2 ms·
Your last paragraph makes no sense to me. There were plenty of places which published long, complex, nuanced data and explanations about ivermectin. But lots
by floor2 3y ago
Your last paragraph makes no sense to me.
There were plenty of places which published long, complex, nuanced data and explanations about ivermectin.
But lots of people are unable to understand complex writing or statistics. And most people have little understanding of biology, medicine or disease. This led to widespread misinformation, which in turn led people to try to simplify out all the complexity, and trim it down to basic things like "ivermectin doesn't work" and "don't take horse medicine when your doctor refuses to prescribe ivermectin to you".
The messaging you think would have "prevented a lot of wasted time" was exactly the messaging in the medical reports that started the whole problem. Dumbing it down was a response to the "internet arguments".
- petesergeant 3y agoI am saying there’s a middle-ground between “long, complex, nuanced” and “ivermectin doesn’t work”, which is useful because as you point out, most people can’t understand the former, but are able to understand abstracts of papers that suggest ivermectin does work, and wonder why they’re being told it doesn’t. Likewise telling people that entertaining the thought that a coronavirus escaped from a lab — in a city that has a lab that studies them — is ridiculous and racist simply opens a huge space for conspiracy peddlers who wonder out-loud and with reasonable justification why this is being dismissed without any nuance at all. Dumbing a message down to contain no nuance — in my opinion — opens up the floor for quacks who will be exploit the lack of nuance on their podcasts.