect” upon scientific discourse and debate. Claims of censorship are one of the go-to tactics of conspiracy theorists and people who don’t like the restrictions to explain the lack of evidence & expert opinion for their assertions that even they realize is problematic for their positions. Many doctors directly claim that they don’t know of a single colleague who has suffered any sort of censorship or any sort of threats.

Skeptics: One of the most enduring, shocking and fundamental cultural transformations that has been achieved by exploiting the pandemic is the systematic purging of political and medical dissent. This censorship has been wielded to eliminate dissent both in public speech and in medical practice, upon experts, medical professionals, and ordinary citizens alike:

• Doctors are threatened with official sanction, including loss of their credentials, license, and even criminal investigation should they say something inconsistent with the establishment political narrative.

• Doctors are further threatened with the same consequences should they prescribe treatments or drugs deemed verboten by the establishment, which prominently include Ivermectin and HCQ.

• Doctors and laypeople alike have been systematically purged from media platforms for dissenting from the official narrative or challenging establishment claims.

• The medical journals and publications, and the various public health agencies both in and out of the govt, have systematically suppressed research that runs counter to their claims or preferred narratives. They have also pulled papers for no reason other than that they were damaging to the political agenda of the establishment.

• Ordinary people are routinely disappeared off of social media when they publicize their personal experiences, such as vaccine injuries, or for reporting on egregious implementation of covid policies that could turn the ordinary citizen against the establishment if they would see reporting, especially videos, of such incidents.

• Both the govt and major so-called “charitable” foundations have, through financial incentivization conditioned upon toing the party line, essentially bribed many experts and doctors to silence themselves.

• The govt and establishment has deliberately suppressed information regarding the numerous easy, safe, and widely available treatments for covid that would have ended the pandemic long ago had they been pursued.

The upshot of this systematic censorship is that everything from the establishment is incorrigibly corrupted and disqualified by virtue of it being a “rigged” system of “scientific inquiry” where scientific discourse was squashed out of existence. Thus, it is irrational not to presume that everything put out by the establishment is a lie. At a minimum, history strongly cautions that the default must be to always assume the opposite of whatever position govt sanctioned censorship benefits is the truth unless and until definitively proven otherwise.

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Disclaimers:

1. The establishment and skeptic as I lay them out are idealized stereotypes that perfectly manifest the underlying beliefs and worldview that characterize each group generally but not perfectly, because there’s a wide range of nuance and intensity when you drill down to an individual level, that can vary greatly from one person to the next.

2. By establishment, I mean medical professionals who are not evil, political, or otherwise corrupt (I personally know of quite a few). The “evidence” isn’t self-evident by itself in a vacuum, despite the insinuations to the contrary of both sides. Some of my family members often remark to me “how can Dr. so-and-so think this when all the data and evidence is 100% against him?”, to which I typically respond “there are plenty of studies and data out there that paints a very different picture, especially when they make up the bulk (or entirety) of the scientific literature that you’re exposed to.” I firmly believe that there are many doctors out there who have been misled and duped under very stressful and confusing circumstances, but are not sinister or intellectually dishonest, just doctors trying to do their job. (This subject requires its own article to properly flesh out.)

3. I elaborated far more explaining the skeptic’s position, because the establishment position to the skeptic is generally more obvious - or able to at least be explained with less elaboration - than vice versa. However, I am probably about a 95% skeptic, and I am biased accordingly, so bear that in mind when reading this.

4. I am not a prophet or a mindreader, and I am assuredly quite fallible, thus there is tremendous room to improve the accuracy and content of the article, and I had to leave out a few things just because of the forbidding length, so please don’t hold it against me when you find things I forgot that should’ve been included/mischaracterized something/etc.

5. I am not trying to pass judgement on any of the positions on either side in this article, rather I’m trying to articulate a general idea of what people are thinking/feeling (although as previously noted, I am wildly biased and it shows).

6. There is a significant amount of interconnectedness between all of the points explored below, which is why most of the points reference each other. I selected the points below because they represent instinctive, default assumptions of either side regarding aspects of covid that illustrate the great chasm between the two camps. But these separate premises tend to reinforce one another, so that someone who gets “red-pilled” on one of them is likely to end up buying into most or all the rest. Think of it as being like an object that is drawn into an orbit around a planet, but is slowly (or quickly) being pulled down into the planet by its gravity. Same idea here, if you buy into a critical premise on one issue, you’ve been sucked into the orbit of the whole worldview where all these premises push and reinforce each other as more and more reasonable and rational conclusions from what you’re seeing.

7. #6 notwithstanding, many people on either side only believe in some of that side’s positions, or be on opposite sides depending on the particular point. To give a prominent example, Florida governor Ron DeSantis (himself is very against the establishment for the most part but very pro vaccines especially for the at-risk cohorts.