Assignment #3: Read Laterally
The pandemic seems to be waning, right? Guidelines from the CDC have been getting less and less restrictive. The WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was recently quoted as saying that the COVID pandemic is nearing the end. So when I saw the retweet posted above by @PhdEdgar, I wondered if he knew something that the CDC and WHO wasn't sharing with the public. Who is @PhdEdgar and is he really a doctor?
https://twitter.com/PhdEdgar/with_replies
After scrolling through @PhdEdgar's twitter feed, I saw quite a bit of information posted by him in relation to COVID. I decided to further investigate to see what kind of credentials this "PhD" has.
A simple google search pulled up information that verifies that yes, @PhdEdgar is in fact a PhD. His name, which he also lists on his Twitter feed, is Edgar Rivera Colon, he is a PhD of medical anthropology and lectures at Columbia SPS.
As I continued my search, I found that he is also a clinical professor of Medical Education at Keck School of Medicine. I decided to do another google search on his name along with the People's CDC to see what results I may find.
We’re epidemiologists, nurses and physicians, artists and biologists. We have come together with a common anger at the US government’s handl
An Op-Ed from The Guardian, which scores a 45 on the Interactive Media Bias Chart, reveals that Dr. Rivera is a member of the organization. There wasn't much information on People's CDC when I did a search with the syntax -site: I also searched for them on WHOIS and found that their domain information is private. After my adventures in reading laterally on Dr. Rivera, even though he is a PhD, I've decided to put my trust and faith in the recommendations given by the CDC and the WHO. Although Edgar Colon Rivera is a PhD, the CDC and the WHO have a lot more validity with the team of experts that they utilize.
