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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowTwo opinions on pages 14A [“Mickey Maurer: My view is that Rokita just has it wrong,” Jan. 21] and 15A from Dr. Phillip Toth [“Letter: IBJ erred in running Rokita’s COVID column,” Jan. 21] demonstrate the illogical and completely nonsensical world that we now inhabit.
Dr. Toth claims that Attorney General Todd Rokita “obviously has no understanding” of the COVID situation begs the simple question: Who really understands this so called “pandemic”? Medical professionals with significant credentials disagree on the virus, its effects and also possible therapeutics and cures. Politicians disagree on the proper role of government response, and by and large, most people on the street disagree on the issues related to COVID.
Dr. Toth’s final statement is the worst: “IBJ should not have given him the opportunity to spout off again.” That is in a nutshell the single biggest problem that has risen from this pandemic which is outright censorship of opposing views.
Maurer [included] statements that are grossly over exaggerated, such as government must “not subordinate to those who choose not to vaccinate, many of whom can be found clogging the beds of our hospitals preventing those who require care from receiving timely treatment.” This is sensationalist garbage with no facts, no numbers, nothing.
Also, comparing anti-vaxxers to smokers is a ridiculous analogy. Many people, including myself, choose not to get vaccinated because they have done the research, observed the results and found that the vaccines don’t work. At best they are marginal in effect.
Ridicule people all you want, call them names, try to discredit anyone who doesn’t follow the Big Pharma narrative. The reality is that many intelligent, educated and prominent people are not following the herd in the vaccine line.
Not considering opposing views is the ultimate expression of ignorance, disrespect, uninformed, misinformed and selfish (all words that Mr. Maurer used to refer to anti-vaxxers).•
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Daniel Egenolf
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Like every one of these vacuous opinions espousing a contrarian approach to a public health event, Daniel’s (and his credentials to advise are what, exactly?) blathering is filled with logical fallacies and misinformation.
Let’s start with the title – correlation is not causation. We have 330 million people in this country and 25%-30% or so spend their time poking under every rock looking for excuses and stroking each other’s egos to just say no to vaccination, despite data overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination. That’s a lot of people and, certainly, “many” of them are educated. The cause of the stance is not education, as implied – rather it’s a sheep-like approach of litmus test to personal brand identity.
Next we have the straw man, the argument that the world is “illogical and completely nonsensical.” That does not come close to describing most of our perceptions of the world.
Next up is the appeal to ignorance, the supposition that no public health responses at all can be justified because no one including experts who’ve spent most of their lives preparing for and then dealing with such issues can know these things with perfect confidence.
Following that is another straw man – censorship is somehow “the single biggest problem that has risen from this pandemic”. First off, Daniel’s opinion is laughable on its face given the lack of censorship that resulted in publication of his letter. Then one must wonder whether the single biggest problem might not actually be 900,000 fatalities or hospitals being overrun or the many economic disruptions we are dealing with or the second order effects of the pandemic on other illnesses or societal coping difficulties or long-haul COVID?
Next up, Daniel covers his eyes and ears to pretend that “no facts, no numbers, nothing” exist to demonstrate the benefits of vaccination. Data from multiple sources available all over the public domain demonstrate that the vast majority of both deaths and hospitalizations since June when vaccinations were readily available to all of us have been among the unvaccinated. Somehow, when Daniel “did the research”, he missed these important facts.
Reading this far, the pattern is formulaic – Daniel has “done the research”, “observed the results” and “found that vaccines don’t work”, while offering, wait for it….. no facts, no numbers, nothing from this echo chamber of Earth 2.0. Of course, the conspiracy bogeyman of “Big Pharma” is to blame! And, no, Daniel doesn’t “follow the herd” of the majority of us who have chosen the best now-proven protection against serious illness or worse – rather, he has fallen in with a different herd for whom idolatry of a false ideal has resulted in foolishly thinning the herd.
Finally, Daniel closes with another straw man – some are “not considering opposing views”. Just as a flat-earther screaming into the void does get attention, his view is simply considered and rejected as objectively incorrect. To get things as right as we can as a society, those of us with objectively incorrect information need to be willing to take a step back when we get it wrong, particularly when the error in thinking or logic results in harm to others. A significant problem with this pandemic has been the enormous effort required to correct misguided, misinformed, blindly loyal to a cause???? nonsense such as this letter. Real life game of whack-a-mole, because the charlatans never go away – the shouting vocal minority – even as they scream above the crowd about their perceived victimhood of censorship….. without a hint of irony.
I’m disappointed that the IBJ would even publish this drivel. The facts are indisputable. We have a global pandemic. We have several very effective vaccines. It’s fine to argue about mandates and other public health measures, but it’s ridiculous to assert that vaccines don’t work. It just goes to show that even intellectually challenged people can get an education.