A few days ago, Senator Mario Monti, a guest at In Onda su La7, said of the Covid pandemic: “We have not used a communication policy appropriate to war.
It will be necessary to find a system that reconciles freedom of expression but extracts information from above. With the constant talk of Covid, only disasters happen. War communication means there has to be a dose of information. We need to find less democratic ways of communicating.
Open heaven. The usual controversy among Italian fans immediately broke out: who accused him of wanting to censor information and who said he was kind and applauded. But the question is not strange.
It should be the moral duty of every good journalist to impartially convey all opinions on a particular issue. When the question is of a political or social nature, impartiality—that is, presenting each party’s main arguments in the field to ensure that each side has equal space—is key.
But when applied to science, integrity can present problems: it may appear to require a reporter to present different competing viewpoints on an issue as if they have equal scientific weight, when in reality they are not at all.
Rights and duties
So: How do we do information in times of epidemics? Should we give everyone a voice? Should we give a voice only to those who claim that Covid is a deadly disease that kills millions, or even to those who say that Covid is like a trivial flu? Just for those who claim that Covid vaccines protect us from infection, disease and death, or even those who say they are experimental gene therapies and cause long-term adverse effects that are unknown to us because the research was done too quickly?
“I don’t leave talk unspoken because they support nonsense,” said Tg di La7 directors Enrico Mentana, and Tg1, Monica Maggioni. Is it control or correct information?
This issue is fundamental because in times of epidemics providing incorrect and unscientific information can lead many in the public to act in a way that puts their lives and the lives of others at risk.
Many repeat a phrase like a mantra: “Science is democratic, scientists argue among themselves and all their opinions must be respected.” this is not true. In science there are no opinions but only “facts” that have been verified by experiments. The scientist first formulates a theory, then conducts an experiment to prove whether that theory is true or false, and if in the end all goes well, he says: “These are the facts.”
To undermine an earlier theory, you have to produce facts, not opinions. This is the scientific method. Journalists must know this, and they must be able to distinguish between a scientific fact and a rumor.
Primary sources
Two extraordinary events occurred during this pandemic: all countries of the world decided to publish and make available online all data related to cases of illness and deaths caused by Covid, and the numbers of vaccinations; Previously available for a fee only, all scientific journals on the planet have decided to make all scientific articles related to Covid available to anyone, precisely because of the exceptional medical and human interest they are receiving. Primary sources are available, at hand, to all, the public and journalists.
However, during the Covid epidemic, we had to witness the sad spectacle of doctors and scientists who said in the press or on television: “Covid is like influenza, the number of deaths from Covid-19 is much less than they tell us”, without a single journalist showing him the official data or Thousands of scientific articles have been published and he is objecting to “No, look, the Corona virus kills millions, it is many times more deadly than influenza.”
who claimed that the virus did not exist because it had never been isolated, without a single reporter showing them hundreds of articles in which the virus had been isolated and sequenced; Who ruled that drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin treated Covid without anyone knocking under their noses dozens of articles that showed that these drugs were useless and even dangerous.
After months of a tight lockdown that reported almost zero infections and deaths, I was able to witness the sad sight of a ruling doctor: “The virus is clinically dead, it may have changed” without a journalist daring to object. “No, look, there isn’t a single scientific article that says this virus has mutated and gotten better, it’s still killing millions of people.”
Almost every day I hear experts describing themselves as repeating that “Vaccines against Covid are experimental gene therapies, they are dangerous, and they cause a huge number of adverse effects and deaths,” without the objection of any journalist: “No, look at the data available to everyone, tested, safe and effective vaccines ».
What behaviors caused by these unfortunate phrases? How many people left home without taking precautions while the virus was still spreading? How many have been persuaded not to get vaccinated? And what responsibility do these journalists bear, who have not raised a single question or a single objection?
Recently I’ve also heard experts claim that the Green Corridor is an unfair measure because those who are vaccinated transmit the virus as well as those who have not been vaccinated, and those who deny this are lying.
However, no journalist objected that no scientist had ever said that a vaccinated person was not infected and could not become infected. But in order to infect someone else, you first have to be infected with the Coronavirus, that is, you have to have it inside your body, and I hope it is clear to everyone now that if you are vaccinated you are less likely to get sick, if you get sick you recover early, and you risk dying a little.
But if those who were vaccinated get sick less and get better faster, they are less likely to have the coronavirus in their bodies, and so they can pass it on to someone else more difficult, and thus infect them less. Do you think the anti-aircraft gun type vaccine kills the virus before it enters our bodies?
However, all scientific articles show that a vaccinated person infects and can be infected much less than the unvaccinated because if the virus enters his body, the vaccinated remains infectious for a few hours, because his immune system is immediately ready to fight and defeat the vaccination, while the unvaccinated remains infectious for days or even weeks.
No journalist has remembered dozens of scientific articles showing that a vaccinated person is much less likely to become infected than unvaccinated people, because vaccinated people are able to eliminate the virus from their bodies much faster than unvaccinated people. It can infect others for a shorter period. In practice, the vaccine can infect others for 24-72 hours, those who have not been vaccinated for weeks or even months.
When 99.9 percent of scholars support a thesis that has been verified by empirical facts, and 0.1, on the contrary, is not verified, if you interview or invite an expert who supports first place and an “expert” supports that opposite, you give the impression that there is Peer discussion does not exist and you are playing with reality.
You’re hiding behind a screen of a level playing field, pretending to be neutral and instead being biased, and you’re also on the wrong side. And during a pandemic, giving a voice to nonsense that is not supported by empirical facts can also mean the death of your conscience.
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