Is it FAKE SCIENCE or is it a CULT? The Pirate Podcast examines the current Church of CovidStan

We're going to take a detailed look at the church of CovidStan.  Is it science, or is it a cult?  When local social media pages pretend to provide COVID19 Information using doctors and mask fetish adherents, often they display the majority of qualities featured in a cult. Do they cross over at a minimum to misinformation?  Are they more harmful than helpful?  Lets look at the characteristics of a cult and see if we can better understand what we may be dealing with.  Real science uses the scientific method, but what is being promoted as blindly trusting "science" today has little resemblance to what science really is, and moreso represents blind alliegance to cult-like characters at the local, state and national level that put ideology over data in the interest of harnessing a harvest field of useful idiots towards a grander societal shift.  
This excerpt written by Janja Lalich and Michael D. Langone is from: Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (Bay Tree Publishing, 2006). You can buy the book on Amazon.  

The group displays an excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader, and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, or debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (e.g., members must get permission to date, change jobs, or marry—or leaders prescribe what to wear, where to live, whether to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and its members (e.g., the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).
The group has a polarized, us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders, or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (e.g., lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).
The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and control members. Often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave—or even consider leaving—the group.

You can apply this to identity politics, radical liberal agendas for schools, academia, the media, planned parenthood radicalism, the current church of Faucian "science" and many other progressive movements.

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