Few people seem to feel as comfortable today as they did in December, 2019. Few seem as certain about recent history, current reality or future prospects. Did the Covid policies imposed by political and bureaucratic powers – the authoritarian lockdowns, theatrical masks, and quickly-approved injections – make you more comfortable?
Earlier this year those policies entered a new phase, which might be called the “Never Mind” Correction. But the discomfort and uncertainty linger.
There are different ways of dealing with uncertainty, a common one being some form of belief. The traditional form, religious belief, seeks moral certainty and a sense of purpose. An increasingly common belief system relies on the assumed wisdom of powerful people in political and bureaucratic positions, including some who remind you of TV game show hosts backed by big commercial money.
Many people still believe in religious salvation, but more seem to follow secular salvation now than decades ago, or even a few years ago. The “followers” of Anthony Fauci are in decline now, but in 2020 they were legion, including virtually all the media amateur experts in contagious diseases.
What did you believe about Covid over the past two miserable years? Did you initially believe the tale that the Covid virus was produced by some strangely infected bat in a Chinese “wet market”?
Did you believe that early-2020 measures to limit the damage of Covid would be satisfied by the initial goal of “flattening the curve”?
Did you believe that perilous “gain of function” research (which actually was banned by President Obama) could be sustained by a powerful U.S. bureaucracy? Of course you didn’t — because you’d never heard of “gain of function” research. So you couldn’t have imagined, much less believed, that this research could have possibly been passed along to a Chinese bio-weapons lab by the American researchers who had first developed it.
Even those who’d heard the name Fauci in early 2020 would never have believed a powerful U.S. health bureaucrat would have effectively exported this morbid research to China, of all countries.
Did you believe (as Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and other prominent Democrats warned publicly and loudly in 2020) that any Covid-fighting vaccine rushed into production under President Trump’s Project Warp Speed should not be trusted? Then, with Trump removed, did you believe the opposite: that anyone with qualms about the vaccine developed under the Trump administration was “anti-science” and a threat to public health?
Probably not. If you had, you wouldn’t have read this far.
Belief is mysterious. It can provide various templates for moral philosophy and consolation through the tribulations of life and death. But belief can encourage something problematic: an eagerness to hold on to convictions with little real evidence.
Believers can be inoculated against serious contrary evidence, producing more than just naïveté or vulnerability to propaganda. For example, a religious fanatic can believe that horrendous acts manifest God’s will. A cult follower can believe that the leader really loves him.
If you’re still a believer in the goals of zero-Covid enforced by government over common people and small businesses, here’s a little test of your belief.
Take a look at a Covid-prevention statement made with virtually religious certainty only ten months ago. It was made last July by a man who was then regarded as credible by what was counted as about eighty million Americans.
“You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”
Granted, that statement was made by a man suffering certain infirmities, a man who is not a doctor, doesn’t know anything about infectious disease, and has trouble speaking. But he was and remains President of the United States.
Similar statements from mid-2021 on this subject:
“Vaccinated people do not carry the virus; they don’t get sick.” — Rochelle Walensky
“When you get vaccinated . . . you become a dead end to the virus.” — Anthony Fauci
These beliefs were presented as confirmed fact by authorities as splendidly paid and highly celebrated as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as the host of The Rachel Maddow Show.
Is there a similar off-key note in these statements? They’re made by public figures ordering the rabble to “follow the science.” Fauci identifies himself as even more authoritative: “I represent science.”
The propaganda promoted daily during the era of Covid mandates wasn’t one of science. It was one of belief. It could be called a gospel of “The Church of Scientism.” Far too late, the faith-based certitudes about the injections were quietly amended. What about the huge numbers of Covid cases contracted by people believing they had been protected by two inoculations . . . or three or four? Oh, those are just “breakthrough” cases.
You might know, as I do, an individual forced by an employer to get fully vaccinated and boosted, who then contracted two cases of Covid (so far). Of course, the “research phase” of these vaccines are only a little over one year long, so we have no idea of any long-term effects. But we already know whether it prevents contracting Covid, as claimed. It doesn’t.
As any scientist of integrity would tell you, science is inherently subject to challenge. In fact, real science pro-actively encourages challenge to any current scientific thesis. Read up on astronomers’ various estimates over recent decades of the size of the universe. Again and again improved observations reveal the universe as larger than previously thought. But astronomers whose earlier estimates proved seriously wrong didn’t equivocate or rationalize those estimates. They didn’t trot out the “I didn’t really say that” or “You misunderstood me” lines.
Astronomers don’t gaslight the public. They aren’t paid princely sums by corporations for conclusions beneficial to corporations. And they don’t work for the CDC.
Belief is different. Belief doesn’t accept challenge. Ask Reverend Goody or Dr. Fauci about some implausibility in their beliefs, even some pronouncement made a year earlier that was clearly contradicted by subsequent evidence. They have only two possible responses: Insist their earlier instructions were misunderstood or attack you for questioning them.
This is The Church of Scientism: wobbly belief promoted as unambiguous fact, endorsed by obedient media. If one’s belief falters, as young clerics in training are sometimes told, “Act as if you still believe, and belief will come.” Or pray to Reverend Fauci.