Responding to Comments on the 'Rona - Fear and Rationality

Fear, Despair, and the Public Reaction to COVID-19

Shelter-in-place order, April 22nd, New Hampshire, social distancing, self-isolation. I'm having a good day, I'm in a great mood. I'm in a great mood, and one thing I noticed in the last video, you could definitely hear those little chickens chirping away, which is probably only gonna get louder as they grow.

They're getting really big. They're getting really big. In fact, I think one of them is a rooster, because he's bigger than all the rest, and, uh, got that that comb thing, seems to be coming in a little more prominently than the others.

I don't know what's gonna happen, but, uh... I don't know if my neighbors are gonna be appreciative of that.

Can't start a fire. Can't start a fire.

You know, you don't even need a spark anymore to start a fire. All you need to do, these days, if you want to start a fire... Uh, sorry, Bruce. Sorry, Bruce, but to start a fire these days, all you need to do is not be full of despair.

That's pretty much it. People get really, really angry if you're not as fearful as they are. In fact, they get really especially angry if you say they shouldn't be as fearful. As they are. That's what really, kind of, grinds people's gears these days.

I've I've, you know, I've been called racist more times than I can count. I've been called white supremacist more times than I can count. Um, but I have to say, I'd rather be called a racist than a white supremacist all day, than to be someone who, uh, doesn't care if people live or die.

Like, that's pretty vicious. That's pretty vicious. But that's kind of the thing that we're seeing here, you know? If you think that we should go, uh, back to work, that the government should not shut have shut down the economy, the government should not have ruined people's lives economically, if you say that publicly and and people hear you, they hear what what a lot of people hear in their in their in their programmed brains is you hate people and you want people to die.

It's really weird. It's a really weird phenomenon. But anyway, um, what I'm gonna do in this video is I'm gonna respond to some pushback, uh, I got on a Facebook post. I'm not gonna name anybody because this is not about, uh, naming names here.

It's it's not about that at all. Um, but I did wanna I I did wanna, you know, kind of ex put an example out of how I think about pushback to to this kind of stuff. Um, and if you remember a few weeks ago, I did a video on theonomy, and I said that there's there's obstinance and then there's rational thinking.

So when you get pushback on theonomy, you'll get the obstinate people. And the obstinate people, you know, that's that's very clear. You either don't respond to them at all, don't give them the time of day, or you zing them.

And that's how you that's how you deal with obstinance. Um, but then there's real pushback. Not everyone who is, uh, fighting back about me thinking the coronavirus is not as serious as, uh, we were told.

Um, not everyone who pushes back on that is obstinate. There's no question about it. There's some rational people that are thinking about this logically and rationally. And, um, we need to give them respect.

It's just that simple. Um, but at the end of the day, I I still am not convinced. I'm just not convinced. So let's go through it. Now, what I posted on Facebook was a sentence from a New York Times article regarding a study that a a medical doctor from Stanford University put out regarding the, uh, the numbers of people who have the virus.

And in this study, he said, it certainly appears to him like lots more people have this virus than are being reported. And and and when I say lots, I mean, like, magnitudes of order here. 55 times, maybe even 100 times more people have the virus already than we know about, which means that there's a lot of people walking around having this virus.

They don't even know they have it. Um, and so if here's what the quote says. He says this. He says, If the numbers prove accurate, the virus may be much less deadly than originally expected, with a fatality rate more closely resembling that of a bad flu strain than a pandemic of profound lethality.

And so what I said was, as that quote, you know, is from the New York Times. The New York Times is one of the one of the the primary fear, you know, producers in the country. I said, my translation of this is, We don't have a clue what's going on with this virus, but we ruined your life anyway by shutting down the economy because orange man bad.

Actually, I think I said super bad. And that's the reality. So so this quote is is is from a doctor, medical doctor. And and by the way, the fact that it's from a medical doctor from Stanford University, and you still get the pushback, Oh, you hate people.

It tells you all you need to know. It's not the fact that you're not an expert that they hate. It's the fact that you're not fearful that they hate. They want you to join them in despair and panic and fear, and they hate the fact that anyone dare say the opposite.

Because the reality is experts have been saying this kind of thing. For a long time. Anyway, so so so that was that was the post. And here's the pushback. I'm going to go through a variety of different pushback.

Rational Pushback About Long-Term Effects and Mortality Rates

The first one is not obstinate in any way. This is a rational thinker. This guy is in the medical profession, and he's a good guy. I think he's a very careful thinker, and I like him very much. Here's what he said.

He said, with all the serum tests coming back in other states, we're finding out a lot more people have it in the community, which is scary. But that also means the mortality rate will go down. But we also have to look at the long-term effects this virus has on the body with those who are severely affected by it.

This virus and the disease it causes is still a lot different than the flu as far as its infectious nature and the pathology of what it does to the body. Some of the patients we have at the hospitals, it's crazy how fast they go downhill.

Even young healthy patients as well. This one is this is one nasty virus due to the amount of different organs it attacks. That's his that's his pushback. And I have nothing to say about that. Very reasonable.

It's not the flu. I understand it's a different disease. It might actually wreak a little more havoc on the body than the flu. That's understandable. The mortality rate is very similar to the flu, maybe even a little lower than the flu.

And but it still could cause long-term damage. I've seen some reports about long-term lung damage and stuff like that. I really don't want to have any long-term lung damage. My lungs already have I already have asthma.

They already don't work the way they're supposed to. And so I really don't want to get this. But I have no I have no I have nothing to say to this. The reality is though, commenter, is that that's not what we were told that we had to shut down the economy for because this could cause long-term damage or it's different than the flu in its pathology.

That's not what we were told. We were told it's going to kill tons and tons of people, 2 million people, if we don't do anything. And that has been proven to be a lie. The lie detector says that's a lie.

And honestly, and again to the commenter, I knew that was a lie before. I already knew that because of the information that we were getting that was very inconsistent. We asymptomatic carriers, but we know the exact mortality rate.

So the point is though, like this is a very good comment, not obstinate at all, but the point is we should not have shut down our economy for this. We should not have shut down our economy for this. We don't shut down our economy because there are diseases that kill people, that wreak havoc on the body.

Because if we did do that, then we'd have to ban alcohol. Because alcohol, it can be abused and it wreaks havoc on the body. If we did do that, we'd have to ban sugar because sugar can be abused and it wreaks havoc on the body.

Diabetes wreaks havoc on the body. Having a high blood sugar, we'd probably have to ban carbs too, now that I think about it because eating too many carbs wreaks havoc on the body. It's unbelievable the amount of damage that having a high-carb diet does to the body.

Unbelievable. But nobody talks about that because that's insane, right? That's absolutely insane to think we should ban carbohydrates. Obviously, that's crazy. But where's the logical line here, right?

Where's the logical line here? Because we understand that, you know, just because some people abuse alcohol doesn't mean that everyone abuses alcohol. Just because some people abuse carbohydrates and sugar doesn't mean everyone abuses carbohydrates and sugar.

We trust people to take responsibility for their own health, right? We do that. We trust people and some people don't and some people do. And the reality is, during a pandemic of this nature, where its mortality rate is pretty low and people could get sick and they could have long-term diseases and actually some people could die, you know, like the flu, because this is also true of the flu, we trust people during flu season to act in a responsible way.

That's all I'm saying. Like, we shouldn't have shut down the economy. And the reality is, New York Times has not had a clue what's going on with this virus, which that, quote, proves. And so even if it does attack the body differently, it, you know, attacks more organs and stuff like that, all I'm saying is the New York Times that's been pumping fear and saying we need to shut down the economy, shut down the economy, shut down the economy, it's not the flu, it's not the flu, it's not the flu.

They've been lying to us all along. That's the whole point. They have no clue what they're doing, but they know they need to ruin the economy because they hate Trump. There you go. All right. Here's another piece of pushback.

Obstinance, False Piety, and the Demand for Peer Review

This is obstinance. This is a person who is obstinate. Ready? Quote, people are landing so much easier now with parachutes. I think we can safely do without them. That's a stupid thing to say. Nobody is advocating for taking no precautions.

Nobody is advocating for throwing caution to the wind. Nobody is doing any of those things. We don't do that during flu season. We don't do that when colds are going around. We don't do that when rotavirus is going around.

Nobody is saying that. So stop being an idiot. That's how you deal with obstinance. All right, let's go back here. Here's something that I think is interesting. I don't know if this is obstinance or just super false piety.

I don't know what this is. This is another response. Wow, responding to me. No grace given for a situation that no one had a handle on. How would things have turned out if it was as bad as they said it was?

What people would be saying, 2 million plus people did die and these drastic measures were not taken. I have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in this mess just trying to keep my business and employees all paid.

So I'm not pleased with what has happened, but this was a moving target that no one knew how bad this was. It's easy to Monday morning quarterback this thing, but I'm not sure this is very fair at all.

Look, this no grace given thing that you said in the beginning, that's not just a band-aid that heals everything. See, the reality is it's not about grace being given. This is about the newspapers lied to you and said the mortality rate was 20, 50 times higher than the flu.

It's actually a lie. And we knew that was a lie back then. All of us knew that was a lie because they couldn't possibly have known the mortality rate when they were telling you this was 50 times more deadly than the flu.

So you had to shut down the economy. Giving grace doesn't mean you ignore reality. You know what I mean? That's a very pious sounding thing, but it's not grace. It's not gracious to ignore reality. The New York Times told you for months that the death rate of this is 50 times as high as the flu.

That turned out to be a lie. And given the information we had back then, this is not about Monday morning quarterbacking this. We already knew they had no idea what the death rate was before because, again, they simultaneously told you that there was asymptomatic areas of unknown numbers walking around.

So we knew the death rate was lower. We just didn't know how much lower. And if this information turns out to be right, then it's so much lower that it's insane to think about how much lower it is. So it's not about Monday morning quarterbacking.

It's not about grace. It's not gracious to ignore the facts. The New York Times and all of the powers that be lied to us in order to shut down the economy, in order to try to stop Trump. It's just that simple.

They shut down the economy because they wanted to ruin lives and make it really hard for Trump to get reelected because they had no clue how serious this disease was at the time. No clue. They didn't have a clue.

All right. So that's not really obstinance, but it's definitely it's just a very it's a pious-sounding thing, but it's not pious at all. All right. Let's go to the next one. Let's see here. There's another guy that's saying that it's still very serious because the hospitalization rate is high and the death rate amongst people that are hospitalized is high.

And that's listen, I have nothing to say about that. That's fine. It's not obstinance. That's fine. A lot of people get hospitalized and things like that. But, again, that's not how this was sold to us.

This was sold to us as this is the bubonic plague-level death. This is sold to us as 50, 100 times higher death rate than the flu, so we have to shut the economy down. And that was a lie, and they ruined lives even knowing they had no clue what they were talking about.

We don't shut down the economy for something that has a death rate higher than the flu or just as high as the flu. We don't do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. I mean, that's the point. It's not about this is the same disease as the flu.

Nobody is saying that this is the same disease as the flu. What some people did say was this has a comparable death rate to the flu. I didn't say that, but I did say that the death rate, we have no idea.

But the point being is you don't shut down the economy because there's a disease running around with the same death rate as the flu. You don't do it. That's the point. So anyone who responds to this stuff saying, well, there are still differences than the flu.

Yeah, we got it. It's not the flu. But we don't shut down the economy for something that has a similar or even potentially even lower death rate than the flu. You don't do it. All right. Here's someone.

Peer Review, the "Wizard Spell," and Inflated Death Counts

This is what I love. This is a properly programmed person. He quotes the sentence I quoted from the New York Times. He says, You love those wizards, don't you? This person loves the wizards. He loves the wizards, and then he wants the wizards to get together and do their magical spells all together.

So the peer review, and then it's definitely true, right? It's definitely true if you peer review it. That's the point. So it's not true, and then it becomes true when it gets peer reviewed. Proper programming clear.

What I especially love about the peer review comment is the inconsistency, right? So we can shut down the economy. We don't need any peer-reviewed studies. We can put out fake death rates. We can put out fake fear.

We can tell you how it wreaks havoc on the body and how it attacks the organs and you get bloodshot eyes and all that stuff. We don't need any peer review for that. But we need peer review to say, well, maybe it's not as deadly as we said, and maybe we shouldn't have shut down the economy.

Maybe we should open it up. We need peer review for that, but we don't need it to shut down the economy. Have I got that right? Is that how it works? Is that how the programming has explained it in your mind?

This is someone who has fallen for the wizard spell. It's just that simple. He's fallen for the wizard spell. You can't blame him. Every bit of his schooling since he was a little kid has been programming him to fall for the wizard spell.

All right. Here is someone who wants you to be so scared. Even locked down, there have been as many deaths from COVID in one month as H1N1 had in a year. And my response to you, commenter, is you don't know that.

You actually have no freaking clue if that's true. And that's the point. You don't know what's true. You could see the death rate. You could see the scary graphs, the maps with all the red dots and stuff like that, and you have no idea if any of that information is true because what you said here is as many deaths from COVID, and we don't know that number.

We don't. And if you look at honest journalism, they'll admit that. Deaths with COVID, deaths from COVID, deaths and they tested and it turned out they were on death's door anyway, but they also had COVID as well, and then they died.

That's not a death from COVID. All right? This thing is purportedly taking out very sick people, very old and very sick people. And so we don't know how many of those people died from COVID. We don't.

And we also don't know how many of those people would have died anyway if they caught the sniffles. We don't know that. And so you're reporting this information as if it's like definitely fact. I'm sorry, it's just not.

We have no idea, and we have lots of reason to believe that they're skewing the numbers high. Lots of reason to believe that. Remember that governor from Connecticut who said that there was their first infant-child related death from COVID, and it turns out that they were like choked to death or something, the accidental choking?

Yeah. There you go. This is the one. This is obstinance right here. I'm sorry, commenter, and I'm sorry if you get mad at me. You're being obstinate here. You respond to my thing where I say the New York Times doesn't have a clue what's going on with this virus, but they knew they had to shut down the economy.

They definitely knew that, but they didn't have a clue what this virus is. Here's his response. Sorry, bro, this ain't the flu. It's not a joke. People are dying down here. And then he posted a picture that says in Brooklyn, 3 ,300 people died this week or something like that.

Yeah. Maybe total. I can't tell. People are dying! It's like as if I said anything otherwise, as if any of us have said, no, nobody's ever died. The whole thing is fake. Nobody's died of it. The virus is fake.

Everything's fake. As if anybody said that. He thinks this is a response. This is obstinance. Nobody said people aren't dying. People die. One of the things I've noticed is people are acting as if they didn't know people died before.

I mean, I knew people died before. And you put this for Brooklyn, you know, like I don't care about people from Brooklyn. I used to live in Brooklyn. My whole family's in New York. You know what I mean?

Like that's not going to work on me. That kind of emotional manipulation is going to work. I know people are dying. It still has nothing to do with the fact that New York Times had no idea about this virus, no idea of the death rate, no idea of any of that stuff.

But they did know we need to shut down the economy for months on end. That's insane. Don't be obstinate. Don't be obstinate. Those of us who are opposing the shutdown are not saying people ain't dying.

We're not saying that. So stop being obstinate. By now, you must know that that's not what we're saying. And yet you still will circle the death number and say, See, you don't care about death. You are evil.

You want people to die. You just don't care about old people and stuff like that. That is so stupid. Stop thinking like a child. It's childish. That's not what we're saying at all. You're thinking like a child.

You know, I've made this point many times, but it needs to be made again here with this obstinate commenter. We're not trading money for lives. It's lives for lives. The economy is not just this thing out here that has nothing to do with lives.

If you think that way, you think like a child. Grow up. It's time to grow up. What I'm saying is that the economy shutting down will cost many, many, many more lives than the coronavirus could ever dream of.

So why don't you care about lives? Anyway. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless. You know, the other thing is, when did preserving life at all costs, at any cost, become this ultimate goal for Christianity?

I just don't understand this. I mean, I'm sure the human energy fields in Matrix, where everyone lived in a vat and they were just used for energy like a battery, I'm sure they had a pretty low death rate.

I'm sure they had a pretty low flu rate. I'm sure they didn't have any coronavirus in the future in the Matrix. But is that like our goal, to just not die? That's the goal for everything that we do, just to not die.

I mean, if that really is the goal, then we got to shut down lots of stuff permanently, like basically anything. You know what we should all do, actually? You ever see the movie Wall-E, where they just live in a chair and they just entertain themselves until they pass away from old age?

I guess that's the ideal Christian goal, right? We just live on a pleasure cruise all day in a chair. We never get out of our chair. We get our food delivered to us, and we just watch TV all day, and there's no risk taken because we don't want to die of anything except for old age.

That's the only thing that I guess is acceptable to die from as a Christian. Anything else, it's not worth the risk. It's not worth the cost. It's not worth the risk, right? I guess that's the goal. We should be Wall-E.

Those guys were pudgy and fat. That was a good movie, actually.