To believe that 7 seven million people died from CoViD-19 is to fall into the trap of trusting the experts. To do so is to take much for granted such as there being a unique lab manipulated virus that can infect people and spread throughout the world; that there is a test that can prove causality and not just try to make an association based on non-specific symptoms; that it was a "virus" causing an increase in morbidity and mortality rather than undetermined isolated event s thus allowing for measures known to adversely impact health to be rolled out until the effects of a poorly or purposefully designed toxin could kick in, acting as cover for something that may not exist as portrayed. To ignore all the above is to "trust the experts" and ignore any and all alternative agendas.
Steve, if you read my post again you'll notice that I've never sad that "trusting the experts" is always bad! Most of the time, health professionals are telling the truth. Generally, you only get mass deceit when a lot of people have a vested interest in downplaying the uselessness or harmfulness of their chosen research area. We had that with the people doing gain-of-function research in Wuhan. But we do not have a transnational conspiracy capable of faking seven million deaths in service to a secret political agenda. And if you just look at overall death rates in 2020-21 vs. pre-2020 averages, then you see a big excess; there is no need to trust official determinations of cause of death in order to believe that Covid is responsible.
There may have been 7 million deaths however, they were not from CoViD, a disease with about 15-20% of all known medical signs and symptoms. Loss of socializing, depression, suicide, prevention of receiving medical care, delaying obtaining medical care, use of poorly studied drugs, undertreatment of secondary bacterial pneumonia, inappropriate use of ventilators, inappropriate mask use, these and other reasons contributed to any excess deaths in the year 2000. As for 2021 and beyond, that starts with the thing that goes by the name of "vaccine", a concoction containing "proprietary" therefore undisclosed ingredients. Even the medical terms vaccine and vaccination were redefined from their historic norms, obviously for political purposes. Considering that countries acted in lockstep with recommendations that came from the WHO, based on thin if any true scientific validity, I'd say that yes, there was a transnational conspiracy.
In his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, the critic Dwight MacDonald [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Macdonald] said that for American Marxists (of whom he was one, before the war), the New York Times was like Aristotle was for the Church fathers -- a pagan source, but revered.
It used to be the case that Americans could differ widely on many issues -- but we all took for granted the reliability of some institutions were were above politics. The far Left had a built-in distrust of any endeavor associated with big business, but even they didn't question, for example, the efficacy of the polio vaccine.
When a group of psychiatrists were enticed into saying that the very conservative Republican candidate for President in 1964 was psychologically unfit for the office there was a sharp reaction within their profession, leading to something called 'the Goldwater Rule', prohibiting them from commenting on the mental fitness of candidates. They realized that their credibility with the public (or half of it) would be undermined if they were seen to be partisan.
All that is gone now.
If you read the supposedly-neutral fact-checkers, Snopes, on the origins of the virus, you will find them confidently proclaiming that "overwhelming evidence" shows that it came from a bat. (Incidentally, it might be an interesting exercise for the Twilight Patriot to see how Snopes is able to exercise a leftist bias using various editorial tricks: Did Kamala Harris contribute money to the bail fund for the BLM/AntiFa rioters? FALSE. But they should have asked, did she solicit others to do so?)
It would be nice if a modern Diogenes found some honest people, drawn from all political quarters, and persuaded them to a genuine fact-checking site, that we could all trust. But as America unravels, things are falling apart, and the center cannot hold.
To believe that 7 seven million people died from CoViD-19 is to fall into the trap of trusting the experts. To do so is to take much for granted such as there being a unique lab manipulated virus that can infect people and spread throughout the world; that there is a test that can prove causality and not just try to make an association based on non-specific symptoms; that it was a "virus" causing an increase in morbidity and mortality rather than undetermined isolated event s thus allowing for measures known to adversely impact health to be rolled out until the effects of a poorly or purposefully designed toxin could kick in, acting as cover for something that may not exist as portrayed. To ignore all the above is to "trust the experts" and ignore any and all alternative agendas.
Steve, if you read my post again you'll notice that I've never sad that "trusting the experts" is always bad! Most of the time, health professionals are telling the truth. Generally, you only get mass deceit when a lot of people have a vested interest in downplaying the uselessness or harmfulness of their chosen research area. We had that with the people doing gain-of-function research in Wuhan. But we do not have a transnational conspiracy capable of faking seven million deaths in service to a secret political agenda. And if you just look at overall death rates in 2020-21 vs. pre-2020 averages, then you see a big excess; there is no need to trust official determinations of cause of death in order to believe that Covid is responsible.
There may have been 7 million deaths however, they were not from CoViD, a disease with about 15-20% of all known medical signs and symptoms. Loss of socializing, depression, suicide, prevention of receiving medical care, delaying obtaining medical care, use of poorly studied drugs, undertreatment of secondary bacterial pneumonia, inappropriate use of ventilators, inappropriate mask use, these and other reasons contributed to any excess deaths in the year 2000. As for 2021 and beyond, that starts with the thing that goes by the name of "vaccine", a concoction containing "proprietary" therefore undisclosed ingredients. Even the medical terms vaccine and vaccination were redefined from their historic norms, obviously for political purposes. Considering that countries acted in lockstep with recommendations that came from the WHO, based on thin if any true scientific validity, I'd say that yes, there was a transnational conspiracy.
In his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, the critic Dwight MacDonald [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Macdonald] said that for American Marxists (of whom he was one, before the war), the New York Times was like Aristotle was for the Church fathers -- a pagan source, but revered.
It used to be the case that Americans could differ widely on many issues -- but we all took for granted the reliability of some institutions were were above politics. The far Left had a built-in distrust of any endeavor associated with big business, but even they didn't question, for example, the efficacy of the polio vaccine.
When a group of psychiatrists were enticed into saying that the very conservative Republican candidate for President in 1964 was psychologically unfit for the office there was a sharp reaction within their profession, leading to something called 'the Goldwater Rule', prohibiting them from commenting on the mental fitness of candidates. They realized that their credibility with the public (or half of it) would be undermined if they were seen to be partisan.
All that is gone now.
If you read the supposedly-neutral fact-checkers, Snopes, on the origins of the virus, you will find them confidently proclaiming that "overwhelming evidence" shows that it came from a bat. (Incidentally, it might be an interesting exercise for the Twilight Patriot to see how Snopes is able to exercise a leftist bias using various editorial tricks: Did Kamala Harris contribute money to the bail fund for the BLM/AntiFa rioters? FALSE. But they should have asked, did she solicit others to do so?)
It would be nice if a modern Diogenes found some honest people, drawn from all political quarters, and persuaded them to a genuine fact-checking site, that we could all trust. But as America unravels, things are falling apart, and the center cannot hold.