How “Science” Turned Into Religious Dogma During COVID

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Dogma is a belief, or set of beliefs, that is accepted by members of a specific group that is not questioned or doubted. Dogma does not imply that something is “bad,” “wrong” or untrue. Religion is an excellent example. It’s ok to believe whatever you believe in, and one should be free to do so.

Science, on the other hand, is all about doubting, questioning, examining and testing, but this suddenly changed during the pandemic.

During COVID, doctors, epidemiologists, professors and various other academics in the field were reprimanded in a number of ways for questioning any and all COVID policies that were put in place by several governments. Public and political discourse normalized stigma against not only academics, but people who were vaccine hesitant.

Demeaning language like “anti-vaxxers” was used, while language like “trust the science” and “back to normal” further singled out the unvaccinated, blaming them for the continuation of the pandemic, lockdowns, and the stress on hospital capacity.

On the other hand, science calling into question the efficacy and safety of COVID vaccines was buried. The wealth of data showing that lockdowns were, as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from the Stanford School of Medicine put it “the worst public health catastrophe in human history,” was completely ignored.

Science calling into question the safety and effectiveness of masks was also ignored, and those who have suffered serious vaccine injury have been unacknowledged.

The “powers that be” seemed to have made this type of language and perspective acceptable. The result of this further polarized society, physically and psychologically with almost zero discussion as to to why people refused to comply/disagreed with public health measures. A proper discourse was not had, only ridicule and finger pointing.

Today, we live in an era where a specific view of science has become akin to taking on a kind of religious authority; those who question it are deemed dangerous heretics and punished accordingly.

Even the British Medical Journal was “fact checked” and censored by Facebook third party fact checkers. The BMJ obtained dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails detailing concerning fraud that took place during clinical trials for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID vaccines. The FDA has still not investigated the case.

Facebook has already removed at least 16 million pieces of content from its platform, and added warnings to approximately 167 million others. YouTube has removed nearly 1 million videos related to, according to them, “dangerous or misleading covid-19 medical information.”

This type of “muzzling” is unprecedented, and infringes upon our right to share and view information. It’s something that continues to gain traction as the years pass, and it started well before COVID.

In many cases, telling the truth has become a crime.

For example, the case of Julian Assange, who exposed various US war crimes, among other things, is an excellent example. The government brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information. This establishes a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable. The US Department of Homeland Security has stated that sharing “misinformation” online may be considered domestic terrorism.

Barack Obama recently made more noise about the fact that disinformation is a big threat to American Democracy. Is it really disinformation that’s a threat, or simply information? Are governments fearful of being exposed?

But who decides what “misinformation” is? The government? Pharmaceutical companies? Funded third party fact checkers? We are constantly told that governments and government affiliated agencies are the gold standard of truth.

I am reminded of a quote from Dr. Julie Ponesse, a philosophy professor from Ontario, Canada who was let go due to her refusal to get vaccinated.

“Don’t underestimate yourself as a reliable source of information. Take notice of the evidence around you. Heed your instincts and experiences. You don’t need to outsource all of your thinking to the government, to the media, to anyone who tells you to do so.”

Scientific dogma is not a new phenomenon, and it comes in many forms. For example, a 2006 report by GlaxoSmithKline in the NEJM concluded that Avandia was a great drug for treating diabetes. At the time, the senior vice president of the company Lawson Macartney stated the following in a news release;

“We now have clear evidence from a large international study that the initial use of (Avandia) is more effective than standard therapies.”

The trial used to approve the drug had been funded by GlaxoSmithKline, and each of the eleven authors had received money from the company. Four were employees and held company stock. The other seven were academics who had received grants or consultant fees from the firm. The drug had been estimated to cause approximately 80,000 heart attacks and deaths, a safety signal that at the time of approval should have been quite clear.

There are countless examples of this, and pharmaceutical companies have knowingly put out “science” that’s been manipulated. This is why Pfizer, for example, has been assessed billions in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards. This is the heart of where scientific dogma originates, from fraud.

The type of censorship seen during COVID are signs of tyranny. COVID created an environment where doctors and scientists were at risk of losing their jobs for simply questioning the official narrative.

Tyrannical dictatorships operate in a different form in today’s day in age. Massive amounts of propaganda are used to sway the perception of the collective public mind, and any other opinion or piece of evidence is quickly done away with in various forms, usually by using censorship and ridicule. Any thought or piece of information that does not support the government seems to be a threat to them.

The question then becomes, what can we do about it?

The answer to that is quite simple. Keep talking, keep sharing information, and continue to use whatever means we have to share information. The number of people who became aware of the issues discussed in this article during COVID is quite large, and that’s very encouraging.

It’s become quite clear that crisis’ like COVID are used, and in some cases created by those who wish to profit off of them politically and financially. The world is being pushed in a direction of compliance and self censorship.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Edward Snowden, as I have done before.

“As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world. Do you truly believe that when the first wave, the second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept?”

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Articles by: Arjun Walia

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