We do need a shadow cabinet, but a private medical society is unlikely to overthrow the current regime.

Don't wait for some elite doctors and scientists to save science for the people from "behind the scenes".

I've watched people pin their hopes on famous doctors and scientists for 5 years only to see things in public health get worse and worse. The idea I've seen being promoted now is that some private association is going to run an alternative governing system to save vaccine information and access. It's not public health and it's not science communication, and is likely to be demotivating in making people believe that things are really going to be okay and they need do nothing while "the experts" – the elites in the field, take care of everything for you. But that's never turned out to be true so why would it work now?

I'm seeing claims that are giving people the idea that it's possible to circumvent RFKJr and the FDA and CDC on vaccines, supposedly with the idea that privatized medical societies and privatized non-profit organizations will be working with local government health departments – which are under state law and subject to federal rules, to go against federal rules, in order to preserve vaccine access and guidance via direct purchasing vaccines from private pharmaceutical manufacturers, which are only allowed to sell medicines by allowance by the FDA, and which healthcare providers are only allowed to administer by approval of the FDA, which is under the authority of RFKJr. That's before you even get to asking: where's the explanations about who's going to pay for it if federal funding is cut and health insurance companies don't cover it because it's not recommended by the authorities that make those rules? The states and municipalities have to balance their budgets, and people pay federal taxes, and that comes back to the states in various programs and grants. If those aren't there, and the private insurance companies won't pay up because it's not recommended by the federal government, and the cost for black market vaccines is likely way over what charity fundraisers could handle, and anyway reputable drug companies won't break the law by selling them in the US and won't bother producing them either… I don't know what the plan here really is, and I suspect there really is none.

I know people want to believe so badly that there's going to be a privatized individualism saviour out there who's going to rescue people with sense from a government that's far outside reasonable, but that's not how reality works. Of course the influencers peddling this, and the doctors in such private medical orgs will get a big fandom for telling people what they want to hear and basically promising that elite experts will fix everything behind the scenes so that you have no disruption in your needs or your life. But this isn't how reality works. It's not how governance works. It's not how government works. It's not how public health works. The FDA could revoke approval and the government could literally outlaw vaccines.

Did people learn nothing from the "Roe v Wade is settled law" bullshit or what? I guess not because they still follow "Mueller She Wrote" who never even bothered to rebrand after viral success peddling saviour syndrome hopium via the Mueller Report along with numerous people telegraphing hopium from failures like Merrick Garland. And people are still hyping up that bogus sketchy "Alt National Park" anonymous influencer account on social media. People just seem to insist on continuing to follow even the most obvious of social media fakes. So I don't know if we could usher people away from this privatized government alternative idea if they're already halfway down that hopium rabbit hole. But at least I hope to inoculate people who haven't been drawn in yet to the bamboozle.

Anyone with experience who understands how government and society works would recognize straight away how this is not a viable strategy based in legal reality. And even if it was a strategy of any type, it's some kind of right-wing libertarian privatization scheme fantasy at best.

Will some doctors and public health officials administer black market vaccines at risk of being tried and sentenced to prison? A lot of doctors in the US are immigrants and probably won't risk being renditioned to a third country gulag. We're already seeing healthcare providers unwilling to do routine life saving medical procedures for fear of being charged with the crime of performing an abortion, in some cases they're willing to let pregnant women die of sepsis rather than risk being criminally charged for doing an abortion. But sure, I guess some doctors will do such things based on advice from some independent group, though probably not without a price tag that shuts out the majority of the most at risk. And it sounds like just another situation where dubious people selling nonsense can set up shop, which is what these people purport to oppose.

And this is where this leads. Anyone suggesting a "dual power structure public health" or that "this is how you do it" to "work around" the Trump administration, is fooling themselves, or trying to fool others, if they don't recognize that this means eventually local governments breaking the law, doctors breaking the law, or expecting corporations to break the law; which isn't likely to happen. Again, if this kind of rogue medical care was actually feasible, women wouldn't be dying because of hospitals and doctors refusing to give medical care out of fear of being arrested under abortion laws.

If someone misleads you that’s on them, but still we must be on guard by always thinking things through.

I think some of the confusion comes in because during the initial months of the pandemic, Democratic governors did their own thing because they had to in an emergency, while the Trump administration was a shitshow. It appeared that the Trump administration at that time "ceded" public health, but in fact their agenda was to do nothing to stop covid, and there were people ready to take positions and ENFORCE THE DOING NOTHING. There were some people with sense within the first Trump administration, now it's entirely stacked with loyalists. Back then, they hadn't gotten to the enacting policies or laws stage. The notorious infect people on purpose White House meeting was in August 2020, and the Great Barrington Declaration wasn't published until October 2020, leading up to the election. And then Joe Biden was elected president, and the worst of the plans were delayed. Those people never got positions of power in the federal government at that time who wanted to enforce doing nothing to stop the pandemic. Now these people are in actual positions of power, the way they would've been in 2021 likely if Trump had won the election in 2020. They are in positions of power now and are poised to make policy, regulations, and set the federal rules which "trump" anything at the state and local level. And again, the federal government right now has NOT "ceded" public health, they're actively doing public health regulation within their own very clear agenda and ideology on public health.

So this idea of providing "alternate public health" isn't a good public health strategy at all. And it's dishonest to not play that movie through for people; with spoilers about where this story would have to go. That's where they're headed with this idea of having an "alternative government" system instead of organizing to pressure the actual government. There's no way to act as a government outside the government legally, so they're necessarily talking about underground healthcare, I guess in an armed resistance, or maybe an insurrection where they install their people back into the government by force? This is the only way this claim that they can preserve vaccine access this way makes sense, because the local health departments and all the healthcare providers have to follow federal rules. Any state level or lower government organizing to break laws or the rules of the federal government would be secession and or treason. I'm sure this revolution fantasy is an attractive prospect for some people, but I'm shocked this speculative agenda is being pushed by liberal democrats connected to healthcare professional associations such as those who've repeatedly failed to stand up for their modest purposes. And I'm cringing that some garden variety progressives might be eating this shit up.

I'm so shocked that I don't believe it because: Occam's Razor. The more reasonable and likely explanation is that some center right privatization aspiration bullshit is coming from doctors and scientists who don't know shit about government and haven't thought this through at all.

And that's likely because we're talking about doctors and scientists who largely haven't even managed to organize in their own workplaces against the inhumane healthcare corporations and private equity, for pity's sake. The nurses always have to do the heavy lifting as a last bulwark against the horrors, even when doctors do manage to go on strike, they're joining nurses. I do not expect that some private medical society could carry out a Lenin style revolution to install doctors and scientists wherever, heavens to Betsy, let's be realistic. You have to be incredibly skeptical of where this thinking leads.

Elite panic leads status quo defenders to attempt to control the public.

Seems like it's just a lot of hopium peddling for the centrists defending the status quo by trying to calm the concerned public into inaction; a concerned general public who is rightly pissed and clearly panicked about having modern medicine ripped away by a political cult that has taken power and is willing to abuse it, and wants everyone deprived of science in modernity that might interfere with their weird eugenics ideology that's motivating all this wellness theory anti-vax bullshit. I'm sure there are those with a vested interest in getting people to calm down and comply with the right-wing insanity, just to keep the financial machine whirring along. People will do nothing if they believe someone else will take care of it.

If you want to know how governance actually works, listen to people who understand politics and the levers of power, because that's what GOVERNS our healthcare system and public health. You can look to the nurses unions for starters. Because there's no alternative to society, and no matter how much propaganda pushes individualism, we all depend on community. If we the people can't manage power, there's no "independent" group that's going to produce it all for us. Politics is not a crockpot, and there's no weird trick to alleviate the need for civic engagement. And some kind of revolution sure isn't the answer to get you out of having to do anything anyway, because if anything, it's even more risky and more disruptive. Write your reps, that's actually pretty effective and the cost is low. And think about why someone might encourage you that you shouldn't do so.

I'm sick of influencers peddling PR, journalists doing churnalism and regurgitated press release stenography, or worse, attempting to be the mind-reading sane-washing interpreters of Trump's bizarre actual statements. Change is possible. Things change all the time. Politicians are often awful, but many can be moved in a better direction with sufficient pressure. And electoral victories for public health are possible. But there's not going to be one easy trick out of this. There are no shortcuts. And nobody is going to take care of it all for us. We need to get with other people with the same interest in the same outcomes and solutions as we want. And we all need to speak up, to lower the cost for everyone.

We do need a shadow government.

The interesting part about this is that we do need a shadow government. We need organized scientists and doctors who are doing the work that the government at this time is refusing to do, or refusing to do accurately. The public deserves to be informed. And this is a good idea that is common in other countries. It serves a purpose. In some countries, like Australia, there are official shadow governments where there's an official opposition party shadow cabinet that's set up, and the duties of this shadow cabinet involve mirroring what the governing body is actually doing, and issuing alternative assessments, statements, and suggesting alternative policy choices. They basically provide an opportunity to announce to the people: "here's what we'd do differently if we were in power", and then this is a starting point to debate issues, and for constituents to tell their elected representatives which they'd prefer, and perhaps decide how to vote in future.

I'm all for having a shadow government watching the federal health agencies and publicizing bad decisions, and offering critiques and alternative policy prescriptions. These people have a role to play, and an important one. But be on the lookout for people who are true experts in one area, but then give bad advice on grassroots organizing. Grassroots organizing is necessary no matter what, the pressure for change needs to build from the general public. And this has happened before where scientists have organized and inspired people to organize successfully for environmental protection, and you don't need to get everyone on board nor do you need one powerful national organization.

Doctors and scientists should not be making false promises that they can stop the government from governing, and somehow create an "alternative" system legally or illegally, based on a fantasy strategy and building a mystery. Behind the scenes hopium is an activism suppressant, we've seen it before. This media strategy for self-promotion is popular with scientist influencers, and it's something I've seen before, with people feeling burned later by a scientist making innuendo that he could change hospital policies with one published paper, when that's not how things work, but it was an appealing bit of hopium that got some attention. I've also heard of scientists with megalomaniacal ideas of being able to replace whole government institutions. But people need to be realistic and not listen to specious claims. We should expect better from health professionals and experts, and we must demand better from our elected representatives.

WRITE YOUR REPS. The elected representatives are the people with the power to make change.

The opposition leverages various tactics to neutralize effective activism.

Well meaning intelligent and caring people are often drawn into specious roles. This is well documented. And we should not ignore the possibility at any given time that maybe people are derailing from sensible directions. We should heed the warnings and learn lessons from the infiltration of Standing Rock and how private mercenaries organized by industry and government were employed to manipulate people, and set people up.

Operations sometimes target people who are experts, or people who might be important in some way, because they carry clout. And then they treat them as if they're very important. And for people who've worked hard at something, to be something, and are yearning for recognition, this is a very powerful leverage for manipulation. If you're being given the impression you're being invited into some elite circle, some super special exalted organization… that's not grassroots political organizing, that's a cult at best, and maybe an astroturfed machine for deactivating would-be activist experts.

At a minimum, I would be wary of any organization that leans hard on only upper class, or even just upper middle class people, to bring some sort of policy change in US politics. Upper middle class people from fancy backgrounds are really good at getting attention and making money in politics, starting orgs and doing clientelism. They don't seem however to be very good on their own for actually making progress without the working class. Because the progress starts with the working class. The working class bears the brunt of bad policies, and the working class has less privilege and comfort to lose, let's be honest. And this is why unions and labor organizing are always cited as integral to political action. We need more than unions, and unions sure aren't perfect especially when they fail at the bottom up part; but if labor interests are sidelined, or working class people aren't involved, I just don't trust it. Especially if it includes innuendo of real plans for insurrection. And dear me, obviously if it reeks of saviour syndrome hopium peddling.

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