Maybe I should take it as a compliment that Dr. Joe Pierre, the San Fransisco psychiatrist with whom I occasionally argue/discuss on social media, believes that I am so educated as to know the meaning of "QED" as an abbreviation for the latin phrase, quid erat demonstrandum. This translates to "that which was to be proved." It's a sort of showboating or peacocking at the end of a written or logical argument, perhaps analogous to a raised fist and screaming grimace after a long three-pointer right at the buzzer in basketball, or a gloating, ecstatic dance in the end zone after a touchdown reception.
Dr. Joe has been increasingly prone (like a huge number of people, maybe most of the population of the USA these days) to political tirades presented as obvious logic that everybody just has to agree with or prove themselves to be of subhuman intelligence. The famous example of this, and of how it can utterly fail win over opponents, was Hillary Clinton's phrase, "basket of deplorables." (It's pretty safe to presume that Dr. Joe voted for Hillary, by the way, and if he reads this article, I expect his reaction will be, "Of course I did!")
Recently, Dr. Joe posted on X: Measles update: 1168 cases and counting--we're now 106 shy of the 1274 from 2019, which would make it the worst outbreak in over 30 years. With new airport exposures, it's likely we'll get there. Meanwhile, RFK Jr is like "vaccines are the problem."
I responded to his post: You're rooting for this, right Doc? Like it's more important to score political points against anyone who challenges orthodoxy than to identify and disseminate truth.
His retort was: Don't conflate "expecting" with "rooting." The effects of RFK's vaccine denialism will demonstrate themselves soon enough and will likely be well beyond the scope of measles. Highlighting this is a case of QED, not "wanting Trump and his regime to fail" as is often claimed.
I could go on and on about this exchange.
- If he weren't "rooting," Joe could easily have added "unfortunately" or "alarmingly" somewhere in the post. And rather than "...we'll get there," he could have written, "...I'm afraid it will happen." His "expecting" rather than "rooting" denial is transparently disingenuous; sorry, but he was rooting. I should add that rooting for a disease, while simultaneously claiming that the same disease is so dangerous as to justify abrogating people's informed consent and coercing them to accept medicine they don't want, seems quite contrary to the fundamental ethics of medicine.
- What exactly is "RFK's vaccine denialism?" That's a curious way of labeling it, probably meant to imply without having to argue that RFK's views on vaccines are ignorant prejudice and simply must give way to the proper judgment of experts or the established facts, like with "Holocaust denialism" or "climate denialism" or some other clearly discredited denialism. But many people consider some issues to still be open, and they have a freedom of speech right to keep talking about them. If Joe doesn't want to take any responsibility for convincing anyone of any arguable point on vaccines, he would be free to simply laugh at the dinosaurs for their views. But then why would he bother to go on about it on social media?
- I never said anything about wanting Trump to fail. Joe's protest there is a protest too much. He definitely wants Trump to fail more than he wants the measles outbreak to be limited to any particular number. Saying "Trump and his regime" also might betray Joe's view that the current administration as some non-democratic entity rather than the duly elected, appointed and confirmed executive branch of our government. Isn't this some brand of "denialism"?
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