COVID is actually a great example of some of TFA is about.

Many of the "facts" about COVID are not actually in much dispute. The people who view it as "a dangerous virus" and those who see it as "the flu" are much less far apart than they appear.

Nobody has seriously disputed the R0 values for COVID, nor the (rather) broad range of deaths per 100k cases. What isn't agreed upon is what the implications for policy should be.

Those who view it as a dangerous virus point to its transmissibility and capacity to cause hospitalization, and therefore its implications for public health issues.

Those who view it as "the flu" point to its relatively low death rate compared to other global pandemics of the past, particularly when adjusted for demographics, and correctly note that a given individual's chance of dying from COVID are extremely low (at least in countries with roughly adequate health care systems).

Both can claim "facts" on their side. The question is what policy consequences follow, and that is where the major differences lie. Depending on your perspective, the deaths (and long term illness) caused by COVID are variously worse, better or about the same as the damage caused by policies to contain it. Since making this assessment necessarily involves subjective judgements and questions of morality, it can't be settled by an appeal to science let alone mere facts.

None of this is to say that there are not relatively fact-ignorant people making various cases for certain policy approaches. But we could ignore those people, and the core debate would remain, and it's not a debate about truth or science, but policy.

There are substantial differences (and, I would argue, motivated reasoning) on the subject of mask mandates. To me, that's the area where the political desire to "look like we're doing something" has trumped following the data.

On vaccines, case rates, etc. I agree with what you said.

> I guess what I'm saying is there's something fundamentally broken about how people process information.

As far back as you can go, yes. 2.5M years. But I think the point is not to call what exists "broken," but to understand and then use it to the advantage of humanity. Cult-like behavior is human behavior--i.e. the rule, not the exception. Now how do we use this to advance the species?

Fair enough, but Logos, Ethos, Pathos are also insufficient. And I have no answers on what else is required. It's very frustrating.

Great point. I agree.

For context: I grew up Mormon, which I consider "cult-lite mainstream" on the cult<->religion spectrum. Having gone through that and left the church, I've spent some time deconstructing what influenced me to think the way I did as a believing member.

The best advice I can give is (a) make friends with people who are inside information bubbles [1], (b) people are motivated primarily by feelings and needs [2] despite what they say, (c) people often cover what they're really feeling with political, philosophical, and ideological language, which is often very difficult to decrypt to outsiders, and leads to significant misunderstandings, which usually serves to further separate and prevent friendship from happening, which is what's needed in the first place.

[1] see Daryl Davis (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-befrien...)

[2] see Nonviolent Communication, a book that I place in the "top 3" most influential books in my life (https://amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Ch...)

Sorry, should have been more clear... I'll take Fauci's word over somebody on Youtube (regardless of that Youtuber's purported credentials). Fauci has a career in public health. Random Youtuber, I have no idea if they even have thee credentials they claim.

And there's a big difference between a scientist saying "people with previous COVID infections have more anti-bodies than those with vaccinations" and Joe Rogan saying "COVID is fake/just the flu".

The first is potentially true and most of us aren't qualified to either verify it or derive any course of action from it - regardless of it's truth, vaccination is probably the appropriate action for any individual (better safe than sorry). Using the statement as a argument to avoid vaccination is bad policy.

The second is on outright fabrication, yet we still have a significant portion of the population believing that crap.

There are a lot of weird claims in this post. Firstly, Fauci has publicly admitted to lying to the public on multiple occasions. I'm not sure why his credibility is unimpeachable simply because he's a bureaucrat in public health. Trusting him over a YouTuber "regardless of their credentials" seems like a significant overstatement of trustworthiness.

Secondly, Rogan has never said COVID was fake or just the flu, and the reason people assert that COVID is fake is down to motivated reasoning, which is the same reason Fauci thinks he was justified in lying to the public.

Getting people to change their behaviour starts by not dismissing them or dehumanizing them, and trying to steelman their position so they and you fully understand why they want to dismiss COVID. When that's done, it's often clear where you can compromise. Sadly, that's not what we see going on.

Also, Fauci's "great" career in public health started out by him getting just about everything wrong that he possibly could have with HIV/AIDS.

Including wanting to implement many of the same draconian policies we see today for communities where AIDS was discovered.

You were very clear in the first post, now you changed the meaning completely.