The first-ever medical diagnosis of "climate change".
Dr Merritt said in an interview with Glacier Media:
If we're not looking at the underlying cause, and we're just treating the symptoms, we're just gonna keep falling further and further behind," the emergency room doctor told Glacier Media. [...] It's me trying to just... process what I'm seeing."The entire situation raises some interesting questions.
Does it make medical sense?
Of course it doesn't.
He diagnosed her as "suffering from climate change". You can't do that, it is insane.
That's like diagnosing someone who was struck by lightning as "suffering from the effects of rain" or a person having a heart attack as "suffering from the effects of Mcdonald's".
...actually, it's worse than that. At least my examples have a distinct cause-and-effect relationship, and there are no scientific papers suggesting Mcdonald's doesn't actually exist.
The patient in question is over 70, asthmatic, diabetic and suffering from heart failure. She's very, very sick...no matter the climate.
Even if Dr Merritt can somehow trace a decline in her health due to the weather (and there's no evidence at all that he can), actually diagnosing it is completely bonkers.
...so why do it?
It's a staged PR move. A very obvious one, when you think about it.
For one thing, there's the question of how the media ever found out it happened, since medical records and diagnoses are completely private.
Clearly Dr Merritt didn't just diagnose his patient with "climate change", he then immediately called up the local media to tell them he had done it.
Throw in the fact that this happened to occur during the COP26 conference in Glasgow, which only today warned of "climate-linked health risks" rising, and that the move has already spawned a new NGO, "Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health", and you have a textbook example of a stage-managed media rollout.
Why now?
In simple terms, because Covid worked and climate didn't.
They have been stoking up public fear of "a new ice age" and acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer and myriad other supposedly incipient climate disasters for literal decades, and never touched one-tenth of the level of hysteria created by the Covid19 "pandemic".
Somewhere, some not especially bright public relations executive has decided that the way to push the "pivot from Covid to climate" is to try and turn the long-predicted environmental disaster into a public health issue.
It's hamfisted, a little funny, and probably won't work, but it does open up some troubling possibilities going forward.
Like what?
Well, for starters, this may be the first "climate change diagnosis", but do you honestly believe it will be the last?
Don't be surprised if we see a huge spike in "climate diagnoses" in the next few months.
There are already widespread academic efforts to create a causal link between "climate change" and common illnesses.
A few days ago, the Independent headlinedThe climate crisis is not just about the environment - it's about health too.
As I mentioned earlier, just today the COP26 panel warned that "climate-linked health risks" are going to rise.
Only last week the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology published a paper titled "Climate Change and Global Issues in Allergy and Immunology" which argues climate change is already making asthma and some allergies worse.
It's not hard to put together a list of other common afflictions that are already being linked back to climate change.
Cancer, pneumonia, heatstroke, diabetes, heart disease and essentially all lung conditions.
There's also all diseases spread by mosquitos or other zoonotic agents, plus every waterborne illness.
And that's without even severely stretching logic, which Covid has shown our medical and scientific institutions have no trouble doing.
They are already discussing "climate-related" mental health issues such as stress, anxiety and depression. These could easily become further types of "climate-related diagnoses" too.
Now, allow me to speculate for a few paragraphs...
The practice of "climate-related diagnosis" is likely going to expand. When questions about the science behind this are raised by sceptics, they will naturally be accused of "climate denial".
Opinion pieces will appear torturing reason to defend the practice of diagnosing "climate illness". So-called journalists, or mercenary experts in made-up fields like "climate ethics", will crochet strands of reason into positions so full of holes they barely exist.
We'll be told that even if the practice is technically inaccurate, it's serving a greater truth. That people might not literally be sick due to climate change, but we are all figuratively dying of it.
"Covid has shown us people only do what's right when they're scared: We need to make them feel climate fear."
"Climate change diagnoses are on the rise. And that's a good thing."
"Healthcare workers take stand on climate with new diagnosis trend."
"NHS workers saved us from Covid, and now want to take on climate."
...you don't have to read the Guardian as much as I have to feel those headlines, or ones very like them, in our future.
Then the deaths can start happening. Covid has demonstrated that you can create a "mass casualty" scare by essentially just adding an extra line on a death certificate. They can do that for climate too. The headlines will carry on...
"Physicians see spike in "climate deaths" as people suddenly feel the consequences of inaction"
When people point out the flaws in reasoning the papers will argue that, even if people aren't really dying of climate change, symbolically putting it on death certificates is the best way to illustrate how much danger we're in.
They'll backhandedly admit the statistic isn't real, but then use it as an excuse to call for action anyway:
"Weekly climate deaths are outstripping Covid - we need to address the "climate pandemic."
...it will go on and on.
Climate change will start being listed as an "underlying cause of death" for more and more diseases. I already mentioned cancer, lung disease and heart disease. They'll all be "climate-related".
The press spent the last year telling us that climate change "makes pandemics more likely", so any future "pandemic" can be linked to climate and boom, a few hundred thousand climate deaths.
Climate change is allegedly bad for unborn babies, so stillbirths and miscarriages can all be "climate deaths".
They can do a study finding "higher levels of solar radiation" can "increase the risk of cancer", and then start saying anyone who dies of cancer also died of climate.
They don't even have to limit it to natural causes.
Drowned in a flash flood? That's a climate death.
Starved due to drought? Climate death.
Committed suicide? "he was pretty upset about the climate".
Attacked by a polar bear? Well, climate change forced it out of its natural habitat.
I'm not being funny. This is not satire, I wish it were. Believe me, they could easily actually say it, or something like it, eventually.
If the past twenty months have done nothing else, they should at least have taught you this valuable lesson: There is nothing - NOTHING - too dishonest, too cynical or even too insane for the establishment to sell.
It doesn't matter if it's unlikely, or self-contradictory or irrational - it doesn't even matter if it's literally physically impossible - they will say it, and they will expect you to believe it.
We now have our first climate "case". The first death "with climate" probably won't be far behind. Thousands more will likely follow.
That's when talk of "climate lockdowns" will come back.
Of course, I’ve been wrong about the masses before. I thought after a year more people would have had enough. I hope what little faith i have in the public isn’t misplaced this time…