On Thursday April 7, COVID experts Dr. Scott Gottlieb and Dr. Marty Makary ’93 came to the University to discuss public health policies. Their mission was to dispel much of the fake information regarding masking and social distancing. 

Many students attended the presentation. However, few have retained the information from the talk. Many speculate that students in attendance suffered from late semester burnout. Another reason for the students’ forgetfulness may be that they were still in recovery from Wednesday night at the time of the meeting. Despite the audience’s lack of comprehension, Lye Eyre ’24 claims to remember the main points of the presentation. Eyre, a proud anti-masker from the start of the pandemic, reports that “disinformation is whatever I don’t agree with.” Since the meeting, he has been heard using this argument to justify licking the serving spoons in the caf because “germs don’t exist if you can’t see them.”

Although Eyre’s ideas may seem radical, many students embrace his mindset of labeling facts they don’t like as disinformation. When a biology professor with an elder parent living with them asked Don T. Care ’23 to pull up his mask, Care responded by questioning the biologist’s scientific reasoning for their masking policy. Care stated, “masks are dangerous because they cause you to breathe in your own carbon dioxide, which kills brain cells.” While Care combats his professor’s “disinformation” with his own science, other students are not so convinced of his reasoning. Shirley U. Care ’23 commented that her twin brother Don “seems to have already been lacking in brain cells to come up with that idea.”

Other students are using Eyre’s rhetoric to make their lives easier as the semester workload gets harder. Lye Zee ’22 has been in the hotel five times for COVID. When his professors questioned why he only got sick during exam times, Zee argued, “the idea that COVID is a virus is disinformation. It’s actually caused by stress.” Thus, while many students are studying in Bertrand library, Zee spends his days swimming in the over-chlorinated pool and eating continental breakfasts at the Best Western. While Zee has been successful in staying at the hotel, his next check out may be his last, as Student Health has recently become suspicious of Zee’s self-proclaimed sickness. Dr. Tee Ruth, on staff at the Health Center, believes that Zee has never had COVID and is actually suffering from “senioritis,” whatever that means. 

Overall, due to the instances of students abusing Eyre’s ideas, people are wondering if his ideas about disinformation are in fact disinformation themselves.