I agree with the sentiment of this article, but I'm noticing that some folks can't determine fact from fiction even when presented with data that supports the facts or makes them irrefutable. No amount of logic, facts, or transparency will be enough for these folks, and while I can appreciate a skeptic, some of these people are beyond basic help and need professional guidance.
Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
11–20 of 837 posts
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#12The 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…
And thats a good thing too. Don't reward poor behavior with compliance.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#13The 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.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#14Thanks for posting. It's a terrible shame society has torn itself apart before we could learn the (to some) obvious lesson, but at least maybe this will inform policy in the future... That or governments are now more terrified of people losing their minds and so feel they should be even more controlling in their fear response as a knee jerk reaction.... Either way, in the UK we failed to save about 67% of those who c…
There's two aspects to this, I think.
One is true protectionism. My objection to this is that if we perhaps had superhumans guiding us mere humans, they might be capable of modulating our information flow to protect us, but mere humans lack this power. Indeed, let's be honest, being a politician is if anything a counter-indicator in being the sort of person capable of dealing with the real issues that arise in a crisis. The truth is government isn't really capable of modulating information flow to a society for their own good or protection. I think a lot of people implicitly and in an unexamined way tend to assume that "the government" is populated by some sort of superhumans, but they're just people. Relative to the enormous problems they face, even their training or experience they may have doesn't necessarily put them that far ahead of normal people, who aren't all unskilled yokels out in the fields trying to figure out how to keep their sheep in the pen or something.
The other aspect is the abuse of information flow to consolidate, create, or simply exercise power, since "information is power" is not really a metaphor. It goes beyond merely being incapable to outright reprehensible that our "trusted" leaders would use the opportunity of having this sort of information in a life-and-death situation for such crass purposes, and there ought to be consequences for them, personally.
Either way, we have once again demonstrated that there really isn't a compelling reason to be keeping information from people.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#15Edit: before you downvote this, read it? I'm not an anti-vax nutcase. They didn't trust the public with their actual thinking at any point during Covid. The guidance was initially "don't wear a mask, it will make it worse because you'll infect yourself with your hand" to "we'll just lock down for 3 weeks and then back to normal" to "we have to flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming hospitals" to the current policy o…
Surgical masks (and other cloth masks) make a small but significant difference in transmission. At the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't understand whether that difference was lost in the increased need to interact with one's face while wearing a mask (and we now know that SARS-CoV-2 becomes inactivated quite quickly on surfaces, like our hands).
N95s and higher rated masks/filters have always been very good for virtually eliminating transmission, but are also much harder to fit properly. Most Nurses/Doctors need to have them fit tested, which is not viable for the general population. Elastomeric half-mask respirators offer the protection of N95s (or better!) but are much easier to fit safely, and I'm actually not sure why more people don't use these or why these weren't recommended.
In my humble opinion, I think the biggest failing of scientific institutions is more that our uncertainty wasn't conveyed to the public. I'd like to know how uncertain our scientific community is regarding some policies when they're discussed in the public.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#16You would think they would have learned from the war on drugs propaganda
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#17Edit: before you downvote this, read it? I'm not an anti-vax nutcase. They didn't trust the public with their actual thinking at any point during Covid. The guidance was initially "don't wear a mask, it will make it worse because you'll infect yourself with your hand" to "we'll just lock down for 3 weeks and then back to normal" to "we have to flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming hospitals" to the current policy o…
Not knowing where you're from sounds like you're commenting on the UK policy at least (I'm sure it parallels others)... Speaking from an unfortunate position of experience a lot of this is driven (in the UK) by whitehall asking deliberately leading questions which are politically charged of civil servants and scientists. aka, there is a difference between, "what do we have to do to reduce deaths due to X this summer"…
> Not knowing where you're from sounds like you're commenting on the UK policy at least
Parent comment does mention they're from the US.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#18The 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…
Not just US, I would say there's a large number of very well educated people even in well off countries who have a large amount of hesitation toward this mainly due to information handling and lack of transparency.
(Yes there is a very vocal anti-vax nut job crowd, but frankly that will always be there, and is always different to those who object to policy decisions on moral grounds of their failings and the deaths that poor policy leads to)
The only nice message for "please take a vaccine for something that won't kill you "is "please take it to stop it killing others". Given the USA seems to treat getting ill as a personal failing that will destroy your life and society turns it's back on you I'm not shocked that it would fall on deaf ears.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#19I agree with the sentiment of this article, but I'm noticing that some folks can't determine fact from fiction even when presented with data that supports the facts or makes them irrefutable. No amount of logic, facts, or transparency will be enough for these folks, and while I can appreciate a skeptic, some of these people are beyond basic help and need professional guidance.
This is of course true for people on both sides of the political aisle, but for different subjects.
Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths
#20Edit: before you downvote this, read it? I'm not an anti-vax nutcase. They didn't trust the public with their actual thinking at any point during Covid. The guidance was initially "don't wear a mask, it will make it worse because you'll infect yourself with your hand" to "we'll just lock down for 3 weeks and then back to normal" to "we have to flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming hospitals" to the current policy o…
Humans are very emotional creatures. A quote from Interstellar which I rewatched recently comes to mind. Their robot TARS says this when asked why his honesty parameter is set to 90% instead of 100%: “Absolute honesty isn't always the most diplomatic nor the safest form of interact with human beings”