Earlier quoted context omitted.
This matches a lot of my own experience in trying to convince people to take reasonable precautions and get vaccinated. And I was one of the first in line for my age group in my state. You have to do things to build trust first, and you have to be willing to admit that some of the measures taken are farcical and have no basis in science. People will listen to a reasonable, nuanced discussion. They won't listen to som…
> People will listen to a reasonable, nuanced discussion. They won't listen to someone who hates them. The victim argument is standard rhetoric, but they can choose to do what they want. For one thing, I haven't seen much hate at all. Could you give examples of it on a significant scale? Some leaders expressing hate? Mostly, I see resignation.
Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
561–570 of 837 posts
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the most frustrating things about this for me, is that this pandemic has highlighted just how important it is that the public have trust and faith in science, doctors, medicine, and in government agencies like the CDC. For far too long we've allowed private companies put their profits over human lives and it's hurt that trust. We have seen scientists taking money from corporations to publish bullshit studies f…
"put their profits over human lives" The government has a price per life when setting airline and automobile standards. Is that putting "profits over human lives"? Stop with the ridiculous rhetoric.
This is some sort of sarcasm right? Arguing that the abhorrent actions of companies like Nestle, DuPont, Phillip Morris, DeBeers, and Purdue Pharma are anything remotely equal to setting federal safety standards while saying I'm guilty of "ridiculous rhetoric"?
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#563Mask policy has always been consistent with the available data. They work but the effect is limited. This is why we have focused on multiple mitigation strategies. The problem we have is that because masks are not 100% effective people have decided that no masks are acceptable. Same flawed logic about vaccines.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there's a bigger risk with the virus. The selfish calculus should also be to get vaccinated.
The calculus is different for tens of millions people who acquired natural immunity from previous infections before the vaccines even existed. I am one of them. There is no good reason for me to take the risk with the vaccines because it will only increase my immunity marginally.
I think the evidence available today contradicts this position. Vaccine immunity is much better than naturally acquired immunity, and natural immunity plus vaccine immunity is much better still.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#565How about the biggest dishonesty - lack of admission that not everyone is at the same risk and that lockdowns have significant irreversible costs for low risk individuals and for society? Young children are not getting critical development years back. Healthy 20 somethings only have limited time to date, party and have fun before being saddled with adult responsibilities forever. Most of shattered local businesses ar…
> lockdowns have significant irreversible costs for low risk individuals and for society Sure, but let's keep in mind what they can do when they are effective. China averted the deaths of 2.5-3 million people with an effective lockdown program. That's incredible. I'm not confident I can really think of any policy proposition that would save more lives off of the top of my head. The fact that we failed to do the same…
At the cost of a lockdown for everyone we could have offered targeted protection to the most vulnerable who wanted to avail themselves of it:
- Work from home options or in the worst case unemployment benefits for duration of the pandemic - Reimbursement for food/goods delivery fees - N95 masks and training on fitting them properly - Hotel/AirBNB rooms as an alternative to congregate living - Small gated communities with entry quarantines / contact tracing
In the meantime those at low risk could have continued to live more normally and building up some herd immunity as a stopgap measure until vaccines were ready.
Certainly Sweden handled things more along these lines and in the long term their society would be better for it. China caused every single COVID death in the world, whether through labs or wet markets, so I wouldn't sing praises of authoritarian governments.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#566Earlier 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.
I'm not trying to be flippant when I say that it's good that they will not trust government again, as long as that leads to greater public vigilance against government's creeping excesses and self-serving propaganda. If it prevents the next Iraq war and the next Japanese internment, I'm all for it.
>If it prevents the next Iraq war and the next Japanese internment, I'm all for it.
The downside is that it may cause other negative outcomes that are equally bad. There is a balance, as distrust can go too far.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there's a bigger risk with the virus. The selfish calculus should also be to get vaccinated.
That is a sweeping generalisation. Covid19 targets a very select group disproportionately, being young and healthy changes the risk dynamics significantly.
As a hockey fan what I see is that at least 4 NHL players have had their careers badly harmed or ended by COVID-19, that's not a very big pool of people, of which only some small proportion have been infected - that has changed my perception of the risk dynamics significantly.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#568Earlier 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…
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.
I bought a bunch of N95 masks the day after I heard China was locking down Wuhan. There were still plenty of masks at regular prices at the time.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#569The lede is buried here, the reason the US is not cohesive is entirely due to the former president who continues to this day to support and spur the anti-vax movement.
By... getting vaxed himself? Why aren't the vax campaigns leading with Trump's action – and his repeated verbal endorsement of choosing to get vaxed – to overcome resistance in his followers? Such over-focus on Trump is a pathological scapegoating to deflect responsibility on the part of both the professional permanent bureacracies, and the current administration. Trump did awfully, yes. But the mistrust & errors spr…
"Pathological scapegoating" of the guy that has literally said "No, that’s okay. That’s all right. You got your freedoms".
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hospitals dont buy masks at COSCO stores and neither does the gov.
But where do the stores buy masks, hm?
wouldn't it be easy for a competent government to identify and control maks suppliers? btw, here in Canada, most notable ppe hoarders were shipping it to China