The danger of misinformation

 

The last couple of years have seen a rise in extreme ideas globally.

As a teacher & educator, I believe the current situation is something which we need to look at very carefully.

We are seeing a lot of ideas being presented as fact, & such a tendency can be a dangerous thing.

I believe that studying Nazi Germany is a very useful nation & time period to examine how ideas can cause so much damage. The rise of nationalism & control being handed to Hitler, and then his taking absolute control, as we know lead to so many deaths & destruction in so many ways. January 27, Holocaust Memorial Day has just occurred, more the reason to focus on the atrocities & how such things could come to happen. Dehumanising various sections of humanity. Within Germany, Jewish people, gay men, gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, trade unionists, communists & socialists and many others were all defined as not really German or traitors of the nation. And policies of segregation & mistreatment increased over the years until a massive extermination machine was created.

And yet, despite such clear information of such history, we now have lots of people who actually deny the holocaust ever happened! There are people who believe the earth is flat, that man never walked on the moon. Conspiracy theories seem to be endless.

A couple of years ago, I had a neighbour who was a conspiracy theorist. He was a nice guy, but absolutely convinced in his thinking. I don’t remember all the things he was trying to point out to me, but there were many! And he had a very elaborate (or his sources) line of thinking to explain away any logical question to his train of thought. I do remember he was convinced that climate change was a hoax, being created by the wealthy to increase their profits through the shift to renewables. There always seemed to be an answer to every objection. 3 weeks ago, Australia broke a new record of 51 degrees celsius. The climate change deniers will dispute the evidence. ‘They have manipulated the data to suit the argument’ it will be said. But 51 or 50 degrees is equally threatening to survival of humans & other species, and when you start getting new records each year or when the hottest 5 years recorded have been in the last ten years, you know something is going on. But the climate change deniers will not budge.

Now we have had a similar mob moving into the Covid debate. “Vaccines don’t work”, “Vaccines will kill you”, “People dying in hospitals are the ones ‘injured’ by the vaccines”, “Covid is not real”, “Covid is just a cold or flu”, “The vaccine contains a microchip”, “This is all part of the New World Order to take away our freedoms”, “They are trying to lock us up”, “lockdowns are communism”, “I should be allowed to go wherever I want, whether I am sick or not & no one should have to wear a facemask”, “facemasks don’t work”, “facemasks make you sick”, “they are trying to poison the children”, “please protect the children; don’t let them get the vaccine”, “the booster is the one that will kill you”. The intensity is strong & the activism is strong. And while they are a minority, they are a loud active minority. And so were the Nazis at the beginning! But it would be an error to call all anti vaxers Nazis which has been said at times. There are at least two elements within the anti vax movement & I will come to the differentiation of the two, later in this article.

If you are reading this, I assume you are fairly smart & have been vaccinated. Well done!

Of course, there are complications to any situation & those ideas should be explored, but with logic & evidence, not based on ‘unfounded evidence’. There is no such thing as an alternative fact. There are facts, proven based on evidence, and then there are IDEAS! The anti vax brigade have lots of ideas, but most of the time they are not facts, but rather thoughts, suspicions & FEARS! Fear has been a huge factor in this pandemic, on all sides of the discussions. Covid has been bad enough to kill millions & who knows how many millions will never regain the health they had before infection. It does not have the mortality rates of Ebola, but it has ended millions of lives. Fortunately, vaccines are making a big difference for most people.

Anti vaxers will have differing ideas, just like any group, but one idea that seems to get spouted a lot is that the vaccines do not work. And there are many people who have been vaccinated but still died of Covid, but in most situations their health was very poor, so they could not handle the disease. I found recent arguments against vaccines with hospital rates fascinating in the lack of logic that many anti vaxers appeared to have. Nearly 95% of adults in New South Wales, Australia got double vaccinated last year. The 5% who were not vaccinated accounted for 50% of the people in ICU. I saw anti vaxers claiming that being vaccinated made no difference because 50% of those in ICU were vaccinated. There seemed to be no understanding that the 50% vaccinated in ICU came from 95% of the population!! And add to that the fact that a large majority of the most vulnerable would be vaccinated out of their own concern & doctors’ instruction. The 5% unvaccinated making up 50% of ICU were more than likely in better health than the vaccinated group before getting sick.

I don’t feel happy when I hear of the deaths of those who did not get vaccinated. All life is sacred. And before we judge, it is important to consider the situations that we all come from. The anti vax brigade and tendencies to dispute scientific reasoning (Climate change denialism or racial purity ideologies are two good examples) generally come from the less educated & vulnerable. And so, there must be recognition of that. Rather than simply judging, the goal is to improve accurate thinking by all people.

It is important to realise how uneducated most of us humans still are. In terms of education for all, this is a very new terrain that humanity is walking. Until the late 19^th century, schools were only for the wealthy children. The poor children worked in factories or swept chimneys and many died before they reached fifteen. That was the barbarity of the times. Despite education becoming standardised for the whole population in western countries through the 20^th century, we have not seen equal access to all the knowledge & resources. And as teachers know, children coming from families with higher education, generally learn easier than others, guidance & value of learning being role modelled by their family.

While the Trump brigade managed to pick up nearly half the votes in the last US election, there is no doubt that Trump has won over the less educated, poor white voters. Voting for a billionaire to improve your situation is highly ironic, but when that leader endorses your race privilege such vulnerable people fall in behind. Very similar to desperate poor Germans in the 1930s.

In the latter half of the 20^th Century, there has been a massive effort through the UN & charities including Bill & Melissa Gates, to bring education into the developing world especially Africa. Education is helping people to learn to read & write & think. But for many, we are still in an infancy stage on the thinking.

The idea of critical thinking is still fairly new in many schools, but it is gaining momentum. To teach students how to determine what is true is a very useful idea but also a very complex one. For students to be able to explore through the variables is no easy task. Just view the adults. How quickly some idea can get exposed to us, and we are already going to war against those who oppose our viewpoint. But what is true? And how do we know?

When I was at school, there were no computers or internet. There were sets of encyclopedias & other books at the library or at home, and that was where you looked up information. I remember once hearing the idea of examining the creator of the encyclopedia to understand potential bias.

This is part of critical thinking, to look for potential bias by the writer, and then seeking various sources on a topic to try & figure out what appears to be truth on a topic.

I remember a lecturer in Sociology once teaching me that neutrality in our research & study was a goal to strive for, but something that could never be guaranteed. Because so many biases that we have in how we see things & what we agree with come from the country/ culture/ group that we live amongst. We need to aim towards neutrality, and we need to search for all variables that could slant our perspective. Such ideas are high level education & still very much a new idea for many.

The Pauline Hanson brigade here in Australia which has strong connections to racism & nationalism is also party to a lot of the anti vax movement. A group with a lot of similarities to the Trump grouping in the US. Blue collar white working class. Feeling that their concerns are not addressed by the generally middle class & wealthy political leaders. I was shocked to read that the Australian PM has a net worth of 48 million. I do not believe that very wealthy people make good political leaders as their interests are different to the ones who struggle. The cost of everything seriously matters to ordinary people.

But it is a shame when such movements become more concerned with scapegoating minorities rather than keeping the focus on the 1% and the need for them to pay taxes. Nazi ideology was the same appearing to speak for the interests of the working class, but in fact killing off working class leaders & allowing the rich & powerful to accumulate through war capitalism. We all need to carefully look at leaders & question their agenda. Are they speaking for the majority & are they telling us the truth or is it spin?

There is one area where I think many political leaders have made an error in the covid situation & that is mandates. I have always believed that mandates for working in education & health care made sense to minimise spread. At the beginning of vaccination, it was believed that vaccination would stop spread, but as we have seen with omicron in particular, vaccination or not, people can still spread the virus. Not as much of course, because people will not get as sick, but vaccinated people can still spread the virus. So, mandating vaccination to stop the spread is not a very effective strategy. Masks & social distancing strategies are best. Mandating is never as effective as a good marketing strategy either. That’s where New South Wales did such a great effort last year. Despite having to resign over corruption allegations, the premier who was a conservative politician, knew how to promote vaccination to the state & she was brilliant. And that demonstrated to me how different personalities can produce different results. As a woman leader, she was not bossy, she used kindness & compassion & 95% of adults in NSW came forward for vaccination. It was amazing. That’s the best strategy. Should everyone be forced to get vaccinated? I don’t think so. There is a small chance of bad consequences from vaccination & some people choose to risk the virus without being vaccinated. Admittedly, many of those people cry for the vaccine when they are in ICU, when it is too late! But mandates are a bad strategy. Incentives are good. With the huge impact of the unvaccinated on the health system, it is understandable why some countries like Austria are forcing everyone to get vaccinated. But I have to wonder how effective the leadership is at promoting vaccination to the population. But we also need to remember that not all countries have the same trust of government as here in Australia. Much of Eastern Europe having lived under totalitarianism are fearful of a similar situation. Conspiracy theories flourish in many nations like Serbia & Croatia. People have a strong distrust of government, education on many social issues was skipped because the civil rights 60s movement was very much a Western thing. There is a tendency towards superstition & stories rather than a search for educated reasoning & science. Much of Eastern Europe has very low vaccination rates, and consequently very high death rates continue. Greece introduced a fee for medical insurance for seniors who refuse vaccination. I think this is a good compromise. I have heard ideas like those who choose not to get vaccinated get made to pay for hospitalisation or denied treatment. Not very civilised, that last idea, but many countries are desperate. Here in Sydney and the rest of NSW, many people are dying each day, but that is with a 95% vaccination rate. Without vaccines or with people refusing vaccination, the hospital rates & deaths could be up to ten times higher or even more. So, we are very lucky that we had a great vaccination promotion. Outstanding result.

Since the premier resigned, we got stuck with a new ‘leader’ who is a Trump supporter & thought Covid was no big deal, allowed everything to reopen & masks & distance regulations to be stopped, even though omicron was already here. All in the name of getting business back up & rolling. The massive surge infection caused most of the state into their own lockdowns over Christmas. Businesses closed due to supply issues, sick staff, & most of the community staying at home. So much for getting business ‘back to business’!

I was reading a few days ago that in some indigenous communities especially in the Northern Territory, vaccination rates are as low as 50%. Efforts have been made to vaccinate, but many are distrustful. Similar to the Eastern Europe situation of distrust of government based on mistreatment in the past and people having been given limited resources particularly in education, making them vulnerable to anti vax spin & the ‘dangers’ of the vaccine.

Finally, to explore the two major tendencies within the anti vax movement. It is understandable that some people would be hesitant of taking a vaccine especially ones being created with a newer type of process. Some who have serious concerns about mRNA vaccines are only too keen to get Novovax which is a more traditional type of vaccine. Pharmaceutical companies have a long history of exploitation, huge profiteering & providing medicines which then can have terrible side effects long term. None of that can be denied, so I understand where some of the anti vax ideas are coming from. But to pretend that Covid is a cold or flu is a very dangerous idea. And as we are seeing the seriously sick & dying from Covid amongst vaccinated & non vaccinated is so obvious to anyone who analyses it scientifically. Vaccines save lives. If you are not vaccinated, you have a 25 x higher likelihood of ending up in hospital.

The other element which seems prolific amongst some of  the anti vax movement is the individualism typical in US society, where people are fearful and resistant to any government instruction or demand. I believe this element is incredibly selfish & fearful. Fearful, because there seems to be a paranoia that government is permanently going to lock them up & take away their freedoms. Selfish, because they resist common sense strategies like wearing masks & social distancing, strategies that can reduce transmission especially into more vulnerable settings like hospitals & aged care. There is a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality amongst this group, an ‘everyman for himself’ approach. ‘Only the tough survive’. ‘Why should I have to miss out on any of my freedoms for another?’. A very sad state of humanity, or lack of it. Search amongst this tendency, and there is more grunt than brains in operation. It is very conservative in other ways. And once you start to follow some of these groups, you will soon discover their belief that BLM is invalid in its concerns. There is a lack of concern for many sections of society especially the most vulnerable. Prejudices & hatred are flowering in some of these circles & that tendency of the anti vax movement needs to be watched carefully. It is far more than an anti vax discussion & we need to realise that. Watching some of the protests by anti vaxers, I have been struck by the violent tendency amongst some of the crowd, usually young guys, and the way brute strength is being used to try & win looks similar to brownshirt actions in Germany in the early 1930s.

Australia & NZ & many other countries do believe in team effort & taking care of the vulnerable, the opposite of the fascist tendency & it is important that we keep advancing as a society where all are protected & respected.

The elevation of society through education is my great hope for humanity, but we are in a race, as many ideas that can hold us back such as nationalism leading to war & division, or denial of science leading to runaway climate change are still being contested by a large section of humanity.

We are lucky to live in an age of science & we must not take it for granted.