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Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

nytimes.com

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Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#621

Post by gadders »

herbst wrote: post #389
andreilys wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC/surgeon general recommended not wearing masks at the beginning of the pandemic, while Silicon Valley was way ahead of the curve (meanwhile hit pieces were posted by journalists with an axe to grind saying they we’re overreacting). So yes it has lost its credibility.

Our Swiss virus guy too told this 'lie' in the beginning, a few months later he explained that this was wrong and the only reason he said masks are not necessary was because there weren't enough and private people were already stockpiling it anyway. So people wore masks and life went on. I still don't understand why sooooo many countries can't be more honest about these things

>> Our Swiss virus guy too told this 'lie' in the beginning

>> I still don't understand why sooooo many countries can't be more honest about these things

Interesting definition of honest. The fact is, all these large organisations believe in the "noble lie" which undermines their credibility.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#622

Post by neaanopri »

avar wrote: post #568
walrus01 wrote: post #434

I have a personal theory that humans do not fully understand death rate when it's spread out widely across many geographic areas. Let's say, for instance, that the covid19 death rate is about 450 people a day. It might be more or less than that right now, I haven't specifically checked (but I do recall that it's easily been 2000-3000 a day for some periods of time in very recent memory). But that might be 450 people…

> What changed? It's the same number of dead people, right? Aside from general aviation concerns, that 747-400 will have young families, infants and children on board, whereas exposing everyone on that 747-400 to COVID-19 would mostly result in the deaths of the elderly and the infirm. If we had an outbreak of Spanish flu with the same overall death rate it would not be as bad. It would be much worse. The deaths of t…

Early on, I read that even though people who die of covid are typically old, they have plenty of time left. E.g. an 85 year old dies, who would be expected to live 10 more years.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#623

Post by syops »

ppf wrote: post #616
teachingassist wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A doctor friend of mine told me, at the start of the pandemic, that they found it important to correctly follow Public Health advice whether or not they (an expert) agreed with all of it. The importance of following the principles for public health is greater than the importance of the advice being unbiasedly perfect at every moment.

Counterpoint: many atrocities have been made acceptable to the general population, in the name of "public health" (or at least, the greater public good). For me, "the greater good" does not over-ride personal critical analysis.

The greater good in this case means following rules/mandates that do not in any way lead to an outcome of supporting atrocities. There is no valid critical analysis by which one concludes that not wearing masks or engaging in social distancing is a fight against atrocities.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#624

Post by varjag »

o-__-o wrote: post #610
cout wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The director of the CDC during most of the pandemic was Robert Redfield. Dr. Fauci is director of the NIH, so his statements are not relevant to the credibility of the CDC. In defense of Dr. Fauci's statement, saying "there is no reason right now to wear a mask" is quite different from "masks are ineffective", as it keeps getting paraphrased. The latter is obviously absurd, as there were numerous studies on the effec…

Fauci had said the reason they made a misspeak about masks is because they were afraid there would not be enough for first responders

That sure helped the trust to CDC.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#625

Post by lawtalkinghuman »

ppf wrote: post #616
teachingassist wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A doctor friend of mine told me, at the start of the pandemic, that they found it important to correctly follow Public Health advice whether or not they (an expert) agreed with all of it. The importance of following the principles for public health is greater than the importance of the advice being unbiasedly perfect at every moment.

Counterpoint: many atrocities have been made acceptable to the general population, in the name of "public health" (or at least, the greater public good). For me, "the greater good" does not over-ride personal critical analysis.

There's a fairly significant difference between the Tuskeegee Experiment, and having to wear a surgical facemask while in a supermarket.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#626

Post by lawtalkinghuman »

sharken wrote: post #467
mlyle wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small. It's totally worth it to bend an exponential function. But the individual benefit from mask wearing in any given interaction is negligible.

Which leads to huge arguments which really benefits nobody as we just establish that we disagree. Common sense seems to say that masks make s difference, but if that is the strongest argument, then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense.

Because if you get it wrong, lots of people die, so you err on the side of caution.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#627

Post by Siira »

teachingassist wrote: post #591
livinginfear wrote: post #221

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…

A doctor friend of mine told me, at the start of the pandemic, that they found it important to correctly follow Public Health advice whether or not they (an expert) agreed with all of it. The importance of following the principles for public health is greater than the importance of the advice being unbiasedly perfect at every moment.

> The importance of following the principles for public health is greater than the importance of the advice being unbiasedly perfect

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Also, even if this is true at some point, as more people adopt your mindset of conformity, it would become very valuable to manipulate, which is easy to do (Goodhart’s law).

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#628

Post by nonameiguess »

Nbox9 wrote: post #242
cozzyd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA and CDC are fundamentally different institutions. It does not make sense to treat them the same any more than it makes sense to treat NASA and the IRS the same...

They are not the same, but they are institutions with a lot of similarities (NSA, CDC, NASA, IRS). They largely receive funding the same way, and are answerable to the same people (congress, White House). There is some similarities to how the heads of these organizations are determined and how the heads of these organizations are fired. In startup speak the organizations have the same VC and share many board members.

This isn't really true. The actual chain of command is, of course, completely different people until you get to the President. But more importantly, intelligence agencies conducting covert actions don't reveal their activities to all of Congress. With respect to funding, only select committees with specific clearance get to see the real budget. Everyone else sees a line item that says "classified budget." As for oversight, see here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3093

The actual committees:

https://intelligence.house.gov/ (23 members)

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/ (14 members)

So that's 37 members of Congress they're accountable to, but not directly. If you read the actual law, it only says the "President" has to inform these committees of what the intelligence agencies are doing, and if they happen to do anything illegal, the President has to tell Congress (but only these 37 members).

Theoretically, the President is not above the law, but as we've seen in recent history, if the President is of the same political party as the majority party of Congress, they're not likely to actually enforce the law.

Practically speaking, all of Congress isn't going to care what all of the Executive Branch is doing all of the time given the limited number of hours in a day, which is why they they have committees, but at least in the case of the CDC, NASA, and IRS, if all 538 members of Congress request information, they have to give it to them. With the NSA, only 37 members of Congress are authorized to even receive information and only through the President.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#629

Post by Siira »

syops wrote: post #623
ppf wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: many atrocities have been made acceptable to the general population, in the name of "public health" (or at least, the greater public good). For me, "the greater good" does not over-ride personal critical analysis.

The greater good in this case means following rules/mandates that do not in any way lead to an outcome of supporting atrocities. There is no valid critical analysis by which one concludes that not wearing masks or engaging in social distancing is a fight against atrocities.

Masks are a minor inconvenience but they affect millions. It adds up.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#630

Post by varjag »

evandijk70 wrote: post #401
Rebelgecko wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the CDC's original statements on masks (they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc) contributed a lot to the distrust and politicization of mask wearing. When you expect an institution to always be impartial and tell the truth, those sorts of white lies can quickly erode trust.

The Dutch CDC (RIVM) made the same statements. As a result, people don't really believe in masks here either, but it not a big political issue. I am not sure why the mask became such a symbol for the corona measures in the US, but not here.

All national authorities did this, because the advice originated at WHO.
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