Hey everybody, its Dr. Z.
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hopefully some channels.
Welcome to the show, it's a ZDoggMD show.
It's Friday, May 8
and I wanna talk about stuff and things.
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Okay, that's out of the way.
Why is it that human beings
really love conspiracy theories,
even though any ounce of
critical thinking applied
to the conspiracy at hand,
would reveal it to be abject horseshit?
And by the way, it's gonna
have a fair amount of cursing,
so if that bothers you, fuck off.
All right, so here's the thing.
I did a piece the other day on YouTube
because about a billion
people had sent me links
to that video, Plandemic.
It was a little clip
of a larger documentary
and when I say documentary,
I put it in quotes
because it's a documentary in the sense
that Vaxxed was a documentary
or What the Health was a
documentary, it's got an agenda
and it supports whatever this agenda is.
In this case, within like a
minute of watching the video,
I realized, oh, this is crazy talk.
I knew it right away because I recognized
that these were straight anti-vaxxers.
Anti-vaxxers and conspiracy
theorists together
in a purported documentary
that people believe.
Now why do people believe it?
That's what I wanna talk about
because the response to the rant I did,
I did not wanna go through
click by click by click
and debunk that video
because it had already been
done by doctors all around
and there have been great pieces on it,
other videos on it going through
everything these guys said
that was just abjectly
wrong, scientifically.
And the fact that the main star
of the thing, Judy Mikovits
was basically a known anti-vax loony
who is trying to prove that
she doesn't falsify data
and she had her paper retracted
just like Andrew Wakefield hangs out
with people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr,
the known anti-vax, clown.
So why do people believe this?
Well, because they write
on there, PhD scientist.
They use scientific words
and they present a conspiracy
that to the human mind that
wants certainty, wants answers,
wants to feel like they know
something other people don't
that they're in the in
crowd and others aren't
and that they're in an exclusive group.
It's the same reason we
root for the underdog
or especially for a little
marginalized ourselves,
we feel like we know something
other people don't know,
it gives us a little leg up
that otherwise we don't have.
So conspiracy theories
like this are so attractive
because the human mind craves certainty.
One of the biggest shit shows
in the history of recent history
is the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why? Because of uncertainty.
So from minute one, it was clear
that nobody knew what
the fuck was going on.
The WHO comes off as just ill informed
and in China's pocket.
The CDC, it's like, something
out of Benny Hill like that
juggling, saying one thing,
doing another thing, suddenly silent.
Our own political
leadership is just like no,
it's not a big deal at
all and then suddenly,
60,000 deaths later, maybe, I don't know.
Nobody knows what's going on
because you have a new
virus in a complex system,
which is the ecosystem
of the planet Earth,
doing something that
we've never seen before.
Live with that shit.
Live with the fact that
we don't fucking know
and understand this,
that when physicians say
or scientists say we just
don't know about this,
they mean it, they don't
know and that's okay
because shit is complicated.
It's really, really complicated,
especially in things like virology
and complex human systems and epidemiology
and population dynamics.
These are not simple topics.
So what happens, early on
you do something draconian,
society shuts down.
This has not happened in
our memory, in living memory
in the way that it has here.
People are going out of
business, people are suffering.
People on the margins
are undoubtedly dying
because they're not seeking medical care.
People are losing their jobs
and therefore their lives to suicide,
which is a correlation
we've seen historically.
And so there in the
setting of uncertainty,
you add on a ton of fear.
How do you fight that?
Particularly and let's remember,
let's do a quick paradigm here.
There's the elephant, which
is the part of our brain
that is unconscious,
emotional, sort of often fear
and threat detection driven
and it's very ancient.
And then we have the
new part of our brain,
the frontal cortex, thinking, planning,
strategizing, moral reasoning
that just came in the
last million years or so
but it's not in charge.
It's actually a slave to this
elephant if it's not careful
and so the elephant now is
driven by all this fear.
It has a political bias,
whether you're on the left
and you think these top
down draconian solutions
are actually the answer,
because we need to be more communitarian
and try to protect everybody
by keeping them inside
and then you go on Twitter
and you virtue signal with your mask
and you write stay at home and your name
and there's a righteousness there.
Or you're on the right and
on the right you're like,
wait, why is the economy shutting down
and why are people telling me what to do?
There's individual liberty here
and these guys don't even
have their act together.
So this and that and the other thing.
Now this particular
conspiracy and plandemic,
typically anti-vax conspiracies
are often conspiracies
of either the left or the
kind of libertarian right.
This one is really pushed on the right
because it's basically saying,
well, okay, now we need certainty,
we need a way to explain
how our elephant feels.
So let's pull a conspiracy down.
Fauci is conspiring
through vaccine patents
to become rich and more powerful.
The government is in on this,
they're silencing the heroic outlier,
this woman, Judy Mikovits
and I know this, why can't
everyone else see it?
And when that video comes up
and confirms their general
political and emotional bias,
and by the way, I'm
saying this out of love.
In the video, I basically said,
people who believe this shit are stupid.
And you know what?
Yes, stupid meaning intellectually,
you are being a fucking moron
if you believe any of that shit
because and I'll get to why that is
because if you look at it critically,
the whole story falls apart.
The problem is good people
who aren't necessarily stupid
will believe it because it
fits that emotional resonance.
That's why conspiracy theories work.
So here we have a theory
that says the government is a shit show.
Powerful people like Gates
and others are conspiring
to make money off an invented pandemic
that's really due to vaccinations
which are an individual liberty issue
that I'm being violated on,
run by big corporations out of my control
that are pulling all the strings.
And that feels more certain.
So now you go, I now I
know what's going on.
It's not that just that
nature is a fucking bitch
and we'll just throw
shit at you that's chaos
and every now and again when
you think everything is perfect
and the world is under control,
she throws you a curveball
because it is the nature of this universe
that we are thrown
curveballs all the time.
Look at human history, check
out somebody who grew up,
say in, spanning 1918
their life was a shit show.
It's because of science,
progress, technology, society
that we've actually stabilized it
that people now are less violent,
less likely to die of violence,
more likely to be fed,
more likely to live in stable societies
than they ever have been,
less likely to go to war
but people ignore all that
and the conspiracy comes in.
But the truth is, it's
still chaos out there.
So the certainty that oh,
there's someone to blame.
Now, to get back to
Plandemic for a second.
Just understand this, when I see it,
as somebody who's been in
the space for a long time,
you have to understand my bias already.
I'm actually with the
anti-government people.
I think government is a shit show.
I'm with anti-corporate people.
Corporations are shit shows.
I also think individual
humans are dumb as fuck.
I actually think humans
and human enterprises are barely risen out
of the primordial ooze.
That we are able to create science and art
and beauty in any way is shocking,
given how relatively primitive we are.
We are a fucking mess.
So that means,
it means a couple things.
Yes, you question everything.
Yes, you recognize when we
don't know what we don't know,
as opposed to Dunning Kruger
where you know a little
and then overestimate what you know
and fuck up like the anti-vaxxers
and these conspiracy ding dongs
and those two guys from Bakersfield,
which we'll talk about as well.
So, this all being said,
now you have Plandemic
where I watch it and go
oh, this is a known anti-vaxxer
spouting anti-vax sentiment,
alarm flag number 212,
she's got a cure for autism.
Alarm bell number 250,
she's saying vaccines caused
all the deaths in Italy
and then people are going
but what about Fauci?
What about what she said about Fauci?
Now, listen to me for a second.
There are plenty of people
debunking this right.
Now, by the way, my video
on YouTube has 2.5 million views right now
in 24 hours plus a little bit
and 55% of the thumbs
on that video are down
and it's all the people who believe,
their elephant believes this conspiracy
'cause read the comments
they're just like,
who didn't debunk anything?
Yeah, link to all the
debunking, they don't care,
because their emotional
decision has already been made.
They have certainty.
They're better than us, so
they have moral superiority
than these clowns who are sold
off in big farmers pocket.
Check out all the accusations on
that page of me being sold out.
Dude, go look on the sunshine act
at the money I take from PhRMA.
It was like five years
ago I took some money
because I did a talk for
some reps teaching them
about Health 3.0 but that doesn't matter.
You can defend yourself
all day, it doesn't matter
because they've already decided
you don't fit the paradigm.
The intellect, the writer is
completely short circuited.
But since I'm looking at it going
oh well, critically thinking,
this is total horseshit.
It's horseshit on every level.
This woman is a con artist.
She's selling a book but
they're talking about shills,
like Fauci, like the fucker
works for government.
(chuckles)
So okay, on top of that,
any degree of critical
thinking goes out the window
in conspiracy theories.
So think about this.
The government can't
fucking tie its shoelaces
without someone leaking it.
How in the living fuck is a
government gonna keep this kind
of secret conspiracy at the
highest levels from the public.
You don't think someone's
gonna say some shit
just to try to get attention.
You've got nurses out
in the wild right now,
reporting on how they think
patients are being abused
in different hospitals like
some government functionary,
who is clocking it in
is gonna leak that shit.
Government is a shit show you guys
just like any corporation.
You think a corporation
has the wherewithal
to actually pull off a conspiracy.
That assumes a level of competence
that means you've never
gotten out of the house.
So I have a good example of this.
People think the CDC is
running these big conspiracies.
Now I have a friend
who used to work at CDC
and now works elsewhere
in private industry.
And he said, "I love my colleagues at CDC.
"I think they're wonderful,
good people trying
"to do the right thing.
"I wouldn't trust them to
run a fucking conspiracy
"to save my life."
It's a shit show like any organization,
any human organization, it's a shit show.
So immediately at just
looking with threads
of critical thinking
at a conspiracy theory,
it starts to unravel,
but it doesn't for the
people who believe it
because they have certainty,
they have moral high ground
and righteousness on their side
and the critical thinking
piece is not important.
So when you look at Plandemic,
watch it from that prism.
Watch what they're doing.
The filmmaker who's done films
about like the Mayan apocalypse
and other shit like that, has an agenda.
The woman has an agenda and
they will then pull little bits
of things out of context
to back this agenda
and anybody who questions
it, they're just like,
this poor person is a fucking shill
or they just haven't been woke.
They haven't woke up sheeple.
Wake up sheeple.
And in some ways, it's very sad
because there's an underlying
current of disconnection
and loneliness in the conspiracy crowd.
So if you go and look at my video,
it has all these negative comments
and yet 2.5 million views?
Why? Because for the positive crowd,
they just watch it and they're like,
yeah, I knew that shit was bullshit.
For people on the fence.
They go, oh, I wonder what
ZDogg thinks about this video.
Oh, he just said it's
horseshit that's enough for me
because I've seen enough
ZDogg's critical thinking
that he doesn't need to
debunk it point by point,
he linked to that.
Now, when people mail it to me,
I can just send them his video
or say no, that's bullshit.
But then there's the conspiracy theorists
and they're just like wait wait wait what?
And they have a need to actually comment,
he's a shill, he's a
fucking paid off, he's ugly,
(chuckles)
his fans are idiots, who
calls a doctor Zdogg.
Now see watch what happens,
it's all emotional response.
Just like my video itself
was an emotional response
'cause I'm so fucking tired
of hearing the same
conspiracy shit repackaged
in different ways and having to be asked,
people are like well, people
are asking you to debunk it
because they care what you think.
I know I get that but you gotta
understand it's fatiguing,
when every piece of stupid
shit that comes out.
Everyone's like, I don't
know what to think about this
and sends it to you
and you're like how about this,
how about we teach you
how to critically think,
how to recognize your own emotional bias
and then filter that
and go, you know what,
oh, okay, I think I know
what I feel about this
and then I'll ask, hey,
I think this about this,
do you agree?
Yeah, you're right.
You got it right or no,
you know what, you missed
something here which is this.
That's a back and forth I'd love to have.
That's not how it works though.
It's not how it works.
I had a lot of really
smart medical people,
who bought that video, who
thought it was accurate
and we're sending it to me like,
hey, you gotta show
people this and I'm like,
you gotta show people
better critical thinking.
And so I was pissed
when I made that video.
And I didn't think
anyone's gonna watch it.
I was just like, let me rant,
let me vent for a second
and then 2.5 million views.
Anyways, let's see where we're at here.
Thanks for corralling a few
elephants, Mike Sullivan.
Mike's referring to
that emotional elephant
So the question is how do
you actually fight back
against this kind of now?
Oh wait, hold on before we do that.
These Bakersfield guys, alright.
I watched, they did a follow up video
to their original video
where they kind of are like,
well I don't know why everyone's so mad,
we just showed our data, this and that.
I gotta say this about those guys.
I agree with them.
The two Bakersfield docs.
I agree that we're doing more harm
than then we're helping now
with this very aggressive lockdown,
which was appropriate at first.
But I'm telling you
right now my position is,
it's time to carefully start opening up
and watch carefully what happens
and if we find things become a shit show,
then you know what you can do,
you can close back up strategically.
But I suspect that the
harm we're doing right now
is much greater than the good we're doing
and all the left's and this
is again a political divide.
All the left's moralizing
and they hate Trump
and they want the economy to be bad.
I mean, these are the theories right
that the right has about the left.
This idea that we only
listen to the scientists
and we don't listen to the economists
and the legal scholars
and others who are saying,
hey guys, this is becoming
a fucking clown fest.
Like we've never done anything like this,
we have no good evidence
that this is exactly the
right course of action.
We're experimenting.
Can we admit that?
And then let's let localities decide,
how they wanna handle this
and I always give the example
of like them forcing us
to wear masks on our trail
system here in California now.
Okay, maybe that reduces
infections by a tiny percentage
but what else does it reduce?
It reduces the desire for people
to go outside, many people
because especially the elderly,
they don't wanna walk on
a trail wearing a mask,
it's a restrictor.
And it just starts to
feel insane to people,
which then is gonna lead
to resistance to measures
that are much more rational.
So you have to choose your battles
when you're talking about these things.
Can we talk about it rationally?
Oh, just saying that will
piss off the left so much
that you will be canceled on Twitter.
And then you have the right
who is down playing this shit
to a degree that is fucking idiotic.
Like, oh no, it's no worse than flu.
Have you fucking been to New York City?
I've had people on my show who said
anyone who thinks this is like
flu is fucking smoking crack.
We've never seen anything like this.
Now, even if that's true,
which I think it is, I know it is.
Does that mean that we take these actions
that we're taking in there correct?
We can still debate that
and have this thing be a
deadly fucking new illness.
We can have both those things be true.
Can we hold that in our minds?
Well, it's very hard when
we're politically biased,
or elephants are involved
and again, it comes back to conspiracy.
Now let's tie this in to
those Bakersfield Docs.
What they were saying is
here's all my political beliefs
about opening up, here my
economic beliefs about opening up.
Now here are my medical
beliefs about opening up.
Now the political beliefs that was clear,
they think we're being
controlled by people like Fauci,
they said as much in the original thing
and it's a way of controlling us
by saying we're keeping you safe.
That's a political belief.
What's interesting though
and I wanna add to this.
There is something that Jonathan Haidt
and others have spoken about,
which is called a culture of safetyism.
Which is, we have this
thing called concept creep.
Well, okay, if we can keep
people safe by doing this
then we should do this.
Well, then that creeps.
Okay, if social distancing is good
then maybe to keep people
safe we should make
them wear masks in public
and since we don't have enough masks,
let's make them wear
cloth masks in public.
And we haven't really scienced this out
whether people touch their face more
or whether it's actually
helpful or whether this or that.
Well, there's theories that it works
and the precautionary principle
says go ahead and do it.
But we haven't really scienced it.
Now let's mandate that
they wear those masks
on fucking open trail systems.
Okay, now In addition to closed
schools, closed businesses,
let's make them wear masks
on open trail systems
and let's punish them if they don't.
Okay, that's called concept creep
and a culture of safetyism,
where safety is the highest virtue,
living your fucking life,
having some degree of
economic engine that works,
continuing to have some
degree of rational thought,
there's nothing there.
So with the Bakersfield
docs on that, my elephant,
I'm being elephant here, agrees.
However, when they talk
about the medical stuff
that's when you realize, okay,
that's when your critical
thinking engine has
to come into play.
You wanna believe the
conspiracy there foisting,
which is this has been overblown
in a way to control you
and so here's our support of it.
Here's our data that shows
why we're right.
And in my original video,
I talked about why their data
was horseshit and it was.
And their follow up actually
proved it even further
because they said, "Yeah,
you know, people were like,
"really mad at us 'cause, you know,
"they were saying our data wasn't valid
"but it was totally valid man
"because we were only testing,
"we were testing a lot of healthy people."
You are in a fucking rural
community, in an urgent care,
it's not even an emergency
department, testing people,
whether they're worried well or whatever.
They're coming in or their
employer is making them come in,
that's a biased test.
Number next.
They admitted in the follow up.
So what kind of COVID have you seen,
like, what have you seen?
Well, if they're really sick,
we send them right to the ER,
yeah, so people who don't
understand how urgent care works
like the lay public if
they're fucking 02Sat is less
than 92, do not pass go, go
right to the ER from there.
So the only patients
these guys are seeing,
are people who are well
and potentially positive with COVID.
So then they have the fucking
audacity to extrapolate
that to everybody and
go we're seeing people
that are doing just fine.
It's basically seasonal flu.
Why are we doing all this?
Well, listen fuckstick
it's because you don't go to the hospital.
You don't go to the hospital,
Mr. Urgent care doc in the box
to actually see the
downstream effect of this.
We had Scott Weingarten on the show,
he can tell you the
downstream effect of this.
We had Barbara McLean on the show,
she can tell you the
downstream effect of this.
It's a serious illness.
So shut your flap hole
if you haven't seen it.
Don't try to convince us of
your conspiracy bullshit,
unless you have the right data
and as a viewer of that shit,
don't share it with people
unless you've critically analyzed it.
Now, again, we may be
asking too much of people
but this is where my emotional
elephant gets very upset
because it's not that hard to do
and if you don't have the tools to do it,
you can acquire them, you can learn them
or you can turn to somebody you trust,
and say, hey, what does so and so think?
And it doesn't require a
20 minute video debunking.
It just requires hey, this is bullshit.
Here's a couple reasons
why, you can dig in here.
That's it.
That's all you need to do.
God, I mean.
So, when I did the Plandemic video,
and again, I didn't expect
it to get so many views.
It's like one of our
top videos of all time,
it's a little embarrassing
'cause we put a lot of
effort into our videos.
I didn't expect it to have so much reach
and going into conspiracy
theories now I realized why.
Like oh, this is it, I get it
and it's funny 'cause if you look at,
there are other doctors
now who've made videos,
where they're more methodically
debunking each point
in this woman's video, which
I will refuse to do again
because others have done it
but also because I don't
wanna even give her
any more airtime of her
stupid kooky ass views
'cause they're just batshit crazy.
You don't have to be batshit
crazy to believe them
and believe the conspiracy
for all the reasons I've said,
but she's batshit crazy.
So that being said, you
look at the other videos
that these guys have made,
they have a bunch of views too
and it's the same ratio of
negative to positive likes.
So the conspiracy guys get together
and they actually in a coordinated way,
will leave these sort of
comments because it's a way again
of when you're feeling
powerless and uncertain
and you feel like you
have this inside knowledge
that's how you're gonna behave,
especially online in these echo chambers
where it's magnified.
So I hope that makes
some sense to you guys.
It's tough and again to
those Bakersfield docs.
It's funny because again,
I sympathize so much
with a lot of what they were saying
in terms of economic impact.
And, my position on this thing is
that we've pushed too far
on on the draconian measures
and the side effects of the
measures are gonna be greater
than the disease by an order of magnitude.
I've said that from the beginning,
consistently, although with
varying degrees of fervency
because my own opinion shifts
as I see data, as I listen
to experts, as I process it
and yours should to.
I think anyone again who
comes out abjectly certain
about something, you should question them.
Like people ask me, are
you certain Fauci isn't
in some kind of?
This is a great question.
Don't you think,
like Fauci could have
funded this Wuhan lab
that then accidentally
released this virus?
Like why do you deny that's the case.
And I say I've never
denied that's the case.
I think it's totally
possible and conceivable
that that could have happened.
Does it change anything
that we are going through right now? No.
Do I have the tools or the resources
or the information to
analyze that claim critically
in a way that's gonna
get me an answer? No.
There's uncertainty in that
and I accept the uncertainty.
I also accept that the answer to
that question is not going to change
what we do now about COVID?
Would it drop the credibility of Fauci?
Well, maybe but people who
think he's not credible
are gonna continue to
think he's not credible.
So this is the way I kind
of think through this stuff.
I hope this makes sense.
So this is what I'm gonna do.
I am going to post a version of this
on YouTube right after this.
So that people on
YouTube can watch it too.
I want you to do me a favor.
Leave your comments.
Tell me what you think.
Tell me if you think I'm an asshole.
I know I'm an asshole, so
you'll just confirm my own bias.
If you want to become a supporter
of the show, that's great
if you don't, no big deal.
If you've sent us Stars, that's great too.
If you don't, no big deal.
If you're on YouTube
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do it and click that
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I always say I'd never say that
but it is important
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All right, guys.
I love you.
Stay woke.
And we out, peace.
