“Follow the science” is an adage that has been rammed down our throats since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. While any level-headed person will agree that science must inform the pandemic response, a lot of well-meaning individuals have swung to the direction of venerating scientists even when the latter are making dubious claims.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is one of those experts extolled by the corporate media and by academicians for his supposed unquestionable expertise about COVID-19. Now his e-mails show that he MIGHT be covering up the virus’ real origins even if the truth will have huge implications for the pandemic response and various public policies. In the past year, Dr. Fauci pushed the narrative that COVID-19 came from bats and then jumped to humans from an unknown intermediary instead of being leaked from a laboratory. But he has always known that parts of the SARS-CoV-2 are possibly artificial.
Moreover, certain scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) manifested COVID-19 signs and symptoms back in 2019 before the world knew about the Wuhan outbreak. There were even reports that China was preparing COVID-19 vaccines before Dec. 31, 2019. Yet Fauci’s e-mails reveal that he downplayed the possibility that Chinese scientists created SARS-CoV-2 even if the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases UNDER HIM had been funding the WIV’s gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
A transnational organization other than the WHO needs to conduct an independent investigation into COVID-19’s origins. We need to study even the theories that dissent from the mainstream narrative because those divergent views might be valid after all. While we wait for that report (if there will ever be one), here are three important critical thinking lessons that we can all learn from this controversy.
# 3 Avoid black-and-white thinking.
Despite all of Donald Trump and his supporters’ mistakes, not everything that they say is wrong. At the start of the pandemic, many conservatives speculated that Chinese scientists modified SARS-CoV-2 in a lab to make it deadlier, possibly because Trump said that he has evidence for it. The Trump administration even had plans to investigate Fauci for the possible cover-up. Yet people who entertained the possibility of a lab leak were deplatformed and branded as xenophobic conspiracy theorists even if they have a basis for their claims. Such authoritarian measures stifled bipartisan dialogue about the most important public health issue of our time.
May we all learn to weigh the merits of other people’s arguments instead of assassinating their character, whether their views lean left or right.
# 2 Have a healthy skepticism towards the mainstream media.
The corporate media pushed the narrative that COVID-19 most likely originated from one of China’s wet markets. There hasn’t been any in-depth and balanced reporting about the theories of how COVID-19 came to be prior to the release of Fauci’s e-mails. This shouldn’t surprise us, because many journalists are beholden to certain political groups. And a lot simply do not have a firm grasp of the topics that they’re reporting about.
It’s difficult to find the truth when the media churns out lies. The best thing that we can do is to get our news from various sources, learn what different experts have to say about an issue though they may be conflicting, and then decide for ourselves what we’ll believe.
# 1 Good clinicians and scientists do not necessarily make good public health specialists.
While healthcare workers (HCWs) have skills that can be generalized from one field to another, dealing with health problems at the societal level is a far different animal from addressing individual patient concerns. Plus it’s certainly different from conducting experiments in a lab. One will need an in-depth knowledge of laws, economics, and geopolitics, along with rigorous training in epidemiology, statistics, health promotion, and health systems development to make decisions that will affect the social determinants of health, such as the economy and international relations. Not all health personnel are equipped in those disciplines, which is not necessarily bad. That actually allows each HCW to focus on a specialty. So an occupational therapist who is skilled at teaching patients how to brush their teeth or a physician who has published RCTs about Remedisivir will not necessarily be the best at deciding on when we should shift to a more relaxed community quarantine.
Besides, having all sorts of degrees doesn’t mean that an expert has integrity. It doesn’t even mean that he respects human life. The Nazi doctors had stellar credentials, which they used to conduct immoral eugenics experiments. And I’ll never forget what a fellow HCW told me: “Some of those who rose to the top made it that far because they kept others down, not because they’re the best.”
(Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante)
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