'Hash it Out' and 'Friendly Fire'

Looking back on a public disagreement with Justin Hart

The Free Press published a story yesterday about a “ragtag group” I used to be associated with until my views diverged: Rational Ground, led by Justin Hart.

The formation and ethos of the group is well-described in Carrie McKean’s article, which you can read here:

A Ragtag Group of Covid Truth-Tellers Go to Washington

My intent is in this post is not to disparage Rational Ground or anyone in it, including the founder.

Justin Hart was hugely supportive of me for a long time. We met in person twice, and I will always be grateful to have been asked to join the “Team Reality” advocacy in 2020 for how it helped me stay sane in very dark period.

A letter I wrote to my children’s summer camp is featured in Justin’s book, Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane, which I recommend for its simple approach and excellent chronicle of the ridiculous things that were said and done in the name of a ‘pandemic.’ (The letter is also archived here.)¹

‘Hash it out and discuss things’

I want to react to something Justin is quoted as saying in the FP story:

In such a diverse group, there was often sharp disagreement. “We’ve had people rage-quit,” said Hart. “Like in any human endeavor, we definitely have our moments where people don’t see things in the same way, but we had an open forum where we felt like we could hash it out and discuss things.”

Without question, Rational Ground was diverse, especially in terms of people’s political identities and religious backgrounds and worldviews. I don’t recall any “Covidians.” By definition, RG was comprised of individuals who did not accept the government narrative wholesale. But there were more differences than outsiders might assume regarding mandates, vaccination, individual/bodily autonomy, and interpretations of data.

In the three years I was involved, there were instances of people departing over differences of opinion (self included), which - as Justin suggests - is expected and normal.

Was the RG forum “open”? Mostly, yes.

Justin occasionally removed people from the group, but as moderator/leader that was his right, and his responsibility in certain circumstances.

I don’t recall whether anyone was “kicked out” over his or her viewpoint, but can confirm that fellow former-member Ben Marten did predict vaccine failure in early 2021 and fought very hard against people in the group who insisted the data was showing efficacy and ‘protection.’

I was removed from Twitter in July 2022 — and therefore from the RG direct message forum — which afforded me more time to look into the New York City mass casualty event of spring 2020 and disappearance of positive flu tests.

My views on both of those “anomalies” were changing by then — and continued to change during suspension and thereafter. I am grateful to the RG friends who tolerated my emails about the New York event and were willing to e-meet. (On at least a few occasions, that included Justin.)

When my Twitter account was restored in late December 2022 - with the help of Jay Bhattacharya - the COVID conversation and emphasis had shifted markedly to an emphasis on COVID shot harms.² The shot was harmful, never warranted, and an abrogation of liberties no matter what. I had largely abandoned associated analysis because the public data were a hot mess, plagued by bad definitions and shell games. Because my primary interest had become (and remains) 2020 and the events before the shot was deployed, I felt a bit “lost” in the new landscape and change in priorities.

For the record: ‘Friendly fire’

I left Rational Ground in or around March 2023, following offline disagreements and some back-and-forth with Jay Bhattacharya - one of the high-profile scientists RG supported.³

A specific public exchange with Justin that took place after my departure is worth preserving for the record, because it captures the complex friction between two people who had mostly been aligned in the past, and the way views on an issue can shift over time.

Plus, over the past ten months, I’ve been interested in tracking expert and influencer perspectives on ‘origin,’ and I see this exchange as a clear example of the messiness that results when officials and agencies lie and cover up the truth.

On 14 June 2023, Michael Shellenberger said,

We now know that covid started in a lab and that the US government has known for a long time that the first people to get sick were the scientists working on gain of function research, which makes viruses more infectious

To which I replied,

Respectfully, your report isn't much better than the "fact checkers" because you rely on anonymous officials from the same govt that has lied to us about this mess for three years. Do you not see that?

Shellenberger never replied. Justin Hart stepped in and said,

I’m not sure what this constant friendly-fire is about, Jessica.

I replied,

I’m not sure why you insist on insisting that “we are on the same team”.

We can be anti-mandate together, but why does that mean we have to agree on everything - or that differences some of us think matter go unchallenged or unspoken?

I’m questioning his work & assumptions. That’s not allowed because….?

Justin:

I think your critique of his sourcing is masking your true critique - which is your claim that there was no virus at all. But maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

Me:

I have never, ever, ever said there was no virus. Here’s what I’ve said

[embedded tweet]

No sudden spread of a novel pathogen

But sudden spread of Pandemic Definition, PCR Tests, Panic, Protocols, Policies

You not only misunderstand me, you appear [to] have little interest in engaging with my questions - which are not personal - unless it’s to scold me.

I went on to say,

I have long assumed it's real and asserted that whatever it was had been circulating in the U.S. since May 2019 or sooner.

I also said this REPEATEDLY in the RG chat - and questioned the NYC narrative and flu's alleged disappearance. Those things took a back seat to getting my kids into school, unmasked, fighting vax mandates, etc.

I have not changed in my skepticism. Maybe you were used to most of it being curbed in a chat group, I don't know.

It's okay to disagree, Justin -- and publicly so.

You aren't a threat to me, nor I to you.

I question and pushback as I see fit. I don't care about "being right" - I care about the truth. Think you do too.

Justin:

I'm trying to reconcile this weird threaded intention:

- Shellenberger notes that even China is admitting it leaked from a lab (seems newsworthy)

- You question his sources (fine)

- The inference I took was you do NOT believe it leaked from a lab

- But I know you don't think it came from a wet market

- And now you admit that you believe it did indeed come from a lab

- So I'm left asking: what do you actually disagree with here?

Jessica:

What weird threaded intention? I'm showing you some big-picture things I've said.

I [believe] very little from China, but my view is that the agent/sequence called SARS-CoV-2 is likely a lab-adulterated but I don't really care if it is or not and could argue different ways. I suspect things get out of labs all the time; none are capable of "getting out" and generating a mass mortality event.

It doesn't need to have been from a lab, China's lab, or even just one lab for everything in 2019 and early 2020 (including the pandemic declaration) for claims to a global viral pandemic involving a novel deadly pathogen to be false.

But "bioweapon leaked from China lab" helps justify the pandemic declaration and U.S. response thereto ("so much we didn't know”). Michael's sources being unnamed govt officials is eye-rolling, given the number and scope of half-truths and lies govt officials (named and unnamed) have told and participated in.

Then vs. Now

The record of what I believed about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, and at what point, is well-documented by 108K tweets and numerous Substack articles. I don’t recall thinking ‘the virus’ was from China, but it’s possible I did - especially in 2020. No one has been ‘right’ about everything from the start and I have been wrong or misguided about much.

For a while I subscribed to the view that SARS-Cov-2 had been circulating in the U.S. in summer or 2019 or sooner, and felt if it came from anywhere, it was here (America). My perspective began to change during the Twitter suspension and has continued to evolve, as a result of closely studying data, documents, and events.⁴

I’m fine with public disagreement, of course, and with the fact that Justin and I still disagree. What I was less-fine with was being “scolded” for challenging Michael Shellenberger. The exchange wasn’t focused squarely on the issue but on me “stepping out of line” and daring to question A Twitter Files Journalist.

Or maybe it was about challenging the Lab Leak story - as another interaction weeks later suggests? (The conversation below continued beyond these tweets and can be accessed here.)

I’m not sure, but at this point much has been said, by me and many others, about the false binary of Lab Leak vs Wet Market. The sentiment that a single ‘resistance’ exists and must remain united is a theme that persists but is unproductive and - as Jonathan Engler and I said a few months ago - “untethered from reality and contrary to how humans make meaning, produce knowledge, and solve problems.”

I consider myself very rational but I never have - and never will - stay away from certain questions or topics simply because they drift off-brand or interfere with anticipated political appointments.

Grateful, regardless

Justin Hart is a smart man for whom I am grateful and wish only the best. The last couple of months I was in Rational Ground were frustrating - largely because I had gone in a different direction in my thinking - but I have no regrets whatsoever about participating in it for as long as I did.

Rational Ground was far from the only counter-narrative collection of people that formed in or as a result of 2020, of course. Like I told Jerm Warfare last week, the shutdowns were designed to keep people apart and flocking to social media was a predictable (if not intended) result.

Much could be said about the roles and purposes such groups have served - including ends that protect the Official Narrative and perpetrators of the Global Human Rights Heist. Even if some degree of engineering was at play — as some have suggested about DRASTIC, for example — birds of a feather usually flock together, and I do believe most ‘dissident’ groups were able to do critically important things and foil plans in ways that will never be known, let alone covered by media.⁵

Five years past the ‘pandemic’ declaration, I’m still here, and still writing about what my family and I believe matters most, whether any group agrees with me or not.

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Minor corrections made post-publication for conventional errors, word omissions, and clarity.

1. I gave permission for the letter to be generalized and the more overt references to scripture/religious tenets sanitized, to benefit a wider range of readers. The camp was Honey Rock.

2. My views on the COVID shot can be found here and here.

3. If someone can confirm the month I departed, I would be grateful. It may have been April 2023, just before or after this exchange with Bhattacharya.

4. All Substack articles related to ‘origins’ can be found on this page.

5. After RG, I participated in the

PANDA

Slack channel for a year or so, and found many like-minded, high-productivity individuals with whom to collaborate, whether via PANDA proper or elsewhere. I ultimately left that too, for reasons I never formally stated but would summarize as realizing I was spending too much time typing words in a closed forum, and have not been “in” another group or organization since then. This hasn’t kept me from connecting and/or writing with some of the people I met. As with Rational Ground, I was very blessed by and am better off as a result of the time I spent engaging directly in the PANDA forum.