They feel their monopoly on information slipping away and the veil of mass formation psychosis - which totally does not exist - beginning to lift.

That is not something they can abide. He must be silenced.

I love headlines, they can be illuminating, and by "illuminating," I mean they can reveal the writer's agenda if you look closely enough.

Doctors call out Spotify over Joe Rogan spreading "false and societally harmful" covid-19 claims

"Doctors."

Hey, it's just a headline, they clarify things in the first paragraph.

A coalition of hundreds...

Hundreds!

Well, a little over 270, which is enough to tip it to the plural, otherwise they'd be stuck with the far less impressive "dozens."

How do they get to that number?

Why, by including not just "doctors," but "public health experts," too!

...of doctors and public health experts have called out Spotify for allowing Joe Rogan to spread "false and societally harmful assertions" about the coronavirus and vaccination on the streaming platform that hosts his wildly popular podcast.

Oh, but we're not done just yet.

When you get to their actual letter, it turns out the coalition consists of "doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators."

They are just a couple steps away from, "doctors, nurses, scientists, educators, administrative assistants, the person at the desk Judy I think, my neighbor two doors down the one with the green shutters, that guy at the grocery store I always say hi to but never caught his name, my dog..."

I don't really like playing the "credentials" game. Either you know what you're talking about or you don't, but it's their game, so let's play by their rules for a moment.

After all, they really don't expect you to examine these lists. Their allies in the media certainly won't. Heck, The Washington Post certainly didn't.

We do.

First, lots of nurses, 27 in total. I think nurses are wonderful. But if you're going to start talking smack about a Rogan guest like Dr. Robert Malone, one of the pioneers of mRNA technology, you‘re going to need to bring your big guns.

Like your dentist.

Colleen Trecartin-Frost, DMD: Dentist

Yes, someone got their dentist to sign on.

Incidentally, my dentist is pretty based. There's a good chance he'd agree with me more than them.

In any case, gotta pad those numbers!

Like, say, see if you can get your son's high school science teacher on board.

Natalie Soto, MSc: Science Teacher

I am not kidding.

This letter has a lot of signatories in totally unrelated fields.

Gabriel Evaristo, MD: Obstetrician-Gynecologist

Gregory Baker, MD: Attending Anesthesiologist

Kristen Watt, RPh: Pharmacist

Nini Muñoz, PhD: Senior Design Engineer

Elle Michel, LMFT: Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

They come from all over the country, too, and some, like Watt the pharmacist, are in Canada.

I suspect that a call went out online for signatories and they took what they could get.

I tracked a few down on social media and there are some common threads of a sort.

Watt, for example, is very woke, and lets everyone know it right up front in her Twitter profile.

Personal pronouns: Check

Recognizing she lives on stolen lands: Check

Double masked: Check

And of course, triple (at least!) vaxxed.

Muñoz, the engineer, is making a name for herself on Instagram creating colorful graphics the better to pat herself on the back for her intellectual superiority.

A debate about science makes it appear that there is something to debate when there really isn't.

Shut up, she explains.

But, like a patient parent dealing with a recalcitrant toddler, she's willing to "discuss this anyway."

As long as you behave.

Fringe scientists from the "other side" have no evidence - that's what I would like to get across.

"If you disagree with me, you're wrong."

There, cleaned it up for her.

What they typically do is gish gallop: bombard as many different half-truths (cherry picking) and no-truths (lies) into a very short space of time so that their opponent cannot hope to combat each point in real time.

The projection in this one is strong.

They resort to other techniques such as fear mongering, the argument of ignorance and false dichotomies to advance a narrative. The average person may not be able to tell what is truth from fiction.

Fear mongering you say?

That's ringing a bell for some reason.

Oh, yeah.

That's just two, the first two I could find social media profiles on.

While the list does include many professionals with relevant experience, they clearly padded the numbers with many who weren't. The Washington Post was all too happy to maintain the fiction, at one point referring to the group as consisting of:

...more than 270 medical professionals."

Which of the signatories did the Washington Post contact?

Not the dentist, not the pharmacist, not even the high school teacher!

Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago's School of Public Health who signed the letter, told The Washington Post that the group of medical professionals came together to "fight against this tidal wave of misinformation" broadcast on Rogan's show.

Rest assured, that choice was not random. That's not how it works. Whoever is behind this group pointed them to her because she has the right credentials and will say the right things.

"I actually think he's a menace to public health because he speaks on things that have no scientific backing," she said Friday.

"A menace to public health."

Wallace is certainly doing her part, explaining "base rate fallacy" and the like to the riffraff.

Her point is that as a percentage of the population, the unvaccinated tend to have worse outcomes than the vaccinated even though the vaccinated are also being hospitalized at high numbers; that is, you can't look at the gross numbers, but the per-100,000 population numbers.

As I have written previously, that does not directly address the fact that the vaccines are not in any fathomable way working as promised. Given their short-term protection, need for repeated boosters, and prevalence for breakthrough infections, they have to be the least effective vaccines ever approved for widespread use with a risk profile not yet fully understood.

That is why they're talking about double-masking, social distancing, and all the rest, even for the triple vaxxed.

They never want to address those issues, but prefer to engage in straw-men arguments.

As for the letter itself, let's take a quick look at a few passages.

On Dec. 31, 2021, the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE), a Spotify-exclusive podcast, uploaded a highly controversial episode featuring guest Dr. Robert Malone (#1757). The episode has been criticized for promoting baseless conspiracy theories and the JRE has a concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals.

The push-back medical professionals are getting is due to the push-back medical professionals are getting.

Got that?

It has nothing to do with the lies, the missteps, the bad policy, or the constant moving of the goal posts. No, the problem is that people are beginning to notice this and speak out about it that is the real problem.

We are a coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators spanning a wide range of fields such as microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, and neuroscience..

... and dentistry, high school science, electrical engineering, marriage therapy, and picking up your prescriptions at CVS.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine.

It couldn't possibly be that that public health authorities "have repeatedly spread misleading and false claims" on their platforms.

Why, it would be misleading to say so!

After a litany of things they believe to be misinformation, they say this:

These actions are not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous.

"Culturally dangerous."

I sure hope that doesn't affect his social credit score.

We, the undersigned doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators thus call on Spotify to immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.

They insist they don't want to "cancel" Rogan.

They just want Spotify to "moderate" his speech.

Which is totally different.

I'm not big into conspiracy theories, and I don't necessarily take everything Rogan or Malone says as gospel. I don't do that with any human being. We are flawed and prone to errors of all kinds.

All of us.

Which is why I am big into free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

The signatories of this letter can play in the arena of ideas all they want, in fact I welcome it. After all, there's another letter with nearly a million signatures that would support Rogan and refute their scientific opinions.

They just don't get to rig the rules in their favor.