[HN Gopher] Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
___________________________________________________________________
Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
Author : hncurious
Score : 299 points
Date : 2021-10-12 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| MikeTaylor wrote:
| SIDE-ISSUE ALERT!
|
| The article ends with the statement "The author declares no
| competing interests". I think this is very poor phrasing, as it's
| ambiguous: does it mean "The author has not declared any
| competing interests", or "The author has positively declared that
| there are no competing interests"?
|
| (To be clear, I am not for a moment suggesting any hidden
| interests on the part of the author, and I think his point is
| both correct and important. It's only the wording that I
| dislike.)
| gameshot911 wrote:
| To me it's not ambiguous - it means the latter.
| timr wrote:
| This is a stock phrase used by the journal. The author didn't
| write the words, he just checked a box on a form.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| This is some bike shedding of the top tier variety.
| d23 wrote:
| > Former US president Donald Trump admitted to playing down the
| risks of the coronavirus to "reduce panic".
|
| The entire premise of this is absurd.
| alkonaut wrote:
| What's "this"? that this Trump statement actually made any
| difference?
| d23 wrote:
| That Trump's motivation for literally anything is anything
| but pure, raw self-interest. It had nothing to do with a fear
| of panic and everything to do with the number of ways he
| perceived it in his self-interest to continually deny this
| was even happening. He gaslit an entire nation.
|
| Judging by the comments I've seen here lately (not yours),
| I'm really starting to question the company I'm keeping here.
| twofornone wrote:
| >That Trump's motivation for literally anything is anything
| but pure, raw self-interest.
|
| You do realize that this is unprovable speculation shaped
| entirely by the filter of media coverage, which is clearly
| much more favorable to the biden administration?
|
| If our institutions are willing to mislead regarding covid,
| why would you trust them about any other politically
| charged subject?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Agree though I don't think it's mutually exclusive. Trump
| doesn't like the look of panic because it would make him
| look bad. Or make the stock market tank, or whatever. I
| don't for a second think that his desire to avoid panic was
| because that would be better for the country (I honestly
| don't even think it occurred to him that that would be a
| valid excuse for downplaying).
| mnglkhn2 wrote:
| Nature are the ones who published the paper dismissing the lab
| origin of the virus. So, not much credibility there either.
| sm0ss117 wrote:
| The evidence says that during disasters ppl come together and
| help each other during disaster while state and business
| institution act in an at best obstructionist and at worst
| predatory way. So why do ppl in power believe the exact opposite?
| The simple explanations are that it's a delusion they actually
| hold, or a lie they project and either way it serves as a
| justification for the systems they benefit from.
| greenail wrote:
| While this thread is mostly a US centric discussion I wonder if
| Australia isn't a better case study for this topic. Seems like
| things are pretty intense there.
| menimax wrote:
| When people with money start to pay for fake vaccine certificates
| is the time for majority to ask why they pay for not getting
| something, that is given for free. Or like - everyone should take
| our vaccine - me:no i did't took it yet :), Like - Coke is a
| poison to sell, not to take. - guess who's remembered for saying
| that.
| tunesmith wrote:
| One of the variant ideas I was stuck on was when the government
| and CDC decided (pre-Delta) to tell everyone that masks weren't
| required in stores if you were vaccinated.
|
| Part of the justification was that they thought it would create
| incentive for the unvaccinated to get vaccinated, since the
| carrot was that they could stop wearing masks afterward.
|
| Regardless of whether that had the desired effect or not, it
| seemed to be another example of being too clever by half, rather
| than just sticking with what the data itself suggested.
| neogodless wrote:
| > tell everyone that masks weren't required in stores if you
| weren't vaccinated.
|
| I assume you've got a typo going on here?
|
| You mean "were vaccinated"?
| tunesmith wrote:
| yes, thanks.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Kind words, but possibly too late, and they won't change anyones
| mind. Authorities have forfeited public trust by co-ordinating to
| decieve people, censor them, and then reward others who publicly
| expressed their contempt for their fellow citizens, just to
| maintain the leverage. I do not see the path to reconciliation
| yet. Destroying millions of businesses and then doubling down by
| attacking guarantees of freedoms (speech, movement, association,
| bodily integrity, etc.) will not be remembered as having been
| justified or proportionate.
|
| People without a lot of dignity and integrity have underestimated
| what the impact of their deception has been, because, really, I
| don't think they were equipped to apprehend it. I know some of
| them personally, and they became strident promoters of narrative-
| right-or-wrong because of their impostor syndromes, anxiety,
| depression, and self loathing. They thought that by renouncing
| their remaining dignity and denouncing their neighbours, they
| could find redemption in compliance.
|
| What surprises me most is that the rhetoric in public forums has
| not spilled over into significant coordinated mutual violence
| yet. It's all still in the provocateur stage. Whether that
| materializes as a pervasive low-level long term conflict over
| decades like The Troubles in Ireland, or accelerated conflict
| like that which occurred in Bosnia in the 90s, the inflection
| point on the path toward outcomes analogous to those appears to
| have already passed and I believe we're into a period of managing
| consequences.
|
| At this point, the only meaningful action is to find a way to
| mitigate the effects of western civil conflict, and then by
| extension, the total world war that results as other countries
| rush into the power vaccuum western domestic instability creates.
| Maybe the article recognizing the deception will give some of
| these people an out where there is still a way to turn it around,
| but if I were a betting man, I'd find a way to get long potable
| water.
|
| Dark times.
| Permit wrote:
| > will not be remembered as having been justified or
| proportionate.
|
| Why not? Do you think there's no chance that the majority of
| people _want_ these things and will remember them as justified
| and proportionate? Where do you get this confidence?
|
| Do you think there's a chance you have projected your own
| feelings about the pandemic restrictions onto others?
|
| You're surprised that there is no civil unrest. Consider the
| possibility there is no unrest because other people want the
| restrictions that you detest.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| How about the biggest dishonesty - lack of admission that not
| everyone is at the same risk and that lockdowns have significant
| irreversible costs for low risk individuals and for society?
| Young children are not getting critical development years back.
| Healthy 20 somethings only have limited time to date, party and
| have fun before being saddled with adult responsibilities
| forever. Most of shattered local businesses are not coming back.
| While pandemic was not the only reason for BLM and Jan 6 riots,
| all the young men not being kept busy and receiving stimulus
| checks to support unproductive activities was certainly a
| contributing factor - and the fallout permanently damaged trust
| we have in each other. What of all the deaths of despair -
| suicides and drug overdoses? Mixed cancer diagnoses because
| people were scared to go to see doctor? Plummeting birth rates?
|
| All of this adds up to the fact that optimum precautions for an
| obese 70 year old guy is not a same as for a healthy 19 year old
| woman, and individuals should have a role in deciding what's
| right for them. While vast majority should take a vaccine, there
| may be a small group for whom it's a reasonable choice to hold
| off. Say you are a 19 year old healthy make and your risk from
| serious vaccine side effects is largest while your risk from
| COVID-19 is smallest. Plus, you already recovered from COVID
| during the time Delta variant was common. Are you really bonkers
| for making a decision either way?
|
| Above all, society must not sacrifice its young for those of us
| who had a chance to live for quite a bit already.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > lockdowns have significant irreversible costs for low risk
| individuals and for society
|
| Sure, but let's keep in mind what they can do when they are
| effective.
|
| China effectively averted the deaths of 2.5-3 million people
| with an effective lockdown program. That's incredible.
|
| I'm not confident I can really think of any policy proposition
| that would save more lives off of the top of my head.
|
| The fact that we failed to do the same will go down as a
| tragedy of massive magnitude.
| sjwalter wrote:
| The goal of a meaningfully-lead life is not to lengthen it as
| much as possible.
|
| The goal of the government is not to minimize the number of
| deaths at any cost.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > The goal of the government is not to minimize the number
| of deaths at any cost.
|
| Maybe not at _any cost_ , but yeah I think there should be
| a pretty strong presumption towards improving people's
| welfare and not killing them.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Here's something funny about the discourse around distrust of the
| government. The problem is often framed as a being about the
| distrust per se: " _we_ want the public to trust the goverment
| but they don't. Why is that?" But this provokes the question: how
| trustworthy is the government, objectively speaking?
|
| At first it might seem like there is a hidden premise: yes, the
| government is trustworthy. But there's also another alternative:
| that's besides the point.
|
| Are Corn Flakes _really_ healthy? Well that's not a concern for
| the marketing department. But it is their concern if people don't
| think that Corn Flakes are healthy.
|
| So, the funny part: the discourse around distrust-of-government
| might betray a manipulative agenda. The talking heads _want_
| people to trust the government but they don't seem concerned with
| whether or not it is rational to trust the government. But any
| honest assessment of trust has to compare two things:
|
| 1. How much the thing is trusted
|
| 2. How trustworthy it is (by some standard)
|
| How rational (1) is is based on how much it differs from (2) --
| there is no way to assess trust in a vacuum (without (2)).
|
| The old phrase "manufacture of consent" comes to mind.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Inconsistent PR is just a peek at the giant cesspool of
| incompetence and corruption that we get when epidemic is managed
| by people who are better suited to discuss warning labels on
| cigarets
| sjwalter wrote:
| Dick Thaler, who won a Nobel prize in econ, wrote a book called
| Nudge (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book for more
| info), which I'd bet good money Fauci and the entire public
| policy elite have read and internalized.
|
| The book is basically about how the ruling class should think
| about structuring policy and messaging to create the outcomes
| they desire--"choice architecture". Thaler's work describes how
| public policy "experts" should frame their messaging such that us
| sheep submit to their will.
|
| Notably, nothing in the book is about how to make public policy
| to benefit the actual people--the built-in assumption is that our
| rulers have the unique ability to see the future that is best,
| and this book simply describes how to achieve that future.
| Honesty is not a consideration in itself--it is only one factor
| among many in considering second- and third-order consequences of
| particular messaging techniques and policy actions.
|
| Our (that is, the peoples') "best interests" don't factor into
| their thinking one single iota.
|
| If anyone thinks any of this pandemic crap has anything to do
| with helping people, at least as far as the rulers go, I feel so
| sorry for them.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I'll go mask off: yeah, I think "nudging" is probably necessary
| in a country where 45% of people legitimately believe in ghosts
| and 30% believe they've interacted with one before.
|
| You've got to be in a serious intellectual bubble to be
| thinking that most people are carefully considering the options
| and making the best choices for themselves.
| lolsal wrote:
| > You've got to be in a serious intellectual bubble to be
| thinking that most people are carefully considering the
| options and making the best choices for themselves
|
| It's risky to dismiss people that make different choices than
| you as idiots not being able to make the best choices for
| themselves. 'Best' here is entirely relative.
|
| For example, I know (in real life), folks that are making the
| choice to not submit to vaccine mandates because that aligns
| with their principals which is a preferred choice for them
| than surviving into old age. It is utter arrogance to argue
| they are not making the best choice for themselves.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't buy into this level of moral relativism.
|
| Sure they might have different principles than me. So do
| people who support child marriage in India.
|
| I have no qualms about outlawing child marriage though.
| Maybe that is ultimately relative and maybe it is western
| arrogance. I'm fine with it.
| sjwalter wrote:
| I think the point of view that nearly half of your fellow
| citizens aren't capable of making good choices is pretty
| silly.
|
| I think sane citizens supporting patriarchal rulers,
| especially when those rulers have proven themselves basically
| selfish and untrustworthy, their shameless behaviour openly
| on display for decades, is super surprising.
|
| By the way, that's Thaler's own description: patriarchal. He
| views the ruling class as basically responsible for cajoling
| and nudging an unruly mass of unthinking golems toward some
| future state.
|
| It seems you're a big fan of this patriarchs. Seems strange
| to support that unless you're part of the ruling class. If
| so, more power to ya, if not, can I ask why you think they're
| qualified in any way to do this nudging? Why do you think the
| outcomes they want are going to be good for you personally?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Patriarchal? Are you sure you don't mean paternal?
|
| > why you think they're qualified in any way to do this
| nudging? Why do you think the outcomes they want are going
| to be good for you personally?
|
| I think publicly sanctioned (ie. elected) rulers should
| craft policy that alters people's behavior in positive
| ways.
|
| This is the underpinning of representative democracy, we
| trust our representatives to make more thoughtful decisions
| on issues than we do ourselves, because they have more time
| to think on it and it is their full-time job. If we don't
| trust them to do that, we don't vote for them.
|
| Of course, that can break down - if for instance, the
| primary thing deciding elections is a bunch of idiots
| voting based on TV ads.
|
| But the problem there is with the representative process,
| not with the concept of "nudging."
|
| > Why do you think the outcomes they want are going to be
| good for you personally?
|
| I don't always want outcomes that are good for me
| personally, I want outcomes that I consider to be good and
| just.
|
| I don't think we always get that, but I think "nudging" can
| certainly be a tool to realize those outcomes.
| sjwalter wrote:
| I did mean paternalism, thank you for the correction.
|
| I agree with you that nudging can certainly be a tool to
| realize outcomes.
|
| I seem to have a disagreement with you in that it seems
| obvious to me that governments across the world have zero
| to offer in the way of visions for a future that are at
| all positive for me personally, my family, my community.
|
| I think our institutions are not worthy of trust, and I
| think there is ample evidence that every major
| institutional category is captured and serves the
| interests of a tiny elite. You said 'mask off' in your
| earlier comment, and I think that's interesting because
| from where I'm sitting the mask _is_ off, but it 's the
| rulers' masks--they clearly view the common citizenry as
| a threat and a nuisance, and their goals have nothing to
| do with our wellbeing. Whatever stated goals they have
| are two-faced and half-hearted.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The decision to lie to the public about masks fearing an N95
| shortage for healthcare workers has been the biggest disaster in
| many minds.
|
| Ideally the government would have owned up and said:
|
| 'wups we were supposed to be stockpiling these for the last 10
| years when this topic came up in a disaster planning scenario (it
| did), but we didn't do that and now there is no way we will have
| enough for many years because industrial supply chains are never
| operated at <10% capacity without government subsidies(wups #2).
| Make cloth masks work in the mean time but they are 10x less
| effective than masks with built in static charged fibers, so the
| best you can do is socially distance and keep your activities out
| doors when you can.'
|
| We see the reverberation today, with people still wearing cloth
| masks and governments not stockpiling for the next pandemic
| (would rather have one extra tank than available supply for every
| citizen).
| infini8 wrote:
| Hopefully one day we have transparent governments like this. In
| many respects the Danish government did a great job in dealing
| with the pandemic compared to the blunder it was in the UK.
|
| If it's the public's trust you require...
|
| Rule 1 - don't lie to them Rule 2 - don't lie to them Rule 3 -
| don't go against the very rules you set out for the public
| thedingwing wrote:
| > would rather have one extra tank than available supply for
| every citizen
|
| I think the problem here is that the Big Tank industry is
| paying kickbacks, but the Big Mask industry is not.
| colordrops wrote:
| The article is discussing the media and government being
| intentionally vague or even misinformative because they don't
| trust the public, but it backfires and causes more distrust. The
| flip side that wasn't discussed is the belittling and censoring
| of voices that were skeptical of the narratives, which engendered
| even more distrust. Their strategy of information control
| backfired, and they doubled down. Now we've got a huge swath of
| US citizens that will never take the vaccine.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > Now we've got a huge swath of US citizens that will never
| take the vaccine
|
| I suspect it's more than just "the vaccine" (assuming "the"
| refers to the covid vaccines); it's an overall regression in
| the trust of health officials that will take decades to
| rebuild.
|
| We had a pretty well built system of trust for health
| officials. Everything from a standard set of vaccines being a
| requirement at schools to CDC guidance being taken fairly
| seriously. There were folks who distrusted this system, but it
| was (at least I felt like it was) _fringe_.
|
| The COVID response put all of these systems in the spotlight.
| It made a lot of people who previously trusted the system ask
| questions they never bothered to ask before. They may have
| asked these questions about how COVID was handled, but these
| are _general questions_ about the trustworthiness of the
| official health channels. The doubt that was sown isn't
| isolated to COVID. Regardless of where you personally stand on
| any of this, the way "official" channels handled the pandemic
| burned trust for a large portion of the population.
|
| Fixing this is going to be a long road.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Censorship is not what causes large numbers of US citizens to
| refuse this vaccine. If the Republicans in leadership positions
| took this seriously from the start and did not go around
| casting doubt on vaccination far more people would get the
| vaccine. If the previous president had not politicized the
| response to COVID and had simply told his followers to do what
| the CDC says we would have many millions more people getting
| the vaccine (and for the matter, hundreds of thousands of
| people would still be alive).
|
| Don't let the Republicans off the hook. This should never have
| been a political issue, but Republican leaders at every level
| of government made this political and continue to politicize
| the pandemic.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| This is exactly what I'm tracking for the 2022 election - is
| the public able to separate anti-mask/vaxx choice from anti-
| vaxxing within their minds? Or will the right be tied to
| anti-vaxxing by proxy?
|
| I'm leaning toward the latter. Most people I talk to think
| the right is actively pushing anti-vaxxing efforts despite
| top federal Congressional leadership explicitly encouraging
| vaccine procurement (and their former POTUS "inventing" the
| vaccine!).
| greenail wrote:
| I don't think it is possible to make the distinction. It is
| too late unfortunately. I'm vaccinated and I'm ok with
| people making (what i view as) bad decisions. The
| fundamental issue here is a question about the role of
| government: let people hurt themselves or have a nanny
| state. I don't think anyone would listen though and I'll
| get lumped in with the antivaxxers regardless of the
| nuances of my opinion.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The right's story has generally been that people should get
| the vaccine _if they want to_ because "freedom." Trump
| literally said this in front of crowds of his vaccine-
| hesitant supporters. Prominent Republicans like Rand Paul
| are going around casting doubt on the credibility of Dr.
| Fauci and the CDC/NIH, and Republicans have done nothing to
| address the tidal wave of conspiracy theories making rounds
| among their constituents.
|
| Get back to me when Trump gets on stage at some rally and
| says, "Anyone who thinks the vaccine makes them magnetic is
| a moron." Republicans are free to call it a Trump vaccine
| if they are saying, "Real Patriots do what their country
| needs, and getting the Trump Vaccine is what we need Real
| Patriots to do." If that is what it would take to convince
| people to get the shot I have no objection. Unfortunately I
| am not seeing that happen; instead what I see are non-
| committal statements, shouts of "freedom!" and Republican
| governors preventing local leaders from imposing mask or
| vaccine mandates in their states.
| jmeister wrote:
| Kamala Harris is on record(last summer) saying she wouldn't
| take the vaccine if Trump told her to take it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0
| gravity13 wrote:
| Yes, there's a difference between a raging narcissist who
| can't even seem to tell the truth even if there's nothing
| to gain from lying and listening to a doctor.
|
| But yeah, keep going with the whole "democrats are just as
| bad as republicans" thing. Seems to be working.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Really setting the bar high. Group A Being every so
| slightly better than really shitty Group B thing does not
| make Group A look very good, just ever so slightly less
| shitty.
|
| "I beat my kids and my spouse" "You're evil, I only beat
| my kids"
|
| Not a great argument.
| gravity13 wrote:
| It seems like there's a lot of propaganda premised on the
| idea that "both sides are bad", it's just "two sides of
| the same coin," and it's always the people who know
| nothing about politics and just want to appear superior
| without putting any effort or though that give this
| insidious ideology it's breath of air.
| dgfitz wrote:
| What do you mean propaganda? Trump was a fool and a shit
| president, and Bidens ratings are rapidly trying to reach
| Trumps. They both suck. Congress is a fucking joke.
|
| I'll gladly accept your insult about not knowing anything
| about politics, wrong as it is. I choose not to insult
| you back.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| Fauci lied about masks at the start of the pandemic --
| the whole world knew the size of the virus and the type
| of mask you need to wear to protect from it. Apparently
| only Americans had the genius idea to show some research
| showing masks are bad for you... Trump, Fauci and the
| whole bunch lying through their teeth and people still
| take their sides.... my god...
| [deleted]
| takeda wrote:
| What she said, she will trust doctors or scientists over
| trump.
|
| I have antivaxxers in my family, and it is the reverse,
| they trust trump over scientists and doctors. And when
| given argument, that trump himself said to take vaccine and
| that he took it himself, their response is that it was a
| placebo and this was step just to appeal to moderates,
| heh...
| krimbus wrote:
| She did say that, just after saying that she would be the
| first in line if public health professionals recommended
| it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This clip reminds me of Colbert because different people
| map their mental model onto her communication to parse
| one thing or the opposite thing.
| Clubber wrote:
| It was still an extremely reckless thing for her to say
| to score some political points though.
| takeda wrote:
| It doesn't to me. What she said it is:
|
| - I won't take it if trump alone tells me to take it
|
| - I will be first to take it if experts give their thumbs
| up
|
| Some people take the whole thing at face value, some take
| only the first part and ignore the rest.
|
| In 70s Ford used political pressure to speed up swine flu
| vaccine development and that had negative consequences.
| Jensson wrote:
| > It doesn't to me. What she said it is:
|
| That is mostly a nonsense statement, public health
| professionals and the state recommend the same things.
| Not all health professionals but it isn't like a vaccine
| would get rolled out without any health professionals
| recommending it.
|
| > In 70s Ford used political pressure to speed up swine
| flu vaccine development and that had negative
| consequences.
|
| And did public health professionals recommend against
| taking it then? Or was it just Ford who recommended it
| against every the wish of every health expert?
|
| I don't see how her statement can be taken as anything
| but "Republicans are also pro vaccine now, so we need to
| sow divisiveness in another way!". If she truly cared
| about peoples health she would have taken the opportunity
| to unite the people and the politicians over the
| vaccination issue here.
| takeda wrote:
| > That is mostly a nonsense statement, public health
| professionals and the state recommend the same things.
| Not all health professionals but it isn't like a vaccine
| would get rolled out without any health professionals
| recommending it.
|
| She particularly mentioned Fauci, until 2020 he was
| respected and known to not being political and served all
| presidents since Reagan.
|
| > I don't see how her statement can be taken as anything
| but "Republicans are also pro vaccine now, so we need to
| sow divisiveness in another way!". If she truly cared
| about peoples health she would have taken the opportunity
| to unite the people and the politicians over the
| vaccination issue here.
|
| I don't at that point we didn't even know if WH wasn't
| planning to purchase vaccines from Russia (they had them
| available before Pfizer, I think July 2020).
|
| Once vaccines were available to people, they were
| approved in other western countries as well, which
| boosted confidence in them.
| Jensson wrote:
| You don't think that public health professionals would
| recommend a vaccine provided by the Trump administration?
| Think a bit, why did she even bring that up at all? Why
| not be happy that Trump talked about getting people
| vaccinated and tell people that vaccination is now
| supported by both parties and therefore everyone should
| go and get vaccinated as soon as possible? You don't
| think that taking that approach would have changed
| anything?
|
| But instead she pushed the divisiveness to its max here
| for no reason at all.
| nradov wrote:
| Prominent Democrats also cast doubt on vaccine safety. The
| governor of California essentially stated that he didn't
| trust the FDA and insisted on doing another safety review
| before authorizing vaccines for use in the state. This was
| inexcusable political behavior on both sides.
|
| https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/10/27/western-states-join-
| califo...
| betterunix2 wrote:
| That was done in response to concerns that Trump was trying
| to push the FDA to approve the vaccines faster to serve his
| own political ambitions:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/politics/white-house-fda-
| coro...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-business-mark-
| meadow...
|
| Moreover, Gov. Newsom's statements did not say that the
| vaccines were unsafe; he simply said that he was
| establishing an independent panel of scientists to evaluate
| the same evidence that the FDA evaluated. At no point did
| he say that people should seek ivermectim or
| hydroxychloroquin or that people should just rely on
| natural immunity.
|
| Even if Newsom did the wrong thing here, it is a far cry
| from the Republicans, who have pushed the narrative that
| people should feel no specific obligation to get vaccinated
| because of "freedom." Trump has stood before crowds of
| vaccine-hesitant supporters and said, "Get the shot _if you
| want to_. " Republican governors have echoed that
| sentiment. The results speak for themselves: Democrats have
| higher vaccination rates and Democrat-leaning areas have
| lower infection and lower hospitalization rates compared to
| Republicans.
| iammisc wrote:
| Since the inception of the FDA, when else have state
| governments independently verified drugs like this? It is
| clearly a signal that one ought not to trust the FDA. Is
| it any surprise that large cohorts of the democratic
| party (namely, their non-white cohorts) do not want to
| get the drug? I am not surprised.
|
| > "Get the shot if you want to."
|
| That is exactly what any sane person should say. Trump is
| pro-vaccine. He has unequivocally said he has had it and
| thinks it's a good idea. He's just anti-mandate. You can
| be pro-vaccine (as in you believe others should get it),
| while being against a mandate. This is insanity. The
| expectation that one must believe that the government
| ought to _require_ a vaccine in order to not be anti-vax
| is quite the shift of goal posts.
| complianceowl wrote:
| Your partisan comments are so toxic. Try making your point
| without spewing that Facebook garbage around here.
| ajvs wrote:
| Agreed, it's especially ridiculous that they said Trump
| should have been advocating for the vaccine when he did and
| still does.
| gravity13 wrote:
| Is it really partisan to point out that Republicans took
| anti-vaxxing to be practically their identifying feature?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Most anti-vaxxers I know are far left, and most
| republicans I know have all the other historic vaccines
| for school and travel, but are more suspicious of the
| Covid ones due in part to the lack of discussion about
| natural immunity in the US context (most of them who
| already had covid don't want to get the vaccine since
| they do t think it is worth their time).
| gravity13 wrote:
| Nobody wants to have a discussion about [enter argument
| of the month here] because it's all BS partisan politics
| motivated by the right's outright disdain for all things
| liberal in America.
|
| The problem isn't a lack of understanding or research for
| new vaccines, the problem is anti-intellectualism running
| rampant.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "Nobody wants to have a discussion about [enter argument
| of the month here] because it's all BS partisan politics
| motivated by the right's outright disdain for all things
| liberal in America."
|
| That is one view, and I have heard the opposite (switch
| the words right with liberal in this statement).
|
| Unfortunately the truth is lost in the medium of dialog,
| e.g. see the recent surveys showing how those that watch
| the media most are also the most misinformed about the
| risk of covid hospitalizations (>50%??).
| jeromegv wrote:
| Is the problem the lack of discussion or the spread of
| fake news, disinformation and fear mongering in the US?
|
| Most/all western countries have higher vax rate than the
| US (and survey says that vaccine usage is lower among
| republicans in the US), why is that?
|
| You really think it's due to lack of discussion on
| natural immunity?
| takeda wrote:
| The previous administration made this political, and the
| pandora's box already have been opened. People were
| swearing they won't take vaccine, before it was even
| available.
|
| Look at countries where pandemic is not political.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >(25 Feb 2020) U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a
| walking tour of San Francisco's Chinatown Monday to let
| the public know the neighborhood is safe and open for
| business.
|
| >Pelosi, a Democrat who represents the heavily Chinese
| American city, visited the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie
| Factory, whose owner Kevin Chan, says his business and
| others are down 70% since the outbreak of the new
| coronavirus.
|
| >"You should come to Chinatown," Pelosi said before
| stopping to lunch at Dim Sum Corner.
|
| >"Precautions have been taken by our city, we know that
| there's concern about tourism, traveling all throughout
| the world, but we think it's very safe to be in Chinatown
| and hope that others will come," she said.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAEfSHeH4Lc
|
| Not just the previous administration.
|
| This is what is tiring about threads like this, you have
| partisans on both sides all going "Not me and my side, it
| was all the other guys."
| takeda wrote:
| At that point no businesses US were closed because of
| covid, but Chinese businesses were unproportionally hurt
| because president called covid a "china virus".
|
| You're trying to smear somebody that they are making it
| political while they are actually trying to unpoliticize
| it.
|
| This was before emrgency was declared. And only 8 people
| were confirmed in California. Check the timeline: https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Again, "Not me and my side, it was all the other guys."
|
| The Washington Post reported that six other countries had
| restricted travel from China before January 30, six did
| so on January 31, and by the time U.S. travel
| restrictions became effective on February 2, 38 other
| countries had taken action before or at the same time as
| the U.S. restrictions.
|
| In what universe does telling people to get out and
| gather in groups make sense when there is a pandemic
| looming.
|
| Looking at the timeline: "The first case of community
| transmission, because it had no known origin, is
| confirmed in Solano County, California, on February 26."
|
| So the day after the call to gather, you have confirmed
| community spread.
| PeterisP wrote:
| IIRC Italy had a similar issue, where authorities
| initially tried to encourage gatherings to downplay Covid
| and made public events themselves for PR, there was a
| "Milan doesn't stop" campaign, etc - while (in hindsight)
| those were the key weeks where very rapid spread was
| happening, causing thousands of deaths afterwards
| [deleted]
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Go back a year and see who was saying the vaccine was not
| safe. Explicitly saying you don't trust the vaccine because
| your political opponent was president when it was created is
| political plain and simple.
| archagon wrote:
| When your political opponent is an unintelligent charlatan
| who can't speak two words without spouting a lie, then
| perhaps some caution would be warranted where public health
| is concerned.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Last I checked Trump had nothing to do with the vaccine
| other than helping fund it (Operation Warpseed). If you
| think Trump could impact the safety then I assume you
| think the FDA is corrupt which means we shouldn't trust
| them when they say it is safe now?
| PeterisP wrote:
| Back when that was the debate, Trump was pushing FDA to
| "accelerate" approval i.e. do it before the studies
| analysis was done. Now we know how those studies went,
| but at that point nobody did yet (and they might have
| revealed e.g. a lack of efficiency), so yes, _if_ FDA did
| issue an approval back then then they should have been
| treated as corrupt for breaching their own process in a
| way that can impact the safety; and that is why the
| concern was (IMHO reasonably) raised by various Democrat
| leaders. Heck, Trump was on record asking officials to
| alter election results, _of course_ he could also try to
| overrule FDA if he chose to and wasn 't loudly opposed.
| greenail wrote:
| You are assuming "they" trust the Republican leadership. this
| Gallup poll says only 12% of Americans trust congress.
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/352316/americans-confidence-
| maj... Lots of other interesting tidbits about trust in
| there...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You are assuming "they" trust the Republican leadership.
| this Gallup poll says only 12% of Americans trust congress.
|
| Congress [?] the Republican leadership [?] at least one
| member of the Republican leadership, or GOP members aligned
| therewith, enough to overcome dis- or non-trust of the
| rest.
|
| "Congress" as an institution usually polls really badly
| when compared to individual politicians in their own
| districts, because Congress consists of 535 members, 532 of
| which the person answering the poll had no say in electing
| and represent people with different interests living
| elsewhere, and (usually) approximately half of which
| represent the _least_ preferred of the two major parties,
| who usually have the power to at least block legislation
| (thanks to either split between the partisan majority of
| the House and Senate or, failing that, the Senate
| filibuster.)
|
| Trust of _either_ party leadership, and particularly
| voter's own members of Congress, tends to be much higher
| than that of Congress as a whole.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| No, the Gallup poll says 12% Americans _say_ they trust
| Congress. People say they do not trust politicians, but the
| fact is that when politicians speak people listen.
| Politicians know this and that is why they always give
| soundbite-oriented remarks and lines of questioning in
| their various hearings and "debates."
| dragontamer wrote:
| These people who don't trust masks trust ivermectin.
| Just... talk with them. Its obvious. There's one political
| party pushing ivermectin as a solution, and the other one
| doesn't.
|
| They want "their side" to be correct on this issue. They
| don't trust masks because masks were chosen by "the other
| side". They don't trust vaccines (despite being pushed by
| Operation Warp Speed by Mr. Trump) because someone else
| became president and started pushing vaccines.
|
| It was historically liberals who hated vaccines, not
| conservatives. Conservatives were the ones making lynch
| mobs to forcibly vaccinate people (still an ugly history
| there but... seriously. The entire political world has
| flipped upside down).
|
| --------
|
| This isn't about the message. Its 100% about who trusts
| who, and who trusts what. This is a problem of ethos, not
| of facts or logos.
| speedybird wrote:
| > _These people who don 't trust masks trust ivermectin.
| Just... talk with them._
|
| I've talked with them. Some of them believe as you say.
| Others don't. I think you're doing a lot of pigeonholing;
| the reality outside defies the neat discrete
| classification favored in internet conversations.
| greenail wrote:
| My post had nothing to do with any party affiliation. I
| was simply pointing out the data regarding where trust in
| our institutions is. Please ratchet the "they"/"other"
| stuff back a bit. I don't think it is helping us trust
| each other.
| dragontamer wrote:
| And my post is about the reality of our politics today.
|
| People distrust masks but trust ivermectin. Why? Because
| certain leaders in certain political thoughts are pushing
| anti-mask and pro-ivermectin messages.
|
| Its that simple. There's no need to mince words. People
| trust their leaders. If it helps, its the same reason why
| some liberals are all "Screw the rich", because they
| trust Bernie Sanders.
|
| No one likes __Congress__ as an institution, but everyone
| likes their particular Senator/House rep. If not, those
| people would be immediately voted out. Its all the
| _OTHER_ reps that people don't like in Congress. Just as
| the institution was designed. That's how its supposed to
| work: you don't like the reps who push for stuff in their
| state/interests (but not your state and/or interests)...
| but you like the guy who represents your state/interests.
|
| Perhaps I'm being too brutalistic or simple. But its
| really how I see things.
| greenail wrote:
| > People distrust masks but trust ivermectin.
|
| source? It may also be useful to disambiguate anti-vaxers
| from anti-vax-mandate-ers. I think they have
| fundamentally different arguments.
|
| >but everyone likes their particular Senator/House rep.
|
| everyone?
|
| > That's how its supposed to work:
|
| I doubt that the founders intended to build a system only
| 12% of people supported but maybe...
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I doubt that the founders intended to build a system
| only 12% of people supported but maybe...
|
| The founders absolutely intended for Congress to be the
| "we like our guy but dislike every other guy" situation.
| 100%. In fact, that's 100% evident in the design of the
| electoral college.
|
| We were _supposed_ to hate other guys so much that
| Congress would end up choosing the President each time
| through debate. What was _NOT_ intended was for political
| parties to creep up and unify the voices of people across
| state lines (ie: giving actual power to the Electoral
| College. Woops).
|
| The founders got a lot of things wrong about how people
| would act. But they got the part right about Congress.
| What we see today is exactly what the founders intended.
| (This doesn't mean that the founders are necessarily
| correct about this issue, but anyone who has studied the
| Federalist papers / other early writings knows this to be
| how Congress was designed).
|
| Yeah, people glorify the founders and all that. But they
| were just people, and they made mistakes. (Have you met
| anyone yet who believes that the founders were divinely
| inspired by God? Because I have. There's lots of opinions
| about how this country was founded) Regardless, its
| important to understand their intents and the design of
| this country as part of our debates.
|
| Congress, for better or for worse, is acting just as
| intended. The reason why Congress can't do anything right
| now is because we have deep disagreements across this
| country about what we should do.
|
| ------------
|
| > everyone?
|
| Every House/Senator has over 50% of support within their
| district, by definition. Every. Period. If not, their
| opponent gets elected next time.
|
| There's some legitimate questions about redistricting and
| such (Gerrymandering wasn't foreseen by the founders).
| But Senators are immune to Gerrymandering by nature of
| how they work. But the reason why we have so many
| Senators for some areas is because of compromises before
| the Civil War about slave states vs non-slave states
| (whenever a "slave state" was founded, a non-slave state
| would split into two states to satisfy the status quo).
| There's all sorts of messes that we've inherited from
| short-sighted decisions 200 years ago (after the
| founders, but before the civil war).
|
| In any case: the specific complain that I asserted
| earlier: that we like "our guy" but dislike others, is
| exactly how the system was designed to work. Only when
| large groups of people agree on a matter should a new law
| be written.
|
| > source? It may also be useful to disambiguate anti-
| vaxers from anti-vax-mandate-ers. I think they have
| fundamentally different arguments.
|
| I dunno? My parents? My sister's father in law? My
| coworkers? The lady on the Airplane I talked to? Just
| talk to people. Its pretty common. Look for watchers of
| Fox News or One American News networks, and the like.
| Surely you have someone in your social circle?
|
| IVM is a miracle drug being used by people overseas that
| CDC isn't allowing. Don't-cha-know? Its the same line
| being used everywhere, because these people are watching
| / listening the same arguments from leaders they trust.
|
| I think the smarter leaders are trying to morph the
| discussion towards drugs that do work (ie: Monoclonal
| Antibodies), and I'm willing to have a debate on that
| issue. (Monoclonal antibodies do work, but cost $2000+
| per dose. Compared to a $20 vaccine or a $1 mask, its a
| steep price to pay).
|
| IVM is so stupid I'm not going to debate it seriously.
| 8eye wrote:
| no disrespect but i know plenty of liberals who will not get
| the vaccine. the media turned it into a bi-partisan issue
| when in all actuality it was a government handling issue in
| which the rest were used as scapegoats. you remember that
| they gave themselves raises while the rest of us were told
| not to go into work. which obviously we are gonna listen if
| we believe that covid is as dangerous as the scientist were
| saying, the main issue and the reason why blockchain (primary
| crypto) technology took last year was because of the
| censorship issues. people do not want amazon to shut down a
| website because it disagrees with their narrative, they don't
| want facebook, reddit or payment processors shutting things
| down for those same reasons. so the push towards even more
| decentralizing is going to happen. but to clear things up,
| this is decentralized together, not the traditional sense of
| decentralization.
|
| you cannot censor someone you disagree with and expect them
| to be okay with it. you make them a slave to your narrative,
| and if they become slaves, they will push to make you a slave
| as well by whatever means necessary. see texas abortion bans.
| it's what Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye leaves the whole
| world blind" or a more modern version would be "that which we
| resist, persist". this is common knowledge, when push comes
| to shove, the shoved push back. but the problem is, we end up
| in a loop, where both parties lose more and more of their
| civil liberties to PWN their perceived enemy. it's odd that a
| lot of adults don't understand this basic concept.
|
| down vote all you want, it doesn't make it any less true
| hackingforfun wrote:
| > no disrespect but i know plenty of liberals who will not
| get the vaccine.
|
| Anecdotally, the liberals I know seem much more open to the
| science behind the COVID vaccine and I don't know any of
| them who didn't get the shot.
|
| > the reason why blockchain (primary crypto) technology
| took last year was because of the censorship issues.
|
| Not sure I understand your point here. I think crypto is
| being adopted for other reasons considering that the most
| popular cryptos are pseudo-anonymous anyway. Is it because
| you think crypto can't be shut down? That is a larger
| discussion and I would say Bitcoin and Ethereum are less
| likely to be shut down, at least by the US (since in
| general it seems like they aren't considered to be
| securities), but I don't think we can expect that of the
| entire crypto ecosystem.
|
| In general though, I'm not sure what your main point is.
| Are you saying that both sides of US politicians are at
| fault here? If so, I don't disagree.
|
| However, I also think the post you were responding to was
| pointing out that conservative politicians carry some of
| the blame here and have been pushing these agendas for
| their own power play, which I'd also agree with.
| iammisc wrote:
| > Anecdotally, the liberals I know seem much more open to
| the science behind the COVID vaccine and I don't know any
| of them who didn't get the shot.
|
| Anecdotally, most people only know others who view things
| very closely to themselves.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| > no disrespect but i know plenty of liberals who will not
| get the vaccine.
|
| Respectfully, those people have been anti-vax for a while
| now
| (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/what-do-
| le...) and were part of the group that were unpersuadable.
|
| But leftist anti-vaxers aren't a majority of current
| COVID-19 anti-vaxers. Those are politically motivated
| groups.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're being down-voted; elements of the
| counter-cultural left has been skeptical of science for
| decades.
|
| The profit-motive is at odds with the nobler pursuit of
| science and companies like Monsanto, Exxon, Dow Jones are
| on the wrong side of history. Unfortunately, distrust of
| "big pharma" mutates into a suspicion of science in
| general - and the medical sector in particular. There
| also isn't a catchy phrase to describe "big
| holistic/wellness/organic".
|
| When people (regardless of political persuasion) give up
| trying to understand the complexities of reality and
| instead, look for easy answers that appeal to them on an
| emotional level, they leave themselves vulnerable to all
| sorts of wacky ideas (many of which can be traced back to
| good old-fashioned anti-Semitism like George Soros and a
| shadowy cabal controlling the world).
|
| George Monbiot recently published an article about this
| issue from a European perspective: https://www.theguardia
| n.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/22/leftwi...
|
| Article from last year from an Australian perspective: ht
| tps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/05/welln
| e...
| romwell wrote:
| >no disrespect but i know plenty of liberals who will not
| get the vaccine
|
| No disrespect, just statistics [1].
|
| Democrat:Republican ratio among is about 3:5 among the
| unvaccinated (and about 2:1 among the vaccinated).
|
| >you make them a slave to your narrative, and if they
| become slaves, they will push to make you a slave as well
| by whatever means necessary
|
| With all due respect, the example you gave of that is the
| behavior of the Republican party (abortion bans in Texas).
| I can provide many more examples from that side, and it
| seems to be disproportionately popular with people who
| support that party.
|
| I don't see this happening with non-Republican supporters.
|
| I also have an issue with "you make them a slave to your
| narrative". The enslaving effect of abortion bans is easily
| understood; but in which way was Texas "enslaved" by
| anything Biden's administration did to do that?
|
| It really seems like you're drawing a false equivalence
| here, because as far as I can see, it's less eye-for-an-eye
| and more one of the parties going wild with poking eyes
| out, and getting hurt and offended by the "narrative" of
| anyone wearing glasses.
|
| [1]https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-
| finding/kff-co...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think the fact that vaccination is only 3:5
| demonstrates that it is remarkably close between parties
| and people should be more thoughtful about
| characterization. It is not like it is 100:1 or some
| extremely skewed distribution.
| [deleted]
| iammisc wrote:
| The previous president was and is extremely pro-vaccine.
| People claim there is a large republican cohort of anti-vax
| politicians, but there is not. There is a large GOP cohort of
| anti-vax-mandate politicians, but being against a mandate
| does not mean being anti vax, unless you're changing the
| meaning.
|
| > If the previous president had not politicized the response
| to COVID and had simply told his followers to do what the CDC
| says we would have many millions more people getting the
| vaccine (and for the matter, hundreds of thousands of people
| would still be alive).
|
| You are accusing Trump of politicizing COVID while ignoring
| Andrew Cuomo, who at the beginning of the pandemic, used
| COVID, and the fact he was not Trump, for his political
| advantage, and the media gushed and was happy to give him
| more airtime than Trump, despite the fact it was obvious from
| the very beginning that New York State's handling was much
| worse than Trumps.
| kansface wrote:
| I don't even know how to respond to this. The nicest thing I
| can say is that your comment is both entirely ahistorical and
| highly indicative of why Republicans don't trust the CDC.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the belittling and censoring of voices that were skeptical
| of the narratives, which engendered even more distrust_
|
| What are examples of this? Most of the U.S. was quite loose
| about lockdowns and mask requirements until their specific
| geography got hit. (For example, I summered in the Smoky
| Mountains June of 2020. Compared to New York, it was as if
| nothing had happened. The tone changed by December, after the
| South had its wave.)
|
| To the extent there was belittling, it was around the promotion
| of treatments, a set of claims that has always been tightly
| regulated. (Also, the early, intentional miscommunications
| around the efficacy of N95 masks, which was horrible.)
| yCombLinks wrote:
| An example that jumps to mind is all of the media and
| academics that opposed the theory that the virus was a lab
| leak in china, primarily because Trump espoused the view. As
| much as Trump deserved ridicule, that was a perfectly valid
| theory.
| bad_username wrote:
| Massive, coordinated, media-sponsored mocking of people who
| discuss Ivermectin, calling them stupid horse paste guzzlers.
| I don't know if works for covid, but there is enough serious
| data and published science for a normal conversation to be
| had about it, instead of disdain, ridicule and suppression.
| iammisc wrote:
| It also completely ignores the fact that ivermectin,
| whatever its merits for covid are, is an actual human
| medication. It is not a veterinary drug, although it has
| utility in animals too.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Isn't it as a prescription-only drug for humans (as a
| dewormer)? In that case, everybody who considers self-
| medicating with Ivermectin would be using the veterinary
| supplies (because they can more easily buy the intended-
| for-horses version), which the associated risks of
| overdosing.
| bothandeach wrote:
| Trust the public with hard truths is exactly right. Thats what
| China did and Trump did not IMO
| fortuna86 wrote:
| > Now we've got a huge swath of US citizens that will never
| take the vaccine.
|
| They were always not going to do it. The second it became a
| political issue, their minds were made up. Blaming what was or
| wasn't done by third parties, government, etc. is completely
| missing the point.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Now we've got a huge swath of US citizens that will never
| take the vaccine.
|
| Some never will. But it's been less than two years. If they
| started telling the truth, the real truth, the hard truths, and
| kept at it, consistently, for two or five or ten years, at
| least some of them would come around.
|
| Oh, yeah, and if you _stopped trying to manipulate and force
| them_. Treat people like grown-ups, even when they disagree
| with you, even when you think they 're wrong, even when you
| think the data _proves_ they 're wrong. In case you[1] haven't
| noticed, people aren't robots that will do what you want. They
| are fiercely independent, and they resent being forced into
| something, and they will fight you _just because you 're trying
| to force them_, whether or not what you're trying to get them
| to do is a good thing.
|
| [1] "You" here does not refer to _you_ , gentle reader. It
| refers to the "you" in authority who think that they can force
| people to get vaccinated without it backfiring spectacularly.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Fully agree.
|
| One of the best takes I read on this argued that the public
| health institutions failed the US because they were so intent
| on forcing outcomes ("don't buy masks") rather than, as you
| said, simply saying hard truths and giving guidance.
|
| People can tell when they're being talked down to, and
| there's been a lot of that since this started. I don't even
| think anyone's doing it maliciously, they're just really,
| really bad at PR.
|
| Now, I think there are plenty of people who over-corrected
| for this and love endlessly nursing a grudge against Evil Big
| Government. That's on them.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| And thats a good thing too. Don't reward poor behavior with
| compliance.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| That's got real "I'm not taking the safe, free, incredibly
| effective vaccine to own the libs" energy.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| I knew it was controversial when I posted it, and I know
| this comment will be too. That's not my energy at all, but
| I do think poor behaviors yield rightfully earned distrust
| and consequences.
|
| I was 100% on board with at home testing every 3 days
| schemes, mask wearing (even though I doubt the efficacy of
| most masks), but having compulsory medical procedures with
| a relatively untested, proprietary technology is where I
| draw the line.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This is such a silly mentality. Deciding to not do something
| that should be done just because someone who is incompetent
| tells you to is the definition of cutting off your nose to
| spite your face.
|
| You aren't 'punishing' those in power by not taking the
| vaccine. You are punishing every other person in society.
| neogodless wrote:
| It's trivially easy to understand that getting a vaccine that
| benefits you, as well as the people around you, is good for
| the people around you, much more so than it is good for
| someone you're protesting against.
|
| And not getting the vaccine is potentially bad for you, and
| those around you, much more so than it is bad for anyone
| you're protesting against.
|
| The vaccine helps your body fight the virus, and reduce the
| spread of the virus in your local community. That should be
| the key point in deciding if you get a vaccine.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| That's just the thing though, isn't it. Is the vaccine good
| for you and the people around you? Since we know
| asymptomatic carriers are a thing, does getting the vaccine
| protect those around you? Are you even able to get reliable
| reporting on the side effects (of various shots) and what
| groups are likely to be at risk for them?
|
| Assuming a disagreement about reality is a disagreement
| about values is a great way to straw man without knowing
| it.
| swader999 wrote:
| How can there be informed consent with censorship?
| [deleted]
| zarkov99 wrote:
| It is hard to understate the damage. The loss of national
| cohesion, the exacerbated division caused by the "choose your
| own reality" consequences of no longer having trustworthy
| institutions. And maybe worse of all, the self-fulfilling
| nature of distrust. When you do not trust someone, and they
| know it, they have no incentive to behave in a trust-worthy
| manner. It will take a long time to dig the country's self-
| image out of the hole dug during the pandemic.
| ska wrote:
| > The loss of national cohesion,
|
| It may be you have the causality backwards here.
| creato wrote:
| Like pretty much everyone in this thread, who are at the
| very least failing to acknowledge the fact that this is a
| feedback loop.
|
| I'd be a lot more willing to acknowledge the notion that
| the media and government are so terrible if the
| alternatives that most people have chosen to trust instead
| weren't so laughably bad sources in comparison.
|
| This isn't people making an informed judgement about what
| sources to best trust, it's people being caught in a wave
| of bullshit and not actually thinking about anything. A lot
| of the comments here in this chain are just part of the
| wave.
| HPsquared wrote:
| See "The Evolution of Trust" which was posted on HN a few
| times, simulating how trust is created and destroyed, with
| reference to game theory. I don't think it covers
| institutional trust, but is interesting nonetheless:
|
| https://ncase.me/trust/
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > It is hard to understate the damage.
|
| It is hard to _overstate_ the damage.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >consequences of no longer having trustworthy institutions.
|
| Those institutions just spent years getting called deep state
| by half the country, systemically racist by the other half
| and in the pockets of entrenched and moneyed interests by
| both. Color me shocked that nobody trusts them.
|
| The same people who were so happy a year and change ago to
| earn cheap internet virtue points trotting out tropes about
| about how the noble FAA has been neutered by Boeing and the
| revolving door are complaining that people don't trust the
| CDC. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
|
| This is a feedback loop. The lower the expectations from
| these institutions (government, academia, etc.) the less they
| have to lose by behaving poorly and the more they will behave
| poorly. It will get worse until it gets so bad it starts
| getting better.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| In my opinion the biggest example of this was the poor mask
| guidance early on in the pandemic that was subsequently
| reversed. Zeynep Tufekci had a very good piece in the NYT on
| this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-
| face-...
|
| The real fear was that there would be a run on masks by the
| public, making them unavailable for hospital use. Also, at the
| time, there wasn't clear evidence of the effectiveness of masks
| by the public (although there _was_ some evidence with earlier
| respiratory infections that mask use by the public is
| beneficial).
|
| But instead of just saying that, the message from the vast
| majority of public health officials (and media types like
| Sanjay Gupta) was that "masks don't work for the public". It's
| not hard to go back to March 2020 and find lots of videos to
| this effect. This all spectacularly backfired a couple months
| later when health officials told everyone to wear masks.
|
| And what made me slightly angry was that many officials tried
| to say something like "well, we have new data now". Which was
| somewhat true, but also conveniently swept over the fact that
| there was _never_ data that said "masks don't work for the
| public", but health officials didn't have a problem saying that
| in public earlier.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| I really think this will go down as The Big Mistake that lost
| the public's trust in the US and made compliance for every
| subsequent measure difficult to sell, and opened the door to
| nutters.
| valeness wrote:
| This is a pretty privileged viewpoint imo.
|
| This one small thing lost the public's trust?
|
| Not the fact that cops used to pull me over for no reason
| because I lived in a poor neighborhood? Not the fact that
| my family member's lives were ruined because of tiny drug-
| related infractions? Not the fact that we went on a
| pointless 20+ year war for no reason (just the one within
| my lifetime)? Really. Wearing a mask is the breaking point
| here?
|
| How easy are people's lives? They have everything going for
| them except they have to wear a mask so THEN they lose
| faith in the system.
|
| Fucking spare me.
| [deleted]
| evandwight wrote:
| I think you are misinterpreting. They lost faith in
| medical experts. I don't think hes talking about the US
| system as a whole but instead trusting the advice that
| vaccines are safe, masks work, etc. Medical advice.
| hackingforfun wrote:
| Just so I understand, the one thing about flip flopping
| on masks cost them to lose faith in all medical experts?
| Doesn't that seem a little unreasonable? I agree we
| shouldn't have flip flopped on masks, but I don't think
| making a whole narrative out of that makes sense.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Just so I understand, the one thing about flip flopping
| on masks cost them to lose faith in all medical experts?
| Doesn't that seem a little unreasonable?
|
| Have you never heard of racism, bias etc? Yes, when a
| representative for a group does something then that will
| affect peoples views of that entire group and not just
| that person. Humans are irrational like that.
| hackingforfun wrote:
| Yes I do understand that. I just hope people would put
| things in perspective and be a bit more rational. I think
| racism, bias and all that comes from people taking hard
| line stances on things, possibly things they inherited
| from their upbringing, political party, etc. If we take a
| hard line stance on this as well, I don't see what value
| we are adding. The way I look at the mask guideline was
| that it was a mistake but it was an evolving situation
| with the pandemic, so I understand why some of the
| actions taken, in retrospect, were not ideal.
| evandwight wrote:
| Sorry, I don't have an answer for you. I was just trying
| to clarify the context with a more charitable
| interpretation of GP's point.
| speedybird wrote:
| It's much easier to lose trust than it is to earn it. Lie
| just once and you can wipe out years of hard-won good
| will.
|
| Isn't it a bit unreasonable to lie but expect people to
| still trust you as they did before? This is not some new
| premise that the authorities got blindsided by; _Fool me
| once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me._ They
| should have known better than to lie, no matter the
| motivation for a lie.
| hackingforfun wrote:
| I saw the flip flopping on masks and thought it was silly
| for them to do that. However, I also was not going to not
| get the COVID shot over that, because, based on my own
| assessment, getting the shot made sense.
|
| Anyway, I'm just surprised a whole narrative was built
| around something I would consider really not a huge deal.
| Folks could buy masks anyway, even without them being
| recommended (I did). It's not like masks were illegal to
| buy or something.
| colpabar wrote:
| > Folks could buy masks anyway
|
| They couldn't for a while though, and that's an aspect of
| the whole fiasco that really bugged me personally. The
| initial claim was that we do not need masks, because they
| are not effective and because if we all buy them then
| hospitals will run out, so I did not buy any. Then, we
| were told that we all _must_ wear masks, and there were
| none available. I was re-using a disposable mask for
| several days at a time because I had no idea where to get
| them. It was really frustrating to see wealthy
| politicians and celebrities telling everyone to "just
| wear your mask!" because the rest of us could not find
| any to wear.
| hackingforfun wrote:
| Yeah, fair, I still don't know what them recommending
| this earlier would've done though. It just would've made
| the shortage sooner, right? It seems that's what they
| were trying to prevent. I do get that people don't like
| that they were lied to though, and then mandates were
| hard to follow when implemented, if people couldn't
| acquire masks. The pandemic exposed, and continues to
| expose, issues with our supply chains. If there was an
| abundance of masks to start with, I don't think the
| government would've flip flopped on masks in the first
| place, but since supplies were what they were, I'm not
| sure there's a good answer here.
| colpabar wrote:
| I don't have a good answer either. I understand public
| health at a national level is about being pragmatic and
| doing things that actually work, and I can honestly
| understand if they acted the way they did to try and give
| hospitals some lead time to stock up before the masses
| did. But even if this was the case, they have not told us
| about it, and continue to deny that anyone ever said not
| to mask up. The tweet[0] from the surgeon general was
| deleted. The CDC page[1] has been taken down. So not only
| did they lie, they are now lying about lying, and I'm not
| going to forget that the next time I'm told to "trust the
| experts."
|
| [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://t
| witter.c...
|
| [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229164715/https://w
| ww.cdc.g...
| hackingforfun wrote:
| Just wondering, are they currently lying about having
| made these guidelines before? I haven't heard anything
| about that myself. I also do remember some news articles
| saying the government's mask guidelines were so hospitals
| could stock up (maybe it was once they flip flopped, I
| forget, it was over a year ago, but I do recall reading
| that).
|
| I think it's possible they deleted old content to make
| sure invalid data isn't out there on the web to be
| cached, linked to, quoted, etc.
|
| However, if they really are lying now (i.e. making
| current statements) saying that they never flip flopped,
| then yeah that would be weird.
| speedybird wrote:
| Different people have different experiences. Different
| people have different thresholds for trust. Different
| people have different prior experiences. Some people have
| witnessed and been harmed by more lies than others. What
| does or doesn't seem like an overreaction to you, me, or
| others is going to be different to one degree or another
| to every individual. What you judge to be a small
| inconsequential lie may seem like a much bigger deal to
| other people who have other experiences and viewpoints.
| That's why the mask lie was not merely silly, it was flat
| out idiotic. Those responsible, the liars, assumed that
| everybody else would have the same tolerance for
| falsehoods as themselves. That was a myopic assumption to
| say the least.
|
| (I got vaccinated too, but I have no particular animosity
| towards those that haven't. They are, if anything,
| victims of the government's long history of being
| untrustworthy.)
| hackingforfun wrote:
| Yeah, based on what you said, I agree it was idiotic. I
| personally still don't think it's a hill worth dying on
| though, but that's just my opinion.
| kickout wrote:
| Yo, chill with the assumptions. Nothing about this
| article/discussion has to do with your comment.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| Yes. The majority of the population doesn't experience
| the things you have, as unfair as that is. So I think the
| person you're replying to has a point.
| rajup wrote:
| Pretty sure it's not the only one, it's just the most
| visible one (the straw that broke the camel's back so to
| speak). There are tons of other examples above (turning
| down the music in gyms etc), just not talked about as
| much. You are reminded about those absurd, knee-jerk
| reactions when you look at masks (unfortunate given that
| of all the measures, masks seem to atleast do something).
| Clubber wrote:
| The public hasn't trusted the US government in a long time,
| probably since Nixon. Recent examples of lies are Iraq
| WMDs, Iraq involvement with 9/11, Afghanistan progress, and
| NSA surveillance. Follow that with persecution of
| whistleblowers and the government seems like it's gone
| rogue to many.
| speedybird wrote:
| Pre-Nixon example of high levels of distrust:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-
| kil...
|
| > _Americans were skeptical about the "lone gunman"
| theory almost immediately after Kennedy was killed. In a
| poll conducted Nov. 22-27, 1963, Gallup found that 29% of
| Americans believed one man was responsible for the
| shooting and 52% believed others were involved in a
| conspiracy. A majority of Americans have maintained that
| "others were involved" in the shooting each time Gallup
| has asked this question over the past 50 years, except
| December 1966, when exactly half of Americans said
| someone in addition to Oswald was responsible._
| mcguire wrote:
| I can't speak to what politicians were saying, but I heard a
| number of virologists and epidemiologists saying that "masks
| weren't necessary" because 1) convincing most people to use
| them consistently and correctly is very difficult, and 2)
| because it was thought that the virus was spread only by
| symptomatic individuals, who produce larger droplets by
| coughing or sneezing and which transmit the disease through
| contact with contaminated surfaces or by close proximity
| (hence, social distancing).
|
| "Then there is the infamous mask issue. Epidemiologists have
| taken a lot of heat on this question in particular. Until
| well into March 2020, I was skeptical about the benefit of
| everyone wearing face masks. That skepticism was based on
| previous scientific research as well as hypotheses about how
| covid was transmitted that turned out to be wrong. Mask-
| wearing has been a common practice in Asia for decades, to
| protect against air pollution and to prevent transmitting
| infection to others when sick. Mask-wearing for protection
| against catching an infection became widespread in Asia
| following the 2003 SARS outbreak, but scientific evidence on
| the effectiveness of this strategy was limited.
|
| "Before the coronavirus pandemic, most research on face masks
| for respiratory diseases came from two types of studies:
| clinical settings with very sick patients, and community
| settings during normal flu seasons. In clinical settings, it
| was clear that well-fitting, high-quality face masks, such as
| the N95 variety, were important protective equipment for
| doctors and nurses against viruses that can be transmitted
| via droplets or smaller aerosol particles. But these studies
| also suggested careful training was required to ensure that
| masks didn't get contaminated when surface transmission was
| possible, as is the case with SARS. Community-level evidence
| about mask-wearing was much less compelling. Most studies
| showed little to no benefit to mask-wearing in the case of
| the flu, for instance. Studies that have suggested a benefit
| of mask-wearing were generally those in which people with
| symptoms wore masks -- so that was the advice I embraced for
| the coronavirus, too.
|
| "I also, like many other epidemiologists, overestimated how
| readily the novel coronavirus would spread on surfaces -- and
| this affected our view of masks. Early data showed that, like
| SARS, the coronavirus could persist on surfaces for hours to
| days, and so I was initially concerned that face masks,
| especially ill-fitting, homemade or carelessly worn coverings
| could become contaminated with transmissible virus. In fact,
| I worried that this might mean wearing face masks could be
| worse than not wearing them. This was wrong. Surface
| transmission, it emerged, is not that big a problem for
| covid, but transmission through air via aerosols is a big
| source of transmission. And so it turns out that face masks
| do work in this case.
|
| "I changed my mind on masks in March 2020, as testing
| capacity increased and it became clear how common
| asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection were (since
| aerosols were the likely vector). I wish that I and others
| had caught on sooner -- and better testing early on might
| have caused an earlier revision of views -- but there was no
| bad faith involved."
|
| "I'm an epidemiologist. Here's what I got wrong about covid."
| (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/04/20/epidemiolo
| ...)
| sk2020 wrote:
| There is a data indicating masks are not effect source
| control for respiratory illnesses.
|
| https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
|
| I think the single study that supported cloth face coverings
| of no particular standard of performance was a mechanistic
| study that depends on the belief that respiratory illness
| spread is a direct function of the distance water droplets of
| an arbitrary threshold size travel from a simulated sneeze.
| Which, of course, is so obviously true it needs no supporting
| evidence.
| ssully wrote:
| I think it's also worth pointing out that even with them
| saying masks aren't effective for the public, there was still
| a run on masks. I don't have the exact date, but when I
| looked for n95's at my local hardware store in March 2020,
| they were all gone and this was definitely before we were
| told to wear masks. And soon after we started getting stories
| about hospitals running low on PPE.
|
| I am not saying what the right messaging move was/would have
| been. But all I do know is that no matter what, masks were
| going to get run on. I also know that, at least from an
| American perspective, no matter what the government told
| people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people
| that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn
| and distrustful people.
| oceanghost wrote:
| Not just masks, anything that was vaguely safety related. I
| had to stop resin 3d printing because I couldn't get:
|
| * Solvents-- IPA, methylated spirits etc.
|
| * Nitrile/Latex Gloves
|
| * Respirators (the kind used for painting)
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > no matter what the government told people to do, there
| was going to be a contingent of people that would do the
| exact opposite because we are a stubborn and distrustful
| people.
|
| Americans are this way because the government continually
| gives them a reason to. The lying through the pandemic, the
| Iraq war, it just goes on.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| America is like that from foundation! Distrust in the
| government is in this nation's DNA! Right now Gov. Abbott
| is taking a major stand against Biden's vaccine mandates.
| kelnos wrote:
| I hear this a lot, but there's no reason why this has to
| be the case. The government has a lot to say in how much
| the people trust it. If they make the first move (and
| probably the second, and third, and fourth) in being
| trustworthy and trusting people with information, they
| can change this perception.
|
| It would take decades at minimum, probably longer than
| our lifetimes, but this doesn't need to be a foregone
| conclusion.
| ssully wrote:
| That's why I don't think it's possible. The priorities
| and operation of the government change whenever the
| administration/majority changes. Having decades of
| consistency like that just isn't going to happen.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's a fair point. This isn't something that can really
| be legislated (at least not effectively), so you need
| successive administrations to be on the same page with
| this, which isn't likely.
| colpabar wrote:
| The point of the comment you're replying to isn't that we
| don't just distrust the government _now_ , it's that
| distrusting the government was expected of all citizens
| by the people who founded the country. We have an
| amendment that basically says "if the government becomes
| tyrannical, use guns to make them stop." Some people
| think that we are _supposed_ to distrust them, _always_.
| kelnos wrote:
| No, I get that, and I explicitly reject it as "part of
| the country's DNA". Talk and assumptions like that merely
| perpetuate the status quo.
| kyleee wrote:
| It's a governance technique meant to curb excesses of the
| ruling elite, informed by the historical frequency of ill
| behaved governing bodies and their miscellaneous
| maltreatment of the governed
| ssully wrote:
| Thank you for clarifying.
|
| This is why I don't know what the right answer is on the
| messaging. The US government, and nearly every
| government, has a history of lying to people. The other
| side of the coin though is that during those early
| months, and well into lock down, everything was up in the
| air about the virus, how it transmitted, and how to fight
| it. If I was in the position of how to convey that
| information to people, in the most honest way possible, I
| don't know if I would have done a better job (or fucked
| it up even more).
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| I've disagreed with the general global response at
| essentially every step. I think any reasonable person
| would have done better, and get the feeling that there
| are likely ulterior motives and disgraceful politicised
| actions to explain how bad the response was.
|
| In particular, in the beginning there were very clear
| indications given by Taiwan and China that there was a
| dangerous virus spreading among the people. Yet sick
| Chinese people were free to spread over the world for
| months with no response except down-playing it. They
| practiced the opposite of the precautionary principle and
| horrendous risk management.
|
| When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and
| take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a
| more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can
| you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies?
| hackingforfun wrote:
| > Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the
| world for months with no response except down-playing it.
|
| > When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and
| take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a
| more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can
| you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies?
|
| Wouldn't pushing toward a more authoritarian society been
| not allowing sick Chinese people to travel?
|
| Do you think it would have been OK to implement
| restrictions at the start of the pandemic, just not now?
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Doing health checks and restricting foreign nationals
| arriving from specific high risk areas is not extreme at
| all, that has been done plenty of times. I don't think it
| is comparable at all to the unprecedented restrictions
| that become normal in the last 1-2 years.
|
| >Do you think it would have been OK to implement
| restrictions at the start of the pandemic, just not now?
|
| Yes. In the beginning nobody knew how dangerous the virus
| was, so risk management should have been much more
| strict. It could have been a virus orders of magnitude
| worse than covid.
| hackingforfun wrote:
| I still think the pandemic should be managed. I agree the
| world could've done better at the start, but I don't
| think that nothing should be done now. Just my opinion.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the
| world for months with no response except down-playing it.
| They practiced the opposite of the precautionary
| principle and horrendous risk management.
|
| At what point did the spread in the US stop being driven
| by sick Chinese people? I don't know the answer, but my
| impression was pretty darn early - far before politicians
| were taking the virus seriously as a policy issue.
| Sometime like early February or even late January.
| Jensson wrote:
| > The US government, and nearly every government, has a
| history of lying to people.
|
| This is something you should work to fix rather than just
| say things like "but the other party lies a bit more, so
| I also have to lie to defend myself! And people doesn't
| listen anyway so why does it matter if I lie?" etc. I see
| so much bullshit people use to defend their sides lies
| and deception here.
|
| To me ensuring the government stops lying and deceiving
| the public is priority number 1, every other issue is
| second to that (as long as the country remains a
| democracy). This goes for your side, no matter which side
| it is, and no matter how much the other side lies and
| deceives, I'll condemn you if you lie and deceive. If you
| disagree then you are a part of the problem, and people
| like you are the reason the government can freely lie and
| deceive the public as they do. Governments only stops
| lying and deceiving when the public strongly reacts to it
| every time they do, ignoring it just because it helps
| your cause is how they can continue to lie and deceive.
| ssully wrote:
| I agree to an extent, but at the end of the day it's
| unrealistic. The government is an entity made up of
| people with their own biases, problems, and their job on
| the line if they fuck up. I think there is a meme of
| honorable government employee who will resign before
| letting down the American people, but the reality is most
| people (and government employee's) would be more
| concerned about covering their ass.
|
| This is a long way of me saying that people are liars,
| the government is made of people, so the government will
| always lie. Same for partisan pissing matches. The
| important thing to me is how they react when new
| information comes to light, or they are caught out on
| their lies. Or when the lies are big enough (I.E. lead to
| great suffering), repercussions are put on the table.
| Jensson wrote:
| > This is a long way of me saying that people are liars,
| the government is made of people, so the government will
| always lie.
|
| I live in Sweden, and our politicians seems to be a lot
| more honest than both sides of American politics. So from
| my perspective you aren't even close to hit the
| theoretical "politicians are people, people lie" limit.
| And until you at least gets somewhat close to it I'd
| argue that you should strive for it rather than let
| politicians run wild with lies and deception as you do
| now.
|
| A good start would be to stop with the "Bundle a million
| unrelated bills and call it the 'Bill of Freedom!'" thing
| that is going on. Those bills are there to sow division
| and hate by saying things like "Our enemy are against
| freedom, vote for us to get the bill of freedom
| accepted!" etc.
| ssully wrote:
| I am willing to admit being wrong on this. I limited by
| my experience being only with the American system. From
| the inside looking out, it is very easy to fall into the
| trap of thinking fixing this system is impossible.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| If they were open and upfront about limited masks and
| reserving N95 and other PPE for healthcare workers there
| was a possibility of a social stigma of individuals buying
| up and using N95 and PPE. Like how scalpers get the stink
| eye and angry stares when they take all the toilet paper,
| hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes. Sure the masks might
| not have all gone to the right place but I imagine it would
| have been better than telling people you don't need masks.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Toilet paper shortage was caused by shift from commercial
| to residential purchasing, with different
| packaging/distribution/purchase size characteristics.
| It's not a convenient item for scalping due to low value
| per volume (comparing to hundreds of $1K iPhones easily
| fitting in a car trunk.
| ssully wrote:
| Doubtful. Just think about the toilet paper shortage; a
| common household item that never would have had a supply
| shortage if people just maintained their regular buying
| patterns.
|
| Now think of masks; a non-household item that a small
| percentage of households carried. Even if people were
| reasonable and only bought an amount to cover their
| needs, that would have introduced hundreds of millions of
| new buyers for that item.
| PeterisP wrote:
| There would have been a supply shortage even if people
| just maintained their regular buying patterns, simply
| because they started to use their home toilets much more
| and their business toilets much less, and those are
| different products (sometimes literally physically
| incompatible with the holders) with different supply
| chains, so an unexpected switch from people using product
| A to product B is inevitably going to cause a supply
| shock.
| speedybird wrote:
| Solution, be honest: _" Masks work, but we don't have
| enough and need them for hospitals so you're not allowed
| to buy any. Wrap a tshirt around your face instead, it's
| probably better than nothing."_
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The government cannot easily quickly ban the
| buying/selling of a certain thing like that. Just not how
| it works, far too slow moving.
| speedybird wrote:
| Toilet paper scalpers... Last year I scoffed at the
| people buying two or three packages of toilet paper. I
| thought that was selfish, and refused to participate in
| that hysteria. Then a few weeks later, I was wiping my
| ass with paper towels for a month because I ran out of
| toilet paper and couldn't buy more. It got me thinking
| that I should buy a bidet. It also got me thinking that
| if I had been "part of the problem" and bought more
| toilet paper than I needed, I would've had enough for
| myself.
| rfreiberger wrote:
| My father works in Taiwan and he was aware something bad
| was coming down well before it hit US news. This was late
| January 2020, and by then most all of the masks at the
| stores were sold out, followed shortly by the cleaning
| supplies. I would say the majority of buyers were shipping
| these back to family in Asia or they were prepairing for
| the peak that hit a few weeks later.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't think people assumed that it was coming to the
| US, but covid was definitely in public awareness by late
| January.
|
| Some proportion of those people are disaster preppers
| that bought a ton of masks, just like the toilet paper
| people.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _American perspective, no matter what the government told
| people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people
| that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn
| and distrustful people._
|
| Right, but you have to start somewhere. The reason we are
| distrustful is because past experience with the US
| government has taught us to be distrustful. The first time
| the US government applies this idea to trust the people and
| give truthful information, it probably won't go super well.
| People will still doubt and mistrust. Trust is built over
| time, not just by saying "yeah, we've been lying forever
| now, but trust us, we're going to start telling the truth
| now".
|
| The answer shouldn't be "well, the people aren't going to
| trust us anyway, so we shouldn't bother being truthful".
| That's just self-fulfilling the lack of trust, and
| perpetuates the problem.
|
| Someone else pointed out that telling the truth can also
| allow you to use social pressure to get what you want. As
| you point out, telling people "masks don't work so don't
| bother hoarding them" didn't work; people still hoarded
| them and there was a shortage. And people who hoarded early
| could later put on a smug grin and say, "yeah, I knew what
| was going on from the start and did the right thing". If
| the government had instead said "masks can help, but we
| need to reserve the supply for hospitals and first
| responders", then you create social stigma around hoarding
| masks. It won't stop hoarding 100%, but it can help. At
| least you probably won't be worse off than the shortages we
| ended up having anyway, and, meanwhile, you've taken a step
| that increases trust. And you paint the hoarders as anti-
| social and selfish.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > ...create social stigma around hoarding masks. It won't
| stop hoarding 100%, but it can help...
|
| That only works in a society with a certain baseline of
| trust, accountability, and empathy. If you remember 2019,
| things were already hyper-partisan, a large minority of
| the population was in a cult of disinformation, and the
| media was reeling from the shift away from print and
| moving towards a clickbaiting 24-hour news cycle.
| sandos wrote:
| Its funny with this mask thing. In Sweden we never had very
| wide mask usage, and I'm not sure what our "CDC" is saying
| about masks now, but I still think they are very sceptical
| tbh.
| valeness wrote:
| (speaking generally here at those I've seen share the same
| rage, not accusing you directly)
|
| I just cannot wrap my head around being so upset that a
| public official lied you're willing to sever friendships,
| familial ties, and sacrifice your career because you refuse
| to follow sane and frankly manageable guidelines to prevent
| the spread of COVID-19. It's not even that the messaging is
| currently or has been conflicting now. It's like carrying a
| grudge for years over the smallest of infractions. Are people
| so bored, they have nothing going on other than to get in a
| big tizzy about having to wear a mask?
|
| My life has been far more impacted by university security
| towing my car back when I was 19 and me using a credit card
| to get it back. Leaving me with debt I couldn't afford for
| the next year or so. I clearly remember my parents, and all
| adults in my life, telling me to "suck it up" when I
| complained how unfair it was. I believe I was far more
| justified using the parking space at a place I paid 6 grand a
| semester to attend than any of those adults are now to enter
| private property for free without wearing a mask.
|
| Why is it only during a global pandemic, with millions of
| lives on the line, do these same people all of a sudden care
| about the tiniest bits of hypocrisy and unfairness of our
| society? Of all the things to be upset about, they choose the
| one thing that has been proven since mid-2020 to SAVE lives?
| I literally cannot wrap my head around it. Just wear the
| fucking mask! Not wearing a mask is such a weird hill to die
| on...
| rajin444 wrote:
| You're probably overestimating covid risk (there are other
| polls similar to this one - this is the most recent):
| https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-
| estimat...
|
| The media's addiction to "scare articles" as well as the
| government's willingness to promote noble lies puts a lot
| of weight towards covid risk being heavily propagandized.
| On top of that, complying with government orders simply
| because you're afraid is a dangerous way to live.
|
| The scariest thing is how quickly propaganda can convince
| people others are not worth of life. The cheering of
| unvaccinated covid deaths is abhorrent.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I agree with you pretty much 100%. My anger is that, by not
| being truthful, I feel like health authorities played right
| into the hands of the conspiracy theorists and everyone
| trying to sow doubt that this is some big power grab.
| psychlops wrote:
| Well, it's also a big power grab so that doesn't help.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Everyone is grabbing for their own power, for their own
| reasons; they feel this tailwind but they assume that it
| means they're right, not that they're temporarily useful
| to other parties with their own agendas.
| atatatat wrote:
| Never waste a crisis.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"because you refuse to follow sane and frankly manageable
| guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19."
|
| As a point of order we can't treat "manageable guidelines"
| as a monolith as there have been a ton of "guidelines" and
| rules imposed over the last three years that were dubious,
| farcical, or overly intrusive. Like supermarkets cordoning
| off the greeting card aisle because social gatherings like
| parties were prohibited. Or gyms being told not to play
| music above a certain BPM because more intense exercise
| could enable Covid to spread more easily [1]. Going to the
| beach alone can get you arrested, but standing in a crowded
| Costco is acceptable. And so on. There's a lot more to the
| resentment and outrage than people simply being upset at
| the inconvenience of wearing a mask.
|
| Plenty of small business owners and restaurateurs had their
| livelihoods destroyed because the government went back and
| forth on restrictions and enforcement.
|
| [1] _South Korea to ban music over 120bpm in gyms, in
| response to Covid spike_ : www.koreaherald.com
| /view.php?ud=20210712000804
| nielsbot wrote:
| It doesn't have to be rational. Vaccines mandates are
| already common for school children, nurses, (and maybe
| teachers, but I'm not sure about that one)
|
| The rage over masks (and things like "CRT") is being
| intentionally stoked to win elections. The plan is to make
| it an us vs them issue. Again, it's intentional and
| cynical.
|
| If you stoke rage about mask wearing (and vaccines) you can
| position yourself as also being a valiant anti-mask/anti-
| vax candidate and win elections on this issue.
| taxicabjesus wrote:
| > If you stoke rage about mask wearing (and vaccines) you
| can position yourself as also being a valiant anti-
| mask/anti-vax candidate and win elections on this issue.
|
| I'm trying to stoke awareness of how oxygen is known to
| be toxic, how ventilation is known to be harmful, and how
| patients' oxygen levels can be improved by using the
| antidote to oxygen toxicity that has been mostly
| forgotten by Science(tm) [0]. Sometimes patients benefit
| from a little extra oxygen, but it's a very fine line
| between helpful and too much.
|
| Would I win an election? Maybe an anti-mask/anti-vax
| candidate will just adopt my term, and point out the harm
| being done: _Medical Hyperventilation_ causes the
| deterioration supposedly being treated.
|
| [0] https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-
| hyperventilat...
| danhak wrote:
| Government-imposed vaccine mandates were never common for
| access to private establishments, as is now the case in
| NYC and LA
|
| Philosophically speaking, It's one thing for the
| government to say you must be vaccinated to attend public
| school. It's quite another thing for them to say you must
| be vaccinated to enter a privately-owned gym.
| dominotw wrote:
| > The plan is to make it an us vs them issue. Again, it's
| intentional and cynical.
|
| Why doesn't everyone see things clearly for what they
| are. If its obviously 'the plan' .
| Jensson wrote:
| Because they started labelling such arguments as
| right/left wing propaganda. Labelling any criticism
| against you as enemy propaganda is a common strategy in
| authoritarian regimes, and it works really well as long
| as you have sowed enough hate against the enemy in
| people.
|
| So even though the plan might not be obvious to those who
| live in the authoritarian regime, it is often very
| obvious for outsiders that for example the democratic
| peoples republic of Korea isn't really a democratic
| republic.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I'd argue it's because propaganda works.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| >It doesn't have to be rational. Vaccines mandates are
| already common for school children, nurses, (and maybe
| teachers, but I'm not sure about that one)
|
| Even this argument ignores nuance.
|
| The vaccines in these schedules are mandated for 2
| reasons
|
| 1. The diseases they treat directly impact their
| population in a major way in large numbers
|
| 2. Immunization not only prevents the negatives impacts
| of 1, but also prevent the spread.
|
| As an exmaple for #2. Take Pertussis and TDAP. Even
| adults that have children will often get a booster. The
| reasoning is sound there, you reduce the chance of
| transmitting pertussis to an infant. This is especially
| true for premature babies that may not have had the
| chance to get the anitbodies from the mother, assuming
| she got a booster during pregnancy.
|
| As of right now. COVID-19 has a pretty small impact on
| children directly ( hospitalization rates at their peak
| were like 1.9 per 100k for under 18 [2]) . And even
| nationally its much smaller than any of the diseases used
| to compare it to (like Measles which has pretty severe
| complications in like 30% of those that contracted it,
| regardless of age [1])
|
| AND the vaccine isnt particularly proven to reduce spread
| [3]. To add insult to injury, CDC specifically stopped
| even recording breakthrough infection rates unless they
| were severe as of May 1, 2021.
|
| So it would make sense to question a vaccination mandate
| for those under 18...
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/meas.html
| [2] https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html [3]
| https://context-
| cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do....
| mcguire wrote:
| There's something horribly wrong with your link [3].
|
| " _The first study saw a drop of 78%, and the second 41%,
| in infectiousness -- with the large difference in numbers
| perhaps explained by the fact that the estimates are
| based on a very small number of vaccinated people who
| were infected and then infected others. ... The results
| correspond well with studies conducted elsewhere. One
| analysis3 of some 365,000 households in the United
| Kingdom, published on 23 June, estimated that individuals
| infected with SARS-CoV-2 were 40-50% less likely to
| spread the infection if they had received at least one
| dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or that developed by
| the University of Oxford, UK, and pharmaceutical company
| AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, UK, at least three weeks
| previously. A study4 from Finland, posted as a preprint
| on 10 July, found that spouses of infected health-care
| workers who had received a single dose of the Pfizer-
| BioNTech vaccine or that produced by Moderna in
| Cambridge, Massachusetts, were 43% less likely to get
| infected than were spouses of unvaccinated health
| workers._ "
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02054-z)
|
| " _The study shows that people who become infected with
| the Delta variant are less likely to pass the virus to
| their close contacts if they have already had a COVID-19
| vaccine than if they haven't1. But that protective effect
| is relatively small, and dwindles alarmingly at three
| months after the receipt of the second shot. ...
| Unfortunately, the vaccine's beneficial effect on Delta
| transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time.
| In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine
| developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca,
| both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close
| contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later,
| that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with
| the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread
| the virus._ "
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y)
| croutonwagon wrote:
| Maybe this. There seems to be an issue with formatting
|
| https://bit.ly/3auVBjh
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Emotions can, and often do guide people to do stupidest
| decisions of their lives that will effectively ruin it, or
| even kill them. You can't reason with such a person. And
| getting through the firewall of those emotions, for
| somebody often on the opposite side of the argument is
| practically impossible. I suspect IQ level plays a role too
| (critical thinking not only towards the world but also
| oneself).
|
| The more you push, the more resistance there is. Doesn't
| matter how right you are and how wrong they are.
|
| What covid highlighted like thermonuclear blast is how many
| people in general population are weird, naive, paranoid and
| basically... dumb, for the lack of better words. Also how
| internet amplifies the good and the bad equally.
|
| 200 years ago it would be just some random quiet weird dude
| that you don't have desire to talk to, today its a self-
| proclaimed patriot who thinks got the ultimate truth in
| contrary to general population. In their own echo chambers,
| this spirals into some pretty weird crowd mechanics.
|
| There is no win of argument. There is no going back. In
| this regard we moved a bit back to the middle ages. And
| yes, politicians fucked up pretty big time, almost every
| single one.
| tchalla wrote:
| > But instead of just saying that, the message from the vast
| majority of public health officials (and media types like
| Sanjay Gupta) was that "masks don't work for the public".
|
| The CDC never really said that "masks don't work for public"
| [0]. Some other health officials and media did. Now, if you
| relied on the CDC for information everything would be more or
| less fine. The two things that make this situation worse is -
| (1) An ever-changing landscape of information and (2) "Whom
| to listen to?" problem. We are not good at (1) itself,
| because we are terrible at updating our priors. Then, you
| throw in (2) in the mix and there's mass confusion.
|
| Zeynep Tufkeci can say that "oh tell the truth" but there's
| no guarantee that her version of communication would play
| better than what we have.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm
| crznp wrote:
| The Surgeon General tweeted [0]:
|
| > Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT
| effective in preventing general public from catching
| #Coronavirus
|
| The CDC's main page had much more nuanced advice (as of
| late March 2020) [1]:
|
| > Wear a facemask if you are sick... If you are NOT sick:
| You do not need to wear a facemask unless you are caring
| for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a
| facemask). Facemasks may be in short supply and they should
| be saved for caregivers.
|
| I agree that the distrust that we are currently seeing has
| many different sources. It is hard to have consistency when
| many different organizations are communicating their own
| messages based on different views of the problem. Even if
| you could fix that messaging, it would not have addressed
| the issue of deliberate disinformation.
|
| However, statements like that tweet from the Surgeon
| General were indefensible based on evidence and clearly
| damaging to public discourse. Not to mention being
| nonsense: why would we prioritize masks for health care
| providers if they weren't effective?
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200302023223/https://twit
| ter.c... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200325234207/htt
| ps://www.cdc.g...
| speedybird wrote:
| Maybe you really believe this, but to me it comes across as
| gas lighting. I know what I remember, all the blabbing
| heads on the media were telling us to stop buying masks
| because they won't help us. Maybe you earnestly believe
| otherwise, but I think this line of argumentation will
| never be accepted by the vax-avoident. On the contrary, it
| probably contributes to their perception that they are
| still being lied to, and consequently, will only strengthen
| their resolve.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The link you shared is from March 2021
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volu
| m...
|
| From a now-deleted tweet from February 29 2020
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://twitter.
| c...
|
| > @Surgeon_General
|
| > Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
|
| > They are NOT effective in preventing general public from
| catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't
| get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our
| communities at risk!
|
| From a now-deleted webpage
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200229164715/https://www.cdc.
| g...
|
| > CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear a
| facemask to protect themselves from respiratory diseases,
| including COVID-19.
| philovivero wrote:
| Yep. The memory-holing is already going strong. In
| another year, all those "now-deleted" links won't work
| anymore, and everyone will keep claiming the government
| never lied, and you'll be a nutter if you claim the
| government ever said masks don't work. You'll be banned
| from all forms of conversation, and labeled "alt-right."
|
| The techno-utopia is awesome.
| 18pfsmt wrote:
| Given that one of Fauci's emails shows the same opinion
| on mask inefficacy, I believe the lie came in the 180
| about face claiming they do work (and there wasn't any
| cost to imposing them).
| tinus_hn wrote:
| The reality still is, if you don't carefully specify the kind
| of masks people are supposed to use (or even specify they
| have to use non-medical masks!) the effect, if any, is so
| small it isn't measurable.
|
| It's just such a great virtue signal that people keep
| clinging to it.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| It's a damn religion at this point. The masks most people
| wear do basically nothing. Wearing an effective mask (for
| some value of "effective") is not comfortable at all!
| Natsu wrote:
| This matches a lot of my own experience in trying to convince
| people to take reasonable precautions and get vaccinated. And
| I was one of the first in line for my age group in my state.
| You have to do things to build trust first, and you have to
| be willing to admit that some of the measures taken are
| farcical and have no basis in science.
|
| People will listen to a reasonable, nuanced discussion. They
| won't listen to someone who hates them.
|
| The answer to masks being uncomfortable is to have a
| reasonable discussion about when masks are really necessary
| and which masks are good (N95), meh (surgical), or useless
| (cloth) and help people find more comfortable masks, take
| more breaks, etc. Not the Reddit way of putting up videos on
| the front page of their 109 year old grandma wearing a cloth
| mask over her oxygen mask for 5 seconds and mocking anyone
| who grumbles about how wearing a mask for an entire 12-hour
| factory shift is uncomfortable is a weak loser... missing the
| fact that they grumble because they're _actually wearing a
| mask_.
|
| If we focused more on _helping people comply_ with rules and
| _explaining things calmly and rationally_ and being clear
| about what we do and don 't know and took much softer
| approaches, this wouldn't be so bad.
|
| There are still people willing to listen out there, though.
| But not a lot of people are interested in actually talking.
| clairity wrote:
| 'just follow the rules'... that's exactly how we get the
| blind unreasonableness we're seeing everywhere. you need to
| examine your assumption that masks are doing anything at
| all in most common situations, and then consider what's
| actually reasonable vs. what you've rationalized yourself
| into.
|
| humility is missing in your thrust to convince others of
| your correctness.
| Natsu wrote:
| I think you meant to reply to someone else, because
| you're quoting words that I didn't write.
|
| If I was running things, I would tell people that they
| have no power to punish anyone whatsoever and design the
| Covid rules with that in mind, making them focused
| entirely on helping people instead of controlling them.
| jjgreen wrote:
| To be fair, "helping people comply with rules" and "just
| follow the rules" are pretty much synonymous.
| vmception wrote:
| Ha thats just the tip of the iceberg!
|
| The medical professional community still continues to blunder
| here!
|
| Exhibit A:
|
| "Ah! Its affecting young people!"
|
| _Like the 1918 flu?_
|
| "What no, people in their 50s and 60s!"
|
| _The public doesnt call this young by any colloquial
| definition, so why would you say that the one time the public
| needs communication from you?_
|
| Exhibit B:
|
| "Let's reduce potential strain on ICUs!"
|
| _yeah sure I'll stay home for that and put dating on hold
| during the prime of my life for a bit_
|
| "Let's make sure nobody gets COVID ever!"
|
| Ehhhhhh .... and now mitigation detractors all have
| ammunition to ignore every mitigation measure because it
| doesnt work 100%
| belltaco wrote:
| Edit: Everytime I point this out, I get hit by multiple
| downvotes
|
| That's a pretty poor example since people had already decided
| covid wasn't even as dangerous as the flu.
|
| The recipient of the highest civilian award in the US said
| this to his 15 million audience.
|
| >"It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet
| another element to bring down Donald Trump," Limbaugh said
| Feb. 24 on his radio show. "Now, I want to tell you the truth
| about the coronavirus ... I'm dead right on this. The
| coronavirus is the common cold, folks."
|
| >"The drive-by media hype up this thing as a pandemic,"
| Limbaugh continued.
|
| Most popular cable channel said this about Covid while Covid
| was raging in Wuhan and Italy:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Yeah you're getting downvoted because your championing
| Limbaugh and Fox News, known liars. Probably in your
| reality they're champions of truth, but seriously, your
| reality has some blind spots. Big ones.
|
| Your citing quotes from the beginning of the pandemic. Hah,
| ever noticed how situations evolve and grow? Dubya didn't
| react when he heard about a plane hitting the first WTC
| tower because like everyone else, his aides probably
| evaluated it as an accident and not the start of an attack.
|
| And sure, Limbaugh got awarded "the highest civilian
| award", but from a president who's a scumbag to a lot of
| other human beings. Biden also has this award, in your
| reality is Biden as honourable as Limbaugh? Or maybe
| Biden's medal wasn't worthy of him because it was "scumbag"
| Obama who awarded it to him?
| belltaco wrote:
| >Yeah you're getting downvoted because your championing
| Limbaugh and Fox News, known liars. Probably in your
| reality they're champions of truth, but seriously, your
| reality has some blind spots. Big ones.
|
| Uhh, I am saying the opposite. I am just pointing out the
| misinformation spread which has nothing to do with CDC
| mask advice.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| I'm not sure how your examples counter what the gp is
| saying. Are you suggesting that the government didn't need
| to lie about mask effectiveness because some people weren't
| taking COVID seriously? Because obviously enough people
| took it seriously to cause a mask shortage _anyway_.
| cjsplat wrote:
| > there was never data that said "masks don't work for the
| public"
|
| Actually there was plenty of data saying that masks don't
| work for the public.
|
| For example, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.
| 1371/journal...
|
| And there are many others - that was just an easy one I found
| today. Some similar studies even showed an increase in flu
| transmission among the subject population wearing masks.
|
| There were plenty of articles (such as the Tufekci one you
| cite) at the time explaining that normal folks don't know
| proper mask discipline, such as how to fit masks and avoid
| fomite transmission.
|
| In this situation with limited supply it makes sense to
| preserve masks for skilled people who are facing numerous
| likely transmission sources, especially on the front line of
| providing health care.
|
| The new data was that fomite transmission is not a strong
| vector for COVID19, that even modest mask technology is a
| good source transmission interrupter, and that the contagion
| window is well in advance of active symptoms.
|
| This new data meant that the flu based studies were not
| representative.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The goal of public health officials is to reduce the overall
| amount of deaths / infections / disease spread. The goal is
| _not_ to ensure maximum survivability for a specific
| individual.
|
| The mask guidance made perfect sense in this light. For the
| overall benefit of the society, masks were prioritized for
| health care professionals rather than the general public, in
| the face of limited supply. But of course wearing a mask
| improves your individual survivability so you should wear one
| even if public health officials tell you not to.
|
| The same thing is currently happening with booster (third)
| shots. For the pandemic to ease worldwide, it is deemed more
| important to send vaccines to poorer countries with low
| vaccination rates rather than using them as third shots in
| rich countries. But if you want to maximize your own chances,
| of course you should get a third shot.
|
| Public health officials deal with the whole population. You
| deal with a population size of one. It's a net win for them
| if their health policy reduced disease by a large proportion
| in one half of a population but increased it slightly in a
| different half. It's game over for you if you happen to be on
| the wrong side.
| outime wrote:
| What's more interesting is that most of these people will
| survive this episode (given the known mortality data) and thus
| will "win" the debate (from their point of view) and will never
| ever trust the government (or health authorities) again. That's
| the biggest downside in reality, and regaining the trust is
| going to be extremely complicated.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I'm not trying to be flippant when I say that it's good that
| they will not trust government again, as long as that leads
| to greater public vigilance against government's creeping
| excesses and self-serving propaganda. If it prevents the next
| Iraq war and the next Japanese internment, I'm all for it.
| ajuc wrote:
| > If it prevents the next Iraq war and the next Japanese
| internment, I'm all for it.
|
| How would it do that? Government didn't asked people about
| either of those. And if anything the people responsible for
| Iraq war will benefit from antivaxers votes.
| ssully wrote:
| Seriously. The vendiagram of people who would be for
| interment of a minority they distrust or a war for
| retribution, and the people currently rallying against
| mask/vaccine's would almost be a perfect circle.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I think that Venn diagram may have shifted a fair amount
| lately, partly because of increasing skepticism towards
| the government on the political right. When the
| government begins to portray _you_ as the enemy, it makes
| you think twice about its depiction of others.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > people who would be for interment of a minority they
| distrust
|
| If the government announced tomorrow that they would be
| putting all unvaccinated people in internment camps for
| everyone's safety, how many people do you think would be
| in favor? I've certainly seen plenty of comments on the
| internet that would suggest it's not zero.
| philovivero wrote:
| You are on hacker news. Left is good. Right is bad.
|
| Facts and reality will not change this formula.
|
| You are absolutely right. Just read the comments, not
| even "on the internet" but right here on HN. Some even
| seem in favour of a... "more extreme" solution yet than
| internment, and have not a shred of self-reflection when
| they talk a mad game about others being bad people.
| ssully wrote:
| I would like to think that is something that would be
| acceptable to a fringe minority. Mandates are one thing;
| forced detention is like multiple steps further in the
| wrong direction.
| Pxtl wrote:
| > I'm not trying to be flippant when I say that it's good
| that they will not trust government again, as long as that
| leads to greater public vigilance against government's
| creeping excesses and self-serving propaganda.
|
| These same people are hyper-credulous of extremist wingnuts
| who manipulate them, just not centrist/progressive
| politicians and news media. They're only "skeptical" of the
| mainstream.
|
| When it's climate-change on the table instead of COVID,
| they will behave the same, actively sabotaging necessary
| measures to protect the habitability of the Earth.
|
| When your grandkids ask you why your generation doomed
| them, what will you tell them?
| jobigoud wrote:
| You can't really win the debate anyway: if everybody had
| followed strict isolation from the get go there wouldn't have
| been a pandemic and people would have said the restrictions
| were completely uncalled for.
| ryathal wrote:
| This is one of the greatest falsehoods out there. A
| stricter lockdown wouldn't have changed much. Australia and
| New Zealand couldn't keep cases from popping up despite
| incredibly strict border control and lockdown procedures.
| There are also animal hosts that can incubate this virus,
| sure you can cull a mink farm, but you can't really do that
| to a wild deer herd.
| hammock wrote:
| >That's the biggest downside
|
| Downside for whom?
| sb52191 wrote:
| Society? People who want their fellow citizens to work
| toward greater goods collectively?
| hammock wrote:
| I guess we don't believe in disruption of suboptimal
| establishment forces anymore on HN.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are missing the point.
|
| Yes, lying governments don't deserve to be trusted. It is
| still unfortunate that the damage done may be so severe
| that for some people it will be irreparable. This isn't
| an absolution of the establishment, or a condemnation of
| those who lost trust.
|
| Increased barriers to developing better establishments in
| the future are still regrettable.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| Such pandemics don't start every other year. Last great one
| was 100 years ago. So i wouldn't worry at all for the
| "winners", there's plenty of time for generations to refresh.
|
| Worry about government's inability to learn and improve based
| on past mistakes, also complacency. It's not hard to imagine
| 100 years from now, popular presidential guy spearheading the
| next great pandemic, calming the subjects down with the great
| medical advancements they had since today and how well
| prepared they are. Until nature, as it always does,
| disregards everything and does its own thing unchallenged.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| ...are you not counting HIV as a recent major pandemic?
| SARS? MERS?
|
| It is also worth remembering that for decades we have been
| carefully monitoring the spread of infectious diseases to
| prevent major pandemics from forming. There was no
| political controversy surrounding those efforts prior to
| COVID19, not in the US or anywhere else.
| Izkata wrote:
| SARS and MERS never reached pandemic status. Swine flu in
| 2009 did though, and Avian flu seemed like it was going
| to in 2012 but also fell short.
| djrogers wrote:
| None of those have had the global impact of COVID-19, so
| it think it's pretty easy to not count them as on the
| same level.
| nradov wrote:
| Compared to COVID-19, HIV/AIDS has killed far more people
| worldwide and has an untreated fatality rate orders of
| magnitude higher. But it spreads and progresses more
| slowly so it seems less dramatic.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The vaccine hesitancy will impact vaccines for HPV,
| measles, HEP B, etc. etc. for generations.
| Covzire wrote:
| Most people against the COVID EUA vaccines are not anti-
| vaxx, at all.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _vaccine hesitancy will impact vaccines for HPV,
| measles, HEP B, etc. etc. for generations_
|
| This will be geographically--and, over time, economically
| --isolated.
|
| Nearly 80% of American adults and over 3/4 of eligible
| Americans have taken at least one dose of a Covid vaccine
| [1]. In the 65+ population, the figure is 95%. This
| simply isn't a big group of people, noisy as they may be.
| (Caveat: the group of people who are philosophically
| against vaccine mandates, but will get vaccinated anyway,
| is larger.)
|
| [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-
| tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-...
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Agreed, I think the effect is that there will be pockets
| where herd immunity is not reached that will be a source
| of outbreaks for years to come.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _will be a source of outbreaks for years to come_
|
| We have experience containing outbreaks in small,
| isolated groups of high-risk populations. Even in densely
| populated places, _e.g._ measles in Williamsburg. The
| advantage is you know _ex ante_ where the risk is, versus
| having the possibility of it popping up at random
| anywhere in the country.
| unanswered wrote:
| Do you have any _evidence_ that ineffective gene therapy
| hesitancy is correlated with effective vaccine hesitancy?
| skyde wrote:
| it's not just the vaccine most of those people dont
| believe germs and virus are real. So I bet they will also
| stop washing hands or taking anti-biotic.
| outime wrote:
| I personally think we should stop labeling a whole
| diverse group under the most stupid categorization we can
| think of. Media is also guilty of this, for example when
| some outlet posted something like "anti-vaxxers are now
| drinking betadine" despite being an isolated act of
| stupidity. This type of confrontation will only yield
| more division and therefore enhance distrust.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I wonder, do we expect the rate of pandemics to increase or
| decrease over time?
|
| On the one hand, you might assume the rate of pandemics is
| proportional to the size of the human population; more
| people, more hosts for mutating viruses, greater odds of
| one mutating to a pandemic-causing disease. There have been
| roughly 400 billion person-years lived since the last
| pandemic, but given the larger populations, we'd expect to
| accumulate another 400 billion person-years by around 2070.
|
| On the other hand, you might assume the rate of pandemics
| is proportional to the size of the _animal populations_
| humans interact with. More animals to breed the viruses,
| more interactions to pass along the next candidate
| pandemic. In this case, we might expect more than a century
| for the next pandemic, since the next century isn 't
| expected to be nearly as kind to animal populations.
|
| (Obviously the situation is more complicated than an
| either-or, and has many contributing factors, and is
| stochastic in any case.)
| ralph84 wrote:
| Whether you believe SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab or not,
| the fact is the technology for engineering pandemic-
| causing viruses exists and hostile regimes have given no
| assurances that they won't continue to develop that
| technology, so we're well beyond any limits imposed by
| mutation and natural selection.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Tinkering with virus genetics is arguably high school
| level, garage lab science at this point, advantaged by
| mass production of almost everything you need, rna
| editing and crispr methodologies are well beyond
| published and into the "follow this tutorial to make a
| glowing frog/beer/bunny"and "here's how to add arbitrary
| sequences to rna."
|
| It's almost certain that bad actors will make use of the
| available tech. We'll likely see many synthetic plagues
| before regulation and international controls catch up.
| nverno wrote:
| But the upside is that hopefully the govt/health authorities
| will learn a lesson and be better in the future. Id say in
| these situations any fallout is always the govt's fault since
| it is there to serve the people- a case of the customer is
| always right.
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > But the upside is that hopefully the govt/health
| authorities will learn a lesson and be better in the
| future.
|
| But there's only so much they can do. Sowing distrust has
| proven to provide short-term self-benefit to many powerful
| interests (e.g. political factions, partisan media). Even
| if the health authorities have a perfect strategy, those
| interests will find an opening to subvert it (e.g.
| portraying initial confusion as lying).
| Jensson wrote:
| In a multi party system sowing distrust in an opposing
| party doesn't help your party, it mostly helps parties
| adjacent to that party. So then the goal becomes to be as
| trustworthy as possible to the public rather than make
| the public hate the enemy. It really solves many of these
| issues.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > In a multi party system sowing distrust in an opposing
| party doesn't help your party, it mostly helps parties
| adjacent to that party. So then the goal becomes to be as
| trustworthy as possible to the public rather than make
| the public hate the enemy. It really solves many of these
| issues.
|
| Does it through? I suppose what I had in mind wasn't so
| much narrowly-focused electioneering, but broader and
| somewhat sloppy gesticulations towards an ideological
| tendency. For instance, if there were two left-wing
| parties, a Rush Limbaugh could get both of them by
| encouraging his listeners to distrust the "left."
| PeterisP wrote:
| The voters of those left-wing parties identify as "left"
| so if a Rush Limbaugh encourages people to distrust the
| "left" then those voters simply distrust Rush Limbaugh
| instead of altering their vote. If he points out that
| Left-1 party with shit, Left-2 gains voters; if he points
| out a scandal in Left-2, Left-1 gains voters; if he
| points out that both Left-1 and Left-2 have a horrible
| foreign policy, there's likely Left-3 that opposes Left-1
| and Left-2 on that policy, but he won't convince them to
| vote for a Right party if there are reasonable Left
| options. Unlike the two-party scenario where you might
| disagree with your "main" party on a single key issue and
| thus feel forced to vote for "the other" party, in a
| multi-party environment you generally choose an
| alternative that's quite close in other aspects as well.
| chaostheory wrote:
| You forgot to mention masks. Early in the pandemic, US health
| authorities were adamant that masks weren't needed. Only months
| later did they later admit that it was done due to the mask
| shortage for medical professionals.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/19/health/face-masks-us-guidance...
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/10/8298906...
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/who-changes-covid...
|
| Is it a surprised that trust in Western public institutions are
| at a low?
| rob_c wrote:
| Not just US, I would say there's a large number of very well
| educated people even in well off countries who have a large
| amount of hesitation toward this mainly due to information
| handling and lack of transparency. (Yes there is a very vocal
| anti-vax nut job crowd, but frankly that will always be there,
| and is always different to those who object to policy decisions
| on moral grounds of their failings and the deaths that poor
| policy leads to)
|
| The only nice message for "please take a vaccine for something
| that won't kill you "is "please take it to stop it killing
| others". Given the USA seems to treat getting ill as a personal
| failing that will destroy your life and society turns it's back
| on you I'm not shocked that it would fall on deaf ears.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think distrust is a larger extant problem for a variety of
| reasons. Antivax is a manifestation of it, but not unique.
|
| In my personal life, I was deeply affected by the guidance
| that was given by authorities on 9/11 re: evacuation. The
| decision made by the police was pragmatic "we don't know the
| downside of evacuation, which creates more problems as the
| situation at ground level is bad", but killed more people
| than it saved. I have a close friend who is alive today
| because he chose to ignore the instructions, and has suffered
| from survivors guilt for not taking more people with him.
|
| My way of handling that is that I get well acquainted with my
| buildings and evacuation procedures, and get myself and my
| people out if anything happens, and don't care about the PA.
| It's a selfish position that may create more hazards to
| others, but that's my position.
|
| I think antivax and hesitancy is a similar attempt to address
| risk, but with an impact that mostly affects others. The same
| industry that gave you opioid addiction gives you a vaccine.
| The vocal anti-everything people are able to pull on that
| string of doubt.
| speedybird wrote:
| > _In my personal life, I was deeply affected by the
| guidance that was given by authorities on 9 /11 re:
| evacuation. The decision made by the police was pragmatic
| "we don't know the downside of evacuation, which creates
| more problems as the situation at ground level is bad", but
| killed more people than it saved. I have a close friend who
| is alive today because he chose to ignore the instructions,
| and has suffered from survivors guilt for not taking more
| people with him._
|
| The Grenfell Tower fire in London is another example of
| this. If you look at the official timelines for the fire;
| when the fire was reported, when the fire spread, when the
| fire started killing people, one thing becomes clear: if
| building evacuation had begun when the fire was reported,
| then few if any would have died.
|
| Official instructions for people living in London highrises
| was, and to my knowledge still is, to stay put. The
| building only had one staircase and everybody rushing for
| it might have caused a stampede... except that was bad
| advice even so. The fire was called in at 0:54 and isn't
| known to have spread to another unit until 1:15, _more than
| twenty minutes later._ If a building wide fire alarm had
| triggered an evacuation at 0:54, there would have been
| plenty of time to get virtually everybody out through that
| single staircase. The first reports of people trapped by
| smoke arrived by 1:30, nearly 40 minutes after the fire was
| called in; 40 minutes after the general evacuation _could_
| have begun. A general evacuation was not called until 2:47,
| nearly two hours after the fire was called in. Two hours
| too late.
|
| My two take-aways from this: I have a lot _more_ trust in
| American fire codes, particularly an appreciation for the
| importance of running general evacuation drills twice a
| year (the whole building clears out easily in five
| minutes.) And secondly, that I would never trust the
| British government 's recommendations in an emergency; I
| would look out for myself instead and evacuate immediately,
| damn the consequences.
| djrogers wrote:
| I don't think it's an issue of seeing illness as a personal
| failing - that's just dismissive and an unhelpful
| characterization.
|
| People I know that choose to not get vaccinated yet are
| largely resistant to the 'do it for others' push because
| we've been told that the vaccine is so effective that the
| 'others' should be safe anyway, unless they've chosen not to
| get the vaccine too. That leaves these people with a risk
| assessment based solely on their own health, age, etc.
| tomp wrote:
| > "please take it to stop it killing others"
|
| Given that the vaccine doesn't work to stop transmissions,
| I'd reckon this was just another way for the "experts" to
| further loose trust with the public.
| [deleted]
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Given that the vaccine doesn't work to stop
| transmissions,
|
| Nothing is perfect, but vaccination reduces transmission
| significantly:
|
| > Two studies from Israel, posted as preprints on 16 July,
| find that two doses of the [Pfizer] vaccine ... are 81%
| effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. And
| vaccinated people who do get infected are up to 78% less
| likely to spread the virus to household members than are
| unvaccinated people.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02054-z
| rob_c wrote:
| The experts selling it? The experts politically mandating
| the pisspoor sales contracts?
|
| Or the experts who say a natural response to covid is
| better and that they'll be sued for saying this publically
| after the reddit "I know science mob" is through with
| them?...
|
| Frankly it was about capacity. If enough get critically
| I'll we go into triage and kill oaps by prioritising
| treatment. The fact the vaccine is linked with less severe
| symptoms proves it would statistically save lives. The
| crowd insisting children get vaxed are just hypochondriacs
| or those who fail to understand statistics. (Or those
| refusing to share vaccines with the at risk in foreign
| countries who will almost certainly die compared to have to
| take time off school...)
| tomp wrote:
| Looks like we agree? That people should take the vaccine
| _to save themselves_ (from having to go into the hospital
| and be triaged...)
| jeromegv wrote:
| Just look at data of percentage of people vaccinated in the
| western world where supply is actually available for anyone
| to take the vaccine right now. The US is last.
|
| There is something specific to the US here.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The more I deal with various government systems/entities, the
| more I realize the level of incompetence and misinformation
| that exists. Also the lack of transparency and
| accountability.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yes, it's clearly the mainstream media and politicians fault
| that they had to hedge some of their bets because they're
| unsure about certain details and the public freaks out when
| they have to change their statements when facts change or
| become more concrete. Totally their fault.
|
| And not the fault of the vast network of extremists spreading
| FUD. Totally not those people's fault.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| With how governments have behaved I absolutely understand why
| people would distrust them and to be honest, I have absolutely
| zero trust in government right now too. They put politics and
| driving wedges between people to further entrench their
| positions (a bunch of provinces and our feds all called snap
| elections during Covid) over honesty and people. Even now
| instead of trying to assuage the fears of the vaccine hesitant,
| they just demonise and threaten them.
|
| Personally, the only trust I have is that a bunch of PhDs
| making vaccines care about solving a hard problem, so I got the
| vaccine. Not that I was ever worried about Covid itself, I had
| Covid during wave 1, had contact with a bunch of Covid positive
| people in wave 2 without contracting it again, etc...
| zionic wrote:
| >They put politics and driving wedges between people to
| further entrench their positions
|
| The current vice president of the united states when on tv in
| 2020 telling the world she wouldn't take "trumps rushed
| vaccine".
| larkost wrote:
| This is a complete mischaracterization, and bordering on a
| lie at this point.
|
| She was very specific about not taking it because President
| Trump said so (rightly, given Trump's history of promoting
| improving treatments). But you don't have to take my work
| for it, read her's:
|
| "If Dr. Fauci, the doctors, tell us that we should take it,
| I'll be the first in line to take it. But if Donald Trump
| tells us we should take it, I'm not going to take it."
|
| Only by omitting the first line can you argue that she was
| going to refuse the vaccine. And that is exactly what many
| Right-wing outlets have been doing, and that is a lie.
| ars wrote:
| Your characterization is even more misleading than
| theirs. Do you seriously think Trump created the vaccine
| himself and it didn't go through the FDA and scientists
| or anything else?
|
| The mere existence of the vaccine should be enough for
| her but no if Trump said something she won't take it.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| Ironically, those PHDs you trust are the most hesitant
| [deleted]
| nokcha wrote:
| That study turned out to be based on unreliable self-
| reported education level:
|
| https://coronavirus.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-PhDs-are-
| the-m...
| larkost wrote:
| Source please. I know a number of PHDs, and they were all
| early in line to get vaccines. I have not seen numbers for
| PHDs (only MDs), but I would be willing to wager that the
| vaccine rates for PHDs have been high the whole time.
| Certainly not without notable exceptions, but you get kooks
| in every group.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Talking about the ones specifically working for the
| pharmaceuticals. I don't particularly like the companies,
| but I trust that the smart people working for them want to
| solve problems.
|
| Don't really care about the opinions of any random PhD (I
| know a few, most know their field and little else).
| SquishyPanda23 wrote:
| > The flip side that wasn't discussed
|
| This has been discussed ad nauseam. Nature isn't a foreign
| policy magazine, so it's not really the greatest place for
| advising how the US should respond to a disinformation
| campaign. But communicating about healthcare policy seems to be
| reasonably in its area of expertise.
|
| > The flip side that wasn't discussed is the belittling and
| censoring of voices that were skeptical of the narratives,
| which engendered even more distrust
|
| The disinformation campaign was allowed to got on essentially
| unchecked for a long time because it was politically sensitive
| to speak publicly about it. As we started to get more
| confirmation that it was being funded by foreign governments
| (e.g. [0]), pushback against the disinformation became
| stronger.
|
| > Their strategy of information control backfired, and they
| doubled down. Now we've got a huge swath of US citizens that
| will never take the vaccine.
|
| I am highly skeptical there is any evidence for the causality
| you are implying here.
|
| A disinformation campaign like this is an attack on Americans
| by a foreign military. People may reasonably disagree about how
| it should be handled, but at some point citizens have a right
| to defend their country from attacks.
|
| [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-disinformation-
| campaign...
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| >censoring of voices that were skeptical of the narratives
|
| Much of what you describe as 'censoring' was focused on
| stopping the promotion of false cures eg Hydroxychloroquine,
| Ivermectin, H2O2 nebulization etc. This type of speech is
| already highly regulated, as most people lack the capacity to
| 'do their own research' regarding a drug's safety or efficacy.
| nokcha wrote:
| >This type of speech is already highly regulated,
|
| Commercial speech (e.g., advertising) about drugs is highly
| regulated, but speech of ordinary citizens (who don't have a
| financial interest in the drugs being discussed) isn't
| regulated by the government since it is protected by the
| First Amendment.
| timr wrote:
| > Much of what you describe as 'censoring' was focused on
| stopping the promotion of false cures eg Hydroxychloroquine,
| Ivermectin, H2O2 nebulization etc.
|
| HCQ, while it has been bourne out that it doesn't work, was a
| _perfect example_ of miscommunication and "protective
| censorship" breeding public mistrust: the initial papers that
| cast doubt on HCQ were _based on fabricated data_. Based on
| this initial bit of false data and (a strong helping of the
| stupidest kind of politics) the media jumped head-first into
| censorship and ridicule. The clinical trials for HCQ were
| halted (ugh). And then they were shown to be basing that on
| fabricated data. It was an utter disaster:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/two-elite-medical-
| jo...
|
| Subsequently, while I don't personally believe that
| Ivermectin works, we're still waiting for clinical trials to
| complete. Let's keep a tighter grip on our horses, please.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I feel like you're discounting the fact that these
| "prescriptions" didn't just manifest from the aether.
| _Someone_ started the idea of these particular medications
| being effective. And not having a clinical trial means
| _neither_ side has been proven correct. So where are people
| getting the idea from in the first place? That source is as
| much mis- or even dis-information as the subsequent
| attempts at damage control by the authorities. But yet it
| 's given a complete pass in your comment?
| timr wrote:
| > Someone started the idea of these particular
| medications being effective.
|
| The original claims of HCQ's effectiveness against Covid
| came from doctors in China, early in 2020. At least,
| these were the first reports I was aware of.
| notahacker wrote:
| People were dying from self-administered HCQ as a supposed
| prophylactic because politicians seeking to downplay the
| severity of COVID were contradicting their health officials
| and insisting that it would work miracles and should be
| available outside hospitals long before that reprehensible
| fake "study" came out. And yes, they were ridiculed for it
| by certain sections of the media, and rightly so. That
| "study" certainly made things worse, but it was far from
| the only source of doubt on hydrochloroquine hype, and a
| study published in May can't be blamed for a pattern which
| started in March.
| timr wrote:
| > People were dying from self-administered HCQ as a
| supposed prophylactic
|
| Yes, "people are dying" is the favored rallying cry for
| any number of poorly considered, knee-jerk reactions to
| unfortunate events.
|
| It's a big country. People die from lots of things every
| day, including a staggering number of people who die from
| overdoses from innocuous medications. A surprising number
| of these people poison themselves with supplements in the
| name of "healthy living" (leading to thousands of ED
| visits a year), but we don't seem to be eager to leap to
| censorship and ridicule for that problem:
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/harmful-effects-of-
| suppl...
|
| We don't change the parameters of science because of a
| few cherry-picked examples, and we shouldn't engage in
| censorship of factual information because "people are
| dying".
| notahacker wrote:
| > and we shouldn't engage in censorship of factual
| information because "people are dying".
|
| It's not 'censorship of factual information' for a
| private service to choose to put health warnings against
| or delete fact free claims of HCQ as a miracle cure.
| Indeed "healthy living" supplement hucksters are
| ridiculed and kicked off platforms on a regular basis,
| even when some of the claims they make about "healthy
| living" have a tenuous connection to fact.
|
| We don't change the parameters of science to pretend that
| people insisting that a pandemic isn't a threat because
| self-administering a moderately dangerous drug is
| effective prophlaxis are presenting "factual information"
| because the people doing so are supporters of politicians
| rather than pill vendors.
|
| All of which is tangential to my original point which is
| that "HCQ is a miracle cure" became a meme entirely
| divorced from the tentative (and probably manipulated)
| evidence of therapeutic benefit _well before_ attempts to
| shut it down or the Surgisphere "study", so I can't
| imagine why more blame is apportioned to them than the
| public figures making evidence-free claims about it from
| the very beginning.
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| >A surprising number of these people poison themselves
| with supplements
|
| Supplements are regulated in the US as foods, not drugs.
| If the makers of these supplements claim they treat, cure
| or diagnose any disease the claims can be censored.
|
| >we shouldn't engage in censorship of factual information
|
| Most of what was said about fake covid cures was not
| factual and/or exaggerated. The case could certainly be
| made that many of those promoting said solutions stood to
| benefit commercially and politically from spreading the
| false information (including many senior politicians).
| notahacker wrote:
| And of course the promotion of quack cures (including at the
| highest levels of government and some of the highest profile
| media personalities) came before some media outlets decided
| to censor some of them. Nobody honestly believes that
| everybody would have ignored the likes of the last POTUS or
| Joe Rogan if Facebook et al had amplified that message rather
| than deleting or fact checking it
| ajvs wrote:
| Highly regulated how? There was no censorship on people
| recommending alternative health treatments online until
| COVID-19 came.
|
| Additionally ivermectin is not a cure, it instead has proven
| effectiveness in attenuating the duration and severity of
| symptoms. That the scientific studies demonstrating this are
| not allowed to be even discussed on major social media
| platforms is a red flag.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| You've got a huge swath of america who doesn't want the vaccine
| because they either have superior natural immunity already OR
| understand that the virus poses little-to-no-risk to them or
| their family. Covid is essentially equal to the flu in terms of
| mortality for people under ~55 and children are virtually
| immune from serious Covid illness.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >Covid is essentially equal to the flu in terms of mortality
| for people under ~55 and children are virtually immune from
| serious Covid illness.
|
| Previously this would've been "COVID misinformation", but it
| isn't anymore as the NYT said it this morning. I'd quibble a
| bit about natural immunity being "superior" but honestly who
| knows anymore.
|
| FTA:
|
| >For children without a serious medical condition, the danger
| of severe Covid is so low as to be difficult to quantify.
|
| [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/briefing/covid-age-
| risk-i...
| Pxtl wrote:
| > The flip side that wasn't discussed is the belittling and
| censoring of voices that were skeptical of the narratives,
| which engendered even more distrust
|
| Oh yeah, a group of people pushing ideas that got thousands
| upon thousands of people killed and jammed up ICUs leading to
| necessary surgeries being postponed by vomiting out a sewage-
| pipe of bad-faith arguments and disinformation. It's clearly
| not okay that we were derisive to those statements.
|
| I mean, look how well politely ignoring conspiracy theorists
| for a decade worked out. That totally had no unforeseen
| consequences, right?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| And there has been this background ambient energy of "Big
| Pharma is evil, the Sacklers ..." (which I find rather
| scapegoaty for the Sacklers in particular) which just
| immediately ran afoul of "You should definitely trust in these
| vaccines produced by Big Pharma, the ones we have been telling
| you are so greedy/evil/incompetent."
|
| Then you have some discussion of what "gain of function" means
| and ...
|
| Well, the distrust the American public has in Science! has been
| earned over decades. The ever-changing food pyramid (according
| to the whims of whatever lobbying group), reefer madness scares
| leading cannibis to be Schedule I of all things (harmful, of no
| utility), cigarettes are healthy, we need to put these forever
| chemicals into your sofas so you don't catch on fire (oh well
| they don't work but we are leaving them in), thalidomide,
| diethylstilbesterol ...
|
| And all of it has been sold with a pat and a don't worry your
| pretty head about it. COVID-19 is just another photon in the
| background radiation of Science We Tell You To Trust.
|
| It's a shame, my BS was in a hard science, but when I run into
| skeptics, well, they've learned it and we've earned it.
| mindslight wrote:
| Is this not the same pattern that happens to every human
| endeavor though, and not just science? Business interests
| step in and market themselves as good faith experts creating
| enlightened progress, when really they're con artists trading
| on the reputation of the real experts to sell harmful
| products.
|
| The same problem happens in the tech world with two decades
| of "don't be evil" and messaging about the fantastic future,
| culminating in the Big Tech dystopia. The whole time it has
| been obvious they've been building a massive humanity-
| crushing surveillance/control machine. But up until recently,
| even on HN, the prevailing groupthink has been to
| unquestioningly drink the corporate kool aid. "It's hard to
| get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on
| his not understanding it"
|
| Technologists, scientists, etc themselves aren't the problem.
| The real problem is that our society encourages con men at
| every turn - from the individual rejection of boring experts
| (filled in by charismatic charlatans), to advertising (since
| everything is relative, fraud is fine), to the utter lack of
| punishment after a con blows up ("white collar crime"). We've
| put business expedience above honesty, essentially equating
| morality with profitability, with the result being that every
| institution has become hollow.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| > the ones we have been telling you are so
| greedy/evil/incompetent."
|
| I haven't seen any claims of incompetency, only of greed (to
| the lev of being evil) - is that an actual theme or did you
| just lump that in? It's a significant different in this
| context.
| iammisc wrote:
| The American has good reason to distrust science (see my
| other comments), but Thalidomide is not one of them. To its
| credit, the FDA did not approve thalidomide at the same time
| as other countries thus mainly preventing the birth defects.
|
| Of course, then you read about Diethylstillbesterol, and your
| faith in american public scientists is once again crushed.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment of this article, but I'm noticing that
| some folks can't determine fact from fiction even when presented
| with data that supports the facts or makes them irrefutable. No
| amount of logic, facts, or transparency will be enough for these
| folks, and while I can appreciate a skeptic, some of these people
| are beyond basic help and need professional guidance.
| specialist wrote:
| Our current epistemological crisis has been decades in the
| making.
|
| The modern No Knowings utterly reject facts, truth,
| objectivity.
|
| Aka Nihilism.
| [deleted]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It certainly does not help that search will cater to whatever
| it is you are looking for with helpful articles supporting just
| about any viewpoint.
|
| To your point, if there is no helping 'these folks', the
| logical conclusion is to take guardrails down and let god sort
| them out.
|
| I will admit I am still coming to terms with all this.
| mmmpop wrote:
| It feels like a game of political chicken to me.
|
| Like, "if you won't trust the voting public enough to give them
| the whole truth and instead treat them like blubbering fools,
| how can you--with a straight face--pretend that their ability
| to pick leaders or vote on actual issues is a correct way to
| run a country?"
|
| So instead of compliance, they'll bring the whole damn thing
| down in protest. I don't think the plurality of those who
| refuse the vaccine actively deny the existence of the virus, or
| even the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. I feel they're
| just absolutely sick of the hypocrisy and pandering by
| "leaders" who refuse to lead by example on much of anything.
|
| As many before me have said, you'll always have the kooks that
| deny science but I honest-to-God think those are the minority.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > how can you--with a straight face--pretend that their
| ability to pick leaders or vote on actual issues is a correct
| way to run a country?"
|
| By arguing that the other options are worse. Democracy and
| the separation of powers do not result in great decision
| making. But it also serves as a significant barrier against
| absolutely horrible decision making, placing it above the
| other choices.
| mmmpop wrote:
| What separation of power? The country is run by executive
| fiat and every 4 years the law of the land takes an about
| face when the next guy comes along to rip up the old guy's
| diktats. The US legislative branch is kabuki theater and
| the judicial branch is disgustingly partisan.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Executive orders only allow decisions within the scope of
| existing laws. So you can move enforcement resources
| around to prioritize certain things, direct the military
| to hit different targets, etc. But the executive branch
| can't just stand up a new daycare program. In plenty of
| other countries, a change in party control leads to wild
| changes. Not in the USA.
|
| And whether the legislative branch is theatrical and the
| judicial branch partisan has nothing to do with the
| separation of powers. Ok, so they may not work all that
| well. They are still constrained significantly by each
| other.
| joncrane wrote:
| What are you doing about it?
| mmmpop wrote:
| Uhhh, voting? What the hell else is there to do, write to
| my crooked senator? Tweet to the ether about my woes?
|
| Some people decided to vote for some asshole business guy
| because it was at least something new and different, but
| that didn't go over so well.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I think you're right. In my opinion, the republic is
| unraveling. Roman Empire 2.0.
| Loughla wrote:
| That is really flippant and cynical sounding, but you're
| right. Seriously. What was the last, actual, substantive
| piece of legislation to come out of the legislature?
|
| I work in higher education, and a new higher education
| act has been just over the horizon since what, 1999?
| Nothing changes, except that which can be changed via
| executive order, or can be sued and changed in well-
| established and forecasted voting patterns via the
| judiciary.
| jnorthrop wrote:
| > If you won't trust the voting public enough to give them
| the whole truth and instead treat them like blubbering fools,
| how can you--with a straight face--pretend that their ability
| to pick leaders or vote on actual issues is a correct way to
| run a country?
|
| Mr. Politician replies, "I trust the individuals that voted
| for me. They're smart. Its the public in general that can't
| be trusted."
| skyde wrote:
| the general public are not the one that decide who get a Phd
| or MD the expert are the one doing it.
|
| It make sense that the expert don't trust the general public
| with health decision. If you are not convinced just head over
| to https://www.youtube.com/c/ChubbyemuGames/videos
| mmmpop wrote:
| Maybe the general public should spend more time electing
| MDs and PhDs to run the government then? Instead we get
| bullshitters and grifters who defer to life-long
| bureaucrats with an MD of a PhD who suck-up to the right
| people to get the job, regardless of their actual
| competence. People tend to mistrust government "experts"
| because the feeling is that if they were better at their
| jobs, they'd obviously be in the private sector. This isn't
| always true but many people feel that way, like it or not.
| angelzen wrote:
| There are a a dozen and a half physicians in Congress.
| Their political affiliation may be surprising.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicians_in_the_United_St
| ate...
| mmmpop wrote:
| I knew it already, but wouldn't be surprised. One party
| appeals to emotion and hides the abject corruption. The
| other appeals more to reason (and for better or worse,
| Jesus) but is a bit more frank about their objectives and
| corruption.
| lovecg wrote:
| This characterization is so alien to me. If you didn't
| mention Jesus I would have no idea which is which.
| Wondering why you think that way?
| betterunix2 wrote:
| People tend to mistrust government experts when
| politicians tell them to mistrust government experts.
| Republicans who say they do not trust the CDC on COVID
| have no such doubts about the DEA, whose decisions on
| drug policy are just blindly trusted, simply because
| Republican leaders have told everyone not to trust the
| CDC. People do not simply draw their own conclusions;
| like it or not, everyone is influenced by the people
| around them and people tend to line up behind their
| leaders.
| Levitz wrote:
| What about the times in which there was plenty of such data,
| only for it to be false in the end, say, typical conspiracy
| turned true like MKULTRA or NSA?
|
| Bear with me, not every country has as many people doubting
| their government, the bottom line in my opinion is that public
| trust in the government has been eroded so much that this
| happens and these people are aware that the government is
| capable of spinning lies that seem completely true, so why
| believe them at all?
| lovecg wrote:
| Implicit in this argument is that Americans ever did trust
| their government. Has that actually ever been the case? I
| mean the whole country is founded on distrust of government
| as one of the principles.
| rob_c wrote:
| It doesn't help when politicians are lying or lying by
| omission. At that point those who don't know better don't know
| where to turn for information.
|
| The UK has branded the official death stats as misinformation
| numerous times in the press and interviews to avoid getting
| into details of how they screwed up in response to all this...
|
| It's not always the fault of those led astray and I'm sure
| there's a suitable parable about a bad shepherd or something...
|
| Someone believing untruths is different to the nutters burning
| down 5G masts mind, but yes I worry about when misinformation
| reaches critical mass...
| DuskStar wrote:
| This is of course true for people on both sides of the
| political aisle, but for different subjects.
| mc32 wrote:
| Quite. I watched a debate between Scott Horton and Bill
| Kristol.
|
| Watching Kristol remain steadfast in his position despite all
| evidence is pretty amazing. Horton wasn't perfect either but
| at last he had evidence on his side.
| rytor718 wrote:
| I think in the US our situation was pretty dire from the start
| in regards to misinformation: the president and his staff were
| saying a ton of crazy crap from day one, from denial, to
| downplaying to telling people to effectively drink bleach.
| Pretty clear cut why we have trust issues right now and people
| denying _any_ information about Covid at all. I mean the
| article raises great points, but the US hasn 't had that
| problem, because its' been blatant misinformation with no
| attempt to tether it to any reality from the start. The trust
| was never there and I'd love to read more articles about how to
| repair _that_.
|
| But it has been interesting to see these dynamics described in
| the article in play out in other Western countries. I have to
| agree that we have to trust the public, but its conclusion --
| that the people _will not_ trust the government otherwise -- is
| sage. US currently is struggling to claw back any trust. We 're
| in very dire straits.
|
| EDIT: formatting.
| k1ko wrote:
| It's ironic that you seem to be a victim of misinformation
| yourself. Trump never came close to telling people to drink
| bleach. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/electio
| ns/2020...
| ISL wrote:
| From CDC's Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (2018):
|
| 1. Be First
|
| 2. Be Right.
|
| 3. Be Credible.
|
| 4. Express Empathy.
|
| 5. Promote Action.
|
| 6. Show Respect.
|
| https://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/ppt/CERC_Introduction.pdf
|
| https://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/manual/index.asp
| buescher wrote:
| There are circles in which credibility and plausibility is more
| important than honesty - can we assume the CDC is one? (even
| "being right" is importantly different from "telling the
| truth")
| lamontcg wrote:
| The big problem is what to do when "Be Right" is vague because
| information is poor and you're dealing with a society where
| black and white thinking is rampant. Combined with a largely
| complete lack of understanding of the actual messiness of the
| scientific method.
| cloverich wrote:
| It's as easy as saying "X seems like the best bet, because Y,
| but we need more evidence (which we'll get via Z around time
| T) to be certain".
| lamontcg wrote:
| The problem is that a good chunk of society views science
| as it should be infallible and its a failure if its not.
| And scientists tend to default to "50-50" kinds of language
| when they're dealing with uncertainty, and tend to overly
| emphasize uncertainty.
|
| I'd kind of like to see science communicators start talking
| in the language of sports betting when it comes to
| uncertainty instead.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| So... Are those listed in order of importance?
| calebm wrote:
| There is an inherent trade-off between being first and being
| right.
| lolsal wrote:
| They are not exclusive.
| [deleted]
| g42gregory wrote:
| I personally find these principles coming from CDC, against the
| backdrop of their actions lately, very hypocritical.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| Right now the CDC continues on its crusade against natural
| immunity, despite the dozens of studies proving otherwise. It's
| understandable how public health policy has it pitfalls, but
| completely dismissing elementary biology is another shot in the
| foot.
| sk2020 wrote:
| "How can we put a meter on it?"
|
| -JP Morgan (he/him)
| kyrra wrote:
| WSJ has a commentary piece in today's paper that is similar but
| also important. The jist I get out of it is that science is ever
| evolving and there is no "trust the science", as it just gives us
| data and is not an absolute truth. Science can provide varying
| levels of certainty on given part of a subject, but running
| around and invoking science for policy decisions is a bad plan
| when there isn't solid data backing it.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/partisan-science-antiscience-fa...
|
| Mirror: https://archive.is/GwRw1
| shockeychap wrote:
| "One had better be scrupulously honest before asking people to
| surrender their own judgment and simply believe what they are
| told."
|
| Couldn't have said it better myself.
| CivBase wrote:
| There are still many people - especially in the US - who are
| concerned about (or adamantly opposed to) receiving the COVID-19
| vaccine. While this is often framed as a conservative-vs-liberal
| issue within the US, that doesn't line up with the data.
| Vaccination rates seem to correlate more strongly with a group's
| trust in the government. Conservatives do tend to have less trust
| in the government than liberals, but the difference is even more
| pronounced when comparing affluent groups to historically
| marginalized groups - regardless of political leanings.
|
| Trust is hard to earn and easy to spend. But it is an invaluable
| resource for a government to have. Hopefully we learn that some
| day.
| veltas wrote:
| What are the hard truths?
| calebm wrote:
| Vaccines are not risk-free.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| No one said they weren't
| switch007 wrote:
| They certainly weren't talking about the risks and side
| effects when telling the entire country the only way to get
| your life and rights back is to take the vaccine. The
| message was: get the vaccine, get the vaccine, get the
| vaccine, do your moral duty
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Because the risks of not getting the vaccine are orders
| of magnitude higher than the risks of getting the
| vaccine. It's absolutely insane that were still having
| this conversation at this point.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Not for young people
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Yes, even for young people. Even when you look at the
| side-effects of the vaccine, they tend to be _more_
| common among people who get the virus. For example,
| myocarditis is several times more common among young
| people who get CoVID-19 than among young people who get
| vaccinated.[1] Given that everyone is eventually going to
| get infected or vaccinated, getting vaccinated probably
| significantly decreases the risk of myocarditis among
| young people.
|
| 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But, see, people don't work that way. If you say that the
| risk of dying from Covid is 1%, and the risk from the
| vaccine is 0.001%, (at least some) people can look at
| those numbers and figure out what's reasonable to do. But
| if you say that the risk from Covid is 1% and the vaccine
| is "safe", then people think you mean the risk from the
| vaccine is 0, and they say, "You're lying; my cousin's
| co-worker's nephew got sick from it", and they will
| refuse to take it.
|
| Be honest about the risk of the vaccine. It's less, but
| it's not zero. Tell people that - _all_ of that. Neither
| BSing them nor trying to force them has worked; try
| telling them the truth. Officially, consistently, tell
| them all of the truth - the risk as well as the safety.
|
| [Edit: Of course, telling them the truth may not actually
| work either... at least, not if you define "work" as
| "they get the vaccine". But even so, at least they had
| the information to make a real choice.]
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| If you go to the CDC website about the Pfizer-BioNTech
| vaccine,[1] there's a banner at the top of the page about
| myocarditis. Later down the page, there are sections
| titled "Who Should Get Vaccinated," "Who Should NOT Get
| Vaccinated" and "Possible Side Effects." None of this has
| been covered up.
|
| I don't think the public health authorities are to blame
| here. I would blame the politicians and media figures who
| have discovered that being anti-vax or vaccine
| "skeptical" boosts their popularity.
|
| 1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/dif
| ferent...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| OK, but also blame the politicians who are all "Thou
| Shalt Vax".
|
| Telling people "this can cause myocarditis, and here's
| the people who should not get it" is telling people the
| truth. But that and a vaccine mandate cannot coexist
| without people rebelling against the mandate (which is in
| fact happening).
|
| Part of telling people the truth is letting them decide
| what to do with the information. "Here, I'm trusting you
| with the truth, now you have to decide the way I think
| you should" doesn't fly, _especially_ when the truth is a
| mixed bag. ( "Who should not get vaccinated" tells you
| that the truth is in fact a mixed bag.)
| detaro wrote:
| That's pretty much what most health authorities are
| saying though if you read more than 5 words of their
| statements? Starting with the AZ problems (which
| obviously weren't a thing in the US since it just
| stockpiled AZ, but a big topic in Europe) it's pretty
| much always has been "problems are rare, we continue to
| recommend it based on the benefit being way larger than
| the risk" (except in the countries that decided they
| don't evaluate it that way and restricted/stopped use).
| Same now with myocarditis. And promptly the complaints
| shift to "they are lying, the numbers are actually way
| worse than they say!".
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You would think they would have learned from the war on drugs
| propaganda
| 01100011 wrote:
| Even before Covid, the scientific and medical community,
| understandably so, decided that continuing dialogue with anti-
| vaxxers and vaccine hesitant wasn't worth the effort.
| Communicating the risks of vaccines, however negligible, seems to
| be seen as enabling the nutjobs. It's unfortunate. I think COVID
| may force the educated folks to reexamine their communication
| strategies and hopefully lead us to a place where anti-vax
| sentiment shrinks to a negligible level.
|
| Edit: Not surprising this is being downvoted. Anytime I suggest
| anything less than crucifying anti-vaxxers or sending them to a
| leper colony the HN crowd freaks out. It's that exact sort of
| sentiment that got us into the mess where a significant portion
| of the country refuses to get vaccinated. Don't hurt your arm
| patting yourselves on the backs folks. Your dismissive attitude
| towards less educated people has the practical effect of killing
| folks.
| r00fus wrote:
| The lede is buried here, the reason the US is not cohesive is
| entirely due to the former president who continues to this day to
| support and spur the anti-vax movement.
| twofornone wrote:
| No, the US is not cohesive on this subject partly because of
| dishonest rhetorical tricks, like deliberately conflating
| hesitancy about this specific vaccine with the "anti-vax
| movement". And implying that trump disparaged his own Operation
| Warp Speed. And ignoring that under Trump media was releasing
| surveys and implying that most people were hesitant about an
| emergency vaccine approval from the Trump administration,
| looking for any opportunity to disparage the orange man.
|
| This country is not cohesive because of such rabid, top down
| left leaning bias in our media, industry, and academia, which
| stereotypes, belittles, and alienates about 50% of the
| population.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I've seen lots of "right wing" people saying that Trump is
| betraying them by recommending the vaccine constantly. I don't
| think he's anti-vax.
| r00fus wrote:
| That he is promoting the vaccine now doesn't ignore the fact
| that his anti-vax, anti-mask stance while in office
| essentially drove that movement.
|
| There are numerous [1] points [2] where he could have changed
| [3] things and saved many many lives but decided it would
| help him politically to do the opposite.
|
| The anti-vax movement is a monster he created, fed and hoped
| would net him a re-election. That it's turning on him now
| (that he's no longer in office) is sad but predictable.
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-downplaying-virus-
| mock...
|
| [2] https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/politics/donald-trump-
| coronav...
|
| [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/calendar-
| confu...
| gojomo wrote:
| By... getting vaxed himself? Why aren't the vax campaigns
| leading with Trump's action - and his repeated verbal
| endorsement of choosing to get vaxed - to overcome resistance
| in his followers?
|
| Such over-focus on Trump is a pathological scapegoating to
| deflect responsibility on the part of both the professional
| permanent bureacracies, and the current administration.
|
| Trump did awfully, yes. But the mistrust & errors spring from
| far deeper cultural issues, and repeated failures by the public
| health officials - in their mixed-messages, manipulative
| exagerrations, & arbitrary punitive actions. Vax resistance is
| at some of its highest levels in urban minority communities
| with no love for Trump.
| jaywalk wrote:
| The same former President who kicked off Operation Warp Speed
| to develop and distribute the vaccines?
| https://www.businessinsider.com/operation-warp-speed-us-coro...
|
| The same former President who said he's "proud" to be
| vaccinated and wishes more people would get vaccinated?
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-pushes-...
|
| The reason the US is not cohesive is precisely because of
| people like you.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| when I hear the CDC director talking honestly about the
| correlation between obesity and covid outcomes, I'll agree that
| we are finally embracing hard truths (cue predictable HN
| responses citing an outlier marathon runner who died of covid)
| Gunax wrote:
| So what were the lies? I guess I just stop not see it.
|
| Surely we can agree there is a difference between lying and jist
| being wrong.
| coryfklein wrote:
| As a grown man, I have never been treated more like a child than
| during this pandemic. And that infuriates me.
| zz865 wrote:
| One problem is there really is some risk with the vaccine. At a
| population level its best if everyone takes the vaccine - there
| are huge benefits, but unfortunately a small minority gets hurt.
| Its best if everyone else gets vaccinated except for me. Of
| course when everyone wants to be that exception the vaccination
| doesn't stop community spread so people get sick.
|
| The problem is the hard truth of "take the risk because society
| benefits" doesn't work in an American me-first mentality.
| lamontcg wrote:
| But there's a bigger risk with the virus. The selfish calculus
| should also be to get vaccinated.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| My local government seems to be dedicated to the opposite:
| instilling panic about Covid, particularly with rules around
| protecting children (who are effectively immune from serious
| illness and transmit the virus less than adults).
| a0-prw wrote:
| TlDr: Trust engenders trust
| nineplay wrote:
| Honestly this is a pretty hand-wavy article from a respected
| journal and I think represents the kind of thing we need less of,
| not more of
|
| His actual research is pretty sparse and comparing the Danish
| government to every other government glosses over any number of
| correlation/causation issues.
|
| Yet it gets cited and quoted and everyone jumps on it as
| confirmation of everything they believed before they read it.
|
| People need to start questioning the articles that they _agree_
| with. If nothing in the article challenges your beliefs, if
| nothing in the research or conclusions surprise you or makes you
| consider things differently in any way, than it deserves more
| skepticism, not less.
|
| A whole lot of sites are generating a whole lot of clicks and
| making a whole lot of money by the simple process of validating
| their audiences beliefs. It is unimaginably destructive.
| veltas wrote:
| > Covid lesson: tell the truth.
|
| Thanks for sharing this novel concept, in a scientific journal no
| less.
| bedhead wrote:
| Hard truths and politics aren't compatible because there's too
| much incentive misalignment. People in power have no reason to
| tell the truth because it'll get them fired, and the reason for
| that is most people don't even want the truth anyhow, it triggers
| some form of pain. The path of least resistance inevitably seems
| to be lying in some form.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Ignoring the truth _also_ triggers pain... it just comes a bit
| later.
| menacingly wrote:
| Well-meaning manipulation of the public is common, and nearly
| always a terrible idea, because even the relatively uneducated
| are still pretty good at applying their intuition and seeing that
| a narrrative doesn't make sense.
|
| Once they've damaged that trust, you end up with these 2 equally
| stupid polarized positions:
|
| A: "I will do the opposite of whatever the established
| authorities say"
|
| B: "It's, like, sad that, like, some people don't Science"
| dehrmann wrote:
| Fauci (and the CDC) lying about masks out of fear it would cause
| a shortage for healthcare providers burnt a lot of trust quickly.
| It probably helped the US get into the polarized situation it's
| in now.
| Covzire wrote:
| Fauci ostensibly being directly involved in the creation of
| COVID19 via gain of function research, and not seeing him
| prosecuted or at least fired is also keeping trust incredibly
| low. Everyone knows what the guy did, said and does and stands
| for. Every time he goes on CNN he sows distrust.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I won't go as far as him being prosecuted, but yes, he was
| uncomfortably involved in it, and didn't call out how bad of
| an idea it is. Edit: Biden should have fired him when he
| became president ostensibly for lying, but actually because
| he's a polarizing figure who makes too many TV appearances.
| It doesn't matter that he's saying the right thing about the
| vaccines, when 40% of people don't trust him, he's the wrong
| messenger.
|
| When the tech industry does a lot of self-reflection on what
| harm could come from various forms of AI, I'm honestly
| shocked that biologists are modifying viruses in ways that
| could be so disruptive (at best) that are just a few mistakes
| away from a pandemic.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Fauci (and the CDC) lying about masks out of fear it would
| cause a shortage for healthcare providers burnt a lot of trust
| quickly. It probably helped the US get into the polarized
| situation it's in now.
|
| This confuses me. If the claim that masks "don't work" caused
| folks to distrust public health authorities, then why are many
| of the folks who claim to distrust those PH authorities
| refusing to wear masks?
| d23 wrote:
| This thread is full of bizarre, depressing contradictions.
| I'm having trouble processing that this many people in this
| community think this way.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Because once they lose their credibility, everything they say
| will be viewed with distrust.
|
| > If the claim that masks "don't work" caused folks to
| distrust public health authorities
|
| I would say it is more the contradictory messaging that
| caused the distrust, than the initial claim that masks do not
| work.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I would say it is more the backtracking that caused the
| distrust.
|
| And so, if I say "gravity does not exist" and then turn
| around and say that the effect we call "gravity"
| accelerates matter at 9.8 meters per second per second,
| that means "the effect we call gravity" doesn't exist?
|
| That's a strange way to look at it, IMHO.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| If you claim that gravity does not exist, then turn
| around and say that the effect we call "gravity"
| accelerates matter at 9.8 meters per second per second.
|
| Then you go and claim that magnetism does not exist, I
| will probably not believe you.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >If you claim that gravity does not exist, then turn
| around and say that the effect we call "gravity"
| accelerates matter at 9.8 meters per second per second.
|
| >Then you go and claim that magnetism does not exist, I
| will probably not believe you.
|
| Fair enough. Now apply that reasoning to my original
| statement.
|
| If public health authorities claim that masks don't work,
| and that's a lie, then they say they do, that's a lie
| too?
|
| That's the root of my confusion. Given that those two
| statements are not just mutually exclusive, but also
| completely contradictory, they obviously can't both be
| false.
|
| And as many folks call out the statement about masks not
| working as a lie, how does it follow that those _same_
| people refuse to wear masks because they "distrust" the
| messenger.
|
| If the messenger is lying about "masks not working," how
| is it reasonable to reject wearing masks because they
| lied about masks not working?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I am not sure of anyone who was on the mask bandwagon but
| then got off when the government approved them. Not
| saying that they don't exist.
|
| The problem is it is not just the health officials, you
| have the media and politicians also all trying to play
| doctor but also not following their own advice.
|
| And it does not matter that it is only a couple people
| that have done so, due to the way people group those
| couple are all it takes.
|
| To look at an older example of this: Look at how the
| religious right community is treated when it comes to
| morals. You probably don't believe them. Why? Not because
| Sally and John in Minnesota or even the most of the
| people in the leadership. No, you don't believe them
| because that one guy who was caught solicitating gay sex
| in the airport. Or the one guy who was cheating on his
| wife.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >that means "the effect we call gravity" doesn't exist?
|
| No, it means whether or not I believe it is unrelated to
| what you said, and I will instantly take any claims you
| make as suspect.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Hospitals dont buy masks at COSCO stores and neither does the
| gov.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| But where do the stores buy masks, hm?
| gojomo wrote:
| Also Fauci in early March 2020 mocking the idea of people
| changing their travel plans as an overreaction.
|
| Also Fauci shooting-down lab-origin theories in public, while
| his private emails - still heavily redacted! - imply
| contemporaneous discussion of such an origin as a serious
| possibility.
|
| Also Fauci misestimating a vaccine as at least a year and half
| away.
|
| Also Fauci helping to fluff Trump's lowball estimates of the
| pandemic ending by summer 2020 with "more like the 60k" dead.
| (Only off by 12x, and still growing!)
|
| Also Fauci overclaiming the rushed EUA 3wk/4wk mRNA vax dose
| spacings as 'optimal' & important not-to-delay... when
| precedent from other vaccines was that 8wks or longer is better
| for stronger & more durable immunity. (Data from other
| countries with wiser spacing has now confirmed, as true experts
| would have expected, that longer spacing is better. So the
| insistence of Fauci/CDC on rushed 2nd doses now leaving
| vaccinated Americans with more, and more severe, breakthrough
| infections.)
| angelzen wrote:
| Whatever you think of Fauci, he's amazingly well connected in
| elite circles. To the point he has people making fawning
| movies about his life and career.
|
| https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fauci
| gojomo wrote:
| Indeed, Fauci has the magic touch of the 'cooler', the
| person in a con who keeps the mark from getting angry.
|
| Everything Fauci's said, at every phase of this pandemic,
| has been optimized not to save lives or be truthful, but to
| excuse whatever actions, or inactions, the federal
| government has taken as "the best possible at the time".
| The doctor schtick, plus the gravelly NYC accent, is a
| powerful combo. There's a reason he's the highest-paid
| employee in the whole federal government!
| rob_c wrote:
| I'm dreading the one about professor fergusson "professor
| lockdown" in the UK... him getting caught having a fling
| during the first UK lockdown breaking the new laws probably
| will help us not have to suffer through that BBC special...
| guscost wrote:
| COVID lesson: _Never_ trust the high-priesthood of professional
| science with political decisions.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Do you believe Dr. Fauci was calling the shots last year in
| 2020?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| The author is completely right in that the government at least in
| the US attempting to downplay, mislead or 'avoid panic'
| absolutely destroyed any credibility and is still suffering from
| it. Most people are not stupid, if provided with all available
| information as well as clear statements regarding the reliability
| of that information and just a clear message saying "hey this is
| new and we have no idea, we are making our best guess" people
| will make decent choices. Unfortunately the US decided to torpedo
| its credibility, and all sides decided to turn it into a
| political issue which a pandemic should very much not be. All
| politics all the time and the US is now crippling itself. In the
| absence of real honest leadership people turned to the loudest
| voices of the media. Once the people distrust the government and
| think they are lying its very hard to appeal to their logic
| again. I am very much not a fan of Bush II but he did it right
| after 9/11. What he did after though is a topic for another day.
| Gortal278 wrote:
| > Most people are not stupid, if provided with all available
| information as well as clear statements regarding the
| reliability of that information and just a clear message saying
| "hey this is new and we have no idea, we are making our best
| guess" people will make decent choices
|
| Citation needed
| notahacker wrote:
| Apart from anything else, this is pretty much what most
| health authorities _did_ on most theories about COVID. Lots
| of people chose to listen to other high profile figures who
| claimed certainty instead...
| Pxtl wrote:
| Seriously, the run on toilet paper was a strong counter-
| argument.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| That was an interesting series of events. The initial run
| was not warranted in hind sight. But at the time no one
| knew how bad it was going to get and how long everything
| was going to be shut down for. After that though if you did
| not join in then you were potentially out of toilet paper
| for a couple months.
| coryfklein wrote:
| No. It was exactly what the prisoner's dilemma dictates an
| intelligent actor would do when they don't have the ability
| to coordinate.
|
| If you suspect there is going to be a run on toilet paper,
| the obvious choice is to stockpile toilet paper before it
| is all gone. If you buy just enough for the next couple
| weeks, and you risk running out because of shortages.
|
| The optimal solution to this IMO is to embrace raising
| prices during crisis, because then the market ensures that
| those with the most need get access to goods, and it
| eliminates the whole point of hoarding 3 months worth of TP
| naturally.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Perhaps we should try being honest with each other next time?
| Certainly lying did not work out very well.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| People are not stupid when their immediate interest is
| threatened. Now, we could argue that people as a whole have
| problems with estimating risk ( they do ) and predicting long
| term consequences ( they do ), but they can usually notice
| when a politician is telling them its raining, when said
| politician is directly pissing at them.
|
| Then again, I am from the old country, where parents ingrain
| in you distrust for the government. By comparison, US
| population really does trust its decision-makers. Or maybe
| trusted, if the article is to be believed.
| hintymad wrote:
| Most people are not stupid, but unfortunately in the US many
| issues are moralized to the point that people have a hard time
| discussing them rationally. You question Fauci? You're an anti-
| science freak. You question CDC's decision? You're a Trump
| supporter. You ask how CDC's numbers lead to certain decisions?
| You're a racist. I really wish people do not attack one's
| motives and focus on discussing facts.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| People in the US have become very good at totally ignoring
| the argument and just tribalizing the approach to everything.
| X must be right and how dare you question them as they are
| part of us. Nothing can be nuanced anymore. Read a twitter
| thread this morning discussing a father whose daughter was
| raped in a high school bathroom and then the perpetrator who
| they did not really make clear if it was someone that was
| trans or just a guy in a skirt was transferred to another
| school while pending trial and then assualted another girl.
| Father was obviously against trans women in the girls
| bathroom after that and was arrested for disturbing the
| peace. Crazy thing was people in the thread were more upset
| if someone misgendered the perpetrator than the fact that
| they raped 2 kids. I say this as someone that truly believes
| that people should be left alone to live however they want
| with out judgment. We live in strange times.
| hintymad wrote:
| My interpretation is the the life in the US has been so
| good that Americans could never imagine what it was like
| living in 1950's Cuba, 1960's China, 1970's Cambodia, and
| North Korea. Do people really think that people in those
| countries were evil or were crazy? The truth is, the people
| there started with good intentions. They wanted to have
| equity. They were pained by all kinds of oppression. They
| genuinely believed that "anti-revolutionary" people or
| "anti-progressive" people can be educated. Then, it started
| with your neighbor reporting your indecent behavior to the
| authority, or your neighborhood organized to educate you.
| Then it went on, and elementary school students beat their
| school principals to death. Your neighborhood looted your
| family for the cause. You lost your right to go to
| university or get a job because your great grandpa owned
| properties. Ironically, no one in such nation ended up
| living well, except the top few. That road to hell is paved
| with good intension is really not a cliche.
| minkzilla wrote:
| A cliche is a saying, idea, or artistic component that
| has lost its meaning from overuse. The way you used "the
| path to hell is paved with good intentions" points to the
| fact that it is a cliche and that you want people to be
| aware of that and consider it instead of reading past it.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| US has just started on that path with the passage of laws
| incentivizing you monetarily to turn in your neighbor for
| undesirable behavior.
| specialist wrote:
| OC cites Denmark as role model.
|
| What's their citizen's level of trust in their institutions?
|
| Does Denmark have a thriving media ecosystem profiting from
| inciting distrust, outage, division?
|
| For the US, UK, Aus, I cannot imagine any increase in
| collectivism, social trust, esteem for the greater good while
| Murdock, Koch, Zuck, Dorsey, and so many others, remain utterly
| opposed.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Edit: before you downvote this, read it? I'm not an anti-vax
| nutcase.
|
| They didn't trust the public with their actual thinking at any
| point during Covid. The guidance was initially "don't wear a
| mask, it will make it worse because you'll infect yourself with
| your hand" to "we'll just lock down for 3 weeks and then back to
| normal" to "we have to flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming
| hospitals" to the current policy of basically 0 covid tolerance.
|
| Why would they initially tell us to not wear masks? The generous
| answer is that they were afraid that a run on masks would make
| them unavailable to medical professionals who as far as we knew
| at that point needed them to survive. The uncharitable answer is
| that the people giving advice are imbeciles who hadn't even read
| the national plan to respond to respiratory pandemics.
|
| The most ridiculous part of our COVID response, at least where I
| am in the USA, is that we have a very detailed national plan that
| tells policy makers exactly how to respond to such an event. It
| was made following SARS (another coronavirus), and it is very
| good, and you can even read it online! It was completely ignored
| of course.
|
| (You can find an up to date version here, originally published in
| 2011: https://www.cms.gov/files/document/covid-pandemic-plan.pdf
| )
|
| My daughter's school just went back to 100% at-home via zoom
| because 'too many children had positive covid tests'. How many
| had positive tests? What is the threshold or flow-chart for this
| decision defining what 'too many' means? Was this decision made
| with guidance or following guidelines given by public health
| experts operating under the umbrella of a national (or state, or
| county, or even school district) strategy? Hah! As if anyone
| would answer any of these questions! The answer is that 'too
| many' cases of covid means they close the schools 'for awhile'.
| The part that concerns me isn't just the lack of transparency, it
| is that behind the lack of transparency there is nothing there,
| it's just a non expert going with their gut or responding to
| pressure from hysterical parents.
|
| If we want to 'trust science' that starts with 'consulting
| scientists'!
| rob_c wrote:
| Not knowing where you're from sounds like you're commenting on
| the UK policy at least (I'm sure it parallels others)...
|
| Speaking from an unfortunate position of experience a lot of
| this is driven (in the UK) by whitehall asking deliberately
| leading questions which are politically charged of civil
| servants and scientists.
|
| aka, there is a difference between, "what do we have to do to
| reduce deaths due to X this summer" and "what do we have to do
| to eradicate X this summer"...
|
| It's a shame that once these decisions had been made that only
| then the questions were asked. This is what comes from
| introducing data illiterate driven morons into the heart of
| politics, they don't understand the minutia of modelling, don't
| understand statsistics, and they abuse anything they find or
| read to a political end. </rant>
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Not knowing where you're from sounds like you're commenting
| on the UK policy at least
|
| Parent comment does mention they're from the US.
| rob_c wrote:
| parent comment was edited several times
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Why would they initially tell us to not wear masks?
|
| Because hard data was scarce and authorities are reluctant to
| impose anything as mere precaution. Or rather, whether
| authorities would do that kind of thing as a precaution before
| there is solid evidence varies from country to country
| (unsurprisingly).
| beebmam wrote:
| Surgical masks (and other cloth masks) make a small but
| significant difference in transmission. At the beginning of the
| pandemic, we didn't understand whether that difference was lost
| in the increased need to interact with one's face while wearing
| a mask (and we now know that SARS-CoV-2 becomes inactivated
| quite quickly on surfaces, like our hands).
|
| N95s and higher rated masks/filters have always been very good
| for virtually eliminating transmission, but are also much
| harder to fit properly. Most Nurses/Doctors need to have them
| fit tested, which is not viable for the general population.
| Elastomeric half-mask respirators offer the protection of N95s
| (or better!) but are much easier to fit safely, and I'm
| actually not sure why more people don't use these or why these
| weren't recommended.
|
| In my humble opinion, I think the biggest failing of scientific
| institutions is more that our uncertainty wasn't conveyed to
| the public. I'd like to know how uncertain our scientific
| community is regarding some policies when they're discussed in
| the public.
| clairity wrote:
| you're getting hung up on technical details, when behavior
| dominates how effective masks are in practice. it's like
| crowing about a 500hp engine in your car that you use to haul
| the kids to soccer practice. it just doesn't matter.
|
| if the message were inverted--wear masks at home, around
| friends, and in social situations rather than in public--
| perhaps masks might have made a bit of a difference. but that
| wasn't the message, and as a result masks haven't made much
| difference at all (other than the ulterior purpose of
| instilling fear and control). most of the effect attributed
| to masking was a misattribution away from simple distancing.
| choward wrote:
| > Most Nurses/Doctors need to have them fit tested, which is
| not viable for the general population
|
| I don't buy this at all. It's viable to vaccinate the general
| population but it's not viable have them fitted for masks?
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| This is obviously false, they did know that it was better to
| wear a mask. Most of the population of the world was already
| wearing masks or being told to do so if possible. Doctors and
| other health professionals wear masks.
|
| National policy should not be made on the basis of 'some
| people kindof have this pet theory that you might infect
| yourself if you touch your ear'. I don't know of a single
| study that says you increase your chance of respiratory virus
| transmission from touching the sides and back of your head.
| miles wrote:
| > they did know that it was better to wear a mask
|
| _U.S. health officials say Americans shouldn't wear face
| masks to prevent coronavirus_
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-
| don...
|
| > In fact the U.S. surgeon general recently urged the
| public to "STOP BUYING MASKS!" "They are NOT effective in
| preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus...The
| CDC said last month it doesn't recommend people use face
| masks...
|
| > "The virus is not spreading in the general community,"
| Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the Center for the
| National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases,
| said in a Jan. 30 briefing. "We don't routinely recommend
| the use of face masks by the public to prevent respiratory
| illness. And we certainly are not recommending that at this
| time for this new virus."
|
| _WHO stands by recommendation to not wear masks if you are
| not sick or not caring for someone who is sick_
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/world/coronavirus-who-
| masks-r...
|
| > "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the
| wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential
| benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the
| opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or
| fitting it properly," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of
| the WHO health emergencies program, said at a media
| briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.
| beebmam wrote:
| It really wasn't false at the time; there's a bunch of
| uncertainty around it for this virus. For quite a long
| time, people really did believe SARS-CoV-2 could transmit
| through surfaces easily. We now know that to be incorrect.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| People may or may not have believed a lot of things, but
| if you are asserting that they didn't know that
| respiratory viruses primarily spread via the respiratory
| system you must be joking?
|
| If you can show me even a single document dated from
| before Fall-2019 that expresses a concern that untrained
| users of n95 masks may INCREASE their chances of
| infection by coronaviruses, cold viruses, flu virus
| (basically anything other than Ebola or other hemorrhagic
| fevers) somehow, then I will happily agree that this was
| an area of debate and perhaps competent (but incorrect)
| advice to avoid mask usage.
|
| However, if no such evidence exists, you should agree
| with me that the evidence points to incompetent and/or
| intentionally misleading guidance.
| rudedogg wrote:
| (Speaking to the information we got in the US)
|
| This is wrong and way too charitable. They were worried that
| hospitals would run out of masks, and that was why the
| Surgeon General lied [0], and said masks weren't necessary.
| Fauci and everyone else did the same thing.
|
| It's unfortunate that so much trust was wasted on this, but
| revising history that we all lived through isn't helping.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-n95
| -fa...
| btmiller wrote:
| Humans are very emotional creatures. A quote from Interstellar
| which I rewatched recently comes to mind. Their robot TARS says
| this when asked why his honesty parameter is set to 90% instead
| of 100%: "Absolute honesty isn't always the most diplomatic nor
| the safest form of interact with human beings"
| rytcio wrote:
| Reminds me of the song from Ishtar
| https://youtu.be/g-mQcPsPAjc
| moistly wrote:
| Disappointed to see so much bald-faced lying in the comments. I
| really don't understand why the most egregious liars aren't given
| the boot.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| March 2020: Masks are useless. Lied
|
| Mid-pandemic: Covid lab leak is a conspiracy theory. Lied
|
| Today: Previous covid infection natural immunity is same as
| unvax'ed. Still lying.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I think you are confusing "statements and policy from available
| and changing information" with "lies".
| ravenstine wrote:
| If that's consistent with reality, then what exactly does the
| CDC exist for if not to study if masks _control disease_?
|
| SARS-CoV2 isn't the world's first coronavirus by any stretch
| of the imagination. The fact that seemingly the whole country
| spent _months_ debating whether masks can stop a virus tells
| us all we need to know, which is that organizations like the
| CDC _fail_. There 's zero reason why we had to act like we
| were starting from scratch other than to trick people into
| not buying up masks.
|
| In fact, it had nothing to do with changing information
| because the information straight from the horse's mouth tells
| the contrary:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm?s_cid=mm.
| ..
|
| ^^ See Table 1
|
| That is at best around a 2% reduction in deaths associated
| with masks. For all intents and purposes, mask mandates can
| never stop the virus or even do much at all to reduce it. 2%
| would make me question whether there's even any meaningful
| causation.
|
| We have this information, but we decided to literally double-
| down by hilariously telling people to double-mask. This isn't
| the scientific method in action.
| cloverich wrote:
| *reduction after state mask mandates in the united states.
| It's an important distinction because mask mandates in the
| US were followed at varying levels, from relatively
| stringent to barely at all. Separately, I don't think
| anyone ever claimed masks (outside of a properly fitted
| n95) stop the virus, only that it reduces the spread.
| Lastly, if an area's hospitals have only a few open ICU
| beds available, then even 2% would be significant enough to
| warrant mandates in the future.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Denmark, the country where they dissect exotic animals at the zoo
| in front of children. Yes, they now how to deal with a political
| storm. They handled Covid very well with a good result so far.
| Congratulations for that! What happened in US was plain ignorance
| and had nothing to do with trying to come the masses. Yes, I am
| saying that Trump is a moron.
| rob_c wrote:
| Thanks for posting. It's a terrible shame society has torn itself
| apart before we could learn the (to some) obvious lesson, but at
| least maybe this will inform policy in the future...
|
| That or governments are now more terrified of people losing their
| minds and so feel they should be even more controlling in their
| fear response as a knee jerk reaction....
|
| Either way, in the UK we failed to save about 67% of those who
| could have been saved through bad practice and even worse
| policy...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > governments are now more terrified of people losing their
| minds
|
| The empirical evidence from the covid experience seems to
| justify their fears that a segment of the population will lose
| their minds.
| jerf wrote:
| There's two aspects to this, I think.
|
| One is true protectionism. My objection to this is that if we
| perhaps had superhumans guiding us mere humans, they might be
| capable of modulating our information flow to protect us, but
| mere humans lack this power. Indeed, let's be honest, being a
| politician is if anything a _counter_ -indicator in being the
| sort of person capable of dealing with the real issues that
| arise in a crisis. The truth is government isn't really capable
| of modulating information flow to a society for their own good
| or protection. I think a lot of people implicitly and in an
| unexamined way tend to assume that "the government" is
| populated by some sort of superhumans, but they're just people.
| Relative to the enormous problems they face, even their
| training or experience they may have doesn't necessarily put
| them that far ahead of normal people, who aren't all unskilled
| yokels out in the fields trying to figure out how to keep their
| sheep in the pen or something.
|
| The other aspect is the abuse of information flow to
| consolidate, create, or simply exercise power, since
| "information is power" is not really a metaphor. It goes beyond
| merely being incapable to outright _reprehensible_ that our
| "trusted" leaders would use the opportunity of having this sort
| of information in a life-and-death situation for such crass
| purposes, and there ought to be consequences for them,
| personally.
|
| Either way, we have once again demonstrated that there really
| isn't a compelling reason to be keeping information from
| people.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > My objection to this is that if we perhaps had superhumans
| guiding us mere humans, they might be capable of modulating
| our information flow to protect us, but mere humans lack this
| power.
|
| It almost sounds like Godel's incompleteness theorem somehow.
| We're not capable of fixing the system because we are the
| system.
| rob_c wrote:
| Broadly after seeing some of the material coming out of the
| UK "think tanks" in early 2020 this was really "govt,
| starched collar, upper class" thinking that the proles will
| start eating themselves if we even mention that there's a
| chance they could die.
|
| I think projected compliance with a lockdown in the UK was
| initially estimated and serious attempts were made to model
| it at 40% compliance. When govt got near 95%+ compliance
| during the first lock down other idiots took over behind the
| scenes, patted themselves on the back and decided why not go
| for "zero-covid" in 2020...
|
| Edit: (I'm not joking there is a statement on record from
| politicians reacting to the suggestion with "this is not
| Asia, people would not stand for a lockdown", aka we expect
| that as policy to not be able to function)
|
| AKA the first lockdown being a success in the UK was a great
| statement of how the people behave that had damming effect on
| the direction of health policy.
|
| Heard immunity would have been reached much quicker and the
| 2020 winter less bad had more healthy people been exposed in
| the start and summer of 2020. The fact that lockdown and
| rules were followed so well actually made the winter worse
| than the initial (sensible) projections predicted.
| notahacker wrote:
| We _still_ haven 't reached herd immunity in the UK, and we
| have 49 of 67 million people vaccinated (plus some of the
| rest previously infected). The idea we'd have had fewer
| COVID casualties by allowing it to spread more easily
| before the winter is not one supported by evidence.
| rob_c wrote:
| Please.
|
| The nonsense here is how herd immunity is
| estimated/measured. There is no/little consensus on how
| this is defined and given how polarised this is it
| probably never will be.
|
| The reality is that the UK adult population is heading to
| 90% vaccinated. If you want to measure immunity to death
| from the disease as immunity we're at about 90%.
|
| Please don't ever pretend that's not enough. I cannot
| fathom a model even as bad as that used in report 9 where
| this doesn't lead to the virus effectively dying out in a
| population. This will be one of the _many_ reasons with
| high cases in the UK we're not seeing bodies being piled
| high outside hospitals.
|
| As for actually stopping the spread of the disease
| itself, this would have happened much sooner had people
| caught it and have a _full_ immune response which makes
| them less likely to transmit the virus.
|
| The point of this is that govt. expected that the virus
| would spread during lockdown 1 (early 2020) because
| people wouldn't follow the rules (it spread more due to
| insanely bad policy and it getting into nursing homes and
| hospitals and hitting the at-risk).
|
| The initial plan was to open-up once the 'first wave'
| dropped reached numbers the NHS could cope with and that
| there would be an open/close/open/close approach as
| numbers rose to keep the hospital cases at manageable
| levels. After seeing the high compliance we kept the
| lockdown and aimed for a zero-covid policy which is where
| Australia and New Zealand are... We didn't see the first
| wave really hit. We shut down too early and too hard in
| lockdown 1. This led to the amount of people building an
| immunity being very low.
|
| During the relaxing in summer-2020 the places that
| returned to normal the most ended up with higher case
| numbers during summer and typically this led to a slower
| spread and lower peak hospitalisations during the winter
| of 2020-2021. This is backed when comparing the high
| number of cases during the summer by region with England
| and the initial rate of cases in the same regions at the
| start of winter. This diverges once winter properly set
| in as other factors became dominant. This is not rocket
| science
|
| In the winter of 2020-2021 the UK locked down too late
| and more people at risk died. This being too late was a
| combination of factors "it only kills over 80s" from
| Boris, the lockdown being too effective, the vaccine
| being around the corner and so on...
| mulvya wrote:
| > there is a statement on record from politicians reacting
| to the suggestion with "this is not Asia, people would not
| stand for a lockdown"
|
| Fauci said that in Feb 2020.
|
| -------- Q. How confident are you that
| the Chinese are doing what needs to be done?
| A. They're doing things that have completely broken the
| paradigm of how you respond. They have been, in a draconian
| way, shutting down everything. They have locked down 50
| million people, including the entire 11 million-person city
| of Wuhan. They will not allow anyone into Beijing unless
| they have a 14-day quarantine. They're essentially locking
| people who test positive in their houses. I mean, they're
| doing things that are almost unheard of in the annals of
| public health. Q. Will it work?
| A. As unusual and extreme as it is, it might actually,
| ultimately, have an effect. There's this report that the
| number of new cases for the last couple of days in China
| has gone down. I don't put much strength in that unless I
| see it really start to come down and down and down. A few
| days of going down doesn't mean anything to me. But if it
| continues to go down, that might be a signal that they're
| having an effect of what otherwise would be extreme means.
| Q. That would never happen here, would it? Locking down 50
| million people? A. No, not a chance. It would
| never happen.
|
| --------
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/17/new-
| corona...
| rob_c wrote:
| Trust me. Not just Faucci and not just the UK. As for
| dates I think the UK one was in Jan or Feb when we
| refused to attend an EU meeting on the situation as it
| was developing in Italy
| thepasswordis wrote:
| You know who doesn't try to hide this stuff from people?
|
| Bad actors. Conspiracy theorists, scammers, straight up liars.
|
| So you've got on one hand "the experts" who are being vague and
| seemingly not wanting to tell you anything, and then on the other
| hand you've got the crazies who will tell you whatever you want
| to hear.
|
| It's something that is increasingly frustrating me about the
| vaccines. The vaccines have become a political battle. You've got
| the president saying absolutely ridiculous things like "we are
| losing our patience with the unvaccinated".
|
| I got phone calls _immediately_ after that speech from my
| conservative friends and family members pissed off _at me_ (who
| is on a different political quadrant than they are), wanting to
| know if I was "losing my patience" with them, and explaining how
| they are NEVER going to take the vaccine. How they now see this
| as an important idealogical battle that they want to win.
|
| Conservatives are sharing videos like this one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=TSZMtSPX3iE&feat...
|
| Where it's Dr. Fauci starting off saying "The vaccine is 100%
| safe and 100% effective!" (a lie, obviously), and as the video
| continues that number goes down and down and down.
|
| It was the same last year when he said that we needed something
| like 70 or 80% antibody presence to reach herd immunity, but then
| was quoted in a more private interview saying that was basically
| a white lie, and that we wouldn't be in the clear until nearly
| 100%. THAT got shared among the conservative spaces, and
| basically erased ANY credibility that Fauci had going forward.
|
| --
|
| I wish they would just say: Covid sucks. Yes, it almost certainly
| leaked out of a lab in China.
|
| Yes it was gain of function research. Yes this is the worst
| industrial disaster in the history of the planet.
|
| Yes we did say masks didn't work. It was a lie to keep the masks
| available for doctors.
|
| Yes the vaccines do have dangers associated with them, but for
| many people that danger is probably less than the danger of
| covid.
|
| Yes there are alternative treatments that show some effectiveness
| in cohorts, but not in RCTs.
|
| No we don't know why.
|
| We aren't sure if the lockdowns are actually effective, but we
| think it's worth it to try them.
|
| We aren't sure if the masks are actually effective but we think
| it's worth it to try them.
|
| The vaccine is available to you and free if you want it. This is
| a huge privilege you get because you live in the richest country
| in the world. Basically your access to the vaccine is an example
| of how kickass the USA is.
|
| Just stop freaking lying to people. It's making the problem 100x
| worse!
| h2odragon wrote:
| One of my problems with masks, for example; is that COVID is
| already prevalent in wildlife. That was known last summer.
| Chasing "less exposure" via masks after that is silly, seems to
| me.
|
| I'm _delighted_ they 're making the vaccines freely available
| as they are. That's a magnificent success that is not yet as
| well celebrated as it deserves. Making vaccination status an
| issue, instead of immune status; is so stupid one has to wonder
| if it could be intentional. Especially as they keep doubling
| down on such decisions.
| LivelyTortoise wrote:
| I watched the video you linked, it's amusing and well
| presented, but if you pause and read the headlines, a lot of
| the lower numbers (<90%) come from either: - results on only
| one dose of a two dose series - efficacy declining after
| several months from the second dose
|
| So those ones seem kind of disingenuous to include, especially
| the former.
|
| (I don't disagree with your general points though)
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Oh yeah, and I don't mean to imply that the video I linked is
| a good example of _truth_ , just that's the sort of thing
| that gets shared in conservative spaces.
|
| If the response was "wait, WTF is this video? Fauci always
| just gives us the bare truth", that would be great.
|
| But unfortunately, some of the things that the authorities
| _have_ lied about have become the ground truth for
| conservatives, so videos like the one I linked get taken as
| truth without any additional inspection.
|
| It's an example of the problem I'm articulating.
| smoe wrote:
| I think the other hard truth that citizens don't get entrusted
| with, is that we don't really know how to deal with a pandemic in
| the modern globalized world.
|
| Sure, some countries had plans and scenarios made before, but
| nonetheless got caught with their pants down. E.g Switzerland
| doing a nationwide epidemic simulation back in 2013, identifying
| serious flaws in preparedness, but not acting on it at all.
|
| And even if, it would most likely not have panned out as neatly
| as predicted.
|
| We haven't dealt with a situation like this before, so things are
| going to be messy. Opinions changing as more information comes
| in, not necessary the most effective measure being taken,
| coordination among countries not working, people fighting for
| attention etc. I reckon it's going to take a couple years of
| analysis to be able to look back and with more certainty say what
| would have been the optimal way to deal with it for different
| regions and what the right tradeoffs might have been.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Canada's Dr. Tam said at the beginning of the pandemic that we
| were in pretty good shape because we learned important lessons
| from SARS.
|
| And then we promptly ran low on PPE.
|
| And told everybody that masking was not important because there
| was no evidence that there was airborne transmission.
| woliveirajr wrote:
| As almost everything that is written now, almost-post-pandemic,
| the survival bias isn't disregard.
|
| When images come from China welding building's doors, everybody
| shouted. When government in Brazil said to skip the Carnival to
| avoid the covid from tourists, lots complained.
|
| Now, looking back, is easy to say that one specific opinion was
| the best and would be perfect, had it been followed. Just
| remember those million other opinions that were terrible and be
| thankful that the worst ones weren't followed.
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