All the while, the charge still leveled at the “anti-maskers” is that they need to wake up and follow the science!
"Arguing anti-maskers need more scientific literacy is to characterize their approach as uninformed & inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: they are deeply invested in forms of critique & knowledge production they recognize as markers of scientific expertise. We argue that anti-maskers’ deep story draws from similar wells of resentment but adds a particular emphasis on the usurpation of scientific knowledge by a paternalistic, condescending elite that expects intellectual subservience rather than critical thinking from the public."
"One user wrote: 'Coding data is a big deal…. The lack of transparency within these data collection systems—which many of these users infer as a lack of honesty—erodes these users’ trust within both government institutions and the datasets they release.’"
Another one of the deeply misleading sets of data was the ever-publicized charts of spikes in “cases” which we are now learning had no relationship to the actual number of people who were developing symptoms that became severe enough to require hospitalization.
"In fact, there are multiple threads every week where users debate how representative the data are of the population given the increased rate of testing across many states. These groups argue that the conflation of asymptomatic and symptomatic cases therefore makes it difficult for anyone to actually determine the severity of the pandemic. For these anti-mask users, their approach to the pandemic is grounded in more scientific rigor, not less…. Data literacy is a quintessential criterion for membership within the community they have created."
And now we have the ongoing saga of the vaccine. Much pressure, public relations, and advertising is being devoted to “encourage” people to take the vaccine – if it even is a vaccine – which is a whole other topic for a different article on a different day.
As we look at the scientific evidence of what is being offered, there are many doubts and much skepticism about how safe it is and whether or not it is effective as well as the possible long-term effects and issues that are currently not understood or identified. Many medical and scientific professionals have weighed in on the subject and recommend caution.
In closing I would like to just say that in this current environment, we need to be very careful about how we decide what to believe and how to find reliable sources for our information. Instead of just following the spokespeople and doing what they tell us, expecting us to follow without challenging, we need to become actively engaged in the process and do our own research to determine our own approach to the situations we are facing.
At the end of the day, it is our health, not theirs and any mistake they make most likely will not be held to account in this political environment of disappearing accountability and liability exemptions.
To Master your own health, Follow The Science!