“Do you research” does not mean reading Facebook.

 Most days I come across yet another person I follow on Instagram having fallen deep deep into the whole anti-vaxx, anti-lockdown, scamdemic thing.

And I’m just like you too mate? Yet another one bites the dust? 

They all seem to have a few things in common.

Largeish followings. White. Wealthy. Everyone close to them is healthy. Job title: influencer. 

I can’t even with these people. They both shock me and appal me.

And I just feel like they’re growing in number each day.

Let’s just say I’ve been pressing the unfollow button a lot lately.

Sometimes though I go back to visit their page a while later, just to see how deep down the fake rabbit hole they’ve fallen. 

Wakeful babies give you plenty of time to scroll.

I think it’s the shock value that makes me want to look again. 

And each time I’m even more shocked and grossed out by their sheer lack of common sense alongside their cruelty towards literally anyone who isn’t them.

So many of them have escalated beyond “COVID is a scam”. Up to talk of Nazi Germany, to vaccine shedding, to moaning about their right to “freedom” being “stolen”. And a few are comparing their experience of being in lockdown, AKA stopping thousands of people dying, to “enslavement”.

Yeah. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Vaccine hesitancy is one thing. But to be so violently set on spreading false information that has the power to literally kill people - that’s a whole different ball game.

A common theme is how apparently the government (mostly in Australia) is using lockdown to control everyone.

To me, it’s kind of like playing by the road rules. We all live by these - these speed limits, these giveways, the following distances. Because if we don’t, then this is endangering the lives of ourselves and everyone around us. And funnily enough, the right to be safe and to be alive is greater than the “right” to drive however you like and to do whatever you please on the road.

And yet this concept is lost on an alarming number of people who are all shouting loudly about their “right” to do whatever they want, completely ignoring everyone else’s right to not risk death.

In addition, the vaccines are supposedly just a control measure by the government too.

I’m not sure about you, but since when has the government ever wanted to partake in something that actively hinders the economy and capitalism as we know it?

And if they secretly did want to control us, then why bother spending billions of dollars trying to vaccinate everyone? Why not just let COVID take us all down?

I don’t know. Their theories really confuse me.

They also claim that you need to “do your own research” and “don’t trust Google”, let alone “government stats and ~science~”

But “doing your own research” really doesn’t mean what they think it does.

Research is not done on Facebook. It is not done on Instagram. Or Twitter or TikTok or YouTube. It is not done by sharing posts or conversing in groups or sending reels. All of these things are at best, simply talk, and at worst, spreading dangerous misinformation.

Do you know what doing research actually involves? Having several years of study in your chosen field behind you. Collecting data, adjusting your methods, going through the ethics committee. Reducing your bias, double blinding, adjusting your metrics. Analysing your results, evaluating your results, reading hundreds of papers on the work that came before you. Hundreds and thousands of hours of work. Then when you’re finally done, all of your fellow experts rip it to shreds. And rightfully so. This is called the peer review process. And this is what makes actual research trustworthy and reliable.

Research is not Googling, cherry picking, or misusing online databases to fit your own narrative.

In the instance of COVID and the associated vaccines, research is done to try and keep people alive. 

This rant isn’t very articulate. There are far more eloquent people out their talking about this (have a read of David Farrier’s newsletters). Basically though, critical thinking is a sorely absent skill. It should be taught at school (as it is in university sometimes!). It would be an awful lot more useful than being taught that it’s your own fault if men leer at you #thanksschool #powerfulessons.