Suspend your disbelief, or else.

The pandemic response has always been about control.

Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying, if only to themselves. Of course, that statement, from a skeptic like me, would likely invoke staunch denials and accusations. Even though those who dared to speak out were met with control-oriented statements like “since when does your freedom outweigh my safety”. The more self-aware true believers might contextualize that sentence with “control…in the name of public health”. In any case, control has been a constant theme since the early months of 2020.

That first year was about control of the body: masks, physical distancing, curfews, plexiglass barriers, travel bans and movement restrictions. “Lockdown”, a dystopian term once relegated only to prisons, became ubiquitous and has been referred to in an almost tender manner by lockdown adherents.

The second year was about control of the mind. Oh yes, many of the themes from the first year lingered — these physical controls were ultimately caricatured in the form of vaccine passports. However, there was something more sinister than the passports: the venomous hatred spewing from the mouths of politicians, public health officials, and true believers alike. Skeptics have been shamed and blamed for the continuation of the pandemic. A strange dichotomy as the people funding and working in the lab from which the virus escaped have at times been lauded as heroes, trusted as experts, or allowed to quietly disappear as they so chose.

Instead, it was called a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and we were supposed to be in for “a winter of severe illness and death”. Overseas, some French metro-sexual politician claimed his strategy was to “shit on” the unvaccinated until the pandemic ended, which was about par for the course amongst politicians. Most of the western media translated that particular statement as “annoy” or “piss off”; however, the traditional meaning of the word is closer to the actions taken against the unvaccinated in France.

Locally, a doctor claimed on the radio that many of his colleagues felt the unvaccinated did not deserve treatment and, true to their word, some refused treatment to those without the password (Hint: The password is “lawyer”). While this was not an official position taken by health authorities in my province, I am personally aware of two instances where this sort of discrimination happened. Notably, one of the instances included a fully vaccinated cancer patient coming to the hospital for chemotherapy who just happened to forget her vaccine passport at home. These may have been independent, despicable actions taken by rogue health care workers; however, the fact that they felt empowered to openly discriminate is not surprising given the messaging.

In other forums, language devolved into recitations of Mein Kampf as the unvaccinated were called “parasites on our society”, and it was not hard to find comments from people hoping the unvaccinated die. The marginalization was combined with the threat of a loss of livelihood on many fronts.

Did the “public health” people never consider the effect this could have?

There is a story from a 1957 article in the Journal of Prospective Techniques about a patient with advanced malignancy of the lymph nodes. His situation was thus:

“Huge tumor masses, the size of oranges, were in the neck, axillas, groins, chest and abdomen. The spleen and liver were enormous. The thoracic duct was obstructed, and between 1 and 2 liters of milky flued had to be drawn from his chest every other day. He was taking oxygen by mask frequently, and our impression was that he was in a terminal state, untreatable, other than to give sedatives to ease him on his way”

Yet, he heard about a novel cancer treatment being evaluated, Krebiozen. Due to his advanced state, the patient was not eligible to receive the treatment. However, he begged his doctor for inclusion in the evaluation who, reluctantly, acquiesced.

After just the first weekend, “the tumor masses had melted like snow balls on a hot stove, and in only these few days, they were half their original size”, and within 10 days he was discharged from the hospital. However, within months, reports began to surface that clinics were reporting no results from the drug. The patient read these reports; subsequently, his cancer returned aggressively.

His doctor decided to perform an experiment with the knowledge that nothing he could do would help the patient. He lied to him. The doctor claimed that the drug worked in higher concentrations and a new version of the drug with double the strength would be arriving soon. The next day, the doctor “administered the first injection of the doubly potent, fresh preparation consisting of fresh water and nothing more” — the treatment quickly worked.

As with the first administration of the treatment, the patient began to recover for the next few months until he read an American Medical Association announcement that said “nationwide tests show Krebiozen to be a worthless drug in the treatment of cancer”. Within a few days, the patient died.

This story is a classic example of the way psychology can be reflected in medical outcomes.

Now, imagine you’re a mad scientist with a financial interest in a certain drug, and you are given the opportunity to run a society wide experiment with no ethical constraints.

Running a massive, unprecedented propaganda campaign, then simply giving the drug to the people that believe it works would be a good start. Honestly, the drug would probably look like it works based on that alone. But you know what would be better? If you can humiliate, degrade, stress, and disenfranchise everyone who is not taking the drug. That would lead to worse health outcomes in the people you are using as a comparison group.

I’m not making an argument, of course, that the vaccine was merely a placebo from the beginning. Initially, I believe that it had limited (but overstated) medium term effects based on the data I have seen prior to omicron. This was coupled with initial negative effectiveness, a relatively quick waning of protection, and questionable long term impacts to the immune system. However, considering the environmental conditions the true believers created, I am beginning to wonder to what degree that initial effectiveness was overstated.

Given that some of the most credible and established effects in the medical literature stem from placebos (for their benefits) and stressors (for their costs), it would be difficult to imagine a scenario in which the public health blitz did not have a major effect on outcomes. The whole spectacle was downright criminal from a scientific standpoint and in terms of public health even if we otherwise ignore the dystopian aspects.