The Gaslighting of Science

[DonViejo]

Final Installment of the Misinformation Trifecta

zeynep
17 hr ago

Since the pandemic began, there has been a lot of talk about the supposed lack of scientific information available at the outset, a void which led to our failures to contain the virus. The science has evolved, this line of thinking goes, allowing us to pursue the proper mitigation strategies.

On the one hand, of course, that is true for any event like this. Especially one so dramatic, involving a global pandemic with a novel pathogen. We learn more as events proceed.

On the other hand, that’s not a completely accurate reflection of what happened. A lot of what was known from very early on took months, if not more, to make its way into our public health guidelines. Some are still being debated, to great frustration.

Perhaps one the most striking examples of all this is what happened with what we learned, and refused to learn, from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in February of 2020, a tragic natural experiment if there ever was one. Thousands of people were trapped inside a cruise ship as the disease spread. Besides the tragedy, it allowed us to observe what happened with the coronavirus inside a closed environment, revealing many things that could be harder to discern in a large, open city.

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https://zeynep.substack.com/p/the-gaslighting-of-science