Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #118

ssully wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Post by tunesmith » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #77

tunesmith wrote: post #70

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…

> 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"?

Post by krimbus » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

jmeister wrote: post #114

betterunix2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 get…

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

Post by specialist » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

bastardoperator wrote: post #11

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.

Post by ralph84 » Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #62

sto_hristo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gre…

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…