Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths • Hacker News Board

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#611

Post by krainboltgreene » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:08 AM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #109

r00fus wrote: post #88

The 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…

> 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?

If you go to trump community sites you'll find out that:

  1. They think he's an idiot for taking the vax
  2. They think he was threatened to taking it
  3. He didn't really take it

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#612

Post by tshaddox » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

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…

Yeah, it’s pretty silly to look at how pretty much every opinion regarding COVID-19 follows party lines so closely and conclude that negative opinions about vaccines are caused by public health experts failing to maintain public trust. This defense reminds me of a similar one we’ve seen recently: “this group is only bigoted because they’ve been called bigots by the media for so long.”

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

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Post by tshaddox » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #442

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…

Why would anybody get vaccinated if they have to continue wearing masks? How does that make any sense at all? It ain’t republicans pushing that kind of nonsense. And what does “take this serious” actually mean? This is a values thing. A lot of people justifiably get upset that the government wants them to put their entire life on hold indefinitely for a virus they aren’t concerned with. Life isn’t meant to survive. I…

For the same reason that some people might wear seat belts and continue following the rest of the rules of the road.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

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Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:15 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #404

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've disagreed with the general global response at essentially every step. I think any reasonable person would have done better, and get the feeling that there are likely ulterior motives and disgraceful politicised actions to explain how bad the response was. In particular, in the beginning there were very clear indications given by Taiwan and China that there was a dangerous virus spreading among the people. Yet si…

> Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. They practiced the opposite of the precautionary principle and horrendous risk management. At what point did the spread in the US stop being driven by sick Chinese people? I don't know the answer, but my impression was pretty darn early - far before politicians were taking the virus seriously as a policy i…

> At what point did the spread in the US stop being driven by sick Chinese people?

After the first initial cases (that could be tracked directly to travel from China; e.g. that one guy in Snohomish county in the Seattle area), it was already spreading on its own by then.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#615

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #525

kyleee wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a governance technique meant to curb excesses of the ruling elite, informed by the historical frequency of ill behaved governing bodies and their miscellaneous maltreatment of the governed

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 get shot after breaking into someone's house? It seems like there's a pretty straightforward way to avoid exposing yourself to that risk.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

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Post by refurb » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #118

ssully wrote: post #113

Earlier 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…

> no matter what the government told people to do, there was going to be a contingent of people that would do the exact opposite because we are a stubborn and distrustful people. Americans are this way because the government continually gives them a reason to. The lying through the pandemic, the Iraq war, it just goes on.

No, that's not really the reason. Those things just further solidified the pre-existing distrust/suspicion.

It's built into the American ethos and the documents founding the republic itself. Having lived in multiple countries it's clear the US government doesn't necessarily lie more than others (often less!), it's just that American start with the premise "The government is probably lying to me".

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

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Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

kcplate wrote: post #559

hackingforfun wrote: post #288

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? I agree we shouldn't have flip flopped on masks, but I don't think making a whole narrative out of that makes sense.

Closing borders is racist. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Don’t mask. Mask. Stay Inside. Trump didn’t close the borders fast enough! Double mask. Protest crowds are not superspreaders. Trump Rallies are superspreaders. School is dangerous, distance learning is good. Go outside, inside is bad. Dems-don’t trust Trump Vaccines. Biden/Pelosi - we can’t mandate vaccination. Dems-you must trust our vaccines, they are effe…

Ya, people who have problems with dynamic situations (e.g. best practices continually changing via new information coming in) have had real problems with this pandemic. They wanted a static stable unchanging story from the onset, and were very disappointed and anxious when they didn't get that.

But everything you’ve written above is simply condemning authorities because they didn’t have the best solution from the onset.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

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Post by lucaspm98 » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #554

timr wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not 'censorship of factual information' for a private service to choose to put health warnings against or delete fact free claims of HCQ as a miracle cure. I'm not going to get into the "it isn't censorship if it's a private company" debate. That's a facile argument. Silencing of speech is wrong. Full stop. I'm not debating semantics. If the only way you can rebut an argument is by silencing it, then you lose…

>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 being pushed in very forceful way while honest (if not always scientifically accurate) discussion is repressed. Although there will certainly be a group too far gone to ever accept the vaccine, this strategy of a heavy handed and propaganda-like approach seems to be causing the vaccine hesitant to only dig in their heels further. The vaccine can't win in the marketplace of ideas if the marketplace is not allowed to exist.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#619

Post by nradov » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #510

hackingforfun wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you make a good point here that someone can be pro-vaccine while being against a mandate. I hadn't thought of it that way. I don't really see many Republicans going out of their way recommending vaccines though, either. Trump got his in secret initially.

Sensor Mitch McConnell: "I’m glad to share that a few minutes ago, I received a booster vaccination for COVID-19." https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/9/mcc... You can find plenty more similar statements by Republicans if you bother to look.

* Senator, not sensor (damn autocorrect)

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#620

Post by refurb » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #327

ssully wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to an extent, but at the end of the day it's unrealistic. The government is an entity made up of people with their own biases, problems, and their job on the line if they fuck up. I think there is a meme of honorable government employee who will resign before letting down the American people, but the reality is most people (and government employee's) would be more concerned about covering their ass. This is a…

> This is a long way of me saying that people are liars, the government is made of people, so the government will always lie. I live in Sweden, and our politicians seems to be a lot more honest than both sides of American politics. So from my perspective you aren't even close to hit the theoretical "politicians are people, people lie" limit. And until you at least gets somewhat close to it I'd argue that you should s…

"Our politicans seems to be a lot more hoenst". Are they though?

I know in Canada the government is just as corrupt, it's just better at keeping out of the press and squashing it quickly.