As Passover — festival of memory and freedom — approaches, I am thinking about the ways we lock ourselves in, and ways we can free ourselves if we are aware enough to do so. So today’s post is about that. There’s also a bit of hopeful news for long Covid patients aaaand a treat at the end.
🕵️ How susceptible are we to fake news?
I’d forgotten about it, but as soon as the pandemic started, so did the spread of a plethora of conspiracy theories. Not even grey-area misinformation (“it’s a silly cold, hydroxychloroquine WORKS, there’s not going to be a second wave”), I’m talking about tinfoil-hat, flat-earther, Q-Anon level chatter that seems to have infected many people around us. Bill Gates! 5G! Covid-19 was unleashed for the Great Reset!
So why does this happen? Why does it feel like some of our loved ones have been taken by a cult?
1. We like new, easy info.
Turns out it’s not just them. We all have the same biases that could easily take us down that path. Nadia Brashier, of Harvard, has found that we tend to believe new, easily-understandable information that also feels familiar, and it requires effort to take a step back and “unlearn” it. It can be done, though. Here’s what she told us last year when we asked her to explain her research in the context of the pandemic:
“We should try to disengage from the cognitive shortcuts that leave us vulnerable to falsehoods. Slowing down your reading and focusing on accuracy will reduce the appeal of fake headlines and rumors about coronavirus.”
2. Fear and outrage are perfect primers.
Ever wondered about the difference between influence and manipulation? Seems a fine line, but according to French neuropsychologist Catherine Zobouyan, there’s a crucial distinction.
Influence can be positive. It allows you to learn from others, or be persuaded by them, in ways that can help you. When you’re being influenced, she says, you do not break the link between your amygdala (where, simplistically put, emotions live) and your orbitofrontal cortex (home to important cognitive processes). In that scenario, you don’t lose self-awareness. You keep the ability to check in with yourself, which allows you to make conscious choices based on the influence that you have freely accepted.
In the case of manipulation, that connection between the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex is weakened. You lose a measure of self-awareness, which impairs the faculty to act upon your conscience. This happens when your emotions take over. Expert manipulators know how to bypass your judgement by stoking your passions.
A “documentary” made in France provides the perfect example. Released in 2020, it peddled all of the above-mentioned bullshit and spread like wildfire on Facebook. When you examine the way it was edited, it did exactly that. Rattling bits of fake or out-of-context information over tense music, not giving viewers the time to process or question it (kids, no exaggeration, it took me two hours to debunk the first 15 minutes), just delivering hit after hit after hit of fear and outrage.
It also appears that we secrete dopamine when we get new information (maybe that’s why we have such a penchant for it), and adrenaline when we feel strongly about stuff. Both feel incredible! Do you know what emotions stimulate both? Fear and outrage. All of which spells disaster for your cognitive and executive functions.
We’re all susceptible.
How to use this: I’ll say to you what we tell our kids all day long. Slow. It. Down. Take your time. Parse it out. Verify. Get suspicious when you get overly excited about new information. Keep your wits and self-awareness about you. And beware, beware, beware fear and outrage.
🤔 Immunisation as therapy?
This is a couple of weeks old, but it deserves to be underscored. Long Covid patients have reported feeling better after getting the jab. How does that even work? Experts are only speculating at this point:
Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale, said that a vaccine, by generating antibodies to the coronavirus’s spike protein, could potentially eliminate vestiges of the virus or remnants of viral RNA that may linger in some patients.
A tiny study of 44 from Britain that hasn’t been peer-reviewed seems to confirm that this is a thing that happens:
When compared to matched unvaccinated participants from the same cohort, those who had receive a vaccine had a small overall improvement in Long Covid symptoms, with a decrease in worsening symptoms (…).
There are other surveys and anecdotal evidence that seem to point to that as well, but let’s not get too excited yet. It may very much depend on the patient and what the virus is doing to their body.
How to use this: get the jab, get the jab, get the jab, if you’re medically cleared, get the jab.
🍫 Holiday treat
Take a stroll down memory lane for a laugh, fellow olds. We’ve earned it. And Happy Easter / Chag Sameach, if you’re going to celebrate. I can’t embed the video so click the link.