It all seemed so obvious to me to be skeptical about something of which we (collectively) knew nothing about; a "novel" virus, a "novel" vaccine- of course we should be skeptical. And as it turned out and makes me more skeptical- the authorities knew much more than they ever let on about all of it. That will make me forever a skeptic and, sadly, a cynic on all matters coming out of these inept and deceitful agencies. They used their "public health" authoritiy in all of the wrong ways at every turn. The examples are endless. I would much rather get my information and advice from a true scientist and skeptic any day, all day long. Thank you.
The dichotomy between "doing your own research" and relying on faith (or cynicism) won't hold up. We decide what we believe by deciding who to believe.
Healthy skepticism means saying "Show your work." Insist that people explain how they reached their conclusions.
What concerns me about Dr. Fauci is not just that he was wrong many times. I'm sure that you or Bret or I have been wrong often, too. But he never justified his pronouncements. He never showed his work.
We should not trust authorities because they are authorities. We should trust authorities when and only when they show their work.
I became a skeptic very early in the COVID saga, after being a faithful early believer. Once the onslaught started against Hydroxychloroquine, I knew something was very rotten in the state of Denmark. I have followed Brett and you closely since then. We do not share the same politics but I can't tell you how refreshing and encouraging it is to listen to you two reason things out with such intelligence, clarity, and wisdom.
Just an anecdote (or two) to add to your unofficial data sets: a little over three weeks ago, on a Monday (June 6, I think), I woke up not feeling so well. I had a slight headache - just a hint of one, which was unusual for me. Fairly quickly, I began to suspect COVID had finally found me. Later that afternoon, I took one of the freebie government tests and got a very quick, yet faint, double line. I resolved to take my usual not-feeling-well regimen: colloidal silver, Vitamins C and D3, lysine, and zinc. If, by the next morning, I felt worse or the same, I would take a second test (this time the expensive Abbott Labs test I bought at CVS). Overnight, I had quite a night sweat - soaked tee shirt and bed clothes. Very unusual for me. The next morning, not feeling worse OR better, I took the second test resulting in another "positive" result. Immediately, I took the appropriate body weight-determined dosage of Ivermectin. At the 24 hour mark, I was 70% improved. At 48 hours, I was completely recovered, feeling as if I'd never been sick. I don't recover that quickly from colds. EVER.
By Friday, my sister, who had also been COVID-free up until a few days before, and who had visited me on Monday (as I was beginning to feel ill), started feeling poorly. She tested the next day and was positive. I delivered her some extra Ivermectin which she took that afternoon. Same results: full recovery within 48 hours. Both of us are in our 50s, I am overweight, with a diagnosed heart condition and my sister is fit and physically active but asthmatic. Both of us tolerated the Ivermectin well - no side-effects that we detected.
Both of us are very grateful for an inexpensive drug that seems to have worked quickly and effectively. Yet, we are also angry. We're angry thinking of all those Americans who most likely died unnecessarily (and worse: alone) because of what we assume is gargantuan-scale greed and organized criminality at the highest reaches of our government and medical and pharmaceutical industries. Knowing this, what do we do, now? Who do we trust/believe the next time we face a serious medical dilemma?
A tangent, but there has always seemed to be a distinct difference among nonbelievers between people who have been exposed to this type of environment and those who haven't. Both sides of my family are faithful Catholics. I secretly was a nonbeliever at six. School, family, church -everything reinforced this worldview. To me it just didn't add up. Before incidents like the one at Evergreen catapulted the phrase social justice to the front page, it was deployed to destroy the burgeoning secular-atheist movement in America. I immediately recognized it. I was already inoculated. I don't think it necessarily requires religion (of course many religious believers are themselves skeptics), but some sort of betrayal or being misled by people in authority seems to build an immunity to nonsense. Go ahead and lie to your kids about Santa Claus with a clear conscience, folks. It makes 'em tough!
For me I found more reasons not to take the vaccine than to take it. The Lancet, NIH, BJM , Scientific American…… Cell had many papers that were ambiguous at best about what it was or how it worked, I’m talking about the virus itself. That on top of the crappy rushed trial and Pfizer’s well documented ‘criminal’ history was enough for me to be…… skeptical.
I have lived my life trying to find truth…… not to define it. Not sure if it’s the best way but it has been quite an adventure!!
Wow Heather, I believe you have put into words( in ways that only you could) how I feel about the situation playing out right now. I do believe that the COVID "faithful" who just believed whatever came from the institutions were following information blindly rather than parse the information themselves and see if they really understood what was going on.
However, in some ways I'm seeing this happening around the COVID skeptic community as well. I see many people citing papers or extrapolating evidence that otherwise may not be the proper thing to do. I always try to remind people to be skeptical of everything, but in many cases groupthink supersedes individual thought and leads people to blindly trust others. We should be far more vigilant in understanding that we should be skeptical of what comes out of BOTH sides of the argument and find ways to piece information together ourselves.
Both groups are likely to be full of both cynics and the faithful, and it's important to understand if you yourself may fall into either category as well.
Thank you for this piece Heather. You have reminded me that I am not the ‘crazy’ one. I am the one with questions, searching for answers and am just not satisfied with the information that was and has been presented thus far. Oddly, most of the faithful/cynics who have criticized me would never consider themselves to be faithful or cynical, but view themselves as open-minded. My how the world has changed!
Having just listened to Darkhorse #138, I am just now getting to this post. It might be that I am a contrarian, but are scientists actually open to re-evaluation of notions central to particular orthodoxies in their field? I more than wonder. When I listen to scientists they often seem to be condescending turf defenders. Especially when the cultural wind is at their back.
Interestingly some “heretics” are arguing that the data from the James Webb telescope reveal some problems with the Big Bang theory in highly consequential ways. I doubt any debate in the journals would happen on this, this is THE BIG BANG after all, still debate could be an extremely useful refining process.
Then we find at the other other end of the spectrum endless multi-verse prattle which proliferates in part because it fills a particularly religious niche for the secular mind. Science at its worst would be this: the choice between an Authoritarian cult and a Fantasy cult.
My personal fave received insult when presenting information that does not align with the collective narrative is, "You don't know what tf you're talking about", to which I will respond with, Is there no room in your fragile ego to be wrong?". Yes, contemptuous to the nth, but effective in, at the very least, kicking someone out of their stubborn complacency if only for a brief moment.
It all seemed so obvious to me to be skeptical about something of which we (collectively) knew nothing about; a "novel" virus, a "novel" vaccine- of course we should be skeptical. And as it turned out and makes me more skeptical- the authorities knew much more than they ever let on about all of it. That will make me forever a skeptic and, sadly, a cynic on all matters coming out of these inept and deceitful agencies. They used their "public health" authoritiy in all of the wrong ways at every turn. The examples are endless. I would much rather get my information and advice from a true scientist and skeptic any day, all day long. Thank you.
Like you, my experience of the past two years has made me "a cynic on all matters coming out of these inept and deceitful agencies".
The dichotomy between "doing your own research" and relying on faith (or cynicism) won't hold up. We decide what we believe by deciding who to believe.
Healthy skepticism means saying "Show your work." Insist that people explain how they reached their conclusions.
What concerns me about Dr. Fauci is not just that he was wrong many times. I'm sure that you or Bret or I have been wrong often, too. But he never justified his pronouncements. He never showed his work.
We should not trust authorities because they are authorities. We should trust authorities when and only when they show their work.
I became a skeptic very early in the COVID saga, after being a faithful early believer. Once the onslaught started against Hydroxychloroquine, I knew something was very rotten in the state of Denmark. I have followed Brett and you closely since then. We do not share the same politics but I can't tell you how refreshing and encouraging it is to listen to you two reason things out with such intelligence, clarity, and wisdom.
Just an anecdote (or two) to add to your unofficial data sets: a little over three weeks ago, on a Monday (June 6, I think), I woke up not feeling so well. I had a slight headache - just a hint of one, which was unusual for me. Fairly quickly, I began to suspect COVID had finally found me. Later that afternoon, I took one of the freebie government tests and got a very quick, yet faint, double line. I resolved to take my usual not-feeling-well regimen: colloidal silver, Vitamins C and D3, lysine, and zinc. If, by the next morning, I felt worse or the same, I would take a second test (this time the expensive Abbott Labs test I bought at CVS). Overnight, I had quite a night sweat - soaked tee shirt and bed clothes. Very unusual for me. The next morning, not feeling worse OR better, I took the second test resulting in another "positive" result. Immediately, I took the appropriate body weight-determined dosage of Ivermectin. At the 24 hour mark, I was 70% improved. At 48 hours, I was completely recovered, feeling as if I'd never been sick. I don't recover that quickly from colds. EVER.
By Friday, my sister, who had also been COVID-free up until a few days before, and who had visited me on Monday (as I was beginning to feel ill), started feeling poorly. She tested the next day and was positive. I delivered her some extra Ivermectin which she took that afternoon. Same results: full recovery within 48 hours. Both of us are in our 50s, I am overweight, with a diagnosed heart condition and my sister is fit and physically active but asthmatic. Both of us tolerated the Ivermectin well - no side-effects that we detected.
Both of us are very grateful for an inexpensive drug that seems to have worked quickly and effectively. Yet, we are also angry. We're angry thinking of all those Americans who most likely died unnecessarily (and worse: alone) because of what we assume is gargantuan-scale greed and organized criminality at the highest reaches of our government and medical and pharmaceutical industries. Knowing this, what do we do, now? Who do we trust/believe the next time we face a serious medical dilemma?
So often you and Bret are able to distill the ramblings in my head into something coherent. Thank you for doing that.
A tangent, but there has always seemed to be a distinct difference among nonbelievers between people who have been exposed to this type of environment and those who haven't. Both sides of my family are faithful Catholics. I secretly was a nonbeliever at six. School, family, church -everything reinforced this worldview. To me it just didn't add up. Before incidents like the one at Evergreen catapulted the phrase social justice to the front page, it was deployed to destroy the burgeoning secular-atheist movement in America. I immediately recognized it. I was already inoculated. I don't think it necessarily requires religion (of course many religious believers are themselves skeptics), but some sort of betrayal or being misled by people in authority seems to build an immunity to nonsense. Go ahead and lie to your kids about Santa Claus with a clear conscience, folks. It makes 'em tough!
For me I found more reasons not to take the vaccine than to take it. The Lancet, NIH, BJM , Scientific American…… Cell had many papers that were ambiguous at best about what it was or how it worked, I’m talking about the virus itself. That on top of the crappy rushed trial and Pfizer’s well documented ‘criminal’ history was enough for me to be…… skeptical.
I have lived my life trying to find truth…… not to define it. Not sure if it’s the best way but it has been quite an adventure!!
Wow Heather, I believe you have put into words( in ways that only you could) how I feel about the situation playing out right now. I do believe that the COVID "faithful" who just believed whatever came from the institutions were following information blindly rather than parse the information themselves and see if they really understood what was going on.
However, in some ways I'm seeing this happening around the COVID skeptic community as well. I see many people citing papers or extrapolating evidence that otherwise may not be the proper thing to do. I always try to remind people to be skeptical of everything, but in many cases groupthink supersedes individual thought and leads people to blindly trust others. We should be far more vigilant in understanding that we should be skeptical of what comes out of BOTH sides of the argument and find ways to piece information together ourselves.
Both groups are likely to be full of both cynics and the faithful, and it's important to understand if you yourself may fall into either category as well.
Thank you for this piece Heather. You have reminded me that I am not the ‘crazy’ one. I am the one with questions, searching for answers and am just not satisfied with the information that was and has been presented thus far. Oddly, most of the faithful/cynics who have criticized me would never consider themselves to be faithful or cynical, but view themselves as open-minded. My how the world has changed!
Like you, I have been labeled a contrarian. Like you, I am not - I am a scientist. Thanks for explaining this with such clarity.
Thank you so much Heather. I have enjoyed this very much.
Having just listened to Darkhorse #138, I am just now getting to this post. It might be that I am a contrarian, but are scientists actually open to re-evaluation of notions central to particular orthodoxies in their field? I more than wonder. When I listen to scientists they often seem to be condescending turf defenders. Especially when the cultural wind is at their back.
Interestingly some “heretics” are arguing that the data from the James Webb telescope reveal some problems with the Big Bang theory in highly consequential ways. I doubt any debate in the journals would happen on this, this is THE BIG BANG after all, still debate could be an extremely useful refining process.
Then we find at the other other end of the spectrum endless multi-verse prattle which proliferates in part because it fills a particularly religious niche for the secular mind. Science at its worst would be this: the choice between an Authoritarian cult and a Fantasy cult.
My personal fave received insult when presenting information that does not align with the collective narrative is, "You don't know what tf you're talking about", to which I will respond with, Is there no room in your fragile ego to be wrong?". Yes, contemptuous to the nth, but effective in, at the very least, kicking someone out of their stubborn complacency if only for a brief moment.
Beautifully written Heather.
Whenever scientific consesus is bandied around I think of poor Ignaz Semmelweis.
All those double negatives...
Does "not being a contrarian" make one a "protrarian"?
well said, thanks