A Sense of Doubt blog post #1843 - Myths, Pseudoscience, Racism, and do not drink bleach
I support Rebecca Watson on Patreon. She makes great videos on science, feminism, and critical thinking! Here's three (with transcripts) dedicated to Coronavirus and epidemics.
Superb!
Consider patronizing her work! She's doing really well at about $1200/video, and it looks like she makes maybe a dozen or so videos a month. That's possibly $13K a month and over $100K a year!
Dang. Teaching is SO MUCH the wrong business! :-)
Anyway, Rebecca is great. Check out these videos.
https://www.patreon.com/rebecca
https://twitter.com/skepchicks
Transcript:
Look, I would love to not make another video about coronavirus. Last month, I talked about the pseudoscience and racism surrounding the spread of the virus. To recap, here were my points:
*it’s not a bioweapon
*don’t be racist
*don’t panic
*don’t drink bleach
I feel like since then, everyone else has done a good job of stressing the fact that you should be washing your hands often and not touching your face so it’s not like I was champing at the bit to talk about coronavirus again. But as it is in the process of hitting the US right now, and things are most definitely going to get worse before they get better here, I think it’s worth examining the unique environment we have here in the US that makes it possible for this to be a truly serious threat to our society.
But before I get to that, I want to stress to the skeptics that the people you see buying groceries are not overreacting. It’s smart to prepare for the possibility of grocery stores being closed for three weeks.
Also I want to stress the fact that you should WASH YOUR HANDS. All the fucking time. And yeah, don’t touch your face. I can’t NOT touch my face so I am sharing with you a tip I learned a long time ago from none other than Mr. Adam Savage: touch things and other people with your right hand and use your left hand to touch yourself (for scratching or whatever, not masturbation. Though if you can get off with your non-dominant hand then go off. Or get off. If you’re left handed the entire thing goes to hell because you are gonna wanna touch everything and everyone with your left hand but then people will shake your right hand so you know what? Everyone just forget I said all this. Don’t touch your face).
I have talked a lot on this channel about universal healthcare and I swear it’s not just because it’s a pet issue of mine. I have other pet issues that hardly ever come up in videos, like how we should just legalize cannabis throughout the country and release everyone who is in prison for possession or dealing and maybe pay them a lot of money or at least give them all the available permits for selling cannabis legally. I don’t talk about that often because it doesn’t naturally come up often in these videos, which are broadly about science and critical thinking.
But single payer healthcare comes up in every other video because it is directly related to science and critical thinking, and establishing it in the US would immediately solve so many problems that are currently negatively affecting those of us who appreciate science and critical thinking.
Right now, if an American thinks they may have coronavirus, or COVID 19, a deadly virus that requires testing to verify, they will need to contact authorities and take an ambulance to a hospital. That requires them to take off work. Ten percent of Americans don’t get sick days at their full-time jobs, and 25% only get a handful. That is one reason why 90% of Americans admit they come into work even when they’re experiencing flu-like symptoms.
So we have a large population of workers who are likely to continue working despite being sick. Meanwhile, calling the authorities and letting them know you have COVID 19 symptoms will land you with a bill of about $2,700 just for the ambulance ride and radiology test alone, and that’s if the test comes back negative. If it’s positive? You’re fucked.
So now we have a large population of workers who are likely to continue working despite being sick and who are afraid to reach out for medical care because it could very well bankrupt them. Meanwhile, that population is in the perfect position to be taken advantage of by people like Alex Jones, who campaign against workers’ rights and healthcare but who have pumped up the prices on their bulk food kits they sell to panicked people, along with phony “cures” that do nothing.
Let’s add one final datapoint to this: America’s anti-science government. Thanks to Trump and his administration, the CDC has, as of this week, stopped reporting on the number of potential COVID-19 cases being tested in America. (Here’s a better, non-governmental source from Johns Hopkins.)
When you picture these workers getting sick and not changing their everyday life, you may be picturing an office worker, which is bad enough as they could infect their entire building, but I also want you to picture the guy getting minimum wage to make your burrito at Chipotle. The driver delivering your Chinese. The lady stocking the peppers at the grocery store. The cashier counting out your change into your hand. The teacher teaching your kids.
By not giving every one -- including our lowest paid and most disrespected workers -- access to guaranteed sick leave and comprehensive healthcare, we have put everyone at risk. Even you, guy who has a good-paying job with lots of sick leave and great insurance that you inexplicably “love.” We’re putting at risk the lives of our grandparents, our newborn babies, and our friends fighting cancer and other diseases. The best insurance-covered medical care in the world won’t save them all from this virus. What will save them is universal healthcare for everyone. What will save them is workers’ rights. What will save them is public education.
The only one I can really help with is that last one. Wash your hands. If you don’t have soap and hot water, use hand sanitizer. Don’t touch your face. Avoid crowds. Stock up on food, water, cold medicine, and other essentials before an official quarantine means you’ve got three weeks before the grocery store opens back up. And please vote for people who will give basic rights to the poorest, most at-risk people in our country. Because while trickle-down economics may not have worked, trickle-up health and happiness will.
Transcript:
The sudden discovery and spread of the Coronavirus at the start of the new year forces us to consider what is the real virus: this, or misinformation? I mean, obviously Coronavirus is the real virus. It’s literally a virus. But! It’s worth paying attention to how social media platforms have once again failed to stop the viral spread of misinformation that is making things so, so much worse. We have the outbreak of a deadly new disease happening in a secretive, despotic country, enabled by the incompetence of (mostly American) social media platforms that allow the spread of outright lies that put people’s lives in danger. It’s the Perfect Storm, if George Clooney’s boat had 7 billion people on it.
And we are talking worldwide numbers here, not just China. Yes, I know, the WHO has only thus far declared it a fairly localized epidemic, but experts are saying that it seems likely to be considered a pandemic before too long. So this does concern you and me and everyone else outside of China, though not as much as it should concern those in and around Wuhan.
Which brings me to my next point: despite all that, DON’T PANIC. Panicking doesn’t help. Ever. You are not going to die from the Coronavirus. You’re probably going to die from influenza, which we already have a vaccine for but a bunch of shitheads have convinced people they shouldn’t get it because it will make them sick or they just don’t need it. So yeah, if you die from a virus then that’s probably the one you should be worried about. Get your flu shot, you asshole.
In fact, here’s a fun game that unfortunately I can’t play because I don’t use Facebook: any time you see someone post fear-mongering shit about Coronavirus, ask them if they got their flu shot this year. Coronavirus has thus far (according to officials) killed 564 people in China, one in Hong Kong, and one in the Philippines. Influenza has killed 10 to 25 THOUSAND PEOPLE in the United States alone this season thus far. So yeah maybe mention that to the idiots you’re friends with on Facebook.
So I hope that puts it into perspective, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a serious problem. People in China, especially in the region around Hubei province, are right to be nervous and right to take whatever steps they can to limit their potential exposure. That means staying away from crowds, wearing a mask, and...well, that’s about it really. Wait for a vaccine to be developed, and then get that vaccine.
That brings me to the shit that does not work, and which has been spreading around social media like...well, like a virus. Is it possible to be too on the nose?
First up, Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) is a snake oil cure-all that is sold for curing pretty much everything you can imagine -- cancer, HIV/AIDS, and of course, now coronavirus. In fact, it’s just bleach, and drinking it will fuck you up, as you can imagine. QAnon YouTubers like this dumbass, who has 116,400 followers, are telling people to drink bleach to cure coronavirus. It’s madness that he even still has an account on YouTube OR Twitter, but hey, so do Nazis so . . .
Then we have the homeopaths getting in on it. And not just your local Whole Foods, but the actual government of India, blue checkmarked and all, announcing the release of a document called Homoeopathy for Prevention of Corona virus Infections, which suggests homeopathic treatment not just for the prevention of infection but for the treatment of symptoms, like rubbing homeopathic plants on your scalp.
An aside, for those who don’t know: homeopathy is made-up bullshit of the highest order. It involves taking a thing and diluting it repeatedly until there is not a single molecule left of the original, and then consuming the leftover water, on the premise that though all molecules are gone, the water might “remember” what was in it. So if anyone ever blasted a load in the shower, for instance, and years later you drink water from a tap in the same town, you are drinking homeopathic cum. And because of the other rule that “like cures like,” so if you have poison ivy the treatment would be to rub homeopathic poison ivy on it, presumably drinking homeopathic cum will ensure you will never get pregnant.
So no, homeopathy will not help prevent or cure the coronavirus, and I have to say it’s a bit of a relief that the United States isn’t the only country making an ass of themselves on Twitter but I’d really prefer India do it in a way that doesn’t put millions of lives at risk.
Finally, let’s talk about the bullshit that has led to such virulent racism over the coronavirus epidemic. No, you can’t get it by talking to a person of Chinese ancestry. No, you can’t get it by ordering products shipped through China. If that were the case, you’d have been dead weeks ago because half the things you own come from China. And no, it wasn’t manufactured by a bioweapons facility in Wuhan. There is a facility in Wuhan that studies the coronavirus -- that name is not new, and is the general term applied to a myriad of diseases including the common cold -- but examinations of the virus RNA suggests that the bat coronavirus being studied there shares a common ancestor from about 20 years ago with the one currently causing trouble. So this virus has most likely been out there evolving from host to host for decades. It may have come from a bat, but more likely there’s an intermediary animal that it jumped to, as with MERS, a previous virus that jumped from bat to camel to human, and SARS, which jumped from bat to civet to human.
And is this all due to China having a particularly disgusting culture? I’ve seen people passing around videos of people eating things we find strange, including bats. It is very possible that the virus sprung forth at the wet market where people buy and sell about 75 different species of wildlife. And that market was also likely influential in the spread of SARS back in the early 2000s, when the market needed to be closed to slow the disease’s progression. Unfortunately, they opened it again, and here we are again.
It is a cultural issue, because there is status in eating exotic wildlife. Many animals are also used for bullshit traditional Chinese medicine cures, which don’t work and endanger the lives of the people who take them while also depleting natural resources. The wet market should close, permanently, and the government should clamp down on the overall trade in exotic wildlife.
But is China unique in these troubles? Again, before Americans are allowed to be critical of Chinese people as a whole, we need to stop and remember that we reversed the eradication of measles because we made up a story about medicine being bad for us. We stopped government money from being used to study the ill health effects of machine guns on the population. We drink bleach to cure AIDS. “Oh, but I didn’t do that,” you might say. No, but your fellow Westerners did. A billion Chinese people didn’t wake up one day and decide to eat sick bats. Have a little fucking compassion and support the people who are suffering, and the scientists who are attempting to control this and educate the population so that it won’t happen again.
Transcript:
Okay yes, this is yet another video about COVID-19, aka “coronavirus.” Yes, I want to make videos about other things but also I am a human and I am obsessed with disasters so this is currently dominating my brain. But don’t worry, this video isn’t just about a pandemic: it’s also about fucking up as a science communicator and how to do it better.
Yes, there are various ways to fuck up and ways to recover from fucking up and some of them are better than others.
The other night I happened to see a science communicator who I follow doing a Twitter Q&A about coronavirus. I thought this was strange because this person is not a working scientist nor does he specialize in talking about health or viruses. Like, as a science generalist I am happy to talk about COVID-19 but if someone has specific questions, I would much prefer you direct them to epidemiologists who do outreach like Tara Smith or Beth Linas.
That said, the Q&A was brief and simple but at one point someone asked, “What is the most common way that (COVID-19) spreads?” The communicator responded:
“Sick person touches face.
Sick person touches a thing.
Well person touches the thing.
Well person touches face.”
That is not the most common way this virus (or any other, really) spreads. COVID-19 spreads via the droplets that fly out of a sick person’s nose and mouth when they cough or sneeze. Those droplets might go straight into your nose and mouth if you are walking by when it happens, or they might land on the person’s hand, which they then use to shake your hand. Or, they may land on a shopping cart handle, some dollar bills, or a doorknob. You might then touch one of those things, and then touch your face -- specifically, your eyes, your nose, or your mouth. Those droplets will then get into your system, and you become infected, too.
That’s why masks can be effective at stopping the spread of the disease. Masks can prevent the sick person from blasting their nasty droplets everywhere, and they can also prevent the well person from breathing in those droplets. The former is more likely than the latter, which is why experts are asking that you don’t go out and buy masks if you are currently well -- there are a finite number of them and they want sick people, medical personnel, and others caring for sick people in close quarters to have access to them.
The science commnicator’s wrong answer probably won’t result in too much trouble, though it was faved a thousand times and retweeted more than 100 times. It could cause someone who is sick to not worry about where they’re coughing or sneezing, or encourage that sick person to not use a mask when one could be helpful.
Much worse, though, is the Tweet from another “scientist” that was brought to my attention by a panicked friend, who (luckily) ran it past me because it didn’t sound quite right. This scientist wrote, “Hand sanitizer is anti-bacterial
The coronavirus is a virus
A bacteria and a virus is not the same
Wash your hands
Sanitizer will do nothing for the coronavirus
Sincerely
A scientist that is tired of this shit”
As of the making of this video, the Tweet has been up for more than a day, has been retweeted 123,000 times and faved nearly 400,000 times. This Tweet is fucking dangerous.
Hand sanitizer absolutely works on both viruses and bacteria. According to Professor James Scott, associate professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, so long as your hand sanitizer has about 60 or 70% alcohol, it will work by “disrupting the virus’s outer coat. For a bacterium, they work by disrupting its cell membrane. It is not a panacea, though, since certain viruses lacking an outer coat (like the one that causes cruise ship diarrhea) or spore forming bacteria (like C.difficile) are not very susceptible.” COVID-19 is in fact susceptible because it does have that outer coat.
Many, many people will find themselves quite often in situations where they should clean their hands but they cannot access soap and hot water. For those situations, they absolutely should use hand sanitizer. Like, maybe you’ve just finished grocery shopping, where you touched the shopping cart, a load of products, the money you got as change, your car doors -- but you’re running late to pick up your kid from preschool. If you think hand sanitizer is useless maybe you won’t bother to use it before picking up your little petri dish, and you’d be dangerously wrong.
Absolutely everyone should carry hand sanitizer with them while this virus is rampant. Use it constantly. And keep it around next winter when this virus will be back along with our good old friend “the regular flu that also kills people.”
Other people pointed out to this science communicator that she was wrong about hand sanitizer. Journalist Erin Biba apparently had a conversation with her in which she acknowledged that she was wrong but refused to delete the Tweet, because “even though the info was factually incorrect, it got people to practice better hygiene, so she's leaving it up.”
Washing your hands is better than using sanitizer, but that’s obviously not what will result from that Tweet. The result will be a whole lot of people who could be sanitizing their hands and the objects they use regularly but they won’t because they think it’s useless. People won’t suddenly stop using hand sanitizer and put their lives on hold to find a clean bathroom with hot water and soap every time they touch something shady. That’s just simple human nature.
I don’t think the scientist behind that viral tweet is an idiot. She made a mistake, and the right thing to do would be to admit as much, delete the initial Tweet, and then boost correct information in its place. I think she knows that her false information isn’t going to encourage anyone to be more hygenic, but she’s too enamored with the thrill that comes with viral content. It’s those “fake internet points” that lead people to make up stories on Reddit or come up with stupid pranks for YouTube. So now she’s just another person contributing to the downfall of society in exchange for those precious retweets.
Anyway, make sure you slam that subscribe button and don’t forget to turn on notifications and give this video a like and also follow me on Twitter.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2003.05 - 10:10
- Days ago =1706 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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