Opinion

Tom Kelly: We need to challenge the anti-science garbage

Covid-19 is not like the flu and with its new strains is highly contagious
Covid-19 is not like the flu and with its new strains is highly contagious Covid-19 is not like the flu and with its new strains is highly contagious

As a writer my natural instinct is to not believe in the silencing of an opinion.

After all, this column is an expression of my opinion about which readers may or may not agree.

It’s the diversity of opinion that makes for better discourse and decision making.

Many of the world’s greatest thinkers clashed and debated the big issues of the day with their contemporaries. But they did so with informed arguments.

One of my favourite books, ``Unpopular Opinions: A Diary of Political Protest'', was written in 1922 by Harold Owen, the younger brother of Wilfred Owen, the soldier poet. The book starts with a quote from the 18th century English wit Sydney Smith: “Catch me if you can, in any one illiberal sentiment, or in any opinion which I have need to recant; and that after twenty years’ scribbling upon all subjects”.

Unlike Smith, this writer would recant some of my opinions which were expressed with a lack of knowledge at the time of writing or which were rendered wrong or improved upon by life experience or advances in science and learning.

So in principle and practice, I am open to debate and that is the modus operandi for my social media platforms.

Though increasingly those platforms have become vile places of viciousness and calumnies driven by nerdy, needy and anonymous people with access to a keyboard. But as evolving politics and science proves, being open to new and different opinions is not only healthy but heartening and inspiring.

However, as the conduct of debate during the Brexit referendum and the campaign of Donald Trump demonstrated, the propagation of untruths and a morbid distrust of science and facts fuelled a dangerous form of populism, culminating with very disturbing physical attacks on the pillars of democracy. Bizarrely, these attacks were sparked by politicians who encouraged distrust in their own institutions. When historians look back on this era it will not been noted for its sense of enlightenment.

Unfortunately, we live in a post truth, anti expert world which has seen the greatest exponents of such nonsense now struggle in a pandemic to convince citizens fed a decade of untruths to trust in science and bona fides of expert opinion.

But the time has come to stop the indulging peddlers of lies and misinformation. Anti-vaccine protest has turned into a form of fanaticism in the same way immigrant fear during the Brexit campaign manifested in xenophobia.

Eighteen months of watching and listening to the rubbish spewed out on social media by anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination proponents has challenged my own libertarian inclinations.

Fed up with trying rational arguments with Covidiots, I now simply hit the delete button.

Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect is that the misinformation is too readily available and is driven by anti-science garbage picked up on the internet. They deny facts in favour of their own opinion cobbled together by the random musings of Dr Google and Nurse YouTube.

Of course, vaccines should not become mandatory as people have a right to decide what goes into their bodies. But as with all actions or inactions there are consequences. One of those consequences is that those who opt for vaccines to protect themselves and others have a right to get on with their lives without risk from those who decided to opt out.

The Victorian politician, John Stuart Mills, speaking of liberty said: “A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by inaction, and in either case he his justly accountable to them for the injury”.

Covid-19 is not like the flu and with its new strains is highly contagious. Unlike flu, cancer or a heart condition it does not threaten the lives of those in the NHS entrusted with treating sufferers.

Refusal to take the vaccine is a personal choice but the consequences may negatively impact on the wider public.