The Good Fight

In this period of systemic instability, we should beware charismatic figures offering simple explanations and easy solutions.

The arduous task of essay writing often feels more like a task or responsibility than a pleasure, so I thought I’d allow myself to enjoy a little diversion. I finished my last piece lamenting the creeping slide to chaos in our societies, and the feeling that we are being gleefully nudged in that perilous direction by some of the less scrupulous and more paranoid among us. As I’m sure many can relate to, I have noticed in these last three years an unsettling spike on social media in extremism and conspiratorial conjecture, not always taking the most obvious form.

On Facebook, I was recently tagged (multiple times) in the comments to a post inviting people to answer 21 questions on covid-19 and the pandemic response. It came from a man who had recently run for councillor in my hometown (he was soundly trounced), and who has spent the last few years building up a small but devoted following of locals to a self-aggrandizing message of… well, why even go into the details. It’s not as if there is any originality in the claims, just the usual “THE ELITES ARE DESTROYING THE ECONOMY ON PURPOSE THROUGH THE PLANDEMIC IN ORDER TO KILL OFF MOST OF THE POPULATION” histrionics. I had earlier been involved in brief but spectacular online dust-ups with said fellow in an effort to combat the misinformation he was spreading, but gradually came to an understanding that I was giving him exactly what he wanted: attention. In other words, I was feeding the troll.

So I thought I’d neatly reverse things and have the troll feed me this time, although I can’t say the meal looks appetizing, but rather overly processed (I’ll add some spicy sauce for flavour). In what follows, I will respond to said fellow’s 21 questions. I have copy pasted his questionnaire from Facebook, and you will find it in bold below, with his links helpfully included. My responses follow each question in

block quotes.

Let the games begin!

As unappetizing as it may be, sometimes you have to have the troll feed you. Drawing by the author.

This is 21 questions but not by 50 Cent, but about covid, all the answers should be "yes" if you are not in denial. It's the easiest test ever, I even give you all my sources lol.

(Name omitted) since you never agree with my covid narrative do you mind answering all the questions?

1. Did Fauci say in 2017 that there would be an outbreak before the end of Trump's term?

Well yes, he did say that. But the question is what we do with that information. We could pluck that soundbite out of a 45 minute speech, completely free of context, and plop it right square in the center of our pre-fabricated narrative. OR, stay with me now, we could watch the speech in its entirety, consider the substance of what Dr. Fauci was trying to communicate (free of the load of personal opinion), and realize that the world is too complicated to be accurately reflected in a narrative that relies on plot-points subjectively grabbed while voraciously consuming social media. In this case, having put myself to the trouble of watching Dr. Fauci’s 37-minute keynote address, I would say the obvious context was the good doctor laying out the perpetual challenges he experienced serving 5 presidents in the area of infectious diseases, including AIDS, Ebola, SARS, H1N1, and the Zika virus, and his certainty that further outbreaks lay ahead. It is beyond preposterous to take Fauci sounding the alarm based on past experience as evidence that he somehow knew in advance and was involved in a “plandemic”.

2. Did the government say only 15 days to stop the spread?

Yes, you’re correct again. I remember March 13th 2020, ominously a Friday, being my last day of work before the country and the world suddenly creaked to a halt (my employer declared bankruptcy a few months later). One didn’t have to hear it from the Trump administration (a mere three days after my work stoppage) to believe that this would all be over in short order, and to look on it all as a brief sojourn from normalcy. After all, what in our lifetimes could we look back on to prepare us for the years of lockdowns and mandates that we were about to encounter? The Spanish Flu had happened a century before, and it never loomed large in our collective memory. What said fellow is really driving at with his question is a claim to a supposed special insight which was denied the rest of us when he “predicted” at the time that this mess would go beyond Trump’s PR tagline promise. We often get this line of rhetoric from social media charlatans trying to shore up their prognosticating authority by looking back at what they got right, but as the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And in this case, all that was being foreseen was that the Trump administration was wrong, which surely was never a risky bet to take, as Trump himself underlined when he contradicted himself on the very same day.

3. When Trump was still president, weren't (sic) everyone against the covid shots and then when Biden was in you pretty much had to take it? (link to source)

This is curious logic considering the timeline of events. The covid shots were not given in the US (outside of trials) until December 14th, 2020, and Biden was inaugurated as president a little over a month later. If you remember, due to issues with delivery and supply, the initial rollout was a slow one, although it seems petty to complain about that when you consider it had been less than a year since covid had first entered the chat, so to speak. So the issue wasn’t that everyone was against the shots but rather that they weren’t at that time widely available. And even if some were against them, could people really be blamed for harbouring doubts about the messaging coming from the Trump administration? I would suggest not.

4. Didn't Fauci say the vaccines were fda approved, and then months later in August of 2021 the fda approved the pfizer one? (links to sources)

If you watch the video clip linked above (the first one), Fauci indeed does say that three vaccines (including Pfizer) were FDA approved, but further in his answer clarifies that what they had been given was emergency use authorization. The interviewer very responsibly presses him on the difference between being FDA approved and receiving emergency use authorization, and Fauci clarifies those differences for the listening audience. A common tactic of the previously mentioned internet charlatans is to seize on misstatements from public officials as evidence that it’s all LIES!!!!!, but that seems to me as foolish as burning your house down because there’s a problem with the caulking. We should consider the whole context and judge accordingly.

5. Didn't they pull the AstraZeneca shot in Canada after they assured us it was safe and effective? (link to source)

Yes, they did do that, but I wonder if said fellow would have preferred the authorities follow the CCP playbook and remain inflexible in the face of contrary evidence. In this specific case, as reported in the article sourced above, Canada was responding to “reports of rare but potentially fatal blood clots in Europe that appear(ed) to be connected to the shot.” As evidence came in, Canada took the very cautious approach of suspending the use of the AstraZeneca shot for Canadians under 55. I think we can also file this under “don’t burn your house down because you feel a draft.” As the known facts change, you modulate your position, you don't sacrifice the whole edifice of the approach which has been constructed.

6. Didn't Trudeau and a few provincial premiers tell us the shot would never be mandatory? (links to sources)

Correct again! The government response from the pandemic suffered from mixed messaging, and that criticism cannot fairly be levelled only at Canada. From the beginning governments and media the world over screwed up badly by trying to manage people’s behaviour and expectations instead of treating us like grown ups. The earliest example of this was the attempt at preventing a run on masks by discouraging their use in the general public, but it was a running theme for much of the pandemic. The predictable result was a deep-rooted distrust in a significant minority of the population, exactly when you needed them to give you the benefit of the doubt in cases where the government could easily be caricatured as arbitrary, illogical, or even authoritarian. But I would caution against following this neat and tidy logic too blindly, as we have reason to doubt that a large part of the significant minority previously mentioned was ever amenable to reason. To address the specific question asked above, it would of course have been better had Trudeau and those provincial premiers never given the impression of a red line which would eventually be crossed, but in a fluid situation such as we all were experiencing, that proved to be difficult.

7. Didn't Fauci, Gates, Welensky and Biden all tell us that after 2 shots you couldn't spread covid or die from it? (link to source)

This has been covered by my answer to the previous question. Especially in the early days of the pandemic, authorities were too relaxed about making untested claims in order to spur desired behaviour on the part of their populations, in this case trying to get everyone to get the shot. While in my view it was the wrong way to go about things, you can understand what the motivation was. And it’s also worth keeping in mind the changing context of mutating variants which were soon to complicate matters. In any case, still no need to light that blazing inferno.

8. Didn't Pfizer admit that they never tested the shot for the spread? (links to sources)

Yes, they did. For the most part you can see my previous two answers for clarification on this, but I’d just add that this question is often followed by claims of discrimination and victimization from the unvaccinated, the idea being that they were being unfairly blamed for the virus continuing to spread even though much of the population had already received their shots. It’s important to remember that although it is correct that the covid vaccine was never tested for whether it stopped people from spreading the virus or gave them immunity, by January 2022 (the peak of the Omicron surge), it was clear from the data that the unvaccinated were being hospitalized and dying at far higher percentages than their vaccinated counterparts (as I show here). So while the vaccinated were also contributing to the continuing spread, it was the unvaxxed who were disproportionately pushing the health care system to the brink. Again, with a changing context, blah blah blah…

9. Is it true that Pfizer got fined 2.3 billion in 2009 for suppressing trial results? (link to source)

Yes, Pfizer was fined 2.3 billion dollars, but no, it wasn’t for suppressing trial results. According to said fellow’s own link provided above, the fine was levied for “illegal promotions,” which involved doctors taking part in consultations at resort locations where “(t)hey were entertained with golf, massages and other activities” free of cost. It all sounds very shady but there is no mention of suppressing trial results. As reported by a USA Today fact-checker, the allegations of suppression of adverse events (in trial results) were brought up in a separate lawsuit which was settled in 2004. In that case,“Pfizer agreed to pay $430 million in a DOJ settlement and pleaded guilty to two violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for marketing the drug Neurontin, also known as gabapentin, for unapproved uses. The Warner-Lambert company, which was acquired by Pfizer in 2000, was said by the DOJ to have promoted Neurontin “even when scientific studies had shown it was not effective.” Pfizer’s story is that this deception occurred before Warner-Lambert was acquired. Regardless, this question provides us an excellent example of the internet charlatans’ tendency of taking a messy, unclear narrative and ironing it free of inconvenient wrinkles to suit his/her purposes.

10. Did they assure us the vaccine was safe and effective then a few months into the campaign they realized it caused myocarditis and pericarditis. No mention of it before they gave it to millions. Then countries like Uruguay, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and France started suspending the vaccines for certain age groups because of side effects? (links to multiple sources)

Lacking said fellow’s powerful prognosticating abilities, governing authorities were unable to foresee the side-effects of the vaccines ahead of time. Cassandra must have been unavailable, perhaps held captive in Wuhan. Spicy sauce aside, these rare side-effects to receiving the vaccine, seen mostly in adolescents and young males over 16, were never covered up or hidden from the public as the question seems to imply. Similar to the situation with the AstraZeneca vaccine, the authorities in respective countries took in the scientific data as it was available and modified their policies based on that.

11. Is it true that in the western world they blamed the unvaccinated for the omicron variant while it came from South Africa and the unvaccinated weren't allowed to fly? (links to sources)

This is a gross oversimplification and yet another glaring example of ironing a narrative wrinkle free. In the first of the links supplied above, the only “blame” attributed to the unvaccinated can be found in a quote of Michael Heard, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, who says, “It might well be a consequence of an outbreak, probably in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where there’s not a huge amount of genomic surveillance going on and the vaccination rate is low.” Notice the use of the modal verb “might”. The article ends on a note of caution, stressing the lack of understanding of the new variant. The second link quotes White House coordinator for the Covid-19 response Jeff Zients as saying, “For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.” While a case can be made that this rhetoric was over the top, Omicron did indeed send disproportionately more of the unvaccinated to hospitals, ICUs and funeral homes, as has been written in an earlier answer. It’s impossible to know where Omicron originated from or who patient zero was, and I think most reasonable people knew that, but taking into account the confusion and anxiety of that time, it’s no surprise that there was a lot of conjecture.

12. Health care workers are still suspended in certain provinces because they wouldn't take a shot that didn't stop the spread? (link to source)

It is true that vaccine mandates for nurses remain in effect in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. It is also true that studies have shown that vaccinations do not prevent infection and transmission. Considering our current situation of a waning pandemic and shortage of nurses, I would agree that it would make sense to end the mandates, even if there is an irony in health-care workers not trusting the shots.

13. Did they change the definition of a vaccine so the covid shot would qualify as a vaccine? (link to source)

It’s correct to say that the definition was changed, but incorrect to assert that this was done in order for the shot to qualify as a vaccine. The changes made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were as follows: Firstly, for the definition of “vaccination,” the word “immunity” was changed to “protection,” to reflect the fact that no vaccines are 100% effective. Secondly, the CDC’s definition of “vaccine” was altered from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” Again, this is just bringing the language in line with what was always the reality: No vaccine is 100% effective. There is nothing nefarious at work here, and the data has for a while now shown that covid vaccination reduces the chances of hospitalization, stays in intensive care, and death.

14. The experts couldn't tell the difference from dying with covid or dying from covid? (link to source)

Here said fellow provides us with a Fox News article describing how the motorcycle death of a man who had the coronavirus was initially counted as a covid death. He does this to cast doubt on the official covid death toll with the implication that it was not nearly as high as reported. However, rigorous studies have shown that “the overwhelming majority of hospitalized patients with positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR… died as a direct consequence of COVID-19 infection.” It is intellectually dishonest to say “experts couldn’t tell the difference” based on an obviously extreme example, although we can admit that there must have been cases where it was hard to know for sure. We can explore some examples of this dynamic in the following.

15. If you died from covid they overlooked the underlying conditions and if you died a few seconds after taking your covid shot they would say you probably died because you had underlying conditions? (links to sources)

The first link above describes the tragic circumstances surrounding a 14-year-old who died of brain cancer after being diagnosed with covid two days before. The death was initially categorized as resulting from covid, but this decision was later reversed after an outcry from the family and the public. The second source provided talks of a woman who very sadly dropped dead mere minutes after getting the shot. After an investigation by the coroner, it was determined that the death came from natural causes. What I take from these unfortunate occurrences is a confirmation of what I have learned from my own interactions with the health care system: that the facts of individual cases are not always cut and dry. This will be especially so where people with underlying conditions are shown to be more vulnerable to a potentially deadly virus, as is known to be the case with the coronavirus. For the above example of the vaccination followed swiftly by death, I have noted the coroner’s determination, but as claims triggered by covid vaccine injuries in Canada have resulted in $2.779 million in compensation thus far, it would be foolish to point to the shots as 100% safe and effective. The important consideration here is to weigh that microscopic risk against the larger (but still admittedly small) risk we are exposed to from covid still being in widespread transmission.

16. Is it true that in Alberta and some other provinces that you were considered unvaccinated for 14 days after taking your covid shot, so then if you died you wouldn't count as a vaccinated death? (link to source)

While vaccine protection does increase in the days after you get the shot, my impression was always that I would not have maximum protection until one to two weeks following my last dose. With this in mind, the policy referenced in the above question hardly seems unreasonable. Said fellow brings all this up to once again cast doubt on the official covid death numbers, and to grotesquely insinuate that many of those deaths were actually caused by the vaccinations. There has never been any evidence of this, including in the above tired strategy of using exceptionally rare occurrences to build a fantasy narrative fitting a prefabricated worldview.

17. Is it true that certain hospitals made more money if they wrote covid deaths on death certificates? (link to source)

Here we have said fellow cravenly clasping onto any claw hold available to him in his continued quest to prove it’s all LIES!!! LIES!!! LIES!!! Nevermind that the person whose interview sparked this claim himself clarifies in the linked article that “he did not think that hospitals were intentionally misclassifying cases for financial reasons.” We can point out that the hospitals in fact DID NOT make more money for reporting covid deaths, and were rather getting funding for TREATING patients with covid (remember how hospitals were desperate for ventilators?). Unfortunately, the point isn’t rigorous argumentation, but rather creating just enough doubt in said fellow’s target audience through sensation headlines used as tools in furtherance of the wrinkle-free narratives mentioned earlier. And with that crowd, once the toothpaste is out of the tube….

18. Is it true that CNBC had an article at one point that said 78% of covid hospitalisations were obese? (link to source)

I’ve always been mystified by this line of thinking. So the implications of these findings are… that the vaccines should be abandoned in favour of a program of dieting and exercise? Mandates for all persons to hit the gym, with quotas for pushups and crunches? Lockdowns on junk food, with strict monitoring to ensure weight loss to within permitted parameters? I’m sure that would have gone over just fine with the vaccine- and mandate-averse (remember the backlash against Michelle Obama’s healthy food program?). In any case, it’s no surprise that, obesity being an underlying condition, it resulted in more hospitalizations.

19. Is it true that the CDC at one point said that 94% of covid deaths had underlying conditions? (link to source)

These last few questions are leading us to what said fellow no doubt considers the iron logic of: “I’m perfectly healthy so why should I get the shot?” Yes, what responsibility could you possibly have to the weaker, more vulnerable members of society? Those poor suckers should have taken better care of themselves, right?

20. Did they try to suppress the covid shot results for 75 years? (link to source)

Well, “results” could be understood to mean how the shots fared once they were in widespread usage, and as I pointed out earlier, in that respect they fared pretty impressively, if by no means perfectly. And none of that data was suppressed. It’s true that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried “to protect the documents they used to approve (Pfizer’s) COVID-19 vaccine” (as opposed to the “results” which the question mentions), but the FDA ultimately lost that battle.

21. Is it true that Gaetan Boudreau aka Wayne Lemieux warned you about most of these things early on in the plandemic? (link to source)

I must say the cringe is pretty intense here but it’s important to face it head on. I would encourage all readers to click the link supplied after the above question and to read through the posts in order to get an idea of the sort we’re dealing with, the type that would infer that because he knew the governing authorities would be wrong about the details of A and B, we should uncritically accept his claim that the United Nations is trying to start a one world government intent on depopulation, amongst other monstrosities. Because of social media, not only do we know that there are such charismatic charlatans in villages, towns, and cities all over the world, but they now have unprecedented ability to reach out and find those susceptible to their flawed logic, their wrinkle-free narratives, mostly without pushback.

Sometimes the best answer is simply to ignore the frauds, and even when we do push back, it should be done keeping in mind the fact that they thrive on the attention, they flourish in the controversy. Pushing back effectively involves nuance and substance, not exactly the hallmarks of social media interaction. Pushing back can be as simple as using your very own critical thinking skills in the quietness of your own mind. Whether you use these skills against a government intent on inducing desired behaviour through giving you incomplete information, OR against a self-aggrandizing social media “prophet”, you are exercising the same crucial, necessary muscles.

These muscles are crucial and necessary for fighting the good fight. A good fight that is unfortunately only just getting started. Our war against Covid-19 may seem to be waning, but the fight against the poison of mis-/disinformation is not anywhere near finished. While I won’t be a hypocrite and suggest quotas to build those muscles, it’s never too late to start working them out, especially when the future of our shared world depends on it.