541–550 of 925 posts
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So what is an appropriate amount of cases to go back to normal?
Personally I will keep wearing a mask around other people until we eradicate it or find a 100% preventive vaccine. So decades for me.
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As a European I'm quite surprised how deep the conspiracy theories and suspicions against the state go in the US. You don't need tp take everything at face value, but to be so suspicious of essential institutions like the CDC seems crazy to me. Except for a vocal but tiny minority there's a lot of trust in the institutions of the EU and (Western) Europe, where citizrns at most worry about incompetence, not malicious…
I find that surprising. It's pretty clear the EU health regulatory agencies aren't much better. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... 500 to 2000 people died in France because the regulatory authorities choose to ignore multiple warning signs the drug has issues. Maybe you shouldn't be so trusting?
I do trust the police, tax authorities, medical authorities, statistics department. I even trust the politicians work towards their stated goals and ideals, each aiming for what they consider the best for the country.
I'm from the Nordics, with a pretty good track record of honesty and societal trust. I would find that continuous mistrust immensely tiring. That would just be a sad, sad world.
I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…
The CDC is not law enforcement. The talent it attracts, its mission statement, its mode of operation are all different. The statements of fact they release pertain to public health with no human adversarial motives. The research they use to substantiate their claims can be peer reviewed, duplicated and critiqued.
It's a historical point of fact that this is untrue.
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2 weeks of asymptomatic spread has been known about since late January (edit: in 2020). [0] And Fauci said at one point (2/14/2020): “There is no reason for anyone right now in the United States, with regard to coronavirus, to wear a mask” [1] And at another point (6/15/2020): "[...] we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal pro…
> “There is no reason for anyone right now in the United States, with regard to coronavirus, to wear a mask” Isn’t this defensible if it was indeed true that there was a temporary shortage of masks for health care workers?
There seems to be a lot of post hoc rationalization for what appears to simply be a mistake. This is why accountability is so difficult. People decide ahead of time that certain organizations or individuals are right. If it looks like they made a mistake, then there must be some good reason that justifies their actions that we just don't see.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/22/coronavirus-why-a-ppe-shorta...
I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…
It's still unclear whether or not masks helped reduce the spread of COVID-19. https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/
> The Swiss Policy Research site has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories including claims that QAnon was a psyop of the FBI.[5] and theories relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.[2][6] German public broadcasterTagesschau calls SPR a propaganda tool[7] and Media Bias/Fact Check says the site is "a Moderate Conspiracy website based on the promotion of unproven claims."[4]
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Fortunately, we’re not. In between, there was a vaccine developed and deployed and the science strongly (overwhelmingly is probably more precise) suggests that fully vaccinated people are at minimal risk to themselves and minimal risk to spread, which is of course the entire point of vaccines and entirely unsurprising given our understanding and long experience with other vaccines, which almost all exhibited the same…
I quite agree, but I think the message from health authorities has also been problematic here: they repeated that "vaccinated individuals will still spread the infection". That is true of course: some vaccinated individuals will still spread the infection because efficacy is not 100 %. But the public has, predictably, got this message wrong: I keep getting told that "vaccinated people will get the infection and sprea…
But I also have to admit that “Defund the Police”, “Flatten the Curve”, “I have a dream”, “Think Different” are more effective than a precise 2-page memo laying out a concrete plan.
Some people struggle with nuanced, complicated messaging. Others struggle when messages are over-simplified. I posit that the first group is a few orders of magnitude larger, at least in terms of effect of public comms.
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> “There is no reason for anyone right now in the United States, with regard to coronavirus, to wear a mask” Isn’t this defensible if it was indeed true that there was a temporary shortage of masks for health care workers?
I think no. It erodes trust in medical institutions, and now we reap what was sown. The same thing was done in other countries, including mine (Finland). Result: covid deniers are still using the year-old statements from national health agency to downplay the significance of masks. "Masks are useless; the officials themselves say so", they quote. Big mistake not to be honest, even if it leads to criticism against the…
There's your issue. Saying masks are in short supply begs the question of why. Whether it's reasonable or not, no politician wants to defend their unpreparedness.
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> China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. Because it was even newer and more unknown at that point. Wuhan was in lockdown on the 23rd of January, so they had a pretty good idea by then. Meanwhile the rest of the world twiddled their thumbs and lost the opportunity to contain it. > They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 How do yo…
> How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads. Actually, this is not so clear. The evidence of community cases in November/December in e.g. France were not picked up at the time either. There is a phase were a new disease can fly completely under the radar, because we are still in a very slow…
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6 months ago there wasn’t a vaccine.
That's GP's point. 6 months ago it made sense for everyone to wear masks. Today it doesn't. If someone today insists that everyone should still wear masks everywhere, then they're doing so for political reasons rather than scientific ones.
Remember that, while the CDC is advised and informed by scientists, they are ultimately a public policy agency. The science matters, to be sure, but what matters most is that the best outcome is achieved, based on people's behavior.
I think they're recommending dropping mask requirements now not because it's the best science, but because vaccine demand has been dropping, and they believe that giving people real-world, day-to-day incentives to vaccinate will convince some of the people hesitant to get vaccinated. And I agree with them on that, and I think it's the right move, even if it carries some risk.