The great Coleman Hughes sent a pained email. Like many Americans angry about various stupid and sinister government Covid policies, he was now feeling the gravitational pull of a warbly-voiced political outsider from a family of consummate political insiders. He was, of course, starting to fall for Mr. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To be clear, this wasn’t a full-throated
Coleman gets so many of the basics wrong. Where do I even start?
1. "The vaccine companies can't be held liable." Well, how does Coleman square that with the fact that RFK Jr is currently suing Merck ? BTW, it's a frivolous lawsuit, as you'd expect.
2. The question of perverse incentives. (Paraphrasing here) "well, the FDA is basically funded by Pharma so how can we trust them?" Moynihan's response was to talk about how the FDA is actually too restrictive, especially with diabetes stuff, and that's a fair reply. But here's a more detailed answer.
When pharma companies submit requests to the FDA, for example to get approval on a drug, or a license agreement, etc, they have to pay fees. Those fees fund the FDA's work. It saves the taxpayers money. Also, 80% of new drug applications are rejected. That means a pharma company now has to pay another fee to submit a new application. So, if Pharma was in bed with the FDA, why is that drug approval number so low? 1 in 5 drug applications are rejected.
3. Coleman also talked about how the CDC and NIH, etc. were not acting as "neutral referees of information, and any skepticism was met with making you a non-person." (during COVID)
What the fuck is this? A non-person? Jesus Christ. But okay, let's explore the first part. "Neutral referees of information." - THAT'S NOT THEIR JOB, MAN! Their job is to give people accurate information. It's not to sit there and debate the fucking efficacy of vaccines with someone who has a journalism degree.
4. "I dont think there's been a careful reckoning over how irrationally the vaccines were pushed upon people and coerced upon people." Yeah, I think that our public health officials did a horrendous job of messaging. They fucked up the masks thing royally from the start, and they were so afraid of ceding any territory to skeptics, that they ended up using dumb phrases like "believe the science" or whatever else. Fair enough. But horrible messaging is not the same as being a genuinely oppressive government agency. The CDC is full of awkward science nerds. Is anyone surprised they suck at messaging? Come on.
5. The idea of being a COVID contrarian is really attractive because it feeds the libertarian streak within a lot of people. But people quickly forget that we didn't know a lot of things for sure at the time. And, going back to the messaging problem, it would have been way better if public health officials had properly communicated about these changes. "Here's why we said X but now we say Y." Some people will never believe them, but what else can they do? There are plenty of things to be upset about, especially with local government's shutting down outdoor spaces and teachers unions helping to keep schools closed. These are real issues, but they're not reason to start buying into the snake oil that people like RFK Jr are selling.
Point 3 I think is a direct reference to people like Jay Bhattacharya who's was not just some journalist. He is a serious expert with a different viewpoint who faced severe professional consequences for advocating for alternatives to lockdowns and such. We can't dismiss the evidence that there was real anti-scientific actions being taken by the CDC and NIH when their views were not met with universal approval. There was also clear political meddling in the messaging making it hard to separate politics from facts. You don't have to support RFK JR or be a "Big Pharma" conspiracy theorist to see that the NIH and CDC burned a lot of their credibility during Covid.
Yeah, that goes towards my point about the messaging being horrendous. The public health stance on handling skepticism has basically been: "crush all dissent". This is a naive approach because it only fosters more skepticism.
The CDC + other agencies were terrified of the idea that some people would refuse the vaccine if they heard from folks like Alex Jones, or Tucker, or whoever else. So, in an effort to ensure the highest possible % of vaccinated citizens, they thought the right approach was to go in heavy-handed. I think that was a massive mistake that damaged their credibility.
I would also point out that the masks thing was a big part of it too. Had Fauci just said something like: "Look, in the beginning of this pandemic we need to conserve the supply of masks for healthcare workers (and other essential workers), therefore, please do not panic-buy them" he would have been treated way differently. Instead, he decided to tell people that masking was not effective, and then of course, changed his tune after the supply of masks stabilized. This is another example of the socially awkward horrible messaging that damaged the credibility of the experts.
- when a scientist looks at your shoes when talking to you - socially awkward
- when a scientist goes on and on about some detail, when no one else is interested - socially awkward
- When a scientist lies to millions of trusting citizens, because that scientist believes those citizens are too stupid and irresponsible to be trusted with the truth, even though not knowing the truth could put their lives at risk - socially awkward
The Federal Government ended up spending around $4.5T on Covid response (1). I believe the mask-lying happened before all of that, or around the same time as the initial covid relief bill. However, if you want to make sure there are enough masks for HCP and first responders, the gov could have just purchased them all for much higher than market rates or provided subsidies for health care orgs et. al. to do the same, directly.
An estimated 1 billion masks were used in the US in 2021. (2) The estimated price per respirator rose to around around $3.5. (3) If the government spent 10x that to buy up masks so plebs couldn't get them, that would have a cost of around $35 billion. A healthy sum of money, no doubt, but less than a tenth of what we spent servicing our national debt(4), and 1/128 of total covid spending.
No need to lie to the American people at a critical moment in the pandemic.
“THAT'S NOT THEIR JOB, MAN! Their job is to give people accurate information. It's not to sit there and debate the fucking efficacy of vaccines with someone who has a journalism degree.”
But they... didn’t provide accurate information about covid vaccines. I was told before I took it that my chance of getting covid would be tiny. I was not told I’d be recommended a booster shot in half a year. I didn’t know they could cause myocarditis, or way more commonly that they’d affect women’s menstrual cycles. And anyone who said or questioned about any of this *was* treated as a non person even though they turned out to be right. So sure you’re right their job isn’t to debate journalists but where do we go from here knowing the Experts’ knowledge of the vaccine they were pushing was severely lacking? Personally I won’t be taking the next one and I think many millions of people are on the same page. We got lucky that their gaps in knowledge weren’t more deadly
They absolutely did provide accurate information about the vaccines, if you were listening. The situation was fluid, so not everything was set in stone from day 1.
Why is it that people need every single message to be perfect and unchanged?
If the evidence leads you to a new conclusion, should you not go with it, simply out of some weird fetish for consistency? People are capable of understanding that things change...
I don’t need messaging to be perfect, but they got it *royally* wrong. It’s insane for them to claim near 100% protection from transmission and then have it turn out to be near 0%. Idk how anyone has even a smidgen of faith in anything they say after they bungled that so badly, especially considering that assertion was used to coerce most of society into getting the vaccine. It’s not that they were wrong, it’s the degree of their mistake and the weaponization of bad science against heretics
The CDC did a study about the spread of the virus and determined that there was something like a 90% reduction in spread for vaccinated people. They ran on this one study and it was a mistake to do so, because clearly, this is not how things played out over the long run.
Instead, it would have been prudent for the CDC to say something like: "Hey we can't say for sure this will stop the spread, BUT we believe it's pretty effective at doing so." Simple, easy and not deceitful at all.
Agreed but i think it’s gotta be at best a major problem when the people who are supposed to be the authorities on science. They should know one short term study (or any number of short term studies) is not enough to make claims this forcefully. So they either essentially lied by not being forthright about how weak the evidence was or are so incompetent that they didn’t even realize it was weak. Either way I’m finding it hard to trust anything they say after that
> But people quickly forget that we didn't know a lot of things for sure at the time
First, we had data about covid in early 2020 - including the very interesting data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship - long before terminology like "lockdown", "flatten the curve", or "the hammer and dance" entered the lexicon. Sure, that data might have been primarily noteworthy in esoteric corners of the scientific community - but if you're in the CDC or a similar public health organization, what's your excuse for not keeping up?
Second, even if that data were somehow to have eluded public health officials (who, I should reiterate, should be expected to have been up to speed on it because that's literally part of the job that we as taxpayers provide for them), then the messaging should have been consistently heavy on "we don't know" or "it depends" phrasing. Why? Because the only thing worse than not knowing what to do health wise is not knowing what to do and *pretending* to know, since it leads to all sorts of unintended consequences. I cannot recall seeing a lot of public displays of uncertainty around, say, the efficacy of masks, whether vaccinated people could spread the virus, or the age-dependent nature of the benefits and risks to vaccines and boosters.
While, like Coleman, I'd like to avoid mind-reading assumptions or presumption of motives, I got a very real sense that the prevailing attitude among elected and public health officials was, "Oh, we can't let the rubes know we're still figuring things out - so instead of being honest and generating credibility that way, we'll just sound very certain and hope for the best". It reeked of patrician disdain for us as subjects rather than citizens. It completely shredded any illusions I previously held about how these people think of me; to them, I can't put my own coat on - I need a wise person like them to put it on for me.
The CDC/NIH/Fauci, Inc. issued an eviction moratorium that has had devastating consequences on the rental housing market. It turns out, they were wrong on the merits on top of destroying a niche of the economy. If they had just stopped at presenting the facts as they were known at the time (and presented that as a caveat), then this backlash may not be as severe. They did not. They presented information that they most likely knew was false when it was presented, and then dictated public policy based on that misinformation with disastrous consequences.
I thought you were very good and measured with Coleman, when I'd have just shouted "What are you talking about? RFK Jr is a mad crank." That's probably why I pay to listen to your podcast and you don't pay to listen to mine. (I don't have a podcast, which is another reason).
The mad crank sees corruption everywhere though, including in the assassinations of his uncle and father, so probably isn't going to do a very good job in rooting it out.
This has been my steadfast opinion for 20 years now. The last election I participated in was Bush v Gore, I supported Bush and I still stand by that vote. This year I intend to support Biden but for the administration rather than the candidate.
You absolutely have to vote your conscience and a vote of no confidence is as valid as anything else.
Clinton vs. Bush was my last and then I unregistered. I think I voted Libertarian that year. I simply decided I couldn't support a practice that uses its language to undermine getting at truths rather than supporting it.
Please spare us the bullshit. RFK is a snake oil salesman, and now I'm being lectured on corruption? This is the guy who tells everyone how dangerous and awful "big pharma" is while injecting himself with HGH/steroids to look ripped.
Being a hypocrite doesn't make someone's conclusion incorrect. I've taught freshman debate and there are teenagers who can grasp this very simple logical structure.
There were times I wanted to yell at Moynihan to stop talking over Coleman, which is unusual because normally Michael is very good at persuasion.
Caveat, I have not listened to RFK. jr. on any pod or read his book. I am still haven't accepted the hot Kennedy Jr. (JFK) is dead.
There was a lot of incomplete information on the pod. If one want to fight against actual conspiracy theories, accurate information is necessary.
1) The idea that vaccines caused autism, got buy-in in the 90's lead by the 1995 Playmate of the year but corroborated by "the science" in a completely fabricated study published in 1998 by the Lancet. The study was largely debunked but not fully retracted by the Lancet until 2010.
2) The anti-vaccine crowd was coded to lefties (hippie's) prior to Covid. The largest measles outbreak was in California in 2015, related to Disneyland visits.
3) The drug approval process in the USA is different than in the EU. In the EU (publicly funded healthcare) the standard to advance a new drug to a trial is is does the "new" treatment work better than the old treatment. That is not the standard the FDA uses.
4) In 1986 Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act which limits liability of pharmaceutical companies who produce vaccines. This act also created the awful VAERS system (system the US uses to report adverse vaccine reactions).
This is different from the complete liability shield Moderna and Pfizer got under the EUA for the Covid vaccines.
5) Purdue Pharma is the ONLY company that went out of business because it's drug killed so many people. There were NO criminal charges against anyone in the Sackler family or the FDA (the officer at the FDA who approved Oxycontin went to work for Purdue a year after he granted the FDA approval). The Sackler family kept $6 billion dollars.
Vioxx killed 60,000 people. Merck manipulated the data they provided to the FDA to get the drug approved. Merck paid $5 billion to settle most of the claims against them. No criminal charges were ever filled against Merck or the FDA. In 2022 Merck sold almost $60 billion worth of pharmaceutical products.
6. Moynihan said the Covid vaccines were "remarkably effective" - why does Michael think that? We have some actual science about their efficacy but not a lot because we didn't have many control arms in the West (people who were not vaxxed). Much of the real data has to be extrapolated from highly vaxxed countries versus non-highly vaxxed.
At best, for old people, vaccines provided 20 weeks (initial doses) of some protection against severe disease, that may have got some olds through the Delta wave. The greatest thing the covid vaccines did was force the mutation of the virus into Omicron, which is effectively what brought the pandemic to an end.
However, all cause mortality in highly vaxxed countries, was on average, 15% higher than trend in 2021 and 2022 (notice not 2020 - so even then Covid was not killing millions of people).
I am not saying vaccines caused the spike in mortality, i am saying the spike happened (is happening) and we don't have a lot of good data on why because the vast majority of "the science" won't even ask the questions.
7. In addition to the FDA approving the vaccines or other drugs, the USA also has state medical licensing boards which establish "the standard of care". This standard is very important in that it is used to establish negligent medical practice. So, a physician is more or less forced to follow the "standard of care" established by their state. In California thanks to covid, it is now law that physicians who don't follow the "standard of care" risk losing their medical licenses.
8. Moynihan was correct in much of the Covid doom porn came from the media but it was always corroborated by terrible science. Remember these studies: "Covid leading cause of death among kids and teenagers" (meanwhile no healthy kid every died from Covid), "Covid causing type 1 diabetes's in kid", "Covid causing hepatitis in kids", Covid induced myocarditis much worse than vaccine induced myocarditis (only if one included 75 year old's in the study) & my favorite Long Covid (a completely fabricated condition, whose symptoms mirrored menopause and oddly both Moynihan and Welch claimed to have).
9. Tie in "standard of care" and pediatric covid vaccines and what does one have today?
A CDC who changed the definition of vaccine to fit the Covid vaccine profile and include the Covid vaccines in childhood and adolescent "Recommended Vaccine Schedule". Meaning if a states "standard of care" is based on the CDC's "Recommended Vaccine Schedule" your kid is getting a Covid vaccine, either at school or the pediatrician's office. The FDA recommended the CDC add Covid vaccines to the schedule and two senior FDA members resigned over this recommendation.
10. Lets not forget, it was only in the last month the US Federal government removed the Covid vaccine mandate from people arriving by plane into the USA.
People (including children) were denied organ transplants because they were unvaccinated. 1000's of healthcare professionals who already had Covid, were fired from work for refusing the vaccine. Remember those people we all clapped for in April of 2020, many of them were fired by April of 2022.
Public health, government officials, and other administrative technocrats denied natural immunity and used absolute state coercion to force the Covid vaccine on the whole population. Incentives matter & petty, stupid bureaucrats love exercising power over people.
If the desire is to negate the appeal of an RFK jr. like figure to the US public, one has to push for a "Truth and Reconciliation" process for the management of the pandemic. One has to push for real accountability.
Covid didn't hurt very many people. Covid policy destroyed million of lives, caused massive learning loss among the most vulnerable kids in the USA and harmful vaccine policy is still being forced onto children. It wasn't wealthy SF Democrats whose kids were out of school for 70 weeks. Those kids were at a private boarding school in a remote location in Canada. There were 120++ PJ's at the main airport in Cabo in November of 2020. Wealthy democrats & republican's were enjoying the unmasked sunshine of luxury Mexican resorts, while they told their constituents to mask up and stay home.
After WMD, GFC, Russigate and Covid, the average voter is interested in whomever will give them an opportunity to hold their "betters" accountable for the last 23 years of rolling public policy disasters. The people are owed some scalps & that is not populism, that was the American idea that people are equal before the law and held to the same standard of accountability.
"If the desire is to negate the appeal of an RFK jr. like figure to the US public...."
I feel the need to stress that this is NEVER my desire, much as I personally despise RFK Jr. in particular, but also many other politicians I've written about. My desire, when it comes to political candidates, is to give people more information about who they are voting for, and also to add any useful context/commentary about the issues that their candidacies bring to the forefront.
Matt, I apologize if I assumed a motive that was not there. My bad.
When it comes to RFK Jr., he said some incorrect things on Covid vaccine. Peter Hotez said some incorrect things on Covid vaccines. I don’t think that makes them kooky or unworthy of respect.
It is rather more egregious for the doctor to be wrong about medicine.
One might lose respect for a doctor/scientist who is saying things they know are wrong, yet try to coerce / browbeat the public on every media platform to accept the falsehoods as facts and vilify this who disagree.
One definitely loses respect for prestige media (Vice last week) who continue to vilify dissenters and demand deference to doctors/scientists who revealed themselves to be charlatans & quacks during the pandemic.
What? Really? At its peak it briefly dethroned Heart Disease as the fastest killer of Americans. 1,000,000 deaths in the US? I'd hardly call that not hurting very many people.
Covid was a serious disease, particularly for certain demographics, but those data are seriously questionable given the reporting incentives that Congress created.
This was bonkers! I lost it when Coleman got into Michael for saying "turned out to be wrong" when Coleman had defended RFK Jr. earlier in the podcast because RFK Jr. turned out to be wrong in the 90s about vaccines causing autism. RFK Jr. is a lunatic and it blows my mind that anyone could think him a voice of reason.
RFKJ does indeed have some bad ideas and is not fit for office. Coleman still had the better side of this discussion.
A modest proposal: our intrepid hosts should invite RFKJ for an interview if they haven’t done so already and confront him themselves with some of the positions that are the most troubling and aren’t getting adequate sunlight because they’re the “B sides” of his conspiracy theory album (i.e. 2004 election denial, Hugo Chavez admiration society, Sirhan-did-nothing-wrongerism).
As drunk as I am, I'm glad you wrote it. Coleman modestly propsed a story of how incentives corrupted the truth. Michael proposed a story of "once a conspirator, always a conspirator." I would never vote for RFK but he should not be dismissed based on crackpottery. Otherwise who would lead us
Thank you for succinctly saying what I've been thinking for the last few weeks. I say this as someone who isn't even a fan of RFK, it feels like the easiest way for the guys to prove out their points is to have RFK on and to challenge him in person.
In my opinion, that's what made the Vivek interview so interesting. I get it if you dislike a candidate or disagree on points, but it solidifies your argument when you can discuss the issues firsthand with your opponent.
I sincerely thought Coleman was much too smart to be taken in by some bullshit peddler like RFK Jr. This was painful to listen to, and it's made me reconsider whether his show is worth my time. If he's going to fall under the sway of RFKJ'S utter horseshit...man. I heard the exact opposite from Coleman on this episode that I had come to expect of him from his own show. He seemed quick to latch onto thin conspiracy theories so long as they aligned with his priors, and seemed to show a general lack of analytical rigor. I'm legitimately bummed.
I am shocked that Coleman was defending RFK Jr. I have heard Coleman share about how his mother got pulled into New Age “alternative” healing that ultimately led to her worsening illness, which made me assume he would be a natural critic of this kind of anti-science grifting. It is disappointing and uncomfortable to hear his flimsy justifications and outright errors about RFK Jr’s beliefs. We can try to understand the draw to RFKJr. as a candidate and empathize with the disillusionment people feel about mainstream institutions like the CDC without endorsing him and his unhinged and irrational views.
Oh I know what you mean. That whole thing has been...interesting (?) to watch. I thought (and continue to hope) Coleman was too insightful to go that route. I just have no patience for the Contrarianism for Contrarianism's Sake, which is what much of the IDW is.
Sad to report that I feel the same way. Always liked Coleman and certainly I’m not going to write him off just because of this but I was shocked at how thin and shallow his arguments were.
I generally really enjoy the way he approaches topics and the eclectic mix of guests he has on the show. He's typically very good about challenging ideas whether he agrees with them or not, and I like the way he interviews people, especially the ones who disagree with him. That's what surprised me about this episode; it seemed like such a diversion from his usual approach to any given issue. I've never equated him with the typical IDW types, who outside of a few, I don't find particularly worth my time.
Moynihan does his typical parry at every valid question, avoiding anything of substance just to point out some character flaw or debunked priors. He's obsessed with plagiarism, missteps, one off comments, anything to deflect from the actual veracity of a claim. I enjoy the pod but we need to start having real conversations, not just leveraging these lame tangential tactics to try and "win" the argument.
You forgot appeal to authority. "RFK is not even a physician!"
"You know those that believe in conspiracies don't just believe in just one. They believe in all of them" is getting a bit tired. It is not that clever.
I found Moynihan's performance to be a bit embarrassing relative to Coleman's. Don't get me wrong, I love Moynihan. But he is best served dishing out esoteric cultural references.
In the beginning of the episode, Coleman points out that RFK Jr. doesn't *currently* claim that thiomersal causes autism, and instead says: "I'm not sure, I think it needs to be studied more." He seems to think this means RFK Jr. has moved away from the radical conspiracies he's peddled for decades, or at least has a more nuanced or measured opinion.
This is completely wrong and Coleman is way too smart to fall for it. It's simply a way for him to dodge the question while maintaining his central narrative that Big Pharma, the government, etc. are comic book villains concocting elaborate schemes to immiserate the American people.
RFK Jr. is incapable of acknowledging the major things he got wrong. He never publicly changes his mind in response to new evidence. He baselessly accuses random scientists of committing grandiose crimes against humanity. Has he ever once gone back and said "I might have been a bit harsh..."? If not, why would you still trust him?
About time! I have a beautiful 5 hour drive from Bakersfield to Sacramento and have been hitting refresh on this app hoping for episode drop. Thank you!
This to me really highlights what it looks like when an intelligent person goes from being high-trust to low-trust. Coleman Hughes has seen, been close to, and subject to many lies and manipulations by high status and powerful people in a fairly short time. This was a great example of how constant and regular dishonesty degrades a society at every level.
My mom worked in the research facility at building 10 for NIH in 2010. I can confirm she got a bag of 8 million dollars cash to give autism to underprivileged children. It was delivered in bags with $$$ on it. She cackled as she counted the cash over and over again. It was terrifying.
At a little over an hour into this episode when Michael was talking about how the people who were believing and trusting everything the CDC said were not interested in learning or finding the truth, etc.; while I do agree that yes it was the media who kept referring to the CDC and that the average person not diving into the truth and/or seeing with their own eyes, believing in an ideology and a narrative are all true. HOWEVER, then why was every single small business (I.e. restaurants and dance studios, yoga studios and most especially stupid academia where I work) citing the CDC as their reasoning for their oppressive and archaic policies? Myself and so many people I know were barred from even entering a place without showing proof of being FULLY vaccinated which included the most up to date booster. (which is what 4 or 5 now?) Michael insists the CDC wasn't telling anybody what to do but I insist that they stood by and watched this unfold while saying absolutely nothing to counter it or correct it. These mandates and proof of being "fully vaccinated" is still alive and well by the way in some small business in SF. So frustrating.
Thank you for taping this episode though guys. It's awesome to hear critically thinking intelligent people talk seriously and debate issues. Y'all are amazing.
This interview has me dismayed. I (with Moyn and Kmele--Matt was abseent) think RFK Jr. is a conspiracy monger. Yet, he appeals to some smart people, eg, Coleman Hughes. How does this happen? Is RFK Jr.'s popularity similar to Trump's?
Right now, RFK is the only dem challenging the absolute NONSENSE of what Public health and the elite ruling/corporate class has forced on us in recent years- heavily on covid in RFK sense but it’s the same mentality that’s brought us division through crt and the Q/T insanity of pride. Until someone reasonable on the left challenges all this from an avg American perspective, people are going to give a listen to RFK with his populist message.
I'm actually optimistic that RFKj isn't the Democrat's trump! An essential part of Trump's success is being absolutely irrepressible to the slings and arrows of a news cycle. No stories about the Kennedy have involved such high enthusiasm.
I think Coleman addressed that in a bit of an en passant fashion - to paraphrase, he talked about how he, like a good deal of the population, felt "gaslit" (an overused but in this case I think apt term) by the way public health messaging seemed narrative-driven rather than data-driven. He traffics in conspiracies for sure, but saying, "the scientific community has some complicated incentives and is subject to the Iron Law of Institutions and we should view them skeptically" is not really a conspiracy so much as an assessment of institutional rot.
Besides, in 17th Century Italy I'd bet one would be called a conspiracy theorist for suggesting the novel heliocentric view was true. After all, do you really expect me to believe that *all* those priests, bishops, and cardinals have been lying this entire time?
That is much of my dismay and frustration. It's true yet the conclusion is false. It reminds me of the Erin Brockovich movie. Everything that is brought up is true: hexavalent chromium is highly corrosive in the air. Respirators were needed. Yet in water, Chromium-VI is ingested into a highly acidic stomach. For more see: https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/04/25/corruption-chromium-17014
It's the RFK Jr. misdirection (look at this...don't consider that) or plausible deniability persuading intelligent people that bothers me.
Pretty much all of them. That vaccines are so dangerous they should not be used. That the CIA killed his father and Uncle. That people who disagree with him should be jailed.
RFK seems to me to be another cult of personality candidate who appeals to many people for the same reason that Trump appealed to a lot of folks; the “I’m an outsider and nobody’s telling you the truth, but I’m not afraid to” populism thing. Tulsi Gabbard had a similar “culty” following. It’s strange. Oh well, maybe we’ll get a new slogan plastered on a new color of dad cap out of this guy. 🧢
Oh, believe me, I was a Stan throughout the primary. In fact, I almost bought a T-shirt. For a presidential candidate. That is insanity. The more culty folks I ran into were mostly on the populist left and were pretty hardcore. And I totally agree it seemed like a good idea at the time. I felt so duped.
I honestly think that many people are so sick of Biden and Trump they will grasp at anyone, ANYONE!, other than those two as folks they can get behind. I feel the same way, but also still need a candidate whose policies I can get behind (still waiting BTW).
And also many people are still traumatized by how the government responded/acted during the 2-3 years of COVID, so that piece at least is why some folks are supporting him at this point IMO.
Seems like selective outrage here. Are there any candidates for president who don't have conspiracy theories even crazier than these as central messages?
Coleman gets so many of the basics wrong. Where do I even start?
1. "The vaccine companies can't be held liable." Well, how does Coleman square that with the fact that RFK Jr is currently suing Merck ? BTW, it's a frivolous lawsuit, as you'd expect.
https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2021/07/30/merck-accused-of-disease-mongering-to-sell-gardasil-hpv-vaccine/?slreturn=20230519220010
2. The question of perverse incentives. (Paraphrasing here) "well, the FDA is basically funded by Pharma so how can we trust them?" Moynihan's response was to talk about how the FDA is actually too restrictive, especially with diabetes stuff, and that's a fair reply. But here's a more detailed answer.
When pharma companies submit requests to the FDA, for example to get approval on a drug, or a license agreement, etc, they have to pay fees. Those fees fund the FDA's work. It saves the taxpayers money. Also, 80% of new drug applications are rejected. That means a pharma company now has to pay another fee to submit a new application. So, if Pharma was in bed with the FDA, why is that drug approval number so low? 1 in 5 drug applications are rejected.
3. Coleman also talked about how the CDC and NIH, etc. were not acting as "neutral referees of information, and any skepticism was met with making you a non-person." (during COVID)
What the fuck is this? A non-person? Jesus Christ. But okay, let's explore the first part. "Neutral referees of information." - THAT'S NOT THEIR JOB, MAN! Their job is to give people accurate information. It's not to sit there and debate the fucking efficacy of vaccines with someone who has a journalism degree.
4. "I dont think there's been a careful reckoning over how irrationally the vaccines were pushed upon people and coerced upon people." Yeah, I think that our public health officials did a horrendous job of messaging. They fucked up the masks thing royally from the start, and they were so afraid of ceding any territory to skeptics, that they ended up using dumb phrases like "believe the science" or whatever else. Fair enough. But horrible messaging is not the same as being a genuinely oppressive government agency. The CDC is full of awkward science nerds. Is anyone surprised they suck at messaging? Come on.
5. The idea of being a COVID contrarian is really attractive because it feeds the libertarian streak within a lot of people. But people quickly forget that we didn't know a lot of things for sure at the time. And, going back to the messaging problem, it would have been way better if public health officials had properly communicated about these changes. "Here's why we said X but now we say Y." Some people will never believe them, but what else can they do? There are plenty of things to be upset about, especially with local government's shutting down outdoor spaces and teachers unions helping to keep schools closed. These are real issues, but they're not reason to start buying into the snake oil that people like RFK Jr are selling.
Point 3 I think is a direct reference to people like Jay Bhattacharya who's was not just some journalist. He is a serious expert with a different viewpoint who faced severe professional consequences for advocating for alternatives to lockdowns and such. We can't dismiss the evidence that there was real anti-scientific actions being taken by the CDC and NIH when their views were not met with universal approval. There was also clear political meddling in the messaging making it hard to separate politics from facts. You don't have to support RFK JR or be a "Big Pharma" conspiracy theorist to see that the NIH and CDC burned a lot of their credibility during Covid.
And the heavy-handedness of the messaging:
https://youtu.be/zI3yU5Z2adI
I will neither forget nor forgive that.
Not totally sure what this clip was trying to communicate. Who, exactly, is safe and under what conditions?
Yeah, that goes towards my point about the messaging being horrendous. The public health stance on handling skepticism has basically been: "crush all dissent". This is a naive approach because it only fosters more skepticism.
The CDC + other agencies were terrified of the idea that some people would refuse the vaccine if they heard from folks like Alex Jones, or Tucker, or whoever else. So, in an effort to ensure the highest possible % of vaccinated citizens, they thought the right approach was to go in heavy-handed. I think that was a massive mistake that damaged their credibility.
I would also point out that the masks thing was a big part of it too. Had Fauci just said something like: "Look, in the beginning of this pandemic we need to conserve the supply of masks for healthcare workers (and other essential workers), therefore, please do not panic-buy them" he would have been treated way differently. Instead, he decided to tell people that masking was not effective, and then of course, changed his tune after the supply of masks stabilized. This is another example of the socially awkward horrible messaging that damaged the credibility of the experts.
Yeah thats how I define socially awkward too.
- when a scientist looks at your shoes when talking to you - socially awkward
- when a scientist goes on and on about some detail, when no one else is interested - socially awkward
- When a scientist lies to millions of trusting citizens, because that scientist believes those citizens are too stupid and irresponsible to be trusted with the truth, even though not knowing the truth could put their lives at risk - socially awkward
Am not! I'm just socially awkward
Hey we cant just start deleting comments in the middle. If everyone did that, this place would turn into a sea of bullshit.
Your deleted comment needs to be on the record:
Art Vandelay - "You're just a miserable prick aren't you."
Re: avoiding panic buying.
The Federal Government ended up spending around $4.5T on Covid response (1). I believe the mask-lying happened before all of that, or around the same time as the initial covid relief bill. However, if you want to make sure there are enough masks for HCP and first responders, the gov could have just purchased them all for much higher than market rates or provided subsidies for health care orgs et. al. to do the same, directly.
An estimated 1 billion masks were used in the US in 2021. (2) The estimated price per respirator rose to around around $3.5. (3) If the government spent 10x that to buy up masks so plebs couldn't get them, that would have a cost of around $35 billion. A healthy sum of money, no doubt, but less than a tenth of what we spent servicing our national debt(4), and 1/128 of total covid spending.
No need to lie to the American people at a critical moment in the pandemic.
1. https://www.usaspending.gov/disaster/covid-19?publicLaw=all
2. https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2215532/domestic-n95-mask-production-expected-to-exceed-1-billion-in-2021/
3. https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/the-face-mask-global-value-chain-in-the-COVID-19-outbreak-evidence-and-policy-lessons-a4df866d/
4.https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/14/facts-about-the-us-national-debt/
I agree. I can't defend the masking strategy. They should not have told us that they don't work in the beginning.
What they should have said was something like:
"Look, wear a well-fitted M95 mask if you need to be around people right now, especially before we have vaccines/treatments."
Hindsight is always 20/20 though!
“THAT'S NOT THEIR JOB, MAN! Their job is to give people accurate information. It's not to sit there and debate the fucking efficacy of vaccines with someone who has a journalism degree.”
But they... didn’t provide accurate information about covid vaccines. I was told before I took it that my chance of getting covid would be tiny. I was not told I’d be recommended a booster shot in half a year. I didn’t know they could cause myocarditis, or way more commonly that they’d affect women’s menstrual cycles. And anyone who said or questioned about any of this *was* treated as a non person even though they turned out to be right. So sure you’re right their job isn’t to debate journalists but where do we go from here knowing the Experts’ knowledge of the vaccine they were pushing was severely lacking? Personally I won’t be taking the next one and I think many millions of people are on the same page. We got lucky that their gaps in knowledge weren’t more deadly
They absolutely did provide accurate information about the vaccines, if you were listening. The situation was fluid, so not everything was set in stone from day 1.
Why is it that people need every single message to be perfect and unchanged?
If the evidence leads you to a new conclusion, should you not go with it, simply out of some weird fetish for consistency? People are capable of understanding that things change...
I don’t need messaging to be perfect, but they got it *royally* wrong. It’s insane for them to claim near 100% protection from transmission and then have it turn out to be near 0%. Idk how anyone has even a smidgen of faith in anything they say after they bungled that so badly, especially considering that assertion was used to coerce most of society into getting the vaccine. It’s not that they were wrong, it’s the degree of their mistake and the weaponization of bad science against heretics
The CDC did a study about the spread of the virus and determined that there was something like a 90% reduction in spread for vaccinated people. They ran on this one study and it was a mistake to do so, because clearly, this is not how things played out over the long run.
Instead, it would have been prudent for the CDC to say something like: "Hey we can't say for sure this will stop the spread, BUT we believe it's pretty effective at doing so." Simple, easy and not deceitful at all.
Agreed but i think it’s gotta be at best a major problem when the people who are supposed to be the authorities on science. They should know one short term study (or any number of short term studies) is not enough to make claims this forcefully. So they either essentially lied by not being forthright about how weak the evidence was or are so incompetent that they didn’t even realize it was weak. Either way I’m finding it hard to trust anything they say after that
> But people quickly forget that we didn't know a lot of things for sure at the time
First, we had data about covid in early 2020 - including the very interesting data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship - long before terminology like "lockdown", "flatten the curve", or "the hammer and dance" entered the lexicon. Sure, that data might have been primarily noteworthy in esoteric corners of the scientific community - but if you're in the CDC or a similar public health organization, what's your excuse for not keeping up?
Second, even if that data were somehow to have eluded public health officials (who, I should reiterate, should be expected to have been up to speed on it because that's literally part of the job that we as taxpayers provide for them), then the messaging should have been consistently heavy on "we don't know" or "it depends" phrasing. Why? Because the only thing worse than not knowing what to do health wise is not knowing what to do and *pretending* to know, since it leads to all sorts of unintended consequences. I cannot recall seeing a lot of public displays of uncertainty around, say, the efficacy of masks, whether vaccinated people could spread the virus, or the age-dependent nature of the benefits and risks to vaccines and boosters.
While, like Coleman, I'd like to avoid mind-reading assumptions or presumption of motives, I got a very real sense that the prevailing attitude among elected and public health officials was, "Oh, we can't let the rubes know we're still figuring things out - so instead of being honest and generating credibility that way, we'll just sound very certain and hope for the best". It reeked of patrician disdain for us as subjects rather than citizens. It completely shredded any illusions I previously held about how these people think of me; to them, I can't put my own coat on - I need a wise person like them to put it on for me.
Dude. Yes. Insert Sean William Scott scene from "Old School" GIF
"That's not their job, man!'
The CDC/NIH/Fauci, Inc. issued an eviction moratorium that has had devastating consequences on the rental housing market. It turns out, they were wrong on the merits on top of destroying a niche of the economy. If they had just stopped at presenting the facts as they were known at the time (and presented that as a caveat), then this backlash may not be as severe. They did not. They presented information that they most likely knew was false when it was presented, and then dictated public policy based on that misinformation with disastrous consequences.
I thought you were very good and measured with Coleman, when I'd have just shouted "What are you talking about? RFK Jr is a mad crank." That's probably why I pay to listen to your podcast and you don't pay to listen to mine. (I don't have a podcast, which is another reason).
Your options are mad crank with genuine interest in addressing corruption and Biden. Who gives an F what he thinks about wifi or autism.
The mad crank sees corruption everywhere though, including in the assassinations of his uncle and father, so probably isn't going to do a very good job in rooting it out.
There are many options, not voting at all is preferable over supporting crazy assholes
This has been my steadfast opinion for 20 years now. The last election I participated in was Bush v Gore, I supported Bush and I still stand by that vote. This year I intend to support Biden but for the administration rather than the candidate.
You absolutely have to vote your conscience and a vote of no confidence is as valid as anything else.
Clinton vs. Bush was my last and then I unregistered. I think I voted Libertarian that year. I simply decided I couldn't support a practice that uses its language to undermine getting at truths rather than supporting it.
"Genuine interest in addressing corruption."
Please spare us the bullshit. RFK is a snake oil salesman, and now I'm being lectured on corruption? This is the guy who tells everyone how dangerous and awful "big pharma" is while injecting himself with HGH/steroids to look ripped.
Being a hypocrite doesn't make someone's conclusion incorrect. I've taught freshman debate and there are teenagers who can grasp this very simple logical structure.
So you'd rather go with drooling Biden? What a joke.
There were times I wanted to yell at Moynihan to stop talking over Coleman, which is unusual because normally Michael is very good at persuasion.
Caveat, I have not listened to RFK. jr. on any pod or read his book. I am still haven't accepted the hot Kennedy Jr. (JFK) is dead.
There was a lot of incomplete information on the pod. If one want to fight against actual conspiracy theories, accurate information is necessary.
1) The idea that vaccines caused autism, got buy-in in the 90's lead by the 1995 Playmate of the year but corroborated by "the science" in a completely fabricated study published in 1998 by the Lancet. The study was largely debunked but not fully retracted by the Lancet until 2010.
2) The anti-vaccine crowd was coded to lefties (hippie's) prior to Covid. The largest measles outbreak was in California in 2015, related to Disneyland visits.
3) The drug approval process in the USA is different than in the EU. In the EU (publicly funded healthcare) the standard to advance a new drug to a trial is is does the "new" treatment work better than the old treatment. That is not the standard the FDA uses.
4) In 1986 Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act which limits liability of pharmaceutical companies who produce vaccines. This act also created the awful VAERS system (system the US uses to report adverse vaccine reactions).
This is different from the complete liability shield Moderna and Pfizer got under the EUA for the Covid vaccines.
5) Purdue Pharma is the ONLY company that went out of business because it's drug killed so many people. There were NO criminal charges against anyone in the Sackler family or the FDA (the officer at the FDA who approved Oxycontin went to work for Purdue a year after he granted the FDA approval). The Sackler family kept $6 billion dollars.
Vioxx killed 60,000 people. Merck manipulated the data they provided to the FDA to get the drug approved. Merck paid $5 billion to settle most of the claims against them. No criminal charges were ever filled against Merck or the FDA. In 2022 Merck sold almost $60 billion worth of pharmaceutical products.
6. Moynihan said the Covid vaccines were "remarkably effective" - why does Michael think that? We have some actual science about their efficacy but not a lot because we didn't have many control arms in the West (people who were not vaxxed). Much of the real data has to be extrapolated from highly vaxxed countries versus non-highly vaxxed.
At best, for old people, vaccines provided 20 weeks (initial doses) of some protection against severe disease, that may have got some olds through the Delta wave. The greatest thing the covid vaccines did was force the mutation of the virus into Omicron, which is effectively what brought the pandemic to an end.
However, all cause mortality in highly vaxxed countries, was on average, 15% higher than trend in 2021 and 2022 (notice not 2020 - so even then Covid was not killing millions of people).
I am not saying vaccines caused the spike in mortality, i am saying the spike happened (is happening) and we don't have a lot of good data on why because the vast majority of "the science" won't even ask the questions.
part 1/2
Part 2/2
7. In addition to the FDA approving the vaccines or other drugs, the USA also has state medical licensing boards which establish "the standard of care". This standard is very important in that it is used to establish negligent medical practice. So, a physician is more or less forced to follow the "standard of care" established by their state. In California thanks to covid, it is now law that physicians who don't follow the "standard of care" risk losing their medical licenses.
8. Moynihan was correct in much of the Covid doom porn came from the media but it was always corroborated by terrible science. Remember these studies: "Covid leading cause of death among kids and teenagers" (meanwhile no healthy kid every died from Covid), "Covid causing type 1 diabetes's in kid", "Covid causing hepatitis in kids", Covid induced myocarditis much worse than vaccine induced myocarditis (only if one included 75 year old's in the study) & my favorite Long Covid (a completely fabricated condition, whose symptoms mirrored menopause and oddly both Moynihan and Welch claimed to have).
9. Tie in "standard of care" and pediatric covid vaccines and what does one have today?
A CDC who changed the definition of vaccine to fit the Covid vaccine profile and include the Covid vaccines in childhood and adolescent "Recommended Vaccine Schedule". Meaning if a states "standard of care" is based on the CDC's "Recommended Vaccine Schedule" your kid is getting a Covid vaccine, either at school or the pediatrician's office. The FDA recommended the CDC add Covid vaccines to the schedule and two senior FDA members resigned over this recommendation.
10. Lets not forget, it was only in the last month the US Federal government removed the Covid vaccine mandate from people arriving by plane into the USA.
People (including children) were denied organ transplants because they were unvaccinated. 1000's of healthcare professionals who already had Covid, were fired from work for refusing the vaccine. Remember those people we all clapped for in April of 2020, many of them were fired by April of 2022.
Public health, government officials, and other administrative technocrats denied natural immunity and used absolute state coercion to force the Covid vaccine on the whole population. Incentives matter & petty, stupid bureaucrats love exercising power over people.
If the desire is to negate the appeal of an RFK jr. like figure to the US public, one has to push for a "Truth and Reconciliation" process for the management of the pandemic. One has to push for real accountability.
Covid didn't hurt very many people. Covid policy destroyed million of lives, caused massive learning loss among the most vulnerable kids in the USA and harmful vaccine policy is still being forced onto children. It wasn't wealthy SF Democrats whose kids were out of school for 70 weeks. Those kids were at a private boarding school in a remote location in Canada. There were 120++ PJ's at the main airport in Cabo in November of 2020. Wealthy democrats & republican's were enjoying the unmasked sunshine of luxury Mexican resorts, while they told their constituents to mask up and stay home.
After WMD, GFC, Russigate and Covid, the average voter is interested in whomever will give them an opportunity to hold their "betters" accountable for the last 23 years of rolling public policy disasters. The people are owed some scalps & that is not populism, that was the American idea that people are equal before the law and held to the same standard of accountability.
"If the desire is to negate the appeal of an RFK jr. like figure to the US public...."
I feel the need to stress that this is NEVER my desire, much as I personally despise RFK Jr. in particular, but also many other politicians I've written about. My desire, when it comes to political candidates, is to give people more information about who they are voting for, and also to add any useful context/commentary about the issues that their candidacies bring to the forefront.
Matt, I apologize if I assumed a motive that was not there. My bad.
When it comes to RFK Jr., he said some incorrect things on Covid vaccine. Peter Hotez said some incorrect things on Covid vaccines. I don’t think that makes them kooky or unworthy of respect.
It is rather more egregious for the doctor to be wrong about medicine.
One might lose respect for a doctor/scientist who is saying things they know are wrong, yet try to coerce / browbeat the public on every media platform to accept the falsehoods as facts and vilify this who disagree.
One definitely loses respect for prestige media (Vice last week) who continue to vilify dissenters and demand deference to doctors/scientists who revealed themselves to be charlatans & quacks during the pandemic.
Enjoy California Screamin’ !
No, you did not. Was just using that opportunity to clarify.
"Covid didn't hurt very many people".
What? Really? At its peak it briefly dethroned Heart Disease as the fastest killer of Americans. 1,000,000 deaths in the US? I'd hardly call that not hurting very many people.
Covid was a serious disease, particularly for certain demographics, but those data are seriously questionable given the reporting incentives that Congress created.
It’s hard to give a full-throated endorsement of a candidate who doesn’t sound full-throated.
This was bonkers! I lost it when Coleman got into Michael for saying "turned out to be wrong" when Coleman had defended RFK Jr. earlier in the podcast because RFK Jr. turned out to be wrong in the 90s about vaccines causing autism. RFK Jr. is a lunatic and it blows my mind that anyone could think him a voice of reason.
Part of his appeal may be that he’s not so much a voice of reason but of opposition.
RFKJ does indeed have some bad ideas and is not fit for office. Coleman still had the better side of this discussion.
A modest proposal: our intrepid hosts should invite RFKJ for an interview if they haven’t done so already and confront him themselves with some of the positions that are the most troubling and aren’t getting adequate sunlight because they’re the “B sides” of his conspiracy theory album (i.e. 2004 election denial, Hugo Chavez admiration society, Sirhan-did-nothing-wrongerism).
As drunk as I am, I'm glad you wrote it. Coleman modestly propsed a story of how incentives corrupted the truth. Michael proposed a story of "once a conspirator, always a conspirator." I would never vote for RFK but he should not be dismissed based on crackpottery. Otherwise who would lead us
Yes, if having bad ideas is a disqualifier, then there would be no one holding the office of President...which sounds great to me.
Thank you for succinctly saying what I've been thinking for the last few weeks. I say this as someone who isn't even a fan of RFK, it feels like the easiest way for the guys to prove out their points is to have RFK on and to challenge him in person.
In my opinion, that's what made the Vivek interview so interesting. I get it if you dislike a candidate or disagree on points, but it solidifies your argument when you can discuss the issues firsthand with your opponent.
It’s a great pod when Moynihan appeals to authority and says nobody cares what the authorities say within the same argument.
Is it terrible that I parsed 'Sirhan-did-nothing-wrongerism' as 'killing bobby kennedy was good actually?'
/yes/
I sincerely thought Coleman was much too smart to be taken in by some bullshit peddler like RFK Jr. This was painful to listen to, and it's made me reconsider whether his show is worth my time. If he's going to fall under the sway of RFKJ'S utter horseshit...man. I heard the exact opposite from Coleman on this episode that I had come to expect of him from his own show. He seemed quick to latch onto thin conspiracy theories so long as they aligned with his priors, and seemed to show a general lack of analytical rigor. I'm legitimately bummed.
I'm shocked, but should I be? I saw conservative intellectuals I respected get body snatched in 2016/2017. This seems similar.
I am shocked that Coleman was defending RFK Jr. I have heard Coleman share about how his mother got pulled into New Age “alternative” healing that ultimately led to her worsening illness, which made me assume he would be a natural critic of this kind of anti-science grifting. It is disappointing and uncomfortable to hear his flimsy justifications and outright errors about RFK Jr’s beliefs. We can try to understand the draw to RFKJr. as a candidate and empathize with the disillusionment people feel about mainstream institutions like the CDC without endorsing him and his unhinged and irrational views.
Wait until you find out what the rest of the IDW believes in.
Oh I know what you mean. That whole thing has been...interesting (?) to watch. I thought (and continue to hope) Coleman was too insightful to go that route. I just have no patience for the Contrarianism for Contrarianism's Sake, which is what much of the IDW is.
Sad to report that I feel the same way. Always liked Coleman and certainly I’m not going to write him off just because of this but I was shocked at how thin and shallow his arguments were.
Given your response, I am surprised that you listened to Coleman in the first place. You don't seem like his type. What drew you in?
I generally really enjoy the way he approaches topics and the eclectic mix of guests he has on the show. He's typically very good about challenging ideas whether he agrees with them or not, and I like the way he interviews people, especially the ones who disagree with him. That's what surprised me about this episode; it seemed like such a diversion from his usual approach to any given issue. I've never equated him with the typical IDW types, who outside of a few, I don't find particularly worth my time.
Moynihan does his typical parry at every valid question, avoiding anything of substance just to point out some character flaw or debunked priors. He's obsessed with plagiarism, missteps, one off comments, anything to deflect from the actual veracity of a claim. I enjoy the pod but we need to start having real conversations, not just leveraging these lame tangential tactics to try and "win" the argument.
You forgot appeal to authority. "RFK is not even a physician!"
"You know those that believe in conspiracies don't just believe in just one. They believe in all of them" is getting a bit tired. It is not that clever.
I found Moynihan's performance to be a bit embarrassing relative to Coleman's. Don't get me wrong, I love Moynihan. But he is best served dishing out esoteric cultural references.
Thanks for articulating my thoughts
It would have been interesting to hear how Welch’s presence would have affected the dynamic of this exchange.
A vague stat of how vaccine discourse reminds him of the ‘73 Brewers.
Bob Coluccio FTW!
Ha! Very good.
In the beginning of the episode, Coleman points out that RFK Jr. doesn't *currently* claim that thiomersal causes autism, and instead says: "I'm not sure, I think it needs to be studied more." He seems to think this means RFK Jr. has moved away from the radical conspiracies he's peddled for decades, or at least has a more nuanced or measured opinion.
This is completely wrong and Coleman is way too smart to fall for it. It's simply a way for him to dodge the question while maintaining his central narrative that Big Pharma, the government, etc. are comic book villains concocting elaborate schemes to immiserate the American people.
RFK Jr. is incapable of acknowledging the major things he got wrong. He never publicly changes his mind in response to new evidence. He baselessly accuses random scientists of committing grandiose crimes against humanity. Has he ever once gone back and said "I might have been a bit harsh..."? If not, why would you still trust him?
About time! I have a beautiful 5 hour drive from Bakersfield to Sacramento and have been hitting refresh on this app hoping for episode drop. Thank you!
Hear, hear! I’ve been sitting around doing nothing, like a loser, waiting for a new ep.
P.S. Always happy to hear Coleman.
Jake, you shouldn't be driving if you've drank enough to consider that drive beautiful
You’re right! I should write an email to the guys first 😜
This to me really highlights what it looks like when an intelligent person goes from being high-trust to low-trust. Coleman Hughes has seen, been close to, and subject to many lies and manipulations by high status and powerful people in a fairly short time. This was a great example of how constant and regular dishonesty degrades a society at every level.
My mom worked in the research facility at building 10 for NIH in 2010. I can confirm she got a bag of 8 million dollars cash to give autism to underprivileged children. It was delivered in bags with $$$ on it. She cackled as she counted the cash over and over again. It was terrifying.
If you guys haven't framed that bag, what are you even doing with your lives
I worked in both 10 and 35 and got squat. :(
Oh! “Big Corn!” I kept hearing “Big Porn” and couldn’t figure out WTH they were talking about... 😂
More shucking than f*cking. But both lobbies are sinister.
>More shucking than f*ucking.
Not sure about that. Some wild stuff happens in corn fields!
"My name is Buck, and I'm here to shuck."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2jWTyiPcHY
They’re not mutually exclusive.
Is that how you get children of the corn?
At a little over an hour into this episode when Michael was talking about how the people who were believing and trusting everything the CDC said were not interested in learning or finding the truth, etc.; while I do agree that yes it was the media who kept referring to the CDC and that the average person not diving into the truth and/or seeing with their own eyes, believing in an ideology and a narrative are all true. HOWEVER, then why was every single small business (I.e. restaurants and dance studios, yoga studios and most especially stupid academia where I work) citing the CDC as their reasoning for their oppressive and archaic policies? Myself and so many people I know were barred from even entering a place without showing proof of being FULLY vaccinated which included the most up to date booster. (which is what 4 or 5 now?) Michael insists the CDC wasn't telling anybody what to do but I insist that they stood by and watched this unfold while saying absolutely nothing to counter it or correct it. These mandates and proof of being "fully vaccinated" is still alive and well by the way in some small business in SF. So frustrating.
Thank you for taping this episode though guys. It's awesome to hear critically thinking intelligent people talk seriously and debate issues. Y'all are amazing.
This interview has me dismayed. I (with Moyn and Kmele--Matt was abseent) think RFK Jr. is a conspiracy monger. Yet, he appeals to some smart people, eg, Coleman Hughes. How does this happen? Is RFK Jr.'s popularity similar to Trump's?
Right now, RFK is the only dem challenging the absolute NONSENSE of what Public health and the elite ruling/corporate class has forced on us in recent years- heavily on covid in RFK sense but it’s the same mentality that’s brought us division through crt and the Q/T insanity of pride. Until someone reasonable on the left challenges all this from an avg American perspective, people are going to give a listen to RFK with his populist message.
The problem is neither side criticizes the excesses of their own side. You see it all the time. Or rather, never see it.
Horseshoe theory in action, we found the democrats trump. Depressing.
I'm actually optimistic that RFKj isn't the Democrat's trump! An essential part of Trump's success is being absolutely irrepressible to the slings and arrows of a news cycle. No stories about the Kennedy have involved such high enthusiasm.
I think Coleman addressed that in a bit of an en passant fashion - to paraphrase, he talked about how he, like a good deal of the population, felt "gaslit" (an overused but in this case I think apt term) by the way public health messaging seemed narrative-driven rather than data-driven. He traffics in conspiracies for sure, but saying, "the scientific community has some complicated incentives and is subject to the Iron Law of Institutions and we should view them skeptically" is not really a conspiracy so much as an assessment of institutional rot.
Besides, in 17th Century Italy I'd bet one would be called a conspiracy theorist for suggesting the novel heliocentric view was true. After all, do you really expect me to believe that *all* those priests, bishops, and cardinals have been lying this entire time?
That is much of my dismay and frustration. It's true yet the conclusion is false. It reminds me of the Erin Brockovich movie. Everything that is brought up is true: hexavalent chromium is highly corrosive in the air. Respirators were needed. Yet in water, Chromium-VI is ingested into a highly acidic stomach. For more see: https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/04/25/corruption-chromium-17014
It's the RFK Jr. misdirection (look at this...don't consider that) or plausible deniability persuading intelligent people that bothers me.
Which conclusion is false?
Pretty much all of them. That vaccines are so dangerous they should not be used. That the CIA killed his father and Uncle. That people who disagree with him should be jailed.
RFK seems to me to be another cult of personality candidate who appeals to many people for the same reason that Trump appealed to a lot of folks; the “I’m an outsider and nobody’s telling you the truth, but I’m not afraid to” populism thing. Tulsi Gabbard had a similar “culty” following. It’s strange. Oh well, maybe we’ll get a new slogan plastered on a new color of dad cap out of this guy. 🧢
“Tulsi Gabbard had a similar “culty” following.”
You take that back! I wrote her in because I didn’t want to be in either cult. It seemed like a good idea at the time...
Oh, believe me, I was a Stan throughout the primary. In fact, I almost bought a T-shirt. For a presidential candidate. That is insanity. The more culty folks I ran into were mostly on the populist left and were pretty hardcore. And I totally agree it seemed like a good idea at the time. I felt so duped.
I honestly think that many people are so sick of Biden and Trump they will grasp at anyone, ANYONE!, other than those two as folks they can get behind. I feel the same way, but also still need a candidate whose policies I can get behind (still waiting BTW).
Me too. I am not holding out much hope for the LP.
And also many people are still traumatized by how the government responded/acted during the 2-3 years of COVID, so that piece at least is why some folks are supporting him at this point IMO.
Seems like selective outrage here. Are there any candidates for president who don't have conspiracy theories even crazier than these as central messages?
Every time I hear “Prigozhin” on the TV, I expect it to be followed by a list of possible side effects and a recommendation to talk to my doctor.
It might cause the runs.
“Do not take with tea. Avoid high windows.”
For a second I actually thought it was a drug when I first saw it in this thread, especially with all the big Pharma and vaccine talk.
I keep waiting for Coleman to break character.
Me too!!! I will be genuinely shocked if this isn’t a bit.