Hey there.
Last week a friend sent me a video from AwakenwithJP,
a comedy YouTube Channel I have enjoyed in
the past.
I have been trying to avoid talking Coronavirus,
I am not a medical professional after all,
but this video pissed me off.
It's an amusing, sarcastic delivery of some
really bad ideas I have been looking for a
good way to counter for a while.
The video positions itself as an anti-media
rant.
But it's clear that AwakenwithJP actually
has waaay too much faith in the media.
There are one or two good arguments in the
video, and I dont think it's malicious.
It comes from a really understandable place
of frustration that we all share.
But it's also full of some of the darkest
conspiracy theories swimming around on 
the internet.
Clip.
3:35
You can see this argument everywhere in the
right wing news universe, and while it sounds
reasonable on its first hearing, what it is
really arguing is that it doesn't count if
old people die of coronavirus.
NICE DISTINGUISHED PHOTO OF DAD
My dad is 77.
He has surpassed the average life expectancy
of men born in 1942, by a whopping 9 years.
But the group of men who lived to be 77 is
a different subset of people.
People born in 1942 who have lived this long
have a life expectancy of an additional 7
or 8 years.
Dad, like absolutely every other 70 something
in the country, has a number of health issues.
He's got issues with his heart his lungs,
you name it.
If he gets the virus and dies, it will be
because the shock to his system aggravates
many of the many preconditions he already
has.
Covid-19 will have stolen the 7 or 8 years
of life he could have had.
But Awaken with JP, and, amusingly enough
my Trump-supporting father, believe that listing
the cause of death as Covid in this case would
be part of a grand conspiracy.
NICE DISTINGUISHED PHOTO OF DAD IN A MAGA
HAT
Don’t get me wrong.
It’s possible that some deaths are being
misrecorded.
The United States has 50 different state health
authorities, and every city and town is collecting
the information differently.
The one thing we know for sure about our aggregate
data is that it’s garbage.
But it’s just as likely that Covid deaths
are being undercounted.
I could easily believe that our totals are
off by 5-20% in either direction.
But the very Republican idea that JP presents,
that there’s a concerted effort to cover
up the fact that nobody’s really dying from
Coronavirus, is ridiculous.
That particular argument really pisses me
off, but other than that I have neither the
time nor the inclination to dive into every
one of JP's arguments.
I don't have the medical background necessary
to speak conclusively about scientific studies
the way JP seems to think he does.
What I do feel qualified to talk about is
the child-like lack of perspective that suffuses
the video.
Underneath the layers of bitter sarcasm it's
clear that JP has a faith in the power and
knowledge of the people in charge that's almost
touching.
According to JP, and conspiracy theorists
everywhere, the people in charge don't just
know the real truth about this disease, they
are successfully hiding it from Everybody,
and they have super secret sinister agendas
that they are putting in place.
JP, and conspiracy theorists everywhere, at
root believe that the powers that be are infallible.
Somebody must be benefiting from all of this
pain and confusion.
This is the viewpoint of angry teenagers everywhere.
Angry teenagers are still children.
And like the most trusting 5 year old, angry
teenagers believe that the people in charge
have infinite powers, just that these powers
are used for evil rather than good.
What adults realize, is that everybody is
weak and stupid.
The world's greatest evils are almost all
brought about by people who think they are
doing the right thing, and nobody in charge
is as smart or capable as we would like them
to be.
Media and government and business are filled
with people who are trying to get things right
and they all fail all the time.
The idea that these people are perpetuating
some grand conspiracy is laughable.
Also, I’m not sure where JP is getting this
idea that Scientists, government officials,
or even Bill Gates are pretending to have
a clear idea what’s going on with coronavirus.
If you read more than a paragraph produced
by any of these organizations, they will tell
you directly about how much they don’t know.
Outlets like Breitbart, Fox News and Awaken
With JP who pretend that shadowy omni-competent
elites are handing out dictates are inventing
a caricature that doesn’t exist.
What we know about this disease is changing
every day.
We need to give doctors and scientists more
resources to figure this out, and the constant
shouting about how they’re lying to us is
not helping us do that.
So… did the World Health Organization screw
up?
Absolutely.
So did the US food and drug administration.
So did the centers for disease control.
The Chinese and US government's screwed up
too.
All of these institutions need to be better
run.
But do they need to be attacked the way they
are in the video?
Is the WHO really a…
"...a giant powerful business that pretends
it's a charity like the World Health Organization"
Not really.
Again, JP assumes power, efficiency and the
competence necessary to fool the world, when
none of those things are present.
The WHO has one of the biggest and most difficult
jobs in the world.
Tracking and fighting infectious disease is
only the most important part of their mission,
they do a lot of other stuff too.
The 4.4 billion dollars a year it has to work
with might sound like a lot of money, but
it’s significantly smaller than the budgets
of than a lot of US hospital systems.
What’s worse is that the WHO has very little
discretion over how this money is used.
Only 20% of the money it gets each year is
made up of predictable payments from governments.
80% of the money is voluntary and program
based, which means the WHO only gets it if
they agree to follow the agendas of the people
giving them money, whether it’s China, the
Gates Foundation or somebody else.
Now most of these programs are worthwhile,
but this approach makes a careful, coordinated
policy impossible.
It’s not like the WHO is some sneaky all
powerful organization.
It’s actually kind of pitiful.
The Organization’s lack of funding requires
its leaders to spend more time doing politics
than science.
It’s a really dumb way to organize the world’s
pandemic response.
We need to be more critical of these organizations.
But we need to do the reading, and figure
out how to improve them.
When Fox, or JP push unthinking conspiracy
theories about them, it has terrible real-world
results.
For example, in late April, Trump was persuaded
to cancel the meager funding the US gives
to the WHO, crippling it in the middle of
a pandemic, and forcing it even further into
China’s arms.
Folks like JP seem to believe that our world
medical infrastructure is competent enough
that things will be just fine without expertise,
experience, personnel, money, or the confidence
of the public.
That's a pretty amazing belief to hold onto
after the past three months.
"I'll tell you who I trust more than God.
Bill Gates, because he's got more money than
God.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can definitely
buy my trust.
I accurately look at Bill Gates as a medical
authority when it comes to vaccines and disease,
because he's a software engineer, not a doctor..."
I think that Bill Gates and his foundation
have done a lot of good, but I didn’t start
this channel to defend billionaires, Mr. Gates
can look out for himself.
And in one sense, this is the best critique
that JP makes in his video.
Why is it exactly that a private sector billionaire
is so central to the world’s health response?
Well it’s because folks making arguments
like the ones JP is making have spent 40 years
tearing down the governmental and intergovernmental
agencies that should be dealing with the Coronavirus.
People were so worried about imagined government
agendas that they left all this power to a
private individual instead.
I don't think that's an improvement.
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