{"id":197161,"date":"2021-10-11T12:01:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T11:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=197161"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:08:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:08:28","slug":"the-cult-of-the-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/the-cult-of-the-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cult of the Vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“The Jab” Is Just the Latest Story to Be Reported as Mantra<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PnVAVDpTwEk<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

8 Oct 2021 – <\/em>Yesterday, I ran a story that had nothing to do with vaccines, about the seeming delay of the development of a drug<\/a>\u00a0called molnupiravir (see the above segment with the gracious hosts of\u00a0The Hill: Rising<\/em>\u00a0for more). In the time it took to report and write that piece, conventional wisdom turned against the drug, which is now suspected of ivermectinism and other deviationist, anti-vax tendencies, in the latest iteration of our most recent collective national mania \u2014 the Cult of the Vaccine.The speed of the change was incredible. Just a week ago, on October 1st, the pharmaceutical giant Merck issued a terse\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0that quickly became big news. Molnupiravir, an experimental antiviral drug, \u201creduced the risk of hospitalization or death\u201d of Covid-19 patients by as much as 50%, according to a study.<\/p>\n

The stories that rushed out in the ensuing minutes and hours were almost uniformly positive.\u00a0AP\u00a0<\/em>called<\/a>\u00a0the news a \u201cpotentially major advance in efforts to fight the pandemic,\u201d while\u00a0National Geographic\u00a0<\/em>quoted<\/a>\u00a0a Yale specialist saying, \u201cHaving a pill that would be easy for people to take at home would be terrific.\u201d Another interesting early reaction came from\u00a0Time:<\/em><\/p>\n

Vaccines will be the way out of the pandemic, but not everyone around the world is\u00a0immunized<\/a>\u00a0yet, and the shots aren\u2019t 100% effective in protecting people from getting infected with the COVID-19 virus. So antiviral drug treatments will be key to making sure that people who do get infected don\u2019t get severely ill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is what news looks like before propagandists get their hands on it.\u00a0Time\u00a0<\/em>writer Alice Park\u2019s lede was sensible and clear. If molnupiravir works \u2014 a big if, incidentally \u2014 it\u2019s good news for everyone, since not everyone is immunized, and the vaccines aren\u2019t 100% effective anyway. As even\u00a0Vox\u00a0<\/em>put it\u00a0initially<\/a>, molnupiravir could \u201chelp compensate for persistent gaps in Covid-19 vaccination coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a day, though, the tone of coverage turned. Writers began stressing a\u00a0Yeah, but\u00a0<\/em>approach, as in, \u201cAny new treatment is of course good,\u00a0but<\/em>\u00a0get your fucking shot.\u201d A CNN lede\u00a0read<\/a>, \u201cA\u00a0pill that could potentially treat\u00a0Covid-19 is a \u2018game-changer,\u2019 but experts are emphasizing that it\u2019s not an alternative to vaccinations.\u201d The\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>went with<\/a>, \u201cHealth officials said the drug could provide an effective way to treat Covid-19, but stressed that vaccines remained the best tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re thinking it was only a matter of time before the mere fact of molnupiravir\u2019s existence would be pitched in headlines as actual bad news, you\u2019re not wrong:\u00a0Marketwatch\u00a0<\/em>came out with<\/a>\u00a0\u201c\u2018It\u2019s not a magic pill\u2019: What Merck\u2019s antiviral pill could mean for vaccine hesitancy\u201d the same day Merck issued its release. The piece came out before we knew much of anything concrete about the drug\u2019s effectiveness, let alone whether it was \u201cmagic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bloomberg\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>morose \u201cNo, the Merck pill won\u2019t end the pandemic<\/a>\u201d was released on October 2nd, i.e. one whole day after the first encouraging news of a possibleauxiliary treatmentwhose most ardent supporters never claimed would end the pandemic. This article said the pill might be cause to celebrate, but warned its emergence \u201cshouldn\u2019t be cause for complacency when it comes to\u00a0the most effective tool to end this pandemic: vaccines.\u201d\u00a0Bloomberg<\/em>\u00a0randomly went on to remind readers that the unrelated drug ivermectin is a \u201chorse de-worming agent,\u201d before adding that if molnupiravir ends up \u201cbeing viewed as a solution for those who refuse to vaccinate,\u201d the \u201cCovid virus will continue to persist.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, it took less than 24 hours for the drug \u2014 barely tested, let alone released yet \u2014 to be accused of prolonging the pandemic. By the third day, mentions of molnupiravir in news reports nearly all came affixed to stern reminders of its place beneath vaccines in the medical hierarchy, as in the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>explaining<\/a>\u00a0that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who initially told reporters the new drug was \u201cimpressive,\u201d now \u201cwarned that Americans should not wait to be vaccinated because they believe they can take the pill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the start of the Trump years, we\u2019ve been introduced to a new kind of news story, which assumes adults can\u2019t handle multiple ideas at once, and has reporters frantically wrapping facts deemed dangerous, unorthodox, or even just insufficiently obvious in layers of disclaimers. The fear of uncontrolled audience brain-drift is now so great that even offhand references must come swaddled in these journalistic Surgeon General\u2019s warnings, which is why whenever we read anything now, we almost always end up fighting through nests of phrases like \u201cthe debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab<\/a>\u201d in order to get to whatever the author\u2019s main point might be.<\/p>\n

This lunacy started with the\u00a0Great Lie Debate of 2016<\/a>, when reporters and editors spent months publicly anguishing over whether to use \u201clie\u201d in headlines of Donald Trump stories, then\u00a0loudly<\/a>\u00a0congratulated<\/a>\u00a0themselves once they decided to do it. The most histrionic offender was the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, previously famous for teaching readers to digest news in code (\u201che claimed\u201d for years was\u00a0Times<\/em>-ese for \u201cfull of shit\u201d) but now reasoned a \u201cmore muscular terminology,\u201d connoting \u201ca certain moral opprobrium,\u201d was needed to distinguish the \u201cdissembling\u201d of a politician like Bill Clinton from Trump\u2019s whoppers. \u201cI did not have sexual relations with that woman\u201d could be mere falsehood, but \u201cI will build a great great wall\u201d required language that \u201cstands apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

The key term was\u00a0moral opprobrium<\/em>. Moralizing was exactly what journalists were once trained not to do, at least outside the op-ed page, but it soon became a central part of the job. When they used they word \u201clie,\u201d the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>explained, they wanted us to know that was because \u201cfrom the childhood schoolyard to the grave, this is a word neither used\u00a0nor taken lightly<\/strong>.\u201d Put another way, the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>didn\u2019t want people reading about something Donald Trump said, grasping that it was a lie, and, say, chuckling about how ridiculous it was. If the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0sent the word \u201clie\u201d up the flagpole, they now expected an appropriately solemn salute.<\/p>\n

This was the beginning of an era in which editors became convinced that all earth\u2019s problems derived from populations failing to accept reports as Talmudic law. It couldn\u2019t be people were just tuning out papers for a hundred different reasons, including sheer boredom. It had to be that their traditional work product was just too damned subtle. The only way to avoid the certain evil of audiences engaging in unsupervised pondering over information was to eliminate all possibility of subtext, through a new communication style that was 100% literal and didactic. Everyone would get the same news and also be instructed, often mid-sentence, on how to respond.<\/p>\n

At first this expressed itself via regurgitation of Approved Unambiguous Phraseology\u2122 handed down from official or law enforcement sources, like \u201cRussia\u2019s election interference activities,\u201d e.g. \u201cPage\u2019s alleged coordination with Russia\u2019s election interference activities<\/a>.\u201d However, it wasn\u2019t long before the stage-direction factor in coverage went berserk, as I\u00a0noted last year<\/a>\u00a0after this question by Anderson Cooper in a presidential debate:<\/p>\n

COOPER: Mr. Vice President, President Trump has\u00a0falsely<\/strong>\u00a0accused your son of doing something wrong while serving on a company board in\u00a0Ukraine<\/a>. I want to point out there\u2019s\u00a0no evidence of wrongdoing<\/strong>\u00a0by either one of you.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The phrase, \u201cno evidence of wrongdoing,\u201d was a mandatory add last year in all coverage involving Ukraine, Joe Biden, and Hunter Biden, from the\u00a0Guardian<\/a>\u00a0(\u201c<\/em>No evidence the younger Biden did anything illegal\u201d) to\u00a0CNBC<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cThere is no evidence that Trump or Giuliani has produced which shows that\u00a0Hunter Biden<\/a>\u00a0was engaged in wrongdoing\u201d) to\u00a0Newsweek<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(\u201c<\/em>Although there is no evidence of illegal wrongdoing by the Bidens in those dealings\u201d) to\u00a0NBC<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cNo evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Biden\u201d) to\u00a0AP<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cThere has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the vice president or his son\u201d) to the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>,\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a>,\u00a0Axios<\/a><\/em>, and countless others.<\/p>\n

The language was absurd on multiple levels, beginning with its incorrectness \u2014 unless they were talking purely about a legal definition, the issue of whether or not there was \u201cwrongdoing\u201d in Hunter Biden accepting a\u00a0no-show $50,000-a-month job<\/a>\u00a0from a crooked Ukrainian energy firm was a matter for readers to decide, not an issue of fact. Still, a lot of people not only swallowed it, but vomited these and other terms back up again, over and over, on social media, or to their friends and family, or to anyone at all, in what became a new way for a certain kind of person to relate to the world.<\/p>\n

As a student in the Soviet Union I noticed subscribers to what Russians called the\u00a0sovok\u00a0<\/em>mindset talked in interminable strings of\u00a0pogovorki,\u00a0<\/em>i.e goofball proverbs or aphorisms you\u2019d heard a million times before (\u201cHe who takes no risk, drinks no champagne,\u201d or \u201cWork isn\u2019t a wolf, it won\u2019t run off into the woods,\u201d etc). This was a learned defense mechanism, adopted by a people who\u2019d found out the hard way that anyone caught not speaking nonstop nonsense could be suspected of harboring original thoughts. Voluble stupidity is a great disguise in a society where silence is suspect.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re similarly becoming a nation of totalitarian nitwits, speaking in a borrowed lexicon of mandatory phrases and smelling heresy in anyone who doesn\u2019t. This cult reflex was bad during the Russiagate years, but it\u2019s gone into overdrive since the arrival of COVID. The CNN writer who thinks it\u2019s necessary to put a disclaimer in the lede of a story about molnupiravir, of all things, is basically claiming he or she is afraid a theoretical unvaccinated person might otherwise read the story and be encouraged to not take the vaccine.<\/p>\n

Except, if that theoretical unvaccinated person could be convinced by anything CNN said or did, they\u2019d have already gotten the shot, because the network runs ten million stories a day\u00a0directly imploring people<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0get vaccinated<\/a>\u00a0or die. News flash: the instinct to armor-plate even unrelated news subjects with layer after layer of insistent vaccine dogma is not for the non-immunized, who mostly don\u2019t watch outlets like CNN or read the\u00a0New York Times.\u00a0<\/em>Outlets apply that neurotic messaging for their own target audiences, who\u2019ve been trained to live in terror of un-contextualized content, which everyone knows leads to Trump, fascism, and death.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d be the last person to claim there aren\u2019t dumb people out there in America, but at least the audiences of channels like Fox and OAN know that content has been designed for them.\u00a0<\/em>The people gobbling down these pieces by\u00a0Bloomberg\u00a0<\/em>and the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>that have the journalistic equivalent of child-proof caps on every paragraph that even parenthetically mentions COVID really believe that content has been dumbed down for some other person. They think it\u2019s\u00a0someone else<\/em>\u00a0who can\u2019t handle news that vaccines work and thatthere also might be a pill that treats the disease, without freaking out or coming to politically unsafe conclusions. So they put up with being talked to like children \u2014 demand it, even. Which is nuts. Right? It is nuts, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Matthew C. Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for <\/em>Rolling Stone, author of several books, a winner of the National Magazine Award for commentary<\/em>, co-host of <\/em>Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on <\/em>Substack.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 taibbi.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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