Just had a fascinating conversation with my smartest friend who is also anti-Trump. He says he gets his news from CNN, MSNBC and the NY Times. So I tested him to see the quality of his general knowledge on the hydroxychloroquine story.
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He was not aware that something like a quarter of doctors would prescribe hydroxychloroquine and zinc based on the situation and the risk assessment. He believed there was zero medical opinion agreeing with Trump.
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He had never heard of "off-label" prescribing of meds, and that it is fairly normal. He believed any doctor doing such a thing was violating healthcare norms with "unproven drugs."
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He was not aware the frontline healthcare workers (some not all) have been taking hydroxychloroquine (and probably zinc) for months.
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He was not aware that multiple other countries are routinely prescribing hydroxychloroquine (and zinc I assume) and they have actual doctors there too.
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He was not aware that the ONE time Trump's handling of the coronavirus departed from the opinion of experts (Fauci in particular), Trump was right: Closing travel from China. He believed Trump was ignoring experts.
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I tried to explain to my friend that the news media pre-2016 sometimes said true things, but we no longer live in those times. I recommended he broaden his news sources so at least he is EXPOSED to the entire news. He resisted because, you know, FOX News blah, blah. Lost cause.
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What fascinates me the most about this situation is that my friend is an Ivy League graduate and easily in the top-five-percent of well-informed people in society, and he pays attention to the news. He was shocked when I told him how much "news" (context) is kept from him.
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If you think this is a criticism of the left, you're only partly right. I'm criticizing anyone who doesn't sample the news from both left and right. But I do observe that conservatives are far more likely to know the story on both sides because "mainstream" news is ubiquitous.
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Also, my friend had never seen the Russian troll farm memes (which looked like a sixth grade project) so he actually believed those memes changed the election. No one who has seen them believes that.
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He also believes that if 17 intelligence agencies say something is true, it's because all 17 independently looked into it. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks that. In the real world, a few people in one agency have an opinion and the rest say it sounds good to them.
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He also believed it is a fact that Russia hacked the DNC. It might be a fact. It might not. But we certainly don't KNOW it to be true.
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End of conversation
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