Vinay, some months ago I went for a haircut at my local barber. He told me he still sees the odd client come in for the first time in 18 months. “They typically open the door a crack and peer in cautiously looking around. They’ve been holed up in their condo for many months and want to know if its Safe to come in”. For some time my barber had been very accepting of this reaction but now his patience had run out and turned to anger. “Where the F*k have these people been while the rest of us are out here trying to keep our businesses afloat and keep basic services running? They have been in their hidey holes buying off Amazon and watching Netflix videos while the rest of us have been working to survive.”
I can cut uninformed, terrified people some slack, but I can’t do so for these highly paid administrators, so while I agree with the context of your piece Vinay, I think their failure is catastrophic and completely unacceptable. They failed to stand up when it was critically needed for them to do so, even though it was their job to do so. We had nurses, doctors, emergency workers (and even barbers) standing up in the face of this emergency while these folks did nothing! The damage is done. Now it’s pretty simple. They do not qualify to hold positions of leadership. They need to be vilified and fired.
I agree. With my kids a few years away from college I have been rethinking what is a quality educational institution. If there is no debate and they blindly follow politics instead of reason, how can I send my kids there for an education? How can I justify the exorbitantly high tuition?
The error is that the "left" (or rather the members of society who think they hold the moral high ground) have become obsessed with the concept of "critical thinking" in youth.
Problem is, critical thinking MUST be based on a strong quantity of facts and experience.
Critical thinking based strictly on feelings (for lack of facts and experience) has zero value.
in the k-12 system today, I see a constant stream of:
-kids giving their opinions
-kids "writing" about their feelings
-kids telling other people what to think, even if it's "good thought", like recycling or charity work.
Kids are in school to learn, not to teach and opine. Opinion and critical thinking happens in graduate studies, that's the time when we start to write opinions based on facts, experience, research.
Putting kids as public speakers must cease. Kid pageants must cease. Kids need to return to PLAY and LEARNING.
I actually have a lot of compassion for those still trapped at home by their own fear. The media, governments, and institutions destroyed those people's lives, preying on paranoia, hypochondria, and agoraphobia.
I'm the opposite. I'm allergic to unjustified fear. I think the first time I really understood that was during a night spent in the woods in a cabin with my best girl friend, we were both around age 15. We we'd had a good time, the night had fallen, and she'd light a candle too close to the curtains and started to scream. Her scream irritated me to such a high degree, that I slapped her across the face, she shut up, then I extinguished the candle and the teensy bit of curtain without a problem.
The screaming was the problem.
We must teach kids NOT to behave that way.
Unfortunately, by enabling false fear-mongering, we've created a whole new generation of hypochondriacs.
So no, let's NOT pity them, they need to be presented with facts, and their fears need to be fixed.
I also know a little girl who's hypochondriac overly fear-mongering mother ruined her life. Enabling fear has real life consequences.
For argument's sake, though, to what degree can we hold someone accountable for mental illness? Is a person to blame for their paranoia? Phobias aren't rational, and cures are in short supply. I'm not a doctor and, obviously, not a psychiatrist, but while I believe we have to take responsibility for our own situations, I also believe some situations are out of our own control.
Yes, that parent in your example is to blame, but is the child? Or when the child grows into adulthood and carries the hypochondria that was foisted upon her in childhood, is she then to blame for it? Curious to know your thoughts.
The important thing is that is not be enabled, and that when masses of these neurotic hypochondriac germophobes arrive on the job market, they be properly filtered out of healthcare positions and denied media time.
But we live in society where every single fear is enabled and used to create celebrity status.
What we've done in Canada, is we've allowed the healthcare industry to be fully invested by neurotic hypochondriac germophobes. I see the same from Australia and NZ and California, and a few others.
I know people like to perform empathy for such persons, but I have none. Though, in places like Canada, it's probably too late.
Feelings have entirely replaced facts in this country.
I kind of feel the same way. On the one hand, I think a lot of them simply aren't aware of the facts and are instead relying on the media. On the other hand, I think it's every person's responsibility to think critically.
I agree -- it's quite likely most were taking in the information that most easily accessed. The level of compliance with the dominant narrative really surprised me, but I guess it shouldn't have.
I have empathy, as frustrated as I am, because I was like that too. Something changed a few years ago. I became very skeptical about any information from institutions, media, schools, etc. Then the pandemic really showed me what hypocrisy and misinformation could be like.
But I actually think I didn't change that much - the institutions _were_ credible and reliable. They changed. But, like yours, my perspectives on many things changed during the pandemic period (and slightly before in some cases)
Vinay is completely and utterly correct here. But I have spoken with many of these administrators (heavens, I am not one) and a reasoned number of those that I know have hated everything they have done. I am sure there are a boatload that are just generally bad/useless/scared people, but some of those I know (in medical school) have hated every minute of what they have had to do. But each has been warned by their county/city/state governments that if they do not bend over and do absurd stuff, and not make noise, they will be externally shut down.
This is not an excuse, but as usual, the underlying villain is the government who has made dissent for those who need governmental permission to function almost impossible. I watched some administrators try and get crushed.
The stupid half of the faculty that believes all the BS (and it is almost all BS) makes it worse. But they would be shouted down/overruled if it weren't for the external threats in, at least, some cases of my personal acquaintance.
I just want to underscore that there is plenty of high dudgeon that should go around, but it is important to not lose sight of the underlying source of most of it.
" … who has made dissent for those who need governmental permission to function almost impossible." This is a particularly important point. There is too much dependence on government money and regulations.
I agree that we should also reflect on the forces those administrators were subjected to from above, but those administrators are almost certainly in some of the safest positions imaginable in terms of basic life needs (food, housing, etc.) because of wealth they have accumulated while rising through the ranks. What good is a fancy position at a fancy institution if the institution doesn't defend basic human rights (in the most fundamental case, open discussion of highly controversial policy)? If those administrators had stood for their principles and gotten fired, one after the other, the uniform obedience of others wouldn't have lasted long! This moment (era?) of politics masquerading as science wouldn't be possible without their cowardice/compliance.
I disagree that the initial blame belongs on governments. In Canada and the US, the PEOPLE DEMANDED that government create mask mandates and vx mandates. DEMANDED it. Governments resisted for a long time!!!!
Meanwhile, 30% of the women in my entourage, with NO science degree, had deemed themselves medical experts and began sewing face diapers! (they claim they were saving lives and the health care system by creating these life saving "masks").
These were the people DEMANDING government restrictions. In Canada, with a first-past-the-post system of four parties, that 30% was enough to re-elect the lying virtue-signalling incumbent, Trudeau. The smallest victory percentage in Canadian history, but electoral victory nonetheless. And with no opposition party. Canadians were doomed.
Fear-mongering is incompatible with civilisation. People who perform fear are no different than people who mandate fear.
...and the Trudeau Liberals didn't even win the plurality of votes.
The mob is a small minority (numerically) and the rest of us are taken for a ride with almost no resistance (especially in BC where I live). Resistance (nonviolent) is the only way.
I'll reply to your post on churches here since I can't reply there... and I'm out of work due to restrictions, so I'm not paying for any more subscriptions.
Even though I'm a raging atheist and secularist, I do agree churches should have stood their ground, but Canada hey! :)
Also on childhood resilience.
There are such weird narratives about that. In countries where abortion gets banned, kids of the next generation have higher crime rates. Kids are NOT resilient, they survive, but they don't do as well as if they have a healthy loving youth. And mothers forced to gestate do not make good mothers. Simple reality.
We also know a lot about children of wars, they do poorly in life.
We also know a lot of about the long term consequences of child abuse (like that girl I spoke of) and A.C.E. (Adverse Childhood Events). Hurting kids creates dysfunctional adults.
And not only dysfunctional adults, but very fat adults (first comorbidity of SCV2). In men it's not quite so bad, but female hormone regulation is different than men, and the correlation between ACE and obesity in girls/women is insane. It's a pandemic as bad as any opioid crisis. And in females, most of it comes from childhood distress. Plus obesity is not as easy to combat as health influencers claim. The simply fact is that fact cells are there forever. So an obese person can starve their fat cells, but those cells remain, lying in wait, for any mere extra calorie, and womp, fat cell plumps back into happiness.
There's really no point in wasting money to try and fix adults (be it mental or physical). "Happy" childhoods are what's needed. We should be preventing dysfunctional people from producing more dysfunctional humans. But Canada Hey! reproduction is a "right" and any fool has the right to tax-payer funded reproductive services Hey!
Because to continue down this path means entire populations of dysfunctional people who're all too happy to hand over all their agency to federal governments and a WHO world government.
To fight authoritarianism, we need STRONG kids, who'll grow up to be STRONG adults.
(And I'd be happy to comp you a subscription :) I'll also change the restrictions on that post)
I've come to see that the greatest source of privilege in this world, at this point, is a childhood free of ACEs. Race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. pale in comparison. A traumatic childhood lasts forever.
I spent my last two winters in interior BC. At least BC has some respect of civil rights enshrined in its covid restrictions. In my province, there are zero exceptions.
I don't know that it's a small minority. Around me, it's a full on majority.
But I've always been a libertarian socialist (à la young Chomsky), in a sea of woke fake leftists. I used to be able to bear it, but the authoritarianism that has come to exemplify this crowd is too horrifying. I grew up in Québec in the PET days 70s-80s, and we despised Trudeau then too! This government has been so very similar to PETs.
It's been "fun" to participate in the BC resistance, but there's an awful lot of "miracle cures" and "praying" and talk of caliphate formation, none of that is my thing.
So I have no home in the resistance, and no home in my leftist entourage.
From my vantage point, there are no Prasads in Canada, no one to speak critically to the science, without falling into religious and conspiracy narratives.
Excellent post. I think the articulated Netflix position should be referred to as the DeSantis-Disney effect though. Corporations have been taking what has up to now been the easiest way, which is caving to vocal and aggressive internal views of a small subset of employees. The tussle in Florida showed that may not be the easiest way anymore. However, universities are much further from their "customers", and have much less accountability. The closest to a customer base in universities is actually the faculty, who have an interest in allowing heterodox discussion -- even if it takes them a long time to realize this.
But then again, even Vinay has caved to mask mandates and vx mandates. He has voiced opposition, which is to be applauded, but after more than two years, the voices aren't achieving enough. We need more action.
All persons having voiced opposition, must move to actual opposition, civil disobedience. All professionals who might incur work difficulties can ban together and take legal actions against their employers.
I think Vinay actually believes in these “vaccines” which always amazes me since he is so strongly opinionated about well done RCTs. Has he studied these trials and found them adequate and/or does he just need to keep his job ? He complained on one video that he was mandated to get a booster that he did not want but he had to get it to keep his job. He appears unready to jeopardize his position in the academic /medical community .
Completely agree. The cowardice among the conventional forums for debate (universities, professional associations, media, religious institutions, etc.) has been very telling.
The universities should have said,
1. The whole wellbeing (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) of our students is our top priority.
2. We will provide reasonable special accommodations for any member of our community (students, staff, and faculty) at high risk due to Covid.
3. We will let evidence and data guide our decisions at every step.
4. The vast majority of our student population is at nearly zero risk of death from Covid.
5. We will respond appropriately to the safety and needs of our faculty and staff.
6. We will publicly express dissent with public health officials and elected representatives if they neglect the whole wellbeing of our students.
7. We will apply due skepticism to mandated actions, including vaccination
8. We will not simply follow instructions: we are an institution of higher learning.
(and, of course, Vinay has done a superior job:) )
Universities see it as their job to protect students. To a degree, that's true. But they got the risk balance completely wrong: they applied the risk balance that would be appropriate for a 90-year-old to a population with an average age around 25. Their neglect has caused way more harm than benefit.
Exactly. Canada, Australia, California, are world leading forces in the race to erase facts with feelings. It's become extremely distressing to live in Canada. I really need to emigrate elsewhere.
Vinay, some months ago I went for a haircut at my local barber. He told me he still sees the odd client come in for the first time in 18 months. “They typically open the door a crack and peer in cautiously looking around. They’ve been holed up in their condo for many months and want to know if its Safe to come in”. For some time my barber had been very accepting of this reaction but now his patience had run out and turned to anger. “Where the F*k have these people been while the rest of us are out here trying to keep our businesses afloat and keep basic services running? They have been in their hidey holes buying off Amazon and watching Netflix videos while the rest of us have been working to survive.”
I can cut uninformed, terrified people some slack, but I can’t do so for these highly paid administrators, so while I agree with the context of your piece Vinay, I think their failure is catastrophic and completely unacceptable. They failed to stand up when it was critically needed for them to do so, even though it was their job to do so. We had nurses, doctors, emergency workers (and even barbers) standing up in the face of this emergency while these folks did nothing! The damage is done. Now it’s pretty simple. They do not qualify to hold positions of leadership. They need to be vilified and fired.
I agree. With my kids a few years away from college I have been rethinking what is a quality educational institution. If there is no debate and they blindly follow politics instead of reason, how can I send my kids there for an education? How can I justify the exorbitantly high tuition?
The error is that the "left" (or rather the members of society who think they hold the moral high ground) have become obsessed with the concept of "critical thinking" in youth.
Problem is, critical thinking MUST be based on a strong quantity of facts and experience.
Critical thinking based strictly on feelings (for lack of facts and experience) has zero value.
in the k-12 system today, I see a constant stream of:
-kids giving their opinions
-kids "writing" about their feelings
-kids telling other people what to think, even if it's "good thought", like recycling or charity work.
Kids are in school to learn, not to teach and opine. Opinion and critical thinking happens in graduate studies, that's the time when we start to write opinions based on facts, experience, research.
Putting kids as public speakers must cease. Kid pageants must cease. Kids need to return to PLAY and LEARNING.
Me too.
I actually have a lot of compassion for those still trapped at home by their own fear. The media, governments, and institutions destroyed those people's lives, preying on paranoia, hypochondria, and agoraphobia.
I'm the opposite. I'm allergic to unjustified fear. I think the first time I really understood that was during a night spent in the woods in a cabin with my best girl friend, we were both around age 15. We we'd had a good time, the night had fallen, and she'd light a candle too close to the curtains and started to scream. Her scream irritated me to such a high degree, that I slapped her across the face, she shut up, then I extinguished the candle and the teensy bit of curtain without a problem.
The screaming was the problem.
We must teach kids NOT to behave that way.
Unfortunately, by enabling false fear-mongering, we've created a whole new generation of hypochondriacs.
So no, let's NOT pity them, they need to be presented with facts, and their fears need to be fixed.
I also know a little girl who's hypochondriac overly fear-mongering mother ruined her life. Enabling fear has real life consequences.
Yep, fair points.
For argument's sake, though, to what degree can we hold someone accountable for mental illness? Is a person to blame for their paranoia? Phobias aren't rational, and cures are in short supply. I'm not a doctor and, obviously, not a psychiatrist, but while I believe we have to take responsibility for our own situations, I also believe some situations are out of our own control.
Yes, that parent in your example is to blame, but is the child? Or when the child grows into adulthood and carries the hypochondria that was foisted upon her in childhood, is she then to blame for it? Curious to know your thoughts.
The important thing is that is not be enabled, and that when masses of these neurotic hypochondriac germophobes arrive on the job market, they be properly filtered out of healthcare positions and denied media time.
But we live in society where every single fear is enabled and used to create celebrity status.
What we've done in Canada, is we've allowed the healthcare industry to be fully invested by neurotic hypochondriac germophobes. I see the same from Australia and NZ and California, and a few others.
I know people like to perform empathy for such persons, but I have none. Though, in places like Canada, it's probably too late.
Feelings have entirely replaced facts in this country.
I kind of feel the same way. On the one hand, I think a lot of them simply aren't aware of the facts and are instead relying on the media. On the other hand, I think it's every person's responsibility to think critically.
I agree -- it's quite likely most were taking in the information that most easily accessed. The level of compliance with the dominant narrative really surprised me, but I guess it shouldn't have.
I have empathy, as frustrated as I am, because I was like that too. Something changed a few years ago. I became very skeptical about any information from institutions, media, schools, etc. Then the pandemic really showed me what hypocrisy and misinformation could be like.
Sounds like you and I have a lot in common.
But I actually think I didn't change that much - the institutions _were_ credible and reliable. They changed. But, like yours, my perspectives on many things changed during the pandemic period (and slightly before in some cases)
Vinay is completely and utterly correct here. But I have spoken with many of these administrators (heavens, I am not one) and a reasoned number of those that I know have hated everything they have done. I am sure there are a boatload that are just generally bad/useless/scared people, but some of those I know (in medical school) have hated every minute of what they have had to do. But each has been warned by their county/city/state governments that if they do not bend over and do absurd stuff, and not make noise, they will be externally shut down.
This is not an excuse, but as usual, the underlying villain is the government who has made dissent for those who need governmental permission to function almost impossible. I watched some administrators try and get crushed.
The stupid half of the faculty that believes all the BS (and it is almost all BS) makes it worse. But they would be shouted down/overruled if it weren't for the external threats in, at least, some cases of my personal acquaintance.
I just want to underscore that there is plenty of high dudgeon that should go around, but it is important to not lose sight of the underlying source of most of it.
" … who has made dissent for those who need governmental permission to function almost impossible." This is a particularly important point. There is too much dependence on government money and regulations.
I agree that we should also reflect on the forces those administrators were subjected to from above, but those administrators are almost certainly in some of the safest positions imaginable in terms of basic life needs (food, housing, etc.) because of wealth they have accumulated while rising through the ranks. What good is a fancy position at a fancy institution if the institution doesn't defend basic human rights (in the most fundamental case, open discussion of highly controversial policy)? If those administrators had stood for their principles and gotten fired, one after the other, the uniform obedience of others wouldn't have lasted long! This moment (era?) of politics masquerading as science wouldn't be possible without their cowardice/compliance.
talons, exactly!
I disagree that the initial blame belongs on governments. In Canada and the US, the PEOPLE DEMANDED that government create mask mandates and vx mandates. DEMANDED it. Governments resisted for a long time!!!!
Meanwhile, 30% of the women in my entourage, with NO science degree, had deemed themselves medical experts and began sewing face diapers! (they claim they were saving lives and the health care system by creating these life saving "masks").
These were the people DEMANDING government restrictions. In Canada, with a first-past-the-post system of four parties, that 30% was enough to re-elect the lying virtue-signalling incumbent, Trudeau. The smallest victory percentage in Canadian history, but electoral victory nonetheless. And with no opposition party. Canadians were doomed.
Fear-mongering is incompatible with civilisation. People who perform fear are no different than people who mandate fear.
...and the Trudeau Liberals didn't even win the plurality of votes.
The mob is a small minority (numerically) and the rest of us are taken for a ride with almost no resistance (especially in BC where I live). Resistance (nonviolent) is the only way.
I'll reply to your post on churches here since I can't reply there... and I'm out of work due to restrictions, so I'm not paying for any more subscriptions.
Even though I'm a raging atheist and secularist, I do agree churches should have stood their ground, but Canada hey! :)
Also on childhood resilience.
There are such weird narratives about that. In countries where abortion gets banned, kids of the next generation have higher crime rates. Kids are NOT resilient, they survive, but they don't do as well as if they have a healthy loving youth. And mothers forced to gestate do not make good mothers. Simple reality.
We also know a lot about children of wars, they do poorly in life.
We also know a lot of about the long term consequences of child abuse (like that girl I spoke of) and A.C.E. (Adverse Childhood Events). Hurting kids creates dysfunctional adults.
And not only dysfunctional adults, but very fat adults (first comorbidity of SCV2). In men it's not quite so bad, but female hormone regulation is different than men, and the correlation between ACE and obesity in girls/women is insane. It's a pandemic as bad as any opioid crisis. And in females, most of it comes from childhood distress. Plus obesity is not as easy to combat as health influencers claim. The simply fact is that fact cells are there forever. So an obese person can starve their fat cells, but those cells remain, lying in wait, for any mere extra calorie, and womp, fat cell plumps back into happiness.
There's really no point in wasting money to try and fix adults (be it mental or physical). "Happy" childhoods are what's needed. We should be preventing dysfunctional people from producing more dysfunctional humans. But Canada Hey! reproduction is a "right" and any fool has the right to tax-payer funded reproductive services Hey!
Because to continue down this path means entire populations of dysfunctional people who're all too happy to hand over all their agency to federal governments and a WHO world government.
To fight authoritarianism, we need STRONG kids, who'll grow up to be STRONG adults.
We are doing the opposite.
So we deserve our future horrors. :(
Agreed.
(And I'd be happy to comp you a subscription :) I'll also change the restrictions on that post)
I've come to see that the greatest source of privilege in this world, at this point, is a childhood free of ACEs. Race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. pale in comparison. A traumatic childhood lasts forever.
cool :)
I spent my last two winters in interior BC. At least BC has some respect of civil rights enshrined in its covid restrictions. In my province, there are zero exceptions.
I don't know that it's a small minority. Around me, it's a full on majority.
But I've always been a libertarian socialist (à la young Chomsky), in a sea of woke fake leftists. I used to be able to bear it, but the authoritarianism that has come to exemplify this crowd is too horrifying. I grew up in Québec in the PET days 70s-80s, and we despised Trudeau then too! This government has been so very similar to PETs.
It's been "fun" to participate in the BC resistance, but there's an awful lot of "miracle cures" and "praying" and talk of caliphate formation, none of that is my thing.
So I have no home in the resistance, and no home in my leftist entourage.
From my vantage point, there are no Prasads in Canada, no one to speak critically to the science, without falling into religious and conspiracy narratives.
Excellent post. I think the articulated Netflix position should be referred to as the DeSantis-Disney effect though. Corporations have been taking what has up to now been the easiest way, which is caving to vocal and aggressive internal views of a small subset of employees. The tussle in Florida showed that may not be the easiest way anymore. However, universities are much further from their "customers", and have much less accountability. The closest to a customer base in universities is actually the faculty, who have an interest in allowing heterodox discussion -- even if it takes them a long time to realize this.
Wonderfully said ! I wonder how Vinay is getting away with writing this type of content in his own medical / academic setting .
But then again, even Vinay has caved to mask mandates and vx mandates. He has voiced opposition, which is to be applauded, but after more than two years, the voices aren't achieving enough. We need more action.
All persons having voiced opposition, must move to actual opposition, civil disobedience. All professionals who might incur work difficulties can ban together and take legal actions against their employers.
I think Vinay actually believes in these “vaccines” which always amazes me since he is so strongly opinionated about well done RCTs. Has he studied these trials and found them adequate and/or does he just need to keep his job ? He complained on one video that he was mandated to get a booster that he did not want but he had to get it to keep his job. He appears unready to jeopardize his position in the academic /medical community .
I wish everyone in our country could/would think like this and DO this.
Completely agree. The cowardice among the conventional forums for debate (universities, professional associations, media, religious institutions, etc.) has been very telling.
The universities should have said,
1. The whole wellbeing (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) of our students is our top priority.
2. We will provide reasonable special accommodations for any member of our community (students, staff, and faculty) at high risk due to Covid.
3. We will let evidence and data guide our decisions at every step.
4. The vast majority of our student population is at nearly zero risk of death from Covid.
5. We will respond appropriately to the safety and needs of our faculty and staff.
6. We will publicly express dissent with public health officials and elected representatives if they neglect the whole wellbeing of our students.
7. We will apply due skepticism to mandated actions, including vaccination
8. We will not simply follow instructions: we are an institution of higher learning.
I try to articulate that here: https://gregpowell.substack.com/p/what-the-universities-should-have?r=6q1ps&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
(and, of course, Vinay has done a superior job:) )
Universities see it as their job to protect students. To a degree, that's true. But they got the risk balance completely wrong: they applied the risk balance that would be appropriate for a 90-year-old to a population with an average age around 25. Their neglect has caused way more harm than benefit.
Dr V
What you are seeing is the result of ceding the virtue of Truth and Knowledge to the virtue of Feelings and Inclusion.
All the rest is details
Exactly. Canada, Australia, California, are world leading forces in the race to erase facts with feelings. It's become extremely distressing to live in Canada. I really need to emigrate elsewhere.
Bravo! Bravo! No more euphemisms... "spinelessness" is exactly right!
So refreshing.
You read my mind this morning but with better vocabulary. Nail on head.