Real scepticism

High time now, better late than never be it… let’s return to rationality, let’s “unmask” what we’re really saying and taking a stand for, and get on with it – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara 

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it” – George Orwell

Today’s COVID “orthodox” are philosophically, medically, socially, culturally, legally “heterodox” from any historical perspective. They are the actual contrarians! And yet, with dazzling sleight of hand, they have put those taking a zealously rational position in the dock, in their stead!

There was a dropdown diatribe from an “anti-sceptic”, and it was itemised in terms of positions claimed to be “debatable.” If only, assertion made for compelling argument. Let’s take a look.

We are over-reacting to a disease that 99%+ recover from: This statement is apparently being contested. Well, suppose only 90% recovered from it, what is the threshold for planetary apocalypse in terms of mass destruction of ways of life and collateral damage, which by the way, is not theoretical, but documented and mounting by the day? We indeed can defend the 99% figure, but is that really the issue?

Should we not make sure the actions taken actually provided the needed recovery and respite? So sheer agitated draconian action that keeps demonstrably failing and has to be repeated incessantly and meaninglessly it seems to these folks, shows respect for the severity of a pathogen?

Outrage at equating COVID to a “bad flu”: Well before we had any reason to believe it wasn’t exactly that, except by virtue of hysterical models which have proven hysterically incorrect, the current actions that have caused a civilisational seizure were enacted. Okay, let’s say it’s twice a really bad influenza season. How does that in and of itself justify bankrupting people and locking up the healthy and keeping them away from others who are healthy as a way to eliminate a virus?

Third outburst had to do with false positives: Well, WHO has also finally pointed out that with dropping prevalence, you have heightened “false positives.” No lab in the world would sanely suggest these don’t exist. WHO has also admitted the higher the viral load, the more directly related it is to successful detection by lower “cycle threshold” settings (unlike the absurdly high settings that were the virtual norm before).

There are also objective demonstrations of people testing differently (negative then positive or vice-versa) by being tested frequently. And we know, as per the founder of the test, again now affirmed also by WHO, that the test is “part” of a potential diagnosis, but not in and of itself diagnostically decisive.  

Rather ask the question, on what basis has the PCR test been validated or verified as a basis for detecting COVID-19?  Simple question. The moment you ask that, the house of cards falls around you, even if you don’t study the fiasco of the apparently non-peer reviewed article, that posed as a peer reviewed article, by the journal that rushed through the “review” in 48 hours to publish the validation and cannot now locate its own peer review over two months, after being challenged (Eurosurveillance in Germany).

Excess deaths is next: Again, we had a rough year by some stats, and in some countries virtually nothing out of the ordinary. However, how does this trigger consigning millions to poverty and hunger and retarding progress against other killer diseases, and seismically destroying education and social development, eroding mental and emotional health among children, none of which was even “flirted” with in past pandemics, wars, after natural disasters, or in the midst of terrorism… for good reason.

Wide-scale, recurring, perpetuated bouts of economic, cultural, educational, and emotional homicide and suicide are not inviting responses, even to difficult (though clearly not unprecedented) viral challenges.

Lockdowns don’t reduce cases is the next statement arousing ire: Well, based on PCR tests, we don’t know what “cases” are. If we use medical wisdom up to 2020, that would require “symptoms.” But if relating to a virus, hiding people away and shutting down our immune systems, just delays the reckoning. And “awaiting” a vaccine, allows a virus plenty of time to mutate. And most transmission happens indoors — potential “superspreader” environments — and the overwhelming number of deaths have taken place in nursing homes and prisons and other confined spaces.

Lockdowns lead to an increase in suicides is contested apparently: It takes a remarkable view of reality, one certainly “sceptical” of everything we know about our psyches and ourselves to “wonder” if the following might lead to mental or emotional meltdown: enforced bankruptcy, illnesses that can’t be treated you might die or seriously deteriorate from (deferred care), no control over life or autonomy, educational wreckage, isolation from loved ones, construing everyone as a “threat” potentially.

It is “lockdown” not a coronavirus that does this, as SARS was new and novel and broadcast as a major hazard, AIDS landed amidst understandable concern and due fanfare and is still with us, but no one dropped a neutron bomb on civilisation during those episodes.

We could isolate the most at risk. Sputtering here too. Look, let’s stop this. Even the most “at risk” are not facing a once-in-a-millennium disaster. We had mild influenza seasons in recent years, we had many who were going to, in this or a subsequent year, pass on. Even in that demographic we don’t have a 50% infection rate with a 10% lethality from that (Spanish Flu, 1918). In this age range, we “may” be akin to the Hong Kong Flu (2–4 million dead), but that was still with a far less populous world, and deaths ranging across far younger age groups (which are essentially bypassed by C-19).

And why can’t those at risk, exercise their own caution, supported by the rest of us? And this would be a six-month imposition as Dr. David Katz of Yale points out, while the healthy develop natural immunity, and become a “wall” against transmission. And children, instead of being locked up, at any other time in history would have been part of this natural riposte.

Opposing experts are wrong: Sunetra Gupta was wrong in thinking half of the UK population had already been infected by March. Was she wrong? Which varietal of COVID might that have been? How long had it been around? Was it perhaps “exposure” rather than confirmed “infection?” WHO said 10% of the world has likely already been infected a few months back. Not the same number, but informed speculation from credible sources abound. So what? You correct misinformation, you don’t demonise someone who came to a conclusion, and was in error.

And do we really compare the career of disinformation that has somehow made Neil Ferguson the UK’s favourite “misleader” of infectious disease, or the fickle, fumbling, incessant policy mutations achieved by Fauci in the US, compared to otherwise venerable epidemiologists whose “errors” are clearly not for preferment or media preening.

Nominating the Real Sceptics!

So, what we have to do here is deconstruct the mainstream dogma and pomposity and show what it implies, assumes and relies on. And as soon as we do, the hall of mirrors, the vapid distortions become clear.

So, here are the deconstructed assumptions. It may not be, that every adherent to today’s “norms” is a badge carrier in all of these affiliations, but they must pledge allegiance to one or more, or else their flight from historical common sense becomes incoherent.

Civil Liberties Deniers

We need simply “assert” a unique contagious, lethal pathogen, spin a few models, flash incessant numbers, conflate “cases” with illness with death, and we can lock you up, shut you up, arrest you, tell you where you can and can’t go, and stop you doing business and “order” you to go bankrupt. It is without precedent outside a police state, but membership here requires the cheery insistence that this is virtuous and in service of our common humanity.

Immunology Sceptics

The human immune system has co-evolved with viruses and illnesses for centuries. By flexing our immune systems, we run some risks, but we become hardier, rally faster when ill, and contain lethality (as viruses become milder in order to inhabit living hosts), until better treatments, medicines, and occasionally vaccines (normally properly and duly tested) can come in to bolster us further. Look at Asian stats and look at Africa, and you can see that demonstrated. 

To be a member of this Society, disbelieve in immunology, have a shrieking fit when anyone suggests “herd” immunity (though “natural immunity” has been baked into our medical practice for too many moons to count), insist we are as helpless as we are hapless, until a “vaccine saviour” no matter how untested comes galloping to the rescue. Any suggestion we use the same immune system and biological resources that allowed us to evolve since we first stood upright must be met with accusations that those suggesting this secretly relish “murder.”

Virus Extension and Mutation Fans

If we delay the inevitable, opening up borders, realising that “epidemic” eventually becomes “endemic” and “eradication” has almost never taken place, and is unlikely to in a year’s time, we can join this club. If we then just extend dealing with the virus through “lockdown” we allow the virus to mutate. When it does, we can cower anew, and worry if our recent vaccines are still relevant, and secretly relish more sadomasochism in the form of tripling up on masks, encasing ourselves in Hazmat gear, and retreating into a bunker as we fetishise our “survival.”

Champions for Economic Destruction

These enthusiasts rejoice in maximising the number of small businesses that can be destroyed, the lives and sacrifices and forbearance that can be rendered futile and misplaced. If we can keep “stopping” life as we know it and pray for a perpetual monetary printing press and zero interest rates to sustain us, we can truly become what we have longed to be, serfs.

Of course, if we are truly rich, we will own the larger enterprises which are all that can survive, until truly all creative edge is gone, no one invents anything worth experiencing, wealth or otherwise. And wealthy “ghettos” will be the new neighbourhoods, and the world exploding in outrage at shortages of resources, lack of food, teeming population and potential climate shocks, will finally through escalating unrest, afford these folks the grisly gruel that fuels their nihilism.

Proliferating poverty is a special joy to add to the festive froth here, as hard won historic economic gains are undermined and retarded over our idolisation of eking out a few more years of locked up empty life functioning largely beyond life expectancy.

Enemies of Education

Clearly children don’t need education. And the less educated, the more pliable. Of course, they won’t produce much, and if we ever “backslide” to a world that needs enterprise and imagination and chutzpah and drive, we’ll be well and truly in trouble. But if human fodder is needed, perhaps we can quell that silly spirit that seeks play, expression, love, engagement, stimulus and all those things we once considered holy. And education is inversely related in the developing world to the number of children per family (which affects poverty), and that type of education is the only hope for a country outgrowing its despair… this way we can make sure the downward spiral continues.

Anti-Social Interaction League

To chase after a coronavirus, why not swat out this annoying human temptation to interact, to socialise, to be enriched by each other’s warmth and company? Community has fostered emotional wellbeing; it has been a carrier of culture and an incubator of meaning. But this “league” decries all that. Surely that’s disposable, when the alternative is to wallow in one’s own social media echo chamber, losing the ability to listen, or to articulate, to empathise, all of which drain so much energy. And against the 1%-2% greater chance of “surviving” our favourite illness, surely a small price to pay.

Anti-Urban League

And if while dealing with this middling pathogen (Stockholm proves it, sorry; so does Florida and Georgia), we can shut down restaurants and bars which are reported by all authorities as being nominal modes of transmission compared to households (where we order people to hang out now in perpetuity), we can shutter museums, dismantle the arts, eliminate public squares, everything that brought people to urban epicentres that were magnets for the progress of humanity, we can really advance our cause.

For many of us, we still salute them: Alexandria, Athens, Cusco, Delhi, Beijing, Istanbul, Carthage, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Hong Kong, New York… who can read the list without a frisson of excitement, if not a beaming smile at their teeming, multifaceted wonder? And while some are gone, what a joy for the anti-urban league to know that over chasing a challenging cold, we decided on no cost-benefit assessment whatsoever, to throw away the genius of still “living” iconic cities and the heritage they embodied, so we could return to the bland expanses that better suit our current un-nuanced fancy.

Travel Sceptics

The world is just teeming with illness, so best stay away. If we can make travel as noxious an experience (though the airlines were already well on their way on that front pre-COVID) as possible, making entry and exit a daunting gauntlet of medical paranoia, and then inhibit as much exploration and spontaneity as possible (though people travelled through illness prone, hazardous parts of the world for ages, and were considered “adult” enough to do so, and many found it thrilling to do so), then we can truly ensure we even better misunderstand each other, stay in our own paradigm prisons, and ensure that we cannot ever celebrate our shared humanity much less learn from it.

But when we’re “COVID free”, tremulously, we can consider it… until the next “bug” and then as “travel sceptics” we can lead the charge to dive under our covers again!

Class/Caste Supporters

Oh, in order to be “able” to be locked down we need another “class” who keeps everything running and delivers and stocks everything and manufactures what’s needed, and we don’t really care if they die, they’re dispensable. We support their subordination, and being able to sacrifice to the nobler, larger cause, of my carcass being protected from even the minute possibility of viral challenge. If we had to grow our own food, or feed ourselves off staples, and manage without teeming electronic distraction, it would be fascinating to see how “virtuously fun” lockdown would be. Oh, this is the “herd” that must not be “heard”, and they must be masked and encased before they deliver to his or her holiness… me!

Die Any Other Way Club

This is a club whereby being thrown out of hospital when you’re elderly because you don’t have COVID (demonstrably happening) or postponing your medical screening and then dying of heart attack or having your cancer develop terminally are all to be extolled as long as you are not infected much less killed by that usurper, COVID-19. Dying from suicide, domestic abuse, overdoses, all are acceptable ways to go. And we willingly allow such avoidable deaths, especially in poor countries where vaccinations for diseases we can actually cure are delayed, and progress against past killers like TB and Malaria is reversed as tests and medicine for them are now depressingly cheap, compared to the multi-billion dollar COVID testing/treatment/mania industry.

Creative Death Certificate Society

This is the belief that if there’s a “positive test” say in the last 28 days, or perhaps “ever” in some jurisdictions, it’s a COVID death no matter the comorbidity. This changed protocols that were in place for decades on how death certificates were to be filled; but it was needed for panic porn. And this loose reporting was never applied to any earlier pandemic (as it didn’t need to be, there was no incentive to hype). So, if you enjoy fiddling with cause of death, misallocating deaths for a better insurance payment, and then stockpiling numbers, so you can “release” death numbers sporadically to heighten the seeming impact on a “slow” day, this could be the society for you.

Never Ordered Around Enough League

And here, the pinnacle. Autonomy is such a drag. Having to take a stand is such a bore. Carving out a life is far too taxing. So tell me where to go, who to salute, where to kowtow, how to pledge allegiance to today’s dogmas, tropes, prevailing nostrums, and government dictates. Try to spare me some change for subsistence, or better yet give me an enhanced life on fake credit, and until it all collapses, we’ll have a hell of a party, except we can’t party, that might involve people getting together, and I don’t need anyone, I can simply squeal at my angst, my dependent independence.

Moving on

To hold their position, they MUST have membership in at least a few of these proverbial societies, they must follow that evangel, by default at least.

And when next attacked, or asked to justify, or when the next website goes up, perhaps we might just ask before we engage with them:  

“Do you believe the history of public health, epidemiology, virology, medicine, psychology, economics, educational theory, should all, on your say-so or the say-so of anyone in power, be thrown overboard with no discussion or debate?”  If the answer is “yes,” they reveal their hollowness and absurdity. 

If the answer is “no,” then ask why the vitriol? Let’s do what should have been done at the outset. Let’s consider our passions, convictions and lives and our futures worthy of real exchange, engagement. 

It has been said, building on Oliver Wendell Holmes, that, “truth is at times the shifting residue from a competition of ideas.”

And perhaps an exploration of data, and perhaps an exchange of values, ideally before you blow up the world. High time now, better late than never be it… let’s return to rationality, let’s “unmask” what we’re really saying and taking a stand for, and get on with it.