The United States has a significant problem with “belief” today, and it’s not so much what Americans believe as how too many of them believe.

Many beliefs are based on facts and long observation. The sun rises and sets every day, and people believe that it will – and from what science can tell us, that has occurred for billions of years and will continue for billions more, although the length of each day will increase by an infinitesimal amount each year. We believe in gravity, because, here on earth, when you drop something, it falls. Those and other beliefs are based on factual observations, and they can be checked against physical reality. Some people, such as flat-earthers, still deny that physical reality, but most people believe in physical reality.

Admittedly, our physical senses gather information and our brain processes that information to interpret those impressions and create an image of that physical reality, but while images may differ from individual to individual, the physical world – more precisely the energy fields that comprise the world – are not dependent on whether an individual believes in that reality.

Then there are beliefs about what cannot be proven in any scientific fashion (or at least not yet), such as whether there is a divine being or multiple universes or dimensions.

And finally, there are beliefs about what I’ll call aspects or views of reality. Some of those beliefs accept that an event occurred, but different people hold different beliefs about whether the event was beneficial, evil, or a mixture of both. In these instances, those with different views don’t dispute that the event occurred, but only how it’s viewed. There are many views about the creation of the modern state of Israel, but almost no one would dispute that the state of Israel exists.

Then there are those who believe that something which can be verified as occurring did not occur… or they believe that something that did not occur actually happened. For these people, truth or accuracy has no effect on their beliefs.

From what I’ve observed over a moderately long life is that more and more people are now so strongly invested in certain beliefs that they feel strongly, overwhelmingly, that “if I believe this, it must be so. It cannot be otherwise.”

The problem with this view is that reality, accuracy, and facts are what they are, and while beliefs can change human actions and perceptions, they cannot change what has already happened or the physical laws of the universe. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop these “true believers,” and all too often the rest of us pay for such false beliefs, often dearly.

Once upon a time, a “consumer” was someone who consumed/used physical goods and limited kinds of services provided by others. Today, especially in the United States, almost everything is viewed through the lens of consumerism and the old and misused mantra that “the consumer is always right.”

People used to listen to news broadcasts and read newspapers to find out the facts of what was happening. Now, they search for and “consume” the news that suits them, regardless of its accuracy or factual content.

Students now “consume” education, and to meet that consumer demand, the vast majority of colleges and universities are dumbing down curricula and providing a huge range of costly services, many of which are at best tangentially related to learning, while putting out the word to faculty not to upset the little darlings in order to keep numbers up, just like a business catering to consumers. Despite all the right-wing talk about left-wing elitism in higher education, what’s pushing the trend to coddle students isn’t primarily the faculty, but the students, assisted by well-meaning and misguided junior administrators. On the undergraduate level, education has become less and less about learning, especially learning to think, and more and more about “keeping the numbers up” and making students “comfortable.” Trigger warnings are everywhere, as if unsettling facts and theories were real bullets, instead of challenges to be faced and dealt with through thought and reason.

Politics has become consumerized as well, especially after the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that essentially declared that votes were consumer goods that could be bought by anyone who had enough money and clever advertising.

Although law has always been biased on the side of the affluent, simply because the poor never had the funds for the best advocates or legislators, it’s become even more consumerized in recent years.

One of the reasons why the US has regulatory agencies dealing with food and drug safety, product safety, and workplace safety is because manufacturers of consumer products proved that far too many of them could not be trusted to turn out a safe product under safe working conditions.

Just as physical products can’t use dangerous ingredients, or parts, and make wildly false claims, why shouldn’t we require similar standards for all the new consumables?

Maybe news outlets should face fines or suspension of their licenses for airing provable falsehoods, including “commentators,” who seem able to air dangerous and blatant falsehoods. Maybe universities should be subject to “truth in education” laws. Maybe politicians should be held personally liable, with damages, for blatant falsehoods.

But… I don’t see it happening, because the United States has become largely a nation of consumers addicted to their consumables, regardless of the effects on their health, their political system, and their ability to think.

The other day a commenter made a statement that falsification is the basis of science. Like a great deal of what appears on the internet, the statement is true, but incomplete, and was presented out of context. As I’ve said elsewhere, a correct statement presented in the wrong context is effectively a lie, or at the least, a misrepresentation.

True science is based on physically proving what works… and what doesn’t, and in what context something works, or doesn’t. Einstein’s work theorized that there were instances in which Newton’s three laws didn’t seem to apply, or not fully. That was a theory. Later experiments proved much of what his theory proposed… but questions remain about certain physical aspects. What gets overlooked is that in most of everyday life and current industry and technology, Newton’s Laws are accurate and applicable.

The second point about theories is that while they can be disproven, they can never be absolutely proven. The best science can say is: at this point, all the evidence indicates that the theory cannot be factually disproven. So… the test of a theory is whether it can be disproven – or falsified. In some esoteric aspects of quantum mechanics or relativity, we have not been able to physically test various aspects of the theory. That means the theory seems to explain the situation, but that we can’t test it to say that either the evidence supports the theory or that it doesn’t.

Science is not static. As science progresses, we learn more. Sometimes, we learn through experimentation or discovery and analysis that an idea once held is not correct, or not totally correct. A cynical expression of this fact is that science progresses as those who hold to older and incorrect theories and refuse to accept newer evidence die off.

Accurate and effective science is a process that has two basic roots – to understand and prove what works and why and to investigate and disprove that which doesn’t. What is known changes daily and so does what was thought to be true and now needs to be discarded or modified.

Some basics don’t change, and they don’t change because evidence continues to support them. Certain viruses and bacteria cause disease. Good sanitation practices and immunization reduce the spread of diseases. Period. Proclaiming personal freedom from proven sanitation practices or immunization won’t reduce the spread of disease and the injuries and death. That’s the science. Anything else is political self-rationalization.

People are the ones who lie. With or without numbers. People also ignore the numbers or fail to understand what they mean. I was trained as an economist and worked for a short time as an industrial economist, and I have a pretty good idea of all the ways the numbers can be manipulated.

As far as COVID numbers go, they’re not lying. People are misrepresenting them or arguing against them on non-scientific grounds. The initial testing of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed an initial effectiveness of 93-95%. The researchers also noted that the vaccines did not provoke as strong an immune response in older individuals or those who were immuno-compromised. The numbers also showed a minuscule risk of severe side-effects from any of the major vaccines. Those numbers and facts remain accurate so far, even considering the greater infectiousness and severity of the Delta variant.

Statistics also show, historically and practically, that a high degree of vaccination/infection-and-recovery is necessary [roughly in the 70% range] to stop an epidemic.

What are we seeing? That the cases in hospitals are overwhelmingly of the unvaccinated with a small percentage of older vaccinated or immuno-compromised individuals, just as the trials predicted. The statistics also show that well over 10% of individuals hospitalized for COVID who survive suffer long-term and possibly permanent health damage, and in some studies that number approaches 40%.

Until a greater percentage of unvaccinated individuals get vaccinated, or catch COVID, those numbers will continue, and they will include unvaccinated children.

All the political crap about “it’s my right” not to get vaccinated isn’t going to change the numbers.

I live in an area where only 36% of those able to be vaccinated are, and the death toll hit the highest number ever last week. I’m not exactly a spring chicken, as the saying goes, and even after being fully vaccinated, I’m likely still at risk. So is my wife, who is also vaccinated and slightly immuno-comprised, but still teaching. Her students have been understanding, and all of them are either vaccinated or wear masks in class.

This is not so for the rest of the community, which is why we don’t go to restaurants or any crowded venues… and shop with care. Our life – and that of millions of others – is restricted because of the baseless fears of the ignorant and their unwillingness to follow time-tested and working procedures for dealing with an epidemic.

Just why do so many people ignore all the obvious – and verified – facts? Except that’s not really the question. In a public health crisis the question is what the government should do. Getting out the facts isn’t sufficient. Too many people are either too ignorant, too distrusting, too lazy, or too invested in self-centered “personal freedom” to get vaccinated.

So the choice is pretty basic – either require vaccinations or see a lot more people die and become permanently disabled. And if you don’t get vaccinated, you’re saying through your inaction that your “freedom” is worth more than the lives of other people.

In the wake of the resurgence of COVID in the form of the Delta variant, the majority of Republican governors in the states hardest hit by COVID, with ICUs and hospitals at capacity or beyond capacity, continue to oppose vaccination requirements and mask mandates. Their cry is “personal freedom” or “it’s my right to choose.”

Those Republicans, including the clearly hypocritical governor of Texas, would have people die rather than give in to governmental public health mandates.

While I obviously disagree with their “principle,” they aren’t even consistent in its application. In fact, there’s extreme hypocrisy in this stance, especially in the case of Governor Abbott, because the governor wants personal choice in the case of COVID public health requirements, insisting that individuals have control over their own bodies, yet he and the Texas Taliban, i.e., the Republicans in the Texas State Legislature, have legislated to deny women the choice to control their own bodies, by effectively eliminating the vast majority of abortions in Texas and even creating a potentially nationwide vigilante system for denying that choice.

But then, it’s become increasingly clear that all too many Republicans have little interest in consistent principles, effective public health measures, or equal legal treatment for all Americans, regardless of income.

What’s even sadder is that most rank-and-file Republicans don’t see this, and, if they do, don’t care that they’re well on their way to becoming the American Taliban, in attempting to make one set of self-contradicting and repressive religious beliefs the law of the land.