Tribalism comes for pandemic science
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Tribalism comes for pandemic science
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Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#2This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March. We _now_ know that children are at a very low risk, people under 40 are very low risk. Most risk is within shared living situations (migrant workers, retirement homes, prisons). We can respond to the _real_ risks and use a nuanced approach that actually saves lives. But instead, the left says "lockdown lockdown lockdown" and the right says "open 100%"... Both are full of shit to the point of it being disgusting.
This isn't a game. This has life and death consequences so far beyond COVID-19, and the lack of foresight that the partisans are demonstrating will have reverberations for generations. We are playing the life of real people, we are risking the financial security of real people, who have families and debts and dreams.
Finally, the fact that the public health sector has devolved into partisanship really has me worried for when we _actually_ have a repeat of Spanish Flu, or a more virulent Ebola etc. Then we are screwed.
Edit: fixed a typo
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#3"In this century, we have become accustomed to heated political debates that somehow avoid contact with reality."
Which is a big problem. It keeps the US from actually doing anything.
(Then again, that may be a good thing. The current administration does not do much follow-through, so most of the weirder ideas stay rhetoric and don't get implemented. Compare the rise of the Nazi party. Much of the stuff they planned to build in the early years was actually built, from the "People's Radio" to the autobahns. With the organization in place to build, arming up for WWII could be done effectively. If the Nazis were all hype, they would not have been able to do much beyond their borders.)
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#4This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…
If we could just convince the hoaxers that wearing masks in public is not emasculating, and convince the doomers that we need to flatten the curve rather than attempt to completely contain the virus, we could go back to something bordering on normal life pretty quickly while we waited for vaccines to come along and kill off the virus altogether. And then we would be prepared to react to the next pandemic, too.
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#5"In this century, we have become accustomed to heated political debates that somehow avoid contact with reality." Which is a big problem. It keeps the US from actually doing anything. (Then again, that may be a good thing. The current administration does not do much follow-through, so most of the weirder ideas stay rhetoric and don't get implemented. Compare the rise of the Nazi party. Much of the stuff they planned…
Fascism is private enterprise under total government control. Of course it'll be very effective at getting things done, both the autobahns and the gas chambers. Communism is pretty effective too. It's government-owned enterprise under total government control. The only thing that really changes is who owns the means of production. And, well, under Communism you're de-facto a slave to the state as well. Not having a job was illegal in e.g. the Soviet Union.
The fact that US political establishment is unable to enact quick change is kind of by design, IMO. While they are at each other's throats, they don't have the time to attack We The People. That, in my book, is a good thing.
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#6This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…
If we could just convince the hoaxers that wearing masks in public is not emasculating, and convince the doomers that we need to flatten the curve rather than attempt to completely contain the virus, we could go back to something bordering on normal life pretty quickly while we waited for vaccines to come along and kill off the virus altogether. And then we would be prepared to react to the next pandemic, too.
Exactly. We need some humility in people. It is okay to admit that this is (thankfully!) not as bad as we thought, but it is still bad. It will still kill a lot of people. We need to take it seriously, but not as seriously as we feared. The doomers need to have the humility to admit that, and the hoaxers need to have the humility to admit that it is worse than the seasonal flu.
Again, I fear people don't realize that this isn't a game. This is disastrously bad and getting worse every. single. day.
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#7This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…
In fairness, the right has been pretty consistent about tailoring the response according to risk—i.e., those who are at risk should isolate and everyone else should resume work. They happened to be right in this regard. The left has also made exceptions in their “lockdown everything” policy, specifically with regard to their own protests (and the response of pandemic experts is a particularly interesting case study of the polarization of science production as opposed to the polarization of science consumption).
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#8This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…
In fairness, the right has been pretty consistent about tailoring the response according to risk—i.e., those who are at risk should isolate and everyone else should resume work. They happened to be right in this regard. The left has also made exceptions in their “lockdown everything” policy, specifically with regard to their own protests (and the response of pandemic experts is a particularly interesting case study o…
I didn't want to get into a game of who has been most wrong, because that will automatically trigger people to go back to their camps and hunker down. I agree that the "isolate the vulnerable, continue with life otherwise" is most likely the best outcome. The fact that this idea is attributed to the right is going to mean it is DOA, for the most part.
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#9This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…
>This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are working with the same plans set in March.
As the article somewhat loosely implies, the problem is that all new data becomes suspect when all of our institutions are openly politicized.
You think these biases only exist with respect to COVID? The marginalized right (consider the viceral response you're about to have to reading these next sentences) has been saying the same thing about academia for at least a decade. That goes for climate change and much of modern psychological theory. And no, these aren't extreme far right Nazis/incels as people like to stereotype, these are near center moderates, these are (typically in the minority) doctors, scientists, engineers, this is the so called silent majority that is denied a voice on most modern platforms. And part of the reason that our society is gridlocked is that the majority has decided that this minority is not allowed a voice because in a one dimensional two party system one side falls closer to morally repugnant views, so we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Our institutions are collapsing because actors are no longer operating in good faith. And those in power believe there are morally justified in suppressing opposing views.
Edit: and I'd like to add, another contribution to gridlock is the tendency for black and white thinking that at this point I'm starting to accept is extremely common human nature - there is a world of nuance between criticism and outright denial that is inevitably ignored almost any time someone expresses criticism for, say, climate change resources or the media (explicitly not scientist) derived predictions.
Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fairness, the right has been pretty consistent about tailoring the response according to risk—i.e., those who are at risk should isolate and everyone else should resume work. They happened to be right in this regard. The left has also made exceptions in their “lockdown everything” policy, specifically with regard to their own protests (and the response of pandemic experts is a particularly interesting case study o…
I didn't want to get into a game of who has been most wrong, because that will automatically trigger people to go back to their camps and hunker down. I agree that the "isolate the vulnerable, continue with life otherwise" is most likely the best outcome. The fact that this idea is attributed to the right is going to mean it is DOA, for the most part.
Understandable. Partisanship is the scourge of our generation.