Read on Twitter
New paper providing evidence of the Covid Safety Mullahs having indeed become a cult. (Ahem, I may be using terms beyond what the authors use.)
h/t @jpr41411
<thread>
1/ “We hypothesized that because Covid-19 (C19) remains an urgent and visible threat, efforts to combat its negative health consequences have become moralized.”
2/ “This moralization of health-based efforts may generate asymmetries in judgement, where harmful by-products of those efforts (i.e., instrumental harm) are perceived as more acceptable than harm resulting from non-C19 efforts, such as prioritizing the economy or non-C19 issues”
3/ “participants evaluated the same costs (public shaming, deaths and illnesses, and police abuse of power) as more acceptable when they resulted from efforts to minimize C19 than from non-health C19 efforts (e.g., economy) or efforts unrelated to C19 (e.g., traffic deaths).”
4/ “participants less favorably evaluated the quality of a research proposal empirically questioning continuing a C19 elimination strategy in NZ than one questioning abandoning an elimination strategy, although both proposals contained the same amount of methodology information”
5/ “This finding suggests questioning elimination approaches is morally condemned, a similar response to that found when sacred values are questioned.”
6/ “In both studies, condition effects were mediated by lowered moral outrage in response to costs resulting from pursuing health-minded C19 efforts.”
7/ “Follow-up analyses revealed that both heightened personal concern over contracting C19 and liberal ideology were associated with greater asymmetries in human cost evaluation.”
8/ “Altogether, results suggest efforts to reduce or eliminate C19 have become moralized, generating asymmetries in evaluations of human suffering.”
Mass delusions and moralized judgements go hand in hand. https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1345751461771284482?s=20