After living through covid, probably 10 people in my family went from "My doctor knows best, I'll do whatever he recommends; I can't do better than my Doctor's recommendation anyways if I tried" to some degree of "I know you are full of sh*t now, I know your sources of knowledge are corrupt, I know you can't do math and I know you aren't free to give me your knowledge to the best of your ability due to political constraints. I will treat you as I treat a used car salesman for the foreseeable future, I'll never take another vaccine in my entire life and what are those people you call 'quacks' recommending, by the way?"
Unfortunately, there are still some parts of my family who would inject manure into their vein if their MD recommended it.
I have only gone to the doctor when absolutely necessary, during the past 3 years (since February 2020). Absolutely necessary: to accompany elderly parents on their appointments or to the ER, or for my own absolutely necessary eye appointments.
Masks all the way, up until my most recent appointment last month. I saw my doctor continuing to put his mask on for the elderly patients who continued to wear their masks, and take it off for any patients who were not wearing one. It's so bizarre. Why? Being polite? Why not just kindly tell your patients that the masks do not work to prevent transmission of viral illness? Set an example?
I told him it was wonderful to finally be able to see what he actually looks like after these few years, as opposed to the photo on the website. So crazy-making.
No, I am not going to "find another doctor" because that's a needle in a haystack exercise around here, and otherwise I have a very competent doctor I trust for my eyes, which is extremely important to me.
I'm angry about the forced participatory charade, which is far from over.
About why the medical community succumbed to the seductiveness of authoritarianism, I can find no better, more eye-opening understanding and clarity than is found in an understanding of history. The history of democide committed by government against the people it governed, that became (rightfully) known as the worst crimes against humanity ever committed. The medical community selected because the death merchant's oft-repeated motto was, "The needle belongs in the hand of the doctor."
Useless Eaters: Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany
It is important to note that the enactment of prejudice against people with disabilities in Nazi Germany could not have succeeded without the complicity of the medical and adjunct professions. Power over life and death was placed firmly in the hands of physicians who became white-coated executioners, having long abandoned the "do no harm" clause of the Hippocratic Oath. Currently, there is evidence of the medical community's again being willing agents in hastening the deaths of people deemed not viable, including people with disabilities, through familiar methods for ending the lives of terminally ill people, such as starvation and death by thirst. Furthermore, there is evidence that "do no harm" is now viewed as a somewhat quaint throwback to a distant, less sophisticated era. For example, many physicians no longer take the Hippocratic Oath before beginning their careers, and many standard hospital treatment protocols now stipulate that staff physicians may override next-of-kin requests for patient treatment if the physician decides that treatment will likely be ineffective."
[Please read the article in its sad, heart-wrenching entirety. A few additional excerpts I chose from it are in my Stack on it:
"During the Weimar Republic in the mid-twentieth century, more than half of all German physicians became early joiners of the Nazi Party, surpassing the party enrollments of all other professions. From early on, the German Medical Society played the most instrumental role in the Nazi medical program, beginning with the marginalization of Jewish physicians, proceeding to coerced "experimentation," "euthanization," and sterilization, and culminating in genocide via the medicalization of mass murder of Jews and others caricatured and demonized by Nazi ideology. Given the medical oath to "do no harm," many postwar ethical analyses have strained to make sense of these seemingly paradoxical atrocities. Why did physicians act in such a manner? Yet few have tried to explain the self-selected Nazi enrollment of such an overwhelming proportion of the German Medical Society in the first place. This article lends insight into this paradox by exploring some major vulnerabilities, motives, and rationalizations that may have predisposed German physicians to Nazi membership-professional vulnerabilities among physicians in general (valuing conformity and obedience to authority, valuing the prevention of contamination and fighting against mortality, and possessing a basic interest in biomedical knowledge and research), economic factors and motives (related to physician economic insecurity and incentives for economic advancement), and Nazi ideological and historical rationalizations (beliefs about Social Darwinism, eugenics, and the social organism as sacred). Of particular significance for future research and education is the manner in which the persecution of Jewish physician colleagues was rationalized in the name of medical ethics itself. Giving proper consideration to the forces that fueled "Nazi Medicine" is of great importance, as it can highlight the conditions and motivations that make physicians susceptible to misapplications of medicine, and guide us toward prevention of future abuse."
Ego. The medical community believes their own press. Egos stroked for becoming doctors, family members and society proudly boast "My son/daughter/friend is a doctor!" Given deference, status, prestige, honor, welcome in country clubs, high society. To be a doctor is to have arrived, to possess intelligence above the commoner. Assumed to have the power to save lives, god-like, living demigods. It goes to their heads. A great many are insufferable. The saying, "Doctors are the smartest people in a room - they'll tell you so" is a joke with its own punchline embedded in it.
And with that image, perception of doctors comes a deference to their authority. As amazing and superior as they are, in their own minds and reinforced by society, just as they want their authority to be respected they are more likely to respect a hierarchical authority they serve. Their country club society friends and neighbors. The perks of the becoming a doctor are nice things, living in nice neighborhoods driving nice cars. They dare not rock the boat, or bite the hand that feeds them. Ego. Vanity. Pride. Avarice. Deadly sins. Comes with believing oneself is a god-like cut above the rest of mankind. A conceit that many suffer from.
Public policymakers love using doctors to sell the public on their agendas. Obamacare was sold using doctors as props. Many doctors of psychology stood in for medical doctors at the infamous 'White Coat' press conference:
George Orwell shared with us his understanding of what was happens within the field of science, medical, natural and social, behavioral science/psychology under totalitarian regimes in one of his lesser known works, The Prevention of Literature:
"When one sees highly educated men looking on indifferently at oppression and persecution, one wonders which to despise more, their cynicism or their shortsightedness. Many scientists, for example, are the uncritical admirers of the U.S.S.R. They appear to think that the destruction of liberty is of no importance so long as their own line of work is for the moment unaffected. The U.S.S.R. is a large, rapidly developing country which has an acute need of scientific workers and, consequently, treats them generously. Provided that they steer clear of dangerous subjects such as psychology, scientists are privileged persons."
Which is why the medical community remains silent about the field of medical science being co-opted and dictated to by the doctors of psychology, the elevation of social and behavioral sciences above natural and medical science. It's dangerous to one's career and status. It's why they remain silent and complicit with genital mutilations of children, "gender affirming surgery" being repackaged eugenics "three generations of imbeciles is enough," Buck v. Bell SCOTUS decision given the Madison Avenue marketing and advertising makeover. Medical community: Crickets. Masks: Crickets. The entire NPI psychological manipulations to "fix" the public's perceptions of disease risk: Crickets.
This is why trust in the medical community has been lost. They have only themselves to blame. Their own egos, their own pride, their own vanity, their own avarice. Their own cowardice. And we don't have to give our trust back to them. Trust is earned, not demanded. No amount of silencing the truth-tellers, those shining bright light on their failings will earn their trust back. Only a complete mea culpa, a true reckoning with their failure to protect the health of their patients and those who trusted them, suffering harms because the trust was misplaced, only that has any potential to restore trust in medicine. And even that may be impossible now for a large and growing larger percentage of the population, the longer the lies go on the less likely it will ever be restored. And I'm okay with that.
They failed when tested in the 1930's. And they've failed when tested in the 2020's. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times and I'm the fool. We're no fools.
Will come at this from a couple angles, Mark. One as to why medical community succumbed the seductiveness of authoritarianism will be a separate comment. This one delves into what the inevitable result of blurring competing versions of science (medical vs behavioral) and types of doctors (Medical Doctors vs Doctors of Psychology) does to trust in medicine.
In your sequence, #5 truly belongs under #2. Masks were never an implement that provided any type of medical science, biological, microbiological, hard natural science efficacy in reducing the spread of pandemic influenza. Pathogens small enough to suspend invisibly in the air are not in any way stopped by cloth or paper, the whole mosquito flying through a chain-link fence image.
When medical professionals began wearing masks in medical facilities, outside the n95's in operating room, the ordinary thin masks were worn for a placebo effect. In fact, pre-2020 they were called placebo masks by nurses and doctors alike. Behavioral health, a type of psychological approach to medicine, determined that most people are scared of catching something at a hospital/clinic because they are surrounded by other sick people. And they worried when they saw that nurses and doctors moving from one patient to the next, patients already feeling vulnerable feared that the nurse or doctor would spread disease from one patient to the next. Even though that's not how most disease and illness is spread, the fearful lay person mind believed it. So the behavioral health, psychology-informed model encouraged medical professionals to wear placebo masks to alleviate the fears of patients. Not to actually protect them, even from spittle. Pre-2020. Mind games. The placebo effect is a real phenomenon.
Thing is, do something long enough like that and the placebo mask becomes perceived as offering real protection. Not just in the patient's mind, but also in most of the minds of the health professionals wearing them. "Of course they work to protect" belief systems were already held by a significant number of health professionals after sufficient time donning them for work blurred their prior medical school training and understanding of microbiology, virology, etc. Behavioral science became the medical science. Pseudoscience masquerading as science.
This pseudoscience had already layered itself into the public mind with a psychological technique known as "priming":
Television and movies, shows like M.A.S.H. and ER reinforced a belief in masks protecting from microbiology they never possibly could. Studies going back to the 1960's proved that masking even by surgeons in the operating room didn't result in any difference in post-op infection rates. Even after doctors and nurses spit, drooled, sweat beads dropped into open body cavities. Nothing. Zilch. Nada in protective efficacy of masks. The only measurable difference was if/when the doctor/nurse had symptoms of infection going into surgery. That was it. But, spit, drool and sweat are kind of gross, and nobody wants the spit, drool and sweat of others on them, much less in them. So they are used for our sensibilities in surgery, not to protect our health. Psychological. Behavioral health.
It's not hard to get the public mind to accept a falsehood, a myth, an icon endowed with protective qualities. Nobody wants to get sick, and we like to imagine we have control over the environment we live in, a sense of empowerment. Even in Roman times the population used icons endowed with protective qualities from illness. Some might say well-endowed:
But endowing icons, even well-endowed icons, with protective powers they don't have becomes a double-edged sword. Since they don't actually possess any medical efficacy, aren't based in any "evidence-based science" they are purely symbols. And symbols, like national flags, team mascots, "R" "D" are inherently divisive. Our team vs. your team. Clean vs. unclean. And bad things flow from division.
That background of masks and symbols was known to medical science and psychology pre-2020. But, those who considered themselves 'experts' and more informed than the uneducated, selfish and foolish masses decided we suffered, suffered, from "optimism bias" when it came to the risk that CV posed to us:
And to cure us of our optimism we suffered from they prescribed "fear amplification" as our Rx. Masked faces, as you write often about, Expressly Human, deprive us of our connection with one another, and are actually fear-inducing in community settings. Triggering the amygdala fight, flight, freeze response, same as seeing snakes:
We all knew this pre-2020, the only masked faces we saw in public were on bank robbers and hijackers. Fear. To get people to comply with their demands. Not just to conceal their identity and get away. Even international courts recognized that we have a *right* to see each other's faces in public, free faces make us a safer, healthier society. Affirmed in court decisions as recently as Fall, 2019...just months before authorities demanded we mask our faces "Burqa bans" weren't just about burqas, Islam. Masks. All masks, banned:
You see, epidemiologists are trained in social and behavioral science, psychological manipulation, in addition to elements of virology and natural sciences. They wish to change public behaviors to "slow the spread" of infectious disease. And they leaned heavily into psychological manipulations, also known as Non-pharmaceutical Interventions (your #2 and #5) to change perspectives in the public to effect changes in behaviors authorities wanted (Hide! Be afraid of others! Be very afraid!). And major influential behavioral health publications, like Health Affairs, said things like "Masks failed in the Spanish Flu. But we need them now," because, symbolism:
Fear! Fear! Fear! To cure our "optimism bias" and gain our willing compliance. The UK and US responses were nearly identical. Both had established sister Social and Behavioral Science 'Nudge Units' at the same time under Obama and Cameron. And leaned heavily into them for the "pandemic emergency." The Conservative Woman did a brilliant three-part series on the UK's behavioural health "fear amplification" that the US also did, just not as transparently:
They even shared a fancy little table produced by UK authorities showing the plug-and-play app for any behavioral science campaign. Pandemic. Climate. Gender. Energy. Food. All-purpose:
The behavioral science-based pandemic response, especially the NPI component that the first year was had nothing to do with medical science. It was pseudoscience masquerading as science. It was doctors of psychology assuming the reins of our health system over doctors of medicine. Dr. Sigmund Freud performing open heart surgery while trained cardiologists watch from the observation balcony above.
They weaponized fear as a means to manipulate and control the public mind, orchestrated coercion, psychological mind-farkery to gain compliance with authoritarian commands. Leaving many early practitioners of the fear amplification fearful of what they had unleashed, calling Behavioral Science "The Science of Totalitarianism":
So many of them are narcissistic. They think if they got a degree they somehow are more critical thinking or logical than patients who didn't go to medical school. If someone has a strong desire to learn they can learn even without paying a school a buttload of money for a degree. I'd like to see them be humbled. But I don't think most of them are capable of that at this juncture, because then they'd have to deal with the fact that they may have hurt many people with their pride.
Like any other profession, there are good and bad doctors. In my case, laziness has led to dumb medical decisions. Or maybe it was a combination of hopefulness and laziness. I have had some really obnoxiously stupid doctors in my 50+ years! I had endometriosis in my twenties that was so bad that I couldn't even bend over... The experts kept telling me it was all in my head. Finally found a doc who knew what was happening. For the last 17 years, I have had a great PA. She listens, she acknowledges she doesn't know everything and she is open to nontraditional medicine. If you look back through your interactions with medical professionals, there are quacks and their are good people who actually care. You just have to find them. The best advice is do your own research. We are complex individuals and our medical solutions are complex also.
ABQ doc just has to list runner along with blood doc. They worship themselves. Running is worn as an I'm worthy badge. But they do show their true colors most in telling people please don't come if you're not one of us. Maybe if you do need ER, God forbid, you ought to show up in marathoner garb. They'll at least think you must be one of them and therefore treat you. Worth a try. I mean, it's that or a multicolored alphabet tee...
After living through covid, probably 10 people in my family went from "My doctor knows best, I'll do whatever he recommends; I can't do better than my Doctor's recommendation anyways if I tried" to some degree of "I know you are full of sh*t now, I know your sources of knowledge are corrupt, I know you can't do math and I know you aren't free to give me your knowledge to the best of your ability due to political constraints. I will treat you as I treat a used car salesman for the foreseeable future, I'll never take another vaccine in my entire life and what are those people you call 'quacks' recommending, by the way?"
Unfortunately, there are still some parts of my family who would inject manure into their vein if their MD recommended it.
I have only gone to the doctor when absolutely necessary, during the past 3 years (since February 2020). Absolutely necessary: to accompany elderly parents on their appointments or to the ER, or for my own absolutely necessary eye appointments.
Masks all the way, up until my most recent appointment last month. I saw my doctor continuing to put his mask on for the elderly patients who continued to wear their masks, and take it off for any patients who were not wearing one. It's so bizarre. Why? Being polite? Why not just kindly tell your patients that the masks do not work to prevent transmission of viral illness? Set an example?
I told him it was wonderful to finally be able to see what he actually looks like after these few years, as opposed to the photo on the website. So crazy-making.
No, I am not going to "find another doctor" because that's a needle in a haystack exercise around here, and otherwise I have a very competent doctor I trust for my eyes, which is extremely important to me.
I'm angry about the forced participatory charade, which is far from over.
About why the medical community succumbed to the seductiveness of authoritarianism, I can find no better, more eye-opening understanding and clarity than is found in an understanding of history. The history of democide committed by government against the people it governed, that became (rightfully) known as the worst crimes against humanity ever committed. The medical community selected because the death merchant's oft-repeated motto was, "The needle belongs in the hand of the doctor."
Useless Eaters: Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany
Catholic Culture, 2003
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7019
"Complicity of the Medical Professions
It is important to note that the enactment of prejudice against people with disabilities in Nazi Germany could not have succeeded without the complicity of the medical and adjunct professions. Power over life and death was placed firmly in the hands of physicians who became white-coated executioners, having long abandoned the "do no harm" clause of the Hippocratic Oath. Currently, there is evidence of the medical community's again being willing agents in hastening the deaths of people deemed not viable, including people with disabilities, through familiar methods for ending the lives of terminally ill people, such as starvation and death by thirst. Furthermore, there is evidence that "do no harm" is now viewed as a somewhat quaint throwback to a distant, less sophisticated era. For example, many physicians no longer take the Hippocratic Oath before beginning their careers, and many standard hospital treatment protocols now stipulate that staff physicians may override next-of-kin requests for patient treatment if the physician decides that treatment will likely be ineffective."
[Please read the article in its sad, heart-wrenching entirety. A few additional excerpts I chose from it are in my Stack on it:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/avoiding-doom-learning-from-history ]
Why did so many German doctors join the Nazi Party early?
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, September 22, 2012
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23040706/
"During the Weimar Republic in the mid-twentieth century, more than half of all German physicians became early joiners of the Nazi Party, surpassing the party enrollments of all other professions. From early on, the German Medical Society played the most instrumental role in the Nazi medical program, beginning with the marginalization of Jewish physicians, proceeding to coerced "experimentation," "euthanization," and sterilization, and culminating in genocide via the medicalization of mass murder of Jews and others caricatured and demonized by Nazi ideology. Given the medical oath to "do no harm," many postwar ethical analyses have strained to make sense of these seemingly paradoxical atrocities. Why did physicians act in such a manner? Yet few have tried to explain the self-selected Nazi enrollment of such an overwhelming proportion of the German Medical Society in the first place. This article lends insight into this paradox by exploring some major vulnerabilities, motives, and rationalizations that may have predisposed German physicians to Nazi membership-professional vulnerabilities among physicians in general (valuing conformity and obedience to authority, valuing the prevention of contamination and fighting against mortality, and possessing a basic interest in biomedical knowledge and research), economic factors and motives (related to physician economic insecurity and incentives for economic advancement), and Nazi ideological and historical rationalizations (beliefs about Social Darwinism, eugenics, and the social organism as sacred). Of particular significance for future research and education is the manner in which the persecution of Jewish physician colleagues was rationalized in the name of medical ethics itself. Giving proper consideration to the forces that fueled "Nazi Medicine" is of great importance, as it can highlight the conditions and motivations that make physicians susceptible to misapplications of medicine, and guide us toward prevention of future abuse."
Ego. The medical community believes their own press. Egos stroked for becoming doctors, family members and society proudly boast "My son/daughter/friend is a doctor!" Given deference, status, prestige, honor, welcome in country clubs, high society. To be a doctor is to have arrived, to possess intelligence above the commoner. Assumed to have the power to save lives, god-like, living demigods. It goes to their heads. A great many are insufferable. The saying, "Doctors are the smartest people in a room - they'll tell you so" is a joke with its own punchline embedded in it.
And with that image, perception of doctors comes a deference to their authority. As amazing and superior as they are, in their own minds and reinforced by society, just as they want their authority to be respected they are more likely to respect a hierarchical authority they serve. Their country club society friends and neighbors. The perks of the becoming a doctor are nice things, living in nice neighborhoods driving nice cars. They dare not rock the boat, or bite the hand that feeds them. Ego. Vanity. Pride. Avarice. Deadly sins. Comes with believing oneself is a god-like cut above the rest of mankind. A conceit that many suffer from.
Public policymakers love using doctors to sell the public on their agendas. Obamacare was sold using doctors as props. Many doctors of psychology stood in for medical doctors at the infamous 'White Coat' press conference:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2009/10/obamas-men-white-coats-c-jay-nordlinger/
George Orwell shared with us his understanding of what was happens within the field of science, medical, natural and social, behavioral science/psychology under totalitarian regimes in one of his lesser known works, The Prevention of Literature:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-prevention-of-literature/
"When one sees highly educated men looking on indifferently at oppression and persecution, one wonders which to despise more, their cynicism or their shortsightedness. Many scientists, for example, are the uncritical admirers of the U.S.S.R. They appear to think that the destruction of liberty is of no importance so long as their own line of work is for the moment unaffected. The U.S.S.R. is a large, rapidly developing country which has an acute need of scientific workers and, consequently, treats them generously. Provided that they steer clear of dangerous subjects such as psychology, scientists are privileged persons."
Which is why the medical community remains silent about the field of medical science being co-opted and dictated to by the doctors of psychology, the elevation of social and behavioral sciences above natural and medical science. It's dangerous to one's career and status. It's why they remain silent and complicit with genital mutilations of children, "gender affirming surgery" being repackaged eugenics "three generations of imbeciles is enough," Buck v. Bell SCOTUS decision given the Madison Avenue marketing and advertising makeover. Medical community: Crickets. Masks: Crickets. The entire NPI psychological manipulations to "fix" the public's perceptions of disease risk: Crickets.
This is why trust in the medical community has been lost. They have only themselves to blame. Their own egos, their own pride, their own vanity, their own avarice. Their own cowardice. And we don't have to give our trust back to them. Trust is earned, not demanded. No amount of silencing the truth-tellers, those shining bright light on their failings will earn their trust back. Only a complete mea culpa, a true reckoning with their failure to protect the health of their patients and those who trusted them, suffering harms because the trust was misplaced, only that has any potential to restore trust in medicine. And even that may be impossible now for a large and growing larger percentage of the population, the longer the lies go on the less likely it will ever be restored. And I'm okay with that.
They failed when tested in the 1930's. And they've failed when tested in the 2020's. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times and I'm the fool. We're no fools.
Will come at this from a couple angles, Mark. One as to why medical community succumbed the seductiveness of authoritarianism will be a separate comment. This one delves into what the inevitable result of blurring competing versions of science (medical vs behavioral) and types of doctors (Medical Doctors vs Doctors of Psychology) does to trust in medicine.
In your sequence, #5 truly belongs under #2. Masks were never an implement that provided any type of medical science, biological, microbiological, hard natural science efficacy in reducing the spread of pandemic influenza. Pathogens small enough to suspend invisibly in the air are not in any way stopped by cloth or paper, the whole mosquito flying through a chain-link fence image.
When medical professionals began wearing masks in medical facilities, outside the n95's in operating room, the ordinary thin masks were worn for a placebo effect. In fact, pre-2020 they were called placebo masks by nurses and doctors alike. Behavioral health, a type of psychological approach to medicine, determined that most people are scared of catching something at a hospital/clinic because they are surrounded by other sick people. And they worried when they saw that nurses and doctors moving from one patient to the next, patients already feeling vulnerable feared that the nurse or doctor would spread disease from one patient to the next. Even though that's not how most disease and illness is spread, the fearful lay person mind believed it. So the behavioral health, psychology-informed model encouraged medical professionals to wear placebo masks to alleviate the fears of patients. Not to actually protect them, even from spittle. Pre-2020. Mind games. The placebo effect is a real phenomenon.
Thing is, do something long enough like that and the placebo mask becomes perceived as offering real protection. Not just in the patient's mind, but also in most of the minds of the health professionals wearing them. "Of course they work to protect" belief systems were already held by a significant number of health professionals after sufficient time donning them for work blurred their prior medical school training and understanding of microbiology, virology, etc. Behavioral science became the medical science. Pseudoscience masquerading as science.
This pseudoscience had already layered itself into the public mind with a psychological technique known as "priming":
https://themindsjournal.com/priming-psychology/
Television and movies, shows like M.A.S.H. and ER reinforced a belief in masks protecting from microbiology they never possibly could. Studies going back to the 1960's proved that masking even by surgeons in the operating room didn't result in any difference in post-op infection rates. Even after doctors and nurses spit, drooled, sweat beads dropped into open body cavities. Nothing. Zilch. Nada in protective efficacy of masks. The only measurable difference was if/when the doctor/nurse had symptoms of infection going into surgery. That was it. But, spit, drool and sweat are kind of gross, and nobody wants the spit, drool and sweat of others on them, much less in them. So they are used for our sensibilities in surgery, not to protect our health. Psychological. Behavioral health.
It's not hard to get the public mind to accept a falsehood, a myth, an icon endowed with protective qualities. Nobody wants to get sick, and we like to imagine we have control over the environment we live in, a sense of empowerment. Even in Roman times the population used icons endowed with protective qualities from illness. Some might say well-endowed:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/romans-used-to-ward-off-sickness-with-flying-penis-amulets
But endowing icons, even well-endowed icons, with protective powers they don't have becomes a double-edged sword. Since they don't actually possess any medical efficacy, aren't based in any "evidence-based science" they are purely symbols. And symbols, like national flags, team mascots, "R" "D" are inherently divisive. Our team vs. your team. Clean vs. unclean. And bad things flow from division.
That background of masks and symbols was known to medical science and psychology pre-2020. But, those who considered themselves 'experts' and more informed than the uneducated, selfish and foolish masses decided we suffered, suffered, from "optimism bias" when it came to the risk that CV posed to us:
https://www.wpr.org/what-optimism-bias-and-how-it-affecting-our-response-pandemic
And to cure us of our optimism we suffered from they prescribed "fear amplification" as our Rx. Masked faces, as you write often about, Expressly Human, deprive us of our connection with one another, and are actually fear-inducing in community settings. Triggering the amygdala fight, flight, freeze response, same as seeing snakes:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9450.2009.00784.x
We all knew this pre-2020, the only masked faces we saw in public were on bank robbers and hijackers. Fear. To get people to comply with their demands. Not just to conceal their identity and get away. Even international courts recognized that we have a *right* to see each other's faces in public, free faces make us a safer, healthier society. Affirmed in court decisions as recently as Fall, 2019...just months before authorities demanded we mask our faces "Burqa bans" weren't just about burqas, Islam. Masks. All masks, banned:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/france-burqa-ban-upheld-human-rights-court
https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2019-08-27/netherlands-burqa-ban-enters-into-force/
You see, epidemiologists are trained in social and behavioral science, psychological manipulation, in addition to elements of virology and natural sciences. They wish to change public behaviors to "slow the spread" of infectious disease. And they leaned heavily into psychological manipulations, also known as Non-pharmaceutical Interventions (your #2 and #5) to change perspectives in the public to effect changes in behaviors authorities wanted (Hide! Be afraid of others! Be very afraid!). And major influential behavioral health publications, like Health Affairs, said things like "Masks failed in the Spanish Flu. But we need them now," because, symbolism:
https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20200508.769108/full/
Fear! Fear! Fear! To cure our "optimism bias" and gain our willing compliance. The UK and US responses were nearly identical. Both had established sister Social and Behavioral Science 'Nudge Units' at the same time under Obama and Cameron. And leaned heavily into them for the "pandemic emergency." The Conservative Woman did a brilliant three-part series on the UK's behavioural health "fear amplification" that the US also did, just not as transparently:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sages-covert-coup/
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sages-covert-coup-part-two-project-fear/
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sages-covert-coup-part-three-the-mass-behavourial-science-experiment/
They even shared a fancy little table produced by UK authorities showing the plug-and-play app for any behavioral science campaign. Pandemic. Climate. Gender. Energy. Food. All-purpose:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/sage.png
The behavioral science-based pandemic response, especially the NPI component that the first year was had nothing to do with medical science. It was pseudoscience masquerading as science. It was doctors of psychology assuming the reins of our health system over doctors of medicine. Dr. Sigmund Freud performing open heart surgery while trained cardiologists watch from the observation balcony above.
They weaponized fear as a means to manipulate and control the public mind, orchestrated coercion, psychological mind-farkery to gain compliance with authoritarian commands. Leaving many early practitioners of the fear amplification fearful of what they had unleashed, calling Behavioral Science "The Science of Totalitarianism":
https://web.archive.org/web/20210519003131/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-admit-totalitarian-use-fear-control-behaviour-covid/
No better way to lose public trust in medicine than turn the entire field over to trained deceivers.
So many of them are narcissistic. They think if they got a degree they somehow are more critical thinking or logical than patients who didn't go to medical school. If someone has a strong desire to learn they can learn even without paying a school a buttload of money for a degree. I'd like to see them be humbled. But I don't think most of them are capable of that at this juncture, because then they'd have to deal with the fact that they may have hurt many people with their pride.
except for the licensing/credentialing requirements; you are correct -- we can teach it all to ourselves.
Like any other profession, there are good and bad doctors. In my case, laziness has led to dumb medical decisions. Or maybe it was a combination of hopefulness and laziness. I have had some really obnoxiously stupid doctors in my 50+ years! I had endometriosis in my twenties that was so bad that I couldn't even bend over... The experts kept telling me it was all in my head. Finally found a doc who knew what was happening. For the last 17 years, I have had a great PA. She listens, she acknowledges she doesn't know everything and she is open to nontraditional medicine. If you look back through your interactions with medical professionals, there are quacks and their are good people who actually care. You just have to find them. The best advice is do your own research. We are complex individuals and our medical solutions are complex also.
ABQ doc just has to list runner along with blood doc. They worship themselves. Running is worn as an I'm worthy badge. But they do show their true colors most in telling people please don't come if you're not one of us. Maybe if you do need ER, God forbid, you ought to show up in marathoner garb. They'll at least think you must be one of them and therefore treat you. Worth a try. I mean, it's that or a multicolored alphabet tee...