Distrusting health officials: what was the turning point?
I think this was indeed a pivotal moment that made the situation starkly clear:
the exact moment my trust in our public heath experts began to erode was in June 2020 when they said “racism is a public health issue and therefore it’s okay to gather in public in the middle of a pandemic” https://t.co/hlg7pUfOz4
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) December 28, 2021
But there were earlier clues for me that all was not right, and that public health authorities weren’t leveling with us. The bottom line to all of it was that Trump was president and it was logical to assume that the majority of these government workers didn’t want anything to reflect well on him and in fact wouldn’t be at all disturbed if events came to hurt him politically.
Three early phenomena had made me uneasy about health authorities’ statements. The first was that they kept harping on cases and implying huge death rates even though it was clear almost from the start – based on the Diamond Princess data, which I analyzed here – that very many cases were asymptomatic or mild, and that deaths were concentrated in the very elderly and/or already ill although not limited to them. The second was the about-face on masks, which didn’t seem based on new information but instead on practical considerations of mask availability. The third was the vigor with which continuing lockdowns were embraced, long after the “two weeks to flatten the curve” period was over.
I don’t automatically assume that health care bureaucrats are lying and often doing so for political (and/or CYA) reasons. But I certainly understand why many people have come to that conclusion.
What was the date Fauci flipped on masks by saying he was lying (he wasn’t)before that masks do no good?
The list of ‘canary in the coalmine’ moments would be a long list another one not quite as big but still interesting was the silencing of those Bakersfield doctors.
Also the stifling of Aaron Ginn’s piece at Medium. That piece has proven to pretty damn accurate by the way.
Shameful times.
Trust takes years to build and moments to destroy. None of our current crop of would-be-betters seems to appreciate that. But if they have any desire to repair or restore trust, the first step would be to admit that they were wrong in no uncertain terms. And certain individuals would need to be removed from positions of power. And some prosecuted.
I seriously doubt the current regime has the capacity to do those things, to admit error and to begin to fix the damage. They seem too busy piling lies upon lies in an attempt to hold on to power.
There exists no longer any reason to have the slightest faith in any prominent figure from the thoroughly-discredited “public health establishment” (from the odious Fauci, who has been lying his way to prominence and great wealth since the AIDS crisis of four decades ago, to the CDC, to cable’s mendacious Hotez and Wen, who has recently changed her tune somewhat), but the problem is much wider (see the latest from VDH at AmericanGreatness entitled “Our Elite is No Elite At All”, as well as Roger Kimball’s piece entitled “Do You Trust the U.S. Government?”). We, the citizens of a sadly moribund republic, are living in what can only be described as a “kakistocracy” encompassing all branches of the state, all of education, all of corporate America and Big Tech, as well as sports, entertainment, and even the realm of high culture, nor is there, in fact (if painful truth be told), any light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
The current strategy is to just remove the mandates and claim ‘the science’ has spoken without admitting error. They will all be back if the election doesn’t go as badly for them as many are predicting next winter.
BTW, I am very uncomfortable with all this fait accompli attitude that the R’s are going to when massively in the elections. I hope it’s right and maybe it will be but I still don’t like this talk so far out.
Griffin:
If memory serves, there were four stages. The first was “don’t wear masks.” The second was that you should wear masks. The third was that you must wear masks. The fourth was “oh, we were actually lying to you initially when we said not to wear them; we were actually intent on saving the limited supply for medical personnel and we thought that hearing that would upset you, so we lied to you.”
“…distrusting…”
Fauci, “Biden”, Psaki, Garland, Mayorkas, Yellin, Blinken, Buttigieg and the entire clown show…
And then…there’s this (ta daah):
“The White House Now Says It Never Really Wanted Lockdowns”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-now-says-it-never-really-wanted-lockdowns
(Of course, it’s only Jen Psaki…but still…, that’s pretty brazen….)
Not to be outdone, the following shows clearly and beyond the shadow of a doubt that we’ve reached the stage where not only is the current administration illegitimate but that it’s gone rogue and is entirely out of control:
“Capitol Police Spies ‘Dressed Like Construction Workers’ To Surveil GOP Congressman’s Office”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/capitol-police-spies-dressed-construction-workers-surveil-congressmans-office
Bidengate? Pelosigate?
“Distrust”, you say?….
+ Bonus:
“Pfizer Quietly Adds Language Warning That ‘Unfavorable Pre-Clinical, Clinical Or Safety Data’ May Impact Business”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/pfizer-quietly-adds-language-warning-unfavorable-pre-clinical-clinical-or-safety-data-may
Once again, “quietly”….
neo,
The masks really are the biggest lie of all of this. The mandate policies are their own issue legally but the masks are pure control virtue signal mechanism.
Here in WA there was no mask mandate until July 2020 which I always remember because there were big signs at all stores saying by decree of the governor issued on July 20, 2020 (or something close) masks are required. So masks weren’t mandatory here for like four months into this travesty but now we have had a mask mandate since last summer non stop.
Turning points only matter to people actually paying attention.
Check this idiot out:
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/joe-rogan-experienced/
This doofus decided to actually listen to Joe Rogan “to be fair” and…SURPRISE!!…he heard exactly what he needed to hear to know he was completely right about Rogan all along.
But like most people who aren’t at smart as they think they are, he gives himself away when he incredulously remarks on Rogan’s fear that China’s social credit system could come to the U.S. He even puts social credit in “scare quotes” and all but says Rogan is just making it all up.
Type “social credit system China” into Google and you get a Wiki entry and stories from Business Insider, Wired, NBC News, and numerous websites on just the first page. But this cretin…WHO IS A PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE…is simultaneously condescending about Joe Rogan while being utterly ignorant of what Rogan is talking about.
There will never be any turning points for such people.
Mike
The masks really are the biggest lie of all of this. The mandate policies are their own issue legally but the masks are pure control virtue signal mechanism.
I’ve worn masks in surgery for 50 years. They were intended to minimize bacterial contamination of surgical wounds. If the risk was higher, as in joint replacement surgery, the surgeons wore “space suits” and used Laminar flow rooms. In spite of all this, some cases still got infected. I am unaware of any science that suggested simple masks would affect viruses. Fort Detrick has four levels of biohazard security. None involve simple masks.
Get Biden in a Hazmat suit pronto.
The trust killer event I remember from the first few months of the pandemic perhaps, was a guy on TV who was an upper level official from Johns Hopkins med school.
Now sometimes these people will explicitly state that they are expressing their personal opinion and are not speaking for the Johns Hopkins med school. But not this guy. His was the word from on-high. And his word was that hydroxychloroquine was useless for covid, dangerous, caused heart arrhythmia, and was extremely dangerous when taken with a Z-pak.
I knew that was bull, with the possible exception of it being useless for covid, as ill informed as we were in the early days.
Whether monetarily or a loss of trust, the same way any bankruptcy occurs; “How did you go bankrupt?” Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
A tipping point is reached individually and then it gathers mass and momentum until it sweeps all before it. Like an avalanche.
TommyJay,
The attacks on practically every possible treatment can’t even be called a turning point because it has been a constant.
From a wider perspective that has been maybe along with natural immunity the most astounding continuing pattern of all this.
Masks, vaccines, vaccines, masks, vaccines, masks, and on and on…
For me there were several turning points, some related to the four stages of masking/no masking that Neo outlined. But the public incident I found most telling was Fauci’s farcical first pitch at the Nationals game in July 2020:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rr9XC3hNGg&ab_channel=CBS17
Fauci threw the ball as if he couldn’t be bothered to take a ceremonial first pitch seriously, and as many of Neo’s readers will recall, he climbed back up into the nearly empty stands after his “performance,” took off his mask, and was photographed sitting close to his friends, laughing and joking without any attempt at social distancing.
I can’t resist adding here some of the YouTube comments about Fauci’s brief shining moment in MLB:
“He threw a strike. CDC redefined the strike zone.”
“He really did a great job at flattening the curve.”
“It would be easier to catch coronavirus than that pitch.”
“He just wanted the ball to practice social distancing from home plate.”
“Amazingly, he’s better at this than addressing health crises.”
I recognize that not all of Neo’s readers are baseball fans, but given the game’s iconic status as the American pastime, Fauci’s lackadaisical attitude spoke volumes to me. I had already come to distrust Fauci (as well as Birx) from his early appearances during Trump’s press conferences, but the Nationals game cemented my distrust of him into loathing.
I don’t automatically assume health-care bureaucrats are lying, but I do automatically look for supporting evidence, from some other source if possible.
The whole “very many cases were asymptomatic” made no sense to me until I learned recently that if a thousand people are tested for strep at any given time, 10-15% will test positive. They won’t show any signs of infection, but they’ll test positive for the bacteria. Which is one of the reasons the constant testing for COVID-19 is problematic.
When Trump banned air travel to and from China, and we were told he was just racist despite the rampant spread of the disease in that country. I’m sorry, but that’s what you do during an out-break of a novel or deadly disease (in this case both). You do that and you isolate the disease to that location. It works for Ebola outbreaks. I’ll accept that the ban was probably too late, as the disease seemed pretty well established in Seattle by then, but we didn’t know it at the time.
Lee Also: In Re testing positive for strep, that can happen because some people are colonised with the bacteria, it is part of that person’s normal flora but may not cause infection (unless conditions change). I believe the same is true for MRSA – some people are carriers in their nasal cavities.
I did not know for a certainty then and I still do not know for certain now but the part of my mind that thinks “bad,very” thoughts believed pretty much from the get-go that this was a deliberate biological attack on the US and Trump by China. Something about watching that Chinese woman haul her ass off a plane from China in the days before the planes were stopped and starting to lick, yes LICK, the surface of a lot of things others would touch while she was in the arrival and baggage area of LAX. I think I started to stop believing this endless tsunami shower of bullshit around about then.
There are so many unanswered questions, and the news media has been totally worthless. The only good outcome may be to finally cause many people to lose their unmerited blind faith in government.
I used my DNA from Ancestry.com and submitted it to https://www.covidforecaster.com/ It said I have a 1 in 244 chance of severe symptoms based on DNA. Based on age I have a 1 in 19 chance of problems. How did they develop this model? I can’t find any information on covidforecaster. If this is actually a reliable method it could be used to protect the vulnerable far better than was done. I have no idea if it has any validity. They put up a professional looking website. There was no charge for the information. I am still very curious. Are there other applications of technology that were not used because big pharma could not monetize it easily?
Heroic obedience to the endless adult versions of hall monitor syndrome identified what I consider to be the worst people among us. The types that created the Inquisitions, that elevated Hitler, etc. In a sane world those people would be shunned and ridiculed. Any future attempts by them to obtain power would be stopped with huge uproars, and the Overton Window would not have a place for them.
I decided that Fauci was a bureaucratic crook when he did the masks/ no masks/ double mask dance over a very short period of time. After fifty years in science, this was clearly someone who was lying, it was not the way a scientist behaves who is wrong. He’d give a detailed explanation and discuss what changed his mind. The fact that prior to Covid, there were a number of CDC reports that dismissed the value of face masks made it worse.
The other issue was the total dismissal of therapeutics. Some doctors were treating early stage patients with HCQ + zinc and getting very good results in clearing the virus in a few days so that the serious respiratory attacks didn’t have time to develop. I remember watching Fauci go ballistic when this was brought up. He all but screamed “Absolutely not”. In short order he was flacking remdesivir instead. It’s a very expensive drug, unlike HCQ and Ivermectin, and hasn’t been shown to help in drug trials, but he pushed it anyway. I didn’t understand what was going on until I talked to a friend who’d dealt with the CDC. The CDC won’t touch a drug that can’t be patented. If a CDC doctor has his name on a patent, he gets a share of the profits from that medication. Bingo. The Covid vaccines stood to make a fortune for big Pharma and the doctors at the CDC. If there are cheap therapeutics that stop 65% or more of the infections that cuts the market way down and their profits are are going to get clobbered. There’s no incentive for most people to get the jab if they can take a few days worth of a cheap drug combination and be OK. This is medical malpractice and I’m not giving them benefit of the doubt.
@Dick Illyes:
Polygenic Risk Scores for well-defined medical conditions are getting better all the time — the more good data you collect, the better the models become. And you need big patient data sets before you start to tease out potential connections.
If a tool like Promethease says something about (e.g.) elevated prostate cancer risk, well you might want to give that some credence. Prostate cancer is something you either have or you don’t have. And lots of men with and without it have had their DNA assayed.
There’s too much of the ‘Half a Virgin’ whiff about Covid data for me to get excited about genetic scoring.
Additionally, we know that obesity, old age, other pre-existing medical problems are the lion’s share of what makes people have poor outcomes. I doubt there are enough outlier perfectly fit and healthy 20-40 year olds with adverse Covid outcomes in any data set to provide any additional explanatory value.
FWIF I ran across an interesting satire site https://substack.com/profile/49763450-good-citizen
Dumb and silent we are being led, like sheep to the slaughter.
Do your part to help flatten the herd.
Yowza: In regard to growing distrust of medical researchers as well as public health officials: here’s a lengthy and detailed piece about the financial and other shenanigans committed by an Alzheimer’s disease researcher who is widely considered to be in line for a Nobel:
Missing among all the flattering kudos and attendant news coverage has been any mention of [Hardy’s] leading role in a conspiracy that held Alzheimer’s research hostage to fraudulently acquired gene patents. The sordid affair mired efforts to find a cure in tangled, resource-sapping litigation. The last of the courthouse wrangling that began in 2003 wouldn’t be resolved for more than a decade – a resolution that came with a ringing rebuke from the bench expressing the judge’s outrage at the scheme, the schemers, and the damage they caused.
Yet until now the full details of the deceptions of Hardy and his accomplices have not been widely reported. Some of them are consigned to scholarly literature and other startling ones are found in overlooked testimony from the prolonged litigation, which documents one of the most celebrated scientists of our time admitting under oath that he lied and committed academic fraud, and confessing that he was ashamed.
The story – which also ensnared one of the world’s most prominent woman scientists, who admitted under oath that she too lied, pressured by Hardy – emerges at a time when the credibility of august scientific authorities is being sorely challenged on other fronts, not least during the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s long, but worth reading: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/02/08/famed_alzheimers_researcher_john_hardy_is_a_knight__but_not_in_shining_armor_813737.html?mc_cid=90a270e8c3&mc_eid=fba478624c
When I came of age, public health still mattered. Tuberculosis, syphilis, and polio weren’t that far in the past. Twenty years later the infrastructure was decaying and the public interest was elsewhere. That left the bureaucracy looking for relevance and the best people probably went elsewhere. I honestly think that the problem here was incompetence rather than malice.
This site was a big part of my COVID “turning point.” Many folks here, led by neo, were doing their own homework and I wasn’t seeing the same level of diligence and thorough information in information coming from official, government sources.
There was no distinguishing between hospitalized with or because of COVID and the same with deaths. Neo’s early and thorough reporting on the Diamond Princess.
I was completely gobsmacked by the lack of granularity in the government messaging, along with completely ignoring recovered (and, likely immune) cases in the population.
Dick Illyes, Zaphod, et al.
Has anyone heard of/done this-https://www.cure-hub.com/
Seems the best way out is through and focus (aside from therapeutics, which are lacking) should have been figuring out who has immunity.
I don’t know if I ever had a turning point. If it was, it was at the very beginning.
Making people think they shouldn’t go outside – and in some jurisdictions, actually preventing them from going outside – just outraged me. That seemed crazy. How could you tell people to shut themselves inside their apartments for days or weeks at a time and claim to care about their health? Wouldn’t fresh air, exercise, and sunlight make people better able to fight disease? Wouldn’t the opposite make them more vulnerable? Was it really possible to catch the virus just by walking by someone for a few seconds, especially on a breezy day?
I knew something was wrong from the beginning. Not because I’m so smart or because I’m secretly a public health expert, but what we were doing seemed so blatantly irrational and counterproductive, I was never inclined to listen to the “experts” at all.
Pretty often it’s the statistics, and when it started to be pointed out that, say, a suicide death or a crash victim were counted as COVID deaths if these people also tested positive for COVID, and were, therefore, counted as COVID deaths, well, I knew I couldn’t trust anything those using those statistics as justification for their policies said.
Moreover, when all of these health “Authorities” also started to badmouth or even ban alternative treatments that seemed–from the experiences cited by doctors in several countries–to work, well, something was fishy, because why wouldn’t you–in the middle of a world-wide pandemic–welcome other possible life-saving treatments?
Then, there were some “authorities” ordering people to wear masks when outside, and that just didn’t make any sense at all.
My “turning point” was almost immediate when they announced a lock down.
I thought: “why on earth would OUR authorities use communist China and corrupt Italy as role models on how to handle a pandemic? Are our authorities really that stupid?”
And, then the last day we were in the office I heard a NYC subway announcement reminding people to wash their hands. Ha, a co-worker and I commented on that announcement with the same thought – it sounded like something one would expect to hear in a communist country reminding people to be great patriots who wash their hands for the glory of the party.
There are two news stories that I point out to people who are believing all the doomsday headlines.
The first is that a group called Samaritan’s Purse came to NYC to set up a temporary hospital during the height of the pandemic. The Mayor, DeBlasio, and others fought against them. Really? If the city was that bad off due to this pandemic I would have thought they would welcome anyone! But, nope, cannot have those darned Christians coming into New York and setting up shop even if it is to help those in need. They tried to stop permits that would allow them to set up temporary tents in Central Park as a hospital. Samaritan’s Purse did come; but, left after less than 2 months treating less than 200 patients in total.
The second story is about the US Navy Hospital Ship Comfort which was berthed in NYC to help with non-covid patients since the city was complaining that hospitals were overrun and on the verge of breaking due to the pandemic. The Comfort had the capacity to handle 1,000 patients at any time. During its one-month stay it saw less than 300 patients total. Again, like the Samaritan’s Purse, if the city hospitals were that bad off why wasn’t this ship used more? My guess would be that the city and hospitals didn’t get any money from Samaritan’s Purse or the US Navy ship – so, why use them? Cry the sky is falling even if it isn’t.
I trust authorities even less now; and am especially ticked off that my company, as many others are doing, has levied a surcharge against those employees who either are not vaccinated or have refused to say if they are/are not vaccinated.
Anything to grab money. Anything to grab power. And yea, that the health care “experts” would say racism was a bigger threat than covid was stupid of them.
Charles,
If my memory is correct, part of the objection to the Samaritan’s Purse hospital had to do with the LGBQT business. Samaritan’s Purse is run by Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham. Franklin has grown much more outspoken on political issues than his late father. I have a friend that recently volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse in a tornado cleanup mission in Kentucky. Outside of certain conservative circles, they may not get a lot of coverage. In addition to the mobile hospital, Samaritan’s Purse regularly responds to domestic crises such as tornadoes and hurricanes for cleanup and even rebuilding jobs. They seem to always be trying to recruit volunteers for their teams.
Banned Lizard posted this on another thread.
It seems appropriate to this discussion of the difference between actual science and the pretend-version we’ve been afflicted with lately.
https://samim.io/p/2020-05-23-scientific-methods-vs-scientific-worshippers-method/
Seems like “Public Health” is just a source of background music for the Democratic-Swamp power play. The response to the Chinese Cof was initially babble to keep the population focused and cooperative. Later the government actions became a way to destroy the economy and to keep the populace fearful. We no longer have a “Public Health Service”. The NIH is now the Public Grift Service. Drop a coin in the slot and they will sing any tune you wish.
The medical industrial complex operates with perverse incentives similar to those of the military industrial complex. Although they are necessary institutions, both need thoroughly skeptical oversight to serve the public interest.
Take heed of Griffin’s BTW at 4:30 yesterday.
The election is 9 months off. A lot can and will happen between now and then. WuFlu will be an annoyance, most likely. The D’s, having wrung everything out of this crisis that they can, will then crow about how it was a tough job, but they succeeded in beating the mighty virus, and how they started to relax all the onerous restrictions in early 2022 as soon as “Science” said it was safe. Fauci will be made into a hero again.
Similarly, inflation will be at least slightly lower than it is today. D’s will brag about how their economic policies are starting to work and let’s not change horses now…
Life will catch up to Gov DeSantis and something he does or says will turn out to be wrong, or ill-advised.
There will finally be a racist act done by a MAGA person (not a hoax). Maybe there will be a cop somewhere who actually shoots a POC without justification.
All of this will be reinforced by MSM to the utmost for people who don’t pay attention to politics except in alternate Novembers.
The predicted GOP landslide will be at best a gain of a few seats in the House and no or minimal change in the Senate. The D’s will crow about that also, as a moral victory and a mandate.
I hope I’m wrong about all of this.
West TX Intermediate:
Well that was certainly a not so happy start to the day. But well put.
West TX, I totally agree. Neo has often said a few months can be an eternity in politics. With the virus on the way out, the Ds will fully take credit for its disappearance. Anyone who bases the November election on today’s political environment is a fool. Remember, the Ds/Left NEVER give up and NEVER lose focus on their goals. And. with the feckless/spineless GOP to help them, I also am not optimistic.
“When I came of age, public health still mattered. Tuberculosis, syphilis, and polio weren’t that far in the past. Twenty years later the infrastructure was decaying and the public interest was elsewhere.”
Also, a lot of people lost the understanding that infectious disease can be a serious threat, because there wasn’t a lot of it anymore. Many came to believe that all you have to do be be ‘natural’, you don’t have to use vaccines or any other medical technology.
These people have been mainly on the Left until the last few years, a lot of them found in Hollywood and such places; we are now finding quite a few of them on the Right.
I was against Doctor Classes, DC here and elsewhere, long before 2016.
If people thought science mask sht was bad, wait until they see the casualties from the waxxines.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/what_happened_to_first_do_no_harm.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/is_the_coronavirus_the_greatest_crime_against_humanity_.html
https://uncoverdc.com/2022/01/03/insurer-says-deaths-for-ages-18-64-up-40-covid-19-not-to-blame/
It is already over except the damage control. Just watch the movie plot end now.
@Chuck
“… I honestly think that the problem here was incompetence rather than malice.”
I used to agree with this but frankly I think that it more often now incompetence with malice.
“I don’t automatically assume that health care bureaucrats are lying and often doing so for political (and/or CYA) reasons.”
i think that bureaucrats, politicians, and TV preachers are lying until proved otherwise.
My turning point occurred after my doctor stated that only a fitted N95 mask would work and everything else is useless against the virus. I think around that time, someone even recommended using a bandana as a mask. This was early in the pandemic.
Also, the lack of development of treatment protocols was a failure of public health officials and then to ban treatments was a disappointment.
.
C19 numbers are dropping in my area (OKC). From Jan21 to now, the 7 day average of cases has dropped 80%. For the local school district over the same period, the drop is 97%. Of course, having frigid temps and a snow storm (6-8 inches) shut down the schools and other activities for 4-5 days. So, a snow lockdown helped with the numbers.
I do remember the public health memo signed by 1,000 or more health care workers justifying demonstrations by calling “racism a health hazard” but I had turned against lockdowns even before that. I am back in the office (by choice, but the vast majority of my coworkers still choose to work from home) and there are people who come into the office and the first thing they do before even taking off their coats is go for the hand sanitizer as if it was still mid March 2020.
As I commented above, it was the manipulation of statistics that alerted me to how politicized this “pandemic” (worse than the Black Death, I tell ya) was.
Well, speaking of apparently manipulated statistics, take a look at the article linked below about the manipulation of military health care statistics–the magnitude of the numbers involved is incredible.
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/dod-caught-major-scandal-us-military-caught-severe-data-manipulation-following-covid-reveal-no-way-revised-numbers-real/