We get mail…

Part of the fun of being on the NZ Skeptics committee is that we get sent emails from folk with some “interesting” views. In many instances the emails we get are provocative trolling messages, or sent from overseas accounts and blasted out to multiple skeptical organisations around the world.

But, this week we received a bunch of emails from a local sender - seven of them in all! We've not responded as yet, though I thought I'd write up my thoughts on them here. Here goes…

The email chain started with one titled “'Skeptics' .... more like 'Gullible Turkeys' …” Well, that sets the tone!

I'm not going to reproduce all of the emails, but the first few paragraphs in the first one will give you an idea of the rest of the content. (And, in the style of PZ Myers' Pharyngula blog, I'll quote their nonsense in Comic Sans font!)

“I came across you looking for something completely different

I saw 'critical thinking' ... I'll get in touch with them, I thought ... but alas ... your idea of 'critical thinking' is more like an ad run by a dodgy car salesman ...I looked on your site for some critical thinking ... and found some absolutely hair-brained (sic), fathomless criticism of NZDSOS

I'm not going to bother trying to point out how pathetic your criticism is ...I don't know what planet you are living on ...

Oh ... hold on ... I do know what planet you're living on ... you're living on a planet that has been deceived ...a planet of gullible turkeys that believe what their 'woke' Govts and very controlled, bought and paid for MSM, and so-called 'fact-checkers' tell them ... a 'blue-pilled' recipe for disaster ... and that is exactly what has happened ...

There is not one person in NZ that knows what's in the so-called 'vaccines' ... they apparently disclosed 50% of the ingredients (on what planet is that acceptable?) but I doubt even that is true ... or verifiable

Excess deaths ... Worldwide ... are up as much as 40% ... people are dropping like flies ... some of the best doctors in the World are banned from social media, for pointing facts like this out

The 'facts' ... which you seem to think you are getting ... are bogus ...

Fertility is down drastically Worldwide ... still-births, miscarriages, menstrual problems, heart attacks, strokes, aggressive cancers are 'through the roof' ...the 'facts' are out there ... just not in MSM ... which, for so-called skeptics ... you are obviously far too trusting of ... which is going to be extremely embarrassing for you, once you start listening to some real critical thinkers ...

Now ... if you're still reading ...I'm sure you'll be quite bemused ... how could any sane person tell such 'critical thinking experts' how to 'suck eggs' but ... the only thing you are going to be sucking ... are lemons!

So ... to take that smirk off your face ... to get you in the right frame of mind to realize ... as 'skeptics' ... you really suck ... hard ... watch this ... if you dare ... and prepare for rain ...just like Auckland ... except, for you, it's going to rain 'red pills' ... torrents of them ...and they are going to choke you ... like a 40ft Anaconda!”

The email goes on to provide a bunch of links to videos on disreputable sites such as BitChute, Rumble, and Odysee.

As you can tell from the intro, the major themes of this person's ideas are the Covid vaccines, that the mainstream media is controlled, that many people are dying from the Covid vaccine.

For bonus, they call out "wokeism" and climate change alarmism, the American 2020 election (including the discredited 2000 Mules “documentary” by conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza). Then there's the “deep state”, with them saying:

“I've been saying it for a year ... they have been planning this for a very long time ... they need to take down China and Russia if they are going to completely control the World ... and they are going to do it ... at the same time getting rid of most of us ... the 'survivors' are going to be weak, totally dependent, totally financially destroyed, totally controlled by 'social credit' little serfs ... the 'new China' will be us ... working for them like good little serfs ... eating bugs to 'save the planet' ... and obediently taking our next 'shot' ... either to keep us alive from 'VAIDS' ... dumb us down some more ... or just make sure we don't live beyond 50 …

[another Bitchute video link]

Kiwis just seem to dumb to get what's really going ... and the rest of the World ... 100 years of MSM 'grooming' has worked spectacularly well ,,,

I keep saying 2023 is going to be the worst year in history ... and then 2024 ... will be worse ...

Another book for you ... I hope you're not still playing Tiddlywinks!”

All in all, this person has sent us 110 links to videos and sites, and a handful of PDFs of books for us to read. Doubtless many of the links have been just copied and pasted from other documents (as evidenced by changes in font sizing).

But, we're not going to waste our time following all these links and watching the videos - which would literally be days of watching and reading. I've investigated a couple, but they're just the same old conspiracy theory stuff.

Are we being closed minded in dismissing all of this? No, we're not.

We've covered the dishonesty of the NZDSOS site in the past. The small number of NZ-based doctors have an ideological axe to grind against vaccines. A number of them have been suspended from practising by the NZ Medical Council (though many have now been reinstated). And, as Mark pointed out, with his original NZDSOS parody site, vastly more doctors and medical professionals are supportive of vaccines than are against them.

On the claim that vast numbers of people are “dropping like flies” from the vaccine, and the related anti-vax documentaries such as Vaxxed, Died Suddenly, and Plandemic. it's clearly a dishonest representation of statistics and other data.

I saw a graph recently (which I'm damned if I can find!) that showed a nice per country negative correlation between excess deaths and vaccination rate in that country. The higher the rate of vaccination, the lower the excess death rate. To think these data have been concocted to somehow control us is just conspiratorial thinking.

On the idea of vast conspiracies, we know they just don't work. The maths shows that it's impossible to keep a conspiracy alive for long. The more people that know about it, the shorter it could possibly survive.

Has the world's response to the Covid pandemic been ideal? No, of course not. Have individual countries done better than others? Yes, and those (such as Aotearoa/New Zealand) that took a science-based approach, listened to experts, and didn't politicise vaccines and masks did way better and resulted in fewer deaths along the way.

Should pharmaceutical companies be immune to criticism? No, but that doesn't mean they've invented a vaccine which was designed to kill off vast swathes of the population.

In summary, our correspondent seems to be prone to conspiratorial thinking, and is gleefully smug in their supposed possession of suppressed knowledge (which isn't actually suppressed, but is conveniently available on the public internet!)