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Episode 1 - “Anti-Science is the New Religion”
122 Plays10 months ago
In today’s episode, “Anti-Science is the New Religion”, we’re visited by Dr. Jackie Nemni, a graduate of McGill and McMaster University. She practiced respirology and sleep medicine for thirty years, including many years in the ICU, a COVID assessment centre, and vaccination clinic.
Dr. Nemni will speak about her experiences with conspiracy theories and how fear-mongering impacts the delivery of vaccines and health services in Ontario.
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Transcript
Introduction to Canadian Humanism Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to the Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the Humanist Lens.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome to The Conversation.
Episode Introduction: Anti-Science is the New Religion
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm Jared W. Kleg. In today's episode, Anti-Science is the New Religion, we're visited by Dr. Jackie Nemny, a graduate of McGill and McMaster University. She practiced Respirology and Sleep Medicine for 30 years, including many years in the ICU, a COVID Assessment Center and Vaccination Clinic.
Experiences with Conspiracy Theories in Health
00:00:49
Speaker
Dr. Nemny will speak about her experiences with conspiracy theories and how fear-mongering impacts the delivery of vaccines and health services in Ontario. Let's begin. I'm here today with Susan Ward, a member of our Humanities Program Committee, who will be moderating your questions. And I'd like to introduce you all to Dr. Jackie Nemny. Jackie, thanks for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, this is a
00:01:18
Speaker
This is a topic I've been looking forward to discussing, and I'm very happy to see how many of you look like you're also interested in talking about it. So I do welcome questions, as Betty Ann said. I would ask that you perhaps type them in the chat, as opposed to unmuting in the middle of the discussion, and if possible,
00:01:45
Speaker
I will answer them as we go, or there will be time for discussion afterwards. So first, let's just get started about who am I and why am I talking to you? I'll give you a disclaimer right off the bat. I am not a specialist in anti-science. I think there are some who are, believe it or not, that has become something that's become a necessary
00:02:15
Speaker
a stream of interest.
Dr. Nemny’s Academic Journey
00:02:17
Speaker
So I started my schooling at McGill. I have an undergrad degree in mechanical engineering from McGill and then went over to the French side. I did my medical degree at the University of Montreal and I did my internal medicine there as well. And then from there we moved to Ontario and I did two years of resporology training at McMaster.
00:02:42
Speaker
And from there, I actually also went on to become board certified in sleep medicine. And the reason that I did an American board is that we don't actually have a sleep specialty that is recognized in Canada. So the only way to get any kind of credentials was through the States. So I practice respiratory sleep medicine and critical care for more years than I wish to count.
00:03:10
Speaker
And I have retired from my Respirology practice, which I did as I show you here in Hamilton, Cambridge and Guelph. So I am not working that, but I am actually starting training and starting to practice in made assessments and provisions. So that's going to be my next career. And some of you also know that I am a humanist-deficient. And I think some of you share that with me and some of you may in fact have trained me.
00:03:40
Speaker
So let's start.
Comparing Anti-Science Beliefs with Religion
00:03:42
Speaker
Why do I say that anti-science is the new religion? Well, not just because I'm not fond of either, but because I do think they share a certain similarity in the sense that if you look at what is used in psychiatry to define delusions, so what's a delusion? A delusion is a strongly held false belief
00:04:06
Speaker
But they have to make a caveat and say that it's not typical for the patient's cultural or religious background. In other words, most religious beliefs are delusional by definition. However, if a lot of people around you share these delusions, then you no longer get admitted to a psychiatric facility. So we allow that as being, okay, that's an accepted cultural belief.
00:04:32
Speaker
But there is nothing you can do to sway those beliefs, right? It doesn't matter how many times you try to say, I don't know, this wafer is not actually a body and this is not actually blood or whatever, it's not going to work. Evidence is not useful and evidence is ignored. And in fact, an argument in
00:04:55
Speaker
What is felt to be faith is that faith is in fact believing not only when there is no evidence, but in the face of evidence to the contrary. So the more faithful you are, the more you're willing to disregard all proof.
00:05:12
Speaker
to the contrary of what you believe. And you're felt to be virtuous that way. So dinosaur bones, they're just there to test you. They're there to show that you're truly faithful and that you can ignore this hard and fast evidence of how old the earth is, for example.
00:05:30
Speaker
So in this kind of context, if you talk to God, you're religious, but if God talks to you, you're delusional. So you have to look at the context to say, well, when is it a belief that we are willing to accept culturally?
The Evolving Nature of Science
00:05:44
Speaker
So let's look at the difference between science and anti-science. I need to just interrupt for a second and say that
00:05:53
Speaker
I am not speaking on behalf of any organization. I'm not speaking for the OMA or for the Canadian Medical Association. I'm not speaking for any group. I'm speaking for myself, for my own thoughts and beliefs and what I have experienced. So again, yeah, don't think that I'm endorsed by any kind of one of these groups. So science,
00:06:21
Speaker
is inherently not absolute. So we don't have absolute truth. If you have absolute truth, maybe we're unlikely to find out that gravity isn't real. But for the most part, science evolves. It changes constantly. Things that we believed with certainty may become completely obsolete and proven false.
00:06:49
Speaker
And that's just the way it is. That's the reality and we accept that. And in fact, in medicine, we have to live with that knowledge that a lot of what we learn, a lot of what we believe, a lot of what we are practicing is going to be proven wrong. That's the way it is. So they even tell you in medical school, they say, you know, probably about 50% of what you are learning here is going to be proven wrong. And
00:07:17
Speaker
The obvious question is with which 50% because I'm not going to bother learning that one. But that's the way it is. It changes and there is no promise for the future. We cannot guarantee you that what we are telling you is true today is going to be true tomorrow or in 10 years. And that has to be not just accepted, but it's a part of the process. It's intrinsic and necessary. It evolves.
00:07:42
Speaker
The other thing about science is that the people who are doing the research, who are practicing, they're really the basic scientists, as we call them. They are, they are generally, they live in relative obscurity. You don't know who they are. You don't know their names. They don't go out and do press conferences.
00:08:03
Speaker
They are in the background and eventually they come up with things that get launched. I don't know who is developing the vaccines. I don't know the names of the old people. I don't know the names of the people who are working on next generation antibiotics, but I hope they're there and I hope they're working hard. And chances are they don't want fame. They don't want to be put in front of a camera and have to defend their positions. That's not comfortable. That's not who they are. That's not what they're trained to do.
00:08:31
Speaker
by contrast, when you have dogma, and that's where the anti sites come in comes in, it is it's invariable, you can count on it, it's always going to be the same. What I tell you today, I'm going to tell you tomorrow, I am not going to change. I am not influenced by
00:08:49
Speaker
Facts, facts, in fact, are a nuisance. And the people are, they're loud, they're outspoken, they've got megaphones, they're up on top of platforms. They are, you know, think of the people storming Congress. You know, they're not shy. They're not these scientists that live in obscurity. And they have a certain attribute of being confident and being able to predict the future, right? They know, they can tell you, they have the truth.
00:09:19
Speaker
So that's attractive like you can see why people are drawn to that because you got these people tell you what I'm telling I'm not sure if this is true or not and maybe it's not true and that's uncomfortable. People don't like to hear that we're not we can't tell you things with absolute confidence.
Public Skepticism Towards Science
00:09:38
Speaker
So I mean one of the one of the
00:09:41
Speaker
One of the examples of this that's very obvious is you recall that for many years we were telling pregnant women to avoid peanuts in the hopes of trying to avoid peanut allergies in children and telling them not to give peanuts to young children. And as it turned out, that was the wrong advice. In fact, that increased peanut allergies. This is the difference with science. You measure your results and you see, whoops, that was wrong.
00:10:09
Speaker
The advice is now the opposite. Don't avoid it. So people look at that, go, look, they don't know the hell they're talking about. First, they tell you to do one thing, and then they're telling you to do the opposite. These guys don't know what they're doing. That's science. It changes. You can be 100% wrong, but that's okay. That's how it goes. So that's where you can see. In particular, if you're somebody who has very little scientific training, you're much more drawn to the person who's giving you absolute truth.
00:10:39
Speaker
attractive. So I am not sure how many of you will actually recognize what this little thing is. But it is the bane of the existence of physicians around the world. This stupid little article with the non pronounceable unpronounceable title is what was published in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield
00:11:05
Speaker
which was the first step where he claimed that there was a link between vaccines and autism. This was a study of 12 people, 12. Somehow this stupid little thing where he made up the data, he was stood to make millions of dollars because he was offering tests
00:11:34
Speaker
It was kids who were over at a sleepover. They were not they weren't there was no actual consent. The whole thing was made up and it was garbage. This has changed the world this stupid garbage study. There's nothing we can do about it somehow this this piece of information has gone completely wild and
00:11:57
Speaker
It seems to be completely out of our ability to turn it around. So it's been retracted. You can see that at the top. You can't even read the article anymore. The Lancet withdrew it. He lost his medical license. He can't practice in the UK. He moved to the US. He doesn't have a license in the US, but he's very prominent in the anti-vaccine movement. He stands up on stages.
00:12:24
Speaker
with Jenny McCarthy and company. It boggles the mind, but that's where it started. So the place where he worked in the US was called the Thoughtful Research Center. Sounds really good, except that you realize they don't think too much.
00:12:49
Speaker
This leads to a very important concept, which I'm sure is not new to any of you, which is correlation versus causation. So two things can happen at the same time. That doesn't mean there's any cause and effect between the two, right? So there's a very fun website called Spurious Correlations. And they come up with some fun
00:13:19
Speaker
graphs, just to give you an idea of what's going on. So apparently, you know, in Maine, the divorce rate is linked to the consumption of margarine, but in Colorado, it's linked to the consumption of milk. Clearly, there's nothing in common with these things.
00:13:39
Speaker
Google searches for Batman correlates with security guards in Oklahoma, et cetera, with the age of the drug. So you can find these correlations that does not prove causation. So children generally get diagnosed with autism at around the same age as they get their MMR. That's it. That's the link. It doesn't mean that one causes the other.
00:14:04
Speaker
I would say maybe learning to drive causes acne because those two things happen around the same time too. So it doesn't matter how often you try to hammer this point home. Correlation is not causation. You might think that you found a link, you've got to prove it. The fact that two numbers line up means nothing. So the public distrusts a lot of people.
Distrust in Authorities and Vaccine Skepticism
00:14:30
Speaker
They distressed politicians and I think that's
00:14:33
Speaker
reasonable. I think especially what's happened to the sales of us, the politicians are terribly trustworthy. They distrust the media. And I also think that that's reasonable. It's not you can't believe everything you read, you can't believe everything you see on TV. They distrust pharmaceutical companies. And that's also there's there's some truth in that. I mean, I've watched some of those documentaries about the opioid crisis and how
00:15:02
Speaker
they were pretty much generated with a profit motive. That doesn't mean that everything the pharmaceutical companies do is wrong or is evil intended. But that's one of the things that we get accused pretty much daily of being in the pocket of big pharma, that somehow the only reason we do what we're doing is because we're getting some kind of payout. And then finally, of course, there's the whole distrust
00:15:32
Speaker
of doctors in the medical establishment, which is generally not directed towards your own doctor. So people say, Oh, I like my doctor. I can trust my doctor, but doctors in general was a generic type. No, they're, they're mercenary. They're just, they can't be trusted. Uh, and as I said, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of truth in that it's, uh, you can't trust everybody and you can't trust everything.
00:16:03
Speaker
So back in 2014, I actually wrote this little book for, it was the first scholastic publishing that was used in grades six to nine. So we're talking 2014. This is a long time before the pandemic, but even then we were having this discussion about vaccinations and whether or not they were a good or a bad thing. And I had a caption in there about the MMR, which very clearly states
00:16:31
Speaker
does not cause autism. I thought that is especially in that age group of kids who are going to be reading about it. And the publisher of this, this little booklet removed that chapter for the books that were being sold in Florida because they didn't want to offend the parents. So already in 2014, we're fighting what felt like a bit of a losing battle where it again,
00:17:01
Speaker
Evidence doesn't seem to matter. There's no evidence of any correlation, as I mentioned. It doesn't matter. It was going to anger the parents, so it was removed. And then, as you know, then the pandemic hit. And at the very beginning, I started working in the assessment unit, and every day,
00:17:28
Speaker
there'd be this parade of ambulances and fire trucks that would come. They're driving over towards the emergency room entrance at the Guelph General Hospital, and it was like the hug we couldn't get, right? You couldn't touch people, but to see all these ambulances and fire trucks and police cars come and drive around the hospital, it was
00:17:52
Speaker
I thought this pandemic is horrible, but it's going to do one good thing because all of a sudden now people are actually grateful and they're trusting of the medical community. And I thought this is going to be the end of this stupid anti-vaccine movement. Wow.
Pandemic and Trust in Medical Community
00:18:12
Speaker
That is not the case. So maybe you shouldn't believe anything I say, because I was, that's what I thought. And you'll remember that, you know, here I am working at the COVID assessment center. We were all gowned and loved and afraid for our lives, especially at the beginning. We didn't know how this thing was spreading and whether or not it was on our clothes and whether or not we were going to kill our families. And I would come home from the, from the assessment center.
00:18:40
Speaker
And I would strip in the garage and throw all my clothes in the washing machine and then go and wipe down my car seat. I mean, we didn't know what was going on. And you remember again, remember the public was actually very positive at the beginning. We got all those painted rocks with thank you and you guys rock. And it was, you know, it felt like there had been a turning of the tide.
00:19:08
Speaker
And if you recall, remember the pots and pans being clanked at seven o'clock every evening and thank you to our healthcare workers and signs on people's front lawns, right? It kind of felt like maybe, maybe it was going to be okay. Maybe we were going to pull through this all together. We were gathering up ventilators in case we got overrun with patients on ventilators.
00:19:32
Speaker
The hospital staff had to wear these, you know, this equipment when they were going into the rooms of patients who were intubated because of the fear of spread. And then finally the vaccines became available. And my reaction then was, you know, here we are. It's the beginning of the light at the end of the tunnel.
00:19:59
Speaker
we are finally, we're gonna get through this. And again, at the beginning, the people who came to get vaccinated, they were so grateful. They were taking selfies with me. I felt like a celebrity. I felt like I was somebody famous and they were gonna keep those pictures and they were so happy to have them. So what went wrong? I think a lot of things have gone wrong. A lot of it is,
00:20:27
Speaker
that there's just a lot of misunderstanding of science. A lot of people just don't understand science. They think they know a little bit, but they don't know enough to make a good decision. So there's a problem with not understanding the difference between atoms and molecules. So if I tell you that oxygen is great,
00:20:57
Speaker
You need oxygen, you need oxygen to breathe. There's an oxygen molecule in every, uh, oxygen atom in every molecule of water. Does that mean I can pour water into your lungs and that's going to be equivalent? Of course not. So then there became this, this fear. They saw the word mercury in, uh, the, the ingredients of the vaccine. Well, it didn't matter. People said it's not the kind of mercury that does you harm. Well, anyhow, I don't want any, I don't want mercury in any form.
00:21:27
Speaker
It's got to be bad. Well, that's not true. If I were to tell you, I'm going to give you, I'm going to put chlorine on your food. I'm going to do it as bleach. That's probably not a good idea. Or I'm going to do it as table salt. You might, one of them might be worse for you than the other, right? So atoms and molecules, not the same thing. Do we really want to have to explain that to every single solitary person who walks through our office? We don't have time. The other argument,
00:21:55
Speaker
was that the vaccine was produced too fast. I would say that wasn't a bad thing. That was a miracle. And it really wasn't produced fast. So they started working on the vaccine around the SARS epidemic, which is a very similar virus. And then they kind of, they put that aside because SARS essentially disappeared. Didn't need to vaccinate the population. And you're only going to vaccinate
00:22:23
Speaker
the healthy population when the risks of the disease become higher than any risks attributable to the vaccine. So you're not going to do it for something that has disappeared.
Misunderstandings Fueling Skepticism
00:22:35
Speaker
But the process had been initiated and they were getting to where they could make those mRNA vaccines. So then they didn't like the fact that the recommendations changed
00:22:50
Speaker
And that goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, is that that's how science works. We didn't know much about COVID when it started. So yeah, we didn't know the frequency of when should you be vaccinated. We didn't know about, you know, wiping down surfaces. People were washing their groceries, turned out you didn't have to do that. They started analyzing how long antibodies lasted and people who had been vaccinated and then
00:23:18
Speaker
were able to determine more precisely when did people need a booster? So the recommendations changed, but they improved. They got fine-tuned. It had to go fast. This thing was all over the planet. It was killing thousands and thousands of people. You can't just sit back and say, well, let's see how things are going in a year, and then we'll decide. You had to make choices. You had to make changes, and perhaps
00:23:47
Speaker
not perfect at the beginning, you gotta fine tune. And then of course, there was the discovery of side effects after the launch. Of course, when you are doing a very rapid launch, which it was, and then you start vaccinating hundreds of thousands, millions of people, there are gonna be side effects that will be discovered, even if they're rare. By the time you get to millions of people, even the rare side effects will start to become more obvious.
00:24:16
Speaker
And then there is the misunderstanding of the difference between in vitro and in vivo. So in vitro means like in a Petri dish as opposed to in vivo, which is in a human. So if I take a Petri dish of whatever and pour bleach on it, I'm going to kill that thing that's in that Petri dish. That doesn't mean that that's a good idea to do to the human being who has that virus bacteria, whatever.
00:24:44
Speaker
That's where Trump came up with the idea that, yeah, drinking bleach is a good idea and maybe a UV light inside the body. That's not how it works. It's very easy to kill anything that's on a plate. You can kill cancer with just about anything you throw at it. That doesn't mean that that's an effective treatment that people should use. So it's a huge, you start your studies in vitro, absolutely. And then you have to progress to see how does it actually
00:25:14
Speaker
really work in real people. It's not enough to say, I did this in the lab. What does it do in people?
00:25:24
Speaker
So this, things like, I couldn't resist. I had to show some of these. I could have gone about three hours showing things like this, because it makes me laugh. But this is something you can buy on Etsy for 35.33. You can buy a little bottle of pure liquid oxygen at room temperature, pure liquid oxygen. And only 25 drops will provide you all of the benefits, the magic effects of oxygen.
00:25:55
Speaker
No, seems kind of unlikely. There's a thing just like this for sale. The next time you're on an Air Canada flight, look into the duty free magazine. And they have a little thing. It's called liquid oxygen that you can buy. And I made me laugh and I asked the flight attendant like liquid oxygen room temperature. Yeah.
00:26:21
Speaker
I said, do you get two free atoms of hydrogen with each atom of oxygen? Because liquid oxygen doesn't exist in that form. And she said, oh, the flight attendants, they swear it helps them with their hangovers. We sell out of it all the time. OK, so obviously, there's a little misunderstanding. I mean, a big glass of water certainly can help with a hangover, but I'm not going to pay $35.33 for
00:26:48
Speaker
Oh, what is it? Two fluid ounces of liquid oxygen. And then you got to wonder, you can also buy the antioxidants. So what happens if you take the antioxidants with the oxygen? I mean, do they just cancel each other out and then you die? Or I'm not entirely sure. But all of the other, all of these kinds of supplements, they don't need to, they don't need to prove anything. There's all kinds of rules about what you can sell when you're marketing a drug, when you're marketing
00:27:17
Speaker
a pharmaceutical product, when you are marketing a nutraceutical, have at it. You can claim all kinds of things. You can say, like you say here, supports immune system, promotes healthy aging. You know, you're not guaranteeing it. You're just saying it's probably, it's probably good. That's all you need to say. And you can, you can claim anything, anything you want.
00:27:44
Speaker
As long as you're not killing people and even then it takes a long time to take these things off the shelf. So they are, they can't be trusted. Let's put it that way. Well then you can heal yourself with crystals and here this will tell you how
00:28:00
Speaker
You know, different crystals for different ailments. I mean, you cleanse the air with onyx, but you relieve headaches and fatigue with amethyst. And you get inspiration and creativity with opal. So you don't want to use an opal for a headache. That's just crazy talk, obviously. You got to make sure you got the right crystal for the right ailment. I mean, of course there's energy in rocks. That's the basis of nuclear energy. But it's not going to be putting a piece of quartz under your pillow. It's not going to ease your anxiety.
00:28:30
Speaker
from a scientific, a medical perspective, we see things like this and we let it go. I mean, you're not gonna fight this battle. It's like, sure, you want to put onyx in your armpits, whatever. Do what makes you happy. So long as we think that they're still going to be accepting the things that work, still listening to some advice. Where it all goes wrong is where it's this instead of,
00:29:00
Speaker
instead of what we're actually recommending. So, oh, sorry, I might have done a few too many of these, but these always, they always make me laugh. So, you know, you stick your feet in this, in these things and they're supposed to detox you somehow, which is amazing. I mean, if, if this were really effective, I would buy 20 for the emergency room because it would be so much easier.
00:29:24
Speaker
You know, if you have red flecks, those are blood clot material in your water coming out of your feet. You imagine how much easier it is to treat a blood clot by sticking your feet in water than what we actually have to do or take blood thinners. I mean, it's also, we used to have color changing Kool-Aid for the kids when they were little. The fact that the thing changes color is not magic. It's not magic. It's not going to fix whatever ails you.
00:29:55
Speaker
And this was at our local grocery store about some of the juices. There's one that gives you energy. There's one that improves your immunity. There's no proof required. It just supports your liver and it's detox every day. If your liver is not detoxing, you're in pretty big trouble. I'm pretty sure that this little bottle is not gonna be the solution.
00:30:24
Speaker
So very recently in Saskatchewan, a doctor got in trouble for offering some, it wasn't clear what they offered in terms of an alternative therapy, but they were found that it was just not, it's unethical to offer a treatment without a scientific basis because you're giving false hope or that you may delay conventional care.
00:30:54
Speaker
unethical, not illegal. So that's, that's a big issue. And it's a big issue in terms of what what do you do with the people who are spreading falsehoods? Is what they're doing illegal? What? Probably not actually, unfortunately, but it's definitely unethical. So the whole argument about free speech enters in and is, is hugely problematic, hugely problematic.
00:31:27
Speaker
So we've been hammered over the head about the importance of patient autonomy. And of course it's important. And you have to do things that are with the consent of the patient. Otherwise it's not, you can't do anything. You have to try to make the patient understand the risks and the benefits, which is a challenge. You have to try to do that in a short conversation and sometimes
00:31:57
Speaker
There's an awful lot of information and we don't necessarily know all the information. And I think my fellow doctors will cringe like I do when you would get these comments like, I did my research. And that typically means a Google search. That's not research, that's a Google search.
00:32:21
Speaker
I like to read everything is code for, I read conspiracy theories, not everything. They're trying to say, we just don't read the things that you recommend and read everything. I want to see how it's made, just kills me. So I had a patient who refused to be vaccinated and she said, you know, I probably would accept to be vaccinated if I could go to the vaccine production facility and see how it was made.
00:32:51
Speaker
At this point, you know, trying to be patient, but there comes a time that's like, that's okay. And I said, okay, well, what would you be looking for exactly? I mean, are you a biochemist? No. Okay. So what would you see? I want to see what they put in it. And I think, well, how would, how would you know whether they're pouring in a gallon of gasoline or they're pouring, what would it mean? But there's this false belief that somehow
00:33:21
Speaker
Because we're all corrupt and in the pockets of big pharma and whatever, we can't be trusted. So somehow the lay person has to go and decide. It's a very strange kind of proposition. And then you get the, if I can't pronounce it, I don't want it. So your choices in medications or in foods are limited by your vocabulary. There are a lot of really tasty ethnic foods that
00:33:52
Speaker
I don't know how to pronounce, but I don't think that's a reason not to eat them. I also don't think it's a really good reason not to accept medication because you don't know how to say it. But there is this very firm belief that you're going to get more unbiased information on the internet. You're going to get more information, that's for damn sure, but you're going to get all kinds of biased information and it's all going to be directed towards whatever you've been looking for.
00:34:23
Speaker
I couldn't help this. I just saw this actually today. It's it's a little bit debunked this effect, but where people believe if you're really you don't know much about something that you then you don't know enough to know what you don't know. So you start out in this in this early knowledge phase becoming a Facebook
00:34:46
Speaker
expert, which they call the peak of mount ignorance. And if you develop a little bit more and more knowledge, then you realize you really don't know anything and you fall into this valley of despair. And then you actually gradually gain knowledge and eventually you become you could become one of the scientists who actually have the highest level of knowledge in this particular field.
00:35:11
Speaker
But the people who are at the very beginning, who think they know because they don't know enough to know what they don't know, are almost impossible to argue with.
00:35:22
Speaker
And they often don't really want more information. They don't want to come off of the peak of Mount Ignorance. They don't want to be anything but Facebook experts. And it's not really their job. So, you know, some of the things that we do when I was working at the vaccination clinic, people would come in and we'd say, you know, which one do you want, the Pfizer or Moderna? And I thought,
00:35:44
Speaker
I'm a respirologist. I don't know which one I want. I just told them, give me whichever one is available. This belief that somehow you can make a good choice about that based on what. So it was based on whatever my aunt had a bad reaction to the Moderna or I've read bad things about Pfizer, whatever. We're asking people to make choices with very little information.
00:36:08
Speaker
And then it took an ugly turn. Not only do we not know what we're doing, not only are doctors ignorant and the entire system is biased and corrupt, but it's malicious. There was malicious intent. We're trying to harm people. We're not just, maybe we don't know the whole truth. We're intentionally trying to hurt people. So that whole vaccines carry a microchip
00:36:37
Speaker
I have no idea how it started. The first person who told me that in the office, I thought they were just wing nuts. And then it's over and over and over. It was a very, very firmly held belief. I thought, who wants to track you? Who wants to know where you are? Why? Why? You carry your phone. We know exactly where you are. Even when I was at the vaccination clinic, people would ask and I would
00:37:03
Speaker
Show them the syringe that has like three drops of liquid in it that you really think we can stick a microchip in there, like to what end? I had multiple people who come in and say, I don't want Moderna, I want Pfizer because Moderna causes sterility. It's like, okay, so you think we're just offering this treatment to people that's gonna make them stare off, but we're just carrying on. We know this, but we're just doing it. And then there's the whole,
00:37:32
Speaker
element of trying to say it's not as bad as that. It's a minor illness. It's just a cold. The disease isn't severe. And the people who are dying of COVID aren't dying of COVID. They're dying of something else. And we're all complicit in this big lie around the world, like people in Asia and Europe and all around the world. We all got together and agreed, but nobody can agree on anything, that we're going to attribute deaths to COVID for no valid reason.
00:38:01
Speaker
So some of my nursing colleagues were telling me they would have patients dying in the ICU on ventilators. And the family would say to them, I just wish I knew what they were dying of. They said, what do you mean? The dying of COVID. Like, what? COVID never killed anyone. Well, evidence to the contrary, this patient is dying of COVID. But again, evidence doesn't matter.
00:38:31
Speaker
And that was actually something that was from a governmental level, some of the places which, for example, Florida, where they were very anti-vaccine at a government level, anti-lockdown, anti-everything, when you're trying to track deaths, if a patient died in hospital of COVID, but also had something else, chances are they put the something else on the death certificate.
00:38:59
Speaker
you know, hangnail, anything but COVID. So you can't even know how many were actually dying of it. Then the other malicious thing that we were being accused of was that there are effective treatments, there are miraculous treatments, but we're withholding for financial reasons, for vindictive reasons, I don't know, but we're just intentionally letting people die, even though these wonderful treatments exist.
00:39:28
Speaker
So one of the ones is, you know, there was the hydroxychloroquine and then the ivermectin, which people decided this is, this is, this is what we need. So it's an anti-parasitic used in animals. And remember I was talking about the in vivo versus in vitro. So in a Petri dish, it blown down the growth of COVID.
Ivermectin and Persistent Beliefs
00:39:51
Speaker
It required a dose a hundred times the regular oral dose, but somehow it became
00:39:57
Speaker
The mythology was that we were withholding it because we didn't want to lose profit. And this picture at the bottom was from an FDA ad which said, you are not a horse. Trying to just dissuade people from taking ivermectin. And just after I took this screenshot, they were forced to remove this ad. They were sued because it was mocking people who believed in the ivermectin.
00:40:27
Speaker
So what happens? What do scientists do in this situation where we're being told, there's this great cure, but you're not giving it to us. So what do we do? Well, they did studies. They did studies, they did studies and they keep coming back with the, okay, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't matter.
00:40:49
Speaker
Evidence doesn't matter. So when you have this delusional belief, it doesn't matter how much evidence you throw at it, it's not going to change anybody's mind. Because remember, we're all in the pocket of Big Pharma. We don't want this miracle cure to be launched for our own terrible reasons. So we're not doing the studies right. So they'd say, oh, it's the wrong group of people, or it's not enough people, or they had other
00:41:18
Speaker
Whatever. So you could do an infinite number of studies and they, they could all be negative, but they would always be dismissed as being biased or they can't, not, it's not going to change anybody's mind. So I would say to these well-meaning scientists, stop wasting your time and your money. Studies don't work. Do enough studies so that we know it's garbage and then stop because it's not, it's not the six, 12, 300 study that's going to change anybody's mind.
00:41:49
Speaker
You can't prove a negative it's extremely difficult to prove that something doesn't exist, all you can say is that you haven't found it yet right, so I can't prove that Santa doesn't exist, I can do all kinds of.
00:42:02
Speaker
flyovers of the North Pole and I can try sonar and I can get dog sleds, whatever. I can't prove. People have seen bites out of cookies. I mean, there's hard and fast evidence that Santa exists. We just haven't found him yet. I can't prove to you that God doesn't exist. I have a lot of evidence to suggest he doesn't, but I can't prove it. The other thing is that we can't tell you what would have happened.
00:42:30
Speaker
if we hadn't had the lockdowns and the vaccines. We only got one run through of this. So would it have been a thousand times worse without the lockdowns and the vaccines? I don't know. I think so. But I can't really tell because all we can compare to is the states where there was a lot worse attention paid to these things where they had about 10 times our
00:42:57
Speaker
fatality level. So I think, but again, maybe they're not comparable. Maybe we're not comparing apples to apples. And of course, the placebo effect is huge. So if you take ivermectin and you're convinced that you're probably going to feel better. We use the placebo effect. It's wonderful. It's very important. But that doesn't mean that you have to give the medication that has nothing but placebo effect.
Anti-Vaccine Movement and Personal Freedom
00:43:26
Speaker
So somehow the anti-vax movement started linking vaccination choice to freedom, which was a brilliant marketing strategy. So they're not anti-vax at all. They will all tell you I'm very much pro-vaccine.
00:43:43
Speaker
I'm for patient choice. I have choice whether I want to be vaccinated or not. And it just so happens that I choose not to, but I could choose to. I'm not anti-vax, absolutely not. But it's the freedom to have choice without consequence. I can do what I want and I shouldn't be limited in any way, as if that's how society works.
00:44:07
Speaker
These people generally, this group, I don't like government control in any way, shape or form. They tend to be pro-gun and they tend to be anti-abortion, which is kind of funny because they're saying, my body, my choice, her body, my choice. It's always their choice. This fine. So in front of a church, the mask-free church, remove your mask or you stay in your car. We celebrate faith over fear.
00:44:35
Speaker
And so somebody said, oh, I guess you don't need guns then. Well, no, that's not the conclusion to draw. The guns are a whole other. They need the guns. They just don't need the masks or the vaccines. So just sort of a little recap. We live in a society, there are rules. You need to be, if you want to drink alcohol, you have to get a server who's smart certified and who's not going to sell it to you if you're drunk.
00:45:03
Speaker
If you are under the age of 18 in Ontario, you need to wear a helmet to ride a bike, even though the only person you're going to hurt is yourself. If you don't ride a bike, nonetheless, that's the law. You need to go to school from when you're six to 18. That's the law. You have to do that. It's not, we accept that there are, you can make choices and there are consequences. You can drink all you want. You can't drive. You can drive.
00:45:30
Speaker
at a different time. You're not being prevented from doing either of those things. And even in terms of health care, there is a precedent, which is tuberculosis, which is a disease with a mandated treatment. You probably don't know this because you're probably not around enough TB. But if you have a patient with active tuberculosis who refuses treatment, you can incarcerate
00:45:56
Speaker
So we have definitely had rules to protect public health. It's not new, it's not just COVID. I have never sent anyone to jail for refusing tuberculosis treatment, but it's just to give you an idea of the public health. It's for the public health. It's choices can't be made by an individual if they harm society. So then, okay, again,
00:46:25
Speaker
We will not live in fear, freedom, this argument that somehow it's our freedom that's at stake. Not that there are choices and with consequences. It's medical apartheid. We're lab rats. Vaccination equals death. Can you imagine?
00:46:49
Speaker
How does this come to be? How does this lead? And that we are hiding, hiding all of the negative effects of the vaccine. Patients came to my office and would tell me that there were mass vaccination clinics where they were carrying out all these dead children out of these big sports arenas. Like, yeah, we just hide that. When children drop dead, we just keep it quiet.
00:47:21
Speaker
Uh, no vaccine needed. I have an immune system, which, you know, again, the reply to that is why are you wearing glasses? You have eyes. Uh, so apparently, you know, why are you, why do you have shoes on? Don't you have feet? And then this, the truckers, the truckers, the freedom, uh, the united against tyranny.
00:47:47
Speaker
and the people up on the bridge. So this is somehow, it's tyranny. We live in a dictatorship because you can choose to have a vaccine or not. But if you choose not to have a vaccine, there are certain things you can't do, including drive across the border where at the other side of the border, they mandated the vaccine for entry.
Protests: Freedom vs. Logic
00:48:11
Speaker
So you just wanted to drive to Detroit or I guess to Windsor and back
00:48:17
Speaker
It makes zero sense. There is no freedom involved in this protest. And for those of you who haven't yet, James Gordon, who is a Guelph singer, songwriter, and I think still city councilor, wrote a song called Cry Baby's Caravan, which is hilarious. In about three minutes, he says everything that I'm telling you in this talk. So Google that, it's well worth the talk, you know, talking about
00:48:46
Speaker
He has a line that inconvenience does not oppressed. So these important considerations and then they do this, which is incomprehensible that these people are driving around with Confederate flags in Ontario.
00:49:05
Speaker
Um, so apparently they don't want to be vaccinated, but they want to put on slaves or I'm not entirely sure what the connection is there, but it's, it's very handy because you label yourself as an asshole. So it's nice that I know exactly who the assholes are. And then they, um, the swastika made of needles. So they are saying, not that they support the Nazis, but that we are the Nazis, the ones who are
00:49:35
Speaker
suggesting vaccination, they're being treated like Jews in the Holocaust. So perhaps a little hyperbole, impossible. So Trudeau is an assassin, fuck Trudeau, on the steps of Parliament Hill. Imagine trying that in Moscow or in Tiananmen Square. So is this a tyrannical government? Is this truly what you have
00:50:03
Speaker
That's what you believe. Trudeau is a traitor. So this whole thing, so this whole convoy, I think it was a lot of it was imported from the states. A lot of people drove up. They had nothing to do with local politics. And it just turned into something that has nothing to do.
00:50:26
Speaker
Nothing to do with vaccines. It has nothing to do with logic. So the problem is, again, is it free speech? Yes, speech is free. Are you allowed to block bridges? Are you allowed to disrupt the citizens of Ottawa for days on end? I can understand why it was a challenge to decide what to do.
00:50:49
Speaker
And then there's the dumpster fire to the south of us, which is truly one step beyond. So all kinds of quotes, which I won't read, but basically the anti vaccine, anti mask, anti public health,
00:51:07
Speaker
factions are winning everywhere. They're becoming the government. And so they are basically repealing laws of even about education, telling students about the HPV vaccine is going to be forbidden. Robert Kennedy, Jr., who claims he's a Democrat and is running as an independent, he's cookeier than all of them. So he says COVID was ethnically targeted to spare the Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. This is a man
00:51:37
Speaker
who might become president. I mean, between him and Trump, it's a battle for the worst. And the problem is in the last quote, they're so loud, they're so vocal, and sometimes they're so potentially violent, sways your opinion. So that's the issue is that there's a threat of violence. There is intimidation, there are death threats. It's not just free speech.
00:52:06
Speaker
And then there are the celebrities who have been public. The list, I could have filled many, many slides, but just to say there's musicians, there's athletes, there are people, actors, there are people from all kinds of disciplines who are outspoken, including Meatloaf, who was very vocal against vaccines and then died of COVID.
00:52:31
Speaker
which prompted some people to say that, you know, he would do anything for love, but he won't get back. Unfortunately, even some health professionals jumped on board of this trend in front of effigies of hanging officials. Again, free speech is one thing. Hanging
00:52:55
Speaker
effigies, I think that's pushing it a little far. This guy's claiming it was causing stillbirths at a hospital in BC. This woman who's local, who's an allergist who was saying, you know, again, we're hiding the truth, we're hiding the fact that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment, that there's no reason for the lockdown. And I would say that my
00:53:18
Speaker
My thoughts about lockdown are not as clear. I think none of us are as well trained in that as we are in vaccines. So I don't know the correct answer to that, but we certainly know about vaccines. And I think to be a doctor and to be anti-vaccine is like being a skydiver and being anti-parachute. It's incomprehensible. This guy who teaches at the Ontario Veterinary College
00:53:47
Speaker
who's not a vet, not a doctor, but have become another face of anti-vaccine sentiment, who says that it's going to drive an epidemic of autism, again, based on nothing. And this is what happens to the outspoken scientists. So Rand Paul says Fauci should go to prison over COVID dishonesty. I don't think he's the one who should go to prison,
00:54:14
Speaker
Poor Fauci, I mean, he had to sit on a stage with Trump and he did it. And his comment here is that, you know, you just have to put up with it that you, what happens when scientists change their recommendations is that it's interpreted as flip-flopping. They start to lose confidence when it's actually just the opposite. It's science that's self-correcting as new information comes along. This is how science works. And now where are we now?
00:54:43
Speaker
The anti-vaccine movement is not as limited to COVID. Now people are anti-vaccine in general. A recent poll in February of this year, 17% of parents strongly opposed to childhood vaccinations. That's unbelievable. Some places very low measles vaccination rates, measles cases.
00:55:09
Speaker
and the first three months of 2024 in the US already surpassed the number of cases in all of 2023. More craziness, pregnant women who are refusing the ROGAM for RH negative blood types, which kills second babies. And the dilemma is that if the bum and the baby's blood mix, it's equally likely that it'll cross
00:55:38
Speaker
over an attack, the baby itself, this happens frequently but isn't discussed by most doctors. It's insane. It's insane. There's a little bit of good news. This graph shows that after COVID, the inclination for parents to vaccinate their children, so the big red bar no influence, the dark blue is
00:56:03
Speaker
They are less inclined and the light blue is they're more inclined. So at least there's some people varying depending on the province who saw the pandemic as the cautionary tale as they should and do want vaccinations. So what do we do? What do we do? Do we just give up? I mean, I don't know. I wish I had answers. I have no answers.
00:56:26
Speaker
I think we have to wait for children to die or maybe just get really, really sick due to lack of vaccines or more children will become deaf from measles. Sometimes, for example, if a child gets admitted to hospital with whooping cough and the parent sees them struggling for every breath, that at least convinces that parent to vaccinate for everything and maybe their friends.
00:56:53
Speaker
Do we keep trying to educate? I think we have to. It's our duty, even if people aren't necessarily listening. We have to find some charismatic scientists who are willing to go and stand in front of hostile crowds and find a way to make it more palatable. Do we have to find a way to link freedom to health? Because it is. You're far freer to do what you want to do in life when you're healthy.
00:57:21
Speaker
And lastly, can we reclaim the Canadian flag? Now when I see a car that's got a flag, or worse, two flags, I automatically think, well, that's a jerk. And I never used to have that reaction to the Canadian flag. So maybe we just have to start flying the flag or putting it up more wearing pins so that the Canadian flag does not become a symbol of intolerance. And that's
00:57:51
Speaker
basically what I have to say. I mean, I think we are in a situation where, yes, there is free speech, people are allowed to harbor opinions even that we think are really stupid. But what happens if that endangers the public? What happens if there are threats to scientists when they start giving, you know, making death threats, those things are obviously illegal.
Free Speech vs. Public Harm
00:58:19
Speaker
It's not obviously illegal to just say stupid things. It's not illegal. But what do you do, especially when you're in a situation like the pandemic, where saying stupid things, especially when they get a wide audience, caused irreparable harm? So yeah, unfortunately, I don't have answers. I don't have solutions.
00:58:43
Speaker
And I think it's gonna get worse before it gets better. And I do think we are going to see a huge upswing of vaccine preventable illnesses. And maybe we have to let that ride out before we see any improvement. And at this point, I open it to any discussion or questions. Thank you, Jackie. I'm gonna go into the chat area and we do have about two questions. One of them,
00:59:13
Speaker
from Craig Barlow. He says the Montreal Gazette article, the 2019 law declares the province, this is about Bill 21, declares the province is a secular state and includes a provision prohibiting public sector workers in position of authority, including teachers, judges and police officers from wearing such religious symbols as the hijab, kippah, turban and crucifix while on the job.
00:59:43
Speaker
So his question basically is, do you think Quebec's secular law, Bill 21, should become law of land and other provinces, territories, and federally? I don't think that is anything to do with what we are discussing today. That certainly is a big, broad question. But I would have to leave that for somebody who has more expertise
01:00:13
Speaker
in the matter, I don't think a medical degree gives me any kind of authority on that.
Need for Critical Thinking in Education
01:00:20
Speaker
Great. So next we have Adrian Giorgio. I hope I pronounced that correctly. His question is stemming from the proof of the negative slide. How much do you think studying philosophy and logical fallacies would help people see through conspiracy theories and or superstition?
01:00:41
Speaker
It would help 1000%. No questions about it. If it were valued in our education system, yes, that would be amazing. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, but I agree with you entirely that critical thinking is essential and not taught or not taught enough and is the solution. It's absolutely the solution. If I knew how to
01:01:10
Speaker
enforce that. I think yeah, we'd be out of the tunnel for sure. Right.
01:01:16
Speaker
So the next question is from Miles McKee and he wants further to Adrian's question. I think critical thinking needs to be part of the school curriculum along with the minimum amount of science classes. Both my boys just graduated high school having to take minimal amounts of science classes and I worry for their ability to navigate these types of issues and make informed decisions.
01:01:41
Speaker
Jill Fletcher, I guess that was just more of a comment. Did you want to speak to that first before I move on? I think that goes to the previous point. I agree. Okay. Now, Jill Fletcher is asking, how can we combat this information to others when so many are against scientists and big pharma? Yeah.
01:02:08
Speaker
I don't know. It certainly is a, as I said, there's a reason for some mistrust. I think that is actually appropriate. And it goes back to the critical thinking, you don't have to reject everything.
01:02:29
Speaker
There have been some horrendous things done by doctors, by pharmaceutical companies, by you name it. So yeah, I think a certain level of skepticism or mistrust is probably healthy. So long as you are able to get
01:02:50
Speaker
proper information to inform your beliefs. That's the challenge. Where are you going to go? How are you going to know? How are you going to know whether this vaccine being launched is actually going to kill you or not? How do you know that it's not a for-profit purely motive? It's an extraordinarily challenging question, but I would again say that critical thinking
01:03:20
Speaker
is key and maybe kind of having reliable news sources. What are those reliable news sources? Well, right now, even the ones that look legit are often not. It's very difficult. There are some very scientific looking articles that are published which
01:03:47
Speaker
aren't which, you know, are not actually based on true, true data. So yeah, we're in a bit of a pickle. Okay, so next question is from Jay Lee.
01:04:06
Speaker
In your experience, was there anything that you did or said that tended to be the most successful in causing people to try and think critically regarding anti-vax and anti-science beliefs? That's a great question. And I think it's more applicable, I think, to family doctors because there is more of a relationship established
01:04:34
Speaker
more trust. And so generally speaking, if you share your beliefs, it is more credible than if it just comes from whatever, a talking head from public health. So I would often, people would ask me, are you vaccinated? And I would say, absolutely. And sometimes that would make them think, okay,
01:05:01
Speaker
you know, if you believe in it, but I also had the reaction where one of my patients said, oh, well, you know, if you just want to be a sheep, well, if the sheep are doing the right thing, then I'm okay being a sheep. Absolutely. I had one patient who has terrible lungs, who was waiting for a lung transplant and who refused vaccination because he didn't trust it or whatever.
01:05:29
Speaker
don't trust the vaccine. I'm thinking maybe a transplant's not really what you're looking for because boy oh boy do you have to trust in medical science and you're going to be on a whole lot of toxic drugs. He just thought that we were discriminating against him by no longer considering him for our transplant. It's
01:05:54
Speaker
It's astonishing, but yeah, so as the pandemic dragged on and on, I started getting more and more tired of having the same debate every day. And I think I was probably more enthusiastic at the beginning and trying to sway people's beliefs. I always did continue to try, but I think our energy was flagging, not just me, but everybody. You can only be accused of
01:06:24
Speaker
of being a shill so many times before it starts to get a little tiresome. Thank you. We're going back to Adrian Giorgio, and it's a skepticism over cynicism question. With regards to the psychiatric standard, are they committing a fallacy at populum, appealing to a large group opinion to validate a delusion? Yes, but we have accepted that as our
01:06:54
Speaker
society's truth. We're not getting rid of religion anytime soon. So unless you want anybody who's religious to be in a psychiatric facility, I think we're accepting that it is a shared delusion that's not going away and we're okay with that. We have to be okay with that because there's no other way to live peacefully.
01:07:20
Speaker
Not sure if Janice is still on the call. She might want to speak a little bit to this, but she posted a comment here saying in January, I interviewed Matthew Rimsky of the Conspiracy Podcast on the topic of COVID and conspiracy theories, critical thinking. She provides the link to YouTube, but I'm wondering if Janice has a question for Jackie. Can you hear me?
01:07:50
Speaker
Yes. Oh, okay. I don't have a question. I just wanted to thank you. So I put together the conference on religious trauma every year, and I host the divorcing religion podcast. And I've been really focusing
01:08:06
Speaker
over the past while on critical thinking. And I just appreciate this so much. And COVID was so exhausting for all of us, but especially for our healthcare professionals. So thank you for all that you did. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
01:08:23
Speaker
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