Moving GoalpostsA common strategy in propaganda is moving goalposts, as the target ultimately being aimed for is something the public would initially never agree upon. As a result, the first thing that is pushed on the public is something that at least on the surface seems justifiable but is then gradually shifted to the originally unacceptable goal (this process is commonly analogized to the totalitarian tiptoe or slowly boiling a frog in water so it does not jump out—although the scientific accuracy of that specific claim is debated). This process is very methodical and easy to recognize once you know how to look for it.
Consider for example, as detailed previously here and here, just how quickly we have gone from each of these to the next:
•A “need” for Big Tech to curate information at the end of the Obama administration.
•Introducing the concept of “misinformation.”
•Creating the illusion of an epidemic of “misinformation.”
•Mass censorship of anything arbitrarily deemed misinformation.
•Doctors being forbidden from sharing ‘misinformation’ with their patients.
•Misinformation being declared a weapon of war by New Zealand’s prime minister at the UN.
•Governments criminalizing the dissemination of “misinformation.”
One of the most consequential examples of moving goalposts can be found in each of the recent major wars the US was involved in (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq). The initial involvement was pitched as limited support (e.g. a limited deployment), which then turned into a quagmire that only accomplished causing enormous devastation on both sides.
In each case, the American public, after years of pointless bloodshed, eventually acknowledged the wars were a mistake, and the U.S. was forced to withdraw with nothing to show for it except enriching defense contractors (a polite term for war profiteers like Biden’s Secretary of Defense). This is an important pattern to recognize because we appear to be going through the early stages of the same process with Ukraine now. Billions in military aid have been given for weapons to “fight Russia” and the same propaganda used to sell each previous war is being reused for this war (Glenn Greenwald provides an excellent synopsis here).
The military-industrial complex’s propaganda has many similarities to the medical-industrial complex’s propaganda and hence is quite valuable to study when attempting to understand what happened with COVID-19. Like wars, vaccination campaigns are always initially sold on miraculous promises those with firsthand knowledge of the data and the subject know are false. Once those promises fail to materialize, the goalposts are repeatedly moved with higher and higher rates of vaccination being demanded, lower and lower bars being set for what the vaccine will accomplish, and harsher and harsher penalties being imposed upon those who refuse vaccination.
As many of you noticed, the COVID-19 vaccines were initially presented as being voluntary (in fact they were initially marked under a scarcity model with each recipient being privileged to get a vaccine), it was claimed the pandemic would soon be over with the miracles of two dose mRNA vaccines, and not a peep was ever mentioned about the potential need for boosters. The goalposts were then eventually moved to mandatory vaccinations, the vaccines only reducing your chance of dying, the virus being with us for the foreseeable future (as numerous cases of outbreaks in fully vaccinated groups emerged), and requiring multiple boosters each year. This reversal was entirely predictable as it followed the playbook which had been already developed with previous vaccinations.
(Note: although the last point is clearly meant to be poking fun at those who worship the vaccines, some have argued it may also be applicable and while their specific argument is highly questionable [I largely view what they are describing as illustrating a loss of physiologic zeta potential], I mention it since am quite curious to see how far this meme will ultimately go).ModelingOne of the foundational beliefs of our religion of science is that everything in the universe can be broken down into mathematical equations. In many cases, this is completely true. However, with more complex natural systems, especially those involving sentient organisms, those models often fail to hold up (e.g. consider this collection of climate models that were later proven to be false). Unfortunately, due to the faith we hold in the “scientific” paradigm, when bad mathematical models are put forward, they are rarely if ever questioned. The below graph is meant to illustrate what I have observed with more models or projections than I can count:
A recent memorable example were the projected vaccination rates in the United States compared to what actually happened:
The modeling problem was most evident with the dire models that were used to justify mass lockdowns. The modelers, who had previously made wildly inaccurate models that greatly overstated the death rate from various infectious diseases, produced a model for COVID-19 that predicted a global catastrophe if strict lockdowns were not immediately implemented. When policymakers were presented with these catastrophic models, they of course felt duty-bound to impose these lockdowns and viewed their potential consequences as a necessary sacrifice.
There were however three problems with those models:
•Lockdowns were nonsensical because at best, all they could accomplish was delaying the spread of the disease as individuals would eventually have to leave their homes.
•The modelers did not consider the social and economic consequences of their models.
•The individuals who made these models utilized a variety of flawed assumptions that would not have withstood any degree of independent scrutiny had they been subject to peer review. Malcolm Kendrick provided an excellent summary of some of the methodological flaws in their model and it is truly amazing these mistakes were never flagged by the scientific community (although fortunately they later were put in the spotlight by a parliament hearing).
One of my favorite “bad models” is the ASCVD calculator which was rolled out in 2013 by the American Heart Association and was eagerly adopted by my colleagues (it has a few easy to obtain numbers you can punch in to “scientifically” calculate how likely someone will be to have a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years). Those with a score of at least 5% were “encouraged” to take a statin, while those with at least a 7.5% risk were “advised” to start a statin.
I was always suspicious of this model as I knew statins provided minimal benefit in preventing these conditions (but were excellent at creating life altering side effects and enriching the statin manufacturers). It was thus not hard for me to notice they would normally calculate a risk which passed the statin threshold which immediately reminded of the 2010 WebMD scandal.
WebMD (a website which Google consistently ranks at the top for all health related search queries) provided a free depression survey that regardless of your answers, always concluded you were at risk for severe depression and recommended seeing your doctors to prevent disastrous complications like suicide, visits that almost always resulted in lifelong psychiatric medication prescriptions. WebMD of course had heavy sponsorship from Eli Lily (Prozac’s manufacturer) and had engaged in decades of egregious conduct to keep their drugs on the market (which I believe represents the best parallel to how everyone in the government covered up the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines).
Most of my colleagues gleefully adopted this cardiovascular risk calculator (as did the medical board examinations and the guidelines each physician is expected to follow). At this point, I have lost track of how many times numbers were authoritatively pushed into the calculator in front of a patient after which the patient was gently, then firmly, and then if still not agreeing to, hysterically lectured on their urgent need to start taking a statin regardless of the side effects of the drug. I was thus overjoyed when I learned that a 2016 Kaiser study had looked at the electronic health care data of 307,591 Americans and discovered that the calculator was overestimating the risk of a heart attack or stroke by between 5 to 6 times!
This is a huge figure which cannot be account for by anything besides a dysfunctional calculator in the first place, and had this error been corrected, almost none of the patients who met the calculator’s criteria for initiating statin therapy would have qualified. Unfortunately, few of my colleagues are aware this study exists, and the calculator has remained in widespread use (which may be explained by most of the members of the guideline committees who inevitably conclude people need to take statins regardless of the evidence being on the payroll of statin manufacturers).
Although the widely adopted calculator overestimating the risk of a heart attack or stroke by 5 to 6 times was a national scandal in of itself with profound consequences for millions, it was far more accurate than the unchallenged and farcical epidemiological models for COVID-19 (or any of the models those individuals had made previously).
As you might suspect, this exact same problem has occurred for decades with modeling herd immunity, and like many other models, the modelers have never been required to defend their models or held to be accountable for their models’ failures.
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Negative Vaccine Efficacy
...a concerning phenomenon has been repeatedly observed: being vaccinated makes one more likely to catch COVID-19.
I have long suspected this is the case as I have observed certain vaccines appear to increase the likelihood of a severe illness and I have seen countless pieces of evidence suggesting this was the case (e.g. smallpox vaccination campaigns repeatedly resulting in larger smallpox outbreaks than those that proceeded the campaign or those in neighboring cities that were not vaccinated). Since that time I discovered that many other studies have reached the same conclusion (e.g. receiving an influenza vaccination greatly increases your risk of developing a variety of other viral respiratory infections).
In the case of COVID-19, vaccine efficacy appears to drop from the time of vaccination until it eventually becomes negative.
The solution to this problem has been to repeatedly deploy boosters before the vaccine efficacy can become negative. Further complicating the issue, as best as I can tell from reviewing the preliminary evidence, the rate of decline in vaccine efficacy appears to accelerate with each successive vaccination (while the rates of severe adverse reactions simultaneously increase).
A phrase I have commonly heard mentioned is that “the definition of fanaticism is one realizing they are going in the wrong direction, and then instead of slowing down or turning around, they double their speed” (another description for this phenomenon is choosing to double-down rather than admit that one is wrong). Our society seems to reward this behavior, so it persists (the previously mentioned wars for example provide numerous tragic examples). I can thus understand why vaccine advocates are choosing to promote more and more boosters rather than acknowledging that vaccination may not be the solution to COVID-19.
I view all of this as a product of public health training conditioning each student to believe the solution to every problem in the world is more vaccinations, which results, quite literally, with many of them being kept up at night in turmoil over the minute percentage of the population who refuse to vaccinate and prevent all of our problems from magically going away.
Nonetheless, it still surprises me that they don't seem to get that there is no possible way a vaccine with negative vaccine efficacy could ever create herd immunity. Like many other things in life, that is the power of ideology, and ironically helps to explain why the mythology of herd immunity actually fulfills the criteria for pseudoscience:
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