“If you’re not going to give me information,” one of my students said during class, “I’m going to take what I have and run with it. Even if something is just a possibility, I’m still going to share it. I want people to know.”
The class was discussing Covid-19, specifically how little we know about who’s been exposed and what might happen next. Of particular concern was whether Syracuse University’s campus would close. This student wasn’t directing her frustration at me, exactly, though it was true that I couldn’t tell her very much. Instead, she was referring to leadership within the Trump administration and at Syracuse. She also wasn’t making a first-person argument. Rather, she was channeling what she’s been seeing in her networks: the instinct to pool information resources when official answers are in short supply. Maybe those answers are missing (or limited, or contradictory) because of wild institutional dissembling. Maybe they’re missing because the answers simply aren’t available. In any case, this student’s point was that, for many people, sharing something is better than sharing nothing at all.
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Source: To Fight Covid-19, Curb the Spread of Germs—and Rumors | WIRED