when nudges become shoves

here comes the next stage of manipulation (as if there had been any doubt) and it's time to protect doctor patient relationships from regulators.

jeez, this meme sure is evergreen.

because they are at it again and it really does take a special sort of crew to respond to “no one trusts us because we lie all the time” with “so let’s lie some more until they start trusting us again.”

yessirree bob it does.

this delightful program is the misanthropic mixing of psychology and behavioral economics into what can only be described as propaganda for hire.

and once more we see the government funding “private” actors to do the dirty-work of social manipulation. this really does seem to be under every single rock one looks under. team “scary poppins” is everywhere.

and this ugly “truth ministry,” brought to you by the same people who just got everything wrong for 3 years and took the world on an unprecedented joyride of lives and livelihoods to such ruinous effect, is not going away.

they want to double down.

and as gatopal™ and all around good guy jay bhattacharya so aptly lays out:

The CDC Foundation funds online propaganda efforts to mass report and de-license doctors who they deem to be conveying 'misinformation' which it defines as anything contrary to CDC or WHO dogma.

yup.

i’d like to start with a simple fact that we really need to take into account:

because this basic fact informs an AWFUL lot of analysis.

why was there such a striking effort to suppress widely available, safe drugs during covid to the point of outright bans, prohibitions, seizures, and absurdist vilification as veterinary medicine?

follow the money.

there is no payola in generics and EUA’s for “experimental” treatments are disallowed if there is an already approved therapy.

consider the incentives that creates for a pharma co with a new drug they want to rush to market:

they not only need to get theirs out, they need to demolish the idea that anything else already in use works.

and that does NOT make them your friend.

their interests are not aligned with yours.

in the choice between “protecting global public health by allowing cheap, common generics to be used” vs “raking in record profits by suppressing them so we can sell untested drugs of dodgy design and provenance,” well you saw how that one goes.

and they are setting up for the next one.

and it’s the same sorts of nasty public/private partnerships we saw used all over social media.

this infection is absolutely everywhere.

Shots Heard, which calls itself a “rapid-response digital cavalry dedicated to protecting the online safety of health care providers and practices.” Kuhk is also a member. Savannah joined Shots Heard on Aug. 6, 2020, and Kuhk joined on Feb. 13, 2021.

According to its website, Shots Heard is an initiative under The Public Good Projects (PGP), a “public health nonprofit specializing in large-scale media monitoring programs, social and behavior change interventions, and cross-sector initiatives.”

Another of PGP’s initiatives is the Public Health Communications Collaborative (PHCC), which sits within the CDC Foundation—a nonprofit arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established by Congress.

The goal of the communications collaborative, according to PGP, is to decrease misinformation and increase vaccine demand worldwide. And it’s using social media influencers to silence vaccine detractors.

these are the truth ministers cum “fact checkers” who have been arrayed into armies of winged monkeys ever ready to swarm and silence anything they deem objectionable.

they are badly calibrated zealots interminably screaming “follow the science” while steadfastly preventing any actual science from being done.

and the goal is to break choice, agency, and even accountability and make medicine into dictatorial top down mandate because that serves those to whom the purse strings are tied.

they seek to eliminate the idea of plurality, experimentation, critical thought, and demolish the the basic relationship of open and honest consultation between physicians and society and a doctor and their patients.

this is no longer to be tolerated:

and that is how medicine dies.

these people are wreckers.

they report any doctors that dissent and because this whole industry is rooted in credentialism and certification that is affirmatively required to be allowed to practice medicine, they can kill your livelihood and take away your ability to treat and care for patients by getting the increasingly politicized medical boards you yank your certification.

and they are doing this to great and chilling effect.

and these are not nice people.

it’s another group of ideologues driven mad by echo chamber incited mob-think. it’s not a science body, it’s a lynch posse working for a robber baron as a kind of coercive marketing arm.

they got drunk on power and now serve nothing but their own celebrity (and perhaps some paymasters with agendas).

consider the tale of tyler hardy, former member:

“They would have all of their followers reach out to the nursing boards to basically attack them in several different ways,” he said. “And so it was very much a situation where if you didn’t support Team Halo, you were part of the problem.

charming.

and now they want to keep going and find new ways to shot down dissent until we all “believe the science.”

but the side of censorship is NEVER the side of science and as all these cockroaches become starkly visible as the lights flick on it’s time to remember that and tear it out root and stem and build the systems and practices that prevent this sort of rulership by unelected and unwanted truth tyrant.

‘Vaccine Hesitancy’

In addition to its social media initiates, PGP runs The Public Good News, a nonprofit newsroom “dedicated to accurate health news.” It states of its mission, “The erosion of trust in science and shared facts is a threat to our democratic way of life.” On Jan. 20, it posted an article titled, “CDC data shows bivalent boosters are safe.”

To combat “vaccine hesitancy worldwide,” on April 29, 2021, UNICEF, the Yale Institute for Global Health, and PGP started the Vaccination Demand Observatory.

Of its efforts to increase vaccinations, PGP stated, “The coronavirus pandemic is the defining public health crisis of our time, and the U.S.—and the world—is currently in the middle of the largest immunization campaign in history. Yet misinformation threatens these efforts, fueling an ‘infodemic’ of myths, lies, and inaccurate information. In the campaigns below, we use our expertise in media monitoring to fight misinformation and decrease vaccine hesitancy.”

Some of PGP’s recent partners include Google, The Rockefeller Foundation, UNICEF, and Yale Institute for Global Health. 

talk about mistaking the disease for the cure.

there has been no greater font of misinformation all covid than medical agencies, governments, regulators, and the drug company industrial complex that drives and sustains them and offers them pay, undisclosed royalties, and jobs, sinecures, and speaking gigs.

they lied about safe. they lied about effective. they lied about alternatives. it’s been grotesque.

yes, the vaccines were supposed to stop covid spread. yes, the "experts" told us so.

this is not a gang you want advising you, much less dictating policy.

you can see the sort of “experiments” they like…

these agencies and the ecosystems of remora-like hangers on they have generated are simply too broken to be fixed. “public health” should serve the public and it’s clear that this cannot.

it’s time these groups were dismantled and replaced with open, public systems of data and of regulation. we need markets, not technocrats.

it’s time ideas like “board certification” were re-assessed and made into something voluntary (like ISO-9000) and not mandatory. trusting the state to manage this is going badly awry, and letting a market sort it out and people decide for themselves what works for them would not only work better, it would be more moral.

safety gets used as a pretext to take rights. it becomes so normal that people never stop to think:

“what fundamental right does the state have to tell me what pharma i can take?”

“what fundamental right does the state have to tell me who i can and cannot chose as a physician and about what we may speak?”

these are big questions that we would do well to remember.

and most of all, it’s time we stopped trusting these popinjay polemicists and censors as they seek to slant and limit debate.

that’s not science, it’s suppression.

and the answer to such people is always the same:

“in the immortal words of ron burgundy: