Background: Tremendous coercion is happening to keep knowledgable physicians silent and to keep the rest ignorant. About 30% are knowledgable and potential allies. About 40% are ignorant, but persuadable by other physicians if the knowledgable physicians were speaking out. About 30% work for pharma or its lackeys in hospital administration or the American Hospital Association or various pharma-controlled coercive parts of the medical establishment (AMA and various professional societies).
There's one obvious way to put an end to this entire charade. Make sure doctors aren't coerced into silence. That has to be done at the state level--in red states. About 30% of doctors are clued in to vaccine damage and early treatment with effective antivirals, but they have been silenced. If those doctors were protected from coercion, then they would speak out over time.
Medical freedom of speech is the linchpin. Physicians are coerced by employers (primarily hospitals) and by the threat of license removal by professional licensing boards. If physicians were protected from those threats, the dam would break and we'd see a lot of physicians start to speak out.
Tom, I have been posting about this for a very long time. There are a core of us "not famous but perhaps influential" docs who have always called out the BS, refused to mask, given sane advice about spikeshots, other therapies, etc. and have still managed to have successful practices. I have many colleagues who are right behind me, just waiting for some visible signals (besides knowing me...lol) that speaking their mind on this subject is OK. With luck we are close to a tipping point.
Most good physicians (there are still some, especially when medical school admissions were about commitment to patient care and not commitment to diversity and social justice warrior scoring) are still consumingly interested in doing the best thing for their patients. Every patient is different from every other patient -- most of us hate cookbook medicine...the kind the government loves. Patients should be far more afraid of cookbooking than physicians are. Anything that helps people rise up and realize how important this is, the better for everyone.
So yes, let us move the needle just a little more so the "good docs", likely 70% can go back to doing what they really want to do.
Apr 26, 2022·edited Apr 26, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
Good for you!
I am now looking for an integrative medicine doc for my primary care. Most allopaths know very little about nutrition and communicate even less to patients. I was talking with a cardiologist from India who claimed that, because India is tropical, vitamin D deficiency is very low in India. Journal articles have put vitamin D deficiency in India between 70-80%
Even among vaccine skeptics, docs worry about risk from calcifediol and suggest D3 instead for treatment of infectious disease. It's crazy!
I’m in Australia, where it is unbearable in terms of the cowardice/coercion of doctors. My own GP (a functional, integrative one), in December 2020 told me not to touch the vaccines. He issued as many exemptions as he could and has managed to stay in practice.
Even fighting at the state level isn't easy. Pharma and its allies like the American Hospital Association are fighting tooth and nail against freedom to speak and freedom to prescribe.
It’s ridiculous for certain. Including in allegedly red states like mine. “Be like Florida!” was my mantra to my state rep and senator this recent session. But none of them would make it happen, each chamber blaming inaction on the other, and then on the governor. But with our supermajority, they could easily override the governor if they wanted to.
Such a great article with so many clever lines. 😂 🤣 😇
Whatever Musk's motives, I'm mostly concerned about the threat of centralization. Bastyon and Odysee are allegedly decentralized. How long you do you think it would be before that becomes common enough that the threat centralized forums pose is eliminated, and what stands in the way?
I have no idea what timeline we are on, but I believe authorities are ready to pull the plug on the whole internet at any moment. Unfortunately we are in a game where we are blackmailed in any quest for truth.
Apr 26, 2022·edited Apr 26, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
There's a dark thought. No one in position of power fighting back?
This is what I've considered: they may pull the plug on the internet. But I have an analogy with the stock market: we really can't predict where it will go and banking on our predictions (long-term) is a loser's game. So we work for the best and prepare for the worst, and simply respond to what's in front of us.
Thank you, Mathew, for pointing out the fact that Elon is now sitting at the confluence of a surprisingly large number of power centers and its not at all clear what, if anything, he might do. Those powers are like bombs not yet armed for detonation (i.e. the possible medical criminality and election manipulation mentioned, and you didn't mention the possible existence of illegal direct Twitter/government censorship links) that even Elon likely already knows he cannot control the trajectory of their fallout should he allow them to be revealed. That guess--that Elon knows he cannot control the result--makes me lean toward a pessimistic prediction that he'll just work toward keeping it all secret, and instead focus on making all the money that GETTR, etc. thought they were going to make as Twitter shed users. Oh well, it MIGHT be an entertaining year, but I doubt it.
Wow! Everything and the kitchen sink, right? What a great show of how a human mind unwinds and plays association-hopscotch. Lovely stuff, really.
As for the Tesla, as in the car - when it performs better than diesel, petrol, or woodgas (heck, or horses!) in the conditions I live in half the year, I might consider it worthy of being called a car. I need a machine that starts in -30C snowstorms with wind blowing 25m/s on top, and doesn't lose power and isn't impossible to refuel on a forest or mountain dirt road. Or catches on fire because the battery casing got a little nick.
We'll get there eventually, just in time for every vehicle to have aminiature nuclear battery, I think (whatever happened to that line of research, minituraisation of nuclear reactors and batteries?).
My wife and I have discussed having one Tesla and making ot the primary in town car. But we won't co sider it prior to getting solar panels on a roof and a power wall.
But we want to keep something like an pickup truck, maybe an old diesel engine, for some purposes.
Tesla’s are fantastic cars, not without some problems. You point out applications where they are I’ll suited.
Elon wants an electric powered world. Cars, airplanes, ships, trains...everything. And everything running on solar or wind. He’s pro nuclear as well, so maybe some of that.
The only minor issue with an all electric vision is that there really are not enough raw materials lying around this old planet to make all of that happen. Maybe we can lasso a few asteroids or something.
Everyone dances around the fact that the governments consume half the power resources, and steer tech development toward centralization. Fixing the incentives would fix all that quickly.
Don't be so naïve to think that COVID propagandists are going to take the fall here. Billionaires profited handsomely in the last two years and COVID was a great opportunity for certain public figures to build their brands.
I DO hope all the dissenting voices get to come back and change the narrative themselves.
Apr 26, 2022·edited Apr 26, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
Elon's recent tweet doesn't sound that good.
I think he'll still be censoring stuff, especially when he deems it anti science, like many ignore that COVID was never isolated (but pretend it was 🤣 )
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy
Names of a few people who have just got back on - Simone Gold, Peter McCullough, Zev Zelenko. The latter picked up 39,000 followers just in his first day, with tribute after tribute offered to him.
Oh really? I did not know McCullough before he spoke up about HCQ, but I am pretty sure that the reason he lost his job, and was censored was not because of any fraud accusations but rather because he spoke up for early treatment, and the dangers of the vaccines. So people can carry on with their fraud as long as they don't challenge the Big Pharma narrative?
Whew! The axe comes down with one fell swoop! I notice that you don't provide any alternatives to all these Covid treatments. What treatments would you promote? For your info, I live in Burkina Faso, West Africa where I was able to get both IVM and HCQ to treat my covid. We also have a local plant based alternative that my husband took along with IVM. It is one thing to trash all these medications, it is another thing when the rubber hits the road, and one needs to find a treatment fast - esp pre omicron. My husband's lung were half filled up before we got it under control.
Thank-you! I did not know that! We have a gardenful of Aloe Vera, which works well also for burns. We have Nigella spice in the kitchen, but not sure where we would get the oil.
I understand that it will be unpopular to rain on everyone's cautious optimism about Musk, especially because we need someone like who he pretends to be right now. So, I'll say something positive: there are very few perfectly linear relationships in the real world, and Musk provides us with a pristine one: The more you look into him, the more you realize he's not to be trusted. That he is, indeed, one of the colluders should be unsurprising given what we've all seen over the last couple of years; it's clear that you couldn't amass the kind of wealth he has without being compromised by the kunlangeta.
But in any event, the thing I wanted to bring up to Mathew is of another topic.
Why? Because they may use it to make a last-ditch effort to blame the unvaccinated for their impending health problems.
I don't have time to read the whole paper with reasonable scrutiny today, and I know you don't have any time either, Mathew, but if people start trying to make this argument and it becomes exigent to look into it, you'll remember it was mentioned and have a head start on the general premise.
My very rushed look at the methods section heavily suggests to me we're dealing with more Neil Ferguson-style bullshit; assumptions without any real evidence with some rudimentary calculations set up in what is referred to as a "model" because that scares everyone who thinks it means "fancy calculations which are therefore incontrovertible". However, I'll let you be the judge:
Methods: We constructed a simple susceptible–infectious–recovered compartmental model of a respiratory infectious disease with 2 connected subpopulations: people who were vaccinated and those who were unvaccinated. We simulated a spectrum of patterns of mixing between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups that ranged from random mixing to complete like-with-like mixing (complete assortativity), in which people have contact exclusively with others with the same vaccination status. We evaluated the dynamics of an epidemic within each subgroup and in the population as a whole.
I've read it. It's pure stupidity. It takes an assumption that vaccines reduce spread then comes to the conclusion that the unvaccinated spread more. It's that simple, but shielded behind fancy-looking differential functions that most people can't read. That's all.
Apr 26, 2022·edited Apr 26, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
That's interesting, thanks. In my view, the following is a must read quick exploration to understand who Elon ("we will coup whoever we want") Musk is.
By the author of one of the most important books of all time on tne relation of Big Tech with the military-industrial complex ('surveillance valley').
What does "free speech absolutism" mean? Ain't no such thing as absolutely free speech. The famous example is shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. For various reasons I do not like that example. For me a better one is somebody in the audience loudly reciting Hamlet during the Antigone production. Ergo there will always be some form of speech policing on social platforms.
Some of the major problems of the current approach is that it is arbitrary, capricious, and opaque. It is also clearly geared toward shaping of public opinion. Make new censorship regime equitable, predictable, and open.
I wanted to say "and stay away from trying to shape the public opinion". But that is purely wishful thinking.
The more interesting parts are yet to come in how he deals with "making the algorithms open source, defeating spam bots, and authenticating all humans." I suspect there's a whole new 'digital id' idea that will carry across multiple social/online platforms (think google authenticator), maybe backed by whatever his favorite cryto is at the time. ala Michael Saylor, and it's a fascinating idea.
It's going to be interesting to see how things play out in the near future. I hope it's going to go well for everyone, but I'm waiting until he actually does the things he says he wants to before I do anything like celebrate.
That was my first experience with Libs of TikTok. I thought, these are the exact sort of people empowered to purge by Mao. I will be happy to never see another Lib of TikTok compilation again.
I've always been more dubious of Elon Musk than a fan. I long thought of Tesla as a subsidy dumpster, especially after the company didn't turn a profit for such a long time, and didn't actually seem to make the kind or amount of product to justify the stock valuation. I long thought of the stock price as the cult of Elon. But maybe I would have been better served to buy some stock a decade ago?
I will say, I feel a palpable sense of relief, like a stricture has been released, like a weighted blanket has been removed, even though I have never had a Twitter account. It was like, after two years of Covid authoritarianism and then Florida said we are going to let doctors be doctors, except much bigger. Go Elon.
Here's hoping this is an opening to burn away woke authoritarianism from the body politic.
Background: Tremendous coercion is happening to keep knowledgable physicians silent and to keep the rest ignorant. About 30% are knowledgable and potential allies. About 40% are ignorant, but persuadable by other physicians if the knowledgable physicians were speaking out. About 30% work for pharma or its lackeys in hospital administration or the American Hospital Association or various pharma-controlled coercive parts of the medical establishment (AMA and various professional societies).
There's one obvious way to put an end to this entire charade. Make sure doctors aren't coerced into silence. That has to be done at the state level--in red states. About 30% of doctors are clued in to vaccine damage and early treatment with effective antivirals, but they have been silenced. If those doctors were protected from coercion, then they would speak out over time.
Medical freedom of speech is the linchpin. Physicians are coerced by employers (primarily hospitals) and by the threat of license removal by professional licensing boards. If physicians were protected from those threats, the dam would break and we'd see a lot of physicians start to speak out.
Tom, I have been posting about this for a very long time. There are a core of us "not famous but perhaps influential" docs who have always called out the BS, refused to mask, given sane advice about spikeshots, other therapies, etc. and have still managed to have successful practices. I have many colleagues who are right behind me, just waiting for some visible signals (besides knowing me...lol) that speaking their mind on this subject is OK. With luck we are close to a tipping point.
Most good physicians (there are still some, especially when medical school admissions were about commitment to patient care and not commitment to diversity and social justice warrior scoring) are still consumingly interested in doing the best thing for their patients. Every patient is different from every other patient -- most of us hate cookbook medicine...the kind the government loves. Patients should be far more afraid of cookbooking than physicians are. Anything that helps people rise up and realize how important this is, the better for everyone.
So yes, let us move the needle just a little more so the "good docs", likely 70% can go back to doing what they really want to do.
Good for you!
I am now looking for an integrative medicine doc for my primary care. Most allopaths know very little about nutrition and communicate even less to patients. I was talking with a cardiologist from India who claimed that, because India is tropical, vitamin D deficiency is very low in India. Journal articles have put vitamin D deficiency in India between 70-80%
Even among vaccine skeptics, docs worry about risk from calcifediol and suggest D3 instead for treatment of infectious disease. It's crazy!
I’m in Australia, where it is unbearable in terms of the cowardice/coercion of doctors. My own GP (a functional, integrative one), in December 2020 told me not to touch the vaccines. He issued as many exemptions as he could and has managed to stay in practice.
Even fighting at the state level isn't easy. Pharma and its allies like the American Hospital Association are fighting tooth and nail against freedom to speak and freedom to prescribe.
It’s ridiculous for certain. Including in allegedly red states like mine. “Be like Florida!” was my mantra to my state rep and senator this recent session. But none of them would make it happen, each chamber blaming inaction on the other, and then on the governor. But with our supermajority, they could easily override the governor if they wanted to.
Yeah, Florida is an act right now, largely. People who haven't been around politics don't know the pervasiveness of blackmail and control.
Such a great article with so many clever lines. 😂 🤣 😇
Whatever Musk's motives, I'm mostly concerned about the threat of centralization. Bastyon and Odysee are allegedly decentralized. How long you do you think it would be before that becomes common enough that the threat centralized forums pose is eliminated, and what stands in the way?
Asking as a non-tech expert.
I have no idea what timeline we are on, but I believe authorities are ready to pull the plug on the whole internet at any moment. Unfortunately we are in a game where we are blackmailed in any quest for truth.
That's what I think, too. And then they may require a Digital ID to get back on the internet.
Agreed. Klaus Schwab has talked about requiring people to more or less have licenses to access the internet. To make it more safe, of course. 🙄
If I had to quess, you'd also be required to be up be up to date on your clot shots in order to get that license.
Personally, I'd be happy if the internet went away forever.
There's a dark thought. No one in position of power fighting back?
This is what I've considered: they may pull the plug on the internet. But I have an analogy with the stock market: we really can't predict where it will go and banking on our predictions (long-term) is a loser's game. So we work for the best and prepare for the worst, and simply respond to what's in front of us.
Thank you, Mathew, for pointing out the fact that Elon is now sitting at the confluence of a surprisingly large number of power centers and its not at all clear what, if anything, he might do. Those powers are like bombs not yet armed for detonation (i.e. the possible medical criminality and election manipulation mentioned, and you didn't mention the possible existence of illegal direct Twitter/government censorship links) that even Elon likely already knows he cannot control the trajectory of their fallout should he allow them to be revealed. That guess--that Elon knows he cannot control the result--makes me lean toward a pessimistic prediction that he'll just work toward keeping it all secret, and instead focus on making all the money that GETTR, etc. thought they were going to make as Twitter shed users. Oh well, it MIGHT be an entertaining year, but I doubt it.
Wow! Everything and the kitchen sink, right? What a great show of how a human mind unwinds and plays association-hopscotch. Lovely stuff, really.
As for the Tesla, as in the car - when it performs better than diesel, petrol, or woodgas (heck, or horses!) in the conditions I live in half the year, I might consider it worthy of being called a car. I need a machine that starts in -30C snowstorms with wind blowing 25m/s on top, and doesn't lose power and isn't impossible to refuel on a forest or mountain dirt road. Or catches on fire because the battery casing got a little nick.
We'll get there eventually, just in time for every vehicle to have aminiature nuclear battery, I think (whatever happened to that line of research, minituraisation of nuclear reactors and batteries?).
My wife and I have discussed having one Tesla and making ot the primary in town car. But we won't co sider it prior to getting solar panels on a roof and a power wall.
But we want to keep something like an pickup truck, maybe an old diesel engine, for some purposes.
Tesla’s are fantastic cars, not without some problems. You point out applications where they are I’ll suited.
Elon wants an electric powered world. Cars, airplanes, ships, trains...everything. And everything running on solar or wind. He’s pro nuclear as well, so maybe some of that.
The only minor issue with an all electric vision is that there really are not enough raw materials lying around this old planet to make all of that happen. Maybe we can lasso a few asteroids or something.
Everyone dances around the fact that the governments consume half the power resources, and steer tech development toward centralization. Fixing the incentives would fix all that quickly.
Don't be so naïve to think that COVID propagandists are going to take the fall here. Billionaires profited handsomely in the last two years and COVID was a great opportunity for certain public figures to build their brands.
I DO hope all the dissenting voices get to come back and change the narrative themselves.
Elon's recent tweet doesn't sound that good.
I think he'll still be censoring stuff, especially when he deems it anti science, like many ignore that COVID was never isolated (but pretend it was 🤣 )
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy
2:25 PM · Apr 19, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1516483038242385928
“I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law”
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376?cxt=HHwWgIC9ydCF2pQqAAAA
Yikes. Not promising.
https://twitter.com/Cherri74887119/status/1517487824219557892?t=rjSG2sioKQB9WxjQeRx5Gg&s=19
please bring back @covid19crusher
Names of a few people who have just got back on - Simone Gold, Peter McCullough, Zev Zelenko. The latter picked up 39,000 followers just in his first day, with tribute after tribute offered to him.
Oh really? I did not know McCullough before he spoke up about HCQ, but I am pretty sure that the reason he lost his job, and was censored was not because of any fraud accusations but rather because he spoke up for early treatment, and the dangers of the vaccines. So people can carry on with their fraud as long as they don't challenge the Big Pharma narrative?
Whew! The axe comes down with one fell swoop! I notice that you don't provide any alternatives to all these Covid treatments. What treatments would you promote? For your info, I live in Burkina Faso, West Africa where I was able to get both IVM and HCQ to treat my covid. We also have a local plant based alternative that my husband took along with IVM. It is one thing to trash all these medications, it is another thing when the rubber hits the road, and one needs to find a treatment fast - esp pre omicron. My husband's lung were half filled up before we got it under control.
Thank-you! I did not know that! We have a gardenful of Aloe Vera, which works well also for burns. We have Nigella spice in the kitchen, but not sure where we would get the oil.
I understand that it will be unpopular to rain on everyone's cautious optimism about Musk, especially because we need someone like who he pretends to be right now. So, I'll say something positive: there are very few perfectly linear relationships in the real world, and Musk provides us with a pristine one: The more you look into him, the more you realize he's not to be trusted. That he is, indeed, one of the colluders should be unsurprising given what we've all seen over the last couple of years; it's clear that you couldn't amass the kind of wealth he has without being compromised by the kunlangeta.
But in any event, the thing I wanted to bring up to Mathew is of another topic.
Might want to keep an eye on the following:
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/194/16/E573
https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/04/25/unvaccinated-people-increase-risk-of-covid-infection-among-vaccinated-study-finds/?sh=15b965d524a3
https://twitter.com/stacey_rudin/status/1518929372811563009
https://twitter.com/DFisman/status/1518473611882999808?s=20&t=9QWa3kSpIqWF3Ez6HPOIjA
Why? Because they may use it to make a last-ditch effort to blame the unvaccinated for their impending health problems.
I don't have time to read the whole paper with reasonable scrutiny today, and I know you don't have any time either, Mathew, but if people start trying to make this argument and it becomes exigent to look into it, you'll remember it was mentioned and have a head start on the general premise.
My very rushed look at the methods section heavily suggests to me we're dealing with more Neil Ferguson-style bullshit; assumptions without any real evidence with some rudimentary calculations set up in what is referred to as a "model" because that scares everyone who thinks it means "fancy calculations which are therefore incontrovertible". However, I'll let you be the judge:
Methods: We constructed a simple susceptible–infectious–recovered compartmental model of a respiratory infectious disease with 2 connected subpopulations: people who were vaccinated and those who were unvaccinated. We simulated a spectrum of patterns of mixing between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups that ranged from random mixing to complete like-with-like mixing (complete assortativity), in which people have contact exclusively with others with the same vaccination status. We evaluated the dynamics of an epidemic within each subgroup and in the population as a whole.
I've read it. It's pure stupidity. It takes an assumption that vaccines reduce spread then comes to the conclusion that the unvaccinated spread more. It's that simple, but shielded behind fancy-looking differential functions that most people can't read. That's all.
That's interesting, thanks. In my view, the following is a must read quick exploration to understand who Elon ("we will coup whoever we want") Musk is.
By the author of one of the most important books of all time on tne relation of Big Tech with the military-industrial complex ('surveillance valley').
Short but valuable.
https://yasha.substack.com/p/elon-musk-is-surveillance-valley
As far as I remember, there was also an interesting history with his father.
Thanks for the link - just bought the book.
The hundred flowers campaign of the CCP during the 1950s and their rise to power thereafter comes to mind. Be cautious is my only suggestion.
What does "free speech absolutism" mean? Ain't no such thing as absolutely free speech. The famous example is shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. For various reasons I do not like that example. For me a better one is somebody in the audience loudly reciting Hamlet during the Antigone production. Ergo there will always be some form of speech policing on social platforms.
Some of the major problems of the current approach is that it is arbitrary, capricious, and opaque. It is also clearly geared toward shaping of public opinion. Make new censorship regime equitable, predictable, and open.
I wanted to say "and stay away from trying to shape the public opinion". But that is purely wishful thinking.
The more interesting parts are yet to come in how he deals with "making the algorithms open source, defeating spam bots, and authenticating all humans." I suspect there's a whole new 'digital id' idea that will carry across multiple social/online platforms (think google authenticator), maybe backed by whatever his favorite cryto is at the time. ala Michael Saylor, and it's a fascinating idea.
It's going to be interesting to see how things play out in the near future. I hope it's going to go well for everyone, but I'm waiting until he actually does the things he says he wants to before I do anything like celebrate.
This will turn out as bad as Omidyar's The Intercept did for Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald and free speech journalism
Wouldn't surprise me.
That was my first experience with Libs of TikTok. I thought, these are the exact sort of people empowered to purge by Mao. I will be happy to never see another Lib of TikTok compilation again.
I've always been more dubious of Elon Musk than a fan. I long thought of Tesla as a subsidy dumpster, especially after the company didn't turn a profit for such a long time, and didn't actually seem to make the kind or amount of product to justify the stock valuation. I long thought of the stock price as the cult of Elon. But maybe I would have been better served to buy some stock a decade ago?
I will say, I feel a palpable sense of relief, like a stricture has been released, like a weighted blanket has been removed, even though I have never had a Twitter account. It was like, after two years of Covid authoritarianism and then Florida said we are going to let doctors be doctors, except much bigger. Go Elon.
Here's hoping this is an opening to burn away woke authoritarianism from the body politic.