“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”
—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (paperback, hardcover, Kindle, audiobook)
I am writing to urge No votes on AB2098, SB1390, AB1797, SB1464, SB871, SB866, and SB1479, and part of a decalogue of medical tyranny bills (down to seven now that SB1184 passed on April 5 while AB 1993 and the HIPAA-violating SB 920 were pulled).
AB2098 threatens to strip physicians and surgeons of their licenses for “unprofessional conduct,” which it defines as:
“disseminat[ing] or promot[ing] misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”
Similarly, SB1390 criminalizes the “amplification of harmful content” on social media platforms.
Who is to decide what is “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “false,” “misleading,” or “harmful”? To claim the State has the right to override medically trained physicians is to subject medical science to political science, consequently putting not only individual patients but all of humanity at grave risk.
You would be fulfilling Carl Sagan’s darkest fears, which have already become manifest over the past two years of politically-formulated COVID absolutism:
“We’ve arranged the society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is gonna blow up in our faces.…
“Science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan—political or religious—who comes ambling along.”
Passing AB2098 and SB1390 would establish a totalitarian Ministry of Truth, and none but the bravest would dare speak against the authoritarian edicts of political forces, themselves lavishly funded by corporations whose bottom line takes precedent over human rights and patients’ health.
