Crisis of Confidence

Public Health, Technocracy, and the Covid Debacle

Once upon a Christmas Dinner in 2019, I enjoyed the warmth and hospitality of a friend of mine and his mother who welcomed me into their home for the holiday that year. After dinner, I recall briefly sharing my hopes for the upcoming decade with them. Perhaps the Twenties would be a decade of cultural renaissance—a time of awakening to new possibilities of inspiration, artistic expression, social conscience, and elevated aspirations for humanity. Perhaps we were about to live through a decade of mind expansion and soulful rebirth into the full potentials of this human life—a flowering of integrity, compassion, understanding, and a newfound sense of purpose. Perhaps future generations would look back on the Twenties with fondness, respect, and awe for what we brought forth as a people during this time.

Well, I think it’s been long enough to get a sense of what the Twenties are actually shaping up to be. As 2023 gets off to a cracking start, the only question is to select the descriptive adjective that properly captures our cultural life during this time. I’ve been tossing around a few playful possibilities in my mind: The Boring Twenties would rhyme with last century’s Roaring Twenties in a satisfying way, but this is not a boring decade. Monikers such as the Grinding Twenties, the Blinding Twenties, the Bitter Twenties, the Grieving Twenties, the Galling Twenties, the Fuming Twenties, or the Woeful Twenties seem more accurate.

Yet still I hold out hope that the Twenties will eventually emerge as a decade of increased insight, awareness, discernment, clarity, and dare I say it: sovereignty. The Sovereign Twenties has a good ring to it. If so, this sovereignty will be dearly bought at the price of much grief, trauma, and disillusionment. For millions of us, this has already been the case. Our illusions were shattered, our faith in institutions decimated, as well as much of our faith and trust in our fellow man.

But we have gained a new degree of clarity, awareness, and resolve. The great teacher has been the covid response. It laid bare the relationship between the rulers and the ruled for those able to see it.

The Problem with Public Health

The parameters of this relationship can be discerned by dissecting the philosophical foundations of public health, and then recognizing its application to all other areas of rulership. The calamitous global covid response highlighted the centrality of public health in our collective relationship with our rulers. The mindset underlying our prevailing public health regime is the Rosetta Stone necessary to translate the events of the Twenties so far, and to shed light on the broader relationship in which we, the ruled, find ourselves relative to our rulers.

The basic concept of public health is essentially an admirable one. The goals of the public health project are to improve the health and wellbeing of mankind on a macro scale by providing coordinated information and action unavailable through individual or small-scale efforts. These laudable objectives are central to the collective dream of a good society—the crowning achievement of our enlightened times. Yet beneath and behind this vision lurks the undoing of the whole venerable enterprise: an instrumentalist ethos that underlies public health as a social project. It is not necessary that public health operate according to an instrumentalist ethos—but when it does, public health itself becomes an instrument of oppression.

Put succinctly, an instrumentalist ethos states that the ends justify the means. In other words, even if the ends sought after are moral, the means by which those ends are achieved need not be. In its current form, public health seeks to induce human beings to behave in particular ways deemed beneficial by policy makers. If those desired behaviors can be achieved at higher rates of compliance by lying to the people than by telling them the truth, then an instrumentalist ethos will recommend lying to the people.

By way of example, the mind of a modern public health official might work like this: Suppose an infectious disease exists that kills one person out of every thousand. If the disease fully spreads in a population of one million, it will lead to one thousand deaths. However, if the general public can be convinced to take extraordinary action to contain the spread, perhaps the disease will only spread to half a million people, and only 500 people will die. The problem is, if people are aware that they have only a 0.1% (one-in-a-thousand) chance of dying from the disease, almost none of them will take extraordinary action, and it will spread to all one million. If, on the other hand, the people can be misled into believing they run a 10% chance of dying (one-in-ten), almost all of them will take extraordinary action, and the death count will be lower.

So the formula is simple: scare people as much as you possibly can, even if you have to grossly misrepresent the degree of risk they actually face. This means deceiving them, but since the ends are moral (fewer deaths), the means (lying and deceiving) are also moral, since the ends justify the means. The people are instruments of the policy rather than moral agents in and of themselves, and like any instrument, they are to be manipulated intentionally to produce that desired result.

To provide another hypothetical example, suppose there is a prophylactic treatment for that disease, such as a vaccine, effective enough to reduce the death count from 1,000 people per million to 500 people per million if the entire million took the prophylaxis. (Rest assured, this is a purely hypothetical thought experiment with arbitrary numbers. I’m not attempting to map this example onto covid or any other specific real-world example.) The downside is that the prophylaxis kills one out of every 10,000 people (by a mechanism unrelated to that of the disease itself). So if no one takes the treatment, 1,000 people will die, but if everyone takes the treatment, 500 people will die of the disease, and 100 people will die from the treatment. This is a net gain of 400 lives, but it required 100 unlucky people to sacrifice their lives. (With the disease only killing one-in-a-thousand, there is a 90% chance every one of these 100 people would have survived the actual disease, and a 10% chance that all but one of them would have survived.)

In the above scenario, the risk factor for the disease and the vaccine are different. Perhaps the disease does not randomly kill 0.1% of people, but kills only the 0.1% of people with the weakest health profile. 99.9% of people are likely to survive the disease, and most of these people know they are likely to survive it, because their health profile does not make them particularly vulnerable to it. But these people, at no real risk from the disease, are now asked to subject themselves to a second risk factor (the vaccine) that will kill 0.01% of them, and the risk factors for the vaccine are unknown.

How then to convince people to take the vaccine? In addition to convincing them the disease is far more deadly than it really is, they need to be convinced the treatment is far safer than it really is. If possible, the people should be convinced the treatment is 100% safe, and doesn’t kill anybody. Another way to get people to comply is to induce them to obey public health as a civic duty and disregard their own personal interest. Like good soldiers, it will be irrelevant to them whether they are being manipulated and deceived; they will be willing to lay down their own lives if that is what the war effort requires.

This hypothetical scenario demonstrates how an under an instrumentalist ethos, the primary business of public health becomes the manipulation of public perception by whatever means necessary to induce the desired behaviors to achieve the goal of saving 400 lives.

“Now wait,” you might say, “why wouldn’t public health market the vaccine only to those at most risk of dying? That way, those extra 100 people who died from the vaccine wouldn’t need to die at all, and we could save 500, rather than 400 lives.”

There could be many reasons why an instrumentalist ethos would recommend marketing the vaccine to everyone. Perhaps it is believed that the vaccine will also induce immunity, and if everyone takes the vaccine the disease will be eliminated entirely, thus saving more lives over the long-term. However, even if this vaccine can neither induce immunity, nor eliminate the disease, the public health authorities might still extrapolate the calculated ends far beyond the scope of this particular disease. If the public can be convinced to submit to every single vaccine recommended by public health for every single disease for which a vaccine exists, the authorities may believe this will save the most lives in the long run. Better to remain consistent by promoting universal compliance with every available vaccine, including this one.

They may even extrapolate this policy beyond the reach of vaccines entirely. If the public health authorities calculate that in the long run, more lives are saved the more often the public follows public health recommendations, then it serves the interests of the greater good to induce obedience to all recommended vaccinations in order to entrain the public into greater obedience to all public health measures of every kind.

It could even be argued that public health is such a net benefit to society, that society will benefit the more public health is financed. If the companies making the vaccine make a lot of money (and because they in turn use their money to fund public health institutions), then if everyone takes the vaccine, the more money the vaccine company will make—and the more money will flow into public health. The more money public health has, the more recommendations they can make, and the more power they will have. Since public health is a net benefit to the good of the world, the ends of more money and power for public health are justified by the means of convincing people to take medications they don’t really need, even if a few of them die unnecessarily, in order to increase power and money for public health, and to induce still stricter obedience to public health instructions.

Can anyone actually convince themselves to take such callous actions for the benefit of their own power and aggrandizement, based on such a flimsy rationale that it’s all for the greater good? It sounds crazy doesn’t it? But I honestly believe this is the way many people in power think. I would venture to guess, for instance, that this resembles the thought process of figures such as the inestimable Dr. Anthony Fauci. He’s probably not a sociopath at all. All it takes is an intricate enough of a hall of mirrors by which to bedazzle oneself by one’s own tortured rationale—that, and an instrumentalist ethos—to justify ever more outrageous crimes to oneself while sincerely believing one is doing good in the process.

I first became aware of the instrumentalist dynamic in public health twenty years ago when the fear campaign about second-hand smoke from cigarettes was launched into full gear. From a public health standpoint, the best outcome in relation to cigarettes would be to eliminate cigarette smoking entirely. After decades of warning people about the actual risks of lung cancer and emphysema incurred by years of cigarette smoking, it became apparent that many people would continue to smoke cigarettes despite the risk. To further reduce the number of cigarette smokers, public health authorities needed to convince people that the second-hand smoke from other people could kill you even if you didn’t smoke yourself. This would cause non-smokers to view smokers as reckless murderers, thus increasing the negative consequences of smoking. By turning non-smokers against smokers with hatred and disdain, overall rates of smoking could be reduced due to the negative social consequences of continuing to smoke.

Utilizing simple observations from daily life, it can be ascertained that it generally takes about 30 years of chronic smoking to produce lung cancer, and that many chronic smokers never develop lung cancer at all. At 20 cigarettes (one pack) per day for 30 years, this translates to over 200,000 cigarettes, inhaled directly into the lungs at high concentrations. It takes a lot of tobacco smoke to cause cancer.

It was clear to me 20 years ago, as it is now, that no amount of second-hand smoke could ever be inhaled by a non-smoker to get anywhere near the amount needed to cause lung cancer, except perhaps in exceedingly rare cases. Yet the fear campaign launched by the public health authorities was successful in angering and terrifying people into believing that exposure to trace amounts of second-hand smoke was endangering their lives. As result, smoking was banned from many places in public life, both indoors and outdoors, and cigarette smokers became shunned and hated. I have no doubt that this has contributed to the decline in smoking rates over the past twenty years, and that this in turn has reduced lung cancer rates accordingly, which has probably saved thousands of lives.

Most people would probably conclude that even if second-hand smoke was never really dangerous to non-smokers, the campaign to convince people otherwise was the right thing to do if it led to reduced rates of smoking and fewer lung cancer deaths. In addition, non-smokers get to breathe fresher air in more places as a result of cigarettes being banned, so there is an additional benefit. So why not lie, exaggerate, and shame people in order to save lives and shape society as desired?

If the logic of the above formula speaks to you—then congratulations—you are on your way to adopting an instrumentalist ethos of ends-justify-the-means. As such, it should be easy to understand how this ethos could be widely held by the public health authorities.

Do you remember how our public health authorities told us not to wear masks because they would not keep us from getting covid? And do you remember how later they said they were lying about that because there weren’t enough masks available at the time for everyone to have one, and they wanted to make sure the hospitals wouldn’t run out of masks? And do you remember when they told us that we needed to wear two masks, not one? And then how later they told us that masks had never worked to prevent against covid after all? And do you remember how, after all of this, to this very day, we still hear some public health authorities recommend that we wear masks anyway, because “case numbers are high?”

It’s easy to think of reasons why public health authorities would want people wearing masks even if masks do nothing to prevent covid transmission. Here are some: By subjecting people to the sight of everyone wearing masks, fear levels were enhanced. The higher the fear level, the higher the degree of compliance with public health orders could be achieved. Later, the authorities attempted to use masks as a lever to induce people to take the vaccine, by allowing people to remove the uncomfortable masks if they provided proof of vaccination. And generally speaking, if people could be entrained into the obedience of mask-wearing, and to shame and vilify those who didn’t, this would promote further obedience for compliance with any other public health directives issued.

Here is a breakdown of the public health formula:

1.       I (the policy maker) wish the masses of people to behave in certain ways.

2.       To achieve this, I must find ways to increase levels of obedience to my directives.

3.       Thus, increased obedience to my directives is my goal.

4.       Increased fear will result in increased obedience, so I will use that.

5.       Increased obedience will also occur if I can get people to believe my directives will provide them with more protection than they actually will. Therefore I will exaggerate the efficacy of my recommendations.

6.       Socially punishing those who do not obey will also result in increased obedience, so I will encourage people to condemn, vilify, and exclude those who do not obey through media campaigns.

7.       Free access to information and critical analysis will result in reduced obedience, because people will realize that I have exaggerated the danger they are in, and that I have also exaggerated the level of protection conferred by my directives.

8.       Therefore, I must silence dissent through a coordinated censorship campaign.

Now, as the public health authority, it may be the case that I am sometimes mistaken in the overall public benefit of my directives. Whenever this is the case, it must be concealed. Why? Because if discovered, it will erode future obedience to my other directives. Because I believe my directives will produce better results on the whole for society if always obeyed (even though sometimes these directives do not produce better results), my overall goal is to induce as much obedience to my directives as possible, at all times.

Thus we arrive where we are at: The primary mission of public health is to use every means at its disposal to produce obedience to public health directives. It is a self-justifying proposal. Not only are the means justified by the ends of improved public health, the means are also justified by the ends of increased obedience.

The means employed to achieve all of this are those recommended by social psychology, irrespective of what is actually true: wielding fear as a weapon, exaggerating the benefits of what I recommend, censoring opposing views, concealing my failures and deceptions, and turning people against the non-compliant.

Behind the scenes, hidden from the public eye, the public health authorities will privately revise their strategies for improving public health—the ostensible noble end that justifies the lies and manipulations behind the obedience agenda. They will get some things wrong, try to gather more data, and come up with more innovative ideas about how a controlled and obedient people can be directed in their behaviors to produce better health outcomes. All of this will occur behind the cloak of censorship and secrecy to protect the reputation of public health.

Once obedience becomes the goal, secrecy and concealment is the order of the day, and truth is no barrier to the strategies deployed. What mechanisms will then exist to provide a check on corruption? Only the personal integrity of our leaders.

But suppose powerful and cynical interests exist somewhere in the world. Suppose these interests are able to observe the value of a public health apparatus designed to induce obedience and control perception? If such an apparatus could be harnessed accordingly, it would represent a formidable tool in the furtherance of the objectives of the powerful. Is it possible these interests might seek to compromise the integrity of public health leadership and steer public health policy in directions that confer them with increased power and benefit? (And is it possible that a giggling billionaire we all know and love whose name rhymes with Kill Bates may even be one of these powerful interests? Just throwing it out there.)

Technocracy, the Larger Umbrella that Encompasses Public Health

I hope I have demonstrated that a public health apparatus guided by an instrumentalist ethos and obedience for the sake of obedience is rife with the potential for corruption. But the issue we are faced with as a people extends far beyond the objectives of public health. After all, what constitutes public health? Should public health be limited in its objectives to prolongation of life, or reduced societal medical costs? Perhaps it ought to include considerations for quality of life, social equity, and economic justice. And perhaps the considerations of justice and equity are too short-sighted. A healthy public is an orderly public, one might argue. Consider all the belief systems and motivations that exist in individuals contrary to the public good. In fact, there are no limits to the scope of social engineering when public health is considered in this expansive context. What is public health if not the public good? And what is the public good if not the greater good?

This is the premise of technocracy. When the tenants of technocracy were first laid out in a deliberate way by its proponents at Columbia University in the 1930s, technocracy was succinctly defined as “the science of social engineering.” The simple premise is that a technocratic class of educated elites would be best suited to design a well-functioning system for the entire world to live by, much like the rule of a philosopher king envisioned by Plato in antiquity. The mechanism for implementing the system the technocrats designed would be that of social engineering.

Public health can be seen as a sub-project of technocracy, with induced obedience (or social engineering) as the mechanism by which greater public health is to be achieved. But the broader technocratic movement applies the same ethos to all of society, to all of humanity. Induced obedience through social engineering becomes the mechanism by which all human behavior is shaped and molded for the purposes of “the greater good.”

Recent examples from America in the Twenties show how the technocratic imperative is at play in society above and beyond the aims of public health. The first glaringly apparent example of this occurred during the George Floyd protest movement in 2020. At the time, our public health authorities reversed course 180° on their program of social distancing and declared that it was now recommended for people to gather in massive crowds all over the country to protest racism. The justification for this was that ending racism was also a public health objective, and our authorities had determined that the potential benefits of protesting racism at that time now outweighed the public health goals of “stopping the spread” of SarsCov2—until it didn’t anymore.

Another example was the establishment movement to remove Donald Trump from office, starkly displayed in the censorship and suppression of the information gleaned from Hunter Biden’s laptop, among other machinations. Our media authorities collectively determined that Biden would be a better choice for president than Trump, and that the news story about the evidence of corruption found in the contents of this laptop would help Trump and hurt Biden in the election, so the story was suppressed. Setting aside any arguments about the integrity of the 2020 election itself, it was also a commonly heard talking point in the media that it was vitally important that the public retain confidence in the integrity of our electoral system and elections. It was the perception that our elections were valid that must be protected more so than the actual validity or integrity of our elections.

As a result, it became a censorable offense merely to question the integrity of the election. Likewise, it became a censorable offense to question the efficacy or safety of masks, or to question the efficacy or safety of vaccines, or to question public health directives or statements promulgated by the CDC, or to question the integrity of Dr. Fauci or Bill Gates, or to question whether the WHO had been compromised by oligarchic pharmaceutical interests, or to question whether getting involved in the Ukraine War was a good idea, or to question whether Jeffrey Epstein was assassinated  or not, or to question how extensively the phenomenon of minor sexual abuse prevails among the ruling class, or to question the degree to which CO2 emissions impact global climate, or to question whether the imbroglio at the Capitol was truly an insurrection or a merely a riot induced with the help of agents provocateurs in the FBI.

These are merely surface-level political developments from the past few years that provide examples of the technocratic ethos. It is not necessary to reach conclusions about whether these forbidden questions are valid in their critiques or not. The mere fact that the questions themselves were/are forbidden lays bare the technocratic ethos of perception management and induced obedience to authority.

The Technocratic Worldview

But perhaps all of this is not a bad thing. Perhaps the technocratic minds and policy-makers that shape our perception and obedience are truly guiding human civilization toward the greater good. According to the instrumentalist ethos, even if they need to lie to us from time to time, even if they need to censor and suppress certain sources of information, it is all for the better—as long as worldviews and behaviors are produced in the masses that contribute to a safer, more harmonious world overall.

But how do we know? How do we know whether the unseen hands behind the realities crafted for us are shaping a world that will actually be better for everyone? Who will be the winners and losers in this world? Will you or I end up getting a better shake in the future they create, or will my needs and values be sacrificed for the enrichment and flourishing of others? Will yours?

And what if the prevailing view of our technocratic rulers is actually misguided? It may be the case that these rulers sincerely believe they are creating a better world, but that their view of how the world works is fundamentally out of step with how the world actually works. It may be that the ends they envision will actually make the world a worse place to live in. They might not be able to achieve the utopia they imagine. Their vision of a controllable, mechanized, programmable materialistic world may be fundamentally unattainable. The complex forces of intelligence in natural processes may be far beyond the capacities of genetic, computer, or social engineering to control.

That is my belief. Again, the covid response of the past few years is the teacher that provides us the clues and evidence we need. Enough time has gone by to have revealed these responses as catastrophic. How many boosters are we supposed to wait for before the covid vaccines achieve what we were promised? What did the lockdowns and social distancing achieve—other than economic and social devastation? What did the masks achieve? We never stopped the spread. Everyone got covid. It became clear to me that the processes of disease and immunity are far more advanced in complexity than our technocratic societal engineers believed them to be (if indeed, their whole response was not motivated primarily by social control, pharmaceutical profits, and concentration of power and wealth than by any real hopes of efficacy).

For a deeper dive into the prevailing mindset and worldview of the presiding technocrats attempting global rule, please refer to my article Understanding Technocracy. I will merely summarize here: The illuminated minds of our technocratic superiors see the world as a solvable math equation. There is no area of life that cannot be improved by bringing it under an agenda of control. The basic formula of more data, better processing power, and more sophisticated technology—compounded exponentially with centralized execution—will yield limitless improvements in life systems, economic systems, human systems, and ultimately, all systems. There is no part of reality that cannot be understood in terms of a system and thereby improved through intentional manipulation.

An old-fashioned way of describing this kind of thinking is captured in the term “God Complex.” This is nakedly proclaimed by the prevailing luminaries of technocratic thought such as Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Noah Harari. Our elites are destined to become gods in every meaningful sense of the word, as are the systems of artificial intelligence they champion. So they believe.

More sober minds witness a reckless megalomaniacal process at work in this attitude. Moreover, the instrumentalist ethos born of their arrogance can be identified as nothing less than narcissistic grandiosity at the pinnacle of hubris. Moreover, the instrumentalist ethos is itself sociopathic and amoral, as are the artificial intelligence processes it seeks to enshrine at the apex of power. Absent a spiritual or moral sensibility and consciousness, the arms of power are apt to treat any human being (or any being of any kind) as a mere object to be manipulated for the purpose of some other end. No crime is impermissible.

Public Health at All Costs

I have engaged in a number of conversations with intelligent, moral people who defend the covid public health response. There are many flavors of defense possible, but the defense I find most interesting, and which I believe strikes near the heart of this whole debacle, is the one I summarize as “Public Health At All Costs.” In these conversations, I would present arguments against the covid response such as the ones I laid out in my previous articles What to Make of Covid and the Lockdowns, and Why Are They Doing This? When my arguments demonstrated that the governmental and institutional responses were indefensible, the response I would receive sounded something like this:

“If what you’re saying is true, Relendra, then almost every one of our governments and public health institutions must be completely corrupt!”

“Yes,” I would reply, “These are all captured institutions. They’ve betrayed the public trust. The evidence of that must be clear by now.”

“But if that’s true, then there’s no hope for us!” would come the response. “We have to be able to trust public health!”

“I love the idea of public health,” I would respond, “but these institutions are now entirely bankrupt. We can’t rely on them anymore.”

“Well, I just can’t go there,” would come the final denouement. “You sound like one of those Trumpers who believe the election was stolen!”

End of conversation.

It’s striking that pointing out the blatant corruption of our public health regime is dismissed by comparing it to questioning the legitimacy of the recent election. Whereas the bankruptcy of global public health is now glaringly obvious, and US election integrity is merely shadowy and vague, the two issues are actually quite similar. The whole rationale we’re offered about why we’re not allowed to question the vote-tabulation process in our elections is because this would weaken people’s belief in democracy. Democracy can’t function if people don’t believe the election results. And public health can’t function if people don’t believe the public health authorities are honest. Therefore we must believe the official election results no matter what, and we must believe whatever our public health authorities say, no matter what.

Well, that system would work well in a world in which it were impossible for elections to be rigged, or a world in which it were impossible for public health authorities to be dishonest. But what if we lived in a world in which it were actually possible for an oligarchy or dictatorship to rig an election (history shows we indeed live in that world) or for public health authorities to be captured by oligarchic financial interests (history shows we live in that world too).

If we lived in the world we live in, democratic governments would need to assure the people their elections are legitimate through meticulous transparency, and by welcoming challenges to the integrity of the electoral process—not by censoring the challengers and branding them as terrorists. Likewise, if we lived in the world we live in, our public health authorities would need to establish their credibility by welcoming challenges to their data, methods, and recommendations, and by publicly reviewing their conclusions (and funding sources) with meticulous transparency—not by censoring their challengers and branding them as terrorists. Furthermore, if we lived in the world we live in, and our major press outlets did not insist on holding our elections and public health officials accountable to this needed transparency, we might need to consider the possibility that our media outlets were captured by the very same oligarchic interests that captured public health and the electoral process.

By the by, didn’t I just hear something about how federal agents are embedded in Twitter and other social media companies, censoring posts by users who contradict claims about public health, elections, and other statements of the establishment press our government doesn’t want people to believe? Probably not… I probably just imagined it. And even if it were true, I’m sure the government is just looking out for us for our own good. It’s an impossibility that our government is corrupt and captured by the very same oligarchic interests that captured those other institutions—right? After all, we elected them… or at least the press would tell us about it… or maybe some upstanding paragon of our incorruptible public health apparatus would sound the alarm…? I suppose the day the government admits its own corruption to us will be the same day they come clean to us about icing JFK. But come on, we may have a shadow government with enough brazen gall to knock off a sitting US President and get away with it, but it’s unthinkable that an outfit like that would actually go as far as to rig some voting machines. Oh wait…

The point here is, if we insisted on safeguards and accountability processes for our public institutions, we might undermine public faith in democracy and public health, not to mention the media. Since democracy and public health can’t work without the public trusting that they work, we have no choice but to believe that they work, no matter what. That’s the only chance we have of democracy and public health still existing in our society—to believe in their integrity regardless of mounting evidence to the contrary. If we could only believe in them hard enough, we might be able to convince ourselves they still exist—and that would be far more pleasant than awakening to the bleak reality that they do not.

We need to believe the consensus of our major press outlets as well, for the same reason. Even if there’s only as little as a 1% chance that we still have a functioning democracy, public health apparatus, and a free press, we must believe we still have them with 100% vigor. If the 99% chance that we live in a hopelessly corrupt oligarchy is true, we’re screwed anyway. But if that 1% chance that we can trust our leaders is actually true, we can only keep democracy and public health alive by never questioning either of them ever again.

It is my hope that the utter folly of such an approach is demonstrable on its face.

If we can no longer trust our public health officials, or our elections, or our press, it does not mean all hope is lost. Most societies in the history of human civilization did not have public health, nor free elections, nor a trustworthy establishment press. If it turns out we are now one of them again, it’s okay, there’s still hope for us. We can rebuild. Every society on Earth that ever had free elections, or a trustworthy press, or honest public health authorities, grew from a society that did not have such things.

In fact, the primary condition that would guarantee we cannot have such things is if we have already lost them—but cannot admit it to ourselves because we’re too afraid to look and find out. So let’s have a look and find out. The truth will set you free, even if it breaks your heart first. If these institutions are well and healthy, then taking a good long look at them to make sure of it will only reveal that they are well and healthy. Won’t that be reassuring?

We really ought to know. Especially when it comes to public health. After all, when you get right down to it, it’s actually your own health that’s on the line here. And as Count Rugen wisely said in the Princess Bride, “If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything.”