TlDr: Trust engenders trust
Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
371–380 of 837 posts
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
>(25 Feb 2020) U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a walking tour of San Francisco's Chinatown Monday to let the public know the neighborhood is safe and open for business. >Pelosi, a Democrat who represents the heavily Chinese American city, visited the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, whose owner Kevin Chan, says his business and others are down 70% since the outbreak of the new coronavirus. >"You should come t…
At that point no businesses US were closed because of covid, but Chinese businesses were unproportionally hurt because president called covid a "china virus". You're trying to smear somebody that they are making it political while they are actually trying to unpoliticize it. This was before emrgency was declared. And only 8 people were confirmed in California. Check the timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin…
Again, "Not me and my side, it was all the other guys."
The Washington Post reported that six other countries had restricted travel from China before January 30, six did so on January 31, and by the time U.S. travel restrictions became effective on February 2, 38 other countries had taken action before or at the same time as the U.S. restrictions.
In what universe does telling people to get out and gather in groups make sense when there is a pandemic looming.
Looking at the timeline: "The first case of community transmission, because it had no known origin, is confirmed in Solano County, California, on February 26."
So the day after the call to gather, you have confirmed community spread.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree to an extent, but at the end of the day it's unrealistic. The government is an entity made up of people with their own biases, problems, and their job on the line if they fuck up. I think there is a meme of honorable government employee who will resign before letting down the American people, but the reality is most people (and government employee's) would be more concerned about covering their ass. This is a…
> This is a long way of me saying that people are liars, the government is made of people, so the government will always lie. I live in Sweden, and our politicians seems to be a lot more honest than both sides of American politics. So from my perspective you aren't even close to hit the theoretical "politicians are people, people lie" limit. And until you at least gets somewhat close to it I'd argue that you should s…
I am willing to admit being wrong on this. I limited by my experience being only with the American system. From the inside looking out, it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking fixing this system is impossible.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Folks could buy masks anyway They couldn't for a while though, and that's an aspect of the whole fiasco that really bugged me personally. The initial claim was that we do not need masks, because they are not effective and because if we all buy them then hospitals will run out, so I did not buy any. Then, we were told that we all must wear masks, and there were none available. I was re-using a disposable mask for se…
Yeah, fair, I still don't know what them recommending this earlier would've done though. It just would've made the shortage sooner, right? It seems that's what they were trying to prevent. I do get that people don't like that they were lied to though, and then mandates were hard to follow when implemented, if people couldn't acquire masks. The pandemic exposed, and continues to expose, issues with our supply chains.…
I don't have a good answer either. I understand public health at a national level is about being pragmatic and doing things that actually work, and I can honestly understand if they acted the way they did to try and give hospitals some lead time to stock up before the masses did. But even if this was the case, they have not told us about it, and continue to deny that anyone ever said not to mask up. The tweet[0] from the surgeon general was deleted. The CDC page[1] has been taken down. So not only did they lie, they are now lying about lying, and I'm not going to forget that the next time I'm told to "trust the experts."
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://twitter.c...
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229164715/https://www.cdc.g...
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear this a lot, but there's no reason why this has to be the case. The government has a lot to say in how much the people trust it. If they make the first move (and probably the second, and third, and fourth) in being trustworthy and trusting people with information, they can change this perception. It would take decades at minimum, probably longer than our lifetimes, but this doesn't need to be a foregone conclus…
The point of the comment you're replying to isn't that we don't just distrust the government now , it's that distrusting the government was expected of all citizens by the people who founded the country. We have an amendment that basically says "if the government becomes tyrannical, use guns to make them stop." Some people think that we are supposed to distrust them, always .
No, I get that, and I explicitly reject it as "part of the country's DNA". Talk and assumptions like that merely perpetuate the status quo.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people are not stupid, but unfortunately in the US many issues are moralized to the point that people have a hard time discussing them rationally. You question Fauci? You're an anti-science freak. You question CDC's decision? You're a Trump supporter. You ask how CDC's numbers lead to certain decisions? You're a racist. I really wish people do not attack one's motives and focus on discussing facts.
People in the US have become very good at totally ignoring the argument and just tribalizing the approach to everything. X must be right and how dare you question them as they are part of us. Nothing can be nuanced anymore. Read a twitter thread this morning discussing a father whose daughter was raped in a high school bathroom and then the perpetrator who they did not really make clear if it was someone that was tra…
My interpretation is the the life in the US has been so good that Americans could never imagine what it was like living in 1950's Cuba, 1960's China, 1970's Cambodia, and North Korea. Do people really think that people in those countries were evil or were crazy? The truth is, the people there started with good intentions. They wanted to have equity. They were pained by all kinds of oppression. They genuinely believed that "anti-revolutionary" people or "anti-progressive" people can be educated. Then, it started with your neighbor reporting your indecent behavior to the authority, or your neighborhood organized to educate you. Then it went on, and elementary school students beat their school principals to death. Your neighborhood looted your family for the cause. You lost your right to go to university or get a job because your great grandpa owned properties. Ironically, no one in such nation ended up living well, except the top few. That road to hell is paved with good intension is really not a cliche.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you claim that gravity does not exist, then turn around and say that the effect we call "gravity" accelerates matter at 9.8 meters per second per second. Then you go and claim that magnetism does not exist, I will probably not believe you.
>If you claim that gravity does not exist, then turn around and say that the effect we call "gravity" accelerates matter at 9.8 meters per second per second. >Then you go and claim that magnetism does not exist, I will probably not believe you. Fair enough. Now apply that reasoning to my original statement. If public health authorities claim that masks don't work, and that's a lie, then they say they do, that's a lie…
I am not sure of anyone who was on the mask bandwagon but then got off when the government approved them. Not saying that they don't exist.
The problem is it is not just the health officials, you have the media and politicians also all trying to play doctor but also not following their own advice.
And it does not matter that it is only a couple people that have done so, due to the way people group those couple are all it takes.
To look at an older example of this: Look at how the religious right community is treated when it comes to morals. You probably don't believe them. Why? Not because Sally and John in Minnesota or even the most of the people in the leadership. No, you don't believe them because that one guy who was caught solicitating gay sex in the airport. Or the one guy who was cheating on his wife.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#378The 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…
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…
> there was never data that said "masks don't work for the public"
Actually there was plenty of data saying that masks don't work for the public.
For example, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
And there are many others - that was just an easy one I found today. Some similar studies even showed an increase in flu transmission among the subject population wearing masks.
There were plenty of articles (such as the Tufekci one you cite) at the time explaining that normal folks don't know proper mask discipline, such as how to fit masks and avoid fomite transmission.
In this situation with limited supply it makes sense to preserve masks for skilled people who are facing numerous likely transmission sources, especially on the front line of providing health care.
The new data was that fomite transmission is not a strong vector for COVID19, that even modest mask technology is a good source transmission interrupter, and that the contagion window is well in advance of active symptoms.
This new data meant that the flu based studies were not representative.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, fair, I still don't know what them recommending this earlier would've done though. It just would've made the shortage sooner, right? It seems that's what they were trying to prevent. I do get that people don't like that they were lied to though, and then mandates were hard to follow when implemented, if people couldn't acquire masks. The pandemic exposed, and continues to expose, issues with our supply chains.…
I don't have a good answer either. I understand public health at a national level is about being pragmatic and doing things that actually work, and I can honestly understand if they acted the way they did to try and give hospitals some lead time to stock up before the masses did. But even if this was the case, they have not told us about it, and continue to deny that anyone ever said not to mask up. The tweet[0] from…
Just wondering, are they currently lying about having made these guidelines before? I haven't heard anything about that myself. I also do remember some news articles saying the government's mask guidelines were so hospitals could stock up (maybe it was once they flip flopped, I forget, it was over a year ago, but I do recall reading that).
I think it's possible they deleted old content to make sure invalid data isn't out there on the web to be cached, linked to, quoted, etc.
However, if they really are lying now (i.e. making current statements) saying that they never flip flopped, then yeah that would be weird.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear this a lot, but there's no reason why this has to be the case. The government has a lot to say in how much the people trust it. If they make the first move (and probably the second, and third, and fourth) in being trustworthy and trusting people with information, they can change this perception. It would take decades at minimum, probably longer than our lifetimes, but this doesn't need to be a foregone conclus…
That's why I don't think it's possible. The priorities and operation of the government change whenever the administration/majority changes. Having decades of consistency like that just isn't going to happen.
That's a fair point. This isn't something that can really be legislated (at least not effectively), so you need successive administrations to be on the same page with this, which isn't likely.