Social media platforms and YouTube are “cracking down” on pandemic related information…
in particular, anti-vaccination information and stuff related to ivermectin have been the subject of unusual scrutiny. Typically scientific matters are relegated to the “experts” and specialised peer-reviewed professional journals – like other specialties it is an esoteric “business” reserved for the learned. Given the impact, from the beginning this pandemic has captured the attention of politicians, media, general public, “bro science dudes and duddettes”, and everyone else.
Given the generality of people commenting, misinformation has come in many forms and from many angles. There are different qualities of misinformation with varying degrees of severity. Firstly, let’s take a look at politicians – leaders have had the trickiest and hardest jobs – they have has to balance, the public health aspects, economic realities and general social impacts. Responses have varied from a very relaxed – let’s get on with it, it’ll be OK attitude to let’s shutdown everything and eliminate the virus.
Part of the job of politicians is to talk shit and they haven’t disappointed during this pandemic – the question is did they have any other good choices. Although, we lost the war against the virus – it could have been much worse and overall, IMO, the leaders have done a decent job at largely maintaining some sort of structure and continuity. Of course, there have been some notable missteps but that is probably to be expected when you’re dealing with a new virus that not many know about. So although they, obviously, have their own agendas and ambitions, and have imparted some of their personal philosophies on a topic they know nothing about – in general, the level of crap was acceptable and tolerable. Plus I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes, making the decisions that they have had to make during a global pandemic.
The next type of “misinformation” has come from the experts – apart from the “masks don’t protect you garbage early in the pandemic” (which was aimed at preserving PPE for healthcare workers), most misinformation comes from the uncertainty of dealing with a novel coronavirus, which has now mutated to a super-contagious form (the delta variant). The have had to understand transmissibility, mutation-rates, acute and long pathologies, socioeconomic factors and many other things. So, the information coming from the experts is not misinformation as such but incomplete information based on the stochastic nature of the progression of the pandemic. However, in general, and definitely on the big issues – public health measures, importance of vaccination – they have done a remarkable job and attempting to minimise the impact and worst case scenarios; even though the virus proved to be too good for us to handle.
Rubbish also comes from a-holes like myself, and others that know stuff but not all the stuff. Crap from these types, and there is plenty of them, is kind of benign because the bottom line of the vast majority of health professionals and scientists is that we should “obey” the prescribed public health measures and “vaccine directives”. We add some colours and perspective while promoting the popular themes.
For example, I am very pro vaccination – double vaccination and even triple as required – but I have a minor issue with vaccine mandates and passports; ridiculous for too many reasons – 1) we can encourage but not force vaccination on people – threatening with job losses and exclusion is forcing BTW, 2) we’ll probably give the green light to people with little or no immunity – immunity wanes with time and who know what “memory” people end up with, 3) we know people that have had the virus have better immunity than those vaccinated – they should be exempt from mandates and passports.
Misinformation also comes from “regular guys”; this is simply because they don’t know stuff – they hear stuff and interpret it in funny ways. This is not a huge problem, when it’s not coming from the mainstream media and these days “mega social media influencers”. Given the severity of the situation general people want to weigh in and that’s generally fine – everyone is entitled to thoughts and opinions even they are totally wrong. With media – some are cheeky and they know it! – with mega social media influencers – they are typically unlearned and sometimes dumb even!; The problem with these last two is that they can influence too many people. But what can you really do about it – in the “free world”, censorship is probably worse even … but … not sure … too complicated!
Until next time …