Why Will Some Republicans Not Seek Good Scientific Medical Information?
For some, ideology Trumps good Scientific Evidence
The pandemic has created a host of new “Facebook experts” with absolutely no experience in medical pandemics (clinical, epidemiology, virology, research or public health).
But, some Republicans certainly have created their own “experts” on Facebook!
I started following several Republican Facebook groups, many of them women’s groups. Two groups stand out for me. Republican Women of Baltimore County and the Reagan Club of Baltimore County. Let’s look at their “experts” in virology, epidemiology, public health, intensivists, pulmonary, infectious disease!
I’ll call out the Republican Women from Baltimore County first.
RWBC most often use far right, conspiracy laden Facebook posts or right winged “journalism” to promote their agenda:
Children’s Health Defense, Robert Kennedy, JR – uses fear and conspiracy theories
Bitchute: “We rate BitChute extreme right and questionable based on the promotion of conspiracy theories, propaganda, hate speech, poor sourcing, fake news, and a lack of transparency.
Rumble: “Cabal the Awakening” – Continued use of Q-anon conspiracy (My comment: stunned to watch this video wondering how anyone could buy into this rhetoric)
Steven Bannon: Enough said.
National Pulse: We rate The National Pulse questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, promotion of propaganda and conspiracy theories, affiliation with a known questionable group.
Town Hall: We rate Townhall Right Biased and questionable based on consistent one-sided reporting that always favors the right and numerous failed fact checks.
I don’t see any primary medical references in their posts, do you?
RWBC has monthly meetings. Thus far, they have had Dan Cox promoting IVM and HCQ. Schifanelli calling Covid Vaccines “gene therapy”. (It is not gene therapy.) RWBC has had other folks speak, none of whom are leaders or experts in their field or in the field of pandemics.
Let me provide some personal examples of their use of ideology instead of scientific evidence. Look only to their Facebook page.
RWBC was interviewing one of their grassroots spokes-women who is working to get rid of masks for children. (I am all for grass roots efforts, I’ve been there, done that myself. But I want actual current data.) On this RWBC post, I posted a new report from NY regarding current information on children and Covid. Here it is: https://health.ny.gov/press/releases/2022/docs/pediatric_covid-19_hospitalization_report.pdf
As I remember, my comment was taken down.
My second experience came when RWBC posted an article calling out NY’s new protocol for using mAB’s for Covid patients. The RWBC’s headline on the post was “Racism in action.” I provided medical documentation of instances where race is part of the decision making for authorizing appropriate medical treatment for people based on race. RWBC called me a “racist”.
And then RWBC blocked me. I was never rude, belligerent. I was merely trying to allow people to understand what the actual medical data shows.
A month ago, RWBC partnered with the Reagan Club of Baltimore County, and had Middleton Evans speak. Mr. Evans is an artist, a writer, and now self-proclaimed “expert” in Covid. While I will recognize him for his time and effort, his report on vaccine mandates was full of hyperbole and threats, and significant medical misinformation. He simply does not have the expertise as an artist to make reasonable conclusions about vaccines and medical research. He used far right conspiracy websites to get “explanations” of the medical issues. His writing was certainly not representative of a good medical review. Unfortunately, Mr. Evans already had his biased conclusion in mind before writing his expose and he used the far-right conspiracy to justify his conclusions.
It is sad to see these groups using non-experts or non-medical websites to drive their agenda. I do not recall ever seeing the two organizations use actual primary medical data or clinical research.
I guess ideology Trumps scientific truth.