This entry is adapted from a Facebook rant that I posted today (28 March). It started out as two paragraphs and just kept growing until I thought, "Y'know, I should really bring this to a conclusion."
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Perhaps you've heard talk about COVID-19 laying bare the vulnerabilities & pro-corporate, anti-human biases of our political & economic systems.
Another thing that it's exposing is right here on Facebook: Too many otherwise intelligent people are now self-appointed experts on the pandemic, its causes, its transmission, how government policies have helped or hurt efforts to curb it, & the long-term socio-politico-economic fallout from it. This is not a new phenomenon, but, as with our government's incompetence, COVID-19 is shining a big ol' spotlight on it.
Science, as a global academic community, doesn't even have the complete picture yet, & it's a picture that changes practically every day. Articles we're quoting or linking here give only portions of the picture that was known the day before. Reliable, verifiable information is good in helping us know how to respond to the crisis. People who aren't health science researchers quibbling over aspects of the information, citing other articles that say something different, isn't helpful. There's good info to be found on FB, but I have to wade through a lot of dis-, mis-, & under-information to get to it.
Social science doesn't have all the answers either. People who study this stuff on individual and community levels may have different conclusions, different prognoses. My knowledge & experience lead me to some very bleak conclusions & prognoses, but I recognize that I may be wrong. I earnestly hope that I am wrong—except for the part where common people rise up & demand a government that operates in their interest, one that doesn't toss them a few croutons while billionaires & multi-national corporations make out like bandits YET AGAIN.
If there's a point to all this, it's that
*****
Perhaps you've heard talk about COVID-19 laying bare the vulnerabilities & pro-corporate, anti-human biases of our political & economic systems.
Another thing that it's exposing is right here on Facebook: Too many otherwise intelligent people are now self-appointed experts on the pandemic, its causes, its transmission, how government policies have helped or hurt efforts to curb it, & the long-term socio-politico-economic fallout from it. This is not a new phenomenon, but, as with our government's incompetence, COVID-19 is shining a big ol' spotlight on it.
Science, as a global academic community, doesn't even have the complete picture yet, & it's a picture that changes practically every day. Articles we're quoting or linking here give only portions of the picture that was known the day before. Reliable, verifiable information is good in helping us know how to respond to the crisis. People who aren't health science researchers quibbling over aspects of the information, citing other articles that say something different, isn't helpful. There's good info to be found on FB, but I have to wade through a lot of dis-, mis-, & under-information to get to it.
Social science doesn't have all the answers either. People who study this stuff on individual and community levels may have different conclusions, different prognoses. My knowledge & experience lead me to some very bleak conclusions & prognoses, but I recognize that I may be wrong. I earnestly hope that I am wrong—except for the part where common people rise up & demand a government that operates in their interest, one that doesn't toss them a few croutons while billionaires & multi-national corporations make out like bandits YET AGAIN.
If there's a point to all this, it's that
- science & social science will both reach conclusions based on incomplete data, & revise them shortly thereafter. That's how the whole thing normally works.
- The problem now is that these revisions are being cranked out so rapidly that we are hard-pressed to keep up. So
- do your best to keep your hands clean & YOUR MIND OPEN.
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