What (scientific?) sources do Trump supporters use regarding Covid19.

June 21, 2020 6:02 AM

I would like to know the sources that Trump supporters/ Republicans/ and others who are more dismissive of the pandemic use to inform themselves Covid19/ deaths etc. I'm asking this question after seeing this recent Breitbart tweet (I'm looking for serious answers... not smart-assy/ name-calling ones- please/thank you)
posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (11 answers total)

I haven't seen so much citing of alternative sources so much as spinning actual data in the best (worst?) light.

What I've been seeing are variants of (and, just reporting what I've seen, a lot of this is debunkable and not internally consistent- for example, COVID is both really widespread and not really widespread- but this is what I've seen on Facebook):

1) The 1968/2009 flu pandemics were just as bad and we didn't shut things down

2) Citing inconsistencies in official statements (Fauci saying not to panic back in February, changing statements on masks, the WHO thing the other day when they said asymptomatic transmission wasn't a big factor); also the retractions of hydroxychloroquine studies as reasons not to listen to guidelines.

3) Also citing things like the earlier antibody study which suggested wider spread of COVID. That one being "from Stanford" was a big deal (because everyone from Stanford is a liberal). More recently, some variants on how not so many people have gotten it (/ they're all in NYC), or ICU beds around here aren't full, so the shut down was an overreaction/ let's reopen everything.

4) I'm sure there's a name for this logical fallacy, but some variant on "Why is 6 feet the magic number? " and from there, "Because 5' 11" is OK but 6' 1" is not, the 6' rule is pointless". And similarly, pretty much all social distancing guidelines.

5) Also, deaths are being overreported because hospitals get more money for COVID patients.
posted by damayanti at 6:32 AM on June 21, 2020 [6 favorites]

Those I've met who spin this same line are never actually able to quote any of the stats or the science that they talk about, preferring instead to tell me I need to stop asking other people to do my research for me and do it myself. Doesn't matter whether they're Trump supporters or anti-vaxxers or chemtrailers or flat-earthers; the dynamic is the same.

The other thing they all have in common is an inability to list any fact-checking websites and/or a tendency to dismiss the whole process of fact-checking out of hand as a liberal plot. Pointing any of these folks at Snopes or Politifact or SkepticalScience merely invites eyerolling.

So I'm unconvinced that any of the "think for yourself" brigade are actually practising what they've been endlessly taught to preach; I don't think they do inform themselves. What they appear to be doing instead is picking up talking points made by talking heads on Fox or Breitbart or YouTube or their local commercial talkback radio station whom they find personally appealing, taking those as gospel and calling it done.

Those talking heads themselves all use the same trick to promote their own credibility in the eyes of their army of true believers: cherry-picking exactly those tiny pieces of authoritative data that, when stripped of all context and all nuance and presented in the most misleading way available, reinforce the preconceived notion they're out to promote. This is the opposite of skeptical inquiry but it's pretty much all I've ever seen "Don't believe me! Do your own research!" boil down to.
posted by flabdablet at 7:02 AM on June 21, 2020 [16 favorites]

A main piece of the logic they apply is equivalent to saying that an HIV+ person died of respiratory kaposi sarcoma, and therefore it was not and should not be counted as an HIV/AIDS-related death. Or died of sepsis, not an untreated broken femur. It's willful misrepresentation of statistics by cretins.
posted by phunniemee at 7:15 AM on June 21, 2020 [11 favorites]

Seconding damayanti that a lot of the "evidence" is just spin generated by places like Breitbart and Fox News emphasizing certain elements of what data we have (and sometimes straight up lying) in order to cast the Republican/Trump response in a good light.

In your linked video, for example, the "look at the numbers" woman is saying "not COVID-related, not they can spell COVID and they die, what really killed them?" IOW, she's claiming that the "mainstream media" and/or Democrats and/or the medical establishment is counting some deaths as COVID deaths when they're not.

Here's an article from Scientific American laying out how and why getting an "accurate" count of deaths can be complex, difficult, and possibly inexact. So right-wing pundits and politicians and media are seizing on this lack of 100% provable accuracy and some (possibly) legitimate difference of opinions about exactly when to count a death as a "COVID" death and spinning this as "proof" that the numbers of COVID deaths have been exaggerated for nefarious purposes. (While completely glossing over the idea that even if they're right, even if COVID deaths are being over-reported by 10 or 25 or even 50 percent, that's still an unconscionable number of deaths that could have been prevented.)

(Also note that this tactic - seizing on even the slightest level of data uncertainty or debate among scientists as "proof" that the scientific consensus is untrue - is a long-standing right wing tactic, commonly used by, for example, Holocaust deniers and evolutionary theory opponents.)
posted by soundguy99 at 7:16 AM on June 21, 2020 [11 favorites]

Speaking of SkepticalScience, John Cook's CrankyUncle blog has a lot of material that addresses this and related issues and is well worth a read. This post in particular speaks directly to the ways in which ill-informed people become and remain so.
posted by flabdablet at 7:18 AM on June 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Alternative Facts and Fake News: Standing Up for Science Amid Misinformation Campaigns
posted by lalochezia at 7:40 AM on June 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Last week The Economist had a whole article about Raoult, the quack doctor in France who's responsible for a lot of the hype for the dangerous and ineffective use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19. It goes into detail about the weird mix of psychology and politics that gets people to grasp at bad science because it confirms their hopes and beliefs.
posted by Nelson at 8:45 AM on June 21, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'd point out that a lot of the Trumpists have had a distrust of expertise from the get-go. Climate change denial, pollution denial, denial of studies about addiction, needle swapping, etc. Way behind the ball on LGBTQ issues, etc. Denial is a standard coping mechanism for them.
posted by SemiSalt at 11:40 AM on June 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

Here are some I've seen posted to social media by COVIDertarians:

600 Physicians Say Lockdowns Are A ‘Mass Casualty Incident’
Coronavirus: Is it time to free the healthy from restrictions?
When Covid ‘Science’ Is a Smokescreen
What It's Like to Believe Everything the Media Tells You
the video that gets debunked in this Sawbones episode
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:01 PM on June 21, 2020

Fact Check: Ahead of Trump Rally, Republicans Spin COVID-19 Metrics (NBC Philadelphia, Jun. 16, 2020) extensively reviews a variety of false and misleading claims about COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and testing by Trump and his supporters.

In addition, WaPo reporters present the view of public health experts concerned about an "overly rosy vision of a pandemic" in VP Pence's recent op-ed: Public health experts warn Pence’s sunny approach to pandemic ignores possibility of dark days ahead (Jun. 19, 2020 / reprint)

This recent Guardian article also reports on ways that data can be presented by Trump-supporting Republicans in a misleading manner: Florida’s Covid-19 surge shows the state's reopening plan is not working (Jun. 20, 2020)
posted by katra at 5:13 PM on June 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Here is one of the sources they use: the CDC website about flu deaths to compare to COVID deaths.
CDC Flu deaths

However, the high value (61k) becomes 81k and instead of that being a bad flu year and a bit of an outlier, that's the baseline, and that 60k die from the flu every year.

There are also lots of comments that every death is counted as COVID, and that flu deaths (and murders and basically everything) is no longer being counted.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:09 AM on June 22, 2020