New Details Show Extent To Which Medical Professionals Are Dealing With Covid Cranks- Like Scott Atlas - The New Pandemic Advisor

How the Covid cranks see themselves: As a kind of newly minted version of Galileo, And Scott Atlas- who wants to get 2 million plus Americans killed to get to a Covid resolution.  Call him "Doctor  Death"

"There's a new plan being pushed in the White House that proponents hope will kill the virus and get the president re-elected, And that plan is to just let most of all of us get infected. And if more than two million people have to die as a result, well, so be it.  That may sound crazy or  hyperbolic but that is really what it is.  That plan is being pushed by a guy named Scott Atlas who this month became Trump's pandemic advisor.  He fancies himself as the anti-Fauci and he says America should embrace a strategy of herd immunity.  

This strategy has been tried before in Sweden and it was a disaster. The strategy led to five times as many deaths as its neighbors and they suffered the same level of economic setback.  The outcome then was just a lot more dead Swedes, no economic benefit.  This is where we are today, after months and 185,000 dead.  The sheer nihilistic absurdity." - Chris Hayes, on 'All In',  last night

"It is a bit crazy. We are many months  into this and we know some things that work and which don't in terms of not having a lot of people die and not having your economy destroyed. Sweden is not the model for any of us. And even Scott Gottlieb former FDA commissioner has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying as much and why this stuff keeps coming up. This feels to me like laziness.  We don't want to do the hard work in protecting American lives.  There's just this strategy of let's let it go and see where it goes. Well, we know where it goes."  Dr. Ashish Jha, Director of Harvard's Global Health Institute. 

The header in The Sunday Denver Post piece from Aug. 23rd ('Doctors Battle Tidal Wave Of Covid Misinformation', Business, p. 5K) I almost passed over because I was sure I'd read about it all before. But I was wrong.   Though I'd written previous posts on this batshit insanity,  e.g.

• The Right's COVID Science Deniers, Hacks, Cranks &...

    I'd really had no idea how deep the mental rot of deranged beliefs went and the degree to which medical professionals - the real ones, not the fakes trotted out by Trump - were up against a tidal wave of bullshit, blarney and bollocks.  For example, as the Post article notes, I wasn't aware that at least 800 people world wide had died - and thousands more hospitalized-  because they'd ingested highly concentrated alcohol to kill the virus.  The findings were published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.   

   Even more concerning to many medical professionals is the extent to which false information is spreading online in the U.S. (such as related to masks and lockdowns) and which may be responsible for 40,000 or more of the more than 180,000 U.S. deaths.  Much of this emerged in an online conference in July in which the groundwork had been laid to measure the harm of virus-related misinformation online.  These falsehoods and misinformation "have undermined efforts to get people to wear masks and fueled a belief the seriousness of the disease is overblown."

    Among the primary sources of misbegotten memes have been the crackpot Judy Mikovits (featured in the mockumentary 'Plandemic'), and the Stanford "meta research" quack John Ioannidis - who claimed the lockdowns were implemented without adequate evidence, and the fatality rate of Covid-19 is not much worse than seasonal flu. 

    According to Daniel Allington, a senior lecturer at King's College, London, the toxic effects of the tidal wave of misinformation are now evident in the statistics.   As he pointed out (ibid.):

   "This is no longer just an anecdotal observation that some individual doctors have made. This is a statistically significant pattern we can observe in a large survey."

    This also has confirmed my fear that a large swath of the American public can no longer reason or think critically.  Their minds have become receptacles - or perhaps better unwitting hostages- to parasitical mind viruses, such as from 'Plandemic'.   These people, not all without college degrees, have little or no grasp of the virus' biology. Nor do they grasp that science is a process of self-correction in the context of successive approximations.  If the Trumpkin "counter revolutionaries",  cranks and quacks grasped that they'd know that initial errors or wrong assumptions (or prescriptions for behavior)  are nothing new as a novel phenomenon is confronted. 

   But crank beliefs are only a part of how the medical system itself is being undermined.  In the Post piece we meet Dr. Howard Mell, an ER physician in an Illinois suburb of St. Louis who relates how he was falsely accused (by a patient's wife)  of filling out a death certificate to make money off Covid. 

   Mell tried to explain to the distraught woman that the form was accurate and also that his pay wasn't based on the cause of death. However, she was having none of it, yelling:

    "We've seen online how you guys get more money!"

    Thus her brain had been totally taken over by some online mind rot meme.  This is why Dr. Joseph Varon at Houston's United Memorial Medical Center decided last month  to allow direct filming of scenes inside an ICU - as televised on assorted MSNBC segments.  In an interview later he explained he hoped by actually seeing these scenes of what front line medical staff are doing, people will drop the infernal (and idiotic) belief that it's all a "hoax" or "Plandemic".   Or that ER docs are getting paid to incorrectly fill out death certificates.

    As for Dr. Mell, he reports (ibid.) the situation has not improved. 

    "Several times per week he meets someone who believes false medical information that was discovered online."

   The damnable thing is that the correct information CAN be found online, with a minimum of due diligence. So why isn't it?  I suspect there are two reasons: 1) the actual information isn't as attractive (or exciting)  as the misinformation. More often than not an understanding of basic scientific principles is already assumed which the non-specialist doesn't have the patience to assimilate. And (2) the minds of too many casual readers are already co-opted by preconceived beliefs or negative attitudes, i.e. a distrust of science, or regarding scientists as "elitists".  Both of these in tandem can wreak havoc and help spread disinfo and falsehoods.

  Then there is the problem of "confirmation bias" which reinforces the negative aspects noted above.  That is, the tendency to find confirmatory evidence for what one already believes.  For example, let's say - despite all the medical evidence on lockdowns being the best way to control the virus' spread after a surge - a person with an existing negative attitude reads this from the WSJ Weekend edition: 

   "We've never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries."

    This from a contrarian imbecile and sometime novelist named Lionel Shriver, in a WSJ interview.   The above quote was clear enough to mark her as imbecilic (given we've never before beheld a contagion like Covid - with a huge contingent of secret spreaders among the populace) but her quote on racial issues in the U.S. confirms it, e.g.:

     "The far left's consuming obsession with race has been building for years. Then for months these same folks have been cooped up, fuming over their computers.

   So the 2020 explosion of Black Lives Matter  was enabled by Covid. Floyd's killing merely lit the fuse."

     In other words, being shuttered in lockdown conditions flipped the brains of the  millions of latent protesters and caused them to go literally ape shit, and act out in the streets.  Not because of some higher purpose but because being locked in for months drove them partially bonkers. As I said, case closed on Shriver's imbecility. 

       Back to the report on Covid idiocy in the D. Post:  Dr. Ryan Stanton - an ER physician in Kentucky - disclosed that a number of sick patients waited until it was nearly too late to visit a hospital with Covid symptoms. "They were convinced by what they had read online that 'Covid was no big deal'."

       According to Dr. Stanton (ibid.):

         "They thought it was just a ploy, a sham, a conspiracy. It just blew my mind that they could just put these blinders on and ignore the facts."

       But that barely scratches the surface of how nonsense has infected people's minds. One paramedic cited in the piece, Thomas Knowles, reported being "troubled" - after searching social media for virus misinformation. He found a range of false claims such as doctors taking people's blood for research than leaving them to die, as well as injecting them with nanoparticles to control behavior. In Knowles own words (ibid.):

    "I've never personally encountered such a strong, consistent - and so clearly coordinated from somewhere - a collective of people so entrenched in their false belief."

      But let's also bear in mind that the brain rot starts at the top, i.e. with the top office holder in the land: Trump. And now we know he's appointed another notorious Quack - Scott Atlas - as a medical "advisor." and the Anti-Fauci.   As noted in a recent WaPo expose, 

     https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-scott-atlas-herd-immunity/2020/08/30/925e68fe-e93b-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html

     Atlas, another Stanford screwball (from its Hoover Institution), is promoting a "herd immunity" approach which could leave over 2 million Americans dead in order to complete  according to the Post's assessment.  This is the moron Trump has offering him advice to pass on to the rest of us.   One suspects Trump ditched Stella Immanuel, one of "America's Frontline Doctors"  
   
    as his go to quack after too many sensible people caught on to her demon shtick, i.e. spreading B.S. about demons' involving themselves in our health as a "residue" of human intercourse with them.   Meanwhile Top Quack Scott Atlas' plan is  based upon a:

   “herd immunity” strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, "

      Trouble is, as Dr. Ashish Jha pointed out on 'All In' last night, millions would have to die before this could materialize.  Dr. Jha referenced Atlas' invocation of the Swedish model, but as we know:

    "Sweden’s handling of the pandemic has been heavily criticized by public health officials and infectious-disease experts as reckless — the country’s infection and death rates are among the world’s highest. It also hasn’t escaped the deep economic problems resulting from the pandemic."

      But addle-pated conservos and their quacks love it because it requires minimal control aspects, basically reducing the approach to "let 'em live or let die". 

     The other side of this Trumpy horse manure is the yen to try to push a vaccine as workable, safe and effective by Nov. 3rd - so El Dotard can claim bragging rights.  And so we behold numerous efforts to peddle such baloney, basically a politically motivated operation to assist Trump in getting re-elected.  But I have no intention of going for any vaccine before next year, because I am 99.99999% certain none will be fully tested (e.g. including Phase 3) before then.  The other aspect is that if a poor vaccine is rushed, there is little doubt it will quash any normative public vaccine effort. And that's the last thing we need given the existing conspiracy ideations about vaccines, and the potential for this virus to spread.

    Finally, the latest lunacy to creep into the conspiracy  memo-sphere is that the COVID 19 death toll is overstated.  Fortunately, Dr. Anthony Fauci has slammed this low I.Q. bunkum and the right wing idiots spreading it. As noted in The Guardian,Fauci told NBC:

    “There is absolutely no evidence that that’s the case at all.  I think it falls under the category of something that’s very unfortunate – these conspiracy theories that we hear about. Any time we have a crisis of any sort there is always this popping up of conspiracy theories.”

     The  primary source of these horse shit claims and conspiracy canards- let us remember - is none other than Donnie Dotard. Another reason we need to get his fat, orange ass out of office lest he lower the U.S. median I.Q. by another 50 points by 2025.


       See Also:
     https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2020/08/17/how-scott-atlas-caught-trumps-ear-789964
     
     Excerpt:
     
   Atlas, a fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, repeatedly used his TV hits to argue that fears about coronavirus outpace reality, a message that appealed to Trump and his advisers.  Atlas has also argued against expanded Covid-19 testing, including a proposal championed by White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx to scale up home testing through methods such as saliva tests. .. And recently, in a task force meeting, Atlas told Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, that science does not definitively support government mandates on wearing masks.

   And:

The Trump Administration | Covid-19 | Economic Policy

The Freedom Caucus Is in Charge of Covid-19 Policy, and We're All Going to Die

And:

  

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Sweden Shouldn't Be America's Pandemic Model - WSJ

    Excerpt:

     Proponents point to Sweden as a successful model of this approach. Swedish government officials initially sought to let the virus run largely unchallenged in the general population while taking steps to protect the elderly. The Swedish view was that the country could reach herd immunity without jeopardizing the economy. But holding up Sweden as an enlightened model misreads important parts of its experience.

    Many Swedes pulled back from normal activities to shelter themselves from infection anyway, even younger and middle-aged people. The country experienced 5,821 Covid deaths in a population the size of North Carolina. And Sweden is far short of herd immunity, even as the country’s economic recovery ranks among the worst in its region. A May survey of Swedish exposure to coronavirus found that 6.7% of those aged 20 to 64 had evidence of past infection, along with 4.7% of those younger than 19 and 2.7% of those 65 and older. Stockholm, the country’s single large population center, also has a much lower density than most American cities. That reduces Sweden’s risk of continued epidemic spread.

      Yet embrace of the “Swedish model” is based on assumptions that sidestep some of these facts.     The biggest misconception is a belief that there’s a large reservoir of Americans who are  already immune to Covid.   It’s important to protect the old and the vulnerable, who are at the highest risk of severe illness and bad outcomes. But like most issues of medicine, it isn’t a binary choice. Given the uncertainties of how this virus spreads and its high risk of infirmities, it would be unwise to abandon efforts to limit Covid spread wherever possible. That means continued universal masking, social distancing, and diagnosing and tracing of individual cases.

Is "God" The Answer To The Suicide Epidemic? Uh...No.

"The rate at which Americans have been taking their lives has been climbing for 20 years...prompting the search for novel suicide prevention practices. But one approach is as old as civilization itself: religious faith."-  Erika Andersen, WSJ,  July 11 op-ed.


The main problem with religious faith in this country, especially the Christian version peddled by the Right,  is the lack of temperance and the consequent prevalence of "god talk".   This leads inevitably to glib "solutions"  to a wide spectrum of societal problems, including:  drug abuse, crime and suicide - as embodied in the quotation above.  Religionists tend to forget that the mere existence of the noun (G-O-D) does not mean there is any existent behind it - or  that a putative transcendent is in any way understandable by a finite human mind.

We should note, however, that the tendency to posit a superior, supernatural being to account for physical existence is nearly universal in every human culture. Indeed, every major sacred book - whether Christian Bible, Talmud, or Koran, attributes a divine origin to the universe. The problem inheres in taking this literally, and then extrapolating to an entity G-O-D   that allegedly is involved in the cosmos.  This further supports the contention of philosopher Joseph Campbell[1] to the effect that:  

‘God’ is an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known.."

In other words, at the root of religious faith there is a profound lack of understanding of  the underlying epistemological (and ontological) limitations  which renders all such supernatural concepts relative and flawed.. There is simply insufficient information (and percipience)  to distinguish one person’s deity as the one true God to the exclusion of all others. 

At a more subtle rhetorical level, the great diversity of deity conceptions led me early on (in studying Comparative Theology at Loyola University)  to conclude that what people really meant when they professed “belief in God”  (or investment in a generic religious faith) was a personal allegiance to a particular  subjective concept.  (Or a particular limited scripture, e.g. Torah, Koran,  that gave rise to its articulation) Invariably, the concept was flawed and limited because it was abstracted from a personal background of  limited experience, awareness and conditioning.   Similarly, the derivative religious faith is defective and limited given it is extracted from limited god concepts and scriptures.

Hence, neither belief in a deity, or adherence to a religious faith (or scripture),  can be advanced as universal  solutions to any societal issue, including suicide.  (This is apart from the fact we now know religious aspirations and beliefs arise from a specific brain region, which I will discuss subsequently.)

All of the above bears consideration when we consider an answer to the queston recently raised by Erika Andersen:  'Is God The Answer To The Suicide Epidemic?"  (WSJ, July 11)  making the core assertion that "Someone who attends religious services is significantly less likely to kill himself."  

Apart from conflating church attendance with God-belief  the author makes a number of other statistical and logical errors.   In respect to the first, merely attending a church service is no indicator one has a comprehensive belief or affinity for a deity. Indeed, given all deities are predicated on god concepts we can conclude this is a form of ideational idolatry.  Also, as I noted some 30 years ago - in a response to a Harrison College colleague (who claimed state-sponsored church services opening special 'weeks'  (e.g. "Police week")  confirmed a "sacred order" - this is a non sequitur.   As I pointed out (rebuttal letter in The Nation) : "I would point out that these exhibitions are merely a conditioned social -cultural reflex, reflecting acceptance of expected social norms in a nation permeated by religious thinking".

Ms. Andersen, indeed, admits to her experience of similar responses when she's gone on lecture circuits "speaking about the ability of church plants to help fight suicide".  And being told by "naysayers"  that "it is the community aspect of the church service rather than faith which is the reason for its effectiveness".  In other words, the communal services - however often conducted - break through the peculiar  American disease of social isolation and lead to better psychological health.  My psychologist great niece Shayl also fully endorses this view: "That's pretty much a no brainer! When people have more community and social associations they are less likely to lack psychological support or kill themselves in despair".

So it has little or nothing to do with belief in a deity, which again - is merely acceptance or belief in a subjective god-concept.   This brings up a citation that Ms. Andersen makes which bears the key defects of selection bias as well as confirmation bias.   She cites a 2016 study from JAMA Psychiatry which "found that American women who attended a religious service at least once a week were five times less likely to commit suicide".

That's amazing! But let's explore it further.   It turns out that an earlier 2015 Pew Research center poll-survey found pretty much the same thing which I pointed out in an April 15, 2016 post.  Therein we learned:

- Globally, more women than men identify with a religion, pray daily and say that 'religion is very important' to them.

- Quantitatively, there are 100 million more religiously -affiliated women than men

- Men make up 55 percent of the world's religiously unaffiliated people

- In the U.S. the religious gender gap is most pronounced with 64 percent of American women expressing religious conviction by praying daily, vs 47 percent of men. (This compares to 15% of women vs. 9% of men in France),

- Most stunning of all, 68 percent of all atheists are men in the U.S.

I noted at the time "all kinds of hypotheses" to explain these findings but referenced one in particular from a salon.com article which asserted:

"Women are more devout because they have to be. Women’s religiosity is directly related to economic security. The lack of a social safety net means that women, who are still responsible for the bulk of elder and child care, often need to rely on religious organizations to support themselves and their families."

I noted that this was basically true and one reason the preponderance of female atheists hailed from higher socio-economic strata, many in the $75 k - $100k  range. Thus, they did not have to concern themselves with  projecting a "halo" say to keep their jobs or get better ones. Further, the probability was low they'd ever need to rely on religious charity.  

I also put forward another powerful argument for the propensity of women to attend church services, as well as participate in religious communities more generally. I had written at the time (same post):

"In most cases, women are raised to be less aggressive than males, and to avoid being confrontational. But the very nature of most areligious people or atheists  is to be confrontational because we are challenged often on our unbelief and have to be able to respond. The very adoption of the term "atheist" is a form of verbal confrontation, and explains why many more passive folks are unable to use it - even though they are atheists in every other  respect.

I surmise women are very aware of the negative perception of atheists as well and because of this they are inclined to avoid any associations with atheism. This may also explain the large proportion of American women who are religious to the extent they actually pray daily. Author Barbara Ehrenreich.[1] has shown that American mass culture is saturated by a saccharine “cult of positivity.”  Women as the "avatars"  of social polity and decorum would be much more prone to the culture's socially positive signals and hence avoid anything perceived to undermine it. In this case culture and biology probably play a dual role in not only atheism avoidance, but active religious embrace ("See I definitely am no atheist! I pray!")

Lastly, females are the "guardians" of societal morality more than men. Statistics show they are far less  sexually licentious than males in U.S. society - with fewer partners outside marriage - and also are much less drawn to things like porn or violent movies, say like Quentin Tarentino's  'The Hateful Eight' - which wifey refuses to see despite the fact its was mostly filmed in Telluride  - which she's visited a number of times. (There is a reason for the embrace of "chick flicks"!)

If females are more active (i.e. demonstrative) moral arbiters it stands to reason they'd also be more religious, pray, go to Novenas, attend Mass daily etc. as well as espouse  non-negotiable moral positions in line with assorted religious edicts. They'd also avoid atheism because it would be seen in the societal perspective of a moral blight or threat. It is important to note this last moral element cuts across all economic and class levels and hence one finds as many or more higher social class- income females in this group as lower."

BY the end of Ms  Andersen's piece one wonders if she is at all familiar with the work of Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili:   'Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief' wherein the authors trace the emergence and attachment to  God concepts directly to an area of the brain- the OAA or orientation association area.   This is critical because, frankly, unless an individual has a brain tuned to religious faith  there is little chance of inducing it and by extension attendance at any church services. To expect otherwise is to put the "cart before the horse."

The authors’ investigated  how the brain’s OAA translates an image,  for example,  into a religious reality is also described in detail[2].This is in connection with a person given an image of Christ and asked to focus on it. Within minutes, neurological measurements, i.e. from PET and SPECT scans showed electrical discharges spiraling down from the right attention area (right OAA) to the limbic system and hypothalamus “triggering the arousal section of the structure”. The authors’ test results and measurements revealed the activation of both the left and right association regions as their subjects focused on an image of Christ. As assorted cortical thresholds were crossed, a maximal stimulation (given by spikes in the SPECT scans) produced a neural “flood” that generated feedback to the attention association area.

To make a long story short, the visual attention area of the OAA was seen to begin to deprive the right orientation area (responsible for balance)  of all neural input not originating with the contemplation of Jesus. In order to compensate, and thereby preserve the neuro-spatial matrix (in which the self could still exist) the right orientation area had to default to the attention area focusing on “Jesus”.  As the authors describe the situation:

It has no choice but to create a spatial matrix out of nothing but the attention area’s single-minded contemplation of Jesus

Newberg and D’Aquili observed that as the process of re-cerebralization continued, all irrelevant neural inputs were stripped away until the only reality left was Jesus. That reality (actually a pseudo-reality confected by the right attention area) thereby took over the entire mind. Or, in the words of the authors, “it was perceived by the mind as the whole depth and breadth of reality.”   This is a profound insight, and fully explained why it was essentially impossible to wean believers away from their objects of worship or devotion based on logic and reason alone.

But conversely it also explains why those of us lacking the particular  OAA  triggers, thresholds for God belief will not be swayed to "join the fold" merely out of a claim we'd have a better chance to avoid suicide.  What we have then is a "Mexican standoff" of sorts between the churched and the unchurched - mainly atheists.   Rather than condemning us or seeking to proselytize us, the religious would do better to maybe research why we don't have the brain chemicals, synapses or structures (or genes for them) and hence no incentive to pursue god belief or church services like they do.  

Erika Andersen, to her credit, is correct when she writes:

 "People living in our increasingly secular culture are hungry for spiritual wisdom and transcendent purpose"

But that doesn't mean "practicing a shared faith" can be a universal solution, as she suggests in her next sentence.  It may well be for a certain subset of humans but educational advantage (awareness of linguistic and comprehension limits) coupled with gender and brain differences ensures her "recipe" can only be limited like the artifacts that underpin  all religious faiths.

---

[1] Campbell.: The Power of Myth, 56

[2] Newberg and D’Aquili., pp.  121-22.