Sanjeev Sabhlok and the power of indoctrination.

I enjoy following Sanjeev Sabhlok’s Telegram channel here.

I first came across Sanjeev - an economist - when he presented to Panda (see here), and since then I have followed the evolution of his thinking via his channel. He is reviewing a mountain of historical documents in his quest to answer a number of fundamental questions on the topic of “public health”, about which he is writing a book.

It is fascinating to see - when confronted by the evidence - how he has been forced to revise his views which, unlike many others, he has willingly done.

Taking vaccines for example:

Throughout most of last year, he was declaring himself rather in favour. In April 2024, he said:

One of the causes he appreciated (like I do) is VACCINATION.

By 6 Dec 2024 however, after much research, he was stating:

Stop over-hyping vaccines: they are a good thing but have played a very minor role in improving life expectancy in the West (my estimate: around 1-2 per cent).

In his more recent posts, it appears that he has worked out that official claims of “lives saved” by mass vaccination are exaggerated, to say the least.

Here he rightly questions this WHO claim (based on modelling, of course) that “Global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives over the past 50 years:

So, in general, I regard him as methodical and open-minded. However, it appears that it is extremely difficult to shake off long-standing indoctrination, as the below exchange illustrates.

On 7 Feb (ie just a few days ago) he made this remark:

Given his open-mindedness and the depth of his research, I found this remark quite surprising.

I sent him a DM on X:

He thanked me for that by DM (“That's a good point, I'll have a think as time permits.) and the conversation continued on X thus:

But, the overarching point I wanted to make was one that I made by a further DM:

Genuinely, I am rather surprised that you could be so deep into this topic, and yet not even consider the possibility that off-target harms might (and IMO very obviously do) counter any apparent benefit.

I say apparent, because I have started looking into a number of vaccine trials, not just the Covid ones, but some of the rest. They all use trickery in various degrees of obviousness.

Whilst it’s possible that the zealots are not wrong about absolutely everything, the quality of the supportive evidence is shockingly poor, and the level of enthusiasm they display must therefore be explained by an ideological belief system, such as seen in a cult, rather than any form of sober analysis.

Of course, if your theory of vaccines in general stopping dangerous diseases was to hold, American children, with upwards of 70 jabs during childhood, should be amongst the healthiest.

Granted, there may be other reasons, but it’s not looking good for mass vaccination, is it?

With respect, and I should add that I was the same as you until a few years ago, I think this reflects the indoctrination we have all been subject to over decades.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to cite this conversation publicly, not in critical terms, but as an example to make people think.

I presume you won’t mind, since you quoted a direct message of mine verbatim?

Best wishes

Jonathan.

To which he responded:

Thanks. Pl. feel free to share our conversations.

It is to Sanjeev’s credit that he appears so willing to question his prior assumptions, and also to see this played out publicly.

The point I am making about indoctrination is an important one, and really, we should all be asking:

If we can be so easily herded into such a powerful belief system, what else in science and medicine is similarly built on foundations of sand?