This commentary is in relation to a troubling web posting of: https://medium.com/@CynicalXennial/unmasking-the-truth-cdc-and-hospital-administrators-are-endangering-us-all-b601012f81be.

Like many others, I have sometimes been hornswoggled by outraged claims on the web or in e-mails. Of course, insufficiently documented or totally undocumented claims have always been an internet issue, along with _ad hominem_ repudiation of those who disagree. But the frequency of such antisocial behavior seems to have skyrocketed since the 2016 presidential campaign. So for the past three+ years, I have had to step up my wariness about what to trust even (especially?) from sources I don’t know but with whose values I identify. Sometimes these claims are messages from people I normally trust but who, like me, are not immune to being hoodwinked. Perhaps it’s my fussiness, but even from the good guys, basic principles of argumentation[1] seem decreasingly observed.

As so many have noted, COVID-19 has placed us in a time and mental state unprecedented in our personal experience. Even if we know some history of epidemics and their disastrous results (most of us have at least heard of the bubonic plague’s individual and social devastation, and by now plenty of people know something about the post-WWI flu epidemic), those events are in the dim past when people were much less savvy than us modern folk, right?

For most (all?) of us it’s incredibly disorienting to find ourselves actually in a pandemic. And of course, in the US and elsewhere, too many “leaders” and their enablers exacerbate our confusion. Given the rampant lying and enabling by members of this administration, perhaps we should be grateful that we had a full three years of its prolific training to mistrust anything it says, what its with routine buck-passing and false accusations against any disagreement, ranging from individual reporters to collective federal agencies.

Still, it is easy to get so constantly assaulted that we get numb to being cautious about what we believe or share.

From early on in this pandemic, we’ve been hearing numerous charges both in support of and against health professionals who, from my perspective, are taking on risks far beyond what any human being should have to do.[2] I have little doubt that many of the horror stories we’re hearing about treatment of health professionals are largely or entirely true, and I have read frequent disturbing discussions of how medical personnel and supplies are being managed (or mismanaged). So when I saw this essay posted, I was drawn (cautiously) to consider what sounded like an extravagant but possibly accurate attack.

After clicking the link, I found myself becoming increasingly uneasy about the writer’s tone and sweeping statements. After I had gotten a considerable way through the essay and saw I still had far to go, I shifted to skimming and finally skipping to the first several responses, which I found largely similar in tone to the essay itself (though one did seem to be intelligently challenging the writer’s claims).

I was especially curious about the basis for the (undocumented) sweeping attacks on the CDC and WHO, especially in the broader history of Trump administration attempts to dictate what federal agencies say (and the courageous rebuttals from a few of those agencies). Did I mention passing the buck?

I looked for on-line evaluations of the publishing site, Medium.com[3]—which I discovered currently has this disclaimer at the top of its web page: “Anyone can publish on Medium per our Policies, but we don’t fact-check every story.” That statement alone was a red flag. What I found elsewhere, though not definitive, deepened my hesitation to take the essay at face value.

Apparently, Medium posts a wide range of viewpoints, each one personal and (like the one cited here) commonly without supporting evidence. (When I read and skimmed the current essay, I watched for supporting references but saw none—nor did I see any footnotes.)

In that sense, they’re personal essays, like the one I’m writing right now. Okay. I get it. We all want people to pay attention to our thoughts, and we look around for ways to publish them. (I use this largely ignored blog.)

But what principles do we follow to reassure readers that we’re not just another voice angrily or deceptively crying into the wilderness? When it comes to pronouncing a “fact” (a concept we typically assume we know when we see it, but which on close examination can be quite slippery[4]), unless I independently know (or think I know) it, I look for evidence beyond hearsay. I hate that, because we DO need to ferret out and publicize social injustices, and “proving” them can easily get muddied by opposing vested interests with no scruples. For me, this has been a constant problem with outrages ascribed to Trump and his enablers; they are often justified, but I try not to be blind to lazy thinking among people with whom I politically identify. Especially for understandably angry reports in my various lefty e-mail services and on-line sites, how can I know what to trust?

So if the Medium essay is totally (or mostly) accurate, I’m actually angry that its writer hasn’t done a better job of presenting claims so that I am encouraged to trust them. To take any steps in response to charges like this, I need accurate information about just how bad things are and who is responsible.

In this case, unfortunately, the only “step” I feel able to take is to remind us all to be careful about what we trust.

If readers have documented information one way or another on claims in this Medium essay, please share it with me and others.

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[1] Mildly embarrassed self-aggrandizing reminder for those who don’t know: As it happens, I have taught written and oral argumentation at the undergraduate and graduate levels, so I feel some legitimacy in addressing this issue—though as I admitted at the start, I myself have occasionally been sucked in by plausible-sounding claims.

Aside from trustworthy documentation, among the factors that affect my trust in a piece of writing are: who is passing on a particular screed, the original writer’s relevant background, tone, accuracy about what I happen already to know, etc., etc.

[2] In recent days, I posted about my general dismay with classist dynamics in who is or isn’t driven to take risks of contracting COVID-19 (http://www.richardyanowitz.com/wordpress/2020/04/03/class-discrimination-during-a-national-and-international-crisis-say-it-isnt-so/).

[3] One site was https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/medium/, which sounds reliable in its own right, but I don’t know for sure. This is so typical of checking out internet review sites—how do we know which critiques to trust? (Can you say “infinite regress”?)

[4] As I probably keep repeating on this blog—but it bears repeating in certain contexts—since completing my undergraduate philosophy degree, I have held the belief that “objectivity” in its traditional meaning is impossible. Conversation on that subject can be endless, but for me it hinges on the underpinning for this quote, from the late Berkeley Professor Paul Alpers, that has stayed with me since graduate school: “All criticism is autobiography.” (I should probably attach this quote to everything I write.)