Opinion – Atila Iamarino: We don’t learn from the pandemic

What makes someone believe lies? Do you need to know the truth? Or does being wrong have its value?

Much of scientific dissemination is based on the information deficit: people do not know how the universe works and if this is explained well they will accept it. According to this model, the role of experts would be to translate the information to those who need it. A simple model that was assumed in the report “The public understanding of science”, something like “The public understanding of science”.

Written by Walter Bodmer, it was a pro-popularization of science report that in 1986 recommended that the British produce content in media and open spaces such as museums to improve public understanding of science.

When it comes to something people have little or no emotional attachment to, this deficit may even be the case. Explaining that metallic objects do not go in the microwave oven can be productive. But when it comes to an emotional or identity issue, like human evolution or even the climate catastrophe we’ve caused, simply providing scientific consensus doesn’t come close to changing what many think.

We are social animals immersed in culture, where it can be much more important to believe and repeat ideas that your group promotes than to isolate yourself by accepting reality. Many are more than willing to accept convenient lies. Lies that are clearly false, but that serve for those who want to believe to cover the hole that the facts open.

If a new report is missing concluding that the information deficit model is flawed, just ask what fact-checkers think about the first round of elections. A lie may be short-legged, but there are those who carry it very far, even when the price is high. Inequality and poverty have added to the ravages of Covid, but a remarkable pattern follows a different trajectory.

During the second wave, in 2021, when the adoption of combat measures was already under the responsibility of states and municipalities, the cities that concentrated more votes for the current president in 2018 had proportionally more deaths.

Residents of small and medium-sized municipalities richer than the national average and with more right-wing votes in 2018, such as in the interior of São Paulo, were more likely to die from Covid than residents of municipalities of the same size with lower income and health infrastructure, but who followed the president’s recommendations less. These are people who died without a vaccine, taking chloroquine and believing that Covid would just be a flu and that they didn’t need to isolate themselves at home. They paid with their lives for these lies.

And now, in 2022, after more economic, social and moral damage, many of these municipalities have repeated the same voting pattern. The former Minister of Health, who did not know what the SUS was, who promoted early treatment and saw 270,000 deaths occur while obeying orders from a denialist government that delayed vaccines, received more than 200,000 votes in Rio de Janeiro. The former environment minister, investigated for trafficking in timber from the Amazon, received more than 600,000 votes in São Paulo. Between others.

Lies such as that the federal government could not act or that early treatment could prevent the lack of oxygen in Manaus are still a shield against responsibility for the avoidable calamity. To the dismay of scientists, journalists and anyone else who wants to live in a world based on reality, it can be difficult to lie to everyone all the time, but lying to 50 million Brazilians for 4 years seems quite doable.