Covid minimisers are a classic case of a network structure, mistaken as a society-wide phenomenon. They’re a…
Covid minimisers are a classic case of a network structure, mistaken as a society-wide phenomenon. They’re a *tiny* number of players, who form hubs that then feed skinny networks out into society. Creating an illusion of mass support. People map some of these networks. /1 https://t.co/cHPIAyZ1lH
Many people here could list the main Covid minimisers easily, and quickly. They wouldn’t fill a school bus. Network diagrams show that what appears as millions of people actively supporting something is really the tiniest handful of people, acting as network hubs. /2 https://t.co/6w5nLRlmu8
You have to target the hubs. This has always been true. Elizabeth 1’s right-hand assassin and adviser Sir Francis Walsingham didn’t travel the countryside looking for anybody who may have expressed a negative view about the Queen. /3 https://t.co/Er0NG1tnB3
He ruthlessly identified, tortured and removed the handful of hubs, mobilising support against the Queen. The anti-climate and anti-Covid action people know all of this, it’s how they operate. Good people labour under the illusion these same actors generate. /4
The illusion that ‘the people’ is doing all of this. It’s a lie. As Walsingham says to the Duke of Norfolk before beheading him, ‘the people’ will not remember him, once his mobilising hub-work is terminated. And no, in 2024 we don’t need beheadings! /5
https://t.co/Er0NG1tnB3
We just need to stop mistaking the actions of a tiny, really really tiny, number of people for the actions of ‘the people’. And for Covid, we need to stop seeing it as acting always, everywhere. It’s not, it’s breeding in a very small number of hubs. /6
And forming tiny, skinny networks from there out into the community, to try to form new hubs elsewhere. If you take away Covid’s hub-making, it’s dead. We knew this back when we did contact tracing. We didn’t extend that insight into the next phase. /7
We just need to identify and target hubs. I’ll still bet the critical hubs for Covid are schools. It’s them for other diseases, like influenza. Not coincidentally, the least ventilated or sanitised parts of our whole public infrastructure. /end