I heard a clip on the Knowledge Fight podcast #969 where Alex Jones, as usual talking nonsense on his show, was reminiscing that at some point during the pandemic he was asked to take a PCR test to be on the Joe Rogan podcast, and he said he faked it somehow because he refused to allow the specimen collection, even though it was some Spotify rule. He refused because he says he thought they were not really covid tests but collecting DNA for a database by Chinese communists, Bill Gates, and the UN. Alex Jones claimed that it’s about “race specific bioweapons”.
On the show where Alex Jones was describing this covid conspiracy fiction bullshit, his voice sounded like he had some type of respiratory illness. He’s probably unaware of what is ailing him.
Knowledge Fight podcast host Dan was at the same Reading Pennsylvania show with Alex Jones recently where he may have gotten the mystery illness. The host said he didn’t wear a mask covering this right-wing event because he felt it would’ve brought unwanted attention, but he said he felt concerned being in that crowd unmasked, and tested after being at the event. It’s very sad that many of the older fans with underlying conditions and possibly unvaccinated, are probably not getting tested for covid or flu, and therefore not getting treated, because of this garbage Alex Jones puts out.
All along there have been baseless conspiracy fictions circulated claiming that PCR tests were used to create a “fake pandemic” in order to get people to do this or that, or supposedly to justify arbitrary public health interventions, or, as Alex Jones has in the past, some wrongly accuse hospitals and doctors of deliberate medical harm. But it’s interesting that Alex Jones brought up that story now, which was probably from a few years ago.
There seems to be an uptick in anti-test propaganda on social media and podcasts, including Paul Offit, who appears to be well along down the road to full on covid contrarian, was on a youtube interview with some doctor pundit content creator where he was enthusiastically claiming that epidemiologists want hospitals to stop testing for covid. He doesn’t say what epidemiologists have said this, and it seems highly counter to the scientific interests of the field of epidemiology to stop testing for diseases. A group that is probably interested in stopping testing, of course, is hospital executives. I heard rumours well over a year ago that hospital administrators were actively pushing public health offices to end pre-surgery testing where it was required, because the hospital was not happy with having to cancel or postpone their most lucrative procedures because a patient has covid, even though they would probably be contagious and may soon become actively sick, and it sure doesn’t sound like a good idea to push through non-emergency surgeries on covid patients just to keep revenue going. It’s been known for years that hospitals don’t want to pay to provide PPE to nurses and other healthcare workers, so it’s in the end, all about money. We can’t keep buying into the bad actor pushed framing — that this is a culture war by ordinary people when it’s really a war against patient safety by big money interests, their allied politicians, and a few on the fringe.
And being anti-test is definitely Trumpian – as then-President Donald Trump said in June 2020: “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, actually.”