Thread by @WhitneyEpi

🧵 1/ In Feb 2021, well-conducted national serosurvey found ~25% of India had #SARSCoV2 antibodies

Didn’t stop Twitter “experts” from concluding India was at herd immunity & should be fully opened

High ranking & everyday people alike bought into this fiction…

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1417619997908680707

🧵2/

These scientific-sounding lies lowered rates of vaccine uptake & NPI. After all, prominent people said everyone already had protection from infection & cross-reactivity w other viruses

These people were extremely wrong bbc.com/news/world-asi…

🧵 3/ In India & the rest of South Asia now, we see that words matter, that scientific-sounding distortions of reality matter

I remain enraged & heart-broken bc that scale of outbreak absolutely didn’t have to happen in a vaccine-exporting & scientifically rich country in 2021

🧵4/ One of the more disturbing things I see on here is smart people willing to misrepresent data & leave out inconvenient data to make a point

I see this from some people with whom I vehemently disagree and even with those w whom I mostly agree

🧵5/ In 2020 I wondered if people didn’t realize that the evidence was shakier than their tweets. But after multiple convos w dif people, I see it’s a strategy

When we are convinced we’re on side of good, it’s easy to justify embellishment or shading the truth to make a point

🧵6/

I believe that facts matter

I also believe that facts aren’t enough. Good policy is facts filtered through values, practicality, past experience, and public buy-in

But the facts do matter

🧵7/ And for those who don’t care much about the staggering sickness and death in the Subcontinent, theres another reason to care: the unchecked outbreak in India likely facilitated the explosion of the delta variant globally. Letting viruses run unchecked is not benign.