PHOTO: A public health nursing office in Green Bay, Wis., circa 1920. Library of Congress.
Being a person who works with language, I get excited when I come across a new word. Like today, for example, the word “infodemiology’.
It’s obviously a playful twist on a term popular among public health workers: ‘epidemiology’. The study of epidemics, especially diseases.
But in the case of “infodemiology’, it’s the study of diseased information. Or rather, an “epidemic of misinformation”.
I came across the word in an August 23 article by reporter Carl Smith, on Governing.com. From his article:
In Brief:
Public health is a realm of science and fact and deals in matters of life and death.
The pandemic brought misinformation about health to new levels, fostering lingering distrust of public health advice. “Infodemiology” is a novel term coined to describe both the diagnosis and prognosis for the increasingly entrenched social ailment.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently posted a report about the public health “infodemic” — an increasingly entrenched social ailment — and what can be done to manage it.
As far as I can tell, the main recommendation from the National Academies authors is, public health needs to be more entertaining. More friendly. More a part of everyday life.
Public health professionals can’t expect us to feel good about their work, when all they do is shut down the economy and make everyone wear masks. Who wants to listen to someone who spends every waking hour complaining about diseases? And telling us we’re going to die?
On the other hand, it’s just as unpleasant to listen to people complaining about the public health industry. Except they aren’t usually telling us we’re going to die.
In my humble opinion, everybody needs to lighten up.
Easy for me to say, of course. I wasn’t making millions of dollar promoting vaccinations, or posting angry misinformation on my ‘influencer’ YouTube channels (and making a nice profit doing it.)
Money is always the root cause. People think it’s ‘misinformation’ (on both sides of the argument) that creates the problems, but really, if no one was getting rich, we probably wouldn’t even notice a pandemic was happening.
The Governing.com article featured this photo, from the Library of Congress, showing a public health office in Wisconsin, in 1920.
Do these dour-looking women seem like the kind of folks you’d want to talk to, about public health? Maybe it’s just me, but I want my public health workers to be happy, and smiling.
Okay, yes, these ladies had just come through the Spanish Flu epidemic, and they were probably wondering if it wouldn’t be a lot more fun to be, like, a school teacher, or a secretary for a handsome lawyer.
Like these ladies, the public health workers of 2023 live in a realm of science and fact, but that hasn’t made them any happier.
But I’m wondering if reporter Smith missed an important angle in his “infodemic” article?
Like, are we noticing that most of the people who work in public health are women?
Yes, I will admit to being a male member of the Patriarchy. (Not proud of it, however.) Is it possible that we (men and women) were skeptical of the “realm of science and fact” during the COVID crisis, because deep down inside, we don’t want to listen to women?
I watched the Barbie movie at the Liberty Theatre here in Pagosa, and when Barbie leaves her (imaginary?) female-led world to visit the “real world” to find her owner… (following an existential crisis where she starts thinking about death)… she discovers the “real world” is a patriarchy, and women are shown very little respect, except as sex objects and wage slaves.
For some reason, the movie didn’t mention COVID. (If it mentioned ‘misinformation’, I missed the reference.)
My point here is, there are many problems in America, including sexism, and mistrust of government, and mistrust of the media, and mistrust of scientists, and mistrust of corporations.
According to Mr. Smith’s article, Elisabeth Wilhelm worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2016 to 2022, and during the pandemic, she was tasked with standing up a “vaccine confidence strategy”.
“It’s not all misinformation. It’s people not knowing where to look for information, outdated information, unsettled science, dodgy scientific papers — and press commentary and social media conversations — that were causing confusion and affecting decision-making about vaccination,” says Wilhelm.
I agree. Misinformation is not the only problem.
Mainly, the problem is “profit”.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.