I’m growing increasingly impatient with our leaders, local and global, for their vacillation about Covid. Newspapers, magazine, radio and television articles about the Covid virus have little scientific concensus about what the virus actually is. Various reports tell us it’s a virulent mutation of the usual flu virus, a combination of viruses from different animals, a completely new organism, possibly laboratory created, or a scam to bring about massive social change. Reported deaths, allegedly from the virus, tell us beforehand, the figures include the deaths of anyone who has tested positive for Covid 19, in the last 28 days. Reports in media occasionally ‘reveal’ that all deaths, not just from Covid, are included in those figures; that the global death rate has actually fallen, because people are not living ‘normal’ lives in which risk assessment is a major part – fewer people are getting their risk assessments wrong; all bacteria and viruses are not being transmitted as usual because of hygiene measure being taken by populations to ‘control the virus’. Then there are statements from politicians, medical professionals and science experts, reporters and the man in the pub telling us such tales are from ‘conspiracy theorists’ or simply disinformation spread by Covid denialists and ‘covidiots’.
Where is truth? What are we to believe from the cornucopia of differing views? Like religions, the tale of Covid can be tailored to our own pre-existing beliefs. We can no longer be tortured or burnt at the stake if we refuse to believe our high priests. We can live our ‘new normal’ according to which views we want to believe. Just as we can tune in to several different weather channels to pick a forecast we like.
Or can we? What happened to Serpico, Stanley Adams and Chelsea Manning? Where is Assange, Snowdon and Li Wenliang?
A few medical experts have challenged the validity of Covid. Some of our nurses and health-care workers have pointed out discrepancies between actual and reported activity in hospitals. One news article I read recently said our NHS has banned workers from posting their views of hospital life on social media. Are these people conspiracy theorists? Covid denialists or covidiots? A lot of these academics and health professionals have written serious academic papers, peer reviewed in esteemed journals, and have been in the health care profession or industry all their working lives.
A conspiracy theorist can also be labelled ‘differently informed’, ‘alternatively educated’ and challenging. The same as a denialist and covidiot. The pejorative use of such common language is easy to direct when it’s been read in bold type on the front of newspapers. But as Einstein said, ‘Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance’. When anyone criticizes someone for having a different view, are they basing their criticism on investigation, or something they read in the papers?
How are we to keep an open mind when so much information is vying for our allegiance? As one mainstream journalist said many years ago, ‘We must keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out’.
