Chakras, crystals and conspiracy theories: how the wellness industry turned its back on Covid scienc

[LeftishBrit]

Its gurus increasingly promote vaccine scepticism, conspiracy theories and the myth that ill people have themselves to blame. How did self-care turn so nasty?


Sirin Kale
Thu 11 Nov 2021 06.00 GMT


When the deployment of the Covid vaccine got under way, Carr began to see posts that troubled her, ranging from polite concern about the social consequences of mass vaccination, or the politics underpinning it, to full-blown rejection of the science. “The conversation and tone of their posts shifted,” she says. “At first it was all about self-care and being part of a community that is caring for each other. But then they started to speak more about how there should be a choice when it came to vaccines. They were saying things like: ‘My body, my choice.’”

Carr watched as Greenacre posted an Instagram story describing vaccine passports as “medical apartheid”. Vittengl went further. In a post in July, Vittengl, who is unvaccinated, compared vaccine passports to the social polarisation witnessed during the Holocaust and spoke about the “mess” caused by the “ideology of the western medical system”. “We aren’t being shown the full picture,” Vittengl concluded, in a post that was liked by Greenacre. Greenacre subsequently invited Vittengl on to her podcast, where Vittengl discussed the pernicious influence of “big pharma” and celebrated the work of the controversial doctor Zach Bush, who has been called a “Covid denialist” by researchers at McGill University in Montreal.

Such views are anything but exceptional in the wellness community. If anything, they are on the milder end of the spectrum. Anti-vaccine or vaccine-hesitant attitudes are as abundant in online wellness circles as pastel-coloured Instagram infographics and asana poses on the beach at sunset. “People are really confused by what is happening,” says Derek Beres, the co-host of Conspirituality, a podcast about the convergence of conspiracy theories and wellness. “Why is their yoga instructor sharing QAnon hashtags?”

(More at link):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/injecting-poison-will-never-make-you-healthy-how-the-wellness-industry-turned-its-back-on-covid-science

[ShazamIam]

1. They saw an opportunity to reach millions of people who would be easy to con and ran with it.

They take a few bits of the science backed wellness effort and turn it into a magical potent boosted with crystals and mysticism.

Facebook and youtube are a guaranteed gold mine for the wellness scammers.

[Doc Sportello]

2. Unfortunately, our brains haven't evolved as much as humans think

People will tend to accept anecdotal information from a friend over peer-reviewed science because the former has much greater credibility to the average person - thanks to how our species developed.

It is a decade old but the book "The Invisible Gorilla" addresses these issues (including the origins of the anti-vaccine movement) and explains why we are not as smart as we think we are and why the intuitions we are told to listen to more often than not lead us astray. Topics include financial investing, eyewitness testimonies and others that show why science is dismissed and unscientific and provably false "advice" from a trusted source is accepted.

People don't like to hear this but our belief in own own decision-making prowess is greatly overblown. One of my favorite examples involves "multi-tasking" that began with David Strayer's research into distracted driving. Strayer found that those individuals who were most convinced of their ability to multi-task were in fact those who were the worst at it. In fact, less than 2 percent of people can actually perform multiple tasks at once and do them successfully. But the majority of people believe they can.

So misinformation can now be spread to millions on social media by trusted sources like yoga teachers or celebrities who are completely misinformed, and people will buy into it because they think they ARE making an informed decision. That includes people who are considered intelligent in other areas.

I highly recommend the book by Chris Chabris and Daniel Simons:
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla-How-Intuitions-Deceive/dp/0307459667

[DBoon]

3. belief in the occult has long had connections with fascism

https://counter-currents.com/2011/06/george-orwell-on-w-b-yeats-as-occult-fascist/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occultism_in_Nazism