The thrust of this piece is exactly what you'd expect from an agenda-driven left-leaning organization like the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Of course people with limited analytical skills might ride to town on the basis of a conspiracy theory but that says nothing about its validity. Given the very detailed genetic analyses in at least two published papers that I've seen (plenty more), the theory that someone engineered Covid is far from being a ridiculous proposition.
One of the papers states: "Judging from the evidence that we and others have gathered, we believe that finding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 should involve an independent audit of the WIV P4 laboratories and the laboratories of their close collaborators. Such an investigation should have taken place long ago and should not be delayed any
further.". A reasonable suggestion I would have thought.
The takeaway from the Annenberg piece is that only (nutty) conservatives take this kind of thing seriously.
I don't think you're speaking in good faith if you don't think the grandparent is speaking from the point of view of an extremely mainstream belief in the dishonesty of "agenda-driven left-leaning organizations".
Even if it were found to be artificially created, how would that change what's necessary to control the virus? Are you saying that if proof were found it was created in a lab that people would suddenly start wearing masks happily?
I think if there wasn't a media blackout on any unapproved theories about the virus, the media and the approved experts would be somewhat more trusted.
There is no media blackout. The media is simply reporting what is the general consensus among professionals. Mainstream news is not a good avenue for discussing theories supported by a single paper or two.
If there was an effective media blackout on something, how would you know?
> The media is simply reporting what is the general consensus among professionals.
It is true that the media reports "general consensus among professionals", but is it perfectly true that this is what they are "simply" (just, only) doing?
Human cognition has several flaws like this - it seems to very much behave in real time (when reckoning at the object level) like it considers itself to be omniscient, so falls victim to many things like "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"[1]. This is just one example of many that can be regularly observed in media and forum conversations, even on HN (whose participants are human beings let's not forget).
I think if we were to spend more time considering world events from a more abstract, "zoomed out" perspective, perhaps we could break out of this never ending loop. So, instead of arguing about whether <IssueX> or <PersonA> "is" right or wrong, try to understand why people are forming the beliefs they hold, which then introduces a whole bunch of complexity into what appears to be (because of the nature of human cognition) a very simple situation.
If we were also to document these learnings and add to and refine the list over time, I propose that a much clearer picture of just what the fuck is going on here would emerge. But instead, we repeat this simplistic process of "News event --> shallow analysis from biased perspectives --> form hasty conclusion that reinforces preexisting beliefs --> End" over and over, and we don't seem to realize we are doing this, because we are always reckoning about things at the object level. If you look closely, it's not too hard to see that this is quite similar (but not identical) to the approach the media takes to presenting the news as well, intentionally or not.
Who told you that? Have you talked to a spectrum of professionals yourself, in an environment where they aren't afraid of social repercussions for speaking against the 'approved' party line? Or did you get that from the media?
Personally, I read the journal publications and see what experts have to say - and not just the experts trotted out by the media.
I've seen similar research indicating artificial origins, and one of the foremost experts in the relevant field came out and said there was no way this wasn't man made.
I may or may not agree with this document or this website (never heard of them), but honestly, I am genuinely shocked at the number of people I run into both on the street and at my workplace (a university of higher learning) that absolutely believe that COVID-19 is a conspiracy. They are hell bent on not wearing masks, think this is all a load, and that we should ignore everything anyone from CDC (or any medical doctor that does not agree with them for that matter) says about it.
I'm still baffled every day at the depths of our own misguided thoughts and beliefs.
I think this trend started with the Internet becoming mainstream, not with Trump. Trump has certainly encouraged and leveraged it though. Not sure if on purpose or just because he happens to be one of them.
President Trump is a public figure whose global visibility is positively unmatched by anyone. This is because he is POTUS but also particularly because he stakes outrageously false claims that draw in the media at every turn. He sows doubt regarding the credibility of scientists in his own administration in agencies like CDC, NOAA, EPA and more.
But of particular relevance to this subject is his opposition to (1) wearing masks as a role model, (2) mandating masks as a nation's leader. His general suggestions to the public that the virus is not a threat give voice to those who would claim that "it's all a hoax."
Can you provide one peer-reviewed study that shows that universal masking (i.e. mandating the general public wear masks made of any material) slows the spread of COVID-19 or a similar respiratory disease?
I've been down this road with a few people, so I'll take a shortcut and get to the crux of it: do you believe that masks stop spread of coronavirus between individuals? If so, what factor would account for masks stopping spread between individuals but not stopping spread over the population?
And importantly - why? Where does the risk/reward chart get so skewed that wearing a piece of cloth that can only barely be considered uncomfortable become an option that's unthinkable? It seems entirely plausible that it could help, what is the harm in trying it? It takes a lot of mental twisting to end up in a place where the potential risk of wearing a mask is larger than the potential reward.
Masks are often recommended as "source control" -- if an infected but asymptomatic person wears one they reduce the risk of spreading the illness to others. The bit that goes unsaid is "a good quality mask, such as a 12 to 16 layer DIY cotton mask, or a properly fitted N95, worn properly, with excellent hand hygiene when putting it on or taking it off".
The problem with that framing is that most people quickly drop the "asymptomatic" bit, and so now we have people with symptoms going shopping wearing a mask. That mask isn't going to do much to protect other people, especially when you consider it's likely to be 2 layers of cotton, poorly fitted, with poor hand hygiene.
But that's not an argument against masks at all. It's an issue with education, but I have no faith that taking away the masks would have those people who are making bad decisions somehow make better decisions.
I agree with you. It's just some cloth, why is it such a big deal to wear it. I wear one all the time, don't even notice after a while. It's slightly inconvenient, but only trivially so. If we all do it it almost certainly saves a significant number of lives and misery, "evidence" or not. The explanations behind it make perfect sense. And it makes people feel safer as well. All good things, for a trivial inconvenience.
The debate reminds me of the debate about smoking.
For a long time, smoking "probably" caused cancer. Meaning, almost certainly. There was plenty of evidence.
But for a long time, cigarette companies said it wasn't "proven" that it caused cancer. Meaning, let's carry on selling, advertising, consuming it in large quantities.
It would take a few more decades to reach the standard of "proof".
So smoking continued, people died.
Rather than following rational life-optimising behaviour based on the growing body of data.
It may not bother you, but it makes some people very uncomfortable. Do you not think it's somewhat entitled and privileged to assume that your own standard of what's convenient and what's not convenient should be applied to everyone?
As you illustrated in your example, the medical establishment is often disastrously wrong, so why shouldn't we take their recommendations with a grain of salt?
It's uncomfortable for some people to not smack me in the mouth when they walk past me in the street.
They have to take a little care where they swing their arms.
In fact some people don't take that much care, and we usually say it is the people who physically dominate a space by being inconsiderate of others who are acting entitled and privileged.
So no, I don't think it's entitled or privileged to ask people to reduce significant[+] aggregate harm to others, at minor inconvenience to themselves.
However, I think it's entitled and privileged for people to decide that they don't have to wear a mask based on their "personal risk assessment for themselves", on the theory that other people can just quit their jobs or whatever and stay locked up at home to feel safe from the unmasked crowds outside. That's the "if people want to feel safe they can stay at home if they want" theory. That's not a reasonable imposition, and does not constitute the reasonable balance of needs that we'd call a free society.
For those for whom it's particularly uncomfortable, I don't know the policy elsewhere, but in the UK, it's permitted to not wear a mask if you have a reason for not wearing one. Reasons are quite reasonable: For example if you're with someone who lip reads, or they give you anxiety or whatever.
The goal is to ensure that almost all people wear one, not that every last person must wear one if they have a reasonable reason not to.
The reason for enforced policy is because too many people won't wear one at all without a stronger incentive. Just asking people to not harm others isn't enough, it seems. (And people really can't get their intuitions around exponential growth and clustering, so they mis-estimate aggregate risks to others by a lot, even when they have numbers to go on.)
[+] (It affects the R number. The difference between R > 1 and R < 1 is pandemic versus disease dying out. It's also the difference between a long pandemic with onerous economic and social consequences, and something that is manageable. The overall effect is profoundly significant in aggregate.)
Finding one of those studies would have taken you way less time that typing your comment. So I think we can all safely assume you are not asking this question in good faith, and you wouldn't believe one such study anyway.
> Although direct evidence is limited, the optimum use of face masks, in particular N95 or similar respirators in health-care settings and 12–16-layer cotton or surgical masks in the community, could depend on contextual factors; action is needed at all levels to address the paucity of better evidence. Eye protection might provide additional benefits. Globally collaborative and well conducted studies, including randomised trials, of different personal protective strategies are needed regardless of the challenges, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence could be considered to inform interim guidance.
There's a bit to unpack here.
1) I don't know anyone wearing a 12 to 16 layer cotton mask. At best they're wearing 4 to 6 layers of cotton. Most people have maybe two layer masks.
2) "paucity of better evidence" isn't how I'd describe something that has great evidence.
Look at how that paper describes the evidence for distancing vs masking:
> Our search identified 172 observational studies across 16 countries and six continents, with no randomised controlled trials and 44 relevant comparative studies in health-care and non-health-care settings (n=25 697 patients). Transmission of viruses was lower with physical distancing of 1 m or more, compared with a distance of less than 1 m (n=10 736, pooled adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0·18, 95% CI 0·09 to 0·38; risk difference [RD] −10·2%, 95% CI −11·5 to −7·5; moderate certainty); protection was increased as distance was lengthened (change in relative risk [RR] 2·02 per m; pinteraction=0·041; moderate certainty). Face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection (n=2647; aOR 0·15, 95% CI 0·07 to 0·34, RD −14·3%, −15·9 to −10·7; low certainty), with stronger associations with N95 or similar respirators compared with disposable surgical masks or similar (eg, reusable 12–16-layer cotton masks; pinteraction=0·090; posterior probability >95%, low certainty).
All of the mask evidence says "low certainty". That's from GRADE, and it means "low certainty (our confidence in the effect estimate is limited; the true effect could be substantially different from the estimate of the effect);"
For your information, I was asking to expand my own knowledge on the subject. Top level commenter was adamant that masks were effective, so this being HN, where people typically know what they're talking about, I assumed they had a good reason to think that way. I have researched this a great deal myself, and have not found anything except flawed or inconclusive studies, like the majority of links submitted in this thread. Have a great day.
That paper says "when you put a mask on, and we immediately ask you to exhale onto a plate, we don't detect virus on that plate".
Parent poster isn't asking whether masks trap particles or not (clearly, they do), they're asking a much more interesting and useful question which is if we make everyone wear a mask does that prevent the spread of disease or not?
So far, we really don't have much evidence. In this thread, where lots of people are posting links, there's only one decent link posted by gameswithgo here:
Not wearing it all the time. Not changing it in the recommended time period. Taking it off and putting it on backwards. Waving it around after taking it off rather than folding inwards and disposing in a sharps bag.
All the things that happen in daily life rather than in a medical setting. Which is why despite full mask protocols and sanitiser at the door to every classroom kids going back to school this week around here have all have gone down with viral sore throats and noses.
That shouldn’t have happened if masks do what it says on the tin.
Unfortunately network effects dominate. We are not hamsters living permanently in cages.
The most compelling objection (to me) is that when surgeons wear masks, they sneeze inside their masks, then change their masks. When everyday people wear masks, we take our masks off to sneeze, expelling aerosol virus particles into the air to be circulated in the A/C for hours (probably days). That said, some studies have shown a small effect of mask mandates on daily case count growth.
They might have done so even without masks, it is hard to say, but it is pretty easy for people to think that it is fine to not keep distance when they have masks.
Whether the mandate is effective isn't as critical as knowing whether the mask itself is effective. Knowing that they're effective opens up lots of policy options, one of which is a mandate.
The link itself appears to contradict your statement.
> The difference in conclusions of mask effectiveness studies is mainly due to different study contents, study designs, evaluation methods and endpoints. Understandably, good evidence on this topic is difficult to assess.
You have cherry-picked this statement presumably because it's a part of the article that concedes genuine inconsistencies among prior studies. The study I cited seeks to explain the differing conclusions of prior studies.
But the study's support for masks is crystal clear and you can't read the entire study (or even the abstract) and come away without that conclusion.
The more I engage with you the more I fear that you are not debating the subject in good faith.
It's just a sloppily-written study. There are spelling and grammar errors all over the place, and it's full of unsubstantiated claims that are hard to take seriously at face value. It's hard for me to even call this a study.
> However, in many western advanced economies, those wearing masks are often met with suspicion in public, even causing panic in certain situation.
Really? Citation needed.
> Although the 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) caused an estimated 40–50 million deaths worldwide, many still may view personal protective equipment (PPE) and physical barrier including wearing the mask as contrary to freedom and individualism.
Non-sequitur alert! Number one, PPEs themselves are value-neutral; it's the mandate that contrary to liberty as enshrined in the Constitution (you know, the highest law in the land). Number two, mask mandates can be both effective in slowing viral spread AND "contrary to freedom and individualism;" the two concepts are orthogonal. Most people understand this, but differ in prioritizing one over the other. The author seems to suggest that the two cannot be believed at once!
Are we all supposed to just take it for granted that masks would have helped in a situation that took place over 100 years ago before so many other medical advances? I don't think that's a fair assumption at all. If so, we could just invoke the Spanish Flu as evidence for any medical intervention we desire.
Omissions like these make it hard for me to take this study as authoritative about anything, especially when they themselves admit that the evidence on universal masking is contradictory.
> This paper is a pre-print and has not been subject to formal peer-review.
Not a great start
This piece, which you present as good quality evidence, says
> The lack of clear recommendations for the general public and low uptake of wearing face masks and coverings may be attributed to: (i) over-reliance on an evidence-based medicine approach and assertion that evidence was weak due to few conclusive RCT (randomised controlled trial) results in community settings, discounting high quality non-RCT evidence.
Someone asks for good quality evidence and you post a link to an opinion piece saying stop over-relying on good quality evidence?
I mean, your link even says they don't have much evidence
> Current knowledge on the effectiveness of face masks to prevent virus transmission from COVID-19, SARS, MERS and H1N1 is mostly limited to studies of surgical masks and N95 respirators. The majority of existing studies are conducted in health care settings and focus on protection of the mask wearer as opposed to wearing a mask for the protection of others. This distinction is vital since mask wearing for the general public occurs in non-clinical situations (home, public transport, shops, restaurants) and involves both protection of oneself but also others.
[...]
> We emphasise that the majority of studies have been conducted in health care settings and there are therefore caveats in the ability to transfer results directly to community settings
> slows the spread of COVID-19 or a similar respiratory disease
What makes you believe that COVID-19 is spread significantly differently that the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is not bearable relative to the potential benefits? Do you believe that masks have risks other than being inconvenient?
fwiw: my household’s being hyper-vigilant regarding covid, rarely doing anything beyond social distancing. i'm looking for a study that validates the conventional wisdom about masking so that we know we aren’t contributing to the spread. at no point am i suggesting any behavior that isn’t backed by scientific data.
Not at all, perhaps you meant another commenter? From the link "Before exhaled breath collection, each participant was randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio to either wearing a surgical face mask (cat. no. 62356, Kimberly-Clark) or not during the collection. [...] Participants were then invited to provide a second exhaled breath sample of the alternate type (for example if the participant was first assigned to wearing a mask they would then provide a second sample without a mask)"
They actually tested infected patients with and without mask.
>We detected coronavirus in respiratory droplets and aerosols in 3 of 10 (30%) and 4 of 10 (40%) of the samples collected without face masks, respectively, but did not detect any virus in respiratory droplets or aerosols collected from participants wearing face masks, this difference was significant in aerosols and showed a trend toward reduced detection in respiratory droplets (Table 1b).
This study is incredibly small, and operating on the limits of significance. Its hardly conclusive, and was done under fairly extreme conditions (30 mins in close proximity) compared to the scenarios in which masks are mandated today. The authors even mention that, for those who did not cough, no detectable virus was identified regardless of whether a mask was worn. Considering that the point of mandatory masking is to prevent asymptomatic transmission from brief interactions with strangers, I just don't find this study very convincing as a scientific basis for a mask mandate.
Parent asked for evidence that mass mask wearing prevent the spread of the disease. You presented a study that shows some masks if worn properly block some viruses.
Can you see how the study you presented doesn't answer parent post's question?
Further, your study tests the first breath exhalation.
> We screened 3,363 individuals in two study phases, ultimately enrolling 246 individuals who provided exhaled breath samples (Extended Data Fig. 1). Among these 246 participants, 122 (50%) participants were randomized to not wearing a face mask during the first exhaled breath collection and 124 (50%) participants were randomized to wearing a face mask. Overall, 49 (20%) voluntarily provided a second exhaled breath collection of the alternate type.
So, your test says "when you put on a mask that mask will, immediately after you put it on, stop your exhaled breath hitting a plate placed in front of your mouth".
It says nothing about how effective that mask is over time.
Masks gets moist over time and virus will build up in it, are there any tests checking how well they work after a full workday? It wouldn't be strange if the virus buildup on the mask pretty quickly makes you start spreading covid, and then the false sense of security would actually cause them to increase spread rather than reduce it.
Edit: Also that is for surgical face masks, most people just put a piece of cloth in their face. I would like to see a study for a piece of cloth in front of your mouth for the entire day and see how much virus there is after that.
Thank you. Interesting stuff. This is the only study I've seen that actually presents evidence for masks slowing the spread. The comment section is a worthwhile read, too. I would like to see another study like this that's more recent, given that some locales started their mask mandate after May 15. I would also like to see if there's an effect on deaths and hospitalizations (the idea being, if mask mandates only slow the growth of asymptomatic cases, they are quite useless from a health perspective).
> if mask mandates only slow the growth of asymptomatic cases, they are quite useless from a health perspective
If mask mandates slow the growth of asymptomatic cases, the R number must be lower.
As we all should know by now, reducing R is a good target, as the difference between R > 1 and R < 1 is profound, and R is thought to be close enough to 1 that measures taking place can make that difference.
> Because mask wearing by infected people can reduce transmission risk, and because of the high proportion of asymptomatic infected individuals and transmissions, there appears to be a strong case for the effectiveness of widespread use of face masks in reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, there is no direct evidence thus far on the magnitude of such effects, especially at a population level.
It's a fair question. One could argue that it doesn't really matter. We often take comfort from a large body of evidence supporting a course of action. Let's assume we don't have that in this case. Could we not invert the question? I.e. is there evidence that wearing (or the mandate) masks increases the spread of the virus? Or could we relax our need for evidence and use the precautionary principle? That is to say one may have doubts about what is being said about the virus but to be on the safe side wear the mask anyway.
Summary:
"investigators found that the prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies among hospital employees was lower than what had been reported for the surrounding general community that is consistent with personal protective equipment being effective at preventing exposure of hospital workers. In addition, researchers found via laboratory testing that N95 masks with intact elastic straps or if sterilized maintained their effectiveness even if they had passed their expiration point, offering alternatives to the scarcity of N95 masks."
Conclusion:
"PPE, when available and properly used, confers protection and lower infection rates of COVID-19 among health care workers when compared with reported infection rates in the general public."
What once was a culture of skepticism in the US seems to have devolved into a culture of mistrust. I wonder what has driven this apparent shift. Is it because of TV shows that introduce and entertain these ideas in people's minds? Is it because clickbait has driven media to resort to entertaining more fringe ideas in the quest for viewership? Is it because media literacy hasn't kept up with the flood of reputable-looking but agenda-driven media outlets?
Personally I think it’s because journalism and media don’t so much seek to investigate what holds as much as they carry water for a certain narrative.
If someone has a legitimate question it’s batted away with out weighing evidence or lack there of.
From this POV they cannot be taken at face value. The Vitamin D thing or HCQ thing. Whether or not they prove useful, the media would not even consider whether they were useful or not. It was just “NO!” Likely this knee jerk reaction was due to a certain person floating them as options. If Bill G had floated them as he floats his own favorite solutions, the reaction would have been different.
Both of those things were investigated and shown to not be a silver bullet and I think HCQ actually is harmful. The problem is Trump doubled down rather than simply informing us that the latest research had recently shown otherwise. Their need to calm people is influencing what they say.
I understand but also understand these are just some examples of the “narrative” carrying I believe undermine their trust.
We know nothing is a silver bullet, but we also know HCQ is prescribed or was to people going to the tropics and in some of those countries it’s OTC, so then labeling it as dangerous as heroin is kind of disingenuous. Sure you don’t want to dose yourself... but it’s also not as dangerous as they made it out to be.
> but we also know HCQ is prescribed or was to people going to the tropics and in some of those countries it’s OTC, so then labeling it as dangerous as heroin is kind of disingenuous
HCQ may be prescribed by a doctor if you are traveling to an area where it is effective, and where the alternatives either are not effective or there's a counterindication (or where they're too expensive if you're in a health system where that's relevant). You will be warned of the risks by the doctor. It wouldn't generally be available over the counter in developed countries.
Heroin would be somewhat rarely prescribed today (though in some developed countries it is used sparingly as a powerful narcotic pain reliever), but even more dangerous opiates are routinely. You will be warned of the risks by the doctor. Heroin, too, was once available over the counter ('Heroin' was originally a trade name; Bayer promoted it as a non-addictive alternative to morphine).
> The Vitamin D thing or HCQ thing. Whether or not they prove useful, the media would not even consider whether they were useful or not. It was just “NO!”
That HCQ might be useful against COVID was widely reported in mainstream media. It was also reported that this was still speculative, but promising enough that tests were starting right away in several places.
Some sort of lack of critical thinking. My wife teaches a high school class where they examine media, try to determine the motivation behind sources, whats credible etc. Its an elective class but maybe ought to be mandatory. I think people are generally overloaded with information these days and for some reason have a hard time sorting out whats true. Or they rely solely on US TV based news, which really isn't news as much as infotainment.
Also I think a common thread with people that go for conspiracy theories is a tendency to see the world in black and white. Everything is either 100% good or 100% bad. If the CDC was wrong about something in February then they're always wrong or theres some deep state plan afoot. A politician that tells some lies, sometimes, is the same as Donald Trump constantly lying. There's no room for nuance.
I think there's a three-pronged cause for reduced trust in public institutions in the US.
The first problem is that US governing elites have proven themselves to be corrupt and untrustworthy.
People in the tech sector have not been greatly exposed to this, but wages for the median person have remained stagnant for the past four decades. The elite response has been either to deny the problem or make it worse. People do notice when it gets harder to make ends meet, and the failure to address this problem has undermined faith in the elected arms of government.
Other issues such as the bipartisan consensus to invade Iraq on the basis of fabricated evidence and the fact that Trump has told 20,000 lies about objective matters since assuming office have exacerbated the problem.
The second problem is that conservatives--including conservative media--massively overstate the scope of governance problems in the unelected civil service as an electoral strategy. These viewpoints are amplified by Facebook and other social media in search of engagement.
The third problem is low quality education among the bulk of the population. Critical thinking skills are not effectively taught, much less internalized, by the average person. Most people are not able to effectively evaluate information they are given, which leaves them vulnerable to whatever propaganda Facebook et el shovels into their feed.
I think it’s because we slowly devalued the authority of expertise and knowledge, because conflict generates more views.
Even in respected media, journalists try to angle stories from opposite sides. So you’ll have a random person from Facebook take up as much screen time, if not more, as a literal PHD in infective diseases.
It gets worse over time, as the story gets more and more boring. I mean, it basically hasn’t changed in 8 months, but you can’t just re-run information in modern media. So you’ll have days where the top corona virus story is about some social media person getting banned from Instagram for spreading fake news, and not how the amount of infected is exploding in Europe again. I mean, that bit did pick up in the following days, but why was it ever news that some idiot got banned from Instagram?
I think downward mobility is a significant factor. People doing well in life have little reason to reach for these fringe ideas. People that aren't doing so well want some sort of explanation, there must be some
malevolent outside force driving their misery. And so conspiracy theories become an attractive explanation. I think if we want to rid our society of conspiratorial thinking we need to improve our economy.
How would you improve the economy? Thus far it appears while the economy has grown the distribution of the benefits has been skewed. Some appear to be worse off as the country as whole is getting richer.
> What once was a culture of skepticism in the US seems to have devolved into a culture of mistrust. I wonder what has driven this apparent shift.
I spend time with both elites (academic, professional class, government bureaucrats) and with working class people. I can, anecdotally, tell you pretty easily why there's so much mistrust. The elite class has shifted wildly away from traditional narratives about how the world works, and toward post modernism and intersectionality, while the working class has largely stayed with traditional views.
Those two views are fundamentally incompatible. When working class people hear views that don't align with theirs over and over stated as facts, and often forced on them, they cease to trust the people pushing them. This is why they love people like Donald Trump, he understanding this dynamic and panders to it, using it for his own ends.
Elites are largely viewed by the working class as either out of touch, corrupt liars, or malicious social-engineers looking to erode society. It shouldn't be a surprise that they don't trust them. The sad result is that these people then fall back to trying to find "truth" themselves, and end up with some strange, often dangerous, results.
I will say, I have a young child, and the experience of caring for a newborn does not inspire faith in the CDC.
Specifically, I'm sure their recommendations are all data-driven in isolation, but the overwhelming impression is that there's been no triage based on consideration of what is feasible, in aggregate, for new parents.
The result is that, when you talk with other parents, after a glass of wine or two you all end up admitting that you did all the CDC recommended stuff for a couple weeks, maybe even a couple months, but you couldn't keep it up and you stopped boiling the bottles and you gave him a little security blanket and oh, yeah, he's alive now.
So there are a lot of people out there (including BosWash hispters like my wife and I) basically trained to think of the CDC as an organization that tells you to do a bunch of onerous, in-the-aggregate impossible tasks that you disregard for your own health and sanity.
> think of the CDC as an organization that tells you to do a bunch of onerous, in-the-aggregate impossible tasks that you disregard for your own health and sanity.
This is the central dilemma of public health policy and public health messaging everywhere.
I read a fascinating book once about public health messaging.
The gist was, for the health of people, messaging from public institutions has to be extremely over-simplified and made rather blunt, because people in aggregate just won't follow nuanced, "more correct" advice effectively.
But if they overdo the over-simplification, then it's not useful any more.
People who are looking for nuance see that the advice is blunt and over-simplified, and may point out to each other that the institution is giving such advice, undermining trust in it.
So it's a difficult line to walk.
We have seen this recently in the England with Covid-19 advice to the public: It was too complicated, now it's changed to the "rule of six". The former advice was probably better advice if people had followed it, but people didn't follow it, for many reasons. So it had to be simplified into a simple, catchy message, in order to take into account people's reactions in aggregate to the type of advice.
I tend to imagine this is frustrating for well-informed public health scientists.
The US surgeon general and Fauci told people to stop buying masks. Then they reversed themselves, and defended their position at the time.
Media reports "fiery, but mostly peaceful protests".
What intelligent person would trust institutions that are inconsistent and refuse accountability? What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace? Can you blame distrust given this environment?
I think the biggest problem is social media. A reasonable person would make this same conclusion you have, for example:
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
And yet another person who gets their information from another source, would reach the opposite conclusion. The simple fact is that enough happened in enough locations that if you hone in on one protest here or one riot there you can paint a completely different picture.
For full disclosure, most of the images I got of the protests personally were from a twitch stream called "Woke" which was a compilation stream of about usually 5-10 simultaneous protest streams from different cities. I don't think I ever once witnessed arson or another crime, despite having watched that stream ever night during the height of the protests.
But I don't doubt there was arson and numerous other crimes.
In other words, I am particularly pessimistic that it is possible to have institutional trust anymore, because the events in our world are so numerous and nuanced that it is frankly impossible to give a succinct, consistent, and accountable view of them.
Same with the mask thing: Fauci and the surgeon general were absolutely correct telling people to stop buying masks when there was a shortage and hospitals were running out of them. And they are absolutely correct now telling people that, with no remaining shortage, we should all have masks and wear them to stop the spread (in particular now that most people aren't sheltering in place anymore). But that level of nuance doesn't come through, especially in a world where most "news" comes from headlines on reddit links and facebook posts.
>” The simple fact is that enough happened in enough location..”
But why with the backdrop of that violence do they characterize that one “as mostly peaceful”. They could at least have been forthcoming and said while most are peaceful this one has devolved into violence you see behind me. But they are like Baghdad Bob ignoring the bombs falling as he broadcasts...
Protests aren't a monolith, though. People come and go throughout the course of the protest. They are loose in organization, and the participants are generally unaffiliated.
I don't know who "they" you are referring to (plenty of organizations covered the violence...) nor why they would not cover the violence in the protests but consider the following possibilities:
1. Executives at the news agencies told the reporters to cover the protests favorably for corrupt reasons
2. The news reporters and camera crew were at the protests for several hours and genuinely got a lot of footage of peaceful protests; the violence happened at 2 AM when most protestors had gone home, and were both not filmed by the camera crew and seemed unrelated to the protest that the camera crew had covered
3. Most of "them" did in fact cover in the violence in some amount, maybe less footage or less coverage then you think is appropriate but some amount of coverage nonetheless. However, because "they" are an unspecific and presumably large number of media channels that run all day long, you probably weren't watching all of the coverage and you might have missed it (or the sources that tell you "they" didn't cover the violence hadn't mentioned that they actually did cover it a little)
I can't tell you which is true between 1-3, because I don't know who "they" refers to, and I know I don't watch "them" anyways because I never watched mainstream coverage of the protests. Just some food for thought, again that we are quick to turn to instant distrust before we apply nuance and consider the alternative.
>For full disclosure, most of the images I got of the protests personally were from a twitch stream called "Woke" which was a compilation stream of about usually 5-10 simultaneous protest streams from different cities. I don't think I ever once witnessed arson or another crime, despite having watched that stream ever night during the height of the protests.
Sorry, but this is classical gas-lighting. This is absolutely equivalent to saying - I saw Leni Riefenstahl's movies and there were no people dying in concentration camps, so Nazi propaganda is factually correct. There are tens of thousands of criminal acts documented during those 'peaceful' protests and I don't think that anyone with IQ >80 and the slightest bit of self-respect would ever take what you're saying seriously.
Btw, these days even far-left HN seems to be split in two and I was sure it would be one of the last bastions of group-think. I guess we live and learn.
I sincerely apologize if it came off that way, because it was not my intention.
I'm not trying to deny that there were crimes and arson and whatever else. They did happen, and they are inexcusable.
I am specifically making the point, that the GP had posed the answer:
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
My point is simply trying to add nuance: nobody is saying arson is okay, the people I talk to say things like:
"this protest I was at was OK. I left at 11 PM everything that happened while I was there was super peaceful and wholesome and people even brought their kids!"
The bifurcation comes when we start to group everything that happened all across the country into one label of "protests". There were violent protests, there were peaceful protests. There were protests that started peaceful and became violent. Sometimes there were small violent groups that were literally ousted from the larger protest group for causing trouble.
I'm not denying that there were violent protests. But I'm also not going to deny that there were a whole lot of peaceful protests.
> Institutional trust has eroded. I think the biggest problem is social media.
Why do you jump straight to social media?
Why wouldn't the fault lay with the authority figures themselves? For decades we have authority figures saying "the science says X therefore you must Y" while at the same time we have an educational system that (correctly) says "science is not authoritative".
Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.
Social media is literally the catalyst for the loss of institutional trust. Maybe in the long run this is a good thing, and we will rebuild our institutions in a way that we can trust them in a hyper-shared hyper-aware world, but currently i just see no way that it can possibly work out.
> Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.
In all honesty, I don't believe this is possible. It's the same problem as how people end up cancelled on twitter for the smallest reasons: humans are flawed, and in our hyper-shared hyper-aware world a single human flaw (or a single systemic flaw in our instutitions) becomes a gigantic crack that makes everyone outraged.
While outrage culture exists I don't think it is possible to have high-trust institutions that are run by human. Period.
And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.
(NOTE: just to be clear, I'm not saying our institutions are in the right. they are frequently wrong. But any wrongness you find, as in your example the way we communicate science as a closed book done deal, is one single flaw in a massive sprawling institution. I'm saying that statistically any large institution WILL have flaws, no matter what, thus in our new world we CANNOT have trust in these institutions the way things are now because any flaws will get blown up into a full model of distrust by social media. That's simply the new world we live in.)
> I disagree that social media is the problem but even if we assume it is, then what?
Just to be clear, I didn't mean to say social media is "a problem" or "the problem", but rather the catalyst of the modern status quo. I should have worded my original post better. Specifically, social media (and I suppose the internet in large) allowed us to much easily share information in a way that sidesteps those institutions. This allows us to easily share information that's negative about those institutions, whereas before we could not. Thus, it was the catalyst towards the modern avalanche of distrust towards once-venerated institutions.
> then what
> Ban social media? Should we make a government review board for all social media posts to make sure people don't think the bad things?
> Even if social media were the problem, I'd start thinking about other places to solve it because social media isn't going anywhere.
I generally agree with what you're saying, I don't have an answer. Pandora's box is open, and from now on it seems impossible to have a big monolithic organization and not have a high level of public distrust (both grassroots and organized by that organizations' opposition).
Ironically you even see this effect for large tech companies. There was a time when people really trusted and loved brands like Google, Apple, Amazon, even Facebook. Nowadays it feels hopeless naive, and the newest cohorts of top startups are often viewed even worse (the Ubers of the world)
I certainly hope the answer isn't an authoritarian control of discourse, because that's probably the only thing worse than having institutions of low trust.
> While outrage culture exists I don't think it is possible to have high-trust institutions that are run by human. Period.
I would say that before forming such conclusions, we should actually try to do it first.
> And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.
I suggest treating it like an engineering problem, something humans are quite good at. Analyze it as a behavior exhibited by systems, in this case, roughly:
- People (the human mind)
- Society (a set of networked human minds, networked via a variety of flawed communication mediums, some of which have human minds filtering and transforming what passes through them).
This is an extremely high level perspective, there is obviously a ton of important complexity (of varying importance) here and there within the system, but a high level perspective like this seems like where an engineer would start when analyzing a misbehaving system.
> The US surgeon general and Fauci told people to stop buying masks. Then they reversed themselves, and defended their position at the time.
Making a claim and then reversing it based on new data is the correct thing to do. This isn't an issue at all and shouldn't be considered a violation of trust.
That's not what happened. They intentionally told people to stop buying masks when they KNEW they would help, because they were worried about running out of them for medical professionals.
What he said on 60 minutes in March 2020, and I'm transcribing here:
"The masks are important for someone who is infected to prevent them from infecting someone else. Now when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea and everyone is wearing a mask - right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.
There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is. And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.
When you think mask, you should think of healthcare providers needing them and people who are ill. When you look at the films of foreign countries and you see 85% of the people wearing masks, that's fine, I'm not against it, if you want to do it, that's fine."
"But it can lead to a shortage of masks?"
"Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."
This was in March, before things started really blowing up. That seems pretty upfront to me as to why they are making the recommendation, and it's incorrect in hindsight.
> There's no reason to be walking around with a mask.
I see that statement as a lie. Fauci addressed it in the TheStreet interview and explained why he lied. I don’t see how somebody would see that as not-a-lie, but if you’d like to, go ahead.
Lying is a combination of truth + intent to speak untruthfully.
The video you are replying to at least plausibly demonstrates intent to deceive (for arguably good reason imho, but deceit nonetheless)
The video you responded with offers a different perspective, but it does not nullify the prior video. What is True is true from all perspectives, otherwise it is not true.
> "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."
From a Truth perspective, this seems untrue.
> "When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is."
"perfect protection" is an interesting choice of words. Is he suggesting that if masks are not perfect, they should not be worn? Of course not. But then, why did he say that?
> "And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face."
And therefore, we shouldn't wear masks?
> "Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."
Which is the reason he gave in the first video for the deceit. I'm not disputing that this was a decent enough strategy under the circumstances (a mask shortage), but it backfired.
> I don't see it as a lie at all.
They've done a decent job covering this up in most people's minds, but not with conspiracy theorists or highly detail oriented people, and I think it's a shame that people seem frequently unwilling to even acknowledge that they have at least somewhat of a valid point. What is strictly true should perhaps not be ignored. If you want people to "not do your own thinking, trust the experts, without exception, then you would be well advised to be worthy of trust. Or, don't, and reap the rewards Mother Nature bestows upon you.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
Your response is extremely frustrating.
At the time they gave this advice, it hadn't yet hit NYC, and the scope and speed of the future outbreak in the states was unknown ; in late February/early March it's more than reasonable to think that, like swine flu, the states' response would contain the outbreak to hospitals and therefore masks a) weren't necessary for the day-to-day, b) could give a false sense of protection to the people wearing them, and c) were best suited to be used by professionals.
Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.
To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.
I fully realize the manner in which I speak is frustrating, and it frustrates me that people find it frustrating (and also that it will get you throttled on HN so you have to wait when replying to posts).
I should also note that the "tone" of this message will be more of the same, because I believe speaking frankly in pedantically objective terms is useful, even if it may offend. If I was able to do it without offending I would, but that is a skill I seem to lack.
> At the time they gave this advice, it hadn't yet hit NYC, and the scope and speed of the future outbreak in the states was unknown.
Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
> in late February/early March it's more than reasonable to think that, like swine flu, the states' response would contain the outbreak to hospitals
It is reasonable to speculate that this is one possible outcome, but I do not believe it is reasonable to speculate that this is the only possible outcome, or choose to ~assume it will be the outcome that will manifest in reality and set strategy on accordingly. I believe when considering and managing risk, worst case scenarios should always be front and centre in people's minds.
> and therefore
I read this is: "and therefore it logically follows that", and therefore disagree.
> a) weren't necessary for the day-to-day
I prefer: may not.
> b) could give a false sense of protection to the people wearing them
Is this harmful? To what degree, and in what way?
Was no other messaging possible that could accommodate this detail?
> c) were best suited to be used by professionals
They may be "best" suited for professionals, but this does not mean that value can only be derived from professionals wearing them, which seems to be what was communicated.
> Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.
Agreed. However, a reader might implicitly infer from this statement that health officials were acting ~perfectly based on available information, when the truth very much seems to be (based on the one Fauci interview video posted here) that at least part of the motivation for the messaging to not wear masks was known to be untruthful, but was done to preserve mask supply for health care personnel. I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact - it seems perfectly plausible to me that if officials were more truthful in this way, they they'd get less blowback from conspiracy theorists and detail oriented people.
> To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.
Mother Nature (and sometimes the real-world behavior of a subset of human beings) is not persuaded by emotion-based [1] rhetoric like this - she behaves the way she does, and we can choose to acknowledge that and respond accordingly [2], or we can choose to ignore objective details and live in a narrative-based fantasy land.
I believe thinking about things in this manner (meta-conversation, meta-cognition) is useful [3]. Is this not the way we think when we are doing engineering and systems analysis? Yes, managing the affairs of humans is different, but it is also similar. What is optimal is unknown, it must be discovered, like anything else humanity has achieved.
[1] affront - an action or remark that causes outrage or offense.
[2] This does not mean that we must tell citizens the truth all the time, but only that it should be acknowledged than when you deceive, you run the risk of being found and suffering consequences.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!"
> I fully realize the manner in which I speak is frustrating, and it frustrates me that people find it frustrating (and also that it will get you throttled on HN so you have to wait when replying to posts).
It wasn't so much the manner in which you're speaking, it's the conclusion being drawn.
> Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
It was, absolutely. But historically, we had managed these scenarios well ; we had a perfect storm of incompetence in the administration that set us up for failure.
It's not unreasonable to think that career civil servants would think that we would be able to leverage similar tools to those we used in the past, and it was only after it really broke in the states that we realized that this was qualitatively different than what we had previously seen.
> It is reasonable to speculate that this is one possible outcome, but I do not believe it is reasonable to speculate that this is the only possible outcome
That's correct. It was one of the possible outcomes, and based on their analysis, they deemed it to be the most likely. Considering this is a once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, it's not unreasonable they made this decision.
> I read this is: "and therefore it logically follows that", and therefore disagree.
That's correct. What I was attempting to say was "Given they believed the decision was correct, if the decision was correct, it logically follows ... "
> I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact
He said in his followup that was posted above that he didn't want the N95s to be hoarded, and this was why he gave the advice not to go out and buy masks. What it appears to me is that there is a conflation in his mind between "masks" and surgical masks/N95s.
In the 60 minutes interview, he said that he didn't have a problem with people wearing masks, but that wearing them would do more harm than good because they were uncomfortable and people fidget with them ; based on his response to the BusinessInsider reporter, I believe what he meant to say was, essentially:
"N95 masks are uncomfortable and made for use by professionals. They will grant you some protection, but because they are uncomfortable, you will likely use them in the non-prescribed way, and therefore expose yourself to risk while thinking you are safe. Please don't go out and buy them because they need to be used by doctors that need them.
"If you want to wear a mask like they do in China or Japan, that's fine, but at this point, it's likely not going to do much more than stop a cough or a sneeze and they're not needed."
I think that's what he was trying to communicate. I don't think it's wrong, but he had a failure in the language he was using, and that miscommunication is making people think he is a liar.
> It wasn't so much the manner in which you're speaking, it's the conclusion being drawn.
I enthusiastically encourage you to point out any specific flaws whatsoever in my logic or conclusion, using strict epistemology and trinary (true/false/unknown) rather than binary (true/false) thinking.
>> Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
> It was, absolutely.
The assertion: it [was] [absolutely] [unknown] that [the stage was set] for a [serious global pandemic] "in [late February/early March]".
- The disease was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.
- A report in The Lancet on 24 January indicated human transmission, strongly recommended personal protective equipment for health workers, and said testing for the virus was essential due to its "pandemic potential".
- On 30 January, the WHO declared the coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern.
- The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.
There is much more I could add to this to make my case more persuasively, but I'm lazy. To me, this seems to cast doubt on the certainty of the general notion that risk averse public health officials (aka: The Experts) did not have the necessary information required to form the conclusion that "the stage was set" for a global pandemic. If the people whose job is managing pandemics are unable to recognize that the potential exists for a global pandemic at this point, I believe an in-depth discussion should be had at some point about whether there are shortcomings in the system, or the current personnel are suited for the job.
> we had a perfect storm of incompetence in the administration that set us up for failure
Perhaps, but that is a different discussion. I am happy to have it, but let's try to avoid changing the topic.
> It was one of the possible outcomes, and based on their analysis, they deemed it to be the most likely. Considering this is a once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, it's not unreasonable they made this decision.
When estimating and managing risk, the "most likely" scenario does not seem like the only thing that should be taken into consideration when determining what actions to take. If the CDC disagrees, then I believe we should be reviewing their decision making policies.
> "Given they believed the decision was correct, if the decision was correct, it logically follows ... "
Agreed. What matters is whether the decision was correct. I suspect we have no disagreement here.
>> I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact
> He said in his followup that was posted above that he didn't want the N95s to be hoarded, and this was why he gave the advice not to go out and buy masks. What it appears to me is that there is a conflation in his mind between "masks" and surgical masks/N95s.
What he initially said is the point of contention: was deceit plausibly involved in the initial claims to not buy masks?
He explicitly says that buying up masks would cause a shortage for healthcare workers in the interview for 60 minutes in early March.
On the topic of citizens buying up mask:"It can lead to a shortage of masks?"
His response: "Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for people who really need it."
This is speculation - you do not have access to the information required to make this statement with certainty.
From my prior message:
>> I enthusiastically encourage you to point out any specific flaws whatsoever in my logic or conclusion, using strict epistemology and trinary (true/false/unknown) rather than binary (true/false) thinking.
Under strict epistemology, one should not state speculation as if it is fact because it may actually be an incorrect statement. From a trinary logic perspective, it is unknown whether he is lying.
If you feel the urge to say we can never know when someone is lying, that is often true, but an important difference in this case is that there is evidence that he could have been lying. One goal of exercises like this is to seek as much truth and clarity as possible (even if certainty cannot be reached). Another goal is to practice control over one's mischievous mind, which is harder than you'd think.
> He explicitly says that buying up masks would cause a shortage for healthcare workers in the interview for 60 minutes in early March.
Correct, he did say that on the 60 minutes interview on March 8, 2020.
He also said:
"...right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is."
The assertion: "People should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask." seems to be quite counter-intuitive advice considering the topic (a global pandemic) and what Fauci knew at that point in time (my prior post, and some additional detail below).
Katherine Ross from TheStreet.com interviewed Fauci on Jun 12, 2020 (note: this is a later date than the 60 minutes interview) and asked about this earlier confusion:
In that video Katherine asks: "Why were we told later in the spring to wear them, when initially we were told not to?"
Fauci answers: "Well the reason for that is that we, the public health community, were concerned that it was at a time that personal protective equipment including the N95 masks and surgical masks were in very short supply, and we wanted to make sure that the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in harms way to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected, we did not want them to be without the equipment that they needed, so there was not enthusiasm about going out and buying a mask - we were afraid that would deter away from the people who really needed it."
A decently fair simplification of this:
Q: "Why were we initially told not to wear masks?"
A: "We wanted to make sure that the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in harms way to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected. We did not recommend that people go out and buy masks because we were afraid that [restrict supply to] people who really needed it."
If the reason they didn't recommend people to wear masks was because they didn't think there was value in wearing a mask (as stated in the earlier 60 minutes video), then why did he say that the reason was to prevent the public from going out and buying out the supply, disrupting it for health care workers?
So that is one motivation for distrust, that the two stories do not add up.
There is also the timeline issues in my prior post, which raises a valid question of professi...
> Making a claim and then reversing it based on new data is the correct thing to do.
Agree with this statement, however it does not apply here. There was no new data. They always knew that masks worked, but they needed them for first responders. Confirmation of this from Fauci interview: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...
The responsible, accountable thing to do would have been to say to Americans, "these masks do work, but we need them for first responders, please donate yours!"
See my comment above. Fauci said on national TV that the first responders needed the masks, and that people buying them up could cause a shortage for the people that needed them.
Somehow the messaging got muddied over the last few months.
I read and comprehend both of your comments. I think we are describing two different points: you are speaking about data on PPE shortages, and I have been speaking about data on PPE efficacy.
In the article I linked to, the surgeon general said masks were not effective. This is false. They are effective (along with non-N95 masks).
The data on shortages did not need to be remedied with a mischaracterization of PPE's effectiveness. It could have been communicated as I previously suggested, stating, "we messed up and need donations from the world." This would have increased institutional trust (being honest about the situation), and perhaps supported more uniform mask usage in the long-run.
The original mischaracterization and subsequent defense of this communication choice remains a cause of institutional mistrust. And even if you don't agree, you must be able to sympathize with the logic behind this conclusion for others. In fact, two other replies to your first comment similarly agreed with me.
I maintain that your logic is faulty, mainly because of the timing of when these things were said.
We had a window in late February/early March where we didn't know how nasty this thing was going to get in the states, and the responsible people in charge (namely, Dr. Fauci and not the administration writ large) made a claim based on previous experience ; as soon as it became apparent that it was getting out of control, there were calls for PPE donations, and the Federal Government refused to act, going so far as to steal PPE purchased by states.
There are many reasons for having institutional distrust, but to claim that the singular person in the administration who fought the President on his strategy (and was subsequently muzzled) was actively misleading the public is beyond frustrating.
The number of distrust has doubled, from 14% in March to 29% in September. So it's possible there is merit and momentum to my reasoning, that government should be transparent and avoid mischaracterization (or the appearance of it) and irresponsibility.
> What intelligent person would trust institutions that are inconsistent [...]
An intelligent person would trust institutions that change their mind more, because it's the right thing to do.
Institutions that remain utterly consistent in the face of evolving knowledge are the ones you should be wary of.
I saw an analogous thing in the much simpler world of signal processing and statistical estimation. Estimators and control systems sometimes oscillate as new data is acquired. It seems counterintuitive, more data should just improve accuracy, right? As if to converge toward an underlying true value? No, sometimes the best possible estimate and control output oscillates gently as more data is acquired, without any inconsistency. It took me a while to appreciate that.
Back to the big picture of institutions. Inconsistency over time may seem dissonant, but it shouldn't. It can be the most correct and accurate recommendation over time as new data and knowledge is accumulated. In an evolving situation, you should be seeing this.
The fact is people do cite inconsistency as a reason to disbelieve, and it puts public health policymakers in a dilemma. If they tell the truth and give the best advice to follow, people don't believe it because the truth is complicated and counterintuitive, and best advice rightly changes over time, and in different locations, circumstances, etc. So they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow.
(I don't disagree with your other assertions about accountability etc).
> they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow
I know they are acting in good faith. However, the field also has a lot of received wisdom that may or may not be true. There’s clearly a bag of tricks they believe must be used to achieve a set of self-set goals, and I think a more straightforward approach along with dialogue would have been wiser in this instance.
The alternative is that some people will lose trust and won’t comply. You don’t want that if your plan requires everyone to comply.
> The alternative is that some people will lose trust and won’t comply. You don’t want that if your plan requires everyone to comply.
The dilemma they face is no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply.
Getting an optimal outcome in the middle of that dilemma is impossible to get right. Not just difficult, but impossible due to the back and forth inter-reactions between individuals, groups and policy.
So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.
I'm not going to say they have got it right. The different points of view and debate have to continue after all, to pursue the "best" outcome whatever it may be.
Only that I have some sympathy with the public health messaging dilemma, and I hope other people can take something useful from the knowledge that public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone.
Endless message mapping and behavior change campaigning was never going to cut it here for an entire pandemic. People know they’re being led by the nose.
I get it, it’s hard, which is why we give the CDC a ton of money every year.
I just don’t have much sympathy for people who deploy preplanned psychological tricks and then don’t get what they want. We deserve better, seriously.
> The dilemma they face is no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply.
This is speculation. There are an infinite set of approaches for complex situations, that we have not found an approach that is consistently effective in no way proves that "no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply", it only proves that they won't trust & comply under the approaches we have tested.
Such things seem to be easy to conceptualize when we are performing computer system analysis, but it seems like when we are embedded within the system being analyzed, we lose this ability.
> So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.
This seems true. But it seems to me that when making strategic decisions about how to go about this, we make plausibly unnecessary mistakes on a regular basis. One problem might be though: if we start discussing some topics in an objective, truthful manner (more facts & logic oriented, less "truthy" narrative oriented), the public might expect us to start discussing all things in this manner.
> public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone
If the government, media, and health professionals would explicitly acknowledge the fallibility and errors of institutions, perhaps people would have more trust. But instead of describing reality as it is, we seem determined to stick with the simplistic fantasy land approach. This approach was extremely effective prior to the internet, but it seems insufficient now (except sometimes, like politics - here it continues to work like a charm, albeit with fairly disastrous outcomes).
Agreed, we seem to believe as a society that we can spew bullshit in all directions constantly (advertising, media, our legal system, our politicians campaigning, so many others) but then just turn it off when we want people to agree on some thing.
The individual things people seem to believe seem to be nearly universally idiotic, but I sympathize with them to the extent that they can see they are being fed bs narratives all the time and just decide to believe whatever they want if it's all bs anyway.
1 person committing arson and 10,000 other people protesting peacefully nearby is entirely possible.
That's of course an over-simplification of the dynamics at play in many US cities this summer, but it's not reasonable to attribute responsibility for the actions of a few to large groups that just happen to be nearby.
Scared people sometimes look for control over a situation to feel less scared. The hypothesis that COVID-19 is man-made makes it seem like we have some control over it, whereas, the thought that it developed outside of human control and might happen again terrifies them.
>The hypothesis that COVID-19 is man-made makes it seem like we have some control over it, whereas, the thought that it developed outside of human control and might happen again terrifies them.
The hypothesis that COVID is man-made is an inevitable result of already existing conspiracy theories about Chinese communist plots and "globalist/NWO" population control programs that go back decades. The only novel aspect of this is the degree to which it's been normalized and adopted as part of mainstream Republican identity politics.
"The hypothesis that COVID is man-made is an inevitable result of already existing conspiracy theories about Chinese communist plots and "globalist/NWO" population control programs that go back decades. The only novel aspect of this is the degree to which it's been normalized and adopted as part of mainstream Republican identity politics."
And people are willing to believe conspiracies due to fear. The US elected a president who has a trail of failed businesses and marriages, as well as, a moral system that would make hardened criminals squirm. But, like any good con artist, he projects confidence and makes complex topics simple by ignoring details. Scared people cling to those cults of personality like a life preserver. The fear started long before the 2016 election. The US is changing demographically and with it comes change culturally. Some people fear their place in a society in which they're no longer the majority.
Meh. I personally believe this pandemic just exposes differences in people's value systems. There are those who are risk-averse and those who are risk-affine. There are those who value freedom of choice over safety restrictions and there are those who would rather save the weak than keep their freedom. It is an interesting moral dilemma and this entire affair has turned into religious debate for me.
There is no real "right" or "wrong" here. Everyone can argue until they are blue in the face whether all these policy decisions are correct or necessary. It all depends on what you believe society should be like.
The entire system is political. That's the problem.
Imagine you are emperor of whatever country and you're sitting there in February with a potentially very deadly mostly unknown highly contagious virus. You are forced to shutdown.
The problem is that your bias will leak into that shutdown and make the entire situation appear like a conspiracy.
Then people step back and look at the context. Hong Kong Protests, Yellow Vests + french martial law + banning public protests before covid, black lives matter, canadian oil blockade country wide, etc etc.
Every place that had ongoing anti-government protests were quick to jump to lockdowns.
Then came the squashing of free speech. You're not allowed to 'spread misinformation' on covid. Mass arrests of people for 'spreading misinformation'.
Wait, there's a global recession, global protests against government and the government is restricting speech? We're not allowed to talk about it?
What we need to do is similar to the military. Medical decisions are outside the chain of command. Remove the politicians from this equation. Fix the entire problem.
I may or may not agree with this document or this website (never heard of them), but honestly, I am genuinely shocked at the number of people I run into both on the street and at my workplace (a university of higher learning) that does not believe that COVID-19 is conspiracy. They are hell bent on that everybody should wear masks, don’t think this is all a load, and that we should ignore everything anyone outside the CDC (or any medical doctor that does not agree with them for that matter) says about it.
I'm still baffled every day at the depths of our own misguided thoughts and beliefs. ️
I don't know anyone that believes it's a conspiracy, but they don't believe it's as serious as the media or the governments portrayed.
Which is actually supported by studies that say infection rate is higher than we think (making the mortality rate lower) and by recent data saying that hospitals got 4 times better at not killing patients (mainly by using steroids and not using invasive ventilators).
This last peak of infections didn't bring the amount of deaths we were expecting.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/why-is-it-that...
> Nearly 1 in 4 (24%) believed in March that some in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, are exaggerating the danger posed by the virus in order to damage Donald Trump’s presidency, which increased to 32% in July;
Even I believe that one. It really didn't help when public health officials banned outdoor gatherings, but BLM protests were OK.
While I agree with what BLM protests were protesting against, they did pick the worst possible time to do so. Especially because, numbers in hand, COVID has killed and will kill more people than police brutality would.
I don't really follow your comment. Here's a paper that concludes that BLM protests had (have) no effect on Covid case growth in the population: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408
"Likewise, while it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread of COVID-19 among those who attended the protests, we demonstrate that the protests had little effect on the spread of COVID- 19 for the entire population of the counties with protests during the more than five weeks following protest onset."
I think many people look at that logic (that those large BLM protests were safe) and wonder why it can't be applied to more mundane activities such as the US Open.
It comes across as blatantly partisan and not the least bit driven by the science.
I get that, but there are differences. With something like the US Open, you have people staying in the same spot for long periods of time in a sheltered building (maybe some have more winds, maybe some don't). You have shared indoor bathrooms, indoor vending, sheltered entrances/exists.
Nevertheless, I agree with the larger point that leadership should have provided more outdoor activities to draw people away from bars and restaurants.
Trouble with events like that is that it encourages people to travel, stay in hotels, and 'socialise' (in the "drinking large amounts of inhibition-lowering alcohol in the company of others" sense). The event itself would probably not be that dangerous; it's everything around it.
The same can be said of the protests. The participants in many of those activities were not just local to the city. They too traveled.
I could understand reducing the attendance at the US Open to a lower level. But to set it to zero while not doing the same for any protests... it undermines credibility.
Also, consider another example.
New York State imposed a travel quarantine on those traveling from other states. Well, except for the MTV Music Awards. Those don't count.
Why? Because I think the political sensibilities of the award recepients better aligns with those who granted this waiver. This creates an aire of political favoritsm. It's very damaging.
"had little effect" is equivalent to no effect; read the paper. "Trends between the treated and non-treated counties are virtually identical prior to the protests. This is reassuring and suggests that the timing of the protests is not correlated with trends in COVID-19 case growth or unobservable determinants of case growth."
I don't know what you're quibbling over. If we're reaching for absolute zero levels of covid spread, then sure protests had a giant effect (just from logic). That's not practical; people need to go outside.
And per the "it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread" is in reference to the article's earlier hypothesis that because people were leaving their homes to protest, you would expect them to get covid at a higher rate than someone who never left their house. The article didn't have any direct evidence that that was actually the case though.
Given the evidence that the actual truth is that there is a significant danger posed by the virus (see 200k dead Americans), a more logical conclusion here is not overstating the risk of the virus, but understating the risk of BLM protests.
So, again, your particular argument is - we shouldn't try to do anything about covid, because people already die from things?
What a complete nonsense argument.
What is different about covid that means we shouldn't try to treat it? We treat cancer, and genetic diseases, and the flu. We actively try to avoid death for a million other reasons. Why should we just throw our hands up with this one and act like it's not there?
That's a straw man. I never said to do nothing. But at the same time, don't overreact. You don't think it's possible to overreact to this?
Why don't you 'do something' about car crash victims every year? Are you okay with all of them dying from something that is preventable? You're just going to throw your hands in the air? Of course not. Have them wear seat belts. Invent things to reduce deaths, like airbags. But it is possible to go too far, like closing every street in the country.
Obviously, you can't prove anything about what would have occurred in counterfactual circumstances in any strong sense, but you can get a pretty good idea from looking at excess deaths.
It's hard to count dead Americans, there was a financial (and political) incentive in over-counting deaths and we probably conflated some deaths from different causes and we didn't know how to treat them in the hospital.
Recent studies point (some say 3 times the number of infected, others 6-24 times) in the direction that we severely undercounted the infected because of its asymptomatic nature in healthy individuals.
Which means the death rate is nothing to cry about.
Legally speaking, that decision was solid. Governments have strong and broad authority to regulate commerce, but their power to regulate protests is relatively narrow.
Religious gatherings typically rely on private property that is subject to health and safety standards. Protests don't typically happen in or on property that is subject to those standards.
I think as we’ve learned more about the virus we’ve learned (after the occurrence of the initial BLM protests) that the transmission rate in large open environments such as beaches or some protests is signficicantly lower compared to closed environments such as churches. In hindsight this does make it hypocritical that some events were criticized and others were not, though the argument can be made that given information at the time the prevailing notion that outdoor rallies by a demographic that refuses to wear mask (for example, in tight knit admissions lines at said rallies) would undeniably spread a not insignificant amount of COVID.
Ultimately as a hypocrisy it’s small frys compared to the tidal wave of misinformation and intentionally damaging information, as well as the incompetent response and outright pitting of states against each other, compared to the current administrators actions during COVID as a whole.
TLDR; America’s response to COVID has been a relentless failure compared to all other western countries of similar size and demographics (outside of MAYBE Brazil) such that exaggeration and hypocrisy towards a small number of social gatherings is utterly insignificant by comparison.
Have there been crackdowns on anti-mask protests? Or is it just BLM that you find problematic? Because I've seen a lot of coverage of both, and folks wear masks and attempt to maintain spacing at one sort and not the other.
Conspiracy theories are a way for people to create rationale when they experience cognitive dissonance.
Almost all conspiracy theories can be disproved if you consider if they are:
1.) Reasonable given the circumstances. (i.e. is there a simpler way to achieve the same ends)
2.) Is the conspiracy theory possible when adjusted for behavioral biology, neuroscience, physics and mathematics.
3.) Is it possible that sufficiently advanced technology is involved but has not been made public. There are many conspiracy theories that can be simply explained by technology that is possible but has not been made public. For instance you can make people paranoid by repeatedly having people walk by them talking about what is going on in their home. The problem is the technology to view and listen into people's homes has been available since the 1970s and is available now for less than $5000. You can modify millimeter wave technology for this purpose today.
If the above two conditions hold true, you need to seriously consider the idea that some of the things that sound like conspiracy theory might be factual.
You can't label everything a conspiracy theory, some of it is just crazy people who need a reason for things they don't want to take the time out to find a rational explanation for.
I think an important flaw in this survey is that it assumes people's belief in each element is 100% true or false, or without nuance. I prefer to think in percentages when it comes to these theories, and think many do. A few Chinese scientists came forward recently suggesting the lab-grown theory again. This put my personal "likelihood meter" up a few % points that the thing came from a lab (but still well below 50% since there is no smoking gun), and according to this, it sounds like others may have done similar.
That people are politicizing the virus on all sides is 100% certainty. All you have to do is read the news- that's not a conspiracy theory. The degree to which any given aspect (mask effectiveness, CFR, HCQ, etc.) is subject to those politics varies. At least in my circles, most people seem to understand there are legitimate risks and mitigations like masks, quarantine, etc. work to some degree. Again, they believe this on a spectrum. Most people are somewhere between "lick all doorknobs" and "sleep in full body respirator".
The pharma industry creating the virus is the least likely scenario IMO (~0%), but again, it doesn't take much imagination to see pharma making money on all this. I don't even necessarily see anything wrong with that, as long as it's done honestly.
All that to say, the premise of the article is flawed in that it doesn't account for the full range of belief in these "conspiracy theories".
Also, what is the alternative? Unquestioning belief in whom?
> U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, are exaggerating the danger posed by the virus in order to damage Donald Trump’s presidency, which increased to 32% in July;
It's not a conspiracy to suggest that people are exaggerating the danger posed by the virus. There are many factions, political and otherwise, that have a vested interest to do so, particularly in an election year. To file any exaggeration in the danger of covid as conspiracy is exactly what makes people disbelieve more legitimate science sources.
I think the best way to stop belief in conspiracy theories is to decrease the number of real conspiracies.
From Watergate to Epstein it’s shown that people in power commonly abuse their own power. From Enron to Purdue Pharma it’s shown that some Americans will indirectly kill other Americans for profit.
I’m not sure how we reduce political corruption or individual greed pursed with morals abandoned. However, I think that’s where the conversation should be around. I can’t blame people for believing China manufactured and unleashed a bio weapon that causes a disease we call Covid-19, that’s on par for the type of evil things other people are doing in the world.
And to that I would say the lack of nuance in almost every media outlet, covid-19 coverage not being exclusive to this, gives conspiracy theories a lot more weight and consideration.
With the recent protests and riots in the US spawned a thousand conspiracies by having news agencies attempting to downplay any criminal activity in the protests by standing in front of burning buildings and telling the audience this was the result of a peaceful protest, queue the theories of people pulling strings in the media to provide cover and drive a communist uprising.
Perhaps if the elites expected the public to trust them on this particular issue, they should not have lied, obfuscated and concealed so many times in the past.
Social trust has been completely wiped out, by the same elites complaining about it.
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” --CS Lewis
Part of the problem is it's not the "same elites" with the level of consistency that phrasing implies.
A group of people with some vaguely common perceived status are lumped together as "elites".
Some of them have lied, obfuscated, concealed so many times.
Others are trying to do good things in the world, and are consistent about that to the best of their ability in a difficult world.
But we reason about them all as if they are single unit.
Same problem as any other kind of lumping people together into a named group - men, woman, white, black, etc.
It leads to false conclusions. But we love doing it, because it's a simpler model of the world than reasoning about the complex interplay of individuals.
True, but we can't expect the average person to keep track of all of this. This is why the elites in general need to act in the interest of the public frequently enough for trust in the system to remain.
It's easy to blame "stupid people" and "the internet" but it seems perfectly rational to me for the average person to view anything coming from elite institutions with scepticism, at best.
Generally I agree with you, but I think it's useful and important to keep highlighting there's no such single unit as "the elites", so that people might take that into account when applying their skeptical thinking.
There is no need for people to keep track of "all this" in detail with individuals and so forth.
It's already a big skeptical improvement just to take on board the idea that vaguely labelled groups are a misleading simplification, and to think in terms of the interplay of very different individuals as taking place.
For a start, that results in applauding good works (for whatever you consider good) when you see them, rather than applauding which party a person is aligned with. The result would be more sensible politics, imho.
Another thing which comes from that, is you then don't blame person A for person B's misdeeds just because A and B are both inside some labelled group you have defined by convenience. That way lies blaming all "X people" for some "X people"'s behaviour, and that's not as effective as focusing on the actual bad behaviour, as well as being arguably unjust.
I personally don't blame "stupid people" or call people that often, mainly because I think a lot of people who are not stupid still commit the cardinal error of hashing things out in public with vague group labels. Sometimes people could never agree on which actual people are part of those vague groups, but gloss over that as though it's irrelevant, and still reason about the vague group itself as if it's an object in the world with a coordinated intention. Sometimes it is, often it isn't.
I do slightly blame some aspects of "the internet" a bit these days, because, like a lot of people, I'm seeing indications that the social media process appears to be amplifying a polarisation feedback process that is independent of the actual issues, and might be becoming more powerful than our evolved human instincts for a healthy balance of group harmony vs conflict. As an internet idealist from the old days, though, I'd rather we study that and learn ways to improve on it.
According to the article, if you believe that "CDC, are exaggerating the danger posed by the virus in order to damage Donald Trump’s presidency" then you're believing in a conspiracy theory.
As someone living in Europe, I don't care two hoots about Trumps presidency, but I do think that the danger of this virus, and the current responses have been exaggerated.
In the beginning, when so many things were unknown, it was perfectly understandable and appropriate to overreact.
But now that it's largely clear that this virus is not much more lethal than the flu, (and that with the recent surge in cases in Europe, the deaths have remained largely flat), I struggle to understand the fear-mongering and hand-wringing.
My guess is, instead of a conspiracy, it's a case of a massive sunk cost fallacy, whereby politicians and high profile celebrity epidemiologists etc. can't admit that they were wrong in their original estimations.
> My guess is, instead of a conspiracy, it's a case of a massive sunk cost fallacy, whereby politicians and high profile celebrity epidemiologists etc. can't admit that they were wrong in their original estimations.
Absolutely. Remember though the original push was to isolate to the bend the curve so that hospitals could cope. Now hospitals have spare capacity but we're still isolating. The story changed.
Interesting that only 76% of the non-conspiracy-believing group intend to take a vaccine. Curious how that compares to the same group’s intention to take, say, a flu vaccine. E.g., some may not be able to take one, others may not want to. [2]
Vaccine is an interesting one because there’s the conspiracy side — vaccines will be microchipped, a way for Bill Gates to control the population, etc — and then there’s the general skepticism over the safety of something done quickly.
The latter is why the drug makers came together recently with a statement saying they would not cut corners on safety. It stems in large part from the White House pushing a message that a vaccine will be available before the November elections, in contradiction with public health experts who have consistently said it will take longer.
Personally, I think health agencies should be given some latitude in an emerging, novel pandemic. Mistakes are inevitable. Course corrections are inevitable. But in times of so much active disinformation, contradicting and tarnishing the agencies tasked with reigning in the pandemic is incredibly dangerous.
2: On closer re-reading, this number was over 80% in the spring.
I will just say as a precursor that I believe the masks have been a prudent precaution. But I am not 100% convinced about the shutdown of the economy.
I'll start at the beginning to try to explain how my worldview is different from many people here.
The treatment of the topic in this article appears to assume that simply by labelling these beliefs as conspiracy theories, they are disproven. Why else would beliefs that are held by such a large portion of the public apparently be dismissed out of hand? There is no other explanation given. They are labelled as conspiracy theories and therefore are not true by default.
In my very different worldview, describing these ideas as "conspiracy theories" makes me suspect even more that at least some of them may have an element of truth. Because historically that description has been used for many government actions that they wanted to cover up.
So in my worldview, even the term "conspiracy theory" is potentially a manipulation, and a significant number of conspiracy theories are true instances of government malignment. Normally many of these are acknowledged to some degree up to a certain historical distance. So if you are interested then you can research further to understand my point of view better.
The term "conspiracy theory" has evolved over the last few years into a tool to criticize people who think too far outside the box. It plays on the dynamics of social group theory, and is being used by the left to ostracize any person who brings up topics they don't want to discuss. It's also an easy unconscious fallback when cognitive dissonance kicks in. Keep in mind Christopher Columbus was labeled the equivalent of a conspiracy theorist when he stated the Earth was actually round.
You're not the only one and i can think of at least a few others who are both aware and well connected. Im just stepping into the ring myself after a long time on the sidelines. Any chance youd be willing to discuss this further in private?
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 232 ms ] threadOne of the papers states: "Judging from the evidence that we and others have gathered, we believe that finding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 should involve an independent audit of the WIV P4 laboratories and the laboratories of their close collaborators. Such an investigation should have taken place long ago and should not be delayed any further.". A reasonable suggestion I would have thought.
The takeaway from the Annenberg piece is that only (nutty) conservatives take this kind of thing seriously.
https://capitalresearch.org/article/dishonest-fact-checkers/
If there was an effective media blackout on something, how would you know?
> The media is simply reporting what is the general consensus among professionals.
It is true that the media reports "general consensus among professionals", but is it perfectly true that this is what they are "simply" (just, only) doing?
Human cognition has several flaws like this - it seems to very much behave in real time (when reckoning at the object level) like it considers itself to be omniscient, so falls victim to many things like "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"[1]. This is just one example of many that can be regularly observed in media and forum conversations, even on HN (whose participants are human beings let's not forget).
I think if we were to spend more time considering world events from a more abstract, "zoomed out" perspective, perhaps we could break out of this never ending loop. So, instead of arguing about whether <IssueX> or <PersonA> "is" right or wrong, try to understand why people are forming the beliefs they hold, which then introduces a whole bunch of complexity into what appears to be (because of the nature of human cognition) a very simple situation.
If we were also to document these learnings and add to and refine the list over time, I propose that a much clearer picture of just what the fuck is going on here would emerge. But instead, we repeat this simplistic process of "News event --> shallow analysis from biased perspectives --> form hasty conclusion that reinforces preexisting beliefs --> End" over and over, and we don't seem to realize we are doing this, because we are always reckoning about things at the object level. If you look closely, it's not too hard to see that this is quite similar (but not identical) to the approach the media takes to presenting the news as well, intentionally or not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
Who told you that? Have you talked to a spectrum of professionals yourself, in an environment where they aren't afraid of social repercussions for speaking against the 'approved' party line? Or did you get that from the media?
Personally, I read the journal publications and see what experts have to say - and not just the experts trotted out by the media.
I'm still baffled every day at the depths of our own misguided thoughts and beliefs.
But of particular relevance to this subject is his opposition to (1) wearing masks as a role model, (2) mandating masks as a nation's leader. His general suggestions to the public that the virus is not a threat give voice to those who would claim that "it's all a hoax."
The problem with that framing is that most people quickly drop the "asymptomatic" bit, and so now we have people with symptoms going shopping wearing a mask. That mask isn't going to do much to protect other people, especially when you consider it's likely to be 2 layers of cotton, poorly fitted, with poor hand hygiene.
The debate reminds me of the debate about smoking.
For a long time, smoking "probably" caused cancer. Meaning, almost certainly. There was plenty of evidence.
But for a long time, cigarette companies said it wasn't "proven" that it caused cancer. Meaning, let's carry on selling, advertising, consuming it in large quantities.
It would take a few more decades to reach the standard of "proof".
So smoking continued, people died.
Rather than following rational life-optimising behaviour based on the growing body of data.
As you illustrated in your example, the medical establishment is often disastrously wrong, so why shouldn't we take their recommendations with a grain of salt?
They have to take a little care where they swing their arms.
In fact some people don't take that much care, and we usually say it is the people who physically dominate a space by being inconsiderate of others who are acting entitled and privileged.
So no, I don't think it's entitled or privileged to ask people to reduce significant[+] aggregate harm to others, at minor inconvenience to themselves.
However, I think it's entitled and privileged for people to decide that they don't have to wear a mask based on their "personal risk assessment for themselves", on the theory that other people can just quit their jobs or whatever and stay locked up at home to feel safe from the unmasked crowds outside. That's the "if people want to feel safe they can stay at home if they want" theory. That's not a reasonable imposition, and does not constitute the reasonable balance of needs that we'd call a free society.
For those for whom it's particularly uncomfortable, I don't know the policy elsewhere, but in the UK, it's permitted to not wear a mask if you have a reason for not wearing one. Reasons are quite reasonable: For example if you're with someone who lip reads, or they give you anxiety or whatever.
The goal is to ensure that almost all people wear one, not that every last person must wear one if they have a reasonable reason not to.
The reason for enforced policy is because too many people won't wear one at all without a stronger incentive. Just asking people to not harm others isn't enough, it seems. (And people really can't get their intuitions around exponential growth and clustering, so they mis-estimate aggregate risks to others by a lot, even when they have numbers to go on.)
[+] (It affects the R number. The difference between R > 1 and R < 1 is pandemic versus disease dying out. It's also the difference between a long pandemic with onerous economic and social consequences, and something that is manageable. The overall effect is profoundly significant in aggregate.)
Here's a recent, high quality, paper in a high impact paper.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
> Although direct evidence is limited, the optimum use of face masks, in particular N95 or similar respirators in health-care settings and 12–16-layer cotton or surgical masks in the community, could depend on contextual factors; action is needed at all levels to address the paucity of better evidence. Eye protection might provide additional benefits. Globally collaborative and well conducted studies, including randomised trials, of different personal protective strategies are needed regardless of the challenges, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence could be considered to inform interim guidance.
There's a bit to unpack here.
1) I don't know anyone wearing a 12 to 16 layer cotton mask. At best they're wearing 4 to 6 layers of cotton. Most people have maybe two layer masks.
2) "paucity of better evidence" isn't how I'd describe something that has great evidence.
Look at how that paper describes the evidence for distancing vs masking:
> Our search identified 172 observational studies across 16 countries and six continents, with no randomised controlled trials and 44 relevant comparative studies in health-care and non-health-care settings (n=25 697 patients). Transmission of viruses was lower with physical distancing of 1 m or more, compared with a distance of less than 1 m (n=10 736, pooled adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0·18, 95% CI 0·09 to 0·38; risk difference [RD] −10·2%, 95% CI −11·5 to −7·5; moderate certainty); protection was increased as distance was lengthened (change in relative risk [RR] 2·02 per m; pinteraction=0·041; moderate certainty). Face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection (n=2647; aOR 0·15, 95% CI 0·07 to 0·34, RD −14·3%, −15·9 to −10·7; low certainty), with stronger associations with N95 or similar respirators compared with disposable surgical masks or similar (eg, reusable 12–16-layer cotton masks; pinteraction=0·090; posterior probability >95%, low certainty).
All of the mask evidence says "low certainty". That's from GRADE, and it means "low certainty (our confidence in the effect estimate is limited; the true effect could be substantially different from the estimate of the effect);"
Does it influence your position on whether or not masks are useful?
Parent poster isn't asking whether masks trap particles or not (clearly, they do), they're asking a much more interesting and useful question which is if we make everyone wear a mask does that prevent the spread of disease or not?
So far, we really don't have much evidence. In this thread, where lots of people are posting links, there's only one decent link posted by gameswithgo here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24589569
All the things that happen in daily life rather than in a medical setting. Which is why despite full mask protocols and sanitiser at the door to every classroom kids going back to school this week around here have all have gone down with viral sore throats and noses.
That shouldn’t have happened if masks do what it says on the tin.
Unfortunately network effects dominate. We are not hamsters living permanently in cages.
We don't know, we don't have much evidence either way.
> but not stopping spread over the population?
Where do people wear masks? They wear masks when leaving their homes. Some of those journeys are essential, but a lot of them are not.
People have chosen something (mask wearing) that has at best weak evidence over something (physical distancing) that has much stronger evidence.
Most recommendations I've seen are to do both.
https://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.635444.1593270228!/ima...
They might have done so even without masks, it is hard to say, but it is pretty easy for people to think that it is fine to not keep distance when they have masks.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314683/
> The difference in conclusions of mask effectiveness studies is mainly due to different study contents, study designs, evaluation methods and endpoints. Understandably, good evidence on this topic is difficult to assess.
But the study's support for masks is crystal clear and you can't read the entire study (or even the abstract) and come away without that conclusion.
The more I engage with you the more I fear that you are not debating the subject in good faith.
> However, in many western advanced economies, those wearing masks are often met with suspicion in public, even causing panic in certain situation.
Really? Citation needed.
> Although the 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) caused an estimated 40–50 million deaths worldwide, many still may view personal protective equipment (PPE) and physical barrier including wearing the mask as contrary to freedom and individualism.
Non-sequitur alert! Number one, PPEs themselves are value-neutral; it's the mandate that contrary to liberty as enshrined in the Constitution (you know, the highest law in the land). Number two, mask mandates can be both effective in slowing viral spread AND "contrary to freedom and individualism;" the two concepts are orthogonal. Most people understand this, but differ in prioritizing one over the other. The author seems to suggest that the two cannot be believed at once!
Are we all supposed to just take it for granted that masks would have helped in a situation that took place over 100 years ago before so many other medical advances? I don't think that's a fair assumption at all. If so, we could just invoke the Spanish Flu as evidence for any medical intervention we desire.
Omissions like these make it hard for me to take this study as authoritative about anything, especially when they themselves admit that the evidence on universal masking is contradictory.
Not a great start
This piece, which you present as good quality evidence, says
> The lack of clear recommendations for the general public and low uptake of wearing face masks and coverings may be attributed to: (i) over-reliance on an evidence-based medicine approach and assertion that evidence was weak due to few conclusive RCT (randomised controlled trial) results in community settings, discounting high quality non-RCT evidence.
Someone asks for good quality evidence and you post a link to an opinion piece saying stop over-relying on good quality evidence?
I mean, your link even says they don't have much evidence
> Current knowledge on the effectiveness of face masks to prevent virus transmission from COVID-19, SARS, MERS and H1N1 is mostly limited to studies of surgical masks and N95 respirators. The majority of existing studies are conducted in health care settings and focus on protection of the mask wearer as opposed to wearing a mask for the protection of others. This distinction is vital since mask wearing for the general public occurs in non-clinical situations (home, public transport, shops, restaurants) and involves both protection of oneself but also others.
[...]
> We emphasise that the majority of studies have been conducted in health care settings and there are therefore caveats in the ability to transfer results directly to community settings
Counterquestion: Will presence of this evidence modify your position?
The study you linked did not have any covid patients.
> slows the spread of COVID-19 or a similar respiratory disease
What makes you believe that COVID-19 is spread significantly differently that the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is not bearable relative to the potential benefits? Do you believe that masks have risks other than being inconvenient?
They actually tested infected patients with and without mask.
This study is incredibly small, and operating on the limits of significance. Its hardly conclusive, and was done under fairly extreme conditions (30 mins in close proximity) compared to the scenarios in which masks are mandated today. The authors even mention that, for those who did not cough, no detectable virus was identified regardless of whether a mask was worn. Considering that the point of mandatory masking is to prevent asymptomatic transmission from brief interactions with strangers, I just don't find this study very convincing as a scientific basis for a mask mandate.
Can you see how the study you presented doesn't answer parent post's question?
Further, your study tests the first breath exhalation.
> We screened 3,363 individuals in two study phases, ultimately enrolling 246 individuals who provided exhaled breath samples (Extended Data Fig. 1). Among these 246 participants, 122 (50%) participants were randomized to not wearing a face mask during the first exhaled breath collection and 124 (50%) participants were randomized to wearing a face mask. Overall, 49 (20%) voluntarily provided a second exhaled breath collection of the alternate type.
So, your test says "when you put on a mask that mask will, immediately after you put it on, stop your exhaled breath hitting a plate placed in front of your mouth".
It says nothing about how effective that mask is over time.
Edit: Also that is for surgical face masks, most people just put a piece of cloth in their face. I would like to see a study for a piece of cloth in front of your mouth for the entire day and see how much virus there is after that.
If mask mandates slow the growth of asymptomatic cases, the R number must be lower.
As we all should know by now, reducing R is a good target, as the difference between R > 1 and R < 1 is profound, and R is thought to be close enough to 1 that measures taking place can make that difference.
This is very useful from a health perspective.
Thank you for the link.
Summary: "investigators found that the prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies among hospital employees was lower than what had been reported for the surrounding general community that is consistent with personal protective equipment being effective at preventing exposure of hospital workers. In addition, researchers found via laboratory testing that N95 masks with intact elastic straps or if sterilized maintained their effectiveness even if they had passed their expiration point, offering alternatives to the scarcity of N95 masks."
Conclusion: "PPE, when available and properly used, confers protection and lower infection rates of COVID-19 among health care workers when compared with reported infection rates in the general public."
If someone has a legitimate question it’s batted away with out weighing evidence or lack there of.
From this POV they cannot be taken at face value. The Vitamin D thing or HCQ thing. Whether or not they prove useful, the media would not even consider whether they were useful or not. It was just “NO!” Likely this knee jerk reaction was due to a certain person floating them as options. If Bill G had floated them as he floats his own favorite solutions, the reaction would have been different.
We know nothing is a silver bullet, but we also know HCQ is prescribed or was to people going to the tropics and in some of those countries it’s OTC, so then labeling it as dangerous as heroin is kind of disingenuous. Sure you don’t want to dose yourself... but it’s also not as dangerous as they made it out to be.
HCQ may be prescribed by a doctor if you are traveling to an area where it is effective, and where the alternatives either are not effective or there's a counterindication (or where they're too expensive if you're in a health system where that's relevant). You will be warned of the risks by the doctor. It wouldn't generally be available over the counter in developed countries.
Heroin would be somewhat rarely prescribed today (though in some developed countries it is used sparingly as a powerful narcotic pain reliever), but even more dangerous opiates are routinely. You will be warned of the risks by the doctor. Heroin, too, was once available over the counter ('Heroin' was originally a trade name; Bayer promoted it as a non-addictive alternative to morphine).
That HCQ might be useful against COVID was widely reported in mainstream media. It was also reported that this was still speculative, but promising enough that tests were starting right away in several places.
Also I think a common thread with people that go for conspiracy theories is a tendency to see the world in black and white. Everything is either 100% good or 100% bad. If the CDC was wrong about something in February then they're always wrong or theres some deep state plan afoot. A politician that tells some lies, sometimes, is the same as Donald Trump constantly lying. There's no room for nuance.
The first problem is that US governing elites have proven themselves to be corrupt and untrustworthy.
People in the tech sector have not been greatly exposed to this, but wages for the median person have remained stagnant for the past four decades. The elite response has been either to deny the problem or make it worse. People do notice when it gets harder to make ends meet, and the failure to address this problem has undermined faith in the elected arms of government.
Other issues such as the bipartisan consensus to invade Iraq on the basis of fabricated evidence and the fact that Trump has told 20,000 lies about objective matters since assuming office have exacerbated the problem.
The second problem is that conservatives--including conservative media--massively overstate the scope of governance problems in the unelected civil service as an electoral strategy. These viewpoints are amplified by Facebook and other social media in search of engagement.
The third problem is low quality education among the bulk of the population. Critical thinking skills are not effectively taught, much less internalized, by the average person. Most people are not able to effectively evaluate information they are given, which leaves them vulnerable to whatever propaganda Facebook et el shovels into their feed.
Even in respected media, journalists try to angle stories from opposite sides. So you’ll have a random person from Facebook take up as much screen time, if not more, as a literal PHD in infective diseases.
It gets worse over time, as the story gets more and more boring. I mean, it basically hasn’t changed in 8 months, but you can’t just re-run information in modern media. So you’ll have days where the top corona virus story is about some social media person getting banned from Instagram for spreading fake news, and not how the amount of infected is exploding in Europe again. I mean, that bit did pick up in the following days, but why was it ever news that some idiot got banned from Instagram?
I spend time with both elites (academic, professional class, government bureaucrats) and with working class people. I can, anecdotally, tell you pretty easily why there's so much mistrust. The elite class has shifted wildly away from traditional narratives about how the world works, and toward post modernism and intersectionality, while the working class has largely stayed with traditional views.
Those two views are fundamentally incompatible. When working class people hear views that don't align with theirs over and over stated as facts, and often forced on them, they cease to trust the people pushing them. This is why they love people like Donald Trump, he understanding this dynamic and panders to it, using it for his own ends.
Elites are largely viewed by the working class as either out of touch, corrupt liars, or malicious social-engineers looking to erode society. It shouldn't be a surprise that they don't trust them. The sad result is that these people then fall back to trying to find "truth" themselves, and end up with some strange, often dangerous, results.
The candle in the dark is being lost in the west.
Specifically, I'm sure their recommendations are all data-driven in isolation, but the overwhelming impression is that there's been no triage based on consideration of what is feasible, in aggregate, for new parents.
The result is that, when you talk with other parents, after a glass of wine or two you all end up admitting that you did all the CDC recommended stuff for a couple weeks, maybe even a couple months, but you couldn't keep it up and you stopped boiling the bottles and you gave him a little security blanket and oh, yeah, he's alive now.
So there are a lot of people out there (including BosWash hispters like my wife and I) basically trained to think of the CDC as an organization that tells you to do a bunch of onerous, in-the-aggregate impossible tasks that you disregard for your own health and sanity.
This is the central dilemma of public health policy and public health messaging everywhere.
I read a fascinating book once about public health messaging.
The gist was, for the health of people, messaging from public institutions has to be extremely over-simplified and made rather blunt, because people in aggregate just won't follow nuanced, "more correct" advice effectively.
But if they overdo the over-simplification, then it's not useful any more.
People who are looking for nuance see that the advice is blunt and over-simplified, and may point out to each other that the institution is giving such advice, undermining trust in it.
So it's a difficult line to walk.
We have seen this recently in the England with Covid-19 advice to the public: It was too complicated, now it's changed to the "rule of six". The former advice was probably better advice if people had followed it, but people didn't follow it, for many reasons. So it had to be simplified into a simple, catchy message, in order to take into account people's reactions in aggregate to the type of advice.
I tend to imagine this is frustrating for well-informed public health scientists.
The US surgeon general and Fauci told people to stop buying masks. Then they reversed themselves, and defended their position at the time.
Media reports "fiery, but mostly peaceful protests".
What intelligent person would trust institutions that are inconsistent and refuse accountability? What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace? Can you blame distrust given this environment?
> Institutional trust has eroded.
I think the biggest problem is social media. A reasonable person would make this same conclusion you have, for example:
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
And yet another person who gets their information from another source, would reach the opposite conclusion. The simple fact is that enough happened in enough locations that if you hone in on one protest here or one riot there you can paint a completely different picture.
For full disclosure, most of the images I got of the protests personally were from a twitch stream called "Woke" which was a compilation stream of about usually 5-10 simultaneous protest streams from different cities. I don't think I ever once witnessed arson or another crime, despite having watched that stream ever night during the height of the protests.
But I don't doubt there was arson and numerous other crimes.
In other words, I am particularly pessimistic that it is possible to have institutional trust anymore, because the events in our world are so numerous and nuanced that it is frankly impossible to give a succinct, consistent, and accountable view of them.
Same with the mask thing: Fauci and the surgeon general were absolutely correct telling people to stop buying masks when there was a shortage and hospitals were running out of them. And they are absolutely correct now telling people that, with no remaining shortage, we should all have masks and wear them to stop the spread (in particular now that most people aren't sheltering in place anymore). But that level of nuance doesn't come through, especially in a world where most "news" comes from headlines on reddit links and facebook posts.
But why with the backdrop of that violence do they characterize that one “as mostly peaceful”. They could at least have been forthcoming and said while most are peaceful this one has devolved into violence you see behind me. But they are like Baghdad Bob ignoring the bombs falling as he broadcasts...
1. Executives at the news agencies told the reporters to cover the protests favorably for corrupt reasons
2. The news reporters and camera crew were at the protests for several hours and genuinely got a lot of footage of peaceful protests; the violence happened at 2 AM when most protestors had gone home, and were both not filmed by the camera crew and seemed unrelated to the protest that the camera crew had covered
3. Most of "them" did in fact cover in the violence in some amount, maybe less footage or less coverage then you think is appropriate but some amount of coverage nonetheless. However, because "they" are an unspecific and presumably large number of media channels that run all day long, you probably weren't watching all of the coverage and you might have missed it (or the sources that tell you "they" didn't cover the violence hadn't mentioned that they actually did cover it a little)
I can't tell you which is true between 1-3, because I don't know who "they" refers to, and I know I don't watch "them" anyways because I never watched mainstream coverage of the protests. Just some food for thought, again that we are quick to turn to instant distrust before we apply nuance and consider the alternative.
Sorry, but this is classical gas-lighting. This is absolutely equivalent to saying - I saw Leni Riefenstahl's movies and there were no people dying in concentration camps, so Nazi propaganda is factually correct. There are tens of thousands of criminal acts documented during those 'peaceful' protests and I don't think that anyone with IQ >80 and the slightest bit of self-respect would ever take what you're saying seriously.
Btw, these days even far-left HN seems to be split in two and I was sure it would be one of the last bastions of group-think. I guess we live and learn.
I sincerely apologize if it came off that way, because it was not my intention.
I'm not trying to deny that there were crimes and arson and whatever else. They did happen, and they are inexcusable.
I am specifically making the point, that the GP had posed the answer:
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
My point is simply trying to add nuance: nobody is saying arson is okay, the people I talk to say things like:
"this protest I was at was OK. I left at 11 PM everything that happened while I was there was super peaceful and wholesome and people even brought their kids!"
The bifurcation comes when we start to group everything that happened all across the country into one label of "protests". There were violent protests, there were peaceful protests. There were protests that started peaceful and became violent. Sometimes there were small violent groups that were literally ousted from the larger protest group for causing trouble.
I'm not denying that there were violent protests. But I'm also not going to deny that there were a whole lot of peaceful protests.
It is interesting thought experiment to keep your sentence the same, but replace "protests" with "police."
Police brutality is wrong, full stop.
Why do you jump straight to social media?
Why wouldn't the fault lay with the authority figures themselves? For decades we have authority figures saying "the science says X therefore you must Y" while at the same time we have an educational system that (correctly) says "science is not authoritative".
Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.
Social media is literally the catalyst for the loss of institutional trust. Maybe in the long run this is a good thing, and we will rebuild our institutions in a way that we can trust them in a hyper-shared hyper-aware world, but currently i just see no way that it can possibly work out.
> Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.
In all honesty, I don't believe this is possible. It's the same problem as how people end up cancelled on twitter for the smallest reasons: humans are flawed, and in our hyper-shared hyper-aware world a single human flaw (or a single systemic flaw in our instutitions) becomes a gigantic crack that makes everyone outraged.
While outrage culture exists I don't think it is possible to have high-trust institutions that are run by human. Period.
And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.
(NOTE: just to be clear, I'm not saying our institutions are in the right. they are frequently wrong. But any wrongness you find, as in your example the way we communicate science as a closed book done deal, is one single flaw in a massive sprawling institution. I'm saying that statistically any large institution WILL have flaws, no matter what, thus in our new world we CANNOT have trust in these institutions the way things are now because any flaws will get blown up into a full model of distrust by social media. That's simply the new world we live in.)
Ban social media? Should we make a government review board for all social media posts to make sure people don't think the bad things?
Even if social media were the problem, I'd start thinking about other places to solve it because social media isn't going anywhere.
We've got a better shot at finding less hubristic leaders all though those odds aren't great either
Just to be clear, I didn't mean to say social media is "a problem" or "the problem", but rather the catalyst of the modern status quo. I should have worded my original post better. Specifically, social media (and I suppose the internet in large) allowed us to much easily share information in a way that sidesteps those institutions. This allows us to easily share information that's negative about those institutions, whereas before we could not. Thus, it was the catalyst towards the modern avalanche of distrust towards once-venerated institutions.
> then what
> Ban social media? Should we make a government review board for all social media posts to make sure people don't think the bad things?
> Even if social media were the problem, I'd start thinking about other places to solve it because social media isn't going anywhere.
I generally agree with what you're saying, I don't have an answer. Pandora's box is open, and from now on it seems impossible to have a big monolithic organization and not have a high level of public distrust (both grassroots and organized by that organizations' opposition).
Ironically you even see this effect for large tech companies. There was a time when people really trusted and loved brands like Google, Apple, Amazon, even Facebook. Nowadays it feels hopeless naive, and the newest cohorts of top startups are often viewed even worse (the Ubers of the world)
I certainly hope the answer isn't an authoritarian control of discourse, because that's probably the only thing worse than having institutions of low trust.
But what is the solution? Heck if I know.
I would say that before forming such conclusions, we should actually try to do it first.
> And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.
I suggest treating it like an engineering problem, something humans are quite good at. Analyze it as a behavior exhibited by systems, in this case, roughly:
- People (the human mind)
- Society (a set of networked human minds, networked via a variety of flawed communication mediums, some of which have human minds filtering and transforming what passes through them).
This is an extremely high level perspective, there is obviously a ton of important complexity (of varying importance) here and there within the system, but a high level perspective like this seems like where an engineer would start when analyzing a misbehaving system.
Making a claim and then reversing it based on new data is the correct thing to do. This isn't an issue at all and shouldn't be considered a violation of trust.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7
Here’s an interview where Fauci discusses point-blank why the American public was mislead, and it had nothing to do with data: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
We need to hold our leaders to a higher standard. All of them. Red, blue, green, whatever.
"The masks are important for someone who is infected to prevent them from infecting someone else. Now when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea and everyone is wearing a mask - right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.
There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is. And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.
When you think mask, you should think of healthcare providers needing them and people who are ill. When you look at the films of foreign countries and you see 85% of the people wearing masks, that's fine, I'm not against it, if you want to do it, that's fine."
"But it can lead to a shortage of masks?"
"Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."
This was in March, before things started really blowing up. That seems pretty upfront to me as to why they are making the recommendation, and it's incorrect in hindsight.
I don't see it as a lie at all.
I see that statement as a lie. Fauci addressed it in the TheStreet interview and explained why he lied. I don’t see how somebody would see that as not-a-lie, but if you’d like to, go ahead.
Lying is a combination of truth + intent to speak untruthfully.
The video you are replying to at least plausibly demonstrates intent to deceive (for arguably good reason imho, but deceit nonetheless)
The video you responded with offers a different perspective, but it does not nullify the prior video. What is True is true from all perspectives, otherwise it is not true.
> "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."
From a Truth perspective, this seems untrue.
> "When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is."
"perfect protection" is an interesting choice of words. Is he suggesting that if masks are not perfect, they should not be worn? Of course not. But then, why did he say that?
> "And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face."
And therefore, we shouldn't wear masks?
> "Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."
Which is the reason he gave in the first video for the deceit. I'm not disputing that this was a decent enough strategy under the circumstances (a mask shortage), but it backfired.
> I don't see it as a lie at all.
They've done a decent job covering this up in most people's minds, but not with conspiracy theorists or highly detail oriented people, and I think it's a shame that people seem frequently unwilling to even acknowledge that they have at least somewhat of a valid point. What is strictly true should perhaps not be ignored. If you want people to "not do your own thinking, trust the experts, without exception, then you would be well advised to be worthy of trust. Or, don't, and reap the rewards Mother Nature bestows upon you.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
- Richard Feynman
Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.
To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.
I fully realize the manner in which I speak is frustrating, and it frustrates me that people find it frustrating (and also that it will get you throttled on HN so you have to wait when replying to posts).
I should also note that the "tone" of this message will be more of the same, because I believe speaking frankly in pedantically objective terms is useful, even if it may offend. If I was able to do it without offending I would, but that is a skill I seem to lack.
> At the time they gave this advice, it hadn't yet hit NYC, and the scope and speed of the future outbreak in the states was unknown.
Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
> in late February/early March it's more than reasonable to think that, like swine flu, the states' response would contain the outbreak to hospitals
It is reasonable to speculate that this is one possible outcome, but I do not believe it is reasonable to speculate that this is the only possible outcome, or choose to ~assume it will be the outcome that will manifest in reality and set strategy on accordingly. I believe when considering and managing risk, worst case scenarios should always be front and centre in people's minds.
> and therefore
I read this is: "and therefore it logically follows that", and therefore disagree.
> a) weren't necessary for the day-to-day
I prefer: may not.
> b) could give a false sense of protection to the people wearing them
Is this harmful? To what degree, and in what way?
Was no other messaging possible that could accommodate this detail?
> c) were best suited to be used by professionals
They may be "best" suited for professionals, but this does not mean that value can only be derived from professionals wearing them, which seems to be what was communicated.
> Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.
Agreed. However, a reader might implicitly infer from this statement that health officials were acting ~perfectly based on available information, when the truth very much seems to be (based on the one Fauci interview video posted here) that at least part of the motivation for the messaging to not wear masks was known to be untruthful, but was done to preserve mask supply for health care personnel. I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact - it seems perfectly plausible to me that if officials were more truthful in this way, they they'd get less blowback from conspiracy theorists and detail oriented people.
> To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.
Mother Nature (and sometimes the real-world behavior of a subset of human beings) is not persuaded by emotion-based [1] rhetoric like this - she behaves the way she does, and we can choose to acknowledge that and respond accordingly [2], or we can choose to ignore objective details and live in a narrative-based fantasy land.
I believe thinking about things in this manner (meta-conversation, meta-cognition) is useful [3]. Is this not the way we think when we are doing engineering and systems analysis? Yes, managing the affairs of humans is different, but it is also similar. What is optimal is unknown, it must be discovered, like anything else humanity has achieved.
[1] affront - an action or remark that causes outrage or offense.
[2] This does not mean that we must tell citizens the truth all the time, but only that it should be acknowledged than when you deceive, you run the risk of being found and suffering consequences.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!"
"If you tell the truth you...
It wasn't so much the manner in which you're speaking, it's the conclusion being drawn.
> Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
It was, absolutely. But historically, we had managed these scenarios well ; we had a perfect storm of incompetence in the administration that set us up for failure.
It's not unreasonable to think that career civil servants would think that we would be able to leverage similar tools to those we used in the past, and it was only after it really broke in the states that we realized that this was qualitatively different than what we had previously seen.
> It is reasonable to speculate that this is one possible outcome, but I do not believe it is reasonable to speculate that this is the only possible outcome
That's correct. It was one of the possible outcomes, and based on their analysis, they deemed it to be the most likely. Considering this is a once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, it's not unreasonable they made this decision.
> I read this is: "and therefore it logically follows that", and therefore disagree.
That's correct. What I was attempting to say was "Given they believed the decision was correct, if the decision was correct, it logically follows ... "
> I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact
He said in his followup that was posted above that he didn't want the N95s to be hoarded, and this was why he gave the advice not to go out and buy masks. What it appears to me is that there is a conflation in his mind between "masks" and surgical masks/N95s.
In the 60 minutes interview, he said that he didn't have a problem with people wearing masks, but that wearing them would do more harm than good because they were uncomfortable and people fidget with them ; based on his response to the BusinessInsider reporter, I believe what he meant to say was, essentially:
"N95 masks are uncomfortable and made for use by professionals. They will grant you some protection, but because they are uncomfortable, you will likely use them in the non-prescribed way, and therefore expose yourself to risk while thinking you are safe. Please don't go out and buy them because they need to be used by doctors that need them.
"If you want to wear a mask like they do in China or Japan, that's fine, but at this point, it's likely not going to do much more than stop a cough or a sneeze and they're not needed."
I think that's what he was trying to communicate. I don't think it's wrong, but he had a failure in the language he was using, and that miscommunication is making people think he is a liar.
I enthusiastically encourage you to point out any specific flaws whatsoever in my logic or conclusion, using strict epistemology and trinary (true/false/unknown) rather than binary (true/false) thinking.
>> Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
> It was, absolutely.
The assertion: it [was] [absolutely] [unknown] that [the stage was set] for a [serious global pandemic] "in [late February/early March]".
Let's investigate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic
- The disease was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic#History
- A report in The Lancet on 24 January indicated human transmission, strongly recommended personal protective equipment for health workers, and said testing for the virus was essential due to its "pandemic potential".
- On 30 January, the WHO declared the coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...
- The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.
There is much more I could add to this to make my case more persuasively, but I'm lazy. To me, this seems to cast doubt on the certainty of the general notion that risk averse public health officials (aka: The Experts) did not have the necessary information required to form the conclusion that "the stage was set" for a global pandemic. If the people whose job is managing pandemics are unable to recognize that the potential exists for a global pandemic at this point, I believe an in-depth discussion should be had at some point about whether there are shortcomings in the system, or the current personnel are suited for the job.
> we had a perfect storm of incompetence in the administration that set us up for failure
Perhaps, but that is a different discussion. I am happy to have it, but let's try to avoid changing the topic.
> It was one of the possible outcomes, and based on their analysis, they deemed it to be the most likely. Considering this is a once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, it's not unreasonable they made this decision.
When estimating and managing risk, the "most likely" scenario does not seem like the only thing that should be taken into consideration when determining what actions to take. If the CDC disagrees, then I believe we should be reviewing their decision making policies.
> "Given they believed the decision was correct, if the decision was correct, it logically follows ... "
Agreed. What matters is whether the decision was correct. I suspect we have no disagreement here.
>> I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact
> He said in his followup that was posted above that he didn't want the N95s to be hoarded, and this was why he gave the advice not to go out and buy masks. What it appears to me is that there is a conflation in his mind between "masks" and surgical masks/N95s.
What he initially said is the point of contention: was deceit plausibly involved in the initial claims to not buy masks?
Rhetor...
On the topic of citizens buying up mask:"It can lead to a shortage of masks?" His response: "Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for people who really need it."
He wasn't hiding it, or lying about it.
--------
This is speculation - you do not have access to the information required to make this statement with certainty.
From my prior message:
>> I enthusiastically encourage you to point out any specific flaws whatsoever in my logic or conclusion, using strict epistemology and trinary (true/false/unknown) rather than binary (true/false) thinking.
Under strict epistemology, one should not state speculation as if it is fact because it may actually be an incorrect statement. From a trinary logic perspective, it is unknown whether he is lying.
If you feel the urge to say we can never know when someone is lying, that is often true, but an important difference in this case is that there is evidence that he could have been lying. One goal of exercises like this is to seek as much truth and clarity as possible (even if certainty cannot be reached). Another goal is to practice control over one's mischievous mind, which is harder than you'd think.
> He explicitly says that buying up masks would cause a shortage for healthcare workers in the interview for 60 minutes in early March.
Correct, he did say that on the 60 minutes interview on March 8, 2020.
He also said:
"...right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is."
The assertion: "People should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask." seems to be quite counter-intuitive advice considering the topic (a global pandemic) and what Fauci knew at that point in time (my prior post, and some additional detail below).
Katherine Ross from TheStreet.com interviewed Fauci on Jun 12, 2020 (note: this is a later date than the 60 minutes interview) and asked about this earlier confusion:
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
In that video Katherine asks: "Why were we told later in the spring to wear them, when initially we were told not to?"
Fauci answers: "Well the reason for that is that we, the public health community, were concerned that it was at a time that personal protective equipment including the N95 masks and surgical masks were in very short supply, and we wanted to make sure that the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in harms way to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected, we did not want them to be without the equipment that they needed, so there was not enthusiasm about going out and buying a mask - we were afraid that would deter away from the people who really needed it."
A decently fair simplification of this:
Q: "Why were we initially told not to wear masks?"
A: "We wanted to make sure that the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in harms way to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected. We did not recommend that people go out and buy masks because we were afraid that [restrict supply to] people who really needed it."
If the reason they didn't recommend people to wear masks was because they didn't think there was value in wearing a mask (as stated in the earlier 60 minutes video), then why did he say that the reason was to prevent the public from going out and buying out the supply, disrupting it for health care workers?
So that is one motivation for distrust, that the two stories do not add up.
There is also the timeline issues in my prior post, which raises a valid question of professi...
Agree with this statement, however it does not apply here. There was no new data. They always knew that masks worked, but they needed them for first responders. Confirmation of this from Fauci interview: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...
The responsible, accountable thing to do would have been to say to Americans, "these masks do work, but we need them for first responders, please donate yours!"
Somehow the messaging got muddied over the last few months.
In the article I linked to, the surgeon general said masks were not effective. This is false. They are effective (along with non-N95 masks).
The data on shortages did not need to be remedied with a mischaracterization of PPE's effectiveness. It could have been communicated as I previously suggested, stating, "we messed up and need donations from the world." This would have increased institutional trust (being honest about the situation), and perhaps supported more uniform mask usage in the long-run.
The original mischaracterization and subsequent defense of this communication choice remains a cause of institutional mistrust. And even if you don't agree, you must be able to sympathize with the logic behind this conclusion for others. In fact, two other replies to your first comment similarly agreed with me.
We had a window in late February/early March where we didn't know how nasty this thing was going to get in the states, and the responsible people in charge (namely, Dr. Fauci and not the administration writ large) made a claim based on previous experience ; as soon as it became apparent that it was getting out of control, there were calls for PPE donations, and the Federal Government refused to act, going so far as to steal PPE purchased by states.
There are many reasons for having institutional distrust, but to claim that the singular person in the administration who fought the President on his strategy (and was subsequently muzzled) was actively misleading the public is beyond frustrating.
Even if our logic is faulty, the reality is that people have come to these conclusions in large minority status in this poll: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/19/914233038/poll-climate-become....
The number of distrust has doubled, from 14% in March to 29% in September. So it's possible there is merit and momentum to my reasoning, that government should be transparent and avoid mischaracterization (or the appearance of it) and irresponsibility.
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
The first statement sounds more like an ampersand than an equals sign.
An intelligent person would trust institutions that change their mind more, because it's the right thing to do.
Institutions that remain utterly consistent in the face of evolving knowledge are the ones you should be wary of.
I saw an analogous thing in the much simpler world of signal processing and statistical estimation. Estimators and control systems sometimes oscillate as new data is acquired. It seems counterintuitive, more data should just improve accuracy, right? As if to converge toward an underlying true value? No, sometimes the best possible estimate and control output oscillates gently as more data is acquired, without any inconsistency. It took me a while to appreciate that.
Back to the big picture of institutions. Inconsistency over time may seem dissonant, but it shouldn't. It can be the most correct and accurate recommendation over time as new data and knowledge is accumulated. In an evolving situation, you should be seeing this.
The fact is people do cite inconsistency as a reason to disbelieve, and it puts public health policymakers in a dilemma. If they tell the truth and give the best advice to follow, people don't believe it because the truth is complicated and counterintuitive, and best advice rightly changes over time, and in different locations, circumstances, etc. So they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow.
(I don't disagree with your other assertions about accountability etc).
> they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow
I know they are acting in good faith. However, the field also has a lot of received wisdom that may or may not be true. There’s clearly a bag of tricks they believe must be used to achieve a set of self-set goals, and I think a more straightforward approach along with dialogue would have been wiser in this instance.
The alternative is that some people will lose trust and won’t comply. You don’t want that if your plan requires everyone to comply.
The dilemma they face is no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply.
Getting an optimal outcome in the middle of that dilemma is impossible to get right. Not just difficult, but impossible due to the back and forth inter-reactions between individuals, groups and policy.
So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.
I'm not going to say they have got it right. The different points of view and debate have to continue after all, to pursue the "best" outcome whatever it may be.
Only that I have some sympathy with the public health messaging dilemma, and I hope other people can take something useful from the knowledge that public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone.
I get it, it’s hard, which is why we give the CDC a ton of money every year.
I just don’t have much sympathy for people who deploy preplanned psychological tricks and then don’t get what they want. We deserve better, seriously.
This is speculation. There are an infinite set of approaches for complex situations, that we have not found an approach that is consistently effective in no way proves that "no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply", it only proves that they won't trust & comply under the approaches we have tested.
Such things seem to be easy to conceptualize when we are performing computer system analysis, but it seems like when we are embedded within the system being analyzed, we lose this ability.
> So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.
This seems true. But it seems to me that when making strategic decisions about how to go about this, we make plausibly unnecessary mistakes on a regular basis. One problem might be though: if we start discussing some topics in an objective, truthful manner (more facts & logic oriented, less "truthy" narrative oriented), the public might expect us to start discussing all things in this manner.
> public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone
If the government, media, and health professionals would explicitly acknowledge the fallibility and errors of institutions, perhaps people would have more trust. But instead of describing reality as it is, we seem determined to stick with the simplistic fantasy land approach. This approach was extremely effective prior to the internet, but it seems insufficient now (except sometimes, like politics - here it continues to work like a charm, albeit with fairly disastrous outcomes).
The individual things people seem to believe seem to be nearly universally idiotic, but I sympathize with them to the extent that they can see they are being fed bs narratives all the time and just decide to believe whatever they want if it's all bs anyway.
That's of course an over-simplification of the dynamics at play in many US cities this summer, but it's not reasonable to attribute responsibility for the actions of a few to large groups that just happen to be nearby.
The hypothesis that COVID is man-made is an inevitable result of already existing conspiracy theories about Chinese communist plots and "globalist/NWO" population control programs that go back decades. The only novel aspect of this is the degree to which it's been normalized and adopted as part of mainstream Republican identity politics.
And people are willing to believe conspiracies due to fear. The US elected a president who has a trail of failed businesses and marriages, as well as, a moral system that would make hardened criminals squirm. But, like any good con artist, he projects confidence and makes complex topics simple by ignoring details. Scared people cling to those cults of personality like a life preserver. The fear started long before the 2016 election. The US is changing demographically and with it comes change culturally. Some people fear their place in a society in which they're no longer the majority.
There is no real "right" or "wrong" here. Everyone can argue until they are blue in the face whether all these policy decisions are correct or necessary. It all depends on what you believe society should be like.
You show a strong bias here.
I would say "those who would rather save the unlucky".
Dying of Covid-19 or getting Long Covid is not due to "weakness".
Imagine you are emperor of whatever country and you're sitting there in February with a potentially very deadly mostly unknown highly contagious virus. You are forced to shutdown.
The problem is that your bias will leak into that shutdown and make the entire situation appear like a conspiracy.
Then people step back and look at the context. Hong Kong Protests, Yellow Vests + french martial law + banning public protests before covid, black lives matter, canadian oil blockade country wide, etc etc.
Every place that had ongoing anti-government protests were quick to jump to lockdowns.
Then came the squashing of free speech. You're not allowed to 'spread misinformation' on covid. Mass arrests of people for 'spreading misinformation'.
Wait, there's a global recession, global protests against government and the government is restricting speech? We're not allowed to talk about it?
What we need to do is similar to the military. Medical decisions are outside the chain of command. Remove the politicians from this equation. Fix the entire problem.
Which is actually supported by studies that say infection rate is higher than we think (making the mortality rate lower) and by recent data saying that hospitals got 4 times better at not killing patients (mainly by using steroids and not using invasive ventilators). This last peak of infections didn't bring the amount of deaths we were expecting. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/why-is-it-that...
Even I believe that one. It really didn't help when public health officials banned outdoor gatherings, but BLM protests were OK.
"Likewise, while it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread of COVID-19 among those who attended the protests, we demonstrate that the protests had little effect on the spread of COVID- 19 for the entire population of the counties with protests during the more than five weeks following protest onset."
It comes across as blatantly partisan and not the least bit driven by the science.
Nevertheless, I agree with the larger point that leadership should have provided more outdoor activities to draw people away from bars and restaurants.
I could understand reducing the attendance at the US Open to a lower level. But to set it to zero while not doing the same for any protests... it undermines credibility.
Also, consider another example.
New York State imposed a travel quarantine on those traveling from other states. Well, except for the MTV Music Awards. Those don't count.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mtv-video-music-awards-new-york...
Why? Because I think the political sensibilities of the award recepients better aligns with those who granted this waiver. This creates an aire of political favoritsm. It's very damaging.
> it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread
> had little effect
I don't know what you're quibbling over. If we're reaching for absolute zero levels of covid spread, then sure protests had a giant effect (just from logic). That's not practical; people need to go outside.
And per the "it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread" is in reference to the article's earlier hypothesis that because people were leaving their homes to protest, you would expect them to get covid at a higher rate than someone who never left their house. The article didn't have any direct evidence that that was actually the case though.
You can expect 3 million and a change funerals each year with a population like us.
How and why did you form that belief? That just doesn't make sense.
Covid Survival Rate:
0-19 years - 99.997%
20-49 years - 99.98%
50-69 years - 99.5%
70+ years - 94.6%
What a complete nonsense argument.
What is different about covid that means we shouldn't try to treat it? We treat cancer, and genetic diseases, and the flu. We actively try to avoid death for a million other reasons. Why should we just throw our hands up with this one and act like it's not there?
Why don't you 'do something' about car crash victims every year? Are you okay with all of them dying from something that is preventable? You're just going to throw your hands in the air? Of course not. Have them wear seat belts. Invent things to reduce deaths, like airbags. But it is possible to go too far, like closing every street in the country.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
IMHO the greatest factor is using steroids and non invasive methods instead of ventilators. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/why-is-it-that...
Recent studies point (some say 3 times the number of infected, others 6-24 times) in the direction that we severely undercounted the infected because of its asymptomatic nature in healthy individuals.
Which means the death rate is nothing to cry about.
Religious gatherings typically rely on private property that is subject to health and safety standards. Protests don't typically happen in or on property that is subject to those standards.
Ultimately as a hypocrisy it’s small frys compared to the tidal wave of misinformation and intentionally damaging information, as well as the incompetent response and outright pitting of states against each other, compared to the current administrators actions during COVID as a whole.
TLDR; America’s response to COVID has been a relentless failure compared to all other western countries of similar size and demographics (outside of MAYBE Brazil) such that exaggeration and hypocrisy towards a small number of social gatherings is utterly insignificant by comparison.
There certainly were various BLM supporters who argued the protests were more important than certain covid-19 restrictions.
But that wasn't the CDC. I don't believe the CDC changed its guidance to allow for BLM protests.
Let's stop spending time on counterfactual complaining and focus on what a serious solution looks like.
Almost all conspiracy theories can be disproved if you consider if they are:
1.) Reasonable given the circumstances. (i.e. is there a simpler way to achieve the same ends) 2.) Is the conspiracy theory possible when adjusted for behavioral biology, neuroscience, physics and mathematics. 3.) Is it possible that sufficiently advanced technology is involved but has not been made public. There are many conspiracy theories that can be simply explained by technology that is possible but has not been made public. For instance you can make people paranoid by repeatedly having people walk by them talking about what is going on in their home. The problem is the technology to view and listen into people's homes has been available since the 1970s and is available now for less than $5000. You can modify millimeter wave technology for this purpose today.
If the above two conditions hold true, you need to seriously consider the idea that some of the things that sound like conspiracy theory might be factual.
You can't label everything a conspiracy theory, some of it is just crazy people who need a reason for things they don't want to take the time out to find a rational explanation for.
That people are politicizing the virus on all sides is 100% certainty. All you have to do is read the news- that's not a conspiracy theory. The degree to which any given aspect (mask effectiveness, CFR, HCQ, etc.) is subject to those politics varies. At least in my circles, most people seem to understand there are legitimate risks and mitigations like masks, quarantine, etc. work to some degree. Again, they believe this on a spectrum. Most people are somewhere between "lick all doorknobs" and "sleep in full body respirator".
The pharma industry creating the virus is the least likely scenario IMO (~0%), but again, it doesn't take much imagination to see pharma making money on all this. I don't even necessarily see anything wrong with that, as long as it's done honestly.
All that to say, the premise of the article is flawed in that it doesn't account for the full range of belief in these "conspiracy theories".
Also, what is the alternative? Unquestioning belief in whom?
It's not a conspiracy to suggest that people are exaggerating the danger posed by the virus. There are many factions, political and otherwise, that have a vested interest to do so, particularly in an election year. To file any exaggeration in the danger of covid as conspiracy is exactly what makes people disbelieve more legitimate science sources.
From Watergate to Epstein it’s shown that people in power commonly abuse their own power. From Enron to Purdue Pharma it’s shown that some Americans will indirectly kill other Americans for profit.
I’m not sure how we reduce political corruption or individual greed pursed with morals abandoned. However, I think that’s where the conversation should be around. I can’t blame people for believing China manufactured and unleashed a bio weapon that causes a disease we call Covid-19, that’s on par for the type of evil things other people are doing in the world.
But we're going in the opposite direction. Probably straight to 1984.
Social trust has been completely wiped out, by the same elites complaining about it.
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” --CS Lewis
A group of people with some vaguely common perceived status are lumped together as "elites".
Some of them have lied, obfuscated, concealed so many times.
Others are trying to do good things in the world, and are consistent about that to the best of their ability in a difficult world.
But we reason about them all as if they are single unit.
Same problem as any other kind of lumping people together into a named group - men, woman, white, black, etc.
It leads to false conclusions. But we love doing it, because it's a simpler model of the world than reasoning about the complex interplay of individuals.
It's easy to blame "stupid people" and "the internet" but it seems perfectly rational to me for the average person to view anything coming from elite institutions with scepticism, at best.
There is no need for people to keep track of "all this" in detail with individuals and so forth.
It's already a big skeptical improvement just to take on board the idea that vaguely labelled groups are a misleading simplification, and to think in terms of the interplay of very different individuals as taking place.
For a start, that results in applauding good works (for whatever you consider good) when you see them, rather than applauding which party a person is aligned with. The result would be more sensible politics, imho.
Another thing which comes from that, is you then don't blame person A for person B's misdeeds just because A and B are both inside some labelled group you have defined by convenience. That way lies blaming all "X people" for some "X people"'s behaviour, and that's not as effective as focusing on the actual bad behaviour, as well as being arguably unjust.
I personally don't blame "stupid people" or call people that often, mainly because I think a lot of people who are not stupid still commit the cardinal error of hashing things out in public with vague group labels. Sometimes people could never agree on which actual people are part of those vague groups, but gloss over that as though it's irrelevant, and still reason about the vague group itself as if it's an object in the world with a coordinated intention. Sometimes it is, often it isn't.
I do slightly blame some aspects of "the internet" a bit these days, because, like a lot of people, I'm seeing indications that the social media process appears to be amplifying a polarisation feedback process that is independent of the actual issues, and might be becoming more powerful than our evolved human instincts for a healthy balance of group harmony vs conflict. As an internet idealist from the old days, though, I'd rather we study that and learn ways to improve on it.
It is purely partisan propaganda and is divisive. Please don't post this material
As someone living in Europe, I don't care two hoots about Trumps presidency, but I do think that the danger of this virus, and the current responses have been exaggerated.
In the beginning, when so many things were unknown, it was perfectly understandable and appropriate to overreact.
But now that it's largely clear that this virus is not much more lethal than the flu, (and that with the recent surge in cases in Europe, the deaths have remained largely flat), I struggle to understand the fear-mongering and hand-wringing.
My guess is, instead of a conspiracy, it's a case of a massive sunk cost fallacy, whereby politicians and high profile celebrity epidemiologists etc. can't admit that they were wrong in their original estimations.
Absolutely. Remember though the original push was to isolate to the bend the curve so that hospitals could cope. Now hospitals have spare capacity but we're still isolating. The story changed.
Vaccine is an interesting one because there’s the conspiracy side — vaccines will be microchipped, a way for Bill Gates to control the population, etc — and then there’s the general skepticism over the safety of something done quickly.
The latter is why the drug makers came together recently with a statement saying they would not cut corners on safety. It stems in large part from the White House pushing a message that a vaccine will be available before the November elections, in contradiction with public health experts who have consistently said it will take longer.
Personally, I think health agencies should be given some latitude in an emerging, novel pandemic. Mistakes are inevitable. Course corrections are inevitable. But in times of so much active disinformation, contradicting and tarnishing the agencies tasked with reigning in the pandemic is incredibly dangerous.
2: On closer re-reading, this number was over 80% in the spring.
I'll start at the beginning to try to explain how my worldview is different from many people here.
The treatment of the topic in this article appears to assume that simply by labelling these beliefs as conspiracy theories, they are disproven. Why else would beliefs that are held by such a large portion of the public apparently be dismissed out of hand? There is no other explanation given. They are labelled as conspiracy theories and therefore are not true by default.
In my very different worldview, describing these ideas as "conspiracy theories" makes me suspect even more that at least some of them may have an element of truth. Because historically that description has been used for many government actions that they wanted to cover up.
So in my worldview, even the term "conspiracy theory" is potentially a manipulation, and a significant number of conspiracy theories are true instances of government malignment. Normally many of these are acknowledged to some degree up to a certain historical distance. So if you are interested then you can research further to understand my point of view better.