Vaccines - Dr. Mike debates a skeptic

Excerpt

Below an excerpt from the section where Dr. Mike (a popular YouTuber and family medicine physician) defends the claim “Anti-vaccine lies cost lives” against his interlocutor Rootsgod (a “Wholistic Health Therapist”). The excerpt can be viewed on YouTube here (07:36 to 10:23). The transcript below is slightly edited for improved clarity and grammar.

Dr. Mike: How you doing, pleasure to meet you.

Rootsgod: Yes, Rootsgod, good to meet you as well.

DM: Love the jacket.

RG: Thank you so much. So, I really want to talk to you about this claim based on all of the other things that are causing disease, the chronic conditions that are in this country, all of the metabolic issues and this is stemming from colonization, putting small pox blankets on indigenous cultures, sterilizing people in Rico, Honduras, all of these different things that have happened. And if you look at Africa—oh by the way, Bill Gates did say something interesting: “The next the next war will be fought with biological warfare”, and I think that was raising eyebrows especially when you look at the Kissinger Report—right, for those of you who don’t know about the Kissinger Report, it’s all about pretty much reducing the population of the planet—so I don’t know how you can make this claim and really defend vaccines in the nature and the world that we’re living in, where we are actually going away from nature and the further we get away from nature, the more diseases we will see. So you know I’m very passionate about this and I want to be able to have a real discussion with you because, yes, you’re a medical doctor, but this is also a system that JD Rockefeller started, getting rid of all types of indigenous practices. And this land is stolen land, so when we’re not even honoring the source, when we’re not honoring the land, the ancestors,—ancestral intelligence, the real AI—when we’re not even honoring these things and we’re just supposed to trust science? No, I trust my scientist, I trust Dr. Sabie [?], I trust Dr. Aris LaTham, I trust Dr. Yahki, because this system is not for us, it’s not built for people like me, it’s not built for any of us because even the opioid crisis, we saw a lot of Caucasians suffering from that. So how can you sit here and say that this [anti-]vaccine [lies] is killing people, when this system is currently killing people, when we even have to have an Administration that comes in now and says we got to start looking at all of these different toxins in the food, in the medicine, in the soil. I don’t think it’s fair for us to take this vaccine when we’re already being forced to take polluted food.

DM: When you say “take this vaccine”, which vaccine are you talking about?

RG: Well, really all of them. It should be a choice, because even when I was younger, I didn’t take as many vaccines as the children have to take now. These children are sicker, they’re going through more metabolic issues, they’re having mental health issues. Now I don’t think it’s just the vaccine, it’s the system that’s perpetuating this type of Lifestyle. Yes, that child who was even in the hospital under those fluorescent lights, I’m not surprised that they had a seizure before because this is an environment that is not conducive to life. This thing that I’m wearing on my chest is called an Ankh, y’all replace this, y’all replaced our cultures, this life representing thing, you replace it with death culture. This is not a a healthcare system, it’s a sick care system and honestly, I cannot sit here in good faith and not represent all of the people who have come before me.

Analysis

In groups, discuss the case study and try to answer the questions below. After the workshop, I will compile the results and publish them here.

Misinformation

  • Which key statements disregard the scientific consensus?

Other comments

  • Can you spot any other questionable arguments and rhetorical tricks?
  • Is there a kernel of truth in what is said?

Counter-narrative

  • How can the misinformation be successfully countered?
    • Feel free choose your preferred format. You can write a simple text response or try something more creative (social media post, comic, humour/memes, conversational roleplay…)
    • If you need help, see the Summary of Misinformation Interventions