Quote (Goomshill @ Jun 10 2020 06:33am)
And yet it does show exactly that, the already existing hazard posed by the amount of tainted information being presented to people by popular culture, establishment media and social media. Its not just politically biased health experts penning a ridiculous letter, its talking heads on cable news. Its guests on public radio making the muffled noises one makes with their head that far up their ass. Its the WHO uncritically regurgitating Chicom propaganda as a supposed authority. Its the US's governments official position being laid out so schizophrenically that even once Trump, Fauci & company settled on a definitive plan for stages of re-opening government, it got tossed out the window within a week by everyone at the state and federal level ('member when they said we could only start to reopen after 2 weeks of declining rates?)
NPR had a gem of a reaction by running a segment about why the US public has started to distrust 'experts', by bringing in their own 'expert' who has written a book on the subject who promptly started bloviating about his politically biased dogmatic interpretation. I got a chuckle listening to their lack of self-awareness while I was driving.
The average American isn't going to have the patience and skill to google up the research and wade through scientific articles to dig up the facts of the facts and known unknowns. Instead they'll get buried under a cloud of misinformation. It doesn't do you much good if any given expert you're presented with through the media has a greater-than-not odds of having their head up their ass. Its why every step of the Covid-19 doomsday coverage so far has been so wildly off the mark.
Was it Tom Nichols? I haven't finished his book yet and he's definitely full of himself. However, he's not wrong either. Two experts can look at the same data and come to different conclusions and that's fine. The issue is when Joe Shmoe looks at the data vs. a set of experts and people believe that Joe has just as much credibility.
I'm not sure what the media can do when the American population just doesn't understand a lot of the issues. Compound that with the fact that a public health expert is just one piece of the puzzle when coming up with public policy. It's just a fucking mess and it boils down to people are really fucking stupid and irrational.