Cartoons debunking COVID misinformation

Over the past few months, I’ve been publishing a series of Critical Thinking About COVID videos, examining the fallacies of misinformation. Sprinkled throughout these videos are cartoons I’ve drawn to more clearly expose the fallacies (a technique known as parallel argumentation). Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing Donald Trump and others doubling down on some of the myths debunked in past videos. So I’m retooling some of the cartoons from my videos to work as standalone images, which can be reposted whenever these myths appear on social media or elsewhere. They’re free to be reused to have at them!

Object permanence & COVID testing

Babies lack object permanence. When they can’t see something, they think it doesn’t exist. By our first birthday, we realize even when you not directly observe something, it still exists. Well, most of us do. Trump struggles with testing because he doesn’t want to believe there’s a problem. To him, testing is the problem.

These cartoons were adapted from cartoons in the following video:

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Mask wearing rights and responsibilities

Claiming we don’t have to wear masks because it violates our freedom focuses on individual rights while ignoring our responsibilities. Being a member of a free society means respecting the right of others. Our freedom to behave however we want should be limited if that behavior endangers the health of others.

These cartoons were adapted from cartoons in the following video:

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Pattern detection and the 5G conspiracy theory

Humans are hardwired to detect patterns in randomness. We evolved this tendency for a simple reason – it kept us alive. But now, pattern detection in the form of conspiratorial thinking is putting us in direct danger, by ignoring scientific advice on how to keep safe from COVID. Fortunately, the antidote to conspiratorial thinking is critical thinking.

This cartoon were adapted from cartoons in the following video:

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Anchoring to downplay COVID deaths

How do you make something bad seem not-so-bad? By comparing it to something much, much worse. This technique is called anchoring. People tend to rely on the first piece of information they learn, and make judgements in relation to it. The anchoring technique has been used to downplay the severity of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. The government uses an extreme form of anchoring, claiming they’ve saved 2.2 million lives. The 2.2 million figure comes from Imperial College in London, who estimated that if nothing was done in response to the pandemic – no government action, no staying at home, no changes in behavior – then 2.2 million Americans would die. In this hypothetical scenario, the whole population carried on normally, with no social distancing, hand-washing or mask-wearing, even as millions were dying. Obviously this is an implausible worst-case scenario – but it’s used as an anchor to downplay 130,000 deaths.

You can avoid being misled by being aware of the technique of anchoring. Remember that everytime you hear how the government has prevented millions of lives, they’re comparing their performance to a fantasy scenario where the government does nothing and people act like nothing’s happening while millions are dying around them. Rating the government’s performance as “better than nothing” is an extremely low standard to expect from the nation’s leader.

This cartoon were adapted from a cartoon in the following video:

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Using fake experts to mislead

The fake expert strategy is one of the most persuasive forms of misinformation. In the 1980s, tobacco companies were desperate to convince us smoking wouldn’t kill us. They had a secret weapon – scientists willing to promote smoking. Tobacco executives called them white coats and the PR campaign was called the Whitecoat Project. It didn’t matter if they didn’t have any expertise researching the health impacts of smoking. They just had to look like an expert.

Now, we see white coats being used to cast doubt on the scientific research into COVID-19. The arguments from these white coats are familiar denial techniques – anecdotal arguments and casting doubt on scientific research. But a white coat is persuasive. A group of white coats is even more persuasive.

How do you tell the difference between an expert and a fake expert? Let’s start by looking at what doesn’t make an expert. You don’t become an expert in one field because you have a degree in a different field. We understand this in real life – when it comes to important life events like surgery, we expect the person opening us up to have relevant expertise.

This cartoon were taken from the following video:

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Flu vs. Coronavirus: how slothful induction helped COVID-19 spread

The myth that the flu is worse than COVID commits the fallacy of slothful induction – ignoring relevant evidence when coming to a conclusion. Back in March when people were making this argument, it had an unstated assumption: that the number of COVID deaths would stay lower than flu deaths. This was a false assumption – just because things aren’t bad yet doesn’t mean there isn’t something bad coming down the pipeline.

This cartoon were adapted from a cartoon in the following video:

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I’ll be adding more cartoons to this post and at some point, compiling them into a Powerpoint freely available for reuse (sign up for notifications here).