The Wizard of CO-19
Imagine walking through a gloomy, dark forest with a couple of new friends, hearing strange noises with every cautious step. Someone muses, “Lions and tigers and bears,” and another “Oh my!” Yes, you’re in the classic story, “The Wizard of Oz,” or more likely you’ve been mashed under the thumbs of fear-mongering media for the past three or four months.
Some of us have been duped way too many times not to be cynical or skeptical. Malcolm Gladwell is an excellent writer of ‘what-happens-and-why’ books like “Blink” and “Tipping Point.” In “Talking to Strangers,” Gladwell writes, “Default to truth is a crucially important strategy that occasionally and unavoidably leads us astray. Transparency is a seemingly commonsense assumption that turns out to be an illusion. Both, however, raise the same question: once we accept our shortcomings, what should we do?”
‘Default to truth’ describes the human condition when we try to determine whether someone is telling the truth. Social scientists have learned that when people don’t catch a lie, they will far more often defer to believing another person, or defaulting to truth.
Gladwell gives case after case where judges, CIA agents, psychologists, and everyday people default to truth instead of discerning the lies of those deceiving them. In one instance Cuban agents had infiltrated the CIA for years as double agents. In another judges deciding bail failed more than half of the time to discern the deceit of those who were being arraigned. If trained professionals with years of experience can miss the truth and even believe lies for decades, what hope do the rest of us have? Unfortunately, as Gladwell has written, “Transparency is … an illusion” or an ill-fated assumption. So, “what should we do?”
At the very least each of us should be open to acknowledging truth when we’ve been deceived. For example, media hyping CO-19 has led to more damage and destruction than the virus itself. Even with new data showing CO-19 is not nearly as deadly as originally predicted, some refuse to believe the latest proof. Of course, media continue to hype and spin CO-19, beating the drums “if it bleeds, it leads.”
Murderers, looters, and rioters have diverted media attention briefly from CO-19. How many protesters and rioters could have spread the virus? Tens of thousands of protesters who spread infections to hundreds of thousands friends, family, and acquaintances? And, yet, where’s the spike in CO-19 numbers of hospitalizations and deaths? Number of CO-19 “cases” have risen in some places along with testing. Hospitalization numbers have increased with elective procedures, not with CO-19 patients.
In our litigious society lawyers have become the go-to professionals for institutional CO-19 protocols that will protect institutions from CO-19 … lawsuits, not infections. Is social distancing necessary if other protocols like wearing masks and washing hands are followed? Has anyone compared similar numbers of people (25, 50, 100) in classrooms with and without social distancing? Comparing infection rates in face-toface classrooms with socially distanced classrooms? Research universities could answer these questions.
In Wizard of Oz the wizard (media) was a guy behind a curtain spinning selected facts and deceiving all those who sought answers. Outside the curtain Dorothy and her friends learned they had their answers all along.