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My Response to a "Panicking Paul"
Unfortunately very few people have „conspiracy theorist“ friends, who seek out information directly, rather than believing newspaper headlines and „panicking Pauls“ on TV shows.
The other day, I had a conversation with someone about the silencing and censorship of the last three years. He had a hard time admitting this, being a notorious „panicking Paul“ who believes everything he sees on TV and meticulously forgets whatever doesn't suit his narrative.
At some point in the discussion, however, he asked an ad hominem question, which I decided to take at face value and answer. The question was whether, at any time during this period, I had made a claim related to Covid-19, that was later proven to be false. Here's my answer:
"I can give you one example, yes. In March 2020, I was extremely worried how tourists from ski resorts in Italy and Austria were being allowed back into Iceland, for I still believed the exaggerated claims of a 3-5% Covid-19 mortality rate regardless of age. If you haven't forgotten, this was something that you yourself kept touting, even long after it became clear how far-fetched it was. Just a few weeks after the outbreak began, it became clear to me that these assumptions were completely wrong. It also became clear to me that the mainstream media was not a reliable source for anything related to this issue.
However, I also remember how surprised I was in the summer of 2021 when a friend of mine mentioned in passing how glad he was not to have contracted the virus, for if he did, there would be a 2% chance that he, a healthy man in his early fifties, would die of it. This is a highly educated man, an executive at a large international insurance company, whose job it is to make decisions based on rigorous analysis of complex datasets. Still, he believed this, thanks to the mainstream media and „panicking Pauls“ like you. It wasn't until I showed him the CDC data on death rates and risk by age group, the seroprevalence studies from the WHO, and explained the difference between IFR and CFR, that he stopped believing this. Unfortunately however, very few people have „conspiracy theorist“ friends, who seek out information directly, rather than believing newspaper headlines and „panicking Pauls“ on TV shows.
So, my answer is yes, I believed the scaremongering at the very start, and I'm ashamed of it. However, I have it to my advantage that I stopped believing it as soon as I realised it was based on lies and exaggerations."
It's quite annoying how I am always asked to prove the truth of my statements about the pandemic and, when I show the research, am told that it must be wrong because it's the opposite of the Real Truth. The other day I gave someone a copy of the letter the Surgeon General in Florida had published about the dangers with the "vaccines" only to be told he was a quack who was friends with Steve Bannon who is clearly a right-wing nutcase and evil man. So the Surgeon General of Florida can't be trusted, apparently. Yet my friend has no research, proof or evidence that this man is a quack - he clearly googled his name and read something. The Believers in the Pandemic don't need to question their beliefs do they? I'm considered to be "a bit wacky" because I have refused to follow any of the rules and maintained from March 2020 that this was all hysterical nonsense. People say I must have a problem with authority and smile in a patronising way!!!!!
I had an almost identical conversation w a very smart, healthy 50-year-old physicist relative in summer 2022 (!!!) who was so relieved he got the vax before getting infected because he would have had a 2% chance of dying. Unlike your experience, when I sent him the studies and stats he ghosted me. In 99% of my attempts to expose panicking Pauls to real data all I get is a blank stare/no response. That’s what really scares me...