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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

#121

Post by ssully »

ajuc wrote: post #99
JasonFruit wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. How would it do that? Government didn't asked people about either of those. And if anything the people responsible for Iraq war will benefit from antivaxers votes.

Seriously. The vendiagram of people who would be for interment of a minority they distrust or a war for retribution, and the people currently rallying against mask/vaccine's would almost be a perfect circle.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#122

Post by switch007 »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #73
calebm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccines are not risk-free.

No one said they weren't

They certainly weren't talking about the risks and side effects when telling the entire country the only way to get your life and rights back is to take the vaccine. The message was: get the vaccine, get the vaccine, get the vaccine, do your moral duty

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#123

Post by complianceowl »

betterunix2 wrote: post #106
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…

Censorship is not what causes large numbers of US citizens to refuse this vaccine. If the Republicans in leadership positions took this seriously from the start and did not go around casting doubt on vaccination far more people would get the vaccine. If the previous president had not politicized the response to COVID and had simply told his followers to do what the CDC says we would have many millions more people get…

Your partisan comments are so toxic. Try making your point without spewing that Facebook garbage around here.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#124

Post by joncrane »

mmmpop wrote: post #87
MattGaiser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how can you--with a straight face--pretend that their ability to pick leaders or vote on actual issues is a correct way to run a country?" By arguing that the other options are worse. Democracy and the separation of powers do not result in great decision making. But it also serves as a significant barrier against absolutely horrible decision making, placing it above the other choices.

What separation of power? The country is run by executive fiat and every 4 years the law of the land takes an about face when the next guy comes along to rip up the old guy's diktats. The US legislative branch is kabuki theater and the judicial branch is disgustingly partisan.

What are you doing about it?

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#125

Post by Griffinsauce »

at_a_remove wrote: post #102
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…

And there has been this background ambient energy of "Big Pharma is evil, the Sacklers ..." (which I find rather scapegoaty for the Sacklers in particular) which just immediately ran afoul of "You should definitely trust in these vaccines produced by Big Pharma, the ones we have been telling you are so greedy/evil/incompetent." Then you have some discussion of what "gain of function" means and ... Well, the distrust…

> the ones we have been telling you are so greedy/evil/incompetent."

I haven't seen any claims of incompetency, only of greed (to the lev of being evil) - is that an actual theme or did you just lump that in? It's a significant different in this context.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#126

Post by kwhitefoot »

zarkov99 wrote: post #43
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…

It is hard to understate the damage. The loss of national cohesion, the exacerbated division caused by the "choose your own reality" consequences of no longer having trustworthy institutions. And maybe worse of all, the self-fulfilling nature of distrust. When you do not trust someone, and they know it, they have no incentive to behave in a trust-worthy manner. It will take a long time to dig the country's self-image…

> It is hard to understate the damage.

It is hard to overstate the damage.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#127

Post by creato »

ska wrote: post #80
zarkov99 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to understate the damage. The loss of national cohesion, the exacerbated division caused by the "choose your own reality" consequences of no longer having trustworthy institutions. And maybe worse of all, the self-fulfilling nature of distrust. When you do not trust someone, and they know it, they have no incentive to behave in a trust-worthy manner. It will take a long time to dig the country's self-image…

> The loss of national cohesion, It may be you have the causality backwards here.

Like pretty much everyone in this thread, who are at the very least failing to acknowledge the fact that this is a feedback loop.

I'd be a lot more willing to acknowledge the notion that the media and government are so terrible if the alternatives that most people have chosen to trust instead weren't so laughably bad sources in comparison.

This isn't people making an informed judgement about what sources to best trust, it's people being caught in a wave of bullshit and not actually thinking about anything. A lot of the comments here in this chain are just part of the wave.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#128

Post by belltaco »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #82
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…

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…

Edit: Everytime I point this out, I get hit by multiple downvotes

That's a pretty poor example since people had already decided covid wasn't even as dangerous as the flu.

The recipient of the highest civilian award in the US said this to his 15 million audience.

>"It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump," Limbaugh said Feb. 24 on his radio show. "Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus … I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks."

>"The drive-by media hype up this thing as a pandemic," Limbaugh continued.

Most popular cable channel said this about Covid while Covid was raging in Wuhan and Italy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#129

Post by gravity13 »

jmeister wrote: post #114
betterunix2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censorship is not what causes large numbers of US citizens to refuse this vaccine. If the Republicans in leadership positions took this seriously from the start and did not go around casting doubt on vaccination far more people would get the vaccine. If the previous president had not politicized the response to COVID and had simply told his followers to do what the CDC says we would have many millions more people get…

Kamala Harris is on record(last summer) saying she wouldn’t take the vaccine if Trump told her to take it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0

Yes, there's a difference between a raging narcissist who can't even seem to tell the truth even if there's nothing to gain from lying and listening to a doctor.

But yeah, keep going with the whole "democrats are just as bad as republicans" thing. Seems to be working.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#130

Post by _-david-_ »

betterunix2 wrote: post #106
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…

Censorship is not what causes large numbers of US citizens to refuse this vaccine. If the Republicans in leadership positions took this seriously from the start and did not go around casting doubt on vaccination far more people would get the vaccine. If the previous president had not politicized the response to COVID and had simply told his followers to do what the CDC says we would have many millions more people get…

Go back a year and see who was saying the vaccine was not safe. Explicitly saying you don't trust the vaccine because your political opponent was president when it was created is political plain and simple.
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