We Shouldn’t Just Trick Anti-Vaxxers, But the Temptation Is Real
What if you could sell a placebo that could also be a cure?
What if you could sell a placebo that could also be a cure?
I felt the call to participate in a disinformation campaign. It felt like the voice of God uttering Truth in my ear.
I belong to several conspiracy theory groups on social media where I just keep tabs. Sometimes I feel a little bit like an 18th-century anthropologist, pinning together wild theories based on my limited worldview.
I worry that guessing why people believe what they believe isn’t going to teach me much. Very few of us have good reasons to believe what we believe, so why pick on the fringe? It’s more useful to accept people’s beliefs at face value and work backwards from there.
I recently came across a post from a fringe anti-vaxxer. This person has claimed to be a targeted individual. They’ve told me about attempts on their lives by certain other cults and provided insights to murders that were made to look like natural deaths.
This is a person who walks the walk. In my mind, their beliefs aren’t materially different from any other religious belief. It’s a worldview cobbled together from hopes and anxieties and the real and true observation that almost everyone is lying almost all the time.
I’ve said it a million times, conspiracy believers aren’t wrong, they’re just overwrought.
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This person, against all that I would have ever believed about them, recently took the vaccine. It was literally some of the best news I’ve heard in years. Although they didn’t give a reason one guesses that vaccination mandates may be starting to work. It’s also possible be that this person has wanted to get vaccinated for some time, and the fear of illness and potential death began to work at their resolve.
Maybe the mandate is the excuse some people needed to abandon the hill upon which they’d initially chosen to die.
Double Disinformation for the Win
I’m paraphrasing here for privacy and clarity, but their message admitting to having accepted the vaccination went something like this:
I got the jab. I’m sorry but there was no avoiding it. Don’t worry about me, though, I went to a natural doctor and underwent cleansing light and sound therapies to neutralize the bad stuff in the vaccine.
This is when what sounded like God’s own Truth was whispered into my ear: What if you could sell a placebo that could also be a cure?
I came up with a campaign immediately:
Maybe the government can make you get vaccinated, but they can’t make you keep that garbage in your blood. With our special UV/sonic cocktail of treatments, you can overcome all the ill effects of any vaccine. Disclaimer: This treatment does not offer or extend Covid protection.
It feels like a harmless lie on the surface, and since they aren’t all quacks, there must be at least a few holistic practitioners thinking that very thing, standing on the rift between their desire to do good and their desire to be good.
It Is So Hard to Empathize With Conspiracy Theory Enthusiasts
It is also absolutely critical to diminishing their influencebytonyrusso.medium.com
Side note: I actually had to Google light therapy to see its uses beyond seasonal affective disorder, but I know a person who practices sound therapy and genuinely believes sound waves can improve your sense of wellbeing. She doesn’t promote its physical curative powers, though.
How tempting must it be to offer vaccine cleansing, especially if you already are a light or sound therapist? If it ticked vaccinations up a couple points where would be the harm? Hell, we could kick it up another notch and say the treatment prevents all vaccine-related Autism, all vaccine-related everything.
I mean, a lot people are on the edge, here. They want an opportunity to back down from their fantastical claims while being able to cling to them. This is a perfect solution.
The only price is legitimizing the thinking that got us into this mess in the first place, but that’s where it makes me feel a little icky.
It wouldn’t just mean taking advantage of people’s core beliefs, it would also mean betraying our own, discarding what we genuinely believe for a quick fix to a serious, long-term problem.
It’s still a question worth airing: Would you further empower the holistic health community to end the pandemic?
The Placebo Conundrum
I’ve written here and elsewhere about the power of orgone. If you’re not familiar, it is supposedly the ultimate in spiritual cleansing. It protects you from demons, neutralizes the ill effects of 5G and other electromagnetic radio waves, breaks up chemtrails, the whole kit and caboodle.
In the cult I investigated, orgone was believed to be a gift from God, a divine weapon as well as a divine palliative.
In Dragged Into the Light, I wrote about a young woman who may have had suicide-inducing depression and paranoia. She worked in a rehab clinic but believed drug addicts actually suffered from demonic possession. Wearing an orgone pendant was the only thing that made her feel safe from the demons that surrounded her.
Sometimes in this life, you have to face some very hard truths about your beliefs and assumptions.
Orgone may have extended her life, but it didn’t save it. Instead, it only solidified her belief that God was protecting her for a bigger reason. When she took her life, she likely believed God was sending her on a mission.
Sure, light and sound therapy might give people an excuse to “get the jab,” but in doing so it only reinforces the idea that there’s an inherent evil at work behind vaccines. Big Pharma certainly hasn’t done itself any favors so far this century, but I’m not sure I’m ready to hand our public health back to the shamen.
My New (Cursed?) Orgone Pendant
When you buy orgone you’re paying for a story not magicbytonyrusso.medium.com
Unlike orgone, there are plenty of holistic methods that work for no good reason. I’ve written elsewhere about how acupuncture cured my panic attacks. But the holistic healing industry attracts so many charlatans.
It isn’t different from any other industry that relies on placebos and metaphysics for its power. When you come to a healer (or a preacher) already prepared to believe, all you can do is hope that they’re trustworthy.
The flip side is, if someone comes to you begging for peace of mind, someone who is convinced the vaccine is killing them from the inside out, and you’re the only one who can help them, how do you turn them away?
For me, as tempting as it is, I fall in the same final predicament as I do when I think about the young woman who killed herself. Sometimes in this life, you have to face some very hard truths about your beliefs and assumptions. Encouraging people to avoid that, even if you think it’s for their own good, doesn’t help anyone in the end.
It goes even deeper than betraying people with their own beliefs. It’s betraying your own for temporary respite, admitting that the world would be a better place if we traded in disinformation alone.
We’re already so close to that and we’re clearly no happier. In the end, I’d rather prop up what’s left of our shared reality than participate in shredding it.
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Tony Russo is a journalist and author of “Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult.” Subscribe to his Bagel Manifesto here.