Red-Pilling is a Tricky Business
My two-year foray into Covid skepticism has taught me something valuable
Image by ClawzCTR
I’ve read a lot of Covid skeptics over the past two years, and I’ve written more than two dozen articles over the past two years criticizing the Covid response and, where possible, pointing out the vaccines are not doing what the government and Covid-hysterical media promised. My inbox clogs up daily with Substack posts on Covid. So when I say what I’m about to say, know it’s not because I don’t pursue the truth relentlessly, or I don’t want to question conventional wisdom or mainstream narratives. I’ve done this for the better part of a decade, and I will continue to do it the rest of my life, Lord willing.
I’d like to share with you an ugly truth about Covid skepticism, and really all genres of skepticism: Someone who appears to be right about one thing and has demonstrated intellectual honesty and rigor on that topic is not necessarily right about another thing —or anything else, for that matter. You can never turn off your own skepticism and accept other claims from people just because they’ve been right about Covid vaccines, or masks, or lockdowns, or anything else.
I’ve noticed recently that people who do or promote solid work, and even offer caveats and critiques that demonstrate a willingness to examine things that counter their own biases, have made sloppy claims they weren’t willing to verify with other data sets (let’s say, checking polls claiming a certain hospitalization rate for adverse events to the Covid jab, but then not checking any hospitalization data to see if that jibes with what their poll respondents said—even if the data ends up being too noisy or opaque, you should still check). Sometimes they do not apply the same standards they hold for data quality when it’s applied to another topic. They might voraciously criticize confounding biases in studies about Covid vaccines or masks, but then overlook biases in other studies that have conclusions that fit their beliefs (like, how healthcare seeking behaviors or small convenience samples might lead to poor quality data on adverse effects to childhood vaccines).
A counter-claim to what The Government Says, or Big Pharma Says or Big Academia Says or My Parents’ Church Said is not automatically true, but people often treat these guides that may have helped point them in the right direction in the past as infallible compasses.
Uneven application of standards for intellectual rigor and honesty is even more prevalent in politics. Lines are hastily drawn and scribbled over with Hashtag Truths. Russia Bad, so Ukraine Good. Trump Bad, so Biden Better. Or, in the conspiracy realm: Ukraine Corrupt, so Putin Hero.
Red-pilling is a tricky business. Sometimes people take a red pill, and then they’re so elated to be Seeing the Truth that they swallow a bunch of poisonous holly berries thinking they’re more red pills. They stop thinking critically now that they think they’ve found “the right side.” This is just another way to fill your head with garbage ideas, except instead of the garbage ideas coming from the government or college professors or pastors, they’re coming from the so-called “red-pillers.”
Beware the red-pillers, especially if they brand themselves as such. And please, please do not give those people money. Even people who don’t have such tawdry branding and may be experts in certain truth-seeking disciplines don’t know everything, and their skepticism in one area doesn’t mean they aren’t being lazy or gullible in another. By all means, hear what they have to say. Then question it. If they can’t give you good answers, they’re probably not applying the same standards to the topic as they seem to be with other topics. They should be open to criticism and questions and not be latching onto any bit of evidence or claims that confirm their biases, regardless of where those claims came from or the quality of the evidence.
The other ugly truth about ugly truths is that sometimes the evidence is so murky and fraught with strong biases that it takes serious dedicated study to get to the bottom of it. I have, on some topics, asked God to help me be content not knowing the answer right now. There are only so many hours in the day. I can’t spend even a handful of them doing deep dives into vaccinology or aliens or whatever. I have a life, and there are things more important in life than knowing the answers to some of these questions.
If you don’t agree with that, you may be addicted to red pills. There’s a cure for that: have children, or more of them. If you can’t do that, start a garden.
Red-Pilling is a Tricky Business
I'm reading a 2011 book, Pox, by Michael Willrich, about smallpox and vaccine battles in the U.S. circa 1900. Lots and lots of echoes of the covid vaccine battles, but as it relates to this post, I'll note that many anti-compulsory vaccination leagues sprang up as school and other mandates were imposed.
What is similar to the covid vaccines and "red-pilling" is that many took to calling the smallpox vaccines "poisons" more dangerous than smallpox itself.
Well said.