Lies, Damned Lies, and Hydroxychloroquine

I saw a minor kerfluffle pop up on Bridget Phetasy’s twitter feed yesterday morning that I want to discuss because it’s such a perfect encapsulation of the way Fake News, and Leftists, operate in this modern hyper-partisan society.

Bridget has been advocating against, correctly IMAO, Vaccine Passports, and just created a shirt for her online store that features a hand flipping the bird and the phrase “Here’s my vaccine passport.”

Which is fine. Funny, provocative, I’m sure she’ll sell a ton of them. But of course the minute she put the announcement up on Twitter, all of the “we must submit to all Goverment orders or people will die!” folks showed up in her feed to let her know exactly how problematic her new shirt was. Because as we all know, a Leftist’s greatest fear is that someone, somewhere might be having a good time.

The comment that really caught my attention was from a guy who suggested that Bridget was enabling and amplifying the veiws of people who, among other things, believe that hydroxychloroquin is an effective treatement for The Bat Soup Flu. And that this was a very dangerous thing for her to do because… reasons.

Leaving aside for a minute the argument over whether or not HCQ actually works to lessen the effects of COVID, what I’ve always found fascinating is the way The Left approaches the concept of HCQ as a potential mitigation strategy. It’s illustrative of their approach to many other things.

What they could have said was “hey, there are no studies showing a link between HCQ and COVID mitigation, so buyer beware. You might simply be wasting your time and money.” But that’s not how things work in our hyperpartisan society. It can’t just be that HCQ might not work, instead it must be the case that even though millions of people all over the world take HCQ every single day for other legitimate medical reasons, to use it for any off-label reason WILL LITERALLY KILL YOU!!!

As if your body knows why you’re taking it. “Hey guys, this is the liver. Even though HCQ has been proven safe and effective for human use, I notice that our human is taking HCQ for COVID, which has not been approved by the FDA…. I guess we have to kill him.”

Ridiculous, no doubt. But that’s the way debate happens these days, because the worst thing you can do in 2021 America is give “wrongthink” a platform.

The argument goes like this. If you tell people that they must do something, but you do it in a way that is not definitive enough, there will be people who will ignore you and continue to do what you don’t want them to do. So you must lie, or make up some incredibly scary possible outcome, in order to force compliance. It’s no longer enough just to tell people they are wrong, you have to add that they are evil, or killing people, or even that they are… “worse than Hitler” (TM).

Otherwise someone might engage in their Consitutionally protected right to tell you to cram it with walnuts and go on about the business of living their life without your input.