Researchers: people irrationally reject anti-lockdown findings
You’ve probably noticed a refusal on the part of some of your friends and family to acknowledge drawbacks to the lockdown strategy advocated by “public health” officials. They doubt the scientific validity of such claims, and they think you’re a bad person even for offering criticisms.
Irrational and bizarre, right?
Well, I don’t know if this makes it better or worse, but researchers have found this to be a general phenomenon, and not confined to your crazy friends.
A study conducted at New Zealand’s University of Otago and published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology looked at people’s readiness to overlook negative consequences of lockdown.
It’s called “Moralization of COVID-19 Health Response: Asymmetry in Tolerance for Human Costs.” The “asymmetry” in the title refers to people’s extreme unwillingness to tolerate COVID-related suffering on the one hand, and their much-reduced concern for lockdown-related suffering on the other.
Participants were presented with two research proposal descriptions. Both proposals involved the same research and gave the same information about the methods used. Yet people described the anti-lockdown research as having less rigorous methods and relying on less accurate information, and they trusted the research team less.
Pure irrationality, in other words, from the very people who urge us to “follow the science.”
The New Zealand Doctor website had this to say about the study:
“Both failing to properly contain Covid-19 and implementing restrictions to contain Covid-19 carry collateral costs. Collateral human costs that may result from failing to combat Covid-19 include increased cases, overwhelmed healthcare systems, health complications, and deaths. Prioritizing control or elimination of Covid-19 also carries collateral human costs, such as unemployment, extreme financial stress, social isolation, substance abuse, and delayed cancer diagnoses.
Left unaddressed, these forces may generate ‘deaths of despair,’ whereby individuals perish from behaviors or worsened illnesses as a result of perceived bleak prospects. Other costs include public shaming of those who violate or question health-based policies, abuse of law-enforcement and government power, and deterioration of human rights.
“Lead author Dr. Maja Graso, a Senior Lecturer in Business Ethics at the University of Otago’s Department of Management, says results supported the hypothesis, suggesting COVID-19 elimination efforts became moralized to an almost sacred level.
“Although moralization may be a natural response to such an imposing health threat, this process may also blind people to potential human costs resulting from a Covid-19 elimination strategy (e.g., extreme financial strain, undiagnosed illnesses). Importantly, moralization of Covid-19 may also mean that merely questioning elimination strategies is not acceptable. Indeed, this is exactly what their findings revealed.
“‘As a research team, we don’t take a stance on whether moralizing elimination is good or bad, nor on how Covid-19 should be handled. Instead, we examine how people assess human costs, and we invite people to consider the possibility that the moralization of Covid-19 elimination may lead us to overlook other, less visible forms of suffering, such as loss of livelihoods or deaths of despair.
It may also lead us to discount peer-reviewed scientific evidence that documents human costs resulting from elimination-based strategies,’Â Dr Graso says.”
At the very time when we could most use a bit of nuance and common sense, then, we’ve instead been overwhelmed by hysterical monomania.
I do know a group of intelligent folks you can talk to who indeed are capable of these things.
It’s my reality-based community, the Tom Woods Show Elite.
See you inside: http://www.
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Herb Rose
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Humans are not rational beings, no matter what they may say. They believe what they want to believe despite evidence and will defend any questioning of their beliefs as an attack on them. They are eager to believe that there is someone with more knowledge and power that will protect them from any project dire consequences despite their own ignorance. They accept that those promoting the threat are doing so out of concern for their welfare instead of exploiting their ignorance for their own self interests. The more outlandish the lie the more likely they are to believe. (Remember the broadcast of the war of the worlds.) If the threat was from the flu, which they know, they would recognize the hoax but give it a new name and mysterious properties they will take it as gospel.
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Linden
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It’s amazing how the entire covid situation has become a religion. Every word that drips from our so-called leaders’ lips is treated as gospel. From the very same people who, a year ago, would have been doubtful of anything they said. How this has happened is explained very well in this article. I’m amazed nevertheless. And I try to understand why some of us can see through the lies, and have done from the start. I can only think it’s to do with ‘gut’ feeling – mine was telling me from the start that this was not about an illness. I’m staggered at how people I’ve known for years, whose intelligence I trusted, cannot see and WILL NOT see that this is not about containing an illness. Having said that, they probably sleep better at night than I do.
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very old white guy
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Amazing how illiterate and ignorant people really are. History should be screaming at them that what is happening is not right, that it is evil and dangerous and I don’t mean a virus. The Jews in 1939 reacted the same way people are reacting to government tyranny today and yet people are unable to make the connection. I harp about stupidity all the time yet here we are.
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BS Detector
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Does this come as any surprise? Yet it is rather interesting how much more capable people are of 2nd and higher order thinking when it supports their predetermined beliefs.
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Andy Rowlands
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People choose to believe the mainstream media over other sources, which is their right of course, and will then refuse to accept anything that contradicts their chosen belief, even when proof is provided.
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