☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Sunday, September 11, 2022 ☙ CONSPIRACY FACTS 🦠
Good morning, C&C, it’s September 11th, the grim anniversary of the deaths of many Americans on 9/11/2001. It’s a time to reflect about how honest the government is, and what the erosion in honesty and trust has cost us. Not in dollars, silly. And a great roundup for you today, with even more narrative-busting news.
🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
💉 Apropos for the September 11th anniversary, the following headline appeared in the Federalist yesterday:
The headline is a trifle misleading; of COURSE the CDC didn’t actually “admit” anything. Haha, that would REALLY be something. But its latest figures show MUCH higher rates of myocarditis occurring in post-jabbed young people than the CDC originally claimed.
Whereas it began by claiming last year that the incidence of the permanent side-effect was ‘only’ between 42 and 75 per million for children under 17 (depending on age), the agency’s latest figures reveal that the incidence is actually much higher, between 137 and 188 per million — about three times more common than originally claimed.
The Federalist lists a bunch of scientists and doctors who were canceled from social media for claiming that myocarditis was much more common than the CDC originally said. That’s how science works.
Why do I say the reveal is apropos for today’s anniversary? It got me thinking about how there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there about 9/11, where folks argue that the heinous attack was really schemed up by the Deep State or something, and not that turbaned patsy Osama Bin Laden. Until lately, I never gave those theories a moment’s consideration, except maybe to reflect cheerfully about how even smart people can believe the weirdest stuff, like the Flat Earthers, or the Moon Landing Deniers.
But now that I’ve survived the Great Covid Fear Pandemic where, over only 18 months, budding conspiracy theories have regularly bloomed into conspiracy facts faster than fields of wildflowers in springtime. The truth is, I’ve realized that the only reason I believe the 9/11 attacks were planned by OBL is because the government and the media said so. Congress even published a book-length report about it, which I read completely un-skeptically at the time.
But now, I have LIVED the awful fact that the government and the media have been the LEAST reliable sources of information about covid — and a large swath of other topics — over the last couple years.
I’m not saying I’m ready to leap headlong into the 9/11 Truther movement or anything. But I’m just saying.
I don’t know if it’s the ebbing of Christian values or what, but society used to place a significant premium on telling the truth, and a tangible penalty on lying. Now, officials routinely lie with impunity, with no ill effects. Changing your official story is a good thing, it’s not even flip-flopping any more, it’s pivoting.
Having some economics background, I’m painfully aware of the extraordinary “transaction costs” imposed on a low-trust society. I feel kind of like I’m trapped in the tilt-a-whirl, and just as it starts spinning up, I’m beginning to realize it wasn’t such a good idea to get on in the first place. Can I get off this ride, or is it too late now?