Hey everyone out there in quarantine land, I hope you’re comfortable and well fed.
I’m very fortunate in that I actually moved to a new place on March 1st that’s much
cozier than my old place, though as you can see my office setup is essentially the same,
but otherwise I’m stuck here all day every day just like everyone else.
Because of this, I wanted to talk a bit more about the coronavirus.
Some of you may have seen the brief informational video I put out in February, using the data
that was available at that time, and it had a fairly optimistic tone to it, given that
the virus was still largely contained in China.
Needless to say it didn’t age too well, as a month later the complete lockdown began.
But if you’re interested in facts about the virus, be sure to check that one out,
as I talk about the morphology of the virus, the methods of transmission, and all the academic stuff.
Today, however, I want to address the wide variety of misinformation that has been rampant lately.
I can’t say I’m surprised to see it, this is how our society has come to function in
the information age, but it’s still very dangerous, so let’s get through a few of
these rumors now, starting with the most ridiculous.
The first thing I’ve heard with alarming frequency is that viruses aren’t real.
That’s right, we aren’t talking about where the novel coronavirus came from, or
what it does to you, or what people think about the quarantine, I’m saying that there
are people who literally believe that viruses are not real.
This is astounding.
It’s difficult to even know how to respond to something so absurd.
Viruses are real, period.
Apart from all the diseases we are aware of that are definitely transmitted by viruses,
we can literally see them in electron microscopes.
Here are a bunch of different images of viruses.
Again, these are not illustrations.
These are actual images captured by an electron microscope, with a magnification of around
one million times.
This is what viruses look like.
We know a lot about them.
We utilize them in biotechnology.
There are thousands of people all over the world who work with viruses every day.
Virology is an entire field of study, and those who study it are called virologists,
which means that virologists have jobs.
They have salaries.
People don’t get paid salaries to study things that don’t exist.
Viruses exist.
If we can’t agree on what exists and what doesn’t exist, we are really in trouble
as a society, so please get on board with this.
I have tons of biochemistry, biology, and microbiology content that can be shared with
people that are this cripplingly skeptical, if they can somehow be convinced to take a look.
Everyone needs to keep in mind that this is not the first large-scale pandemic.
Pathogens like Yersinia pestis, also known as The Plague, have historically taken huge
chunks out of the global population.
This is nothing new, we are just far better equipped to handle something like this than
ever before.
It is science that specifically equips us with the capacity to battle these pathogens,
and those who turn their back on this capacity become problematic.
People who think the virus isn’t real obviously aren’t taking social distancing seriously,
which drives up the rate of transmission, and thousands more will die as a result.
Our actions during this peak period of infection matter, so you should leave the house as little
as possible, only for supplies, unless you have a job in an industry that is deemed critical
at this time.
There is also a viral fad, pun intended, associated with filming hospitals, which is meant to
convey that nothing is going on inside of them, and this too is ridiculous.
First of all, everyone inside has taken proper precautions, which is why you don’t see
activity in the main lobby.
People are upstairs saving lives.
You can’t get a sense of what’s going on in a hospital from a brief video showing
one room or one hallway in that hospital.
Also, activity changes day to day.
There may be a chaotic day, followed by a relatively calm day.
If hospitals become calm it means that social distancing is working.
Anyone going near a hospital is exposing themselves to unnecessary risk, which again, affects lives.
This is not a joke, people are dying in the many thousands, enough that many of us personally
know someone affected.
The more seriously we take this situation now, the sooner everything can go back to
normal.
Ok, with that one out of the way, let’s move on to a particularly bizarre claim.
Some people are convinced that the new 5G network is involved in this pandemic.
This one is so absurd it’s difficult to know where to start.
First, it would seem to be an extension of the notion that viruses don’t exist, because
some are proposing that the 5G network specifically causes COVID-19, and the alleged virus is
a cover up.
But really, this paranoia surrounding the new technology existed prior to the virus,
so the narrative is just lumping COVID in with the already existing narrative that 5G
is somehow harmful in general.
What sense can this possibly make?
Apart from the fact that 5G existed long before the virus did, it’s a wireless network.
It’s literally light.
Electromagnetic radiation is light.
Like the light we see, and radio waves, and so forth.
How can this do harm to the human body at the frequencies specified?
What possible mechanism could this operate by?
I searched for an hour to find any coherent argument as to how this can be harmful, and
there isn’t even a shred of a rational thought put forward for me to debunk.
It’s complete nonsense.
The frequencies used are higher frequencies than used by previous networks, but they are
nowhere near ionizing, like gamma rays, and besides, using a phone is not the same as
jumping into a box with immense output like a microwave.
The frequencies and intensities being used just are not dangerous whatsoever.
Being afraid of 5G is like being afraid of a light bulb, or an old timey radio, or of
being outside.
Yes, if you can see the sun, you are being bathed in electromagnetic radiation.
I think that people hear the term electromagnetic radiation and become concerned because of
other, scarier connotations for the word radiation, but ignorance of basic scientific principles
is not a valid stance.
All of this bizarre behavior, tearing down 5G towers, is just petty vandalism.
I don’t exactly care much about the profits of telecommunications companies, but there
definitely is no justification for this type of action, it’s just reckless destabilization.
Then, to piggyback on these outlandish claims, there are the people who cash in on the alt-health
craze with their “home remedies” for COVID.
The ones I’ve seen are all pretty much the same, they include common items like garlic,
ginger, lemon juice, honey, tea, all the things that will attract diet-obsessed people with
no understanding of immunology.
These items absolutely do not destroy viruses, period.
It’s a preposterous notion.
You can’t just cure every disease by eating what’s in your garden, as delightful of
a narrative this may be.
A good diet maintains general health, which includes normal immune system functionality,
but this is a complex relationship, and it is overly reductive to simply suggest that
eating a particular food will destroy a pathogen.
Anyone who pushes this narrative has no idea what pathogens are, nor how the immune system
functions, and especially not how the immune system destroys pathogens.
If a pathogen is virulent enough, there is nothing about your diet that will prevent
infection.
If viral proteins are recognized by potential host cells, that’s the end of the story,
no matter how much garlic you eat.
And finally, there is the notion of the virus being deliberately manufactured in a Wuhan lab.
I mention this last as it is technically the least ridiculous, because it is not specifically
unscientific, and therefore doesn’t deserve to be instantly dismissed like the other claims.
But the fact remains that it’s difficult to identify a solid logical basis for such
a notion.
How could this virus be considered a biological weapon?
Similarity to other coronaviruses is not specifically indicative of manufacturing, it is completely
consistent with normal evolutionary processes.
It is an animal-borne pathogen that is causing a global pandemic as other viruses have, it
is just more widespread, not because it is deadlier than previous coronoaviruses, but
rather due to details regarding the incubation period.
Also, it is affecting every nation on earth.
It is not disproportionately affecting one nation, it is destabilizing the global economy
as a whole, which wouldn’t seem to therefore benefit any nation or institution in particular.
This kind of sentiment is difficult to deal with, because it isn’t the same as blatantly
unscientific nonsense that is trivial to squash.
This is also why I hesitate in saying any more than I have just said about manufacture
in a definitive manner, as I can’t possibly possess enough information to specifically
disprove it, I can only point out that it is without reasonable basis.
The notion of conspiracy has to be dealt with in a delicate manner, because we don’t want
to lose our sensitivity towards skepticism in general.
Sometimes conspiratorial thought uncovers legitimate government misconduct.
We should be skeptical, we should seek the truth, but people have a tendency to get addicted
to this mentality, and project it onto everything they see, which is why there are media outlets
that manufacture content that appeals to these viewers, as they will consume this type of
news voraciously, whether or not it is true.
There is a huge subset of the population that lives and breathes conspiratorial narratives,
and will exercise confirmation bias like crazy, which is a problem, because any reality you
want to believe will be there somewhere on the internet for you to find it.
Just because you saw a YouTube documentary or read a blog post that says something, it
doesn’t necessarily make it true, no matter how professional the source seems.
There is a broader danger here.
People who arbitrarily skew towards conspiracy are easy to control, because some power, whether
political or corporate, can feed them a narrative that appeals to this predisposition, and get
them to act against their own best interest.
Equating scientists with “The Man” is ridiculous, the scientific community should
be trusted above all other sources, because of the manner in which it operates.
Anti-science mentality destabilizes our society, and could even be its downfall.
We know that trolls and bots exist, which are fake accounts that amplify misinformation
on social media platforms.
Why do they do this?
It must be effective or it wouldn’t be so prevalent.
It is an exercise in manipulating the way people think, the reality that society accepts.
Who are the entities that engage in this manipulation, and why do they do it?
What is the motive?
I don’t really know.
And I don’t care to speculate, since I have no basis with which to do so, and it isn’t
really relevant.
As long as we immunize ourselves against this kind of manipulation it will eventually become
powerless.
So that covers some of the stories I’ve been hearing lately.
As we can see, they tend to revolve around a common theme.
The theme is that the government is bad, and science is somehow the government, so science is bad.
This is the primary issue, some people seem to be unable to view basic scientific facts
as existing without political motivation.
Pathogens like viruses existed before there were governments, before there were humans
even, and the manner in which we learn about them has nothing to do with power or policy.
Coronavirus is real, and this is a pandemic, so stay inside until we are ready for society
to resume business as usual.
Stay safe, stay sane.