My understanding of this contradiction was that it took time for the medical community to switch from an individual medical perspective to a public health perspective.
For preventative measures used by doctors and hospitals the expectation is that they should be proven to be nearly 100% effective because doctors and hospitals are responsible for the wellfare of individuals.
But in a pandemic situation even a measure that is only 10% effective would become very compelling if it could lower the reproduction rate to less than 1, not because of the change in probability of infection for individual encounters, but because it has the potential to change the trajectory of the pandemic, which could save many more lives.
So there really is no need to assume some conspiracy or lying on the part of the medical establishment: there was a natural progression to a more rational viewpoint.
A similar thing happened with testing: for individual care tests have to be nearly perfectly accurate even though in the early phases of the pandemic, faster less accurate tests might have made a difference if they had been available.
The post says that Fauci and others did not lie (probably) because they actually believed what they were saying at the time - at the start of the covid-19 pandemic (March-ish 2020 in the US when things started really heating up here).
The evidence is months' worth of UK government discussion docs which presumably show most UK government officials, experts, and others stating -- presumably in self-belief -- that covid was not spreading through the air.
There are several problems, imo, with this train of thought.
The first is that, if it were true, then Fauci and myriad other US government officials, scientists, public health experts, and others intended to lie initially, but were too stupid to do it correctly, then to conceal their initial stupidity, started to try to cover it up by starting to change their expert advice to say that mask-wearing was good/necessary to prevent covid transmission.
I believe experts are just as fallible as regular folks, and even moreso in many situations, but I don't think it's credible in this case.
To me, you just have to look at the power dynamics in the situation.
Every time Fauci or others tried to tell the truth, they got beat down by Trump and his supporters, so they relented -- most famously, if unfairly, Dr. Deborah Birx, seemingly backing up Trump's claims that injecting bleach into your body could prevent or cure Covid.
Fauci and Birx and others were responding to power -- to incentives -- nothing more.
The 'probably' in this post's title looks wishy-washy -- similar to how Fauci and others have tried to explain away their treachery -- or incompetence, if you prefer to believe all these people are truly, wonderously, actually stupid.
One of the scary parts, to me, is that many people, experts, opinion leaders, health leaders, etc. still seem to believe that lying to the public, even or especially in matters of public health, is good and necessary.
That is, that Fauci intended to lie, and maybe even did lie intentionally (if you agree with that), was right and good. Because his intentions were right and good.
To that, I would say -- doesn't everyone who get busted for lying claim that their intentions were noble, and therefore right?
Zeynep Tufekci has some articles at the NYT that talk about all of this.
I usually agree with her on most things, but i feel like she doesn't go in hard enough on the individuals/systems that need it. Of course, maybe she's just reponding to incentives, too -- get a little too direct, and you won't be published in the NYT for long.
This first one from last year addressed the duplicity and its harms:
Why telling people they don't need masks backfired
And this one from a couple weeks ago talks about what to do about it -- specifically, how to change agencies like the WHO and CDC so that they actually work for public health instead of against it, especially in these BIG situations:
Why did it take so long to accept the facts about covid transimission?
I agree-ish in both cases, but also feel she leaves out crucial context -- the 'power dynamics/incentives' argument.
Maybe she's right that the potential to upend the business community/billionaires/power/social structures has little to nothing to do with the reasons why advice about covid is still, more than a year later, largely incorrect in much of the world, including America -- but I doubt it.
I believe that institutional knowledge and processes and all that are part of ...
3 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 17.9 ms ] threadA similar thing happened with testing: for individual care tests have to be nearly perfectly accurate even though in the early phases of the pandemic, faster less accurate tests might have made a difference if they had been available.
The evidence is months' worth of UK government discussion docs which presumably show most UK government officials, experts, and others stating -- presumably in self-belief -- that covid was not spreading through the air.
There are several problems, imo, with this train of thought.
The first is that, if it were true, then Fauci and myriad other US government officials, scientists, public health experts, and others intended to lie initially, but were too stupid to do it correctly, then to conceal their initial stupidity, started to try to cover it up by starting to change their expert advice to say that mask-wearing was good/necessary to prevent covid transmission.
I believe experts are just as fallible as regular folks, and even moreso in many situations, but I don't think it's credible in this case.
To me, you just have to look at the power dynamics in the situation.
Every time Fauci or others tried to tell the truth, they got beat down by Trump and his supporters, so they relented -- most famously, if unfairly, Dr. Deborah Birx, seemingly backing up Trump's claims that injecting bleach into your body could prevent or cure Covid.
Fauci and Birx and others were responding to power -- to incentives -- nothing more.
The 'probably' in this post's title looks wishy-washy -- similar to how Fauci and others have tried to explain away their treachery -- or incompetence, if you prefer to believe all these people are truly, wonderously, actually stupid.
One of the scary parts, to me, is that many people, experts, opinion leaders, health leaders, etc. still seem to believe that lying to the public, even or especially in matters of public health, is good and necessary.
That is, that Fauci intended to lie, and maybe even did lie intentionally (if you agree with that), was right and good. Because his intentions were right and good.
To that, I would say -- doesn't everyone who get busted for lying claim that their intentions were noble, and therefore right?
Zeynep Tufekci has some articles at the NYT that talk about all of this.
I usually agree with her on most things, but i feel like she doesn't go in hard enough on the individuals/systems that need it. Of course, maybe she's just reponding to incentives, too -- get a little too direct, and you won't be published in the NYT for long.
This first one from last year addressed the duplicity and its harms:
Why telling people they don't need masks backfired
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...
And this one from a couple weeks ago talks about what to do about it -- specifically, how to change agencies like the WHO and CDC so that they actually work for public health instead of against it, especially in these BIG situations:
Why did it take so long to accept the facts about covid transimission?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airbo...
I agree-ish in both cases, but also feel she leaves out crucial context -- the 'power dynamics/incentives' argument.
Maybe she's right that the potential to upend the business community/billionaires/power/social structures has little to nothing to do with the reasons why advice about covid is still, more than a year later, largely incorrect in much of the world, including America -- but I doubt it.
I believe that institutional knowledge and processes and all that are part of ...