Post-Truth
We live in a post-truth era. What in any other time would be widely accepted as fact, today is a matter of “opinion”. No matter what “science” learns, no matter what level of expertise someone has in a particular subject, everyone’s opinions about everything, all of a sudden, are valued. You have yours, I have mine, and somehow, they both have equal weight.
That’s because we can go “on Google” and find any justification for any theory we want. And since that information is presented in a “smart” way, say with lab coats in front of the US Capitol, then “obviously” it’s the truth. All of the credentialing that created trust in the past, from academic degrees to years of expertise, no longer count. Joe Rogan has at least as much weight in the Covid debate as Anthony Fauci, if not more. Ask Green Bay Quarterback Aaron Rogers. Rogan (Newton South High School, U-Mass dropout) is an “influencer” with eleven million followers, and that status somehow lends more credence than Fauci’s forty years of scientific leadership and advanced degrees (BA from Holy Cross, MD from Cornell, Honorary Doctorates from 9 Universities).
“Experts”
It is foolish. We still want an “expert” to fix our car, or our broken leg. If I had a question about pole vaulting, I’d go to Greg Hull (Arizona) or Jim Bemiller (Tennessee) or my pole vaulting “guru”, Mark Hannay (Slippery Rock). They are the best, the most experienced. They are the proven experts in the field. Of course folks outside the “pole vault world” don’t know their names. And we didn’t know the names of Tony Fauci (National Institute of Health) or Mike Osterholm (University of Minnesota) or Peter Hotez (Baylor) before Covid either. (Except Fauci, we knew him from AIDS and Ebola).
But our arguments about the pandemic aren’t really scientific ones anymore. As we are post-truth and post-fact, we are post-science as well. The debate is now clothed in political terms of “personal freedom”. “You can’t tell me what injection I have to take”, is the argument now, based not in science, but in a narcissistic view of personal privilege versus civic responsibility.
American Dis-Unity
America has a long tradition of unifying in the face of great crisis. From World War I and World War II to 9-11, we have turned to national solutions to solve our national problems. But we also have a long tradition of dissent to those solutions. The Vietnam War started with national support. That didn’t last. As the war dragged on, Americans discovered that the Government wasn’t telling the truth about the conflict (The Post – Pentagon Papers). That revelation didn’t seem to alter national policy or action. The War continued, through the final years of Johnson’s Presidency and the six years of Nixon’s ill-fated stay in the White House. The Vietnam War didn’t end until 1975, after Ford’s ascension to the Oval Office.
While we have a tradition of unifying under crisis, the Vietnam Era taught a deep distrust of “the Government”. That distrust is underlined in popular culture, from the Rambo movies to the heroic portrayals of activist protestors in The Trial of the Chicago Seven. That distrust is also emphasized in The Report, which examined the actions of the CIA after 9-11, and Shock and Awe that looked at the false evidence that justified the invasion of Iraq.
Add that to the current post-truth era, and maybe it isn’t such a surprise that instead of unifying in the face of a pandemic virus, the United States is fractured. But that division has a real cost in lives. The United States still leads the world in Covid deaths, now nearing 800,000. India, with a population four times the size, has only recently reached half that toll.
Oh, the Needle!!
It is logical for a nation faced with a health crisis to search for a way to prevent the disease. It is logical for that nation to look to the most brilliant to find a preventative, a vaccine. And once it finds that preventative, it’s more than logical for the nation to want it’s citizens to take it. In fact, it is logical to protect the nation, just as logical as it was to draft soldiers for World War I and II, and to ration food and products. Now THAT imposed on “personal freedom” – especially when they put a rifle in your hands and sent you to war.
But “Oh the needle – oh the needle in my arm!!!!!” Clearly that infringement must be beyond “the pale” for some. The science is irrefutable: the vaccine works, and it would save lives. But that all depends on facts that many don’t believe anymore.
Natural Immunity
And the final illogic of our post-truth world is “natural immunity”. Those who had the misfortune of getting Covid, now claim that are “immune” from the disease. Again, science conflicts with that claim. While prior infection does give some immunity, the level is dependent on how sick you were, and what variant of the disease you had. And worse, instead of “risking” the vaccine, some are more willing to risk the disease itself, in order to gain immunity from – the disease.
But those pandering to the anti-vaccine crowd are trying to place “natural immunity” as equal protection to vaccination. The science, the facts, demonstrates that it isn’t. But since all opinions are “weighed equally”, those that find political shelter in opposing vaccination are now clinging to “natural immunity”. I wish they were right. I wish that the almost fifty million Americans already infected by Covid were set.
But they’re not.
Omicron
It would be nice for the worst of Covid to be behind us. Politically, it would be an advantage for President Biden to be able to say “…he cured the United States”. We have weathered the original infection, then re-infection with the Delta Variant. But viruses are all about mutation, and the global spread of the corona-virus encourages genetic changes.
The world-wide web of transportation means that what happens anywhere in the world, will be everywhere else in days. So the discovery of the Omicron Variant of Covid 19, a variation with multiple mutations, is chilling. We know we can’t stop it from getting into the United States. It’s probably here. It’s already in Canada, with two cases identified in Ontario. What we don’t know is how infective it is, and how effective the vaccines will be against it. Omicron may not change a thing. It might change everything.
It would be better if we could handle this together; united as a nation against the disease. That’s not likely. The anti-fact machine is already churning out propaganda, claiming that somehow one side is “making the variant up” for political gain. We don’t share the same facts, nor the same sources of information. Another viral crisis will deepen our divisions, not heal them.
In a post-truth world, that’s the truth.
