Some people who abuse public health experts and scientists have faced consequences: one man who emailed death threats to White House Covid-19 adviser Tony Fauci was given a three-year prison sentence. But in many people’s minds, because of the exceptional Covid-19 response, it’s now become synonymous with the shutdown of whole sectors, of stay-at-home orders and severe restrictions on mobility and individual freedoms. Infectious disease management has always been about identifying what’s making someone ill, trying to figure out how transmission is happening, identifying measures to stop this before more people get ill and developing vaccinations and treatments. Unfortunately, many people now associate public health with restrictions and lockdowns. This builds anger and resentment, but it does nothing to improve society or people’s wellbeing. In its place, pseudo-celebrities are building major followings on platforms such as Twitter, where they’re spreading insidious rubbish, such as the myth that vaccinations involve micro-chipping individuals or that Covid-19 is part of a global hoax. This has created a vacuum where expert communication should be. Scientists I have spoken with increasingly decline interviews about vaccines on TV and with newspapers because they are wary of the backlash they may receive from anti-vaxxers. GPs, nurses and trained medical professionals are exhausted and burnt out, and an estimated 7,000 health workers are leaving the NHS every month. Many doctors, scientists and medical professionals have stepped back from the field because they decided that it’s not worth the personal cost. And it’s easy to blame GPs and doctors for waiting times without realising the long hours they work. It’s easy to forget that healthcare services are limited until a loved one needs care. In the UK, the crucial issue was always the collapse of the NHS. Even with the stringent measures that were put in place to delay the spread of Covid-19, the virus still caused more than 200,000 deaths in Britain and more than a million in the United States. Of course they are not responsible for the losses and collective trauma suffered during the pandemic. In the face of a deadly virus that required an exceptional response, scientists became an easy scapegoat. The attacks came from all directions: anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, conspiracy theorists, anti-Bill Gates, anti-Wellcome Trust, anti-medicine, anti-Scottish government, Tory politicians, all muddled together in puzzling ways. Someone pointed to a talk about global health I gave in 2018 as evidence that I had caused the Covid-19 pandemic as part of the “deep state”. I was targeted in tweets, YouTube videos, blogs, viral Facebook posts and malicious revisions to my Wikipedia page. I suffered far less than many of my colleagues, but still got my share of online attacks during the pandemic. During the pandemic, scientists have suffered huge amounts of abuse and blame while just trying to do their jobs. When the news of Kellermayr’s death was shared among the medical community, the reaction was one of sadness but little surprise. Last month, Kellermayr took her own life. Colleagues expressed frustration with the lack of support she received for dealing with the daily abuse. She had endured months of death threats from Covid conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. L isa-Maria Kellermayr, an Austrian GP, was a doctor who dedicated her life to her patients and was vocal about the risks of Covid-19 on Twitter and in the media.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |