Why Blind Skepticism Isn't Always the Smart Approach- The Many Realities of Covid-19

I’ve spent a great deal of time the last couple of months watching the US struggle with the Coronavirus from afar. I count myself lucky that I found myself in a country (South Korea) where the government’s and society’s response to the Covid pandemic was swift, comprehensive, and undoubtedly effective. While many people I know Stateside have needed to go into lockdown, stock up on supplies and socially distance (or else do work deemed essential and risk infection) my wife and I have not had our lives impacted to nearly the same extent. Apart from having the start of ours schools’ academic year pushed back, spending more time at home and spending less money because some our income was curbed, we’ve been able to live our lives with a great deal of normalcy, which can’t really be said for a lot of my fellow Americans.


It’s surreal to contrast the way the US has been impacted on this virus to the experiences of South Korea, and many other countries, who have dealt way more successfully with Covid-19. There are a lot of reasons for why the US is struggling so much. Certainly, the US has a larger population than many other countries and it is a very large global trade center. There’s also the matter of America’s extreme lack of adequate social safety nets in the form of affordable healthcare, an emergency UBI or unemployment system and lack of any kind of rent or mortgage freeze. It also hasn’t helped that US national leadership (not just the Trumpster Fire but also his administration) has botched the response badly, being slow to act in the beginning and then failing to provide adequate testing and essential medical supplies. Every subsequent failure of the US government gets deflected, especially from conservatives, onto China, even though the virus’ origin has no correlation to how widely it was allowed to spread inside the US once it made landfall. Both South Korea and the US had their first confirmed Covid-19 cases on the same day (January 20) yet in Korea we have yet (as of this date) to break 11,000 confirmed cases. That’s including the recent second wave outbreak that happened in Seoul recently. The US has almost 123 times the number of cases South Korea. It (America) does not have 123 times the population.


Yet out of all the factors that I think have contributed to America’s devastating struggle with Covid, there’s one that’s stood out to me a lot with the recent anti-lockdown protests and the viral surge of conspiracy theories. Fundamentally, Americans, even in what should be a very unifying moment of crisis, can’t agree on a single set of facts about the pandemic to base their reality on. The sheer volume of ‘information’ on the virus online and the vast number of narratives, counternarratives conspiracies and general bullshit about the Coronavirus means that Americans can absorb themselves into whatever version of the crisis suits their biases or desires. We’ve become so used to having our view of the world spoon fed to us through social media and a proliferation of ideologically polarizing media that we’ve made it impossible for us to see a single comprehensive but unified Covid-19 crisis. 


A lot of the time, the BS information about the virus and the effects of the pandemic has come from corporate media outlets with strong ties to one particular ideology or ‘alternative sources’ of information. Often these alternative sources of info are little more than a few memes online or a website that often fails to have any scientific or academic backing to the bogus data or arguments they are making. This includes videos like ‘Plandemic’ or the ‘Two Bakersfield Doctors’.



To me, the popularity of these kinds of conspiracies and alternative narratives goes hand in hand with the general lack of trust in any kind of ‘expertise’ or ‘authority’ that comes from what someone dubs ‘mainstream media’ or any kind of establishment institution. This isn’t just big media conglomerates like CNN or MSNBC. Even medical experts and scientists are being lumped in as part of the ‘establishment’.


Over the past few years, I’ve encountered more and more people who seem to have what I consider to be a blind distrust of any kind of establishment or mainstream worldview. On one level, I get where that skepticism comes from. It is important to be critical of any source of information, even if it’s one you trust. Large corporate media outlets and even universities can undoubtedly hold certain biases that influence the information they give. What’s always intrigued me though about people (especially online) who loudly and vocally criticize mainstream narratives or sources is that they often don’t apply that level of skepticism to the alternative sources they rely on. They don’t ask if maybe their blind skepticism of everything mainstream, is itself a kind of bias or cognitive dissonance and fail to see that a source or theory that has an alternative voice isn’t by default more authoritative or authentic.


The appeal of alternative sources also lies in the fact that they can, on the surface, seem more authentic and thereby more legitimate. Often, there’s something very raw about a seemingly ordinary person talking to you, directly through a Youtube video or a radio speaker. There’s something cool and unique when you find an obscure article in a corner of cyberspace that lends credence to a view a lot of people around you don’t take seriously. It gives us the sense that we are in on some special insight or knowledge when it comes to understanding the world. And in an individualistic society like America that’s a very appealing state of mind. You want to be seen as someone who’s both outside the norm but outside the norm because on some level ‘you get it’ more than your friends or family members who watch CNN do.


On some level I also think our recent infatuation with alterative sources is a product of our consumer culture. We live in societies now where our default setting is as a customer or a consumer. Everything is expected to be tailored to our every desire. Every time we order a dish at a restaurant we expect that if we’re not satisfied with something that the staff will do everything in their power to change their product so that it fits our desires. We’ve become so accustomed to the idea of ‘the customer is always right’ that now a lot of us feel justified in tailoring our media and information consumption to suit our own biases, prejudices and what we want to be true about the world. When we encounter a piece of information that counters or goes against the narrative that we’ve been telling ourselves about how the world works and how we work in it we feel justified in saying that’s ‘fake news’ or ‘the source is biased’ or ‘MSM lies’ because we’re the customer and by default we’re always right. If I want to believe the Chinese government deliberately started Covid-19 to destroy America I can. If I want to believe that Trump didn’t really mean what he said about injecting disinfectants and he was really referring to seemingly scientifically sound, I can. If I want to believe that Covid-19 isn’t actually very dangerous and or that the lockdown in the US is just an excuse to curb civil liberties and create a police state I can. I’m the customer and whatever worldview I want is right by default.


Obviously though, reality is reality. America leads the US Covid 19 cases and Covid 19 deaths. You don’t get to that place by having a great or even adequate plan to counter the virus in place. What we are seeing now in the US is the limitation of having multiple views on reality play out in the public space. What we are seeing is what happens when people trust their guts with something like a pandemic that requires trust in academic and professional expertise. What we’re seeing is that blind distrust of any and all kinds of authority is not the smarter or more rational position and that sadly a lot of people have died and will continue to die unnecessarily in the States because the ordinary person can’t bear to be wrong.