Friday, March 06, 2020
The Pandemic Breakdown of Critical Thought
As a career NASA Space Life Scientist and Bioengineer of
Macro-Systems, understanding the behavior of microorganisms interacting with
larger, dynamic living systems was my specialty. I was not a microbiologist, a
virologist, or an epidemiologist. When I had specific questions concerning
these oft-intersecting fields, I consulted the experts in these disciplines. It
was prudent, professional reflex based on common sense. Outside my field of
specialty, injecting speculation and my personal feelings – or politics - into
the scientific equation was not just unthinkable nonsense, it was also career
limiting and no peer reviewed publication would ever publish anything from in
my laboratory.
As I have witnessed the emergence of the novel coronavirus
crisis (COVID-19) from the viewpoint of a life scientist and bioengineer, I
have observed yet another much more dangerous social disorder in play – the
pandemic breakdown of critical thought. I view the advancing global viral pandemic
from professional eyes. But if one’s eyes are not those of a professional
scientist, then by definition, your personal philosophy, worldview, and educational
background discipline of thought drive the understanding of any event embedded
in the culture – such as an unfolding pandemic.
The most immediate and altogether surprising observation
of the cultural breakdown that has preceded the arrival of the full wave of the
viral organism is the wholly illogical and yet pervasively powerful overlay of
politics onto the science of epidemiology. The culture is already thoroughly
contaminated with the predominantly emotional illogic of political thought that
has become so ubiquitous that it influences nearly every cultural interaction
from individuals to vast population segments. Its powerful emotive dynamic nearly
always leverages loyalty to the given political standard, and all other thought
processes and philosophies are forced to conform. True critical thought thus becomes
an anathema and sign of disloyalty to the brand. If the scientific discipline
is lacking at the crucial moment of understanding, the inherent depth of the
problem, decision making is easily corrupted by the political framework. And,
like the malignant, perverse, living philosophic organism that it really is,
this irrational, emotional nonsense is spread like a virus via social media.
For example, in the current COVID-19 crisis, instead of
the nation coming together to understand fully, prepare for, and fight the viral
pandemic – the wholly polarized population is instead incredibly divided by never-ending
political infighting. Both sides are struggling to defend their positions of
pseudo-scientific nonsense – literally wasting precious time fiddling while
Rome is about to burn to ashes all around them.
The political Left has blamed the President for the
pandemic. The degree of intellectual dishonesty is boundless and literally
defies any logical description. They have all but called a news conference and
provided evidence from a handful of whistleblowers that will testify that
Donald Trump mixed up COVID-19 in the White House kitchen late at night with a
CRISPR gene knockout kit he bought from eBay-Russia. The political Left has, in
fact, called news conferences to announce that the President is dangerous and
has left the United States absolutely unprepared to face what is coming. From
there, the chorus of “Trump-Is-Going-To-Kill-Us-All” has been repeated in
billions of imprints all over social media. The principal message from the Left
is that many Americans will die from the COVID-19 epidemic. It will become
known as the Donald Trump epidemic; therefore, he cannot possibly be reelected
in the fall.
The overwhelming message of simplistic, infantile contrivance
is astonishing to the extent of actual hilarity – except that it has elicited
the expected backlash from the opposite political spectrum that, when coupled
with the Left’s response, is overtly dangerous for the people of the United
States.
The political Right has responded to this finger-pointing
by an equally infantile contrivance of their own: “COVID-19 is no big deal.” If
the Left is going to serve up a panic, the Right is obliged to serve up an
emotional counterpunch somewhere opposite to panic. The logical gymnastics to
support this is both illogical and scientifically illiterate. There is an
ongoing effort by the Right to compare seasonal viral deaths with COVID-19
current statistics, which is unthinkably irrational and clearly belies a
wholesale misunderstanding of the individual class of disease organisms, and the
most basic nature of pandemic virology. This cherry-picked statistical issue is
designed to be disseminated to the faithful with a numerical anchor selected
merely to defend a technically indefensible political position. Multiply this
by any number of other cherry-picked “data-points,” and the political Right has
attempted to disarm the American people simply in order to retaliate and offset
the nonsense of the Left. Sadly, their followers are not scientifically
prepared to understand the political machinations behind the scientific
grandstanding nonsense, and thus unwittingly wind up spreading and infecting
the rest of the population like a viral contagion. It has not corrected the political imbalance –
instead, it has significantly reduced our chances to adequately meet the
emergent threat.
For example, one has only to go to the World Health
Organization’s COVID-19 daily situation reports and add up the numbers of
infected and deaths reported each day. A simple four-function calculator will
easily and unemotionally reveal the mortality rate and the non-linear increase
of the spread. And yet, the WHO information itself is not accepted by many on
the Right as a valid source “because of the corruption of data by unfriendly countries.”
They also cite that the current COVID-19 daily mortality rate is ‘so small’
compared to seasonal flu mortality rates, that it “proves the deep-state Left
is deliberately trying to panic the public to defeat Trump in the fall.” The
flat-Earth, fake-moon-landing style of reasoning inevitably springs to mind
here.
The former Director of the United States Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, stated on March 2nd, “We think
it will be very difficult if not impossible to contain it … but that doesn’t
mean we shouldn’t try.” Frieden described it as an ”unprecedented situation. Never
before have we seen a pathogen emerge and have global spread like this. That is
scary.”
The CDC warned on their website on March 3rd that, “More
cases of COVID-19 are likely to be identified in the coming days, including
more cases in the United States. It’s also likely that person-to-person spread
will continue to occur, including in communities in the United States. It’s
likely that at some point, widespread transmission of COVID-19 in the United
States will occur.”
Against this backdrop, both sides of the finger-pointing political
argument are intellectually deceived and have no rational tools of critical
thought available to them to reason through the pair of ruses they have created.
Far worse than the danger of a viral COVID-19 pandemic to the United States is
the pandemic breakdown of critical thought elicited by the ongoing ideological
civil war – the key intellectual process we will need to adequately respond.
An honest, authentic, critically thinking process for
this and any other event would be to first examine one’s own worldview so that
the process endpoint filters are at least understood. Then, when examining any
given situation, to carefully filter the source, any biases connected to it,
and the probability of information corruption. Presented conclusions must be
subjected to a very critical assessment of the origins of the professional
expertise associated with the conclusion. While most individuals are proud of
their Google PhD’s, in a truly honest assessment, that reality is almost
certainly merely virtual and disconnected to the real world. And, just like all
other professionals, a reliance on a wide spectrum of experts in the fields is
absolutely required before arriving at a final conclusion. This process of
critical thinking cannot be compromised by personal opinions for a valid
conclusion to be reached. Otherwise, we wind up with the social chaos we are
dealing with today.
What is the solution as the nation now faces the very
real prospect of an incredibly destructive pandemic? It seems easy enough. But
with the vitriolic, explosive backlog of emotional fuel stored up by both
sides, we may not be able to recover a modicum level of critical thought even
in times of unprecedented crisis.
The cultural solution to this unwinding disaster in
multiple dimensions is for the leadership of the political Left and Right to
call a formal national truce before the cameras, united to face the oncoming
pandemic, which may last two or more years as it cycles through, just as did the
pandemic of 1918-1919. We must abandon our poisoned processes of intellectual
reasoning and give the authority that is due to our experts. We must follow precisely what they recommend
without rendering their credibility to medieval alchemists simply because their
political card has not been properly stamped. We must truly abandon the cycle
of hysterical self-destructive partisan nonsense to make it through this time
of adversity as a unified nation of people who are intelligent and desire a
united society intent on surviving and healing what we are about to face.
_____________________________________