"DO YOU BELIEVE IN VIRUSES? YES or NO?"
Conversation between me and my daughter
En route to a sporting goods store last week, my 13-year-old daughter and I had this conversation. It’s part of an ongoing dialogue we have about the COVID event, which I’m sure will continue until one of us passes away.
Daughter: You know what I don’t get?
Me: What?
Daughter: How people can think the whole world was created from an explosion.
Me: Yep, me neither.
Daughter: I just — I couldn’t even believe that if I wanted to.
Me: Same. If for no other reason than because things that are obviously designed have a designer.
Daughter: Yeah.
Me: Speaking of that —
Daughter: Oh no. Is this gonna be a COVID thing?
Me: Yep. So, speaking of ‘designs have designers,’ I didn’t always think the COVID ‘pandemic’ was a planned event, but I eventually came to think that it was because it is impossible to look back on what was done - like, really study it - and not see the design.
Daughter: (abrupt tone switch) Okay, you need to answer this once and for all: Do you believe in viruses? Yes or no?
Me: So, first let me—-
Daughter: NO. You can't do that. Answer the question! DO YOU BELIEVE IN VIRUSES? YES OR NO?
Me: Do you want me to answer the question?
Daughter: Yes! But you HAVE to answer it with YES OR NO!
Me: I object to those conditions.
Daughter: YES. OR. NO.
Me: I decline to respond, because I would actually like to answer the question - not simply say a word because you demand that I do so.
Daughter: I canNOT believe you don’t think people get sick!! Like it’s all in their mind or something!!
Me: That’s not what I believe. Of course people ‘get sick’ or feel sick. Including me, obviously. I don't dispute that.
Daughter: But you don’t believe in COVID or that there was a virus.
Me: I believe the government lied about there being a new sickness caused by a new virus and, as a result of all the lying, I’ve done a lot of reading and researching and realized viruses probably aren’t a thing. So YES, people get sick but NO ‘viruses’ aren’t a reason. (There’s your YES and your NO, by the way.) People can get sick from many other things. No one denies that. The question is whether things called viruses are a reason or cause.
Daughter: So viruses are FAKE? Like MADE UP?
Me: Well, I’m still learning about that, but the way I see it right now is that the things called viruses might be something else and aren’t in the air around us or get passed between us.
Daughter: Whatever. New topic.
Me: Okay. So you said you need a water bottle and what else?
I'm not quite there yet but your writing and references are at least making me question years of indoctrination via my internist dad, medical school, residency, and medical literature.
The fact is it makes as much sense to believe in viruses as to believe that there are magic, tiny, invisible malicious pixies that fly around in people's noses and turn their snot into flu/covid pixie dust and sprinkle it on people to make it sick, but they are rather daft pixies so when they see their reflection in a plexiglass sneeze guard they fly right into it and splat against the shield, and also get confused when they can't see your mouth or nose (even though they are 10,000 times smaller than a millimeter and could easy fit through any gaps) so your face mask protects you, and their "pixie poop" can be detected in electron microscopy as itsy bitsy black-and-white bloops and blops indistinguishable from anything else in the EM photos which is the "evidence there were pixies there", and ...