Collapse of critical thinking

When Pfizer refused to proceed with India demanding independent safety trials and refusing to provide blanket indemnification, that should have told a thinking person just about everything they needed to know 

– Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

It seems remarkable that this multi-year war against basic liberty has come to this. And yet it should not be a surprise. All ideology aside, you simply cannot maintain much less cultivate a civilised life when governments, in combination with the scavengers in the media and large corporations, treat their citizens like lab rats in a science experiment, for their profit. And so we have to cultivate our critical faculties rather than letting deception and deceit suck away the essential vibrancy of the human spirit, as well as the will to advance those unalienable rights the American founders spoke of, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” 

At the height of the COVID hysteria, several times I encountered variations of the meme, “It’s not a pandemic; it’s an IQ test.” It was also a credulity test, a fact checking test, a discernment test, a cost-benefit test, and so much more…and less.

In any case, that meme really misses the point. The essential problem has never been about IQ. Many credentialed and purportedly intelligent people (at least in an academic sense) swallowed a very dubious narrative, while others less academically gifted, or with more “street smarts” did not. The real divider was the ability and inclination to think critically about it, to emotionally suspend the seductions of “group think” and the pressures to conform inflicted by so many societal forces.

The basic concept of critical thinking is an underpinning of a functioning society. It can be defined as judgment that emerges from data and clarity of linchpin concepts, without paranoia, general extrapolating or appeals to belief. In hopes of avoiding future common-sense meltdowns, let’s review this in relation to the hysterical, histrionic, “science camouflaged” COVID messaging and outpourings.

Number one: What are the issues and the conclusion? The purpose of this question is to spur awareness that very often there is an assertion being made in the context of a debated issue. Many have been completely unaware that a debate exists about many matters they hear about from the media, such as climate change/global warming, the rationality of wars, the health of our Constitutional guarantees, the impartiality of our justice system and more. 

Sri Lanka has just fallen 12 places to 116 in terms of economic freedom. How hotly will this be debated? The policies that came into play have to do with size of government (catastrophic and crippling economically), access to sound money (a nice euphemism), freedom to trade internationally (how we have tried to “ban” our way to growth), and the regulation (or lack thereof) of credit, labour and business.

Are we aware Sri Lanka has been given essentially, if provisionally, a “failing grade” by the IMF in terms of restructuring its external debt, something Japan and the US are trying to advance, despite China’s intransigence on this front? And China is a hinge for further cash, and so President Ranil’s mid-October visit to China is critical (to attend the 10th anniversary summit of the Belt and Road initiative, Beijing’s regionwide infrastructure building program). Again, these are grim but unavoidable realities that must be faced if we are ever to have a hope of transforming them. 

When people insist that no real debate exists in regard to an issue about which reasonable people differ, they have already failed the critical thinking test. That stance certainly has been the substance of much COVID messaging, and also applies to economic and political “magical thinking”, wherein we posture, pontificate and rail, as if throwing a tantrum at reality is transformational.

Number two: How good are the reasons? Many of my clients can brainstorm on their own the characteristics of good reasons: clear, true, logical, objective, and important. 

In the COVID context, untrue reasons include arguing on the basis that novel, experimental injections are certainly (100% or 95%) “safe and effective.” Of course, the demand by pharmaceutical companies to receive complete legal protection from any liability belied this claim of safety. 

Adverse effects are mushrooming. There is no health reason, given the risk demographic and evidently miniscule mortality rate for anyone under 65 and not awash in comorbidities. And when Pfizer refused to proceed with India demanding independent safety trials and refusing to provide blanket indemnification, that should have told a thinking person just about everything they needed to know.

There was a mass collapse in logic as well by entombing people indoors with often poor ventilation, the sick along with the healthy, keeping them from fresh air and sunlight and exercise (all dangerous to pathogens and beneficial to us), choking off their personal options -- and it all did nothing remotely positive. The same so called “cases” proliferated and the same lack of excess mortality globally was registered. No one ever bothers to answer how you possibly “lock in” an airborne pathogen anyway. 

Similarly, no one wishes to address how we can have economic recovery by continuing to print money globally without creating real corresponding wealth, or here in Sri Lanka when virtually everything goes to pay for a dysfunctional, bloated Government clearly not serving the growth aspirations of the nation, or the development requirements of its citizens. There are roughly 17 civil servants per citizen in Sri Lanka, compared with roughly 174 in India! Enough said.

Number three: How good is the evidence? For the purpose of learning critical thinking about statistics, a number of books explain common forms of statistical deception and error. We have the classic, How to Lie With Statistics, along with the more recent Damned Lies and Statistics. Both of these and others like them, showcase how such dubious statistical data is often created, asserted, touted, or at least, badly interpreted.

In a Japanese book, The Lies of Social Research, Professor Ichiro Tanioka reveals that government statistics also are often deceptive and simply serve the interests of bureaucrats and politicians, either by magnifying a problem to justify government policies and funding or by making a government program appear to be successful. Or by simply ignoring inconvenient facts.

Since many people are easily impressed by number data, he comments that more than half of all social science research is garbage, a problem compounded when the data is then referenced by the mass media, activists, and others, gaining in drum beating vehemence with each repetition.

COVID was a “masterpiece theatre” of statistical chicanery. We had the way deaths were counted, “with” rather than “from” COVID. Anyone infected in the last 28 days in some jurisdictions who then died, became a “COVID death.” We had Neil Ferguson fantasising inaccurately (as he does so reliably) millions of deaths without lockdowns, until Sweden as well as swathes of Africa, showed what alarmist rubbish that was. 

We have Pfizer’s claim of 95% COVID vaccine efficacy which was based on its own shoddy research using the repeatedly and demonstrably unreliable PCR tests. And since these “vaccines” never claimed to stop reinfection or stop spread even in their Emergency Use Authorisation application, what efficacy was being referenced? Yet, regardless, they simply parroted the “95%.”

On the national front, there is a mania for counting tourist numbers. What is missing? Everything relevant. Namely, spend per tourist, numbers relative to other regional tourist hubs, return rates of visitors. On this basis, we would not be taking victory laps, but doing a serious forensic look at our value proposition and our communication strategy. 

For a country so rich in appeal, how we package and parlay it with so little discernment and vitality should be unnerving. And it would be, if we were not being seduced by distorting numbers of arrivals taken by themselves, rather than the satisfaction of these visitors, or their profitability or comparing these stats with say Cambodia, or Vietnam, much less Thailand (dispiriting, even adjusting for population size).

Number four: Are any words unclear or used strangely? A number of words took on unclear, strange, or inconsistent meanings during the COVID mania. One notable example was the word safe. In the case of the experimental COVID injections, the term evidently could accommodate a wide variety of serious side effects and a considerable number of deaths and still be broadcast blithely.

There were silly slogans on this front, “No one is safe until everyone is safe.” This slogan makes as much sense as shouting, during the sinking of a passenger ship, “If everyone is not in the lifeboats, then no one is in the lifeboats.” Nevertheless, this nonsensical mantra was on the lips of many in the corporate media, in order to insist on policies like universal COVID vaccination. 

And so “immunity” was revised to mean “vaccination” and “natural immunity” (after recovering from the infection) was briefly removed from consideration, and now has returned, as the results for those with natural immunity are clearly comparable or better globally. Humans wouldn’t be alive if natural immunity was not the powerful natural capability it is. And it would hardly be flummoxed by a pathogen with an overall 99%+ survival rate! 

There is a well-regarded test in this regard that focuses on a fictional letter to a newspaper editor arguing for a total ban on overnight street parking in a certain city. The test-taker’s job is to evaluate the various arguments in the letter, one of which asserts that “conditions are not safe if there’s even the slightest possible chance for an accident.”

Of course, such a view of safety could lead to the ban of almost anything with the slightest element of risk. Bathtubs are hazardous. Crossing the street is hazardous. If a student slips in school, schools are hazardous. Sexual relations are hazardous. Eating food that has not been 100% vetted can be hazardous. Too much sun is hazardous. 

Life is a cost-benefit exchange between stimulus and hazards, between experiential value and manageable risk. Bureaucrats cannot adjudicate this, showcased when our not screening for cancer is likely far more dangerous than seeking to evade the equivalent of a median influenza strain.

In order to allay public anxieties and avoid the necessity of testing their injections for possible toxic gene-related side effects like cancer, the familiar, user-friendly term vaccine was chosen. Then when the “vaccines” were obviously failing to prevent COVID infection, as vaccines are normally expected to do, the public was suddenly offered a new definition of a vaccine –something that does not prevent infection at all but simply ameliorates the symptoms of disease. Rather than face facts, we just rewrite definitions.

“Education” is one of those words, which in too many countries now means “schooling” or “passing certain exams” rather than learning how to think rather than “what” to think. The root of “educate” is “educare” which means to “pull out of” and not “dump into.” So, education has to include appreciating the relevance of learning and understanding context. It has to include being able to apply what you learn. By those standards, our modern norms of “education” need real rehabilitation.

Number 5: Are there any other possible causes? People often arbitrarily attribute phenomena to causes that they wish to implicate. However, multiple causes may be to blame, or the real cause may actually be something entirely different. For example, many have been blaming human-generated CO2 for the high temperatures this last summer, but other possible causes have been identified, such as an increase in atmospheric water vapour from underwater volcanic eruptions, or simple cyclical aberrations.

The “Arab Spring” was a prime example of misunderstanding cause and effect. It was believed that if national “strong men” were removed as leaders, there would be an outpouring of democratic sentiment. Instead, people rallied to religious extremists or other tribal affiliations, as there were no governing structures, no rule of law, no civil society, inadequate education particularly of women, and a plethora of other social fissures. 

Democracy requires functioning institutions. It took root in the United States as Europeans from Parliamentary democracies came there to settle and worked with established governance frameworks. Nobody goes from Adam and Eve directly to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. There are a lot of bloody, iterative, intermediate steps, and “nation building” deserves its own scrupulous study. 

In regard to COVID causation, John Beaudoin discovered evidence to demonstrate how death certificates in Massachusetts were handled, in response to pressure from public health officials wanting to inflate COVID death figures. Hundreds of accidental deaths and even COVID “vaccine” deaths were counted as actually resulting from the pathogen.

Looking at the UK’s national COVID death statistics, Norman Fenton discovered a shocking fact. Only around 6,000 people actually died from COVID alone, a mere four and a half percent of the total number of supposed “COVID deaths.” The rest had other serious medical conditions as possible causes of death. And when an immune system is compromised, pneumonia and its cousins are very often the result, and one of the pathways to their final passing – though not the primary “cause”.

In another example of wrong-headed thinking about causation, elements of the mainstream news media and certain “experts” claimed the initial relatively low numbers of COVID hospitalisations and deaths in Japan to be a testament to the practice of universal masking there. But the same masking did nothing to avert the terrible influenza crisis the year before in Japan. And Japan also only ever minimally locked down. Yet no one ever spoke of that as potentially causing the positive statistics. No one cited the fact that people moved around more in more open spaces, that they developed more natural immunity, that they were better oxygenated and more active.

Of course, as Japan went crazy on “vaccinations”, masks or no, numbers shot up dramatically and were sustained, as happened in much of Asia, including Vietnam where initially there was no impact. But coinciding with the allegedly “salvific” vaccines, extreme spikes took place across the region.

Number six: What are the basic assumptions and are they acceptable? Viral epidemics can and should be halted by extreme measures bringing great suffering to large numbers of people is one suspect assumption. That the mere threat of “infection” should supersede human rights, like the right to work, to commune, or even to express opinions freely, is another. That a symptomless positive test can be called a “case” and have alarm bells ringing is yet another. With a plethora of early treatments evidently and demonstrably available, we should not treat patients until and if they need emergency care, adds to the stockpile.

This is similar to basic assumptions like democracies or republics in which voting is free are to be admired. But when the only people who you can vote for come out of a party machine that is corrupt, and which requires huge amounts of donations and produces candidates beholden to clearly vested interests, then while the “optics” of democracy may be present, the soul is gone. 

From the beginning the mainstream COVID narrative has failed to give persuasive responses to any of these questions. In light of that, it is remarkable that there are still many people who espouse the original measures and messaging, even though they, more than the pathogen, were the real blight and contagion on our society. 

Especially in times like these, more people need to employ critical thinking to become less gullible and more sceptical of widespread ideas and influential entities, including those usually branded as reliable. 

As Thomas Sowell reminds us, “Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly – and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.”

The fallout

In all this time, no one ever explained why prolonging the period of non-exposure was always better than meeting the virus sooner, gaining immunity, and getting over it. Hospitals were not strained. Indeed, with the inexplicable shutdown of medical services for diagnostics and elective surgeries, hospitals in, say, Texas were empty for months. Healthcare spending collapsed. 

Life was cancelled. Businesses destroyed. Events planned with years of investment and care were brushed aside. The message was: your property is not your own. Your events are not yours. Your decisions are subject to our will. We know better than you. And all those credentialed experts explaining otherwise, must be muzzled and deplatformed. Of course, don’t debate them, as we have no facts on our side, just fear and pandemic pyrotechnics.

Key message, though you are a human and can ski, parachute jump, start businesses, go on multi-day fasts, engage in sexual congress, you cannot take risks with your own free will over a mild pathogen virtually every healthy person’s immune system could shrug off. 

Our political masters and their pharmaceutical financiers were clear: our judgment is always better than yours. We will override anything about your bodily autonomy and choices that are inconsistent with our perceptions of the common good, and our bottomless greed. We have ice cream cones to beguile kids to get “jabbed” though they are at virtually no risk, and internment camp equivalents being prepared in so called “free” societies for the intransigent. 

This messaging and this practice is inconsistent with a flourishing human life, which requires freedom of choice above all. It also requires the security of property and contracts. It presumes that if we legally generate plans and create businesses and build societies, those human outputs of creativity and enterprise cannot be arbitrarily cancelled by force by a power outside of our will. Those are the presumptions of a civilised society; these are conditions for the free economies we spoke of. Anything else leads to barbarism and that is exactly where the mass closures got us on the slippery slope to. 

We fundamentally undermined the civil liberties and rights of global youth in developed countries, not to mention the impact in many developing countries. For formative and impressionable youngsters, it was utter trauma, leading to emotional and mental reprogramming. They learned all the wrong lessons: they are not in charge of their lives; someone else is. The only way to get on is to figure out the system and play along. 

We now see epic learning loss, psychological shock, substance abuse, decline in health, plummeting investor confidence, a shrinkage of savings reflecting less interest in the future, and a dramatic decline in public participation in what used to be stimulating life events: church, theatre, museums, libraries, fares, symphonies, ballets, theme parks, and so on. When people do participate, they are almost desperate to do so. But the investments that are needed to make this part of the fabric of our lives have been undermined. The confidence to underwrite the expression of our human aptitudes has been rattled.

In the leading cultural hubs in the world, attendance in general is down by roughly half and this is starving these venues of money. Most of the big institutions in large cities like New York, such as Broadway and the Met, are on life support. What COVID didn’t do, the Woke mania is taking care of, by demanding to filter expression of artistic and creative sentiments through a minority ideology that wishes to censor and dominate in different, but no less pernicious ways. Stifling our sense of taste and aesthetic appreciation, leading symphony halls have a third empty seats despite lowering prices. 

It seems remarkable that this multi-year war against basic liberty has come to this. And yet it should not be a surprise. All ideology aside, you simply cannot maintain much less cultivate a civilised life when governments, in combination with the scavengers in the media and large corporations, treat their citizens like lab rats in a science experiment, for their profit. And so we have to cultivate our critical faculties rather than letting deception and deceit suck away the essential vibrancy of the human spirit, as well as the will to advance those unalienable rights the American founders spoke of, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

(The writer is the founder and CEO of EPL Global and founder of Sensei Lanka, a global consultant with over 30 years strategic leadership experience and now, since March 2020, a globally recognised COVID researcher and commentator.)