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Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

nature.com

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Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#91

Post by Mikeb85 »

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…

With how governments have behaved I absolutely understand why people would distrust them and to be honest, I have absolutely zero trust in government right now too. They put politics and driving wedges between people to further entrench their positions (a bunch of provinces and our feds all called snap elections during Covid) over honesty and people. Even now instead of trying to assuage the fears of the vaccine hesitant, they just demonise and threaten them.

Personally, the only trust I have is that a bunch of PhDs making vaccines care about solving a hard problem, so I got the vaccine. Not that I was ever worried about Covid itself, I had Covid during wave 1, had contact with a bunch of Covid positive people in wave 2 without contracting it again, etc...

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#92

Post by zz865 »

One problem is there really is some risk with the vaccine. At a population level its best if everyone takes the vaccine - there are huge benefits, but unfortunately a small minority gets hurt. Its best if everyone else gets vaccinated except for me. Of course when everyone wants to be that exception the vaccination doesn't stop community spread so people get sick.

The problem is the hard truth of "take the risk because society benefits" doesn't work in an American me-first mentality.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#93

Post by nineplay »

Honestly this is a pretty hand-wavy article from a respected journal and I think represents the kind of thing we need less of, not more of

His actual research is pretty sparse and comparing the Danish government to every other government glosses over any number of correlation/causation issues.

Yet it gets cited and quoted and everyone jumps on it as confirmation of everything they believed before they read it.

People need to start questioning the articles that they _agree_ with. If nothing in the article challenges your beliefs, if nothing in the research or conclusions surprise you or makes you consider things differently in any way, than it deserves more skepticism, not less.

A whole lot of sites are generating a whole lot of clicks and making a whole lot of money by the simple process of validating their audiences beliefs. It is unimaginably destructive.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#94

Post by giantg2 »

rob_c wrote: post #18
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…

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 t…

The more I deal with various government systems/entities, the more I realize the level of incompetence and misinformation that exists. Also the lack of transparency and accountability.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#95

Post by Ensorceled »

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,…

Canada's Dr. Tam said at the beginning of the pandemic that we were in pretty good shape because we learned important lessons from SARS.

And then we promptly ran low on PPE.

And told everybody that masking was not important because there was no evidence that there was airborne transmission.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#96

Post by cortesoft »

WhisperingShiba wrote: post #12
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 thats a good thing too. Don't reward poor behavior with compliance.

This is such a silly mentality. Deciding to not do something that should be done just because someone who is incompetent tells you to is the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

You aren't 'punishing' those in power by not taking the vaccine. You are punishing every other person in society.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#97

Post by tablespoon »

nverno wrote: post #59
outime wrote: post #13

Earlier 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.

But the upside is that hopefully the govt/health authorities will learn a lesson and be better in the future. Id say in these situations any fallout is always the govt's fault since it is there to serve the people- a case of the customer is always right.

> But the upside is that hopefully the govt/health authorities will learn a lesson and be better in the future.

But there's only so much they can do. Sowing distrust has proven to provide short-term self-benefit to many powerful interests (e.g. political factions, partisan media). Even if the health authorities have a perfect strategy, those interests will find an opening to subvert it (e.g. portraying initial confusion as lying).

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#98

Post by djrogers »

betterunix2 wrote: post #68
sto_hristo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such pandemics don't start every other year. Last great one was 100 years ago. So i wouldn't worry at all for the "winners", there's plenty of time for generations to refresh. Worry about government's inability to learn and improve based on past mistakes, also complacency. It's not hard to imagine 100 years from now, popular presidential guy spearheading the next great pandemic, calming the subjects down with the gre…

...are you not counting HIV as a recent major pandemic? SARS? MERS? It is also worth remembering that for decades we have been carefully monitoring the spread of infectious diseases to prevent major pandemics from forming. There was no political controversy surrounding those efforts prior to COVID19, not in the US or anywhere else.

None of those have had the global impact of COVID-19, so it think it's pretty easy to not count them as on the same level.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#99

Post by ajuc »

JasonFruit wrote: post #74
outime wrote: post #13

Earlier 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.

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.

Re: Covid lesson: trust the public with hard truths

#100

Post by rytcio »

btmiller wrote: post #20
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #3

Edit: 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”

Reminds me of the song from Ishtar https://youtu.be/g-mQcPsPAjc
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