Those of us who had followed the antivaccine movement for a long time before the COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world in early 2020 have been routinely alarmed, amazed, and disappointed at how easily certain “COVID-19 contrarian doctors”—as some of us like to call those who have consistently minimized COVID-19 severity and opposed public health interventions such as “lockdowns” and mandates for masks and vaccines—have slipped into longstanding talking points and tropes of the antivaccine movement. These are often doctors who never, ever would have said anything even vaguely antivaccine before the pandemic but now routinely parrot “old school” antivaccine talking points, whether they realize them to be antivax or not. An example of just such a talking point is to portray people who actually take precautions against being infected by COVID-19 of being “irrational” or having “irrational” fear or anxiety. The fear and anxiety are thus acknowledged, but portrayed as less than rational or even not rational at all.
Worse than that, these “COVID-19 contrarians” portray taking precautions to avoid COVID-19 as being more than just irrational, but outright pathological, with people who still wear N95 masks, for instance, being accused of “irrational anxiety” or “fear” just because they don’t want to be infected by a virus that has killed over a million people (and counting) in just the US alone and is still widely circulating in the population. This narrative is of a piece with longstanding antivaccine messaging that portrays vaccination programs driven primarily by irrational fear in order for the medical profession, big pharma, and government to exercise “control” over you. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read variations on this theme over the last two decades, which is why I took note of an article on a Substack called Sensible Medicine entitled Legitimizing irrational anxiety is bad medicine. The author? Who else could it be but Dr. Vinay Prasad, the adult oncologist who fancies himself an expert in pediatrics, infectious disease, epidemiology, and virology, because of course it had to be him? In his Substack, he argues that we should treat COVID-19 like the flu and do no more or less to protect ourselves against COVID-19 than we used to do for the flu—but with an omission.
Before I discuss his analogy, let’s look at his contempt for the “irrational.” If you don’t get the idea about how “irrational” the ever-eminent (in his own mind) Dr. Prasad thinks precautions against COVID-19 are now for most people, he nails it home with a subtitle:
Healthy middle age people carrying CO2 monitors need frank advice to stop.
Quite honestly, I had been unaware that CO2 monitors were a thing any more since very early in the pandemic. Dr. Prasad mentions these monitors multiple times in his post, in particular citing photos of them on Twitter. So I did what my curiosity led me to do and searched Twitter for the term “CO2 monitor.” Most of what I found were Tweets advocating such monitors in rooms to indicate when ventilation is inadequate and therefore the risk of COVID-19 transmission in the room probably elevated. Yes, I found among the top Tweets peopleadvocating such monitors, but they didn’t sound anywhere near as fearful and—dare I say?—irrational as Dr. Prasad leads his readers to believe in his post.
For example:
This one amused me:
And there were stories like this:
My overall impression was that these people were not being irrational, just cautious, and that having better ventilation is a good thing, even leaving aside the question of how low your CO2 reading needs to be to lower the risk of aerosol transmission of COVID-19 to very low levels. I can see one reason why Dr. Prasad might want to target such monitors as an example of “irrational” anxiety, though. Many of the Tweets advocating them tend to recommend them in schools in order to reduce transmission there, and Dr. Prasad and the Brownstone Institute for which he writes have been nothing if not unrelentingly hostile for a long time to masks (which are portrayed as horrifically harmful) and any other COVID-19 mitigations in schools, such as school closures and virtual learning.
Of course, the very title of Dr. Prasad’s little rant should tell you what I’m talking about when I point out that “COVID-19 contrarian” doctors often echo antivax talking points. There was a time when I used to give people like Dr. Prasad the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were clueless that the arguments they were making were not new and, prior to the pandemic, had been staples of antivaccine propaganda going back decades. Indeed, on several occasions, that benefit of the doubt led me to state emphatically and unequivocally on a number of occasions that, no matter what I thought of him otherwise, I didn’t think that Dr. Prasad is in any way antivaccine. Nearly a year later, I can no longer say this about Dr. Prasad with nearly much confidence as I used to. As for the other “contrarians,” they have been told time and time again, with examples, that these talking points are old antivax tropes. They either refuse to believe or continue to use them anyway. Truly, the “new school” COVID-19 antivaxxers are coming more and more to resemble “old school” antivaxxers from days gone by.
The overall message of the post is simple: Anyone who is middle-aged or younger and relatively healthy shouldn’t worry about COVID-19 anymore, and if you continue to take precautions you’re a victim of “irrational anxiety” stoked by the public health infrastructure. In fact, to Dr. Prasad, you might even be mentally ill:
Medicine has always drawn a distinction between appropriate and inappropriate emotions. If someone experiences sadness, loss of appetite, and lack of desire to get out of bed, it is relevant if they just lost a spouse versus if this is simply Wednesday.
Similarly, if you take appropriate precautions when you climb Half Dome you are being reasonable, but if you refuse to climb 12 stairs out of fear of heights, you are not, and you might benefit from mental health care.
It’s time for medical professionals to advise young, middle age, healthy people to throw away your n95, leave your C02 monitor at home and get back to life. These are not proportionate responses. You are not acting reasonably. Someone needs to tell you.
See the narrative? If you are young to middle-aged and still insist on wearing an N95 in public, then Dr. Prasad thinks that you are, at minimum, being very irrational and, at the worst, might even be suffering from mental illness.Why? Because to him there’s no sense in resisting any more. You can’t avoid it, and you’re supposedly so low risk that worrying about COVID-19 is irrational.
As I said, irrational:
Anyone who plans on being around for the next decade has only two things guaranteed: You will definitely get Covid19 and you will definitely pay taxes.
As of Sept 2022, everyone in America has had plenty of opportunity to be vaccinated if they wish. Among those who haven’t, rates of COVID-19 are sky high. Most have had and recovered from the virus, making their risk from reinfection low. Even those who’ve been vaccinated suffered breakthrough at astonishing rates. Finally, the virus itself has drifted towards less lethality.
Why bother trying to avoid getting a disease that, even if you accept Dr. Prasad’s estimation that it’s no longer any more deadly than the flu? I also can’t help but note the evolution in the antivax/COVID-19 minimization narrative from March 2020 with respect to influenza. Back then, the narrative was that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu. Funny how now, in 2022, Dr. Prasad’s narrative is that it’s “no worse than the flu” now that we have vaccines and boosters, even as he has resisted vaccine mandates for anyone who’s not elderly or so chronically ill that even he has to concede that they are high risk for severe COVID-19 and death.
In fact, let’s do a little compare and contrast. Here is Dr. Prasad now:
The IFR for Covid19 is now less than flu. Fear of long COVID is irrational. In so far as it exists, you have to accept it. In so far as it is overblown, you can ignore it. There is no good evidence boosters or Paxlovid or anything changes it. That evidence would require a clear consistent and reproducible definition. Good luck with that.
Over the next few years, COVID-19 will engulf everyone on Earth. Over the next few decades, it will engulf everyone many times over.
Given: you’re eventually going to get Covid19 and it’s less dangerous than flu, you should take all the same precautions you used to take for flu, but no more.
Here’s a little more of Dr. Prasad’s characterization of “irrational” fear—oh, and tribalism, because of course Dr. Prasad thinks it’s all “virtual signaling.” (Normally, I don’t make fun of typos, but I’ll make an exception for Dr. Prasad.) Anyhow:
At this moment in time, COVID19 is not a risk big enough to most people to justify behaving differently than you did pre-covid. When I see a healthy 20 year old wearing an n95 mask outside, I feel pity for them. They are the victim of irrational messaging, virtual signaling, tribalism, and possibly also fear and anxiety. We should encourage them to live normally, and relax.
Now let’s go back to June 2020, where I will quote a certain someone whom I will not identify until after the quote. This is not Dr. Prasad. I am quoting this statement from May 2020 in order to illustrate how similar the message then is to Dr. Prasad’s message now:
What is the group that is really at risk? Let’s be honest about this and say something that might get me some trouble here, but let’s be honest. That group is very well known. It’s people over the age of 65—not just because you’re over the age of 65, but you’re sick with other diseases. You have heart disease. You have COPD. You have diabetes. You have issues, many of those issues coming from the fact that you didn’t treat your body very well while you were on this planet. And I want to talk about this for one minute as we close this down. That 0.26% are the most sick among us, and I have nothing against you. Go ahead and bubble wrap your house. Lock yourself in your basement. Go and do what’s necessary.
And:
So here’s what we do. Let’s go outside. Let’s take off our masks. We’re not on drugs, and we don’t need to be on drugs. Let’s catch this cold! Whether or not it’s just the 20% of us and maybe we’re not even in that category, let’s give it a college try to catch this cold, so that we can protect the pharmaceutical-dependent amongst us!
Don’t these two passages sound a lot alike? There’s the same “don’t worry, be happy” attitude, the same characterization of COVID-19 as not dangerous to people who aren’t old and sick already, the same minimization of COVID-19 (Dr. Prasad likening it to the flu and this latter person likening it to a bad cold), the same call to stop masking and not do anything that we didn’t do to protect ourselves from disease before the pandemic.
So who is the second person who two years ago was urging people to “catch this cold” while characterizing those who want people to take precautions as not just irrational but selfish as well? Regular readers know, as I’ve quoted him saying this a number of times since June 2022 as an example of an antivaxxer who denies the severity of COVID-19 and basically advocates that most people return to pre-COVID-19 behavior. That’s right. It’s antivax influencer Del Bigtree, the man who had before the pandemic previously teamed up with Andrew Wakefield in order to produce an overwrought antivax movie VAXXED. Here’s a hint: If you find yourself sounding like Del Bigtree when it comes to COVID-19 mitigation measures, you really should take a long hard look at how you got to this point.
Of course, I strongly suspect that Dr. Prasad knows exactly what he’s doing. He seeks out a small minority of people whose precautions against COVID-19 he considers ridiculous and then does his best to portray them to be as “irrational” as possible, even though he has to massively exaggerate to do it:
Looking down at your Co2 monitor and snapping photos for twitter is no way to live. You need some frank advice: it’s time to stop, for your own sake and those around you.
Also, you’re worthless and weak, but Dr. Prasad assures you that you shouldn’t feel bad about your worthlessness and weakness because our worthlessness and weakness in the face of COVID-19 aren’t your fault (at least, not entirely your fault). They’re largely the CDC’s fault—and that of the Democrats as well:
The CDC has done you a disservice. It has enabled people to act irrationally by pushing Paxlovid in people in whom it was not studied. It encouraged people to mask without ever generating data if the community recommendation worked, and worse: long after it made sense. It recently encouraged healthy 20 year olds to wear an n95— that is frankly bad advice. Any covid benefit dwarfed by the downsides of making a 20 year old think they are vulnerable and weak. The CDC may be doing this for political rather than medical reasons. It caters to the most irrational pole of one political party. Alternatively, the agency is filled with work from home people— who themselves could benefit from frank advice.
Got that, all you millennials? The CDC and the Democrats have turned you all into a bunch of wimps and crybabies! Come to think of it, now Dr. Prasad is sounding a lot like Tucker Carlson and all the far right wing pundits who are trying to portray caution in the face of a global pandemic as hopeless cowardice, all because they worship “strength” and masculinity and view collective action and action that doesn’t just as undermining manliness…or something. Indeed, Dr. Prasad’s messaging is custom-designed to appeal to a certain…other…political leaning.
In fact, it’s worse than that. If you are still masking your children, particularly children in daycare, Dr. Prasad thinks you’re not just irrational, he thinks…well…let me just quote him, so that you don’t think I’m exaggerating:
You would never shield your face from an infant in daycare, for hour after hour, day after day. Doing that now is deranged. The potential downside far exceeds any potential upside.
That’s right! Those of you who want to protect daycare workers and small children with mask mandates aren’t just worthless and weak. You’re downright deranged! (What was that Dr. Prasad keeps lamenting about as far as rhetoric around COVID-19? “Loss of civility” and “obsessive criticism” of people like him? Yes, I’m calling him out for hypocrisy, but his hypocrisy is nothing new.)
And all you workers who have the temerity to hope for safe workplaces during a pandemic, Dr. Prasad has news for you, along with a heaping helping of contempt, slippery slope fallacy, and a dash of reductio ad absurdum aimed at academics:
You didn’t complain that your employer was trying to encourage people to show up to work, so they can justify paying them. Don’t do that now. It seem unreal that professors, who have been handsomely paid and never asked to take risk pre-vax, are refusing to work post-vax—- refusing to work in 2022. Will they refuse to work in 2030? The virus isn’t going anywhere.
It is, of course, no coincidence that Dr. Prasad is laying down the opprobrium particularly harshly on academics, given that academics have tended to be the ones most concerned about the pandemic and theleast receptive to his style of “don’t worry, be happy” blandishments regarding the pandemic disguised as “sensible medicine.” His argument also serves the large corporations that are trying to force their workers to stop working virtually and come back to the office, whether it’s safe or not, which totally tracks with his association with the “free market” libertarian think tank the Brownstone Institute and a certain other ideology. I also can’t help but note that condescendingly and contemptuously lecturing and mocking people is a great way to persuade them…not. Dr. Prasad is barely middle-aged, but he sounds like a 70-year-old lecturing young people, whom he views as not as tough, smart, moral, or good as his generation was.
That’s probably why Dr. Prasad doesn’t limit his attacks to just academics, but also challenges his critics with another slippery slope attack, just not stretching it all the way out to 2030:
Some may disagree with my prescription: If you do, you should articulate the reason. Do you really think you can avoid COVID-19 indefinitely? Are you going to carrying a CO2 monitor in 2025? How long will you continue this? Do you think it’s possible you’re acting irrationally?
The slippery slope fallacy is, of course, a logical fallacy and generally a bad argument in all but a handful of cases in which the path down the “slope” is clearly laid out and strongly supported. In this case, it’s just a convenient strategy to portray his critics and those whom he sees as “irrational” as cowards duped by the CDC. Reductio ad absurdum can be an effective rhetorical strategy, but it’s not an actual argument based on science and facts.
But what about long COVID, that constellation of baffling and often debilitating symptoms suffered by a disturbing percentage of people who have recovered from COVID-19? Glad you asked! He thinks you’re irrational to fear that too:
Fear of long COVID is irrational. In so far as it exists, you have to accept it. In so far as it is overblown, you can ignore it. There is no good evidence boosters or Paxlovid or anything changes it. That evidence would require a clear consistent and reproducible definition. Good luck with that.
What an asshole! (Sorry, I know I rarely use language worse than “damn,” or “hell,” or, rarely, “shit,” but really, there’s only one word to describe Dr. Prasad after he dismissed concerns over long COVID so bluntly.
Back in May, I wrote about a similar sort of argument, in which Dr. Lucy McBride described what she referred to as “coronaphobia.” Here’s a link from Twitter:
And this is what Dr. McBride had said about her own article:
Basically, the message is the same: Stop being irrationally afraid and just catch COVID-19, already! As I said then writing about Dr. McBride and say now writing Dr. Prasad, it is not my intention to deny that there are people out there suffering from anxiety and depression due to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of whom might even require treatment. There are. What I am going to point out is how the messaging that Dr. McBride doubled down on a year after she had first promoted it was very similar to messaging that I’ve been encountering for many years coming from the antivaccine movement. Although Dr. McBride probably doesn’t realize it, she is echoing an old antivax trope that does exactly the same thing: Seeks to shame those who fear vaccine-preventable diseases. I listed examples going back years in my post about her article; so I won’t repeat them here.
I will, however, note that Dr. Prasad goes beyond Dr. McBride’s shaming of people with anxiety over the pandemic. Dr. McBride at least tried to sound empathetic discussing what she clearly viewed as “irrational” fears of her patients. (What is a phobia, after all, but overblown and irrational fear or anxiety?) Dr. Prasad is dismissive of those fears as “irrational,” stoked by the CDC, and arrogantly lectures those who still have concerns as being not just completely unrealistic but cowardly and paranoid—deranged, even! (“Given: you’re eventually going to get Covid19 and it’s less dangerous than flu.” So stop being such a cowardly wimp and “catch that cold“—I mean flu.)
On the other hand, I do want to be as charitable as possible, even after venting a bit about Dr. Prasad’s general assholishness. That’s why I can’t help but wonder about one part of Dr. Prasad’s post: “…you should take all the same precautions you used to take for flu, but no more.”
Here’s what I mean: What were “all the same precautions” that we used to take for flu? According to Dr. Prasad they included this:
You definitely washed your hands in the winter back in 2019, and you should do that now. At the same time you don’t have to be excessive about it. You can do it like you did before, reasonably.
I sense that Dr. Prasad missed…something…in his description of the precautions we used to take against the flu before the pandemic. What specific precaution am I missing? Hmmm…
Oh, wait, I know!
Dr. Prasad forgot to mention yearly flu vaccines. I’m sure it must have been an oversight on his part. After all, before the pandemic, the CDC did recommend that everyone over the age of 6 months be vaccinated against the flu every year before the start of the flu season—and still does recommend it. That was a key part of taking “all the same precautions you used to take for flu, but no more,” wasn’t it?
By Dr. Prasad’s logic, then—ignoring all his dismissive rejection of masks and other nonpharmacologic interventions against COVID-19—we should at the very least also model our precautions against COVID-19 (which, like the flu, is here to stay according to the good doctor and we’ll just have to lear to live with it) on those that we routinely took against the flu before the pandemic, which was to get vaccinated every year, starting as an infant.
I have to assume—in the interests of the most charitable interpretation of Dr. Prasad’s post—then, that Dr. Prasad is recommending that everyone, starting at the age of six months, follow CDC recommendations for vaccination against COVID-19 as well—just as many of us did for vaccaintion against the flu—given that the CDC recommends vaccination against COVID-19 for everyone over the age of 6 months, a recommendation that is very much like its recommendation for the flu, minus the yearly vaccine.
Again, I’m sure that it was just an inadvertent oversight that Dr. Prasad didn’t mention the vaccine, right? Surely he couldn’t mean that we should behave differently and not get vaccinated against COVID-19, could he? It was he who made the comparison and said that we should treat COVID-19 the same way that we treat the flu and take the same precautions for COVID-19 as the flu, not I. It must have been an error that he didn’t use this comparison to urge everyone to get vaccinated and boosted. It must have!
I’ll let you be the judge.
94 replies on “Caution over COVID-19 is “irrational anxiety”?”
It’s just like the flu. Of course it is. An interesting set of graphs.
The Course of the Pandemic: What’s the story with Excess Deaths?
I still were a mask in stores and on public transit as do quite a few people in my town.
That’s an interesting link.
My favorite is the second comment:
“There’s also an idea out there that the world is flat.
It’s a very complicated time to be a sentient being, with such a vibrant marketplace of ideas.”
The comment was referring to a suggestion about the dangers of mRNA vaccines, but it applies very well to Dr. Prasad’s ravings.
Forgot, all these angst-ridden precautions seem to have affected the flu so Dr. Prasad is somewhat correct. The same precations for Covid beat the flu also.
Annual influenza reports
Bonus irony: over in east Asia, which leans culturally conservative, the entire population wearing masks all throughout flu season has for a century been the cultural norm. Clearly our western conservatives are doing conservatism all wrong.
Vinay Prasad, meanwhile, is just steamed there are people who exist who are not doing as Vinay Prasad says, which to Vinay Prasad is a personal affront.
I haven’t seen what Prasad says people should do, only what people shouldn’t…
Is this what passes for rational scientific debate? Ad hominem attacks on a fellow Doctor because he does not share your views? Throwing around the term “antivaxer” as a pejorative when the article was not about vaccination at all? Childish playground insults?
Having read both articles, I found Dr. Prasad’s to be far more reasoned and rational, and a lot less misanthropic.
May I assume that what you mean by Dr. Prasad being “more reasoned and rational” and “a lot less misanthropic” are the parts of Dr. Prasad’s article in which he calls daycare workers taking care of infants who wear a mask at work “deranged and people who use CO2 monitors “paranoid,” while basically calling people who are concerned about going back to work without adequate COVID-19 mitigation measures lazy and cowardly and also dismissing those who fear long COVID-19 as “irrational”?
Yes, that’s a whole lot less misanthropic and “more reasoned and rational” than me referring to Dr. Prasad as sounding a lot like an antivaxxer and echoing old antivax talking points.🙄
Prasad finds it ‘irrational’ to take any step to slow infections. It’s a strange kind of defeatism. On one hand, he says that there’s nothing to be done, while also saying that anyone who feels that we should do something to deal with this public health issue is ‘irrational’. Are there any preventative steps Prasad finds as being ‘rational’, when dealing with COVID-19, because I haven’t found any.
I would like to live in Prasad’s world, where any worry about health issues is irrational.
Yes! That’s why I’ve added wearing a mask in busy places to my flu prevention efforts–flu and Covid prevention are now one-and-the-same basically. I haven’t had so much as a cold since donning my first Covid-19 mask and I haven’t had flu since I started getting flu shots. As for comparing flu and Covid, for god’s sake, who thinks flu is trivial? I had it once decades ago and do not want it again.
What really grinds my gears about this guy being so mad about seeing healthy 20-year-olds in masks is that he thinks he can tell who’s healthy and less vulnerable just by looking at them. So many people I know who have invisible disabilities are understandably really afraid of getting COVID, and that fear is only compounded in the college town where I live because the assumption that all young people are healthy means less people are likely to take precautions. (And of course, we forget about the fact that sometimes young healthy people live with older people as well when we accept this narrative.)
Agree. But mocking people with long Covid-19 was also jarring. Lots about this is offensive.
I notice that as well–he was absolutely dismissive of long-Covid. That’s beyond stupid.
Regarding long COVID he throws caution out (“In so far as it exists, you have to accept it.”), but regarding COVID risk factors themselves, he blames victims for being overweight or having heart disease as pre-existing risk factors. His approach to risk mitigation and his assignment of blame is totally inconsistent.
Yeah right, you have to accept long covid, but if you want to take precautions to avoid getting covid and perhaps getting long covid, you are irrational. I wonder how dr. Prasad thinks about that if an employee is unable to work, because he or she is stuck with long covid. Or if he will be unable to work because he gets long covid. I suppose I just thinks, this will never happen to him, because he is healthy, eats well and takes care of his health. Just like al those healthy people, who thought they wouldn’t get covid, but still got it and had to live with long covid.
A. Wouldn’t use of CO2 monitors reduce the risk of other precautions in, say, schools? If he doesn’t want masks, wouldn’t better ventilation and monitoring it be something he should support?
B. Dr. Prasad must have missed our prepandemic efforts to promote flu vaccines and reduce the burden of flu. In spite of what he thinks, we don’t want people to die from either.
C. The comparison to Bigtree was really striking. Including the tone of blaming people concerned. And do you remember when Bigtree called parents worried about rotavirus hypochondriac? https://twitter.com/delbigtree/status/919038917629874182?s=21&t=0ykOz8MCvVYpVIeZQ-OSPg
D. Just as a reminder set, Dr. Prasad opposes children vaccinating – he would not have supported the EUA – and wants children to get sick. He wrote: https://unherd.com/2022/02/should-we-let-children-catch-omicron/
After seeing just how effectively masks and the other public health measures killed the flu season in 2021, I’ll be wearing N95s in public during flu season from now on in addition to getting vaccinated. COVID and the flu can both be very unpleasant even if you survive intact. Who needs unpleasant? Who needs to be sick for a week or more? Somehow, these “contrarian doctors” entirely miss the point of all this. They are supposed to be keeping people healthy, not just alive. Ideology has blinded them to reality. It’s sad that anyone is willing to listen to them. It’s sad that we are so poor at educating children that anyone is willing to listen to them.
I was able to get an appointment for the bivalent booster on Monday. At least I might have some additional protection for a few weeks, hopefully for a few months. My mask stays on.
Many people in blue California, where I live, are abandoning masks, and many are getting Covid—mild cases, probably because they are vaccinated. A theater nearby that shows old movies just reopened, but most of the patrons crowd together, talking, laughing, eating popcorn, and perhaps 2/3 aren’t wearing masks. Wanting the entertainment, I bought a P100 mask that claims to filter 99.7% of aerosols, and also tend to sit off to the side while attending movies at hopefully less popular times. The mask has replaceable filters and can be cleaned, and while wearing it I can’t smell the popcorn, which I can in an N95, however hard I tighten it. The mask is ugly, conspicuous and not comfortable, but it’s worth it if I don’t get sick. I’m really unhappy with the casual attitudes of people who drop all precautions. Expect a normal flu season on top of Covid this winter; it seems people are incapable of altering their behavior in response to facts. I’m getting my booster as soon as possible.
I’m getting my Omicron booster and my flu shot in about an hour. Thank goodness, because I’ve got stuff to do and people to protect (including myself) and ain’t nobody got time for being sick.
(I am lightly irked that I have to drive across the city and get my shots at a pharmacy rather than at my doctor’s office, but they won’t have flu shots for weeks and don’t seem to be allocated any COVID boosters.)
Do you have a preferred location for us to hide your corpse? Our vaccine may kill you but we’re very polite about it.
I’m not dead yet! Though my arm hurts and I’m tired with a bit of muscle aches and chills. So I’m taking the afternoon off work to lie on the couch and drink tea, like a sensible person.
Considering this is my first COVID shot (or flu shot) since becoming somewhat immunocompromised, it’s not nearly as bad as I expected, about the same as the last booster.
Though to answer your question, I’d like to be composted and used to repair a forest, please.
” I bought a P100 mask that claims to filter 99.7% of aerosols, and also tend to sit off to the side while attending movies at hopefully less popular times.”
How about 99.997?
I wear a rolled up vacuum cleaner bag (about 28 pleats) and ain’t gottit yet.
HEPA is a different tech that does not rely on electrostatics. Thus, there is no need to thow it away after 17 hours of use. The kind I use has activat3vated charcoal layer so the stink is, thus far, not mentioned by anybody. And the tube I use (dishwasher drain hose) to turn it under my chin is ribbed and collects most moisture.
In fact, there are reviews out there based on examination of 10-15 year old filters from BSL3 labs and the only thing that was degraded was the glue holding the seams together.
“The mask is ugly, conspicuous and not comfortable, but it’s worth it if I don’t get sick. I’m really unhappy with the casual attitudes of people who drop all precautions.”
That is why I wear a ‘respirator’ that I cobbled together that I have confidence in. And pirate movies instead of going into crowds!
Dear Dr Prasad, I am high risk, not due to not treating my body very well as you so crassly state, but because of cystic fibrosis. Your statement is offensive and I agree with Orac that you are an asshole.
I agree. Any suggestion that those who are at high risk are high risk by choice is offensive. I am high risk, not by choice.
Quite: my diagnosis of cardiac issues starts with the word “idiopathic” (I’m sure the learned Prasad knows what that means) and is likely to have a significant genetic componenet, given my family history, not to mention likely exposure to environmental toxins outwith my control (try growing up near a large trunk road and walking along it to school for 14 years, for example). My father-in-law’s COPD was down to work-related exposure to paper dust for decades…
Doncha just love a helping of victim blaming with your afternoon tea?
Prasad can go indulge in sexual acts with himself.
I suspect the Prasad already does, every day.
I wasn’t sure if that incredibly offensive statement was from Dr Prasad or from Del Bigtree. Because for a working oncologist to say something like that: wow someone needs to go back to basic bedside manner classes.
Dr. Prasad believes in following the evidence, rather than being caught up in drug industry promoted hysteria. It might have been understandable to over-react at the beginning of the pandemic, when no one was sure how dangerous covid would be. Now we know it is seldom dangerous for anyone who is not very old and not very sick.
This recent research considers risk vs benefit of covid vaccines for different groups of people. For healthy young or middle-aged people they conclude the risk of serious adverse effects from the vaccines is not worth it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9428332/
Orac seems to be unaware that covid variants are now less dangerous, or that covid was never a serious threat for most young people. Or that the vaccines are known to sometimes cause harm, especially in the young. Orac is worried about long covid, even though it has not been researched enough to know if it is a serious threat. Orac is not at all worried about possible long term risks of the vaccines.
He seems to think all vaccines are good, the more the better, and all infectious diseases are a grave danger. Reality is much more subtle and complicated than that.
Dr. Prasad is open-minded and cares more about evidence than politics. Listen to him.
From what I’ve been able to gather, the lower frequency of hospitalizations and deaths may not be intrinsic to the virus but is the result of growing immunity in the population. Omicron caused a large increase in pediatric hospitalizations. The virus is still extremely dangerous for those people who have never been vaccinated or infected, and there are still lots of those people.
Remember that 1% of a very large number is a very large number.
True, but remember you’re preaching to people who don’t count past One. Hence any % of “Who Cares” is equal to zero.
true, but IR, CI, labarge, greg, ginny, … also seem to be willing to lie repeatedly about science they don’t understand but assume have to be wrong since the evidence doesn’t support their favorite conspiracy. It’s a terrible combination of lack of knowledge and zero integrity on their parts.
You’re assuming they’re intentionally lying. If they are, as I hypothesize, NPDs then it is entirely feasible they are not. That’s because narcissistic Truth is whatever the narcissist says is true, in the moment she says it. The narcissist knows she is right, because she is incapable of error.
Thus from their narc POV they are not lying but telling the unvarnished truth, and any cognitive dissonance/impedance mismatch between that truth and reality is 100% your fault, my fault, reality’s fault itself. Hence the inevitable “pharma shill” retort when others’ arguments stubbornly refuse to submit: because that is the only possible explanation which fits all the facts of their own observation.
They are, in their odd way, doing science: following the evidence trail wherever it leads. We would argue they lack one component: an ability to ask “Might I be wrong?” But they know they cannot, so that is not needed at all.
Do you have kids? Raised them to be well-adjusted functioning adults? Now imagine a child that reaches adult without ever growing out of his toddlerhood. I think that is the intellect, world view, goals, impulse control you are dealing with whenever you try to reason—quite futilely—with these people. It’s no coincidence that 45, an overt NPD, was frequently called “Toddler in Chief”; in hindsight I find it surprising is folk thought it only an insult, not literally true.
It is our own egocentrism that we automatically assume other people also think like us. Some do not. Time to revisit our own mental models, perhaps.
That’s the description of a modern right-wing libertarian: spoiled, “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours I should get, might makes right” — all the stuff we hear from them.
Possibly you [has] are right about them, but I still find it amazing that folks like them can repeatedly make statements so counter to reality, not have any evidence to support their claims, and dismiss everything that shows they’re wrong. That much BS has to take some work on their part.
Nah, mate. That’s you still thinking like you.
For you it would be hard work. To a narc it is picking up a spoon at an all-you-can-eat buffet and immediately double-dipping.
A narc needs attention. Grovelling love tastes sweetest of all (being proof they have broken their target entirely), but raging hatred is just as nourishing. Any energy expenditure on their part is minor and instantly pays back a thousand-fold.
The only way to punish a narc is to deprive them of attention entirely. You cannot change them—but you can teach them which of their behaviors are allowed and which are not. Train a narc through behavioral reinforcement: engage only when they accede to your terms, and the moment they try to make it all about them (and they will), back out to the cornfield they go. Till either they learn or they stay there. But the instant you break those rules yourself, you teach them how to manipulate you; and they will exploit that weakness to get what they want, ruthlessly.
It’s all about who goes into the Skinner Box. And they are naturally very good at making you into their rat and you don’t even realize it.
ROFL, you gagging mung bean.
But seriously, you’re wasting your energy trying to flirt with the man. Vinay Prasad is already in love with himself.
LOL. Doshi and Fraiman? https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/peer-review-fail-vaccine-publishes-antivax-propaganda/
“Reality is much more subtle and complicated than that.”
It’s a shame that you can say this with a straight face, whilst reducing every pro-vaccination virus warning as “drug industry promoted hysteria”.
Oh yeah! Not dangerous at all except for the over 23,000 who died in the U.S. in the last month 🙁
So,which people are “very old and very sick” and thus have your permission to be worried about the risk of infection?
Now, how are you going to identify everyone who lives with one of those people,plus everyone who would like to visit their elderly and infirm friends and relatives?
And why should I pander to your entirely irrational anger at strangers choosing to protect ourselves from a pandemic that has already killed more than a million Americans? I’m not going to pretend that I don’t exist, or accept your not-exactly-subtext that my and my mother’s lives are worth less than your self-satisfaction.
When the data are analyzed with proper consideration of confounders those data say that the omicron lineage is no less virulent or deadly than any previous variant of concern. Almost every COVID hospitalization and death for quite some time now has been caused by a member of the omicron lineage. It appears mild only to those who take the most simplistic view of the data and ignore the confounders.
Dr. Daniel Griffin says “… these 500 mild deaths a day …” Dr. Griffin was commenting on omicron being just as bad as previous variants well before the formal analyses were done. He has cared for a great many COVID patients.
Many people, including the readers of the blog, read him. But you can’t expect everyone to agree with him, as well.
A fun comment on that paper over at PubPeer
.In the most basic sense, the authors shuffled around data until they got the seeming illusion of a result that fringe figures loved
Does Doshi get paid to be a BMJ editor? ’Cos I flunked high school stats and even I know you have to set your test conditions first, then run your math, and finally accept the result, whatever it is, even if it’s not the one you want.
You cannot define your test conditions once you already know what your data is, because at that point it is impossible not to be influenced by this “insider” knowledge. It is not enough to say that you did not contrive your tests, scout’s honor; you must be able to prove you could not have. Thus there are only two possible explanations when someone does it anyway: they’re criminally incompetent at how to do statistics, or they’re criminally malicious. Either way, it should be a sacking offense as they are utterly unfit for the role.
Therefore I really think the BMJ should give me Doshi’s job, because even though I can’t do statistics (or really anything else) to save myself, I am still infinitely more competent than that breeching jackass is. Also, I can use the money and will be happy to fight cage-match style for it too if that helps. They can even sell tickets. All of which will be a lot less publicly humiliating that what the BMJ is doing to medicine and also itself by enabling that festering turd.
Where is that language in the paper?
Do you want to help those around you whom are at a higher risk to covid, in example , older people?. Are you aged 20ish and agree with the above sentiment?. Wear a mask, it’s not all for you, it’s for others too.
Antonym for empathy: Prasad.
Speaking of Dr Prasad and the Slippery Slope Fallacy, these public health measures are not only irrational. They will lead to the End Of Democracy!
https://youtu.be/n_v5h0niekM
@ Indie Rebel
You write: “Dr. Prasad believes in following the evidence, rather than being caught up in drug industry promoted hysteria. It might have been understandable to over-react at the beginning of the pandemic, when no one was sure how dangerous covid would be. Now we know it is seldom dangerous for anyone who is not very old and not very sick.
This recent research considers risk vs benefit of covid vaccines for different groups of people. For healthy young or middle-aged people they conclude the risk of serious adverse effects from the vaccines is not worth it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9428332/”
I guess you missed Orac/David Gorski’s article that literally tears apart the article you link to???
David Gorski (2022 Sep 5). Peer review fail: Vaccine publishes antivax propaganda disguised as “reanalyses” of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data. Science-Based Medicine. at: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/peer-review-fail-vaccine-publishes-antivax-propaganda/
You write: “Orac seems to be unaware that covid variants are now less dangerous, or that covid was never a serious threat for most young people. Or that the vaccines are known to sometimes cause harm, especially in the young. Orac is worried about long covid, even though it has not been researched enough to know if it is a serious threat. Orac is not at all worried about possible long term risks of the vaccines.
He seems to think all vaccines are good, the more the better, and all infectious diseases are a grave danger. Reality is much more subtle and complicated than that.”
First, though the new variants are “less dangerous” they are still causing masses of hospitalizations, CDC at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html :
Hospitalizations
New Hospital Admissions
The current 7-day daily average for August 17–23, 2022, was 5,314. This is a 6.6% decrease from the prior 7-day average (5,687) from August 10–16, 2022.
5,198,924 Total New Admissions
5,314 Current 7-Day Average
5,687 Prior 7-Day Average
-6.6% Change in 7-Day Average
CDC Deaths at: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths_select_00
SO, deaths certainly far fewer than earlier during pandemic; but not just because current variants less lethal; but because large portion of population either vaccinated or already suffered a bought of COVID.
From CDC:
Vaccinations
COVID-19 Vaccine Primary Series
As of August 24, 2022, 608.9 million vaccine doses have been administered in the United States. Overall, about 262.6 million people, or 79.1% of the total U.S. population, have received at least one dose of vaccine. About 223.9 million people, or 67.4% of the total U.S. population, have been fully vaccinated
So, part of explanation for lower number of deaths is vaccination, also lower number of hospitalizations; but you fail to realize or ignore that, though younger, healthier individuals have a much lower risk of severe Covid, they can still infect others and even others who have been vaccinated may still be at some risk; e.g., vaccine didn’t take, their immune system had weaker response to vaccine, etc. And finally, the risk from the vaccine is infinitesimals; e.g. a very few cases of myocarditis, etc. and almost all totally recuperated. As for Orac supporting vaccines, he has a PhD in immunology and over 60 peer-reviewed research papers. In case you don’t understand, immunology is the science that underlies vaccines. And, also, anyone, such as myself, who have read extensively on the history of vaccine-preventable diseases; e.g. smallpox, polio, diphtheria, etc. understand that vaccines may be responsible for the large increase in life-expectancy during the past 100 years.
So, haven’t seen you in a while on this blog; but keep making fool of yourself, including referring to a totally piss poor article.
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425/rr-31 ” recent peer-reviewed paper by one of the world’s most cited and respected scientist, Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University, quotes an infection fatality rate (IFR) for Covid of 0.00-0.57% (0.05% for under 70s), far lower than originally feared and no different to severe flu [3]”
Because the world average for the alpha variant was shown to be 0.04% fatal by the top ranked epidemiologist in the world, places that show upward of 2% mortality are admitting to catastrophic medical and administrative errors. Cases such as this: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-some-doctors-are-moving-away-ventilators-virus-patients-n1179986 are what contributed to public mania. Where therapeutic protocols were dangerous or lacking is where covid was unduly dangerous.
Regarding John Ioannidis, I’ve written about him often enough, particularly his bad COVID-19 takes, that he has his own tag on this blog. Here’s the tag for a bunch of posts:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/tag/john-ioannidis/
“Top epidemiologist in the world”? You do know, don’t you, that Ioannidis isn’t even an epidemiologist, right?
As for the whole ventilator thing, I note that that article is from 2020. It is true that there was a controversy among critical care doctors regarding when to intubate COVID-19 patients and whether early intubation might produce worse outcomes. It turns out that that controversy has been largely resolved, and early intubation was not causing harm. Unfortunately, that conspiracy theory is still floating around two years later, and guess who helped stoke it? Drs Ioannidis and Prasad:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/intubations/
I had forgotten that Dr Prasad is an oncologist, and frankly that makes all of his statements here even more egregious in their callousness.
All of his patients are immunocompromised! Which means that all of the people who live with or interact regularly with his patients should be taking precautions to not get COVID so they don’t pass it along to these immunocompromised people! Even the “young and healthy” people.
A lot more people are immunocompromised than just people over 65. Sometimes it’s temporary, sometimes it’s permanent. Sometimes it’s the consequence of medications to treat an unrelated but serious condition.
Here’s an example: before COVID the baby son of one of my friends needed several surgeries to address a couple of serious conditions. None of those conditions impacted his immune system, but the whole family was still incredibly careful to avoid getting any illness because if he got sick before surgery it would delay a needed surgery, and if he got sick after surgery, well, that’s not going to help anyone’s recovery. So they were very careful about staying out of crowds and washing hands and all that jazz. Would Dr Prasad say that they were suffering from a “mental illness”? Or would he recognize that they were taking reasonable precautions with a high risk person in their household?
My healthy, young coworker got COVID a few months ago. She missed two weeks of work, between being sick and testing positive. Does Dr Prasad think that every American can afford to miss weeks of work for illness?
Thoughtless and entitled is Dr Prasad.
@JustaTech: “I had forgotten that Dr Prasad is an oncologist”
That’s okay, so has Dr Prasad.
@ Indie Rebel
The following somehow didn’t get into my previous comment, just
CDC Deaths at: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths_select_00
SO, deaths certainly far fewer than earlier during pandemic; but not just because current variants less lethal; but because large portion of population either vaccinated or already suffered a bought of COVID.
State Date New Deaths 7-Day Moving Avg Historic Deaths
United States Sep 5, 2022 60 342 0
United States Sep 4, 2022 20 373 0
United States Sep 3, 2022 24 382 0
United States Sep 2, 2022 453 392 27
United States Sep 1, 2022 428 416 0
United States Aug 31, 2022 830 425 0
United States Aug 30, 2022 582 412 0
Frankly, Prasad is just guilty of sensationalism by taking the most egregiously (at least to him) cautious folks and using them as “hah, you don’t want that” by portraying them as the “typical maskers”.
What he doesn’t see, probably due to the size of his ego, is that he’s far more WRONG than he can ever see himself. If he really thinks we are doing the same to his side, we are far closer to the truth than he ever can be.
The anti-maskers, who made comments like “COVID theater” (much like Prasad here) have a preset notion that the cure is worse than the disease, so they have to discredit the cure somehow. In other words, they are closet antivaxxers, but they often have professional credentials that lend some some legitimacy, and they value that and won’t go full antivax because they KNOW they sound cuckoo if they do so, so they chip around the edge, by going after masks and such.
Prasad is a part of the Urgency of Normal group, along with McBride, Hoeg, and a bunch of other anti-vax/anti-mask doctors.
I basically laughed at “Urgency of Normal” website, where their position paper was basically a bunch of made up data, and cherry-picking what they want to quote. Their number of US pediatric flu deaths was several times the official CDC numbers, with no citings whatever, in order to justify their position “COVID was no worse than the flu”. And they quoted the Georgia School masking study after they saw the words “not statistically significant” as an example of mask does NOT work despite the study’s overall conclusion that masks do work, and “not statistically significant” refers to comparison between a masking school vs “no mask required” schools where they have NO data on who masked and who did not. What’s even MORE hilarious is they are trying to use OG or pre-Delta numbers during Epsilon season (Feb 2022) to justify their policy when it’s already OBE (overtake by events). And their proof that quarantine is hurting kids? A survey that only identified girls with more depression, and it can’t separate between psychological stress caused by COVID vs by the counter-measures.
TL;DR — their logic is bogus, they cherry-pick their evidence, they reach the wrong conclusions, they make up their data, and they accuse the other side of doing all that to them. They are basically an ideologically aligned motivated thinking group with an agenda to impede official US response to COVID.
Dorit: “The comparison to Bigtree was really striking. Including the tone of blaming people concerned. And do you remember when Bigtree called parents worried about rotavirus hypochondriac?”
Deriding parents is a feature of pediatrician Paul Thomas’ “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan” (which consists of fearmongering about vaccines while ostensibly recommending a greatly scaled-down vaccine schedule). Quoting the good doctor:
“As you do what you can to shore up your child’s immune system, you can let go of the fear of illness and embrace the fun.”
Yes, it’s such a rollicking good time when your kids are running a high fever and coughing uncontrollably.
Thomas endorses the idea of sickness being a great opportunity to bond with the little ones. “Enjoy the cuddles” and “Laugh a lot” are among his prescriptions.
Parents who are concerned about their children contracting serious infectious diseases and want to avoid that are termed “Nervous Nellies” by Thomas.
It’s not a big jump to Prasad thinking that young people appear “vulnerable and weak” if they’re taking reasonable precautions to avoid contracting Covid-19.
@DB: “Deriding…”
Yep. It’s almost as if there’s some checklist they are following.
https://yimregister.medium.com/the-abusers-textbook-13-steps-abusers-take-to-trap-victims-fab7bd2a78a1
Vaccine Friendly? Wouldn’t that be more like Virus Friendly?
Thomas’ has repeatedly stated “kids don’t die” from COVID. What an odious quack. It is, however in line with his 2016 dismissal (in his book) of the death of a childhood friend from measles when Thomas himself was a child (in Africa, pre-vaccine era). Thomas has repeatedly said the MMR vaccine “might have” saved him from measles, but that adequate vitamin A would have. Thomas has also stated he saw a child die from varicella when he was a resident but the child had lots of other conditions (so I guess the death was no biggie?). Thomas, in his usual interview schtick on how he is the oh-so-amazing doctor he is today will state he saw the HIB vaccine greatly decrease meningitis in children when he was a pediatric resident but then state the vaccine is now ineffective because we don’t see any HIB illness now except for non-typeable hemophilus influenza (which means the vaccine is working, duh). And, of course Thomas states kids don’t need polio vaccine in the US because there are no cases of polio (well there wasn’t until last month, but he hasn’t come out with his excuse for that yet) in the US. And he states it’s ok to delay or skip the MMR vaccine because if there is an outbreak you can just shimmy on down to your pediatrician or health dept and get your child an MMR then.
It’s all about Control: Thomas hears others having influence on the people he wants to own, and it just twists him up inside.
It doesn’t really matter what his instruction is: only that it is His word, and His alone, not anyone else’s. The consequences of following it, even deaths, are not his concern. It is the obedience that matters.
This is nothing new: the Judaic god did the same thing to Abraham. It’s abusers all the way down, normalizing it for millennia.
“Yes, it’s such a rollicking good time when your kids are running a high fever and coughing uncontrollably”
….and, of course, if you happen to catch covid during those cuddles then you can bond even more by staying in a bed in the same room.
“Yes, it’s such a rollicking good time when your kids are running a high fever and coughing uncontrollably.”
Yeah, it’s so great that every new-parent website says “get a good glider or recliner, because for your baby’s first few colds you will be sleeping in that chair with them.”
Do these “pro virus” doctors not have any experience with children?
“Let’s catch this cold!” really ? “You’re less likely to die of it, and less likely to be hospitalized. ” Because of Monoclonal Antibody treatment and antivirals. Monoclonal antibodies are fine, but mRNA vaccines are not ? I was less likely to die of chicken pox, and so my Mom did nothing to prevent my catching it. about 48 years later I had a case of shingles and I’d have given a lot to have never had chicken pox as a child. What knock-on effects are there with covid ? We only know a few — Long covid — and they’re unpleasant, if not debilitating. What about 48 years hence, when the current cohort of young covid survivors hits up around my age, will they start seeing knock-on effects ? We don’t know because it hasn’t happened yet. I hope our knowledge of viruses has increased by then, but remember, we’ve been studying them for around 120-odd years.
Thought for the Day: Narcissists feed and thrive on generating drama.
Certainly, it is hard to think of anything less dramatic than just one more annual boring jab.
K, drug dealers, full disclosure, after feeling that I was invincible, I caught Covid twice, or tested positive for something twice on one of those Rapid tests. Symptoms wise, the intense fatigue was memorable, and I don’t ever recall being being bedridden from the flu. My experience leads me to believe that Covid — or whatever people are testing positive for on one of those Rapid tests — is not entirely a walk in the park.
Yet, drug dealers, with this said, what is there to be made of people driving alone in their cars on the hottest days and with all windows closed and wearing masks. Who here will honestly dispute that this is not absolute proof of mental illness?!
First of all, I’m sorry to hear you suffered from COVID-19. I hope it will not leave lasting harm.
Second, I agree having a mask on when you’re alone in the car isn’t necessary. Here are several situations where I did that anyway: rushing from a store to pick up a kid five minutes away – I need the mask on for the store, I need it on to go into kid’s school, so I don’t bother to take it off; other short drives between places that need masks; and there was one or two times I forgot, because in spite of what anti-mask people say, the mask really isn’t a big deal and if my mind is occupied, I can and do forget it’s on. Not very often in the car, but it happens.
Happens even more to my kid. He gets in the car with the mask, and totally doesn’t realize it’s on unless I ask him if he wants to take it off. It’s not actually a big deal to wear them.
I expect there are quite a few people facing some of those situations. I also expect Uber drivers would, while Uber required masks, reasonable just leave it on between rides – easier than on/off.
The need of people to imagine something is wrong with the person with the mask is more a reflection on them, I think.
“what is there to be made of people driving alone in their cars on the hottest days and with all windows closed and wearing masks.”
How exactly does this harm you?
You’re doing it too?
If I lived near Greg, I would wear a mask in my car just to mess with him.
It appears others have already come up with the same ploy.
Driving around on the hottest days with the windows closed? Damn skippy! My car has very efficient air conditioning.
I live in an apartment complex, so I wear my mask between the apartment and my car (since I absolutely insist on masking in the elevator since too many people just plain don’t) … and if I’m going to a drive-through that’s five minutes away, why bother taking the mask off?
But also of course I keep all car windows closed on hot days, that makes my air conditioning work better, rather than letting the cooled air exchange with external hot air. That has nothing to do with Covid at all?
Hah. Nice one. A perfectly common reason for keeping windows closed on a hot day. Especially if the mask is making you feel hot anyway.
Lyft and Uber drivers on their way to pick up a fare.
And to echo several people, what’s it to you?
Great, add air conditioning to the list of things Gerg doesn’t understand.
Being afraid of viral illnesses might be more than anxiety but a full blown mass formation psychosis!
Today Del hosts Mattias Desmet to discuss this form of totalitarianism. In the past, Dr Malone has written about MFP in regard to Covid.
AoA/ CHD’s Katie Wright ( @ katiewr31413491) calls requiring masks for young children “child abuse”.
Mike Adams says that college educated women who are vaccinated/ boosted for Covid will be dead soon because of their unhealthy choices and that Dr Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, is a demon. Not just demon-infested, but an actual demon ( ok, he does has a pointy beard).
As a psychologist, I can only comment that all of the aforementioned exhibit odd thinking not based on data but on emotionalism, scare mongering and marketing their brands.
In other news, medical experts now recommend that it’s okay for children to run with scissors. There is no more need to limit their freedom and we should allow them to explore the world in their own way.
In those rare instances that they are injured we now have the ability to stitch them up, reattach severed fingers and do cornea transplants. If they stick the scissors in a power outlet we can, in many cases, restart their hearts.
“Mike Adams says that college educated women who are vaccinated/ boosted for Covid will be dead soon because of their unhealthy choices”
One assumes getting eddycated is an unhealthy choice? Isn’t his missus educated? Or is she an entrepreneur?
Not that one can’t be both…..
Sheh Horng Lio Adams, 53, was born in Taiwan but studied Oriental Medicine in Arizona. She is an acupuncturist in Texas, located in Bastrop. A quick search reveals that she is an officer of several of Mikey’s companies registered in different states like Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon and Texas.
So I suppose she IS educated and a business person…in a manner of speaking. I doubt she was vaccinated though.
@Denice–I tried to make it to that part of Highwire today, but the earlier segment where Paul Thomas claimed the Oregon Medical Board ruined his life (so therefore please give me money so I can sue them) was too mind numbingly awful to continue. Sad thing is it netted him $12K in donations since yesterday (to which Thomas then raised the $400,000 grifting goal to $750,000.
“$12K in donations since yesterday”
Oof. Nothing but the very finest-quality narc food for all of Thomas’s marks.
Pierre Kory is saluting the (Covid-19) unvaccinated for surviving “the greatest psychological fear campaign in human history”.
He’s also posted (on Substack) a humdinger of a piece by someone styling themselves as “Constitutional Nobody”. CN praises the unvaccinated as “soldiers” of an “army of light”, comparing them to “Marines, Commandos and Green Berets”.
We should be deeply touched by the unparalleled courage of these freedom fighters, who have dared to brave Wal-Mart without a mask.
Ryan Manning tried that in Jan 2021, shopping at Whole Foods without a mask in Deadham Mass. When refused entry, he called the police. WF manager offered to shop for him, or measure his temp, he refused both, then sued everybody he can think of in May 2021, including Whole Foods, Whole Food’s CEO, the manager and the staff who helped him (by preventing him from entering). Let’s just say the judge was not amused by his pro se representation of his views. ( Manning v. Whole Foods Mkt. Grp., Civil Action 21-cv-10833-ADB, 15 n.5 (D. Mass. Jan. 21, 2022) )
Oh, poor dear—nobody else wants to play with him!
https://childmind.org/article/what-is-odd-oppositional-defiant-disorder/
Some highlights: “In his opposition brief, Plaintiff argues that he “was held and questioned by the police prior to being forced to leave the premise on threat of arrest.” [ECF No. 22 at 22]. It is undisputed that Plaintiff called the police to the scene so any purported threat of arrest by the police fails to support the plausible inference that Defendants engaged in conduct that confined Plaintiff in any way.”
Way to tell on himself. ROFL 🤣
“If your heart is set on products from a market with a mask requirement and you can’t or won’t wear a mask, your choices are to get your food delivered, have someone else shop for you, or reconsider wearing a mask for your own health and the good health of the other shoppers.”
My lands. That is a 3rd-degree judicial burn. I can only imagine the thermonuclear extinction burst accordingly provoked.
Oh narcs. May they never grow old!
As far as I am aware, in the UK, there is no legal duty for a shop to serve customers. As long as the reason isn’t discrimination on the basis of sex, ethnicity, sexuality etc they can freely refuse to serve you.
Do NOT attempt to read Substack using a blacklight. I mean it. Just, don’t.
Even in my red state (and even redder county), no one has ever commented on or scowled at my wearing an N95 mask into stores – not even the guy wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” t-shirt at the Rural King.*
*it’s sort of a redneck Wal-Mart, with bonus farm and ranch supplies, plus live chicks and rabbits in season.
I’m somehow always baffled when reminded that delivers poults.
Wearing of masks has dropped off a lot, so when I visited a local supermarket with a mask on I was questioned as to why by a stranger, who reminded me ‘it’s all done with you derp’. ‘because I am not a pretty sight without my dentures mate’ upon which I removed it and smiled. He agreed.
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I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but my (estranged) wife got COVID-19 before a vaccine was available. In hospital for ten days on oxygen. Every morning I’d send her a text message, not knowing if I’d get one back. Anyone who denies the seriousness of C-19 needs their head examining.
I didn’t know that. I’m really sorry. And yes, COVID-19 is a bad, bad disease.
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