4 ms·

It is not an excuse. Those early wrong statements have cause irreparable harm that's still ongoing. If all they wanted was to ensure health professionals get it

• kbenson 6y ago
  You can hold people liable for making the best guess at the time with the information they have, but you can't expect them to keep giving you advice then. All the professionals were saying "given what we know now" with all their statements, and revising them as they went along. The problem isn't that they were wrong, it's that when correcting themselves, that was immediately used as evidence that they were incompetent, which means people are then forced to choose between the new messaging of the professionals and the counter-messaging of the politicians (and media, since they carry that signal). You can read Fauci's statements on what he said and why here[1], but the main things to thing about are: - What did we know about transmission at the time those statements were made? - Where was the outbreak at those times? Localized to specific areas, or nation-wide? - Was it responsible to report to the whole nation that they should be wearing masks given those facts? What if we know there's not enough masks, and that means masks go to areas that don't need them? The bottom line is, should we have expected anyone to act differently given those conditions and that knowledge at that time? You can note someone made a wrong decision in the past, but if they made the correct decision given the information they have, you can't rationally hold them accountable for the outcome (and if we're not speaking rationally, then we're not actually discussing anything, just airing grievances). 1: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-doesnt-regret-advising-against-masks-early-in-pandemic-2020-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-doesnt-regret-advising...
  • renewiltord 6y ago
    > The bottom line is, should we have expected anyone to act differently given those conditions and that knowledge at that time? Yes? This isn't a school classroom. It's okay to cheat on the test. You know who's best at handling this because you know they handled it last time. You ask your boss to ask his boss to get on the line with Chou Jih-Haw and ask for some of his best people. They're an allied nation with close ties who want even closer ties. They will gladly help. And this isn't news. People were saying this in February, in March, in April. People whose full time job is other things knew this. The real problem is that American public health institutions have NIH (haha, a pun!) syndrome.
    • kbenson 6y ago
      > You know who's best at handling this because you know they handled it last time. You ask your boss to ask his boss to get on the line with Chou Jih-Haw and ask for some of his best people. They're an allied nation with close ties who want even closer ties. They will gladly help. You think that's Fauci's call? That's Trump's call. You're blaming healthcare professional's for doing what was best given the knowledge and resource they had available. I've made it pretty clear that the politicians failed us, and you've just pointed out another way. > And this isn't news. People were saying this in February, in March, in April. People whose full time job is other things knew this. All this does presuppose they have any actual help they could provide. It's unlikely they were willing to ship us a few tens (or hundreds!) of millions of N95 masks. > The real problem is that American public health institutions have NIH (haha, a pun!) syndrome. The problem is that they are beholden to the politicians, and even more so now, where appointees that speak out using their experience but contradict the party line are replaced. There's been a lot of talk about how Trump is eroding people's faith in government and institutions, and here we have a prime example of that, where the institutions were clearly dysfunctional for obvious reasons that have to do with the executive branch, and we still have people shooting the messengers.