Admitting my Covid-19 Biases: A Reflective Re-Introduction to my Pandemic Blogs

Originally published on RootsToSky.com in Autumn 2021

I’d like to admit my obvious biases and motivated reasoning (and own my previous frustration) as my post/pandemic writing and posting moves forward.

First, it’s my professional job to protect public health — as mandated by the province of Ontario’s CTCMPAO regulations. Second, specifically as a TCM practitioner, it’s also my job to protect individual health. I strive to balance both angles. Then, on a personal level, I also happen to have a sister with Down Syndrome and have an obvious interest in protecting her — a vulnerable member of society, and quite possibly a literal angel incarnate. She is immunocompromised. Further, I am also a member of a large highly active cross-culture “underground” community. For all these reasons I am always alert to how fast this virus can spread — on guard the entire pandemic for my friends, patients, colleagues, and their families.

It's what I do.

These facts may have given me an admittedly angled view of the pandemic. Yet, as has been obvious from the beginnings of my ranty pandemic posting: My job has also been in debunking misinformation to protect mental health from unnecessary additional stress and overwhelm in a pandemic (so where are we — four jobs now?) So, it would be rather hypocritical of me to not check my own blind spots.

Yet in many ways above even my medical interests, I am a student of history: of historical methods of health, of economic systems, of the search for the roots of hierarchy and inequality that result in normalized but no less pathological internalized oppression mechanics. Of which most of us are blind to (in the sense of the cliché “does the fish know of the water in which it swims?)”. Blind to what caused past civilizations to rise and fall and how impudence and assumed permanence led to their downfall.

While at first these perspectives may seem to be disparate topics, my purpose in writing is to connect the dots: from indigenous wisdom to anti/vaccine capitalism, I hope to reveal as quite neatly and obviously interconnected. We must understand our place in history — both where we come from, and where we are our “story” … as there are many chapters to follow. Thus, these small trends point to bigger ones.

Symptoms pointing to disease.

In the pandemic/misinformation/political leaning articles that I have written and those that will follow, I often use jargony words and technically-accurate-but-still-wordy-run-on-sentences and make assumptions in baseline education. I know I should avoid this in my day to day blogging. But simply because in a science-based era using science-based words as we all normalize discussions of viruses, mRNA, and vaccines; now essentially a century of fact & evidence-based experience, capable of wiping out smallpox and polio, it is critical that we equally uphold/strive for baseline levels of education and critical thinking that gave birth to these miraculous achievements.

(Assuming of course, that individuals participate in community preservation over self-interest… because community preservation is in the self-interest of the individual, and as I’ll prove, humans are a communal species).

Similar to what I wrote in my Covid Resources webpage, in my in-person debates I may have at times been wrong about, for example, the specific mechanisms of vaccinology — this is quite simply because I’m not a vaccine research scientist. As essentially none of my readers are. Do you trust your mechanic? Do you trust me with my specialized training to treat you with TCM? Then equally, let’s stop assuming we know more than my countless medical professional and research scientist colleagues who are essentially in unanimous agreement that vaccines work (not counting the debunked quacks that make up any given population).

What is more likely, more rational: believing a fringe (but at times necessary) paranoid/conspiracy/outlier, what I call “guardrail” minority group; or trusting those who literally day-in-day-out exhaust themselves on the front lines of advanced research or taking care of our loved ones in ICU, discussing and correcting themselves?

So let’s slow the f’k down and recognize how far we’ve come as a species and how to continue this progress. Or… experience another intellectually stunted, climate apocalyptic, class-divided/wealth concentrated return to aristocratic dark ages. If we are all talking about sciencey things like viruses (like seriously — camman — none of us have even seen one, we *only* know they exist because of science) — then let’s level up our game.

Thus, my role has always been debunking misinformation to protect public sanity, not convincing people to get vaccinated. And by simply launching my quest to provide accurate information — be it TCM or infectious disease — I re-established my socialized pro-vaccine stance, as a result of the sheer nonstop amount of misinformation articles and memes I have been sent (nearly always in an attacking, rude manner rather than a problem-solving friendly mindset.) … (Thanks to anyone who has approached me with professional respect!).

The more I debunked, the more I concluded: get vaccinated.

This (mRNA vaccine, etc) is us improving on what we’ve learned since 1918. This is the first pandemic in a social media era. And we will do even better in the next pandemic, but no response will ever be perfect. Nor will any vaccine.

It seems there is always a conservative (I mean that in the true sense of the word) minority resistant to change present in any group. But should they dictate the course of pandemic measures? Of course not. Raise your voice, but don’t expect the majority of the public to bend to your will. (For some: how does it feel to be a minority — quite possibly for the first time in your life? Perhaps some reflection on privilege is required.)

Thus, it has never been my intent to make this about partisan left/right us/them politics: it is about keeping things in context. It is an appeal to reason, to actual research, to evidence-based decisions… the lack of which currently happens to neatly overlap with the growing, selfish, violent xenophobic “Right” that is factually far far more of an immediate threat to our health and our civil future than the reactive “Left”.

It would be less of an issue if the so-called “Right” wasn’t routinely factually wrong, putting lives (and the climate, as these views are linked as you’ll see in my book) at stake for anti-science hyper-individualist partisan antiquated self-interest.

Yes, that’s right — reality, science, and basic human decency — factually lean “Left”. It’s time some deal with that. And we should be angry. Angry for being co-opted, used as a tool to maintain unequal health & wealth distribution, and for a machine that perpetuates misinformation that is both delaying the end to this pandemic — and killing both people and planet. We all should be learning everything we can right now to stop the rise of actual Nazis, para-fascists, anti-science, vaccine distribution inequality, cronyism, disinformation, and racism. And how these facets are all connected. And I’ll prove how.

My target audience is people on the fence, or people who “think” they might lean Right — when in actuality when asked to reverse engineer their beliefs, actually do lean Left — but are currently being hypnotized by the likes of misinformation peddlers.

Perhaps it’s time reorient our political spectrum with basic human decency at the centre, rather than calling it “Left”?

Don’t like any of these statements? Then please challenge them. As a scientist — I want to be proven wrong. And in the literal countless pandemic debates I’ve debunked, I have yet to be. Not when it comes to conspiracy and vaccine science. So no, I am not “too sure” — every article and video I have debunked and then documented (over and over and over and over again), has by default… lead me to these conclusions. As a consequence: not by intent.

So no, I am not “too sure” — every article and video I have debunked has by default… lead me to these conclusions. As a consequence: not by intent.

Seriously — directly speaking to my community — does anyone else have an *evidence based* debunking database? So maybe — just maybe, it might be worthwhile listening to the peer-reviewed majority of medical professionals who are highly trained, clinically experienced, regulated by governing bodies designed to protect public health (despite the outsider appearance, the governmental regulating bodies of healthcare professionals serve the *public* not the practitioners — especially here in Canada with socialized healthcare — yanno — for the people). Ask us questions, rather than attack.

So… Dialogue.

I have the luxury (and neuroses) to maintain a database — overworked front line nurses witnessing choking deaths — often do not.

This now leads me to admit the key factor I’ve been avoiding, compartmentalizing, intellectualizing, throughout the pandemic with my wordy posts and no-fucks-given memes:

Feeling.

Behind it all — all of this — I’ve been feeling SO damn much — TOO damn much, because I care SO damn much that I don’t want to see my loved ones in ICU.

Because I don’t want to say, “I told you so”. Because I’ve treated both Covid — and Long Covid (of which TCM is especially adept at treating [/selfpromo]) and I don’t want my mind-over-heart based, naïve, hyper-individual focussed friend circles having as-yet-still-unexplained-by-science symptoms that last months, if not causing permanent damage to your “Jing”, your “True Qi”, your reserve tank of your potential. Ending your life prematurely now, or as we age together. And then infecting others. Because my little sub-culture is especially social.

And who will be there to treat you, to help you, to save you, to rejuvenate you? The nurses, doctors, and scientists, who yes unanimously agree — the vaccines work (yes even in Omicron, at reducing transmission, ICU admissions & deaths) and it is only the fringe, easily debunked quack doctors and pundits (no population is immune to stupidity), who’s voices are amplified by social media algorithms (*ahem capitalism), misinforming you otherwise.

So no, these highly educated but still human sectors of our species are not perfect. But our ingenuity as modern homo-scientus** is to self-correct when evidence is provided. Please re-read that: The ability to self-correct when evidence is provided. To admit one was wrong in light of new evidence.

With that said, note that most of my pandemic-era writing was unplanned (in the sense that I had much more formal health & “inspired living” related writing in the pipelines, before being rudely interrupted by misinformation/political chaos), and is/was thus more ranty, direct, at times arrogant and hastily posted.

But it also awoke something in me, to begin sharing my words in their imperfect status, rather than waiting for some mythical “perfectly-worded someday”.

So please follow along — as I continue to dispatch “The Politics of Health Misinformation”…

**(I made that term up, if you use it, you owe me money) … (I just looked it up — I’m not counting the Italian term because I’m English and we all know that nothing is real until the English say so)