The Conspirituality Report
Conspirituality and Soft Religious Zealotry
A COVID-Contrarian Doctor Implies Reincarnation is the Answer
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A few weeks ago, Board certified anesthesiologist Dr. Madhava Setty appeared on a popular podcast hosted by yoga teacher J. Brown. Setty has self-published a book that positively explores conspiracy theories called WOKE. An Anesthesiologist’s View.
In the course of his discussion with Brown, Setty, who works in the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at Emerson Hospital in Concord, MA, offered the following opinions, without references or citations:
- Anesthesiology shows that consciousness is transcendent or immaterial.
- “Our [consensus medical] model of how consciousness and our bodies actually work is based on a paradigm that is not rigorous. We’re looking at it completely wrong.”
- Masks during COVID are not necessarily a good idea.
- Natural exposure to viruses can confer better immunity than vaccines.
- COVID vaccines have not been through third-phase trials.
- WTC7 collapsed due to controlled demolition.
- Mainstream journalism cannot be trusted.
These opinions are either false or deeply misleading and confusing to a New Age or yoga audience, which is typically science-intimidated, or science-illiterate. Together, these opinions may encourage the paranoid patternicity that is the hallmark of conspiratorial thinking, whereby belief in one conspiracy predicts belief in others.
The format of the podcast begins with and returns to Setty’s religious beliefs about consciousness, namely, that it can exist without the body. This core concern is then underlined as Setty guides the conversation back to metaphysics at the end. The sandwich bread of this podcast are Setty’s spiritual beliefs and then conspiracies are the sandwich fillings.
The episode is a masterclass on making conspirituality digestible. Throughout, Setty flatters Brown, praising him for his intuitions about the COVID vaccines being insufficiently, and other errors.
