Remember in Ebola all the discussion about needing to engage anthropologists to understand why African villagers would shun medical advice? Now we’ve got a much larger epidemic in our own country, but I hear no call to study the culture & mindset of those disregarding health recs

I’m going to mute this thread since it has rendered my phone unusable. Thanks for the engagement! Final thoughts: 1) All societies have sociocultural drivers, not just “others.” 2) Policy that ignores these are hamstrung at best & doomed to fail at worst. 1

3) Social scientists of all ilks (including historians, folklorists, etc) should be funded to help explain the drivers of health behaviors & to help craft targeted culturally-appropriate public health messages. 4) Diseases cannot be controlled with only biomedical knowledge. 2

5) It is rare a socially undesirable behavior will change in response to the message that “you’re just stupid/selfish/deluded.” 6) While there’s a place & audience for everything, there’s a difference between rigorous research & impressionistic thought-pieces. 3

Understanding behavior is not the same as giving someone a free pass to act in harmful ways. You can deem a behavior misguided, harmful, etc & still think it is important to understand the rationale behind it. 4

Finally (and I’m sure I forgot something) epidemics impact communities, & effective responses are communal, not individual. End