IM Doc pt14

Sep. 18th, 2021 02:22 pm
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Good Friday and Easter Church Raid Attempts by Police Over Covid Intensify Conservative Christian Vaccine Hesitancy

Posted on April 5, 2021 by 

Yves here. We didn’t expect to return to a heated topic so soon, that of conservative Christian resistance to Covid 19 vaccines, which we discussed late last week. As the post described, they have two grounds for concerns. One is the use of fetal stem cell lines. The connection to the vaccines may seem pretty strained to those not sensitive to this issue, but it isn’t fabricated.1

The second is that the proposed vaccine passports sound like the Mark of the Beast. Lambert found the relevant section in Revelation 13:

11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon….

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

In the last three days, as the post explains below, two heavy handed police actions against Catholic churches, both outside the US, have heightened vaccine concerns in some conservative parts of America. While the plural of anecdote is not data, IM Doc said they were major topics in his part of flyover…when vaccinations had already fallen off sharply.

Biden as a Catholic could speak to his fellow believers and Catholic leaders to try to repair the damage. But is he too far removed from ordinary people in the heartland to have the foggiest idea what is happening?

I am not able to ascertain how prevalent these attitudes are. I don’t see it in Birmingham, but this is a small city where the medical industry is the dominant employer, and Baptists are the largest religious group, followed by Methodists and Catholics. 5% are Pentecostals and we have roughly as many Mormons as Jews, both under 1%. That is a long winded way of saying that evangelicals are not a significant force here, although I imagine that varies widely in cities across the South. Since we are near the dead bottom on vaccination rates (they’ve only recently opened up vaccinations to everyone 55 or over, and distribution outside mass vaccination centers is still pretty limited), I doubt we’ve hit saturation of those keen to get a shot.

More generally, we are in the midst of a collision of religions: traditional sects versus the cult of experts. Economist and Biden supporter Paul Romer warned of the dangers of elite authoritarianism last October, and Lambert thought it important enough to devote an entire post to it. The Covid topic then was contact tracing but the same general principles apply:

 

 

By IM Doc, an internal medicine doctor working in a rural hospital in the heartlands

My worst nightmare concerns are starting to come true and the media will not be able to hide this for much longer. Today, I am not concerned about the SCIENCE of medicine – I am concerned about the ART of medicine.

The ART can best be summarized as encouraging patients to do the right thing for THEM. With regard to COVID 19, that would be to meet the patient at whatever level they are and find ways to encourage social distancing rules, masking and to correctly guide them on vaccine choice. It would also include encouraging them to be engaged in the healthiest behaviors possible during this time of crisis. Eat well, exercise, sleep and de-stress.

The ART is often much more important to a physician’s medical outcomes than the SCIENCE – something our society and our medical establishment has long ago forgotten. ART requires as a foundation explicit trust and honesty between a patient and the physician. There is no other way.

Yves, I appreciated your post the other day on the Christian Nationalism aspect of COVID 19. I made a comment on the post about this not just being an Evangelical problem. I even suggested in the comment that there could be issues brewing among Roman Catholics, based on what I had been hearing as a physician.

As of Easter Sunday, there are now multiple videos being widely circulated and they all speak to the issue better than I could ever type out in a comment. I have been seeing this problem slowly brewing for weeks and it has largely been completely ignored by our mainstream media.

These videos have both gone viral on our social media in the past 24 hours:

 

This video is from a Polish Catholic church somewhere in London. To say that it reminded me of a Dalek invasion straight out of Dr. Who is an understatement. Also – it appears that Big Brother has now arrived in our Good Friday mass.

Oh but this one is even better – This is from Calgary Alberta Canada. And in my rural parish this Easter morning, this was the main event being talked about by everyone.

 

At the time I put this tweet here – there were 1.2 million views – and I am certain many of them were at our Easter Mass this AM. There is a phrase used here to express the people’s reaction that is so apropos – “whomper-jawed”.

I will state for the record officially today – the public health authorities have lost the narrative. They apparently have also lost their minds. If they think this type of behavior on the most Holy Days of the Church is not going to go unnoticed – they have rocks for brains. This kind of thuggishness is not going to help their cause in any way; rather, it will make these people dig in more. And trust me – as of this Easter Sunday AM – they are digging in. Bunker-style. A clarion call has gone out and it could not be more clear. And I am talking about Roman Catholics – not my Evangelical family – they went off the reservation long ago. Now even my Orthodox friends have taken notice.

As I have been stating over the past few days – the authorities have repeatedly allowed discredited, hypocritical and lying Hoohahs to be their voice in the national media. Outside of our big blue cities and states – NO ONE AMONG MY PATIENTS COULD GIVE A RAT’S ASS WHAT THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY ANYMORE ABOUT THIS PANDEMIC. I hear this refrain constantly every day. The lying, dissembling, crying, misstatements, backtracking and hypocrisy have taken their final toll. If they are not careful, they will soon be public enemy #1.

We have made many errors as a society in the past 12 months, but probably the most important mistake is hardly ever mentioned. One which our forbears in public health, like my father, worked to eradicate for decades. It is very simple – national “one-size-fits-all” narratives and plans in public health do not now nor have they ever worked. Never have. Never will.

There is a very good reason we have local health departments with trusted and elected figures to run things and to communicate. These people have their ears to the ground in their communities. They are trusted neighbors, often elected. That means there is accountability.

Over the past generation, we have largely decided that this is a system that we could no longer afford. So instead we have installed a national “one size fits all” bureaucratic octopus – and this fiasco is what has been wrought. And obviously not just in the USA. Combatting a pandemic in urban blue America is very difficult to do as we have all seen this year. But combatting a pandemic in the Rockies, or in the South is not even closely the same.

As just one example of many, who in rural America could forget our hospitals standing empty for a good 6 weeks last Spring with zero patients in many places while NYC was in a crisis? It was just a sign of mass disorganization which likely would never have happened a generation ago. Trust me – I could go on and on with examples for an entire novel-length discussion. The centralized bureaucracy “model” has been a complete bomb. I am not suggesting there should not be a CDC or an NIH. I am however suggesting that my people in my county should be much more attuned to their local authorities rather than Rachel Maddow or Dr. Fauci.

The tenor of what I am hearing from the MSNBC types, the UMC, the professionals, has become deeply disturbing. To wit, just call these stragglers names – yeah – then they’ll take the shot and willingly comply with orders. They’re just stupid after all. Or better yet, just let the dullards die. “Science” is telling us to take the vaccines – and only morons don’t get it. I have absolutely had to remove dailykos.com from my toolbar because it is obvious those people really do not have a clue. The partisans in our country have completely lost the gift of empathy for the other side. Those of us in the middle are left to just shake our heads and “fan ourselves” as my grandma used to say.

One of the founding tenets of public health is that shaming and name-calling have no place, certainly not in an emergency. I hope we are all beginning to understand this simple concept. I had the opportunity to speak with someone from the CDC this week. He asked me about vaccine hesitancy and loss of stringency in social distancing and masking that is becoming apparent in my area. I told him – and I will tell you all – the strategy must change and do so now if there is any hope of salvaging this situation. The MSNBC crowd have largely been the ones lining up to get vaccines. Most of them have now gotten their shots. Our agencies must immediately yank the HooHahs off the air – and get someone else to reach the rest of this country without all the backtracking and theatrics. I just do not know who that would be, nor do I know if the damage is already permanent. In my opinion, a big move like firing Dr. Fauci would likely do wonders. At this point – who cares what the MSNBC crowd thinks?

A few data points to consider out here in flyover country.

My wife has decided to take the J&J vaccine. I have too. We are going to take them on separate weekends so someone will always be well to take care of the kids. The J&J vaccines are available in our county. My wife called the pharmacy early thinking there would be a wait for an appointment. Not at all, just show up anytime. And we were there yesterday AM. The pharmacist informed us that this was only the 10th COVID vaccine of any brand administered the whole week. They have boxes of vaccines – and no one is taking them. The rush about a month ago is long over.

During the homily this AM, the guest Roman Catholic priest, an emigre, showed the above videos on the monitors and informed the crowd to be prepared to “fight for the faith”. He never thought he would see behavior like this in the West – behavior that was very common when he was a young priest in his home country.

He also suggested to think twice before taking the vaccines – they had all been tainted with fetal abortion cells. I know this is true of the J&J vaccine.1 I am also aware the Catholic Bishops have said it is OK to take the vaccine. In the minds of the majority of Catholics out here in the netherlands these days – they also remember that the Catholic Bishops vehemently said that raping boys by priests was supremely uncommon and when found would be taken care of with an iron fist. We all know how that worked out.

In brief – I am finding it ever more fascinating to live in a culture where everyone is trying their best to do the right thing – but the level of trust in our institutions is now approaching ZERO. That includes political, health, medical, media/entertainment and now sports – just about everything. I never thought I would be living in these days in America – but here we are. Our elites have been working diligently on this banquet for decades – now, the feast of consequences is being served.
 

James P.

First this from the author:
“The partisans in our country have completely lost the gift of empathy for the other side.”

Followed by:
“At this point – who cares what the MSNBC crowd thinks?”

Ironic. Clearly the author has taken a side. The new popular approach: pick a tribe but decry tribalism.

 
  1. IM Doc

    I am most definitely not on any side. I find both sides grotesque. What I meant there and what is clearly stated in a clumsy fashion is that one group has largely complied. If this is as critically important as we are being told we should be concentrated on the other side which has up until now by anyone viewing this with a fair lens been given short shrift by our media and leaders.

Kurt Sperry

Are dissenting opinions actually welcome here or is this another bubble? I guess we’ll soon find out.

The anti-vaxxers (and I am deliberately avoiding misleadingly anodyne euphemisms like vaccine-skeptical or vaccine hesitant) are going to pay no more attention to what I or anyone outside their hermetic ideological bubble think than frankly I will to their batty opinions. This is intrinsically a tribal binary divide with very little middle or shared ground to work in. Either you believe in and take the vaccine or you refuse it; pick a side, there’s no equivocating this time.

Anyone who’ll voluntarily get into a car to drive across town to do something unnecessary and not tremble in fear at the danger yet will at the same time pause before the unambiguously far lesser danger of getting a vaccine quite likely not only to save their life but to protect those of their family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens is manifestly incapable of assessing relative risks in a rational manner. And this is leaving out the pure selfishness of thinking and acting this way.

 
  1. Yves Smith

    You clearly did not read the post, or at least not with care. These are religious objections, and they go beyond assembling.

    We mentioned at the top The Mark of the Beast concern. The vaccine passport threat is now being bandied about as a compliance measure. That’s despite the fact that many of its promoters have not checked on its legal status (you cannot require people to take a vaccine approved only under an EUA under Federal law, so not in any Federal or governmental context, as well as in employment).

    Some commentators claim that private businesses can still impose them under the “no shirt, no service” standard. But that fails because this isn’t a status you can ascertain based on public/visible information. It runs afoul of civil rights and privacy statutes in many state and even cities (no way is this legal in Denver, for instance).

    So we have a lame-assed idea that at most could be imposed only in certain states in a pretty narrow context. Yet this is being bandied about in the US as something imminent, when it triggers evangelicals who otherwise might be persuadable (they don’t have issues with fetal stem cells).

     
    1. Kurt Sperry

      “Mark of the beast concerns” are for me as an agnostic on a par with “invisible unicorn concerns”, “disembodied voice in my head concerns”, or “alien lizard people concerns”.

      I have no opinion on the legality of “vaccine passports”, a subject I never broached in my post, but I’m hoping they are found legal as I think they might likely help nudge some fencesitters over to the vaccinated side if they allow access to events, travel, and recreational opportunities that cannot otherwise be responsibly held. Plus I’ll feel a lot more confident having the freedom to choose attending events and traveling knowing I’m not sharing enclosed spaces for hours with anti-vaxxers, as even after I’m fully vaccine-protected some small contagion risk will inevitably remain.

      Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, the anti-vaxxers, if sufficient in numbers, will unnecessarily keep the pandemic ongoing far past the time it should and as a direct result cause a lot of completely needless and gratuitous death, life-long disability, and massive economic harms that will inevitably disproportionately effect the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

       
  2. IM Doc

    I will tell you that anti Vaxxers do not bother to talk to me about this. The people I see all the time are folks who have dutifully taken vaccines for years and this one has them concerned.

    I would urge everyone not to conflate these two groups. Completely different

Tom Stone

When you are dealing with the morally and intellectually inferior firmness is a necessity.
And so is the occasional “Noble lie” for the common good.
The deplorables can either get in line or get hurt, it’s traditional.

 
  1. IM Doc

    For 30 years in my professional career, I walked among those with credentialed education and Ivy League paticulars. Our PMC has decided that that intelligence and wisdom only flow from those with such a background. Yet another almost daily mistake I see being made by our media figures.

    I believe, and I may be wrong, that it was Noam Chomsky who several years ago wrote a nice long passage about this very issue – indeed he suggested that it was actually easier to prove that intelligence and wisdom were mainly to be found in the non-credentialed.

    Now that I have been out among the “deplorables” as you call them – and as so often they are referred by the credentialed class – I can assure you that I cannot agree with the good Dr. Chomsky more vigorously.

    Non-credentialed does not equal moral and intellectual inferiority. Indeed, I have learned the past 3 years that if I was ever stuck on an island Survivor-style, I would want to be surrounded with the folks I stand with now – and not the ones I spent the past 30 years with. And most certainly I am so relieved that my children are learning values from these deplorables rather than the educated fools that populate our cities.

    Our move to the hinterlands has been probably the most illuminating journey in our lives.

occasional anonymous

“Non-credentialed does not equal moral and intellectual inferiority.”

No, it doesn’t. But being a petulant Karen or manchild who aggressively refuses to do something as simple as wearing a freaking mask does.

I’m breaking hard with NC on this. Yes, our leaders, the media, and our ‘healthcare’ industry have failed over and over and over again over the last year. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that an apparently significant portion of our population have chosen to act like fools. In the end personal responsibility is a thing, and I’m tired of us trying to come up with systemic reasons to excuse the idiocy of individuals. As Lambert has said repeatedly: Russian roulette is risking your own life, while American roulette is risking other people’s lives. I actively resent these morons; they’re putting everyone else at risk.

IM Doc

These morons as you call them are the ones who risk life and limb dealing with animals so you can eat – and with oil pipelines and down the mines so you can heat your home.

We seem to lose sight of this constantly.

Their day to day life and jobs are so incredibly physically difficult and complete disaster is always around the corner – that many of them do indeed have the attitude of “What is a virus going to do to me that these bulls have not already done?”

They are not morons. They are not going out of their way to inconvenience you or anybody. They laugh out loud at this kind of preening. Many of them stare death and dismemberment straight in the face daily. And have the scars to show for it.

I used to think like you do. Those days are long gone. I deal with these people every day. Maybe you should get out into the rural areas of this country a bit more. It has sure changed my perspective.

 
  1. IM Doc

    I do not know who you are. I do not want to come off as harsh on you either. Believe me I understand. I have learned over the past year to deal with people where they are. It is my job. It is my profession. There are thousands like me all over this country doing their very best to deal with this situation.

    I have learned a lot about how to deal with these “morons.” It has been a whole year of a step forward with me and then three steps back with the chaos in our media. I have been able to make great strides with many of them. But it has certainly not been done by name-calling or virtue signaling.

    Indeed, I have found this to be the best way to live life outside of medicine as well. Time and experience teach us quite a bit if we keep our minds open.

     
  2. occasional anonymous

    I work on a farm. Don’t give me this ‘so I can eat’ crap. Being a laborer doesn’t necessitate someone to be a stubborn fool.

    Good job just throwing all workers under the bus like that though. So in your mind ‘covidiot’ equals ‘working class’?

     
    2. IM Doc

      Not at all – I usually do not refer to anyone as a covidiot. It does not get one far in my business.

      All I can say I am relieved I am the one trying to deal with these people. Not all of whom are farmers, ranchers, or roughnecks by any stretch of the imagination.

      People with your attitude have been dealing with them all year on the legacy and social media – and you can see where it has gotten us.

       
      1. occasional anonymous

        My frustration is one created by a year of observing and trying to interact with these Cro-Magnons who are not just stupid, but aggressively stupid. Being polite to them hasn’t worked. Trying to handle them like children and talk down to their level hasn’t worked. No, continuing to insult them isn’t going to work, but freaking nothing else is working either.

        Here, can we please stop the pretense that the reason many people are are being idiots about this epidemic has anything to do with the (many) mistakes of the WHO, CDC, etc etc? Compiling a list of the many elite and institutional errors misses the key point that many people who refuse to even do basic things like wear masks aren’t even aware of those many errors, because they were never paying attention to official pronouncements to begin with. They were getting their news from Fox and Facebook groups. They were refusing to wears masks from jump. And in fact if you go back to the Spanish flu epidemic a century ago we see literally the same kind of stubborn stupidity.

        I’d throw up my hands and say ‘just let them kill themselves’, but unfortunately diseases don’t work like that.

IM Doc

I cannot say it enough – the people are no longer listening.

To the federal public health authorities – The people are no longer listening. At least enough of them to make any difference. This has been caused by many things – but not the least of which has been the outright bumbling incompetence you have so expertly displayed repeatedly this past 12 months. It will be fodder for management, marketing, and communication classes for a generation – as in how not to do things.

I am not sure what to make of this. Thankfully, this event is largely outdoors with an open roof so hopefully lots of ventilation.

If I were you – I would be moving to PLAN B. And I would be getting input from as many local health authorities and providers as I could.

I cannot say this loud enough – you have completely lost the narrative.
 

2:00PM Water Cooler 4/5/2021

Posted on April 5, 2021 by 

nimmpau

It’s almost as if, when they say the vaccine is 92% effective, that means it is also 8% non-effective.

 
  1. IM Doc

    This is a classic example of the way that Big Pharma manipulates data for public consumption. The entire 92 and 8 and 95 and 100 % effectiveness reporting is very much not what the average person thinks it is. It is the old ABSOLUTE vs RELATIVE schtick. The RELATIVE numbers are much higher – 92 95 etc – and much easier for the vast majority of people to digest – but it is actually not representative of what most people think it is.

    I have literally had to explain this hundreds of times since the vaccines came out to my patients in person. Pharma has been using this statistical contrivance since way before I was an intern in their ads and glossies – one of the very first lessons in medical epidemiology class is how to cut through this to get to the real numbers.

antidlc

Interviews on the news last night re: sold out Rangers game.

Granted, it was just a couple of people who were interviewed.

The people who were interviewed said they felt “safe” going to the Rangers game because they were vaccinated. One also mentioned that since they would be outdoors, they would be OK. (Hope they didn’t have to use the restroom.)

From my own experience, I had to explain to a family member that going to a restaurant for Easter was probably not a good idea even though said family member was vaccinated.

Response was, “Well, I’ve been vaccinated.” I tried to inform said family member that large groups should really be avoided (like going to a restaurant on Easter).

Response was, “Well, I’M GOING.” (very emphatic)

I think people have this feeling of invulnerability once they have been vaccinated and either don’t understand or just don’t want to hear about the risks of going out in large groups.

I really think there are a lot of people who think their lives can return to “normal” once they’ve been vaccinated and they can resume their pre-pandemic activities and go back to doing whatever they want. I don’t think they understand (or just choose to ignore) the risks that we still face.

My two cents.

 
  1. IM Doc

    I must add that last night was a real epiphany for me with my Facebook friends.

    I have quite a few physician contacts in the DFW area. Some of them have been repeatedly on Facebook loud and proud since December, showing off all their lovely masking efforts, putting up videos to shame and humiliate social distancing scofflaws, showing themselves getting the vaccines, shouting down anyone in their comments asking legitimate questions about safety and efficacy. You get the point and probably have your own to follow.

    Yesterday evening right before bed I glanced over my Facebook feed. There were two of these self-same physicians at that game. No masks, hugging others around them and they were proudly posting these pics. When confronted about the fact that indeed masks and social distancing were supposed to be employed at that game by commenters ( their own family members and in one case an actual patient) , the commenters were loudly screeched down – WE ARE VACCINATED – BUG OFF! GO GET VACCINATED, DULLARD- and THEN YOU CAN HAVE FUN TOO! – Those are not exact words – but that was the general message.

    I want no one to have the impression that I feel it is just our national medical leaders who have exhibited issues during this pandemic. I have come to realize that my profession is slowly but surely taking up almost cult-like behavior. And actually believing it. I am waiting to see who will be the Jim Jones figure that blows it all up.

    2 thoughts that kept going through my mind as I was going to sleep last night –

    I know personally the old professors who trained these people and they would be hanging their head in shame. I really do not fit into this old world anymore.

    More importantly –
    I hope this all works out with the vaccines the way they believe it will and that we are all hoping. If not, GOD HELP US!

     
    1. Lambert Strether

      > WE ARE VACCINATED – BUG OFF! GO GET VACCINATED, DULLARD- and THEN YOU CAN HAVE FUN TOO!

      Well, if that’s the baseline, and it’s a pretty low baseline, the vaccination numbers should keep steadily rising, hopefully outrunning the variants. And one has to admit that, stupid as “you can have fun” might seem to an introvert like me, peer pressure will result from it, and cut down on the hesitancy.

       
      1. IM Doc

        Again, I am hoping that these early good-looking numbers will hold and also hold up with the variants. I would just not be so cocky and arrogant about this type of thing.

         
        1. Lambert Strether

          No, neither would I, but if previously hesitant Joe Sixpack gets vaccinated because he wants to have a few beers with his friends, I’ll take the win. Perhaps, also, the great unwashed are showing us a better form of messaging than weeping or shaming.

           
IM Doc

One little observation that is tangential but very germane to this article.

Our health officials and Big Pharma seem hell-bent on vaccinating teens and kids as soon as possible. Despite the fact that kids have just a miniscule chance of getting ill. I believe the numbers from the CDC in the past week revealed a total of less than 150 serious illness or death in kids in America out of 85 million kids.

It seems completely absurd – and I feel unethical – to be contemplating vaccinating kids in this country before every old or infirm (in other words high risk for death/morbitity – but also high risk for variant production) person in this entire world has been vaccinated.

I have seen this concern repeatedly stated by epidemiologists in this country accompanied with a face palm – it is just they are not the medical “experts” pumping Pfizer stock on the TV.

This problem is going to have to be solved by the world – not individual countries. If that advice is not heeded – the consequences may be severe.

Furthermore, as it was nicely pointed out by someone on CNBC this AM – the average blockbuster drug in this decade in this country is a 20 billion dollar generator over 5-10 years. This vaccine has already put SIXTY BILLION or so into Pfizer’s coffers – risk free. They are going to do everything they can to keep that cash coming – whether it improves the health of the world or not. Hell – three boosters a year – why not?

The corporate money grubbing – what is it going to take to reach its event horizon?

 


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