Toqueville, "Crystallization" and Tyranny

I find it a bit jarring that in that tranquil Swiss lake country tourist town, Lugano, there is a statue of the death of Socrates. Perhaps it is a reminder that there is poison hemlock growing in the hills, and that everyone around you does not have your best interests in mind. Maybe it is one reason Lugano is tranquil today.

I ran across a striking, rather long piece in TABLET that was recommended by Jordan Peterson: Read this and think

This piece, whether you agree with its message or not, has some fascinating history and some implications that go far beyond the main subject. It is called "Needle Points". It is by Norman Doidge - a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. It comes in 4 chapters (with a downloadable PDF offered), starting with CHAPTER I: The unexpected occurs

This is a rather non-threatening, academic start to a piece that reflects our current situation, with looming vaccine mandates even for children:

. . . ever since they were made available, vaccines have been controversial, and it has almost always been difficult to have a nonemotionally charged discussion about them. One reason is that in humans (and other animals), any infection can trigger an archaic brain circuit in most of us called the behavioral immune system (BIS). It's a circuit that is triggered when we sense we may be near a potential carrier of disease, causing disgust, fear, and avoidance. It is involuntary, and not easy to shut off once it's been turned on.

The BIS is best understood in contrast to the regular immune system. The "regular immune system" consists of antibodies and T-cells and so on, and it evolved to protect us once a problematic microbe gets inside us. The BIS is different; it evolved to prevent us from getting infected in the first place, by making us hypersensitive to hygiene, hints of disease in other people, even signs that they are from another tribe--since, in ancient times, encounters with different tribes could wipe out one's own tribe with an infectious disease they carried. Often the "foreign" tribe had its own long history of exposure to pathogens, some of which it still carried, but to which it had developed immunity in some way. Members of the tribe were themselves healthy, but dangerous to others. And so we developed a system whereby anything or anyone that seems like it might bear significant illness can trigger an ancient brain circuit of fear, disgust, and avoidance.

It can also trigger rage, but rage is complex, because it is normally expressed by getting close to the object, and attacking it. But with contagion, one fears getting too close, so generally the anger is expressed by isolating the plague-bearer. The BIS is thus an alarm system specific to contagion (and, I should add, to the fear of being poisoned, which before the development of modern chemistry often came from exposure to living things and their dangerous byproducts, such as venoms).

(emphasis mine)

Just a joke below. Right?

Thus it can also be triggered by nonanimate things, like body fluids of some kinds, surfaces others may have touched, or even more abstract ideas like "going to the grocery store."

One of the reasons our discussions of vaccination are so emotionally radioactive, inconsistent, and harsh, is that the BIS is turned on in people on both sides of the debate. Those who favor vaccination are focused on the danger of the virus, and that triggers their system. Those who don't are focused on the fact that the vaccines inject into them a virus or a virus surrogate or even a chemical they think may be poisonous, and that turns on their system. Thus both sides are firing alarms (including many false-positive alarms) that put them in a state of panic, fear, loathing, and disgust of the other.

And now these two sides of the vaccination debate are tearing America apart. . .

And it's not just America. Here, in a two-minute podcast, Jordan Peterson also expresses grave concerns over Australia's COVID tracking app. Is it worse than the virus?

Back to the part of the TABLET piece that I think has applicability far beyond the subject of vaccines:

It seems to me especially vital that we broaden our understanding of the history and current state of vaccines because, over the summer, many who chose vaccination for themselves concluded that it is acceptable to mandate vaccines for others, including those who are reluctant to get them. That majority entered a state of "crystallization"--a term I borrow from the French novelist Stendhal, who applied it to the moment when a person first falls in love: Feelings that may have been fluid become solid, clear, and absolute, leading to all-or-nothing thinking, such that even the beloved's blemishes become signs of their perfection.

Crystallization, as I'm using it here, happens within a group that has been involved in a major dispute. For a while there is an awareness that some disagreement is in play, and people are free to have different opinions. But at a certain point--often hard to predict and impossible to measure because it is happening in the wider culture and not necessarily at the ballot box--both sides of the dispute become aware that, within this mass of human beings, there is now a winner. One might say that a consensus arises that there is now a majority consensus. Suddenly, certain ideas and actions must be applauded, voiced, obeyed, and acted on, while others are off limits.

(Emphasis mine)

One person who understood how this works intuitively was Alexis de Tocqueville. In democracies, as long as there is not yet a majority opinion, a range of views can be expressed, and it appears there is a great "liberty of opinion," to use his phrase. But once a majority opinion forms, it acquires a sudden social power, and it brings with it pressure to end dissent. A powerful new kind of censorship and coercion begins in everyday life (at work, school, choir, church, hospitals, in all institutions) as the majority turns on the minority, demanding it comply. Tocqueville, like James Madison, was concerned about this "the tyranny of the majority," which he saw as the Achilles' heel of democracy. It isn't only because divisiveness created a minority faction steeped in lingering resentment; it's also because minorities can sometimes be more right than majorities (indeed, emerging ideas are, by definition, minority ideas to start with). The majority overtaking the minority could mean stamping out thoughts and actions that would otherwise generate progress and forward movement.

It is a fascinating moment when this sort of crystallization happens in a mass culture like America's, because seemingly overnight even the definition of legitimate speech (or thought or action) also changes. Tocqueville observed that quite abruptly a person can no longer express opinions or raise questions that only days before were acceptable, even though no facts of the matter have changed. At an individual level, people who were within the bounds can be surprised to find themselves "tormented by the slights and persecutions of daily obloquy." Once this occurs, he wrote, "your fellow-creatures will shun you like an impure being, and those who are most persuaded of your innocence will abandon you too, lest they should be shunned in their turn."

In the midst of a pandemic, seeing the unvaccinated as "impure" is no surprise, because of course they could carry contagion. But as Tocqueville pointed out, this also occurs when there is no contagion, and we begin to experience those who are on the wrong side as "impure" - - as in failing the purity test - - and react to them as though they are dangerous. That we do this even when there is no pandemic suggests that there is, along with realistic fear of infection, something else going on here - - a sense that those with whom we may disagree are impurities in the body politic, bad people who need to be taught a lesson, even punished.

The constant repetition of "pandemic of the unvaccinated" was evil.

A June 2021 Gallup poll found that, among the vaccinated, 53% now worry most about those choosing not to get vaccinated, "surpassing concerns about lack of social distancing in their area (27%), availability of local hospital resources and supplies (11%), and availability of coronavirus tests in their area (5%)." True to the BIS's impulses, this fear is metastasizing into disgust, even hatred, of those who--because they believe or act differently--are now perceived as threats: On Aug. 26, in a front-page story in the Toronto Star, my local newspaper, a resident was quoted as saying: "I have no empathy left for the willfully unvaccinated. Let them die."

In the midst of such a death wish for fellow human beings, even the person quoted understood that an important mental capacity has been lost: empathy. . .

In addition to vaccines, there are a number of issues where I would not want to see The Left's positions become the "crystallized" positions. But the minority opposed to mandates and such on the vaccine issue is still a sizeable minority. It shouldn't take a psychiatrist to point this out, but maybe it does:

For many, vaccine hesitancy is not simply about the vaccines; it's about the absence of faith in the wider systems that brought us the vaccines. "Public health moves at the speed of trust," notes physician and author Rishi Manchanda. If we want our public health system to function better--safer, swifter, in ways that more effectively safeguard the lives and livelihoods of all citizens--it must be rooted not in coercion but in confidence, and not only among the majority.

In the next two chapters of the piece, there is a historical discussion which provides very good reasons for "vaccine hesitancy". Some highlights and comments below:

CHAPTER II: The kernel brilliance of vaccines

Among the great triumphs of vaccination are the elimination in the United States of the scourge of polio, and the eradication of smallpox throughout the world. Indeed, perhaps because of these successes, many of us nostalgically imagine that their development and public acceptance came easily. . .

But there were serious problems on the way to these triumphs. There were also serious problems with later vaccines. Not to mention other medical scandals involving both government and pharmaceutical companies.

I worked for a pharmaceutical company in 1986 (one of the few NOT "Big Pharma" companies) when the development below occurred, and there was a company-wide meeting to discuss its implications. Our company did not make vaccines, but this was still seen as a big issue in terms of how liability was affecting pharmaceutical companies. Government funding for other forms of drug injury was not foreseen at that time. America stands out for the size of jury awards for drug injuries, and originator companies bear primary liability even when the drug is off patent and supplied by a generic company:

In 1986, the last pharmaceutical company still making the DPT, Lederle, told the government it would stop making the vaccine. Companies making vaccines for other diseases were also being sued, and also stopping production. The government grew very concerned, and in 1986 Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA). The act established a new system for vaccine-related injuries or death linked to childhood vaccinations, wherein companies were indemnified from being sued for safety problems. (Soon after, the program was enlarged to include adult vaccination injuries.) If anyone believed that a child or person was injured by a vaccine, they could take the complaint to a newly established vaccine court, run by the U.S. government, and plead their case. If they won, the government would pay them damages from a fund it created out of taxpayer money.

This might have seemed the best possible solution: The country retained a vaccine supply, and citizens had recourse in the event of harm. But because companies were indemnified from any harm their vaccines might cause, they no longer had a powerful financial incentive to rectify existing safety problems, or even improve safety as time passed. Arguably, they were financially disincentivized from doing so. The solution shifted liability for the costs of safety problems from the makers onto the taxpayers, the pool that included those who were arguably harmed.

This atmosphere of suspicion spread in the 1990s, with even greater explosiveness and toxicity, during the vaccine autism debate.

The author does not mention that the COVID vaccines are not covered under the programs set up to compensate for injuries or deaths from approved vaccines.

Back in August, Glenn Reynolds suggested this:

Vaccine manufacturers are usually protected from liability by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. . .

But the VICP doesn't apply to emergency "countermeasures" like the COVID vaccines. . .

So when people say that they're being asked to take an unapproved vaccine without much in the way of compensation if something goes wrong, they're basically right. So what do we do? The government should put its money where its mouth is.

We change the rules to make people feel safe. In the case of ordinary vaccines, manufacturers need an incentive to enter the market. In the case of these vaccines, ordinary people need an incentive to enter the market. So let's provide ordinary people with some incentives.

A special "COVID Injury Compensation Fund" paying much higher damages to injured people might fit the bill. The ordinary vaccine-compensation program caps damages at $250,000 for death and disability. A COVID fund might award sums of $1 million for death or disability, plus lost income and medical expenses; a million is a round number that should reassure people.

He also mentions something about not insulting the intelligence of the hesitant.

Why are they afraid to give the people REAL information?

I don't think I have heard anything about coverage for vaccine injuries for the "approved" Pfizer vaccine, by the way.

Why not?

Returning to CHAPTER II in the TABLET piece:

What distinguishes the courageous person from the coward is not that they don't worry or fear, but that they can still manage to move forward into the dangerous situation they cannot avoid facing. All of which is to say that the presence of anxiety alone is not dispositive of sanity or insanity: It, alone, does not tell you whether the anxiety is well or ill-founded. The same goes with distrust. Sometimes distrust is paranoia, and sometimes it is healthy skepticism.

As of a September 2019 Gallup poll, only a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, Big Pharma was the least trusted of America's 25 top industry sectors, No. 25 of 25. In the eyes of ordinary Americans, it had both the highest negatives and the lowest positives of all industries. At No. 24 was the federal government, and at No. 23 was the health care industry.

These three industries form a neat troika (though at No. 22 was the advertising and public relations industry, which facilitates the work of the other three.) Those inside the troika often characterize the vaccine hesitant as broadly fringe and paranoid. But there are plenty of industries and sectors that Americans do trust. Of the top 25 U.S. industry sectors, 21 enjoy net positive views from American voters. Only pharma, government, health care, and PR are seen as net negative: precisely the sectors involved in the rollout of the COVID vaccines. This set the conditions, in a way, for a perfect storm.

CHAPTER III: A new plague descends

In February and March 2020, it became clear that the disaster that had swept through Wuhan was becoming catastrophic in Bergamo. As frontline health care workers were dying in both China and Italy, the virus had also spread throughout Western Europe and arrived in North America. . .

While much of the United States was terrified, there was some light: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the physician-scientist now running the country's pandemic defense, seemed able to answer most press questions, projected an affable, avuncular persona, and spoke in ways people could understand, which is what the nation required. Even skeptics had hopes: Fauci seemed steady when events took unexpected turns, explaining that we were learning as we went along. He said the lockdown would be for 15 days, to "flatten the curve." . . .

Then the changes in messaging and flip-flops on several fronts started. Bill Gates gets a couple of cameos in the story. How did HE come to figure so heavily in the details of vaccine development?

How did the Master Narrative that vaccines were the only answer develop, and how did cracks in that narrative develop? Why is it so hard to change the Master Narrative despite the gaping cracks which are obvious to anyone who wants to see them?

It may be worth downloading the PDF of this piece just for the history. An example of "crystallization" below:

Remaining unvaccinated & going out in public is equivalent to driving under the influence. You want to be intoxicated? That’s your choice, but if you want to drive a car, that endangers others. No one should have the “choice” to infect others with a potentially deadly disease. pic.twitter.com/a4itLS2upX

— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) September 10, 2021

On clinical trial design and follow-up concerning long-term adverse effects:

One can more persuasively demonstrate that a vaccine doesn't have these effects if there is a proper vaccine-free, COVID-free control group. But if vaccines continue to be pushed as the one and only answer, we will never know if certain health problems emerge, because there will be no "normal" vaccine-free group left for comparison. It's a development that is quite disconcerting, for it suggests a wish not to know.

CHAPTER IV: Getting out

The author presents some of the complexities of our current situation here. You really need to read it yourself to get an idea of some of the scientific details behind the headlines.

. . . demonizing people for having doubts is the worst move we can make, especially since there are serious problems in our drug and vaccine regulatory systems. Some health organizations have become concerned enough about the effects of non-transparency that a group has formed. . In a report released recently, the alliance analyzed 86 registered clinical vaccine trials across 20 COVID vaccines, and found only 12% have made their protocols available as of May 2021. Scores of key decisions affecting the public were never made available. The U.S. government should immediately give the public and outside scientists access to raw data on which studies are based, and the minutes of meetings where major decisions are made on policies like mandates; we need the kinds of transparency Peter Doshi has asked for from pharma, and Kesselheim did from the FDA. Doshi and some colleagues from Oxford have asked, for instance, what the rationale was for the regulatory agencies to allow pharma companies not to choose hospitalization, death, or viral transmission as "endpoints" in the authorization studies. Let's see the internal deliberations; let's see the minutes of crucial meetings. All these researchers are doing is being true to the motto of the Royal Society, the first national scientific institution ever established: Nullias in verba, "Take Nobody's Word For It."

Again,

Doshi and some colleagues from Oxford have asked, for instance, what the rationale was for the regulatory agencies to allow pharma companies not to choose hospitalization, death, or viral transmission as "endpoints" in the authorization studies.

This does not sound like the regulatory agencies I remember when I was in the business. Were they traumatized by pharmaceutical companies planning to quit making vaccines decades ago?

There have been so many mistakes by so many.

Norman Doidge wants people to be able to consider issues of vaccination, immunity and treatment in a less emotional, polarized way.

For Tocqueville, "the tyranny of the majority over the minority" is the ever-present danger in democracies, the remedy for which, John Stuart Mill argued, was a protection of minority rights, and, above all, the right to continue speaking--even if a majority opinion seemed to be crystalizing. Mill in the end was influenced and changed by Tocqueville's notion of the tyranny of the majority, and pointed out that the tyranny unique to democracy gave rise to "the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion" in the social sphere, in our so-called free societies. It moved him to write his great plea for free speech, in On Liberty:

Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. . .

What form should that protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling take?

Music and Dance

West Coast Swing

East Coast Swing

Hope you have something nice planned for the weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

posted by K.T. at 11:20 AM

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