{"id":29152,"date":"2023-08-28T17:00:11","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T05:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/?p=29152"},"modified":"2023-08-29T14:09:52","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T02:09:52","slug":"transcending-the-pandemic-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.frot.co.nz\/design\/wapf\/transcending-the-pandemic-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"Transcending the Pandemic Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How do we transcend the pandemic narrative and move into a new paradigm?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\nTo address that ques\u00adtion, first I want to discuss the fallacies, manipula\u00adtion and lies that this narrative has exposed us to, with a special focus on science and health. Then, I\u2019d like to talk about how we figure out what is actually true and the steps we can take to become our own health authority.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our society faces many false narratives, but I\u2019m focusing on the realm of public health. False theories\u2014germ theory and virus theory\u2014have been manipulated to cause fear. In fact, fear is one of the primary drivers of this latest round of coercion and tyranny. You can see how the idea that an invis\u00adible particle can invade your body at any time and not only make you sick, but actually threaten your very existence, is a very scary proposition. Of course, this is not really what\u2019s going on, but the narrative leaves many of us dependent on the so-called white-coated priests <\/i>of the allopathic system to come rescue us and bring us back to life, with no ability to control our own health.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CIRCULAR REASONING<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Understanding logical fallacies dates back to Aristotle. The main logical fallacy behind the virus lie is circular reasoning. We\u2019ve all encountered circular reasoning in cocktail party discussions and family debates, but in this in\u00adstance, it\u2019s being used for manipulation of the world population.<\/p>\n

In his 2006 essay titled \u201cWhat Is Circular Reasoning?\u201d Dr. Robert Coleman wrote, \u201cThe fallacy of circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion of an argument is essentially the same as one of the premises in the argument.\u201d1 In other words, your starting assumptions are the same as your conclusions, and there\u2019s no rigor in the process of bringing about novel conclusions.<\/p>\n

A related form of circular reasoning is the logical fallacy \u201cbegging the question,\u201d the Latin term for which is petitio principii<\/i>. For this, we can look back to James Welton, who in 1905 wrote in A Manual of Logic, Volume Two<\/i>, \u201cto beg the question is to attempt to support a claim with a premise that itself restates or presupposes the claim.\u201d2 So, you start off with a claim and then restate it at the end: there\u2019s your circular argument.<\/p>\n

Pseudoscience occurs when you give the appearance that you\u2019re using science but you\u2019re not. Circular reasoning, which applies to many aspects of science and medicine, describes the entire field of virology. Let\u2019s look at virus isolation. The starting premise is that a sick individual has a virus in their body. This is a presupposition without any proof or evidence to support it, but it is the starting point. The second premise is that viruses cause so-called cytopathic effects (CPEs) in a cell culture. Once again, there is no clear evidence that this is the case, but that is the starting point.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you take a sample from a patient and run it through the cell culture process, a process that includes putting additives in the culture. You do not perform any control ex\u00adperiments. When you then observe CPEs and interpret those results based on your original premise\u2014which is that the CPEs are caused by a virus\u2014that brings you back to your starting point. You haven\u2019t made any progress here; all you\u2019ve done is restate your initial claim.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at metagenomics\u2014the use of computer sequencing to study genetic material. With metagenomic sequencing, also sometimes referred to as \u201cin silico <\/i>genome sequencing,\u201d you are starting with the same premise, namely, that viruses are present in the patient. A second premise (and this is very arbitrary) is that vi\u00adruses have a genome of a certain length. When it comes to alleged \u201ccoronaviruses,\u201d they say it is thirty thousand base pairs. So, they are going to find something of that length, even though it is completely made up.<\/p>\n

Once again, they take a sample from a pa\u00adtient where they assume there is a virus present. They further assume that it\u2019s an RNA virus. They don\u2019t look for DNA viruses at all; it\u2019s as if that is not even a possibility from their point of view. Then they take the RNA out, but there is no strand of RNA that represents the com\u00adplete genome of an organism in their sample; all they have are little fragments of RNA, and the provenance or the origin of those fragments is unknown. But that doesn\u2019t stop them. They amplify those fragments using PCR,3 which also compounds the problem; because of the way they\u2019re using PCR with overamplification, it creates new sequences that didn\u2019t exist in the original sample. Next, they sequence all those little, tiny strands and fragments of RNA that are one hundred fifty bases long or fewer. We\u2019re talking about pieces of one hundred fifty in length, when they say the whole genome is thirty thousand\u2014so you can see it\u2019s a very tiny percentage.<\/p>\n

When they did the sequence in the SARS-CoV-2 experiment, they found that they had over fifty-six million unique fragments. They do not know where any single one of those fifty-six million comes from. They use a computer and put those sequences into the computer as data. The computer puts these things together like a puzzle and makes over a million solutions. Although there is no way to know whether any of those solutions represents anything in reality\u2014and I would say that they absolutely do not\u2014they arbitrarily pick one of the million sequences that happens to match their premise that the genome is thirty thousand base pairs long. They take the longest one that the com\u00adputer spits out and say, \u201cThis is the genome.\u201d Once again, they\u2019ve simply restated their start\u00ading premise that there is a virus in the sample and that there is a genome of thirty thousand base pairs. It doesn\u2019t matter that it was created out of thin air in a computer.<\/p>\n

CULTIVATING DISCERNMENT<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Discernment is a very important skill that you must develop, particularly when it comes to assessing science. You have to understand how a given experiment is done and what it can\u2014and can\u2019t\u2014determine in order to see whether the conclusions drawn represent circular reason\u00ading or true knowledge. One key aspect of the scientific method is that you have to have an independent variable\u2014the thing you think is causing the phenomenon of interest (the depen\u00addent variable). If you hypothesize that rain is caused by kids playing on a swing set, you have to do a control experiment where you exclude that variable to make sure there\u2019s not something else in the experiment that is causing the rain.<\/p>\n

Not every type of knowledge is amenable to the scientific method because it\u2019s not always about a cause-and-effect relationship. There are many things that are purely descriptive, such as the phenomenon of pleomorphism, where you can see microbial cells changing form. You can observe that carefully and describe it, and that is valuable knowledge. However, you have to be very careful that you\u2019re not influencing the behavior of the organisms you are observing; you want to be a passive observer, which can be challenging.<\/p>\n

Any analytical methods that researchers use have to be validated, meaning the method does what researchers say it does. You have to do your due diligence. Someone was telling me about an external device that could tell the pH inside the cells and interstitium (the space between cells and tissues)\u2014a type of electronic scan. I asked, \u201cHas it been validated?\u201d meaning \u201cHas it been compared to a gold standard?\u201d (In this case, the gold standard for measurement of pH involves putting a micropipette or microelectrode right into a cell.) If they didn\u2019t compare the technique against the gold standard to see whether the results match, you can just take that analytical method and throw it right out the window and ignore it, because it\u2019s not valid. Note that none of the tests for infectious disease have been validated.<\/p>\n

When you read a study, here are some questions you should ask: What was the experimental design? Did they have an independent variable? Did they have a control group? Did they have a large enough sample to determine the outcome? What was the outcome? Was the outcome a lab marker or an outcome like mortality? The details of the experiment are the only thing you can look at to determine whether the conclusions are valid. Be suspicious of studies based on animal models\u2014and especially when the animals are genetically modified because that is not what\u2019s in nature.<\/p>\n

You also have to be very careful with statistical analysis. For ex\u00adample, statistical analysis is how antidepressants came to be. We\u2019ve all seen Bill Gates\u2019 favorite book, How to Lie with Statistics<\/i>.4 Realize that statistics give you probabilities, not certainties. If scientists stick with simple tests such as tests of proportion, t-tests and regressions, statistics can be very useful. However, you need to keep in mind that correlation does not prove causation.<\/p>\n

Exercise discernment when you encounter logical fallacies. We need to learn to recognize these types of errors in logic. Once we can see through the false arguments, we don\u2019t have to get caught up in the details. In addition to circular reasoning, some of the other logical fallacies that come into play in false science include:<\/p>\n