A few days ago, Dilbert creator, and more lately contrarian commentator, Scott Adams admitted “the anti-vaxxers won”.
If you’re not that familiar with Adams, he sabotaged his highly successful career as a cartoonist and public speaker by predicting that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election.
He didn’t even say he was a Trump fan (in fact, his political views are largely Left-wing) but the prediction itself, and the idea that Americans might not be absolute monsters for voting Trump, was enough to lose him most of his living.
He then became popular in a completely different market, with his relatively red-pilled takes on the culture war. When it came to Covid, however, he strongly and repeatedly backed the vaccine, thus alienating much of his new, vaccine sceptic following.
However, in another twist, Adams has now admitted, unequivocally, though not without a touch of snark, that the ”anti-vaxxers”, as he calls them, have won.
The thrust of his argument (against his prior self) is that those who refused the vaccine now have natural immunity, and don’t have to worry about an mRNA time bomb five years down the line.
And that’s perfectly true.
What’s not true is his statement that the choice to refuse the vaccine was simply a “coin flip”.
Adams seems to be speaking as if we are still in a normal world, making difficult decisions where the evidence on both sides is finely balanced, rather than the new paradigm where everything is weaponised by a ruling elite, to the point that even something as seemingly objective as science becomes the sinister, entirely political concept of ‘the Science’.
In other words, we’re not in Kansas anymore, but Adams is acting like we are.
Which is odd, because in many other ways Adams is totally ‘awake’. Indeed, he spends the beginning of his stream on the vaccine talking about how he was totally “brainwashed” about the evils of President Nixon. Which is not one you hear very often. In fact, Adams might be one of the first ‘Nixon Truthers’, except for Tucker Carlson, from whom he gained his new knowledge, and Roger Stone, who famously has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
Anyway, the point is that Adams is highly perceptive on some issues, but totally fell for the mainstream narrative on the vaccine.
He claims vaccine sceptics bested him by simply applying a basic ‘heuristic’. Namely: don’t trust the government or big companies.
That isn’t wholly accurate, since vaccine sceptic views range from the most advanced arguments of professional virologists, to the humble commoner who just doesn’t trust this dodgy new medicine. (You have probably seen some of the bell curve memes regarding vaccines and IQ. If not, I include one below for your consideration).
Notwithstanding Adams’ oversimplification of why people refused the vaccine, he admits that this suspicion of authority is a totally sound approach. After all, when has not trusting the government ever really been wrong?
What is strange is that Adams’ research led him to the conclusion that he should take the jab. He is a highly intelligent person who has proved himself very capable of thinking independently. Normally those are the people questioning just about everything surrounding the Covid hysteria.
Perhaps Adams was following his own ‘heuristic’ of contrarianism, leading him to rail against his new-found red-pilled audience, just as it initially prompted him to highlight the positives of Trump.
More likely he really did just believe he was making a rational, well-researched choice. But, unlike Sam Harris and so many others, he is willing to admit he got it wrong.
For me it’s all much more simple: I never once considered taking the vaccine.
Perhaps I am one of Adams’s anti-vaxxer heuristic gang. Perhaps, despite once scoring a solid 137 on a Mensa test, I am just the Hammerheaded low IQ chap from the meme who fears the 5G magnet.
Either way, I gave it about as much thought as the “killer bees” scandal. I admit I was a bit worried about Y2K, but you don’t fool me twice.
Which is relevant, actually, because what Adams appeared to miss out of his heuristic was that it’s not just Big Government and Big Pharma we doubt, but the mainstream media. And all three working in concert (the very red-pilled would say in ‘lockstep’) should raise alarm bells in even the most placid normie.
Somehow, though, that clearly did not occur for most people, as the normies all lined up for their arm poison, while I stood aloof and totally bemused.
The whole thing was entirely alien to me. It was just something normies were chatting about among themselves, like whether to choose go-karting or miniature golf for their work event – I’m not going to either, so I don’t need to listen.
Although I had thoughts like “Will I be banned from society?” and “Which of my family members would put me in a Covid camp?” I never considered actually taking a medicine that you only seemed to need if you watched too much TV. I don’t buy the gizmos on late night shopping channels either.
Scott Adams, on the other hand, despite his past good work, doesn’t seem to have fully digested quite how off his picture of the world really is. Maybe he just needs to take a few more red pills.
And, pace Adams, it was not a coin flip. I simply never picked up the coin.
Nick Dixon is Deputy Editor of the Daily Sceptic. You can follow him on Twitter and Substack.
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Much as I appreciate DS, please stop with these articles on masks and lockdowns and whether they “work” or not.
They are plain wrong on their face; no further analysis required. It was known from the start that Covid was a mild for most virus in the realms of a bad strain of flu, that was fatal almost exclusively for the frail.
We simply cannot shut the world down and stop living normally for such things.
This is just a rabbit hole.
Quite, how we can ensure this never happens again is far more pressing..
And hold the perpetrators to account!
LOL you saved me a comment. I’m bored shitless with all of this harping on about lockdowns, masks etc. It’s all been done to death, the jury was in a long time back on these matters and things have moved on significantly. Time to worry about the things coming down the pipeline in our future ( if not present ), not keep dredging up the past.
Hear, hear.
100% agree tof. I was just about to post:
Give it a bloody rest!
You said it all.
I disagree.
We need to keep trying to convince people that the world over-reacted, and that the reaction was not effective or necessary. We need to present concise, coherent arguments so that people can convince themselves that if only they had known *whatever* they would have behaved differently. Telling people they’ve been stupid is not going to be effective – they need to believe they’ve been fooled by the people they followed. It is important that people have a chance to save face as they convert from supporting the restrictions to protesting them. People need to hear the arguments or they will never convert.
Even the complicit media need to be allowed to claim ‘we were only following orders’ or some other excuse. If they aren’t allowed that fig-leaf they won’t convert until hell freezes over.
Presenting convincing arguments is key. We have to start with simple things like did lockdown work ‘here’? And go on to did they work anywhere? When did masks become a thing? Unless and until other media outlets start carrying these stories DS and the like must do so – and no matter how disheartening we have to keep offering these alternative views without alienating our audience.
Discussing whether lockdowns and masks work is a distraction and a rabbit hole. Our very own MTF is a perfect demonstration of that. Covid was never an emergency and saving lives at all costs is futile and immoral and unnatural. Those are all the arguments you need. As soon as you start arguing about what measures “worked” you more or less concede that “something” needed to be done.
The fact that Covid was never an emergency is not accepted by far too many people; we need to prove that to them somehow. Then we can move on to showing that authorities were whipping up fear to make it appear to be an emergency.
I need to have the necessary rebuttals in mind when people state that lockdown ‘worked’ in Wuhan. To counter that one I have previously relied on stating that we can’t trust China’s figures. It’s good to have additional ammunition from articles like this.
Only later will many people be ready for complex ideas like ‘don’t just do something, stand there’. Or that gathering data before deciding on anything is doing something.
Yes of course hardly anyone believes Covid was not an emergency and hardly anyone believes that saving lives at all costs is wrong and hardly anyone believes that doing nothing is often the best option. I remain convinced that these must be the starting points for any discussion of Covid and the wider subject of collectivism versus personal freedom. I think it’s really a philosophical debate about how you see life. Picking over the minutiae of whether lockdowns worked is a rabbit hole you will never come out of. If you really want a ready rebuttal then ask them to prove lockdowns worked using worldwide real world data and they will not be able to find any pattern that shows they did – another important concept which is that the burden of proof is on the lunatics imposing untried and dangerous measures.
the burden of proof
isshould be on the lunatics imposing untried and dangerous measures.But it isn’t yet for far too many.
Indeed
Sadly I don’t think Covid was some
one off aberration but an extreme manifestation of a drift that has been going on for decades
I fully agree.
So I want to get a majority on board to try to stop that drift.
Amen. We need to refute the specious utilitarian calculus entirely, root and branch, not merely say it was calculated incorrectly, if we want to prevent this from ever happening again. Lockdowns are wrong not only because they are all pain and no gain, but *a fortiori* because they are inherently a blatant violation of basic human rights and civil liberties.
And on that note, the specious notion that “rights are merely a social construct” needs to be jettisoned as well.
Talking of worrisome things coming down the pipeline, this looks slightly concerning, and worth more energy expenditure than flaming ( yawn ) lockdowns for the squillionth time. mRNA in milk!
Yes, it’s ruddy China at it again;
”From a scientific perspective, these experimental steps taken by the Chinese were a stunning success. However, given the damage mRNA vaccines have generated in terms of injuries, disabilities, and deaths, these data raise considerable ethical issues. The COVID States project has shown that 25% of Americans were successful in remaining unvaccinated. This group would have strong objections to mRNA in the food supply, particularly if it was done surreptitiously or with minimal labelling/warnings. Children could be targeted with easily administered oral vaccine dosing or potentially get mRNA through milk at school lunches and other unsupervised meals.
For those who have taken one of the COVID-19 vaccines, having milk vaccines as an EUA offering would allow even more loading of the body with synthetic mRNA which has been proven resistant to ribonucleases and may reside permanently in the human body.
These observations lead me to conclude that mRNA technology has just entered a whole new, much darker phase of development. Expect more research on and resistance to mRNA in our food supply. The Chinese have just taken the first of what will probably be many more dangerous steps for the world.”
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/chinese-load-cows-milk-with-mrna
Very disturbing news Mogs which certainly points to a dark and limited future for many.
Wow that is horrifying!
The answer is obviously no. The real issue is that that they were attempted in the first place, and the gross over reaction, and the abuse of the authority of politicians and servants etc. This includes the opportunism that has been evident in various branches of the medical trade.
The long term effect of that could well be that lots of potentially useful organisations have lost their reputation with intelligent citizens; we’ll see. What it has done is to encourage worthwhile organisations like this site!
LDs worked at; killing old people, destroying businesses, annihilating our immune systems, destroying our freedom, rendering families, increasing suicides and divorces, psychologically damaging children, handing unfettered power over to Health Nazis and effacing our constitution,.
NO. NO. NO!
Even if it were a pandemic, which it was not, they still wouldn’t work!
Indeed, they are all pain and no gain, and the therapeutic window is closed from the start.
I doubt that any DS regulars will read this article. Sorry guys… There are so many other topics to research.
Whether lockdowns ‘worked’ medically is now beside the point.
No cost benefit analysis prior to their introduction, no coherent after action review of the health, social and economic cost of their introduction now that the data is available.
Incompetent, inhuman, irresponsible, arguably criminal, definitely bovine, moronic government at home and globally, with few, notable, exceptions.
‘What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.‘ Melinda Gates Dec 2020
Pathetic.
Amen
To repeat an old German joke I brought up in relation to this topic somewhat early: What’s that? It’s hanging on the wall and ticks and when falls down, the garden door opens? Answer: Happenstance. See also post hoc non est propter hoc and cum hoc non est propter hoc.
MTF would probably frame this as something like But if the only thing we have is handwaiving and we absolutely must do something, what other options are available?
However, this approach is wrong. Something with numerous obvious downsides whose supposed positive effects cannot be reliably assessed is something which must not be done. Not even when thousands of dimwitted hysterics demand it. These are prone to demanding anything some motormouth sold them as miracle cure for their largely imaginary problems.
Very well-said. Taiwan is another example. They had strict border controls but NO lockdowns and barely any other restrictions, and had no meaningful Covid wave until April 2022. Lockdowns are clearly an unnecessary add-on that is all pain and no gain.
You mention the five million who allegedly flew round the world (particularly to ‘Belt and Road’ terminals like Lombardy.
But you forget that, at that very time, internal travel in China was strictly banned.
And let’s not forget the Milan Mayor: – ” Go hug a Chinaman”.
I can honestly see the logic in ‘stop the spread’. But, isolation only works if its 100% controllable, which it never was. This is something airborne, and unless you can stop air circulating, it is facile and ridiculous. The fact that so many educated people appear to have been taken in by this is mind numbing. Like face screens with their large gaps at the sides. I just wanted to ask the wearers how big they thought the virus was, like the size of an apple..?
I can honestly see the logic in ‘stop the spread’.
I still think this sounds like Something must urgently be done about Marmite! If the people who kept repeating this had been serious about it, they would at least have gone to the lengths they did go to during the most-recent Ebola epidemic.
I appreciate the DS to a good part for giving us the two sides of a story. It is obviously biased towards the sceptical side, which I appreciate even more, but thereby it has laudably avoided becoming entirely an echo chamber of and for fanatics.
But I also agree with some of the criticism here, in that the really big points in such discussions are.and.must remain:
Lockdowns might or might not have worked in the meaning of delaying the spread a bit, but they have not and cannot ever ‘work’, if their multiple harms are incorporated, which proper scientists like Henderson and politicians recognized and therefore adhered to up until 2020, and, above all, there is simply zero legitimacy for state or other actors to infringe upon peoples natural rights and freedom.
Or in short: no one has the right to deem anyone or anyone’s business to be ‘essential’ or ‘not essential’.
And the very same goes for masks, test, vaccine mandates&co. and anything else related to ones sacrosanct bodily autonomy.
This is non-negotiable and non-discussable.
Straying from that line got us where we are at with regard to wokeness, free speech, the trans/women farce, man-made climate change/CO2 hoax etc..
“Do Lockdowns Work?”
No!
Good article, until I got to this sentence: “The question we’re looking at here, though, is not whether strict border controls can keep out the disease – I think the evidence suggests they can, for a time.”
Come on. The UK is supposed to have had this big covid wave in early 2020 – but we know now from FOI requests that only around 1000 people died OF covid in 2020 so the whole idea that there was a big covid wave is nonsense.
As Will rightly mentions covid was spreading all around the world before Wuhan locked down. I remember in 2020 watching reported death rates all around the world going up and up but China’s staying at a few hundred. Who can believe China’s own figures?
As for New Zealand, did they REALLY keep the virus out as they claimed to have? Loads of people were sick in NZ in March 2020 with some kind of bug as we were here at around the time we all went into lockdown. And then after that did nobody in New Zealand get a respiratory infection in all that time their borders were closed? I very much doubt it. And there were reports that they banned the immunity tests so that people wouldn’t realise they had already had it and were immune.Planes were still arriving, ships were still coming and going all that time. Even Antartica couldn’t keep covid out. It is just far too much of a stretch to believe that New Zealand actually kept covid out as it claimed to have.
And then there is the question if “covid” even exists at all or are the covid tests just picking up cold/flu bugs?