Over 100 people attended the San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday where the public was allowed to voice their opinion of the county's COVID-19 policies and restrictions, including the recent recommendation that all San Diego County employers should require their employees to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or submit to weekly testing. People from all walks of life expressed their outrage over vaccination mandates, as well as the county's pandemic response and policies.
Even though each speaker was given a limited amount of time to deliver their message, it took four and a half hours for the group to have their say. Many of the speakers directed their comments at County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, and to some extent at Public Health Office Dr. Wilma Wooten.
After listening to hours of criticism, Fletcher responded by saying, "I'm not going to give in to this bullying and threatening and intimidation. We have an obligation to go out and speak the truth. We got to call this out for what this is which is disinformation and misinformation."
The following day, Fletcher posted a message on his Instagram account, that has inflamed the matter further. The post reads:
"Please stop saying you "researched it."
You didn't research anything and its highly probable that you don't even know how to do so.
Did you compile a literature review and write abstracts on each article? Or better yet, did you collect a random sample of sources and perform independent probability statistics on the reported results? No?
Did you at least take each article, one by one and look into the source (that would be the author, publisher, and funder), then critique the writing for logical fallacies, cognitive distortions and plain inaccuracies.
Did you ask yourself why this source might publish these particular results? Did you follow the trailer of references and apply the same source of scrutiny to them?
No? The you didn't fucking research anything. You read or watched a video, most likely with little to no objectivity. You came across something in your algorithm manipulated feed, something that jived with your implicit biases and served your confirmation bias, and subconsciously applied your emotions filters and called is proof.
Scary."
The entire meeting can be viewed on the Count of San Diego's site.