Brownstone Institute
The Covid Narrative Flunked the Critical Thinking Test
From the Brownstone Institute
At the height of the Covid hysteria, several times I encountered variations of the meme “It’s not a pandemic; it’s an IQ test.” Probably the memesters were poking fun at those duped by the mainstream Covid messaging.
In any case, that meme really misses the point. The essential problem has never been about one’s IQ. Many highly intelligent people (in an academic sense) swallowed a very dubious narrative, while others less academically gifted did not. The real divider was the ability and inclination to think critically about it.
In a previous article I explained the basic concept of critical thinking, which can be defined as rational judgment about appeals to belief. Here I will lay out my own classroom approach to it in relation to the Covid messaging and policies.
The approach was derived from Browne and Keeley’s once popular critical thinking textbook, Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking. Simplified for Japanese university students unfamiliar with the concept of critical thinking, this approach consists of six questions, all very applicable to the official narrative about Covid. For any Japanese speakers who may be reading this, here is a video link of me explaining my approach.
Number one: What are the issues and the conclusion? The purpose of this question is to spur awareness that very often there is an assertion being made in the context of a debated issue. Many of my students have been completely unaware that a debate exists about many matters they hear about in school or from the media, such as climate change/global warming.
When people insist that no real debate exists in regard to an issue about which reasonable people differ, they have already failed the critical thinking test. That stance certainly has been the substance of much Covid messaging.
Number two: How good are the reasons? Many of my students can brainstorm on their own the characteristics of good reasons: clear, true, logical, objective, and important. In the Covid context, untrue reasons include arguing on the basis that novel, experimental injections are certainly (100 percent or 95 percent) “safe and effective.” Moreover, the demand by pharmaceutical companies to receive complete legal protection from any liability belied this claim of safety.
Along with that, it was not logical to endanger people with potentially serious health harms from experimental injections or to withhold from them medical care in the name of protecting them, as happened during the lockdowns.
Number three: How good is the evidence? For the purpose of learning critical thinking about statistics, a number of books explain common forms of statistical deception and error. The classic book How to Lie With Statistics, along with the more recent book by Joel Best Damned Lies and Statistics, show how such dubious statistical data is often created or else badly interpreted.
In a Japanese book, Shakai Chosa no Uso (The Lies of Social Research), Professor Ichiro Tanioka reveals that government statistics also are often deceptive and simply serve the interests of bureaucrats and politicians, either by magnifying a problem to justify government policies and funding or by making a government program appear to be successful. Since many people are easily impressed by number data, he comments that more than half of all social science research is garbage, a problem compounded when the data is then referenced by the mass media, activists, and others.
Since the earliest days of the Covid panic, statistical chicanery has been conspicuous, including Neil Ferguson’s now-infamous predictions of millions of deaths without lockdowns. Norman Fenton exposed a number of statistical confusions in the UK’s national statistics in regard to Covid. As another example, Pfizer’s claim of 95 percent Covid vaccine efficacy was based on its own shoddy research using the PCR tests. However, few in the Covid-messaging mainstream bothered to look into the statistically shaky basis for this claim. They simply parroted the “95 percent.”
Number four: Are any words unclear or used strangely? A number of words took on unclear, strange, or inconsistent meanings during the Covid panic. One notable example was the word safe. In the case of the experimental Covid injections, the term evidently could accommodate a wide variety of serious side effects and a considerable number of deaths.
However, in other contexts, an extreme, all-or-nothing concept of safety came into play, as in the slogan “No one is safe until everyone is safe.” This slogan makes as much sense as shouting, during the sinking of a passenger ship, “If everyone is not in the lifeboats, then no one is in the lifeboats.” Nevertheless, this nonsensical mantra was on the lips of many in the corporate media, in order to insist on policies like universal Covid vaccination.
Interestingly, this absurd concept of safety is actually one of the items in The Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test, which I made use of in my teaching and research (The test and manual can be downloaded for free). The test focuses on a fictional letter to a newspaper editor arguing for a total ban on overnight street parking in a certain city. The test-taker’s job is to evaluate the various arguments in the letter, one of which asserts that “conditions are not safe if there’s even the slightest possible chance for an accident.”
Of course, such a view of safety could lead to the ban of almost anything with the slightest element of risk. To illustrate this, I pretended to trip on a student desk in class. Then I would insist that the accident showed that “teaching is too dangerous” and leave the classroom briefly. There is very little in life that is really “100 percent safe.”
Another conspicuous misuse of terminology has been referring to the Covid injections as “vaccines,” since the novel mRNA technology does not fit within the traditional definition of a vaccine. A more accurate designation would be “gene therapy,” since the injections influence the expression of the body’s genes, as Sonia Elijah and others have pointed out.
In order to allay public anxieties and avoid the necessity of testing their injections for possible toxic gene-related side effects like cancer, the familiar, user-friendly term vaccine was chosen. Then when the “vaccines” were obviously failing to prevent Covid infection, as vaccines are normally expected to do, the public was suddenly offered a new definition of a vaccine –something that does not prevent infection at all but simply ameliorates the symptoms of disease.
Number 5: Are there any other possible causes? People often arbitrarily attribute phenomena to causes that they wish to implicate. However, multiple causes may be to blame, or the real cause may actually be something entirely different. For example, many have been blaming human-generated CO2 for the high temperatures this summer, but other possible causes have been identified, such as an increase in atmospheric water vapor from underwater volcanic eruptions.
In regard to Covid causation, John Beaudoin discovered evidence of widespread fraud on death certificates in Massachusetts, in response to pressure from public health officials wanting to inflate Covid death figures. Hundreds of accidental deaths and even Covid vaccine deaths were counted as resulting from Covid.
Looking at the UK’s national Covid death statistics, Norman Fenton discovered a similar problem. Only around 6,000 people actually died from Covid alone, a mere four and a half percent of the total number of supposed “Covid deaths.” The rest had other serious medical conditions as possible causes of death. If a person tested positive on a PCR test after hospital admission, even someone fatally injured in a traffic accident could be counted as a Covid death.
In another example of wrong-headed thinking about causation, elements of the mainstream news media and certain “experts” credited the initial relatively low numbers of Covid hospitalizations and deaths in Japan to the practice of universal masking here. Unfortunately for that theory, soon afterwards Covid cases and hospitalizations shot up dramatically in Japan, making the “saved-by-masks” explanation difficult to maintain. Nevertheless, many officials and media outlets had decided early on that they believed in masks, regardless of what the evidence and common sense had to say.
Number six: What are the basic assumptions and are they acceptable? An assumption is an underlying, unstated belief that often goes without challenge and discussion. Recently I encountered a false assumption when I decided to stop wearing a face mask in class at my university. This met with the displeasure of one of the higher-ups, who called me in for a chat. He insisted that my unmasked face was making my students uncomfortable in class. He was assuming that they felt this way about it, so I decided to do an anonymous survey to find out their real feelings. To my surprise, only one student in all of my classes objected to my going maskless. The rest preferred that I teach without a mask or else expressed indifference.
Adherents of the mainstream Covid narrative accepted as axioms dubious ideas such as these:
- Viral epidemics can and should be halted by extreme measures bringing great suffering on large numbers of people.
- The threat of Covid infection supersedes human rights such as the rights to work, to commune with other human beings, to express opinions freely, etc.
- Facial masks prevent Covid transmission.
- Facial masks do no significant harm.
These assumptions have been ably debunked by many articles at Brownstone Institute and elsewhere.
Thus from the beginning the mainstream Covid narrative has failed to give persuasive responses to any of these questions. In light of that, it is remarkable that there are still many people who endorse the original Covid measures and messaging. Especially in times like these, more people need to employ critical thinking to become less gullible and more skeptical of widespread ideas and influential entities, including those usually branded as reliable. They neglect to do so at their own peril.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
Way back in the B.C. era (Before Covid), I taught Medical Humanities and Bioethics at an American medical school. One of my older colleagues – I’ll call him Dr. Quinlan – was a prominent member of the faculty and a nationally recognized proponent of physician-assisted suicide.
Dr. Quinlan was a very nice man. He was soft-spoken, friendly, and intelligent. He had originally become involved in the subject of physician-assisted suicide by accident, while trying to help a patient near the end of her life who was suffering terribly.
That particular clinical case, which Dr. Quinlan wrote up and published in a major medical journal, launched a second career of sorts for him, as he became a leading figure in the physician-assisted suicide movement. In fact, he was lead plaintiff in a challenge of New York’s then-prohibition against physician-assisted suicide.
The case eventually went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which added to his fame. As it happened, SCOTUS ruled 9-0 against him, definitively establishing that there is no “right to die” enshrined in the Constitution, and affirming that the state has a compelling interest to protect the vulnerable.
SCOTUS’s unanimous decision against Dr. Quinlan meant that his side had somehow pulled off the impressive feat of uniting Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and all points in between against their cause. (I never quite saw how that added to his luster, but such is the Academy.)
At any rate, I once had a conversation with Dr. Quinlan about physician-assisted suicide. I told him that I opposed it ever becoming legal. I recall he calmly, pleasantly asked me why I felt that way.
First, I acknowledged that his formative case must have been very tough, and allowed that maybe, just maybe, he had done right in that exceptionally difficult situation. But as the legal saying goes, hard cases make bad law.
Second, as a clinical physician, I felt strongly that no patient should ever see their doctor and have to wonder if he was coming to help keep them alive or to kill them.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, there’s this thing called the slippery slope.
As I recall, he replied that he couldn’t imagine the slippery slope becoming a problem in a matter so profound as causing a patient’s death.
Well, maybe not with you personally, Dr. Quinlan, I thought. I said no more.
But having done my residency at a major liver transplant center in Boston, I had had more than enough experience with the rather slapdash ethics of the organ transplantation world. The opaque shuffling of patients up and down the transplant list, the endless and rather macabre scrounging for donors, and the nebulous, vaguely sinister concept of brain death had all unsettled me.
Prior to residency, I had attended medical school in Canada. In those days, the McGill University Faculty of Medicine was still almost Victorian in its ways: an old-school, stiff-upper-lip, Workaholics-Anonymous-chapter-house sort of place. The ethic was hard work, personal accountability for mistakes, and above all primum non nocere – first, do no harm.
Fast forward to today’s soft-core totalitarian state of Canada, the land of debanking and convicting peaceful protesters, persecuting honest physicians for speaking obvious truth, fining people $25,000 for hiking on their own property, and spitefully seeking to slaughter harmless animals precisely because they may hold unique medical and scientific value.
To all those offenses against liberty, morality, and basic decency, we must add Canada’s aggressive policy of legalizing, and, in fact, encouraging industrial-scale physician-assisted suicide. Under Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAiD) program, which has been in place only since 2016, physician-assisted suicide now accounts for a terrifying 4.7 percent of all deaths in Canada.
MAiD will be permitted for patients suffering from mental illness in Canada in 2027, putting it on par with the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.
To its credit, and unlike the Netherlands and Belgium, Canada does not allow minors to access MAiD. Not yet.
However, patients scheduled to be terminated via MAiD in Canada are actively recruited to have their organs harvested. In fact, MAiD accounts for 6 percent of all deceased organ donors in Canada.
In summary, in Canada, in less than 10 years, physician-assisted suicide has gone from illegal to both an epidemic cause of death and a highly successful organ-harvesting source for the organ transplantation industry.
Physician-assisted suicide has not slid down the slippery slope in Canada. It has thrown itself off the face of El Capitan.
And now, at long last, physician-assisted suicide may be coming to New York. It has passed the House and Senate, and just awaits the Governor’s signature. It seems that the 9-0 Supreme Court shellacking back in the day was just a bump in the road. The long march through the institutions, indeed.
For a brief period in Western history, roughly from the introduction of antibiotics until Covid, hospitals ceased to be a place one entered fully expecting to die. It appears that era is coming to an end.
Covid demonstrated that Western allopathic medicine has a dark, sadistic, anti-human side – fueled by 20th-century scientism and 21st-century technocratic globalism – to which it is increasingly turning. Physician-assisted suicide is a growing part of this death cult transformation. It should be fought at every step.
I have not seen Dr. Quinlan in years. I do not know how he might feel about my slippery slope argument today.
I still believe I was correct.
From the Brownstone Institute
Many news outlets reported the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday by saying President Donald Trump had missed out (Washington Post, Yahoo, Hindustan Times, Huffington Post), not won (USA Today), fallen short (AP News), lost (Time), etc. There is even a meme doing the rounds about ‘Trump Wine.’ ‘Made from sour grapes,’ the label explains, ‘This is a full bodied and bitter vintage guaranteed to leave a nasty taste in your mouth for years.’
For the record, the prize was awarded to María Corina Machado for her courageous and sustained opposition to Venezuela’s ruling regime. Trump called to congratulate her. Given his own attacks on the Venezuelan president, his anger will be partly mollified, and he could even back her with practical support. He nonetheless attacked the prize committee, and the White House assailed it for putting politics before peace.
He could be in serious contention next year. If his Gaza peace plan is implemented and holds until next October, he should get it. That he is unlikely to do so is more a reflection on the award and less on Trump.
So He Won the Nobel Peace Prize. Meh!
Alfred Nobel’s will stipulates the prize should be awarded to the person who has contributed the most to promote ‘fraternity between nations…abolition or reduction of standing armies and…holding and promotion of peace congresses.’ Over the decades, this has expanded progressively to embrace human rights, political dissent, environmentalism, race, gender, and other social justice causes.
On these grounds, I would have thought the Covid resistance should have been a winner. The emphasis has shifted from outcomes and actual work to advocacy. In honouring President Barack Obama in 2009, the Nobel committee embarrassed itself, patronised him, and demeaned the prize. His biggest accomplishment was the choice of his predecessor as president: the prize was a one-finger send-off to President George W. Bush.
There have been other strange laureates, including those prone to wage war (Henry Kissinger, 1973), tainted through association with terrorism (Yasser Arafat, 1994), and contributions to fields beyond peace, such as planting millions of trees. Some laureates were subsequently discovered to have embellished their record, and others proved to be flawed champions of human rights who had won them the treasured accolade.
Conversely, Mahatma Gandhi did not get the prize, not for his contributions to the theory and practice of non-violence, nor for his role in toppling the British Raj as the curtain raiser to worldwide decolonisation. The sad reality is how little practical difference the prize has made to the causes it espoused. They bring baubles and honour to the laureates, but the prize has lost much of its lustre as far as results go.
Trump Was Not a Serious Contender
The nomination processes start in September and nominations close on 31 January. The five-member Norwegian Nobel committee scrutinises the list of candidates and whittles it down between February and October. The prize is announced on or close to 10 October, the date Alfred Nobel died, and the award ceremony is held in Oslo in early December.
The calendar rules out a newly elected president in his first year, with the risible exception of Obama. The period under review was 2024. Trump’s claims to have ended seven wars and boasts of ‘nobody’s ever done that’ are not taken seriously beyond the narrow circle of fervent devotees, sycophantic courtiers, and supplicant foreign leaders eager to ingratiate themselves with over-the-top flattery.
Trump Could Be in Serious Contention Next Year
Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan falls into three conceptual-cum-chronological parts: today, tomorrow, and the day after. At the time of writing, in a hinge moment in the two-year war, Israel has implemented a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas has agreed to release Israeli hostages on 13-14 October, and Israel will release around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners (today’s agenda). So why are the ‘Ceasefire Now!’ mobs not out on the streets celebrating joyously instead of looking morose and discombobulated? Perhaps they’ve been robbed of the meaning of life?
The second part (tomorrow) requires Hamas demilitarisation, surrender, amnesty, no role in Gaza’s future governance, resumption of aid deliveries, Israeli military pullbacks, a temporary international stabilisation force, and a technocratic transitional administration. The third part, the agenda for the day after, calls for the deradicalisation of Gaza, its reconstruction and development, an international Peace Board to oversee implementation of the plan, governance reforms of the Palestinian Authority, and, over the horizon, Palestinian statehood.
There are too many potential pitfalls to rest easy on the prospects for success. Will Hamas commit military and political suicide? How can the call for democracy in Gaza and the West Bank be reconciled with Hamas as the most popular group among Palestinians? Can Israel’s fractious governing coalition survive?
Both Hamas and Israel have a long record of agreeing to demands under pressure but sabotaging their implementation at points of vulnerability. The broad Arab support could weaken as difficulties arise. The presence of the internationally toxic Tony Blair on the Peace Board could derail the project. Hamas has reportedly called on all factions to reject Blair’s involvement. Hamas official Basem Naim, while thanking Trump for his positive role in the peace deal, explained that ‘Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe a lot [of] people around the world still remember his [Blair’s] role in causing the killing of thousands or millions of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.’
It would be a stupendous achievement for all the complicated moving parts to come together in stable equilibrium. What cannot and should not be denied is the breathtaking diplomatic coup already achieved. Only Trump could have pulled this off.
The very traits that are so offputting in one context helped him to get here: narcissism; bullying and impatience; bull in a china shop style of diplomacy; indifference to what others think; dislike of wars and love of real estate development; bottomless faith in his own vision, negotiating skills, and ability to read others; personal relationships with key players in the region; and credibility as both the ultimate guarantor of Israel’s security and preparedness to use force if obstructed. Israelis trust him; Hamas and Iran fear him.
The combined Israeli-US attacks to degrade Iran’s nuclear capability underlined the credibility of threats of force against recalcitrant opponents. Unilateral Israeli strikes on Hamas leaders in Qatar highlighted to uninvolved Arabs the very real dangers of continued escalation amidst the grim Israeli determination to rid themselves of Hamas once and for all.
Trump Is Likely to Be Overlooked
Russia has sometimes been the object of the Nobel Peace Prize. The mischievous President Vladimir Putin has suggested Trump may be too good for the prize. Trump’s disdain for and hostility to international institutions and assaults on the pillars of the liberal international order would have rubbed Norwegians, among the world’s strongest supporters of rules-based international governance, net zero, and foreign aid, the wrong way.
Brash and public lobbying for the prize, like calling the Norwegian prime minister, is counterproductive. The committee is fiercely independent. Nominees are advised against making the nomination public, let alone orchestrating an advocacy campaign. Yet, one laureate is believed to have mobilised his entire government for quiet lobbying behind the scenes, and another to have bad-mouthed a leading rival to friendly journalists.
Most crucially, given that Scandinavian character traits tip towards the opposite end of the scale, it’s hard to see the committee overlooking Trump’s loud flaws, vanity, braggadocio, and lack of grace and humility. Trump supporters discount his character traits and take his policies and results seriously. Haters cannot get over the flaws to seriously evaluate policies and outcomes. No prizes for guessing which group the Nobel committee is likely to belong to. As is currently fashionable to say when cancelling someone, Trump’s values do not align with those of the committee and the ideals of the prize.
Author
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