I: These times are hard

The suite of social reactions to COVID-19 are diverse: apathy, panic, concern, hoarding, charity, suspicion, anger, sadness, selfishness, selflessness, courage, fear, reason, paranoia, etc…

And as I have advocated before: please don’t panic, don’t hoard, stay safe, don’t go out unnecessarily, and wash your damn hands. Also, the only medical advice you should take from me regarding COVID-19 is to see the CDC. They have an extensive suite of information and resources for people on a user-friendly interface.

These are strange days. Hard days. I think we will inefficiently drift out of these choppy waters, but we are not there yet. And in the meantime, I tip my hat to all the hospital workers, first responders, cashiers, stockers, and everyone else carrying an unequal burden to get us all through. And my heart aches for those who have lost loved ones as the death tolls rise; and my heart bleeds for those struggling families trying to make an already stretched budget stretch even further. Mine sure is. But COVID-19 is still a threat to our health, well-being, society, economy, and even our politics. We must learn from this.

II: We must advance STEM and critical thinking

There are many lessons and questions that will arise. I am sure this will reinvigorate basic policy questions about how we structure economic and social programs, but that is not what I am talking about here. I will leave that to you. I am here to discuss the importance of STEM and critical thinking, which are essential tools for the vitality of a democratic republic, as well as some of the key tools for us to collectively and individually overcome trying times.

As I’ve written before, for decades, Americans have consistently averaged only 6 out of 9 correct answers to very basic science questions from the National Science Foundation (NSF, 2106; 2018). These questions included, “true or false, the center of the Earth is hot,” and “True or False, electrons are smaller than atoms.” It is painfully obvious we can do better.

Moreover, pseudoscientific beliefs are common, as well as beliefs in conspiracy theories. 57% of Americans surveyed believed in advanced ancient civilizations like Atlantis (Rapoport and Berta, 2018), and nearly a third believe the government is covering up plans for a one-world government (Mansfield and Rosas, 2016). Though I’ve critiqued the accuracy of these stats in my writings, the studies do reflect something: these beliefs are not uncommon.

Propensities for pseudoscience, conspiracies, and a lack of scientific literacy is a bad mixture, especially in a pandemic.

As an advocate of STEM and critical thinking, I see the relationships among pseudoscience, misinformation, bad journalism, and paranoia. And COVID-19 is rich with all of these. I am not going to address all of those. This is a blog. Rather than try to keep up with the media and call out all those sources that dropped the ball and spread misinformation (and contribute to the finger-pointing), I will constructively promote STEM by asking you to please see the CDC’s FAQs and the WHO’s Mythbuster page. Besides, it might be easier to illustrate these relationships with an eerily accurate piece of fiction: Contagion.

III: The eerie warning from Contagion

We have the disadvantage of a first-person perspective, trying to survive the chaos of a real, worldwide problem. So it might be hard to see the connections among pseudoscience, lousy journalism, misinformation, and paranoia right now. But 2011’s film Contagion shows these relationships from the vantage point of a safe, third-person bird’s eye view, and we should take a good long look.

Plot

In the 2011 movie Contagion, a deadly virus quickly sweeps the world. The movie portrays society’s mishandling of the situation and highlights how easily pseudoscience, misinformation from charlatans, and paranoia can make a bad situation worse.

The fictitious virus originated in Hong Kong and was the result of a random, natural mixing of bat and pig viruses. It managed to jump species and infect humans, and thanks to dense urban population densities and modern travel, it quickly spread.

Very unlike COVID 19, It had a mortality rate of 25 to 30%. COVID 19’s mortality rate is thankfully much lower and remains dormant/mild for days. However, these aspects contribute to why COVID spreads so quickly, threatening the health of millions of susceptible people. (Again, see the CDC for more).

Pseudoscience in the film: Homeopathy

Actor Jude Law plays the role of a famous conspiracy theorist blogger named Alan Krumwiede. He is a smooth-talking hack who is convinced he has connected the dots. During the outbreak, Krumewiede made an online video where he “cured” himself of with a homeopathic remedy he made from a plant called forsythia.

For those that do not know, homeopathy is bullshit. Utter bullshit.

Homeopathy proposes that water retains the “memory” of an active ingredient, and the water can be used as the remedy. This is nonsense, but it gets whackier. This ingredient is then diluted to about 1 part “ingredient” to 1030 parts water. At this concentration, you would need to drink approximately 8,000 gallons of water to get a single molecule of the active ingredient. If you applied this to trying to get pregnant, you would need 8,000 gallons of diluted semen to get one sperm.

This pseudoscientific dribble flies right in the face of physical laws. If this is how chemistry operated, I would never have to buy another beer. I would just keep watering down the same one for the rest of my life. Not to mention, water has been on Earth for billions of years. Conceivably, every water molecule has the “memory” of a slew of substances, which potentially includes naturally occurring arsenic to T-rex love juice. Yum.

Okay, I’ll stop with the semen references.

A snake-oil salesman

Anyways, as if this is bad enough, Krumwiede faked the cure. He was never sick. But his videos go viral because he offers a “cure.” So, Krumwiede panders to the public’s fear, and Forsythia sales skyrocket. He becomes even more famous, and he makes a shit ton of money and is perceived by the public as an “expert.”

But he seems to genuinely believe his own bullshit! He thinks the CDC, Big Pharma, and Big Government are willingly letting people die so they can profit from medicine sales.

It’s bass-ackwards. Krumwiede unwittingly uses the dark arts of persuasion to convince people he is the bastion of truth in a sea of corrupt officials.

The interview scene

For me, the interview scene highlights how pseudoscience, misinformation, bad journalism, and paranoia make a toxic concoction. In this scene, a media pundit puts Krumwiede on the air to debate the head of the CDC, Dr. Cheever. Please watch it, it is only a few minutes.

Look familiar? It should. This is Alex Jones, David Avado Wolfe, Natural News, Gwenyth Paltrow (who was patient 0 and died in the film, BTW), Andrew Wakefield, Jenna McCarthy, just to just name a few. These quacks peddle fake news, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and bullshit expensive “remedies.” They are the Stolen Valor of science and medicine.

This scene is frightening and infuriating because of its realism. You can see this happening, and those “stolen valor” followers are obliviously under their spell. But these same followers can watch the movie and probably see all the warning signs that clearly show Krumwiede is full of shit…but they can’t see how they’ve been duped in reality.

There is a saying often attributed to Mark Twain (but I have yet to find a source): “it is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” I don’t know if Twain actually said/wrote this, but the sentiment is true nonetheless. And if you believe asserts it was Twain without evidence, then you may want to revisit the quote. As I wrote before, remember what Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” Just kidding. Though the phenomenon is real, this quote is also frequently attributed without evidence.

Let’s unpack Krumwiede’s silver-tongued dribble.

We should be wary of people like Krumwiede during regular times, and more so during times of crisis when our frustrations and fears make us even more vulnerable to believing their bovine scat. Critical thinking is paramount because none of us are entirely immune to the psychological shortcuts that can lead us astray, and we can never fully master it. So, let us take advantage of our third-person, birds-eye view to unpack Krumwiede’s seemingly “good” argument to see why he was full of shit, which is a skill set that may help avoid bullshit peddlers today

First is the appeal to false authority. This is a subset of the appeal to authority fallacy, where a famous person (or persuasive one) is perceived as being an expert voice, especially on complex topics. Just like those charlatans I mention above, Krumwiede has no experience. But people resonate around fame and persuasive words. He presents his false expertise as genuine expertise.

Next, the false balance effect. This is related to false authority, and it technically isn’t a fallacy, per se, but it is a tactic that is a disservice to critical thinking. This is a media bias where opposing sides (of a question of fact) are presented as equally plausible even though the evidence overwhelmingly supports one side. The result is a public misperception believing there is a controversy, when in fact there is little to none among experts in the field.

Of course, false equivalence, which conflates one (or a few) commonalities between different entities and concludes them as being equivalent. It’s like comparing apples to oranges, or in some cases apples to moon rocks. Here Krumwedie compared the government’s role in protecting people from Wall Street and Katrina with this. This is a virus, it isn’t a force with an agency (like Wall Street conglomerates) nor is it a weather event that is localized, and mostly follows a predictable path. This is a new virus. How to protect people, and the potential to protect people are vastly different in all of these scenarios.

The above comparison was also guilt by association, which attacks the person by associating them to some negatively-perceived group and makes a conclusion based on that group, rather than the argument. Who likes Wall Street and the agency that reacted (or lack thereof) to Katrina? Not many. Comparing the CDC to these entities is not only a false comparison, but Krumwiede tires (and successfully does) also make Dr. Cheever look bad.

And of course, there were appeals to emotion. This one is tricky. Given this is an issue off immense concern, emotions are relevant to the overall discussion. But it becomes a fallacy when it detracts from evidence. For example, Krumwiede did deliver the math accurately, assuming an r-naught of 2 that goes thirty steps? But is it that the case? Will it? Krumwiede delivered this in a way that didn’t help solve the problem, but in a way that specifically appleade to fear and instigate panic.

Then, there were unfounded appeals to circumstantial ad hominem fallacies. By saying the powerful had something to gain, Krumwiede manages to discredit the CDC, WHO, and science at large, without a shred of evidence to back that statement up. In fact, the opposite is more likely: the powerful have much to lose. How can they profit in an economy that is crashed and worthless? The value of money disappears in a crisis. Large swaths of people die, and last I checked, it’s hard for dead people to buy products.

Of course, red herrings. For example, Krumwiede’s sd hominem on Dr. Cheever’s character turns into a red herring. Yes, Dr. Cheever misused his power to get his loved ones out of town before the quarantine. But realistically, this isn’t a gross abuse of power that should cause us to question his scientific expertise of virology and epidemiology. Granted, public officials need to keep minutia like this in mind, because even though it shouldn’t, it would be naive to expect people not to lose some confidence.

Plus, Krumwiede starts off with a red herring. The pundit started with Krumwiede tweets about the world being kept from truth, that CDC and the WHO are conspiring to help the wealthy. Rather than respond about why Krunweide thinks this conspiracy is right, he uses this as an opportunity to promote his bullshit product, forsythia.

And of course, appeal to conspiracy theories, which he advances without any evidence. But, his rhetoric is appealing. He manages to spin everything to look like he is credible. This is perhaps catalyzed because he offers an easy scapegoat in a time of despair. He plays on people’s fear when its hard to think straight. He provides a bullshit cure when a real one is not yet available. And it all seems plausible under the massive conspiracy.

V: Parallels with the real quacks

Consider this meme from the anti-vaxxer Larry Cook, promising that vitamin C cures 100% of COVID-19…

All the same warning signs are there: pseudoscience, extraordinary claims without evidence, selling fear, conspiracies of this “remedy” being denied, etcetera. Cook is just another Krumwiede.

But Cook is not alone. Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist of Infowars said on his radio show that his Silverblue toothpaste “kills the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range.” Of course, there is no evidence for this, and the New York Attorney general’s office ordered him to stop promoting his fake cures.

And check out this nonsense from David Avacodo Wolfe on March tenth touting “deep state” nonsense and chem-trails, and promotes his remedies for this… Keep in mind this twat waffle has 12 million likes on Facebook. He is another charlatan trying to capitalize on paranoia.

And it is not just the famous quacks like these. Internet rumors are spreading fast. Bizarrely, there were even claims that gargling bleach would work. I mean, technically yes. You can’t get sick if you are dead.

A slew of other claims was propped up, like garlic, UV scanners, antibiotics, etc… None of these are true.

Some evidence suggests that medicines like Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine might have an effect (Yao et al. 2020; Liu et al., 20020), as explained on the CDC website (updated March 21). But don’t hold your breath, another study from Zhejiang University showed Hydroxychloroquine was no better than regular treatment (Chen et al., 2020). However, the sample sizes in these are small. Better information will be needed.

I know leaders like the president and news pundits would love to build much-needed hope with these drugs. I get it. But please be pragmatic, use critical thinking, and recognize science has only given this a “maybe.” It isn’t yet verified. And since these drugs have been touted, there has been a shortage of chloroquine. This is a prescription drug that is needed by many people, such as those with lupus. They are not getting the medicine they need, which means prescriptions were initially handed out by some doctors who should have known better. But, it looks like the problem has been identified, and this will be rectified.

Other scams and bulshittery can be found here.

VI: Closing thoughts

Misinformation, pseudoscience, paranoia, and lousy journalism helped make a bad situation even worse. In the film, millions die, governing officials scramble to implement effective rules in time, and society collapses. It’s an eerie warning.

Fortunately, we have collectively avoided this with COVID-19, and it looks like we will (very imperfectly, to say the least) continue to do so. It seems we will eventually flatten the curve, despite slow the hemming and hawing in DC, despite a lack of medical resources, despite the minority of panicked hoarders, despite the efforts of a few conspiracy theorists and paranoid hucksters. A medicine and/or vaccine is bound to be discovered in time. We will prevail, but only if we maintain best practices (again, see the CDC).

But we have much to learn from this still. Society is likely going “pass” this test, albeit, not with flying colors. And I am left pondering, “What about the next time?” There will undoubtedly be another, it’s only a matter of time. Reasons like this are why I promote critical thinking and STEM. We must train ourselves to be better critical thinkers, and increase STEM literacy, both individually and collectively—not just for our regular lives, but also for these critical moments.

Stay safe. Keep calm. Maintain Social Distancing.

Carpe Datum and Semper Sci,

Sgt Scholar, out.

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References

Chen Jun, L. D., Liu Li, Liu Ping, Xu Qingnian, Xia Lu, Ling Yun, Huang Dan, Song Shuli, Zhan Dandan, Qian Zhiping, Li Tao, Shen Yinzhong, Lu Hongzhou. (2020). 2020-03-01. A pilot study of hydroxychloroquine in treatment of patients with common coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19). J Zhejiang Univ (Med Sci), 49(1), 0-0. https://doi.org/10.3785/j.issn.1008-9292.2020.03.03

Mansfeld, W., & Rosas, M. (2016). The GfK Group Project Report for the National Survey of Fear – Wave 3 (310.111.00667.1; GfK Group. https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/_files/codebook-wave-3-draft.pdf

NSF (2018). Science and Engineering Indicators 2018. National Science Board; National Science Foundation. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/#/report/chapter-7/public-knowledge-about-s-t

NSF (2016). Science and Engineering Indicators 2016. National Science Board; National Science Foundation. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/#/report/chapter-7/public-knowledge-about-s-t

Rapoport, R. and K. Berta (2018). American Fears Survey July 2018. The Division on the Study of American Fears: Chapman University. https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/survey-american-fears.aspx

Yao X, Ye F, Zhang M, et al (2020). In Vitro Antiviral Activity and Projection of Optimized Dosing Design of Hydroxychloroquine for the Treatment of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [published online ahead of print, 2020 Mar 9]. Clin Infect Dis. 2020;ciaa237. doi:10.1093/cid/ciaa237

Liu, J., Cao, R., Xu, M. et al (2020). Hydroxychloroquine, a less toxic derivative of chloroquine, is effective in inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro. Cell Discov 6, 16 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41421-020-0156-0