This Is a Good Time to Stop Getting Your Information from Ideological Zealots
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All humans are political and ideological. We’re political in the sense that we have beliefs about the groups we’re part of—what those groups ought to have done in the past, ought to do now, ought to do in the future, and what sort of people should lead them. And we certainly have strong views about the groups we’re not part of.
We’re also ideological. Even the most down-to-earth among us hold to some big ideas, reject some big ideas, and look at the world through an ideological set of lenses. People’s worldviews range from highly rational, systematic, and coherent to highly random, chaotic, and contradictory, but we all have them.
And we’ve all got narratives we believe in that both flow out of, and sustain, our political and ideological commitments.
But something’s wrong if we let group identities, dogmas, and stories dominate our thinking to the point that we’re no longer able to recognize bunk (as in balderdash, hooey, flimflam) when it’s being sold to us by those we see as “our own.”
From where I sit, this seems to be a growing problem on “the right” these days. It’s probably an equal or greater problem on “the left,” but we’re primarily responsible for ourselves, and we’re supposed to be better than that.
Zealots and COVID-19
The latest example is the assortment of ill-informed attitudes and claims about COVID-19 I’m seeing echoed by fundamentalists, conservative evangelicals, and not-at-all-Christian folks on the right. I say “echoed,” because they seem to originate from two often-overlapping flavors of political-right media: partisan-right media and conspiracy-right media. I don’t want to get into a tiff about what sources belong under which heading, but the partisan-right media are the ones who are in lock-step with the GOP talking points—which means in lockstep with President Trump’s talking points.
These are the media personalities who were sure COVID-19 was a big politically motivated hoax … until they were sure it wasn’t … until they were sure it was “just overhyped, and we should all get back to work by Easter” … until they were sure that “nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won.” Their messaging is perfectly synchronous with the White House.
By conspiracy-right sources I mean media personalities who occasionally or constantly trot out a range of anti-mainstream suggestions and claims, usually with bad data and sloppy reasoning for support—if there’s any effort to support it at all. Sometimes its theories of sinister secret machinations, sometimes just dumb (and misleading) comparisons of supposed death rates (COVID-19 vs. flu, COVID-19 vs. lightning, etc.), and the like.
In both cases, what we’re getting is not very good information. One is just GOP propaganda—thoughtless cheerleading for the administration. The other is a weird mix of paranoia, reflexive nonconformity, and cynicism.
Either way, what you get from these sources is advocacy for a group, a leader, a movement, or a mood—not advocacy for truth and solutions to problems. Zealots are loyal to their agenda and truth is only one tool in the box to use, or abuse, in service of that agenda.
Toward Better Sources
It may come as a shock to some, but the majority view isn’t always wrong. There’s a really strong consensus that sunshine is warm, that birds are generally poor swimmers, and that horses don’t have feathers. Contrarianism has gotten so mindless on the right lately, I wonder if I could start a movement and get famous on the claim that horses really do have feathers, because “the left and the mainstream media say they don’t … and it’s all a plot to make Trump look bad.”
Here’s the point: for many matters in life, political and ideological zealots are the worst sources of information. COVID-19 is one of them.
It’s true that nobody is really “objective.” It doesn’t follow, though, that nobody is rational, rigorous, and committed to good information. Thankfully, some are much more interested in being accurate than they are in advancing a party, ideology, or conspiracy theory!
At the top of many organizations, you’re going to find some very political people. Because these leaders interface with national figures, some of whom are elected officials, that’s to be expected. But the CDC and WHO and countless other public and private organizations working on COVID-19 are full of professionals in biochemistry, virology, epidemiology, and related fields, who really aren’t very interested in what political party is dominant at the moment or what the current U.S. President’s popularity numbers are—or even who wins the next election.
We can get COVID-19 information straight from these sources as well as other more local ones.
We can also get information from media sources that aren’t dominated by political or ideological zealots. Although MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right aren’t always delivering heavily spun information (or outright misinformation), there’s little need to go there—or turn on the TV at all—when you can read National Review, or better yet, The Dispatch. Though fallen humans like the rest of us, these folks are willing to look critically at the political “us,” and not just the political “them”—a key characteristic of any source’s commitment to truth. The Dispatch has even been known to argue that, as a nation and culture, we need to stop this madness of trying to politicize everything.
A small fact salad
These links are a bit old now, since I was gathering them mostly last weekend, but they may be of some use in countering a tiny bit of the misinformation bouncing around in the zealot-fandom echo chamber. There are also some good sources here for more up to date information.
- Testing lag: due to the shortage of tests in the U.S., we don’t have reliable numbers on the infection rate or how many are infected now. (We’re catching up now, though.)
- Probability of death by COVID-19: many misleading comparisons are going around fueled by confusion on the difference between case fatality rate and infection fatality rate or by simple innumeracy.
- Probability of hospitalization: the focus on relatively low death rates often results in overlooking the larger problem of high hospitalization rates. Overwhelming the medical system with a surge of hospitalizations is a serious problem as well—one that could unnecessarily increase death rates (more on this here).
- Data on what’s happening: The interactive data map from Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering is a great source of visualized data, close to “real time.”
- Canada: Probably the best COVID-19 information in Canada.
- Scams: Keep an eye out as well for Coronavirus Scams. See also Coronavirus Rumor Control, and info on Coronavirus stimulus scams.
What if they’re wrong?
Maybe the people I trust are giving me bad info. Maybe the thousands of medical professionals at CDC and NIAID, the state health departments, the private and university researchers, and the many national health departments all over the world will somehow turn out to all be wrong about the severity of the disease and the need to flatten the curve. The economic analysts I’ve been reading have me convinced that COVID-19 was going to tank the economy with or without all the state and local efforts to flatten the curve, so crushing it on purpose to save lives was the right strategy. Maybe they’ll turn out to have been wrong, too.
But if my sources turn out to be wrong, it won’t be because they put their passion for a political agenda, or party, or leader ahead of their commitment to reason, research, and helping people. If they’re wrong, it will be because they did their best to get the facts right and the response right, but failed. I’ll take that over the distortions of ideological zealots any day.
Aaron Blumer 2016 Bio
Aaron Blumer is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in small-town western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored for thirteen years. In his full time job, he is content manager for a law-enforcement digital library service. (Views expressed are the author's own and not his employer's, church's, etc.)
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I really like this article and will certainly be sharing it. Thank you so much for putting the time into it!
A couple of issues, though.
[Aaron Blumer]But the CDC and WHO and countless other public and private organizations working on COVID-19 are full of professionals in biochemistry, virology, epidemiology, and related fields, who really aren’t very interested in what political party is dominant at the moment or what the current U.S. President’s popularity numbers are—or even who wins the next election.
“Full” is misleading; you have no way of knowing how many of those professionals aren’t interested in politics. In fact, there are many cases where organizations like these have proven highly political. Just take the WHO and China right now, for example. There are plenty of ways that it is clear the WHO pandered to China. Consider the naming of the virus and the disease, for starters. And professionals all over the world come from highly secularistic intelligentsia and are often shown to ignore facts in favor of agenda.
[Aaron Blumer]A small fact salad
I was especially intrigued that you included this section. The below article isn’t the only place that speaks to the meaningless numbers, and it is very easy to understand just how useless all of the numbers really are. Some countries have high death rates, some have low. Many factors account for the wide differences, not the least of which is how extensive the testing is. The only possible way any valid, useful conclusions can be drawn would be to test every human and to do it almost every day. It took experts years to come up with even a wide range of estimates with MERS and SARS, and those were diseases that very rarely, if ever, presented in mild or asymptomatic ways. The only numbers that should really matter to the general public are the total number of hospitalizations and deaths. Hospitals are filling up, and people are dying - both are happening at a much higher rate than any other disease in over a hundred years. This is sufficient to shape our behaviors. Anything beyond that is subject to such huge swings in estimates that it only serves to drive either paranoia or carelessness.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-28/confirmed-coronav…
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
…you have no way of knowing how many of those professionals aren’t interested in politics.
I can know with a fairly high level of certainty, but not absolute. First, I’m not talking about “interested” in politics; I’m talking about driven by politics. I may not have been very clear about that… I would say “not interested in how politics relates to their work” is better. I’m basing this observation mostly on experience interacting with people at federal agencies (and more interacting with people who are interacting with people at federal agencies)… as well as reading work by people that work at these places. Probably most of them of them have some political opinions, but their 40+ hours a week work just doesn’t have much to do with all that.
So the point is that, ironically, the people on the right who are trying to cast all this as politically driven are actually projecting their own political obsession onto people who are really just professionals, focused on their professions. Because they look at everything through a binary political filter (“us” vs. “them”), and do everything they do in devotion to a political agenda, they assume everyone else does, too.
But I have rarely encountered people in the workplace, either in the healthcare sector or the justice sector, who look at life and their work that way.
… I mean, I’m way more interested in politics and political philosophy than most people I know, and even I don’t do my work in service of a political agenda.
I added a few more links to my “salad” section. I’ve come across so much solid stuff over the last week, it’s a bit overwhelming to try to sort it out.
About experts
I wanted to write a whole section on how to think about experts and tie in The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols. But I’m not ready to do that anything like justice. I just want to point out that experts may be wrong, but they’re way less likely to be wrong than non-experts. Nobody is saying you have to be an expert to have an opinion. They’re pointing out what should be obvious: that all opinions are not of equal value and trustworthiness. Genuine expert opinion may be a “best guess,” but it truly is a better guess than most of us are qualified to make.
… and an MD in regenerative medicine and orthopedics is not really an expert compared to a consensus of MDs in epidemiology, infectious disease, virology, etc. So, sure, you can always find an “expert” to take a view you like. But is he/she really an expert? And even if he/she is, what do his claims weigh against people with considerable more and more relevant expertise?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Aaron Blumer]Complex, not meaningless
The title of your post is interesting, but it didn’t address my usage of the word “meaningless” in my original post, so I’m wondering if you were going to say something about my comments regarding why I believe all of the statistical analysis is meaningless. And, actually, I think all of the statistical analysis may be worse than meaningless - I think it actually can create more problems than anything. I know we can never stop the flow of that kind of data because people love to see the numbers, so I am in no way advocating the removal of the data. My point is that people need to understand that comparisons between countries and even states must be understood in such complex ways that the raw data is virtually useless.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
The media has made us all armchair experts on things we know nothing about. I always smile when I read pundits criticize “the government,” and stereotype bureaucrats as mindless drones who can’t do anything. It’s actually hard to do things. I know that isn’t sexy, but there it is.
I trust the experts on the numbers and the facts of the virus, insofar as they can be known at this stage.
But, the response by State and Federal government is a political question; a leadership issue. The technicians do their thing and predict what they predict. Trust them. But, the politicians have to make the best decision based on other factors. The economy. Unemployment. Re-election.
I trust the experts. I am less certain about the wisdom of the responses we’ve received. WA State just extended it’s “Stay at Home” order until 04 May. Is that the best decision? Gov. Inslee said it was a “moral imperative” that we extend the order, to save lives. I cannot help but sneer at him as I recall his unqualified support for Planned Parenthood and the murder of unborn children. He says U of WA predicts 1000 WA deaths. I am not convinced 1000 deaths is worth the cost of shutting the State down for a total of six weeks. However, I’m not certain whether our very comfy culture will stomach 1000 deaths. We are so very comfortable, so very spoiled, so very removed from the world the Biblical authors lived in.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Thank you, Aaron.
Predictably, though, many of the President’s followers (including Trump himself) are now in the “we’ve always been at war with Eurasia” phase.
[TylerR]I am not convinced 1000 deaths is worth the cost of shutting the State down for a total of six weeks.
The only way a person can believe in this manner is if he is of the belief that the specific point in time of a man’s death is a fixed point, immovable by anyone, that even God himself does not change. I know there are many who believe the Bible teaches this, and I myself am not settled on the matter. Every life has complete value, and it comes across as callous, as indifferent, to approach COVID-19 in a way that puts the economy above human life. Yet we all know that everyone will die at some point in time. Over 1,700 people die in America every day from heart disease. Heart disease is a risk factor with COVID-19. So some number >0 of yesterday’s 1,700 heart disease deaths will now be categorized as COVID-19 deaths. Does that mean COVID-19 is more deadly than heart disease? Did God know over 1,700 people would die from heart disease yesterday? Does God know who will die of COVID-19 today? Were any of those dates/times of death “premature” - either due to life choices that increased the likelihood of having heart disease or other sins that impact health? These are not easy questions to answer.
I believe that as Christians, our responsibilities are neither to direct nor to criticize our government, but to pray for them: that God would do a work of salvation in them, and that he would give them wisdom. Is our government right or wrong if they decide to focus on the economy rather than the death toll? It really doesn’t matter (unless you’re an elected official). Our responsibility as Christians does not change. We have the same God in 2019 as we do today, and we can take comfort in knowing he is in control. And so we can rejoice with those who rejoice (thinking of those who recover from COVID-19 or who do not lose their jobs), and we can weep with those who weep (the opposites). But let’s not fall into the trap of blaming Trump, Xi, or anyone else for what God has sovereignly allowed. And let’s also not forget that lives really do matter more than the economy.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
[TylerR] I’m not certain whether our very comfy culture will stomach 1000 deaths. We are so very comfortable, so very spoiled, so very removed from the world the Biblical authors lived in.
We are definitely a “soft” culture, in more ways than one. As I’ve been reading through and about the ancient Greeks, I’m amazed at how much hardship they not only endured as a regular part of life but also sought out to make themselves a hardier people. They knew the dangers that came with being “too soft.” Of course, daily decisions led to life-and-death outcomes, whereas today most people never have to face death in a meaningful way until they are old.
I agree with what you say, in broad terms. What I didn’t articulate was that the side impacts of shutting the State down will likely cost more than 1000 lives, and ruin untold more. What about people who commit suicide because of the loneliness? What about the people whose small business is destroyed? What about people whose lives are so upended by this shutdown that they never recover? What about the people who die from complications from medical procedures they can’t get?
All of life is a conscious decision of cost-benefit analysis. It is incredibly dangerous for me to drive my car (so many people die from it), but I make the conscious decision that it’s a risk worth taking. So does the rest of America. At some point, our elected officials must make the same decision when it comes to COVID-19. When does the cost of a shutdown outweigh the risk? It can’t be as simple as “every life matters.” Because every day we make lots of decisions that have the potential to take a life, even unwittingly.
I am personally unconvinced of the necessity of a WA shutdown until 04 May. But, we are complying. I just sent an email out to the congregation saying we shall continue our combination of Zoom for normal meetings and YouTube for the abbreviated worship service, which we’ve truncated to just the sermon. It doesn’t mean I have to like it, but I do have to obey it.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
[TylerR]TylerR
And I actually agree with your broad terms, as well. But about your “what ifs” - the trouble is this: none of us knows the answers to those questions, but we all know and agree that life matters. So as individuals, I find it difficult to complain to my government about a decision to keep things shut down when that decision is being made from the perspective of valuing life over the economy. I completely agree that the what-ifs have a strong potential to cause more death than COVID-19, but we cannot know that, only God knows that, which is why the conversation of fixed-point death vs. non-fixed-point death becomes a factor. Just a thought - if we decided to return to normal, could the death toll be so bad that the economy is wrecked anyway? That’s another “what if” that we cannot know, but it is not an unfair question.
Military leadership in combat make cost-benefit analyses constantly, even knowingly sending someone to his death to protect the unit or the mission. Then there’s the Truman-bomb issue, as well. And so I pray that our leaders make wise decisions, and I obey the government until they command me to disobey scripture. I am not of those who currently say that proclaiming the Word over the internet isn’t church (“therefore we aren’t doing it!!!”), and so we continue to find ways to be under the Word and even to fellowship virtually. We pray for those who are ill and try to help those who are now unemployed. In all of this, I am learning that it is during these challenging times that there is the greatest opportunity for the Gospel to shine. This dynamic is particularly tricky since we must minimize exposure to other humans, but we can still find ways to be vessels for God’s use.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
[JNoël]The title of your post is interesting, but it didn’t address my usage of the word “meaningless” in my original post, so I’m wondering if you were going to say something about my comments regarding why I believe all of the statistical analysis is meaningless. And, actually, I think all of the statistical analysis may be worse than meaningless - I think it actually can create more problems than anything. I know we can never stop the flow of that kind of data because people love to see the numbers, so I am in no way advocating the removal of the data. My point is that people need to understand that comparisons between countries and even states must be understood in such complex ways that the raw data is virtually useless.
Yes, got sidetracked. I was going to go into that. The data is difficult to interpret. I guess if we’re going to be precise, data is always meaningless. It falls on humans to analyze, relate to other data, and interpret. Some data is definitely of higher quality than other data, depending on the conditions under which it was collected.
But anyway, I think I understand now that your point was that these numbers don’t tell most of us anything useful. I do think that the experts in their fields who are doing the educating guessing can make good use of them. They are “just guessing” about what’s going to happen, but I don’t think that’s a criticism. There are times when we all have to do that, and when it comes to epidemics, they’re the right people to do the guessing as best they can…. and it’s, in some cases, really rigorous guessing.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[TylerR]The media has made us all armchair experts on things we know nothing about. I always smile when I read pundits criticize “the government,” and stereotype bureaucrats as mindless drones who can’t do anything. It’s actually hard to do things. I know that isn’t sexy, but there it is.
I trust the experts on the numbers and the facts of the virus, insofar as they can be known at this stage.
But, the response by State and Federal government is a political question; a leadership issue. The technicians do their thing and predict what they predict. Trust them. But, the politicians have to make the best decision based on other factors. The economy. Unemployment. Re-election.
I trust the experts. I am less certain about the wisdom of the responses we’ve received. WA State just extended it’s “Stay at Home” order until 04 May. Is that the best decision? Gov. Inslee said it was a “moral imperative” that we extend the order, to save lives. I cannot help but sneer at him as I recall his unqualified support for Planned Parenthood and the murder of unborn children. He says U of WA predicts 1000 WA deaths. I am not convinced 1000 deaths is worth the cost of shutting the State down for a total of six weeks. However, I’m not certain whether our very comfy culture will stomach 1000 deaths. We are so very comfortable, so very spoiled, so very removed from the world the Biblical authors lived in.
Well, part of what the experts are saying is that the governing officials ought to do certain things. The whole flattening the curve thing didn’t come from the government, in the sense of elected officials. So I see a difference here between what politicians normally do and what they ought to do. One difference between a mere politician and a politician who is also a statesman, is that he/she will, when the stakes are high choose to do what seems to be best for the people—even if the people don’t think so (and are likely to significantly shorten the tenure of the leader). It’s like parenting, where the kids get to fire their parents if they don’t like their decisions.
Of course, that’s the ideal. We have seen not just nationally but at state and local levels that sometimes the voters are the parents who, for some reason, put the kids in office.
Humans are strange. (Or maybe it’s really kids putting kids in office… there not being enough adults to prevent it.)
Strong point on the softness of our times … We would not attach so much importance to the # of deaths in past ages. But here’s where I see the situation a bit differently, I think: because we can protect life better, and routinely do (as evidenced by lower levels of mortality by both natural and criminal causes), there is an “oughtness” that goes with that. So I think it’s not necessarily that we’re all whimpier than we used to be—though there’s truth in that—but that we are society that tolerates much less harm routinely, and so a higher standard is appropriate.
Plus… I really am convinced that if we didn’t flatten the curve, the surge in sick people would more severely overwhelm the medical system, and that would result in many more deaths of causes that aren’t normally fatal. Keep in mind that all the usual things that send people to hospitals (except traffic accidents and workplace injuries, which have to be lower than normal right now) are still happening. So if COVID fills up hospital A, and Mitch next door gets a acute apendicitus, he’s going to die if there’s nowhere he can get care.
This could have happened, still could happen, on a large scale.
What the medical experts might not be doing, though is looking at how crushing an economy badly enough for long enough will also affect public health. The relationship may be complex and hard to trace, but it’s definitely something to think about, and I’m wondering if epidemiologists normally have that on their radar. Maybe they do. I have to claim ignorance on that one. I do know that epidemiology normally kind of dances with both medical science and social science…. so it certainly should be something they take seriously.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I agree with the concept of “flattening the curve.” My question is whether we’re trying to flatten it too much, beyond what is prudent.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
[Aaron Blumer]What the medical experts might not be doing, though is looking at how crushing an economy badly enough for long enough will also affect public health. The relationship may be complex and hard to trace, but it’s definitely something to think about, and I’m wondering if epidemiologists normally have that on their radar. Maybe they do. I have to claim ignorance on that one. I do know that epidemiology normally kind of dances with both medical science and social science…. so it certainly should be something they take seriously.
The whole concept of modeling bothers me. Yes, these people are supposed to be experts in their field, but when they use the term “models” that reminds me of “climate change models” and the “models” that dogmatically proclaim evolution as gospel. The majority of the experts in those fields speak with one voice. Most of us here would disagree with many if not most of the experts on climate change or evolution.
I ran across an article that contained this quote:
We’ve been through alarmist projections of viral mortality before, and I don’t mean just Sars or Mers, but HIV. Researching Game Control in 1990, I tracked down all seven studies then available that modeled the impact of Aids on population growth in Africa, where the epidemic was exploding. Four (all authored by epidemiologists) predicted that HIV would devastate African populations, whose growth would plunge to the negative. Three (authored by demographers) predicted that HIV would have a negligible effect on the continent’s population, which would continue to soar. Thirty years later, guess who was right
Link: The longer lockdown continues, the more imperiled we become
I agree that the virus is a serious problem, public policy needs to address it. However, if public policy destroys the economy and ushers in some kind of totalitarianism, we won’t be too happy. Last week in Canada, the government (a minority government) tried to tie a spending bill for relief for workers and businesses to authority for the Cabinet (ie, the Prime Minister) to raise and lower taxes and have no limit on spending for the next TWO YEARS, without having to go to parliament for approval. That would remove what little checks and balances we have here (which are no way as robust as yours).
The attempt at total control by our Prime Minister thankfully got shot down. For now.
But we know how he thinks, the totalitarian instinct is obviously there.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Aaron, I think you are absolutely right about zealots but can we press in on the reasoning here in the larger picture. You previously argued that the effects of a Trump presidency were so disastrous that you could see no way for a Christian to support him. There was a line at which the cost was too great.
In this case, is there a line in which the cost is too great for you to bear?
Discussion