In countries now at the top of the league for death scores, invincibility myths have been propagated by some politicians, and mirrored by the press, in the early phase of the pandemic.
Are there thorough studies from behavioural sciences scholars, on how invincibility speeches and higher death rates correlate?
Political information was mixed with scientific information and became neither known nor corrected for error
@Renaud Di Francesco
Legislative metadata was combined with scientific evidence and was not indicated for the mistake, and hardly rectified.
Many thanks for your input!
It seems the subject has substance, and the question is seen as valid.
Invincibility speeches, and the analysis of the response of the public to these, may benefit from systemic behavioural studies such as:
-do the public respond better to "self-protection" or "don't spread it" messages?
"Don't get it or don't spread it? Comparing self-interested versus prosocially framed COVID-19 prevention messaging" J Jordan, E Yoeli, D Rand - 2020
https://psyarxiv.com/yuq7x
-game theoretic approach to political communication for public trust development in the pandemic era
"An Opportunity to Build Legitimacy and Trust in Public Institutions in the Time of COVID-19" Stuti Khemani
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/33715/An-Opportunity-to-Build-Legitimacy-and-Trust-in-Public-Institutions-in-the-Time-of-COVID-19.pdf?sequence=1
Enjoy the reading
If we compare how society faces the virus with a war, there is an attitude of holding positions, in many wars, at any human cost. During World War 1, there must have been 6 battles between Italy and Austria, on the same place Isonzo, for a few hundred meters territory won or lost. Seen from today it is absurd, and those deaths were in vain.
Pride or ego decisions with little meaning sacrificing someone else's life were guided by fallacious invincibility myths.
This is exactly what we do not want...
By definition, there are two concepts, unfortunately, irreconcilable in more than a few cases: "the convenience and the politically correct" are not interested in the deceased - they are mere statistics that could subtract votes; See the case of Trump and Bolsonaro, for example, I think there are more comments; nevertheless, I hope, one day History will judge them as genocidal
Sad to see statistics of the USA and of Brazil. Many other countries around the world suffer a lot too.
After several months, we can observe a change in the official attitudes, and less invicibility speeches.
UK and the USA seem to be more careful, to some extent. However testing and tracing do not seem to materialise at scale, according to the press and health experts in those countries.
As long as "test and trace" is not scaled up, or a vaccine becomes available (at scale too), the risk stays high, according to public health experts.
How is it in your country?
Dear Di Francesco!
You raised an important issue. I think that one can see already the link between misinformation related to covid-19 and death rates in a country:
1) Mikey Biddlestone Ricky Green Karen M. Douglas (2020). "Cultural orientation, power, belief in conspiracy theories, and intentions to reduce the spread of COVID‐19" British Journal of Social Psychology Volume 59, Issue 3, Open Access
© 2020 The Authors. British Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society, Available at:
Article Cultural orientation, powerlessness, belief in conspiracy th...
2) Zapan Barua et al. (2020). "Effects of misinformation on COVID-19 individual responses and recommendations for resilience of disastrous consequences of misinformation" Progress in Disaster Science, 21 July 2020, In Press, Uncorrected Proof, Open Access © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Available at;
Article Effects of misinformation on COVID-19 individual responses a...
3) P. Sol Hart et al. (2020)."Politicization and Polarization in COVID-19 News Coverage" Science Communication 2020 August 25 2020 SAGE Public Health Emergency Collection National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine Available at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447862/
Yours sincerely, Bulcsu Szekely