The Prophets/Profits of Fear
Since I’m a doctor, I end up getting asked a lot of questions about health issues on social media, as well as through Messenger and text. I also get sent a lot of articles and posts about these sorts of issues.
Not surprisingly, since the pandemic, these questions and posts have, quite understandably, all been about or related to the novel coronavirus.
Well, you would not believe — or maybe you would — how much time I have ended up spending on these social media trying to debunk outlandish falsehoods about COVID-19. (There’s one in particular that exploded over the past week, the name of which I’m not even going to tag here because I don’t want you searching it out if you haven’t seen it. The point is, it is absolute rubbish.) Not only do I run across them in my newsfeed, but I get tagged in other people‘s posts with comments like, “Ken Haller, what do you think of this?”
Some of these videos are really slickly-produced, using classic, proven techniques of documentary filmmaking and persuasive marketing, like ominous music, washed-our colors, and slo-mo shots of thoughtful, sad, heroic faces. They almost always involve some person who is trying to reveal a “truth” that the “authorities” are trying to keep from “all of us.” They present themselves as beleaguered and heroic, having had research destroyed, having been fired or thrown in jail, or having suffered any and all manner of injustice, but they don’t give a damn about what happens to them because they only want to help “The People.”
They work hard to scare the crap out of you. They will also invoke JUST enough science to make themselves sound legitimate as well as JUST enough legitimate outrage against, say, Big Pharma to gain your sympathy or at least your curiosity.
This is where they go in for the kill. Having established their “credibility” and “credentials,” they will lay out a conspiracy that seems, within the context they have just established, sorta, kinda plausible. They will make sweeping claims and invoke wrenching personal narratives to convince both your mind and your heart.
(This is the sort of thing that, frankly, scientists have a hard time countering. Since we believe in actual reproducible scientific evidence, we have to acknowledge the gaps in our knowledge and add qualifiers to assure that we are not misrepresenting findings or making promises that exceed the scope of our work. That can make scientists sound like they’re either alarmists or ditherers. These hucksters, of course, are not bound by such scruples so they allow themselves free reign to do and say anything they can to get you on their side.)
Finally, this is where they urge you to Buy Their Book or Fund Their Documentary or Buy Their Immune Boosters at Their Website.
These persuasive media techniques date back to D. W. Griffith and his silent epic “The Birth of a Nation,” which lionized the rise of the KKK, as well as Leni Riefenstahl and her apologia for Nazism, “The Triumph of the Will.” In my world the most nefarious modern day exemplars of these outrageous methods are Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy, the two worst exemplars of the anti-vaccination movement. Their extremely persuasive, yet wholly unscientific, arguments demonizing vaccination for their own profit have resulted in many thousands of kids being hospitalized with preventable infections who would not otherwise need to have suffered.
Today, though, for me what is really frightening is that so many of these posts and inquiries are not just coming from those I know to be part of that unpersuadable-by-science group of people whom we see frequently on Facebook, but are often from people I know and respect.
Rational decision-making comes from a combination of an emotional response from the amygdala and thoughtful consideration from the prefrontal cortex. It seems that right now, when the entire planet is in crisis, the amygdala is firing so loudly and rapidly that, even for the most thoughtful among us, the prefrontal cortex can’t seem to get a word in edgewise.
My advice, for what it’s worth, is to be skeptical of scary things you see on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter or Instagram. Do a Google search, and find the original source that the story came from. If it’s a website you’ve never heard of, don’t trust it. And I’m going to say right here that outlets I would never trust for factual reporting are Fox News, One America News, the Washington Times, Alex Jones Info Wars, Rush Limbaugh, and oh yeah, President Trump.
While in a time of high anxiety, our instinct may be to Trust Our Gut, please also let us Trust Our Brain. Only by allowing our prefrontal cortex to have an actual conversation with our amygdala will we be able to make decisions where our heart is in concert with our mind so that we can all act in the best interest of ourselves and our entire community.
