Getting closer to pinpointing the Problem of the Berensonite Wing

My term the "Berensonite Wing" refers to that dominant wing of the Covid Dissenters movement (such as it is) -- named after Alex Berenson, their unofficial leader -- who tend to play it safe, double-virtue-signalling both to their Team Reality members and to the Mainstream at large ("look at us, we're not wild-eyed Conspiracy Theorists!"), thereby unwittingly reinforcing the very same damned Mainstream narrative they purport otherwise to oppose.

Over the months what I've adverted to here on this blog represents a small fraction of what the Berensonite Wing has been up to in this regard.  Even my Twitter feed is not the whole story, since probably more often than not, I'm too weary to tweet my protestant response.  At any rate, here are a couple that reflect my theme today.  So we have today Alex Berenson tweeting this:

I know some of you feel overwhelmed at this moment. I hear from you everyday.

But this will not be the future. Not for you, Sarah, not for your kids, not for ours.

Not if we stand up for the truth.

Sounds bracingly encouraging in a Churchillian way, eh?  Well, as I tweeted in response:

Depends on what "the truth" is. If the truth is what Dr. Elke de Klerk of Doctors for Truth says -- namely, that there is no pandemic nor epidemic at all -- then Alex is not standing up for the truth.

Naturally, my tweet received only 1 lonely like.  And what was my "Doctors for Truth" reference about?  Well, as I tweeted on Alex's Twitter page a few days ago:

Has Alex ever featured "Doctors for Truth"?  Why not?

And I then quoted what their founder, Dr. Elke de Klerk, said at a recent press conference, flanked by her medical professional colleagues:

"I want to state that we do not have a medical pandemic or epidemic. We also state that Covid-19 should not be on 'list A' for any longer, because we now know that it is a normal flu virus..."

On that same note, in another tweet on another day, I responded to Alex's typical mainstream-reinforcing double-virtue-signaling:

I hate fighting about masks with people like Dr. Gawande. But he is wrong. The papers he offers barely rank as hypothesis-generating. The national data is impossibly confounded, the Harvard hospital paper doesn’t even have a control group, and the others are mostly care reports.

Alex was responding to a Mainstream doctor, who had tweeted:

Masks work? YES. This is appalling. [Dr. Scott] Atlas offers no explanation for the increasing mountain of evidence in support, and instead offers only a bizarre and incoherent paper. I don't know why the administration wants to die on this hill. 

To which I responded:

And I don't know why Team Reality wants to die on the hill of arguing about masks at all -- when the real issue is that what we are supposedly protecting from (or not), is virtually harmless and not really a pandemic or an epidemic, as Dr. Elke de Klerk of Doctors for Truth, says.

Alex's Conspirophobia

 

Pastor Mark Burns asks:

Is it possible that President @realDonaldTrump & his team was targeted for #COVID19?

Alex Berenson tweets:

No

My response at the time was:

Where is Alex's proof for his apodictic certitude?

Of course, Alex has no proof. He has only the axiom: It can't possibly be a conspiracy, so we must bracket that out of consideration when we think about and pronounce upon this unprecedented earth-shattering event of Covid policy.

More ruminations on Alex Berenson

 

More thoughts on Alex Berenson's cognitive dissonance (or less charitably, schizophrenia) -- challenging the mainstream narrative on Covid with one side of his mouth, reinforcing that same narrative with the other side of his mouth.

One side of Alex's mouth:

And for six months. #SARSCoV2 is not seriously risky to the vast majority of people. In fact if @who’s numbers are correct the death rate is much lower than has been reported.

Followed swiftly (in the same tweet, separated only by a paragraph break) with the other side of his mouth:

Trump’s illness is scary for him and his family. I hope he recovers...

Followed by another tweet:

But an even deeper tragedy will be if the media uses his illness to frighten people unnecessarily and push us toward policies that take away our rights, hurt our economy, and most importantly damage our kids.

And unfortunately that’s already happening.

Well, unfortunately it's already happening because the mainstream does that with Covid in general, and Alex is participating in (and thereby reinforcing) that very same panic rhetoric he's otherwise decrying in the quotes above.

As I tweeted there:

Hesperado
Alex is subtly reinforcing the Mainstream (whether he knows it or not).  The vast majority of people had nothing to worry about these past 6 months from Covid. Trump and his family have NOTHING to worry about from Covid; and EVERYthing to worry about from the treacherous Swamp.

Then I noticed someone named "Squidink" level an apt riposte:

"But an even deeper tragedy will be if the media uses his illness to frighten people unnecessarily" and yet you write: "Trump’s illness is scary..." Speaking out both sides of yer gob much?

To which I responded:

Hesperado
Yep. Alex has been doing that for months, in a variety of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways.  His fan base (choir) doesn't seem to notice, and when I have pointed it out here in tweets over the months, I get like 1 or 2 likes and zero comments LMMO (Laughing My Mask Off).
 

The Problem With Alex

 

Alex Berenson, that is; the (or an) unofficial leader of the Covid Dissident movement (such as it is). I'll illustrate features of this problem with 4 tweets and my immediate, brief responses to them. In a subsequent posting, hopefully (if I don't die of Covid or -- far more likely -- if I don't die from a falling grand piano as I take a whistlingly jaunty walk in the park), I will further palpate the problematics. 

1) 

Someone tweeted this: 

Florida reports 127 newly identified deaths, and the oldest addition today: April 15th! I am not making this stuff up. Lots of deletions, some additional deaths in mid July. How is this even possible? @GovRonDeSantis what in the world is going on here? 

Alex Berenson (AB) replied: 

Hey @GovRonDeSantis - if you don't have the power to stop this practice, you can at least force your Health Department to be far, far more transparent about it and disclose granular data on causes of death and overall data on the percentage of deaths from death matching. I know you have done the right thing in FL but in most of the rest of the country "200,000 deaths" has become the rallying cry to make full reopening impossible. The data you provide can help those of us explain the truth about those deaths. 

Then the great Hesperado got in his typical zinger (typically ignored by as great a percentile as those who will never be harmed by Covid -- 99.99%): 

@HesperadoBlue Replying to @AlexBerenson

It could help, if 1) the mainstream weren't hopelessly corrupt; and if 2) Branch Covidians (who dominate our public space) weren't psychotically OCD thus rendering any SLIGHTEST POSSIBLE danger as = **Mankind will die**. 

[Then I noticed a tweeter named "A little bird told me" added some helpful information:] 

@ALittleTweet Replying to @AlexBerenson 

WA State counts “all death, irrespective of the cause, that tested positive for COVID.” CO too. TX is ridiculous. WA counts “untested & negative” in their cases. 

screenshot: https://twitter.com/ALittleTweet/status/1311684310370414593 

 2) 

AB: I don't agree with all of @zeynep's piece but it is exactly what supposedly serious outlets like @TheAtlantic SHOULD be offering - a non-hysterical take that tracing "super-spreader events" is crucial to controlling #Covid, with ideas about ways to do so. 

Hesperado:  There seem to be two wings to the Covid Dissident movement. One of them (the Berensonites) seems overly anxious not to catch conspiracy theory cooties, and thus ends up in subtle ways reinforcing the same damned mainstream narrative that has been oppressing us all these months.   The key passage in this regard:  ". . . tracing "super-spreader events" is crucial to controlling #Covid. . ." assumes that there are "super-spreader events" at all, and that "controlling Covid" is something we should be wringing our hands about at all -- both mainstream narrative memes.

3) 

AB: After six months ⁦@washingtonpost admits the truth: kids are at close to zero risk from the ro, and the inflammatory syndrome is generally easily managed. One small step... 

Hesperado: "close to zero" to the Branch Covidians = Mankind could still *possibly* die. All they need for their psychotic OCD principle of Better Safe Than Sorry is the slightest, most infinitesimal chance of doom, and they will think, feel, and act as though it were full-throttle doom. 

 4) 

AB: ...the irony is that the #Covid response has turned out to be the ultimate example of the kind of statist/elitist power grab that Trump in 2016 successfully ran against... And guess what? It’s steamrolled him and he can’t even understand why, much less explain what’s happened... 

Hesperado:  This one I didn't tweet because it had been too long since Alex's origial tweet, and we all know that Twitter cultivates a manically short attention span. I.e., if you respond to a tweet that's more than about 30 minutes old, you may as well be sending a letter in the 19th century to a missionary in Timbuktu.  I will only say in response now that AB's jab at Trump is rather rich, seeing as AB himself hasn't adequately grappled with the full nature & dimensions of the madness of Covid behavior & policy.  As I have tweeted countless times over the months now, this madness either reflects 1) a mass psychosis or 2) a conspiracy, with no reasonably adequate third explanation.  (#2 of course can include elements of #1, but not vice versa, in terms of an Either/Or.)  AB consistently shirks, dodges, bobs and weaves from facing this.  

His persisting evasiveness manifests itself in many behavioral quirks, among them a cognitive dissonance or schizophrenia whereby one day he posts an example of the confounding factors calling into serious question the mainstream numbers -- then the next day (or the next 15 minutes) posting a report that in his own words shows complete reliance upon the mainstream numbers.  And he never seems to even attempt to harmonize these mutually contradictory impulses of his CDB (Covid-Dissident Behavior).

P.S.:

Yet another example of Alex Berenson's quirks -- here's another recent tweet:

The Milwaukee coroner says about 20 percent of #COVID deaths in his county are misclassified and not due to the virus (not sure if this includes death certificate matching, which typically happens at the state level). 20 percent is likely the minimum.

 

As I Twitteringly noted at the time:

 

Approximately every other tweet by Alex reports various permutations of confounding factors that ruin the mainstream numbers on which the mainstream narrative is based; meanwhile the other Alex tweets in between reinforce those same mainstream numbers by relying on them.

 

The net effect of this incoherent schizophrenia (or, more charitably, cognitive dissonance) is to reinforce the mainstream narrative while giving Alex's fan base the encouraging illusion that they are fighting that mainstream narrative.