The No-Virus PsyOp
In this episode, I wade into the most acrimonious, rancorous argument in the anti-vaxx community: the no-virus agenda. I put it this way because I don’t concede that “Do viruses exist?” is the real question. The first question is whether we need to agree that they don’t, or be insulted and ridiculed, and accused of supporting global domination. And the question that follows logically from this behavior is whether the no-virus agenda is designed make anti-vaxxers not credible just at the point when the consequences they predicted are becoming evident to everyone.
For a decade, I was part of an agricultural society called the Grange. Their slogan was “In essentials, unity. In nonessentials, liberty. In all things, charity.” Is the belief that viruses don’t exist essential for anti-vaxxers? Or should we have liberty to question the doctrine of no-virus? And what does the lack of charity and goodwill say?
I know there are many fans and friends of Mike Yeadon among my readers, who say he’s been attacked and censored, and his heart is in the right place. These are the same things I’ve been told about Robert Malone, RFKj, Charles Eisenstein, Sasha Latypova.
When Mike calls others liars and frauds, allows vicious attacks on his comment thread without intervening, and deletes my comments on his partner-site, it’s legitimate to question his motives. The stakes are high. If no-virus becomes the public reasoning against vaccine mandates, lockdowns and global control, the ordeal of the last five years will be wasted. We will be crackpots.
If this is the hill you’re willing to die on, I won’t argue with you. If this is the hill you insist I die on, I will not kill my own credibility in order to spare your feelings. I don’t want my daughters to have their children jabbed like infused meat because I let Seattle grunge band wannabes intimidate me into giving up my common sense. Or confused anarchists who defend patriarchy. Or ex-Big Pharma execs. Be forewarned.
thinking clearly with others 101
From my episode, Have a Better Argument:
Argue with people you like. This doesn’t seem to be the case with the no-virus camp where insults and character attacks are cheered like they scored a goal, Kirschesque publicity stunts are considered proof of the opposition’s cowardice, and links are copied repetitiously instead of engaging on the questions.
State the question. Their question is ‘Do viruses exist?’ Mine is ‘Do anti-vaxxers need to swear public allegiance that viruses don’t exist or be labeled frauds and liars?’ And second, ‘Is the no-virus agenda designed make anti-vaxxers not credible?’
Define the terms. Crow has written, “If the word “virus” meant nothing other than "invisible and unidentified disease-causing agent", I would not deny the existence of viruses.” That should have been the end of the argument. But even after I agreed with his definition, he positioned me as defending the Chat GTP definition.
What is the ‘no-virus’ position? This seems to differ from person to person. To some, human-created pathogens exist but not natural viruses. To some, harmful bacteria exist but not viruses. To others, there are no pathogens OR harmful bacteria, only terrain. No contagion happens, whether from smallpox infested blankets given to the inconveniently indigenous or from kids passing around a cold.
What is the ‘no-virus agenda’? An insistence that No-Virus is the TRUTH that will save us, but only if everyone in the anti-vaxx community adheres to it. Testing the effectiveness of this TRUTH to convince pro-vaxxers is not needed.
Why does it matter? To the no-virus camp, the belief matters because it will end the capability for future ‘pandemics.’ How that will work is not explained or tested.
mees baaijen and tim west
The commenters denying that viruses exist are not answering Mees' example from animal husbandry, which is less fraught with controversy because you CAN ethically spread a virus intentionally.
As a mother, my experience belies that viruses don't exist. I don't need to see them or isolate them in a petri dish—I see the empirical data in watching an illness spread from kid to kid. So the no-virus folks are asking me to abandon my own logic and observation in favor of TRUSTING their science. Isn't that the same that the Covid plotters want us to do?
The commenters are presenting a false dichotomy: either viruses don't exist or Covid was a true pandemic justifying lockdowns, ventilators and mandatory vaccines. That's a trick that cults use. I am, like Mees, very suspicious of this 'purity test'. If long-time, outspoken anti-vaxxers like myself now start telling people something that contradicts their own intuitive knowledge, we lose all credibility just at the point where our predictions are coming true.
Tell me, no-virus peeps, is that your agenda? Do you want to discredit all those who said that Covid was a scam and the so-called 'vaccines' a weapon of depopulation? Because that's the cost you seem willing to pay.
Rather than work through the nuances of terrain theory—which we all agree is a major factor—you want to go to the simplistic argument that no virus exists. End of story.
Instead of making this less likely they'll get away with the next con—because everyone will agree there's no such thing as a virus!—it means that we will be discredited and no one will listen to us. Is that worth it to denounce the 'virus heretics'?
I had a chicken pox, and then within a day, my sister got it too. So, there must have been something that spread the disease.
As far as covid19 is concerned, I disagree with Kevin that similar lung damage in covid19 patients is evidence that the covid19 virus exists. It could have been caused by intentionally spread toxins or radiation.
I appreciate your nuanced view, Sonja. Yes, there was a time before the concept of a virus had been weaponized. We got sick and got better, giving us immunity.
Covid has been a con from the start. I'm fully willing to agree there was never a Covid19 virus, lab grown or springing from the wet market. It's not an either/ or that no viruses exist or Covid was a real pandemic.
“The commenters are presenting a false dichotomy: either viruses don't exist or Covid was a true pandemic “
That is not true Tereza.
Why not claim the £10,000?
Tell me, Tim, what's your purpose? What's the goal of your £10,000 stunt, which seems a lot like Steve Kirsch, who was later exposed as a huckster controlling the opposition with Malone and Weinstein?
My goal is to give individuals control over their bodily sovereignty, and families and communities control over the choices and information they have in healthcare. I don't see how attacking those who are against vaccine mandates and coercion—unless they take the no-virus oath—serves that purpose. Please explain your logic to me, or let me know if your purpose is different.
You've posted numerous notes to your true believers in which you call me a "pseudoscience pusher", engaging in "fear porn", "propping up tyranny" and "genuinely lazy and gullible." You then say, "The only question is if you will just ignore this or return with Ad Hominem or waffle."
I think you're unclear about the definition of ad hominem, as is Graeme Bird, who tells me 'get it through your thick skull,' and 'there's no fucking agenda, airhead,' saying others are 'full of shit.' Is that what passes for argument in your circle?
In those notes you also say Mees can't be trusted because he's not answering your Kirsch publicity stunt, that he has no integrity and is "helping the supranational psychopathic predator class."
My contention is not that viruses exist or don't exist, but that making it a purity test of an anti-vaxxer's intelligence or integrity is counterproductive and "helping the supranational psychopathic predator class." All that your side has done to answer this contention is attack our intelligence and integrity. Please answer the argument instead of proving my point.
There is no agenda. Just get it through your thick skull that there are no viruses. It’s not complicated.
The agenda would be to discredit fellow anti-vaxxers so that, when the evidence of people dying and becoming debilitated is too great to ignore, there is no cohesive message or movement. Your casual insult to me shows that you're certainly serving that agenda, whether unwittingly or knowingly.
Either you are complicit, and paid to spread dissent that serves no useful purpose, or you're not very bright and don't care whether they keep getting away with new vaccine mandates. Which is it?
Mees, btw, has been involved in large-scale animal husbandry for decades. Are you really telling him and all other ranchers how to manage their herds?
There is no fucking agenda airhead. There is no viruses. No good could ever come lying about it.
crow & nevermore media
Since our comment thread went into the margins on Mees' article, I'll repost my reply to Crow here:
Elsewhere on this thread, I proved to Crow that the no-virus camp engages in insults and character attacks:
https://thepredatorsversusthepeople.substack.com/p/mees-baaijen-says-no-viruses-is-another/comment/118111816
Crow then stated "Okay, some anti-virus people can be insulting... I'll give you that. But are the pro-virus people any better? I definitely feel insulted by Mees's condescending attitude."
Having both his and Mees' interview summary up, I will do a comparison:
Mees starts with five paragraphs stating our common ground, which goes much further than just the medical front into geopolitics, economics, revisionist history, inverted ideologies and methods of psychological control. No one can accuse him of falling for things he doesn't question, if they've read his work.
His point of contention is that "Virology, both medical and veterinary, has been developed over the last 130 years, and has developed an enormous body of knowledge" and "the no-virus theory ... throws the whole body of virology blindly out of the window, as the proverbial baby with the bathwater."
That isn't a personal attack and not contentious—the very point of the no-virus position is that not one study is valid and the entire field has always been a sham. Mees quotes Ron Unz on past instances of 'cognitive infiltration', what I call circles of psyops. That's also not controversial, it's a proven part of the playbook. Is it happening with Covid? We all know it is. We only differ on who and how.
On Crow's substack, he writes, "Mees Baaijen has unleashed a deluge of posts in which he attempts to convince his readers that people who deny the existence of viruses are a bunch of credulous dupes who have fallen for a psy op meant to divide the Truth Movement. Since March, he has published no less than seven articles in which he beats his dead pet horse like it owes him money. ... I think that he is quite convinced of his own Belief System (BS for short), and that he thinks that he thinks that he is doing the world a service by berating us dupes for our gullibility. Clearly we’ve all been brainwashed by the beguiling Baileys!"
Do I really need to point out why that's insulting and condescending? Because I'll be happy to, if you need it.
Crow then misstates Mees' evidence. Crow writes, "Mees has a background as a veterinarian, and is convinced that viruses are real because he has personally observed outbreaks of Foot and Mouth Disease when working with livestock." That wasn't his proof at all. It was that FMD could be intentionally spread manually by using a cloth contaminated from a sick animal.
Crow asks, "Is this all you've got?" But he misses the point. Intentionally spreading diseases that people might die of is a little bit unethical. Yes? So this experiment could never be done with humans.
No one is addressing this evidence. When I read the comments, I've yet to find one where Mees insults anyone. If you need me to, I'll do a point by point analysis showing how Mees is talking about why he disagrees with the theory and why the stridency of the movement is destructive. And I'll explain why Crow's statements are insulting and condescending, from words like 'unleashes', 'deluge' 'attempts' 'beats a dead horse.' I know that if I called Crow's Belief System BS for short, he would be justifiably offended. And much more so if I called his research and evidence a 'belief system.' And if it is indeed a dead horse, why does it evoke such a scathing and ridiculing reaction?
Okay, maybe I shouldn't have been so sarcastic. Fair enough. I guess I am adding to drama. But I could definitely tell from the comment sections on Mees's other articles that he is not interested in challenging his own assumptions.
I personally think the virus debate is a highly important one, because if the virology paradigm is not overturned, it will only be a matter of time before Big Pharma unleashes another AIDS or COVID onto the world. If people don't believe in virology, they won't fall for it.
As for hurting people's feelings, I really think that such concerns should take a back seat at this stage in the game. If this is the Truth Movement, we're supposed to be researching and disseminating the truth. The reason that the No Virus crowd gets so riled up is because we are convinced that we have discovered the truth - that virology is a massive fraud - and yet we can't convince people of what they don't want to see.
But it's all good. I think that we are all united against vaccines, so maybe we should just focus on the common ground that we have.
If we are all anti-vaxx, then what are we even arguing about?
"If we are all anti-vaxx, then what are we even arguing about?"
You tell me! Isn't this the crux of the issue? You say Mees isn't interested in challenging his own assumptions. Then you write, "The reason that the No Virus crowd gets so riled up is because we are convinced that we have discovered the truth." Exactly! You're convinced you've discovered the truth and aren't interested in challenging your assumptions.
When you're sarcastic, it doesn't hurt Mees' feelings. As he wrote to me, "Crow has copied the typical Cowan style, and probably thinks that's the way scientific discussions are held. Fortunately at 72 I have a well developed elephant skin and consider it his problem, not mine."
When Mathew Crawford did his parody of me, it didn't hurt my feelings. It let me know Mathew was emotional and not rational about BitCoin.
When Mike Yeadon writes, “It’s extremely wearying that frauds keep lying. Lying about submicroscopic infectious particles cause diseases which are contagious. Neither are true, not the infectious particle, not the contagion, It’s not a mistake. It’s not a difference in interpretation. It’s a lie.” That's not going to hurt Mees' feelings. Mike sounds like a petulant five-yr-old. He's a fraud! He's a liar! What exactly is Mees a fraud about? He's retired and raising chickens.
What's Mees' motivation to lie? It's illogical, he's got no skin in the game. Mike, on the other hand, is an ex-Big Pharma exec. People within the anti-vaxx community will listen to you, argue with you, but the rest of the world? They'll just laugh at you. And isn't that what Big Pharma wants? They don't want you taken seriously when you present the research on the childhood vaccine schedule or why they might be having heart problems or be getting sick more often. No, they want you to be a crackpot who's out there saying there's no such thing as a virus.
This was Mike's mission from the very start. Gain everyone's trust by talking about the vaxx and then steer them by another route back to the slaughterhouse: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/malone-and-slaughterhouse-four.
Okay, that actually seems like a sensible place to end (at least for now) - if we're all opposed to vaccines, then I'm not really sure what the point of this debate is.
I don't agree with you that Dr. Yeadon is controlled opposition. I think that he is courageously going where the evidence leads.
No, I'm not going to let you end it there, Crow. You're saying "if we're all opposed to vaccines, then I'm not really sure what the point of this debate is" as if you didn't start the debate on Mees' article, insult him, ridicule him, call him names, accuse him of intellectual dishonesty and tell him he should retract his article. I think you owe him an apology.
Mike is courageously leading you in a direction that will make sure no one ever takes you seriously, outside of anti-vaxx inner circles. I don't think he's controlled opposition, I think he's controlling the opposition.
He also posted that opposing digital ID was 'the hill to die on.' Not Palestine. Not the Rothschild banking dynasty. Digital ID. Gabe, who's done more work on cyber privacy than anyone I know, wrote in the comments that, for young people, that would make them unemployable, dependent on their families, unable to travel. We need to create the infrastructure to make that possible. He got so much hate in the comments—which Mike did nothing to moderate—that he wrote his own article, which led to an interview on the Corbett Report.
As a retired Pharma exec, I don't think Mike is as vulnerable as those he's advising to die on that hill. But the more that anti-vaxxers are disempowered, the more it serves Big Pharma. I don't think it takes courage to tell other people what to do and how to think, or to call them liars and frauds.
I don't think that sugar-coating the truth to make it more palatable will ultimately be beneficial.
You seem to be side-stepping the main issue - No one can provide convincing proof for the existence of viruses. Mees is quoting from a 1897 experiment which 1) didn't involve humans, 2) didn't have a control group, and 3) happened decades before virology even existed.
If this is the strongest argument you can make, that shows the weakness of the pro-virus position.
Who said anything about 'sugar-coating' the truth? Have you ever seen me 'sugar-coat' anything, including my critique of your arguments?
If we didn't know each other personally, Anton, I'd be wondering if you were a bot. You just wrote, "if we're all opposed to vaccines, then I'm not really sure what the point of this debate is." That conceded the point being made by Mees and myself. We don't care what you believe, and we're not calling you a liar. We don't agree.
Then you went straight back from conceding the point to attacking him. There's a name for the rhetorical device of nitpicking points irrelevant to the whole: nitpicking. That's why it's important to state the question, define the terms and say why it matters. Otherwise, some people keep changing the question when it suits them, leading you around in circles.
This debate has devolved. Surely I'm partly responsible, and I'd like it to end, but I feel like I'm in too deep to abandon it at this point.
So, let me restate what I think the debate is about. The No Virus position is that no real proof for the existence of viruses (as defined by virology) exists.
The 1897 experiment cited by Mees Baaijen is wholly inadequate. So, let me ask you this, Tereza: What proof do you have for the existence for viruses?
You seem to be a passionate believer in virology. On what do you base this belief?
Sigh. Crow then closed the comments to make sure I couldn’t reply.
mike yeadon and suavek
This Substack is put out jointly by Suavek and Mike Yeadon, as he stated in his separate Substack. From the article, this is Katherine Watts’ dialectic:
In my view, the biodefense deception system is comprised of projection of several simultaneous, interlocking illusions, the most important three of which are:
1) that there are airborne threats posed by stable, unique, specific-disease-causing, airborne, transmissible biological organisms (known as “viruses”);
2) that such threats justify societal and government-directed “preparation,” “responses” or “countermeasures;” and
3) that “vaccines” are useful responses because (so the deception runs) vaccines protect people from the threats in a pathogen-specific manner.
I think sidelining the threat-deception (No. 1 above) as if it doesn’t matter, serves to maintain the false justification for the biodefense response deception and the false scientific premises for the vaccine deception.
Kathleen Devanney. A human. 7d Liked by Suavek
Thanks for this. Yes, exposing the virus lie is fundamental. That goes and all the others resting on it, go too. It matters.
Third Paradigm 6d Reply removed by Suavek and Mike Yeadon
"The question is whether we should agree." Yes. If this is the truth - and this is the truth - then we should agree with the truth. If we don't, then we are "lighting a candle and hiding it under a bushel." Just so they don't think we're crazy. A virus only exists in the original Greek sense of the word, which means poison. And if there are no viruses, then any "vaccine" produced against them can only be produced with the premeditated, deliberate goal of killing humans and animals. And that's a stronger argument than just "we accidentally made a mistake"! Especially if we judge all other "vaccines" based on this truth.
Third Paradigm 6d Reply removed by Suavek and Mike Yeadon
Kathleen Devanney. A human. 5d
Hey Tereza. Thanks, I get your point and appreciate the breakdown for a better argument. I do think it matters - the question on whether virus' exist. And this comes down to # 3 - define your terms. I think that's where we run into problems.
Invisible infectious agents could be pathogens dispersed in specific locations, (what I think we saw with Covid) rather than a globally circulating respiratory infection that was contagious. The way we've been taught to think of viruses is that they are somehow natural and dangerous and we can 'catch' them from each other. We become dangerous to each other.
Does contagion exist? Lots of evidence to suggest it does not, even while we've experienced 'spread' and linked those experiences to what we've been taught, including scary viruses and contagion.
https://stolenhistory.net/threads/viruses-are-not-contagious.5618/
I'm not looking to convince pro-vaxxers on this. That's like skipping past reality of chemtrails to a normie who doesn't accept them, and going to straight to space aliens. Your framing: ‘You think 'no viruses' is a stronger argument than losing your loved ones? She doesn't.’ [My daughter in bereavement counseling who says it’s undeniable that younger people are dying at an unprecedented rate.]
No, of courseI don't think that. I think that's a false choice you've framed. But I do think among those of us who know vaccines are dangerous, it matters a great deal. It doesn't negate the dangers of vaccines and the massive amounts of data we have now to prove that. Which is where I would focus if talking to a pro-vaxxer.
In a larger context, because scary contagious respiratory viruses are still in the mix, this sets us up for the next marketed plague. The fact that our strongest voices for no virus are who's excluded on the biggest alternative platforms tells us we are still being managed. Break this critical piece of the spell and a lot more breaks. Keep it in place, and much of the narrative-control structure stays in place.
If we recognize that model is not even possible - yes we can be poisoned, encounter a pathogen, etc. and our bodies will respond in similar ways to expel the poison - we are in a very different world. You, as a potential virus carrier is no longer scary to me, but those behind the pysop that uses localized pathogens, quickly comes into view. It changes the whole orientation.
Ultimately the debate among anti-vaxxers matters because the truth matters.
Tereza Coraggio reply: removed by Suarak & Mike, forwarded by Kathleen to my email along with “So it looks as if your comments have been removed! WTF?! Very bad sign there. I mean debate as in being allowed the same platforms where they present their view.” Although Kathleen gives examples of Mike, Sam Bailey or Tom Cowan not being allowed on the mainstream alternative channels, I’m sure it wasn’t lost on her that they had just done the same to me. And this is the reply to Kathleen they removed:
You use a word that needs definition when you say, "the debate among anti-vaxxers matters because the truth matters." What is a debate? I use Thich Nhat Hahn's definition that in a true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.
Mike calls Mees Baaijen a liar and a fraud because he presents Loeffler's evidence, to which no one responds. Calling Mees a liar and fraud isn't debate; answering his evidence would be.
I question Katherine Watts' integrity because she partners with Sasha Latypova, who's demonstrated her lack of integrity on my site: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/sashas-daughter-soph. However, maybe Sasha is her 'keeper.' I was keeping an open mind. I find it interesting, though, that the three people speaking out earliest and most clearly about the intentional harm of the vaxx would all be taking the lead on no-virus .
Let's look at why it matters if the no-virus theory is false: If the anti-vax community is proven to be undeniably wrong about Katherine's #1, they won't have a chance to argue #2 and #3. So the debate DOES matter--as a debate, not a conclusion!
I agree with Katherine that the 'health' dept is a subset of the military. Does no-virus mean there are no weapons of bio-terrorism being developed? Was it silly of Russia to worry about those labs in Ukraine on its border? There are no ethnically-selective pathogens the military is trying to develop, since viruses are a hoax?
When Asian and African children were given an oral 'vaccine' with the live polio virus, why did they develop something with all the symptoms of polio but rebranded and more deadly? Is anthrax not a pathogen (don't know, open-ended question)? If #1 matters because of #2 and #3, but we're already in agreement on 2 & 3, why does #1 matter as a purity test of whether someone's 'controlled op,' a liar and a fraud? Why isn't respect and good intentions being given to both sides?
At my dentist office just now, I wondered if the reception area needed to stay closed 5 yrs later, and got a 15-min explanation of the small space, the HEPA filters, that an immune-compromised person might be exposed because someone else didn't know they were sick, etc.
If we present a 'united front' on no-virus, together we'll stand and together we'll fall. From my social experiments, we'd be falling ... and no one would be left to point out the link between all the deaths and the vaccine. As ex-pharma execs, is that what Mike and Sasha want?
At this point, everyone who got sick after they took the vaccines knows empirically they weren’t effective. And sadly, whether they’re ready to admit it or not, everyone knows someone who proved they weren’t safe. What’s the real motivation for those who NOW want us to throw our credibility away?
I outline ten steps for improving the quality of your arguments: 1) Frame an open-ended question 2) Like the person you're arguing with 3) Why does it matter? 4) Define all terms in the question 5) Expand the realm of possible answers 6) What evidence could change your mind? 7) How do you determine authority on the subject? 8) Own your dogma 9) Name the rules of engagement and 10) Agree to talk until you agree.
Due Diligence & Art is a popular Substack with 43K subs but its author has a dark secret—that she can't help bragging about. In this video I reveal what I've kept quiet for a year ... until she attacked another journalist who exposed her lies. The author's reaction is both shocking and confirming that she's not who she pretends to be.
In this episode, I respond to James Corbett's analysis of the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory and I develop 16 levels of conspiracy theorists based on my own progression. I name 9 rhetorical divisives that end the conversation rather than moving the question forward. I end with another Corbett where he takes the test to see whether YOU are a conspiracy theorist.
Viruses? I thought we were supposed to fight about nuclear weapons!
Due to the hot new war brewing, instead of discussing war profiteering and the military industrial complex, we should make sure all of the anti-war resistance is aligned on the lack of real nuclear weapons.
For those doubting the urgency of this mission, consider that if everyone accepts that nuclear weapons aren't real, we can't go to war over Iran's nuclear program! (*This presumes that the war IS actually about Iran's nuclear program...)
🥸 Sarcasm over
To psychoanalyze a bit, I definitely don't like the humiliation ritual around needing consensus. For many of us these things will always be quazi-abstract anyways. I have no desire to investigate or prove particulars of viruses or nuclear weapons. So when one is unable, or unwilling to give up the time to be aligned on these issues, they ultimately will take it on trust. I see those pushing for consensus using a particularly aggressive means to extort trust out of people. Regardless of the actual truth of these positions, I think you're entirely correct that this behavior is counter-productive and a mark of bad actors. The shaming rhetoric is clearly not about education.
I have similar issues with statements along the lines of "silence is consent", because I do NOT believe that tyranny fundamentally relies on consent, and recognize that in many situations that may be the only protest one feels safe with. I appreciate your efforts here to try to defend the "voiceless" on this particular issue. The fact of the matter is, that the public conversation is such a small fraction of the totality of the fight that worrying about it as if it is the fight feels somewhat contrived.
It is blatantly obvious to us all, that lies about viruses and nukes are very powerful tools for tyranny or oppression. But one of the things I like about your work and perspective is that you do a fantastic job at helping people realize we need to stop blaming the oppressed for the oppression. I don't believe that a repressed minority (the unvaccinated, especially here in Canada) have the capacity to change the status quo by drawing a hard line on theory but not practice. Case in point, the Freedom Convoy was principally about mandates and medical segregation, are we to say it was all for nothing because the focus wasn't a vigorous debate on virology?
Yet I have no love for establishment science as a whole. I recognize many of its limits and failings so I'm very open to the idea that much of what we understand is entirely false. The problem however, is that as you point out, it takes an inordinate amount of effort to bridge that understanding to the general public. Those of us who are less invested in these particular scientific inquiries may not be able to challenge them confidently in a confrontational situation. I agree that it is principally the responsibility of those who do feel strongly on these fronts to make that case, not your rank-and-file activist who is currently highly likely to be engaged on a wide variety of important fronts. I recognize that the independent capacity for research, education, outreach and many other important things is incredibly scarce, and we should use that capacity as efficiently as possible, ironically by letting each person choose how to focus their own efforts.
I rather lean towards the «viruses are trash» camp, and that usually gets me some fire from both sides.
But. Most real-world events don't have one deterministic cause, they have multiple necessary conditions, none of which are sufficient in themselves. Even gravity, although necessary to cause an apple to fall, isn't in itself sufficient, it's also necessary that there is no table under the apple. :)
So. There's an apple on my table, and it stands still and doesn't fall. But this doesn't mean gravity doesn't exist.