Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 837 posts

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#221

Post by potta_coffee »

mmmpop wrote: post #87
MattGaiser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

I think you're right. In my opinion, the republic is unraveling. Roman Empire 2.0.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#222

Post by [deleted] »

takeda wrote: post #138
complianceowl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your partisan comments are so toxic. Try making your point without spewing that Facebook garbage around here.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#223

Post by rfreiberger »

ssully wrote: post #113
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effective…

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…

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.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#224

Post by jobigoud »

outime wrote: post #13
colordrops wrote: post #10

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…

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.

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.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#225

Post by Mikeb85 »

teh_infallible wrote: post #180
Mikeb85 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hesi…

Ironically, those PHDs you trust are the most hesitant

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).

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#226

Post by robbedpeter »

ralph84 wrote: post #149
saalweachter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#227

Post by Jensson »

krimbus wrote: post #145
jmeister wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

She did say that, just after saying that she would be the first in line if public health professionals recommended it.

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.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#228

Post by Clubber »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #174
krimbus wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She did say that, just after saying that she would be the first in line if public health professionals recommended it.

This clip reminds me of Colbert because different people map their mental model onto her communication to parse one thing or the opposite thing.

It was still an extremely reckless thing for her to say to score some political points though.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#229

Post by mattgreenrocks »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #163
colordrops wrote: post #10

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…

> 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 w…

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.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#230

Post by thepasswordis »

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!

Post reply on HN