Help me debunk my dad's skepticism on covid

[piddocktrumperiness]

Hello all
My father, whom I love very dearly is sucking the energy out of me. He is 70 years old, a retired doctor and every time I speak to him, he insists that there is "something insidious going on behind the scenes". He is suspicious of how deaths are recorded, he is suspicious of how the majority of 'world' governments "conspire" to come up with lockdowns and therefore ruining their economies- claiming there are some interests there, somebody wants all this to happen. He is suspicious of why countries that are poorer than ours, are thriving. He even said "countries like Bangladesh should have had most of their citizens dead from covid by now if it was THAT serious". He also said the same about India and China and parts of the Middle East and Africa, despite me telling him their past experiences with epidemics prepared them for this. He is questioning why the nightingale hospital is not open and doesn't believe that hospitals are over run. He also says the fact that he doesn't know anyone that suffered badly from it proves his point. :(

He's hard work. He gets his news from youtube and discounts anything the BBC says. I feel frustrated and he puts any argument I put forward down.

I was hoping if anyone here can point me to articles, that I can show him, that are not BBC because he won't believe it, or help me verbalise what I want to say.

I freeze up when he yells about this stuff and all he can reply is "How do you know for sure? Don't believe everything you see!" :(

I love and admire him but I am shocked that as a doctor, he doesn't see the severity of. the situation we have been in.

@piddocktrumperiness
I was going to ask if he's always been like this or if it's a change in behaviour
Only asking because my mum (70's) has dementia and in the very early stages (in her mid 60s) could be very entrenched in contrary positions and went a bit down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole (hers was a different crusade) . It was hard because her arguments always were very well put together, she's an intelligent woman, a mathematician with an analytical mind but if you sat down after a while you realised she wasn't quite right. It took a few more years before we realised it was dementia but hindsight is an amazing thing.

I find it difficult to believe that a dr in their 70s doesn't have former colleagues who are still working that wouldn't be able to confirm what's going on. DH is a acute medical consultant and is seeing & experiencing what's happening in real time (NE not London but still scary situation) and many former colleagues in their 70s have been called back in to help usually with co-ordination or vaccinations rather than frontline but they can clearly see it's unprecedented and definitely happening.
I doubt there is much you can do about it either way. My brother is a CV denier and despite the fact that his BIL can tell him about colleagues and patients that have died and the pressures they have been under first hand still thinks everyone's lying.
I've stopped talking to my brother most of the time because I find it so difficult.

He is questioning why the nightingale hospital is not open

"Some sceptics are arguing that the failure to use Nightingales before now indicates that the NHS isn’t that busy. They are not purpose built hospitals and would require staff to be transferred from other settings. Systematic use was always a last resort insurance policy. "

"The NHS was always going to use every ounce of permanent purpose built capacity first. The fact that the London Nightingale is opening next week is a sign of how pressured the NHS in London has become. Other Nightingales – e.g. Exeter and Manchester – already in use."

Chris Hopson, CEO of NHS Providers, the association of NHS trusts and foundation trusts.
mobile.twitter.com/ChrisCEOHopson/status/1348288457504907265

Ask him to start a thread on mumsnet. Through your account if necessary.
People can then either agree, or disagree with him.
Everyone may learn something.

I only ask about the RCoA membership because chances are that some of the people who are members now will be people your Dad was responsible for helping to train, people who really are at the sticky end of the Covid crisis in hospitals, along with other Intensivists. Does he honestly believe that everything they are currently going through is a hoax ?

I used to be quite harsh about the conspiracy types (not the people who question policy or the approach, the people who deny it exists) but I’ve come to realise that they’re just really, really terrified. It’s their coping mechanism. I’d just avoid the topic altogether.

Chris Whitty gave a very informative lecture back at Gresham College back in April 2020.

www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/covid-19

I've just seen there are more up-to-date lectures from Whitty there, which I'll watch myself shortly – the first was excellent.

At least then your dad can make his mind up on fuller information. He may also have a good professional idea of how to assess material within his own profession.

What BlueBaubles12 said , plus do you think he feels a bit helpless, not being in the thick of it ? He will have been used to being The go to person when the shit hit the fan.

I think part of the issue is that in the past, at the time of the cold war many secrets were kept by various countries, and if at the time anyone said x they usually would of been considered a conspiracy theorist, ect and it was only years later that various details about various projects , technology ect were proven true, there for, as back then the media at the time would be possibly trying to determine the "truth" however they would also be limited due to national security reasons depending the story, fast forward to today, the technology may be better, and we have social media, however with that, various secret projects still happen for one reason or another and I think that's why you get people not always believing the main stream media version of events, plus from a fictional perspective, remember fox mulder, as another factor that would of also influenced various people's perceptions and perspectives of the various groups and organisations and government's ect.

I don't deny covid exists but I'm sceptical about a lot of things...

When they announced the deaths on the news last night, they said number of deaths who had had a positive covid result in the past 28 days. So does that mean if you test positive for covid two weeks ago and are subsequently killed in a car accident, you will be recorded as a covid death?

Anyway I think we're on a slippery slope when we accuse anyone who questions what the government says as a conspiracy theorist or a covid denier.

@formerbabe

I don't deny covid exists but I'm sceptical about a lot of things...

When they announced the deaths on the news last night, they said number of deaths who had had a positive covid result in the past 28 days. So does that mean if you test positive for covid two weeks ago and are subsequently killed in a car accident, you will be recorded as a covid death?

Based on the amount of comments like this I see, the number of covid positive people getting run over seems to huge.

@formerbabe

I don't deny covid exists but I'm sceptical about a lot of things...

When they announced the deaths on the news last night, they said number of deaths who had had a positive covid result in the past 28 days. So does that mean if you test positive for covid two weeks ago and are subsequently killed in a car accident, you will be recorded as a covid death?

Yeah I saw it phrased 'died after testing positive for covid...' Should it not be 'died of covid' if it were exactly that?

Ok I will give you another scenario @BlueBaubles12

Cancer patient at end of life but who catches covid? How is that recorded?

A person admitted to hospital with a heart attack who dies but had covid three weeks ago?

Yes @borntohula. The wording seemed strange to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking questions.

@formerbabe

Anyway I think we're on a slippery slope when we accuse anyone who questions what the government says as a conspiracy theorist or a covid denier.

I also agree with this. We've known about covid for less than a year and we are probably not privy to even half of what is actually known about it now. Why do people (especially on Mumsnet) think they have expert knowledge of this new virus (and indeed, situation) which they can use to patronise anyone who disagrees with them?

I find in these cases it helps to find common ground. If you keep pushing then he’ll just get more defensive, like in American políticas.

Find something to agree with him in, before questioning another point. For example, the BBC are clearly pushing an agenda to scare people into compliance. I can see why but it’s frustrating. The headline in BBC Scotland today was initially about a surge in cases, then changed to a surge in ICU cases, because actually cases have been stable for over a week. Acknowledge that there are biases.

Then go in with “but I disagree with you about Bangladesh because of the demographics”. Or whatever point.

In terms of media input, would he accept BMJ, or even Fox News(!)

Your dad sounds great, tbh.

To be fair he has some valid points

@NewYearNewLockdown

Good for him for not believing everything he is told. Free thought has not been banned yet, thank Christ, although give it a few months....

This!

formerbabe I think the OP's point is that her Dad, who is someone who has probably saved hundreds of peoples lives over the course of his career, has suddenly decided that 'science' doesn't do it for him anymore. That the people he has trained and are doing the job he once did, are lying or at best exaggerating their experiences.

There are a number of reasons he might think like this;

a) He is right and everyone else currently working in the NHS is wrong

b) He has developed some sort of mental health problem

c) He likes winding his Daughter up

Or maybe a combination of the three ?

I'm always really interested to hear other people's opinions on stuff especially if they differ from mine, but it sounds like it's gone beyond healthy debating for the op.
Maybe he is an over bearing parent and has history of always belittling her opinion. My mum can be a bit like this and has become much worse as shes got older, I just do the smile and nod thing and change the subject

Or of course

d) the OP isn't genuine

@frumpety ha ha I am genuine :)
I'd like to think it's C! although he tries to make out he is A!

He retired the year we lost my mother, 7 years ago now (Gosh that shocked me it's that long ago) and usually he would talk to her and wind her up as he didn't see her as highly educated as he was. He is a massive introvert and keeps to himself, doesn't have many friends left (sadly passed away)- an excellent academic too and thinks he knows more than anyone around him and more often than not he does. I can't discount his experience of course.

He keeps himself busy by watching youtube, and Russian news channels.

Thank you everyone for contributing :)

Cancer patient at end of life but who catches covid? How is that recorded?

This is always a tricky one. The paperwork allows for more than one entry, and concurrent things (is my understanding). This is important because how do you record someone who dies of toxoplasmosis but has AIDS? Or dies of thrush but has AIDS? They wouldn't have died of those things if they didn't have AIDS but they did die of them. So did the thrush or the AIDS kill them?

If someone dies with cancer, pneumonia and COVID, it's easy for medical professionals to record this accurately (because they aren't idiots) but they can't communicate it well on a population level (because we are idiots). Much easier to look back in 10 years and examine excess deaths and factor in car use etc. to really get the numbers. But they can't do that with rolling news.

MO it would be far better for the Great and the Good to be honest and say 'if you get covid the overwhelming likelihood is that you'll be absolutely fine, but in this scenario we would like you not to consider yourself to matter in any way and make massive, sometimes unbelievable sacrifices on behalf of other people,' rather than spinning some narrative about certain death for all. Anyone with a shred of intelligence can see that's not true and it doesn't inspire trust.
This. The government now trotting out the line "if you go out, people will die" is making them look even less trustworthy.

I still think it's weird to cherry pick when it's the government saying stuff. Apart from Tony Blair setting a massive precedent for the prime minister telling a whopping lie, with devastating consequences for some people, and getting away with it.