They are too believable these days
There was a time not too long ago when you could tell conspiracy theory from truth with no difficulty. But now, truth has gotten so strange that it is hard to distinguish from the conspiracy theories. Satire sites, such as the Onion or the Babylon Bee are more believable than the mainstream news outlets. The news and the government have been doing things to make conspiracy theories believable. And the worst part is they have made it more difficult to fight the pandemic.
If you were to write a playbook of how not to get people to protect themselves and others during a pandemic, you should use our experience as the example to follow. Start with flip-flopping on what science says for obvious expedient reasons. Then take a do as I say, not as I do philosophy. Follow that up with unenforceable mandates that have little scientific backing. Keep saying the same mantra over and over, without providing any evidence. Make sure to emphasize fear and death to control the population. Have media post non peer-reviewed articles that support your mantra without validating the science. Get maximum coverage as quickly as possible, then hide the fact that the story never made it to publication or was retracted once the science was properly evaluated. Finally start censoring any information that does not support your mantra, claiming that any dissent is an attempt to kill our grandparents.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the official message was that masks won’t help so don’t wear one. Healthcare workers need the masks. Then, once the PPE shortage for healthcare workers was fixed, the message came out that masks do help and you must wear one. Scientific evidence was used to prove both arguments. Eventually, the government stated that they were lying and manipulating evidence to get people to do what they wanted in the first case. But if they lied and manipulated evidence once, who is to say they are not continuing to do so. And of course, there were many examples where government officials told us one thing, and then were shown to not be following their own guidance. These things do not build up trust.
Politicians would constantly repeat that they were following the science and data. But they would not show us the raw data and the science they were following. Studies would come out, and a sensationalized headline would be published showing that masks and lockdowns worked. Eventually, these studies would get reviewed and found to be flawed. That news was buried or hidden from casual observers. Still, in ad campaigns as well as the constant barrage of media we hear the mantras of “Masks are our best defense against the pandemic” and “The vaccine is the only thing that will end this pandemic”. Then the government uses media to censor any claims that go against this message claiming dissent is dangerous. These efforts to control the messaging, without allowing for dissenting argument, tear down trust.
All of this while politicians, instead of uniting as a group to fight this pandemic, have worked hard to try to get their partisan goals implemented under the guise of emergency relief measures. When this country has faced true threats before, we have always come together, put aside party politics, to make sure the threat is taken care of. The fact that we did not do that this time lessens the credibility of the threat, again leading to decreased trust in the government.
In a time where the government most needed to build trust in the populace, they did everything possible to destroy trust. Instead of openness, honesty and integrity, they fought the pandemic with the tools used in psychological warfare operations. While these tools will unfortunately work for a majority of the population, there is still a large minority of the population that will recognize the problems with the methodology. Even if the government is well intentioned, the attempts at psychological warfare make it easy to come up with believable theories of not well intentioned motives.
And now we are starting to see parts of government want to install a vaccine passport. The idea being that to work, travel or even get groceries you will have to show proof that you have received a vaccine that still has not been fully approved by the very government agencies that are requiring you to take it. And these same government agencies have given the vaccine makers full immunity from lawsuits of any damage the vaccine may be found to cause in the future. All, at least if you trust the governments motives, in an attempt to get everyone to submit to this vaccine in order to stop the virus. But again, the government has not been working to build trust, so it is easy to believe that there are ulterior motives involved. The government is using the psychological warfare playbook rather than the playbook of openness, honesty and integrity to get concurrence. The latter would result in much higher compliance rates than the former.
Alas, I must state that it is not just our government that has fallen into this pattern. Many organizations are following this same pattern too. Even our churches, which should be the very example of openness, honesty and integrity, are instead adding to the propaganda rather than helping their flocks.
We have shown exactly what not to do with the next pandemic. Hopefully our government and organizational leadership will both learn this lesson and apply it correctly with the next pandemic.