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Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

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Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#731

Post by CaptainMarvel »

smoe wrote: post #61

I think the other hard truth that citizens don't get entrusted with, is that we don't really know how to deal with a pandemic in the modern globalized world. Sure, some countries had plans and scenarios made before, but nonetheless got caught with their pants down. E.g Switzerland doing a nationwide epidemic simulation back in 2013, identifying serious flaws in preparedness, but not acting on it at all. And even if,…

The UK similarly did simulations five years ago [0], but didn’t act on the findings from those either.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/07/coronavirus...

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#732

Post by roenxi »

nuerow wrote: post #729
roenxi wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your argument is actually not about freedom at all, but about exceptionalism, entitlements, and excluding yourself from any responsibility or duty towards ensuring that the priviledges you enjoy are also made available to others. The technical term I prefer is "basic human rights". Like right to work, right to freedom of movement, right to associate, etc, etc. That might be a bit entitled I suppose.

> The technical term I prefer is "basic human rights". If that's what you're going with, please keep in mind that basic human rights include right to health, and your refusal to comply with basic health and safety precautions violates "basic human rights" of everyone around you. So, your argument isn't really about "freedom" but this false sense of entitlement where no rules or obligations should apply to you while t…

> your refusal to comply with basic health and safety precautions violates "basic human rights" of everyone around you...

1. I mean, I'm vaccinated. So pardon me for not taking that outburst seriously.

2. That is a stupid argument. We haven't managed to eradicate the flu, I caught it the other year. So it isn't obvious how someone being unvaccinated can expose you to extra risk - COVID is still going to be around and you're still going to catch it eventually - if you haven't already. Probably several times. There is no credible plan to eradicate the coronavirus.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#733

Post by maxerickson »

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…

I don't think we can make a lot of assumptions about counterfactuals. There's a bunch of people primed to act out regardless of how well the messaging is handled.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#734

Post by hypertele-Xii »

sokoloff wrote: post #615
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That also causes significant loss of life, both domestically and abroad. The punishment feels, to me, disproportionate to the crime. Things like having permission to shoot someone for breaking into your house.

What leads you to conclude that defending yourself with up to/including deadly force against an intruder with unknown (but quite reasonably presumed to be criminal) intent is unreasonable? Breaking into an occupied residence is a quite serious crime and I don't think it's reasonable to require the inhabitants to sit down over tea and find out what the invader's intentions are before mounting a defense. Don't want to…

There was a gun in the house when I was a kid. Explicitly to protect the family against intruders.

Number of times intrusions occurred: 0

Number of times the gun went off by accident: 2

Number of times a drunken adult gave the gun, loaded, to a kid: 1

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#735

Post by nuerow »

viridian wrote: post #716
nuerow wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, the Herman Cain Award is a place to vent frustration about the wave of reckless and irresponsible behavior perpetrated by a largely uninformed/disinformed segment of the population which happens to also be highly vocal and even militant regarding their personal ill-informed beliefs. The Herman Cain Award focuses mainly on reporting cases of individuals who are eggregiously contrarian and even hostile in…

If you would like, I can pull upvoted comments from the subreddit where people are bathing in the catharsis of their dead political enemies.

> (...) where people are bathing in the catharsis of their dead political enemies.

Taking a vaccine is not a political issue, except to a radical bunch of anti-intellectual militants who for some reason still hold a few cognitive dissonances tied to the last election round.

To put things in perspective, there are countries which already are in the high 90% of total vaccination rounds, have a residual incidence rate, and have already went back to normal, simply due to the fact that they didn't had to deal with conspiracy theorists that adopted denial as a election strategy.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#736

Post by croutonwagon »

nielsbot wrote: post #587
croutonwagon wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It doesn't have to be rational. Vaccines mandates are already common for school children, nurses, (and maybe teachers, but I'm not sure about that one) Even this argument ignores nuance. The vaccines in these schedules are mandated for 2 reasons 1. The diseases they treat directly impact their population in a major way in large numbers 2. Immunization not only prevents the negatives impacts of 1, but also prevent th…

Is your argument that COVID-19 does not impact the population directly in large numbers?

Yes basically. Major complication rates for those under 18 are very low, especially when compared to other diseases in these vaccine schedules (in my example I used measles which was closer to 30%) [1][1.1][1.2] .

By far most of the major complications as a result of COVID are in populations over 45 OR with those with pre existing conditions. This qualifications are almost nonexistent in the under 18 population. At best, the hospitalization rate for those under 18 was about 1.9 per 100k. There have been, according to CDC data, 499 deaths as of 10/6/21 for those 0-17 yo [2][3].

Add to that there is evidence that vaccination doesn’t necessarily prevent transmission, and there have been breakouts where up to 70% of those involved were vaccinated it’s not entirely unreasonable to question a vaccine mandate for that population [4]. Additionally as of May 1, 2021 the CDC stopped really tracking breakthrough rates and only tracks them if they result in hospitalization, which makes it hard, if not impossible to really gather data on how effective the vaccinations used in the US are at preventing transmission.

So theres plenty of arguments to be had about being skeptical of even this argument "vaccines are mandated for kids" as it applies to THIS specific vaccine.

[1] https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html

[1.1] https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_5.html#virusTypeD...

[1.2] https://imgur.com/a/8oENuRn

[2] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex...

[3] https://imgur.com/a/0W1oqlH

[4] https://bit.ly/3auVBjh

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#737

Post by concordDance »

Covzire wrote: post #571
detaro wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people still trot out “4% kill rate” Which health authority or public health expert is claiming that today and hasn't shared updates with better data (=good news)? Yes, some people still bring that, but that's not because evil experts hide the true data from them.

I think you discount the idea of "evil experts" too quickly. The day Joe Biden took over the presidency, CNN stopped listing death counts for COVID. The deaths increased in 2021 precipitously, had it been Trump you know they would have probably used bigger fonts, colors etc to drive the narrative. There are evil people and some of them are in control of various parts of the narrative and they use that control for the…

The problem here is treating partisan news sites as experts.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#738

Post by concordDance »

rc2634 wrote: post #502
spookthesunset wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that to this day people still trot out “4% kill rate” and make their kids wear a mask for a disease a kid isn’t even remotely at risk for… my trust in public health is below zero. Not once have these people done anything to calm people or tell them good news. Not a single time. It is disgusting how horribly these public health “experts” treat us.

They keep yelling “follow the science” while completely ignoring or ridiculing science that goes against their pro-mask, pro-lockdown, pro-vaccination narrative.

"They" is mostly people on social media and partisan news orgs. Not health institutions or scientists.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#739

Post by jasonlaramburu »

lucaspm98 wrote: post #618
jasonlaramburu wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Get better at defending your beliefs in the marketplace of ideas. This is sort of the Joe Rogan argument: fight misinformation by talking louder and more convincingly. I am legitimately curious, in what way could the pro-vaccine community do a better job of defending their beliefs in the marketplace of ideas? The data is clear that vaccines save lives, they have generally mild side effects and they reduce transmissi…

I see two reasons for this. First is a carryover of distrust from the mishandling of the pandemic up to this point. There has been flip-flopping in government messaging and policy constantly. This has sometimes been due to new data, and sometimes I'd argue for political gain. The second reason is, well, the free discussion of the nuances of the vaccine has largely not been allowed/socially acceptable. The vaccine is…

OP’s point was that the argument in favor of vaccines needs to be made more convincingly. What does that actually mean? How could the information be presented more convincingly?

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#740

Post by concordDance »

rootusrootus wrote: post #591
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #356

How 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…

My goodness, what a selfish take. God forbid 20 somethings miss out on some party time. Meanwhile, people who need medical care (many of them not elderly) can't get it because the hospitals are choked with covid patients.

Honestly, that "party time" should not be trivialized. A year of lost mating opportunities is a really big deal to a mammal.
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