“You are not a horse”: Medicalization, social control, and academic discourse in the Covid-19 era

Since early 2020, public figures in government, medicine, public health, and academia have accused critics of official Covid-19 policy of subverting efforts to contain the crisis, by spreading “misinformation” leading to concerning levels of “vaccine hesitancy” or to the uptake of unproven, even dangerous, therapeutics. These accusations were compellingly captured in an August 2021 tweet from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “You’re not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it”, warning anyone considering or already consuming the antiparasitic drug ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19 that the drug could be “dangerous and even lethal” if used outside of the scope of FDA guidelines. In this study I examine the role of academic popularizing discourse in Covid-19 debates. Drawing from theories and methods that share a concern with how medical language and frames are deployed to control social behaviour, I appraise articles from The Conversation, an outlet that disseminates academic knowledge to facilitate open exchange and democratic governance. My analysis challenges the outlet’s self-presentation, suggesting instead that, in the Covid-19 era, far from contributing to its ostensible goals, The Conversation’s stigmatizing and condemnatory messaging is largely undermining them, with dire implication for the normative academic principles of open inquiry, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the promotion of critical thinking among younger generations.