Weaponizing religion, celebrity, and social media in support of anti-science

An observation

During this season of uncertainty about SARSCOV2 and its accompanying human illness, covid19, I have made a lot of observations in various community groups. There is divisiveness that I have never seen before in my lifetime. It surpasses racial division and political division, although it has incorporated elements of each.

There is a stiff resistance to scientifically sound medical advice being updated constantly by the Centers for Disease Control, prominent doctors from the White House Task Force, and pandemic teams at the NIH, well-respected hospitals, and international health organizations.

Part of this resistance is because of muddled messaging in the beginning and an even larger part because of the vast unknown expanse that any novel disease presents. The learning curve is being pushed forward faster and faster, but there is no final knowledge base to which to refer.

In order for messaging to be effective, it seems, it has to be immutable at the beginning. That doesn’t work for a situation that is constantly evolving.

In addition, there is evidence that hostile foreign entities are harnessing “bots” to propagate divisive information. The two most prominent are the “Plandemic” and “America’s Frontline Doctors” YouTube videos, which reached tens of millions of views within hours.

The “America’s Frontline Doctors” video, in particular, features a practicing doctor and minister in Texas who advances controversial ideas about space aliens, demon sex dreams, and other ideas that might be better suited for a horror movie. She appears well-versed in Scripture, making her seem credible to many believers. Credibility in a religious sphere seems to outweigh science for many of our compatriots.

At the very beginning of the pandemic, there was Jim Bakker hawking a “Silver Solution” as a cure for the virus. (He was formerly jailed for financial fraud but he soon rebuilt his following). He was stopped from making those claims by the FDA and FTC, as well as by Missouri’s attorney general.

However, he continues to sell buckets of freeze-dried “survivalist” ingredients for the coming apocalypse (no one seems to question where we will obtain untainted water with which to rehydrate those meals), for which he has been preparing his audience.

Celebrity doctors like Dr. Mehmet Oz, for the most part, have walked back any endorsement for unproven treatments, but their original speculative videos remain online forever, being passed around by the unwary.

Doctors who have sidelines peddling remedies are treading the space between anecdotes and science — and sometimes not too carefully.

Health “coaches” and sellers of nutritional supplements, oils, tinctures, and the whole “alternative wellness” industry seems to be forming a whole network of alternative explanations for why hundreds of thousands of people are dying. (Update: we have now passed half a million souls).

This is going to be something to watch in the coming months. Will virus deniers wake up? Or will they dig deeper?