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Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

nature.com

451–460 of 837 posts

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution, be honest: "Masks work, but we don't have enough and need them for hospitals so you're not allowed to buy any. Wrap a tshirt around your face instead, it's probably better than nothing."

The government cannot easily quickly ban the buying/selling of a certain thing like that. Just not how it works, far too slow moving.

They were able to completely shut down entire sectors of the economy pretty quickly quickly.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just so I understand, the one thing about flip flopping on masks cost them to lose faith in all medical experts? Doesn't that seem a little unreasonable? Have you never heard of racism, bias etc? Yes, when a representative for a group does something then that will affect peoples views of that entire group and not just that person. Humans are irrational like that.

Yes I do understand that. I just hope people would put things in perspective and be a bit more rational. I think racism, bias and all that comes from people taking hard line stances on things, possibly things they inherited from their upbringing, political party, etc. If we take a hard line stance on this as well, I don't see what value we are adding. The way I look at the mask guideline was that it was a mistake but…

Trust is irrational by definition: you are trusting somebody is being truthful without any proof. However, refusing trust after it has been broken even once is rational: not only you still don't have any proof but now you have the evidence that that person/entity can lie to you. You might have heard this saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" what do you think it's about?

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#453
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the minute the restrictions were lifted the virus would be back again. Sorry. The idea that if we did lockdowns “right” this would be over is a lie. And to date I’ve yet to hear any “expert” tell the public that a strict lockdown wouldn’t work… all the more reason to not trust them.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#454
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "please take it to stop it killing others" Given that the vaccine doesn't work to stop transmissions, I'd reckon this was just another way for the "experts" to further loose trust with the public.

> Given that the vaccine doesn't work to stop transmissions, Nothing is perfect, but vaccination reduces transmission significantly: > Two studies from Israel, posted as preprints on 16 July, find that two doses of the [Pfizer] vaccine ... are 81% effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. And vaccinated people who do get infected are up to 78% less likely to spread the virus to household members than are unvacci…

Important to note that both of these studies are on pre-Delta variant patient sets, so unlikely to represent current real world impact on transmission from vaccination. This [0] is the most recent I've seen, and it suggests the reduction in transmission against Delta is smaller and wanes rapidly, even with the mRNA vaccines.

[0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264260v...

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people are not stupid, if provided with all available information as well as clear statements regarding the reliability of that information and just a clear message saying "hey this is new and we have no idea, we are making our best guess" people will make decent choices Citation needed

Apart from anything else, this is pretty much what most health authorities did on most theories about COVID. Lots of people chose to listen to other high profile figures who claimed certainty instead...

> this is pretty much what most health authorities did on most theories about COVID

I guess we're living in alternate realities.

The world I'm living in, the biggest celebrity doctor in the USA has repeatedly lied about natural immunity (which is robust, durable, and superior to vaccine immunity in every study published to date), for just one example, and continues to push unnecessary vaccines on people who don't need them and indeed may be harmed by taking them, the opposite of what doctors should do.

Strange you think they're just all above board and doing their best.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#456

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…

> The flip side that wasn't discussed This has been discussed ad nauseam. Nature isn't a foreign policy magazine, so it's not really the greatest place for advising how the US should respond to a disinformation campaign. But communicating about healthcare policy seems to be reasonably in its area of expertise. > The flip side that wasn't discussed is the belittling and censoring of voices that were skeptical of the n…

What is disinformation? Who gets to decide?

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it as moral relativism. We're talking about an individual making their own health choice. Not to mention, the "safe" and "effective" vaccines, according to all available data, are nothing like what they were advertised as. Hell, the President of the USA came out and said you won't get covid if you get the vaccine. And no journalist is calling him out on this obvious lie. Given that environment, it seems s…

> We're talking about an individual making their own health choice. And businesses making their own employment choices. > new biosecurity state. Vaccine mandates are nothing new - I was required to get vaccinated to go to my public school. > I don't see it as moral relativism. You literally said the "best" choice is relative. Your entire stance is deeply relativistic at its core. > And no journalist is calling him ou…

Comparing the MMR requirement for public school to taking experimental vaccines with vastly worse safety profile being a requirement to engage meaningfully in public life at all is a gigantic stretch.

I don't know why people deceive themselves that these are similar in any way.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming "they" trust the Republican leadership. this Gallup poll says only 12% of Americans trust congress. https://news.gallup.com/poll/352316/americans-confidence-maj... Lots of other interesting tidbits about trust in there...

These people who don't trust masks trust ivermectin. Just... talk with them. Its obvious. There's one political party pushing ivermectin as a solution, and the other one doesn't. They want "their side" to be correct on this issue. They don't trust masks because masks were chosen by "the other side". They don't trust vaccines (despite being pushed by Operation Warp Speed by Mr. Trump) because someone else became presi…

Ivermectin is a perfect story for our divided times. Republicans believe Ivermectin is very effective by a 22R-6D margin and very + possibly effective by a 56R-19D margin. Conversely, Democrats believe Ivermectin is dangerous by a 64D-18R margin. May I kindly suggest we lay off partisan news?

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from anything else, this is pretty much what most health authorities did on most theories about COVID. Lots of people chose to listen to other high profile figures who claimed certainty instead...

> this is pretty much what most health authorities did on most theories about COVID I guess we're living in alternate realities. The world I'm living in, the biggest celebrity doctor in the USA has repeatedly lied about natural immunity (which is robust, durable, and superior to vaccine immunity in every study published to date), for just one example, and continues to push unnecessary vaccines on people who don't nee…

Dude also has yet to tell parents to stop worrying about children. I only assume that none of these “experts” talk about who is actually at risk and who isn’t because they are trying to manipulate people into “taking this serious”. Lord help us all if the truth got out that more kids get screwed in house fires each year than they do by covid. Then we might not bother to vaccinate them or something.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the belittling and censoring of voices that were skeptical of the narratives, which engendered even more distrust What are examples of this? Most of the U.S. was quite loose about lockdowns and mask requirements until their specific geography got hit. (For example, I summered in the Smoky Mountains June of 2020. Compared to New York, it was as if nothing had happened. The tone changed by December, after the South h…

An example that jumps to mind is all of the media and academics that opposed the theory that the virus was a lab leak in china, primarily because Trump espoused the view. As much as Trump deserved ridicule, that was a perfectly valid theory.

Another that was roundly mocked was Trump's idea about bringing "UV light inside the body" as a treatment. Lo and behold a year or so later.. [0]

>Ultraviolet light treatments introduced into the tracheas of five critically ill COVID-19 patients appeared to be safe and associated with a reduction in the respiratory load of SARS-CoV-2—the virus responsible for COVID-19—in all but one patient, according to a study conducted by Cedars-Sinai.

[0] https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/reduced-viral-loads-se...

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