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It seems the reasoning by officials is, "Yes, it's airborne, but there's not enough N95 masks for everyone so we don't want to cause panic or an N95 mask shorta

It seems the reasoning by officials is, "Yes, it's airborne, but there's not enough N95 masks for everyone so we don't want to cause panic or an N95 mask shortage for doctors and nurses by admitting it's airborne."

dboreham 6y ago
Also supposedly if a disease is declared airborne then hospitals have to adopt various isolation measures beyond just N95 that are very costly. This may be the reason the powers that be won't announce airborne transmission until after the pandemic is over.
- shalmanese 6y ago
  We make fun of medieval medicine but look at this shit! We're pretending that saying some magic words has an effect on a physical reality of disease spread! Who says that saying its airborne "has" to mean that certain procedures have to be adopted? That's not a rule of the universe, it's a rule that humans came up with and agreed upon and humans have the power to fix. We distilled down a set of physical principles into a set of guidelines, forgot the underlying physical principles and now operate purely in the world of the manmade guidelines, totally oblivious to when the guidelines are no longer reflecting the physical reality.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Unless you say something like “look it’s airborne but that fact shall not be admissible into any future lawsuits on any topic” (and have certainty that that will stand up to review), I’m not sure you can fully equate to the current “it’s not been declared to be airborne transmissible.”
  - jchw 6y ago
    While I understand the frustration, the reality is we shouldn’t be making fun of either. Just because the end result of something is inarguably “stupid” does not mean that any of the things that went into it are “stupid.” To do the Hacker News thing and make a bad analogy to computer science topics in a totally irrelevant thread, this is how I view a lot of stuff people complain about these days (think JavaScript, or Electron apps.) Real life is hard. To be a bit more concrete, consider the following: if you have a system where people are not encouraged to follow the rules as written, they will work against the spirit of what is written as well as what is actually written. If you have a system where people are discouraged from not following the rules, they may still engage in things that do not follow the spirit or written rules, but there is some accountability. But you can also try to work around what’s written to follow the intent as well, and I think that is where you get weird, counterintuitive, “stupid” results that can still “make sense” (as opposed to clearly corrupt cases where it is “stupid” and also does not make sense.) I think people, especially literal minded as many here are, prefer concrete rules. But the knock-on effect is that its not easy to simply proclaim they’re made up any time it’s inconvenient, and it really shouldn’t be. Perhaps, in fact in my opinion, definitely, the “escape hatches“ for when rules don’t work out practically are broken, but I still do prefer having rigid standards, especially for health. Hopefully, although it is probably not going to happen, organizations can have some postmortem-style reflections on what went wrong, so that hopefully next time we can be better prepared. History loves repeating though, so, you know.
    - wbl 6y ago
      The people who will die because we haven't told them how to protect themselves don't care.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - jchw 6y ago
        OK. But not caring about how we get into no-win situations is exactly how we get into no-win situations. Or perhaps in a different light, neither do the people who would've died if we had chosen a different branching path with negative consequences. There is some implication that there was a better outcome easily available and that is not clear at all. There should've been one, but there wasn't necessarily.
    - hahajk 6y ago
      Keeping information from the public to avoid mass hysteria is one thing, but keeping information from hospitals so they don’t have to implement prohibitive protocols is daft. If the healthcare response would be unreasonable, the right thing to do is to deliberately modify the protocols, not pretend the problem isn’t happening.
      - jchw 6y ago
        I'm not saying that the end result isn't stupid, just that sometimes no stupidity is actually required for us to end up in situations like this.
      - hackerfromthefu 6y ago
        In a perfect world, with a responsive and easily adaptable healthcare system .. Also how do you keep information from the public without keeping it from hospitals. Widespread publicising of a controversial tidbit to hospitals would leak within the minute if not within the hour .. I'm not saying I agree with how it was handled at all .. I'm merely pointing out the fairly obvious realities to the claims made, which seem strong on principle but lacking in pragmatism and consideration of the realities.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  It's useless to say this without evidence.
endgame 6y ago
Not the first time we were lied to as part of this disaster: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/ski-party-pandemic-travel-coronavirus.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/ski-party-pa... Turns out the "don't close borders" advice was a cached thought related to a plague outbreak in India over 25 years ago, and welded in place by politics.
- throwmeaway_pls 6y ago
  This culture of deceit needs to change. I don’t blame anybody for not following the rules.
  - jakear 6y ago
    Agreed. US official response has been to lie to the population so as to “not cause a panic” then act shocked when that same population doesn’t trust the officials anymore. Go figure.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
It seems leaders think “you can’t handle the truth” is a proper response to citizens. We would have had to prepare with 10 years of 24/6 manufacturing of N95s to stop an airborne virus, which is why the most effective response is social distancing (not going to work, the 6 ft thing is bunk).

dboreham 6y ago

Also supposedly if a disease is declared airborne then hospitals have to adopt various isolation measures beyond just N95 that are very costly. This may be the reason the powers that be won't announce airborne transmission until after the pandemic is over.

shalmanese 6y ago
We make fun of medieval medicine but look at this shit! We're pretending that saying some magic words has an effect on a physical reality of disease spread! Who says that saying its airborne "has" to mean that certain procedures have to be adopted? That's not a rule of the universe, it's a rule that humans came up with and agreed upon and humans have the power to fix. We distilled down a set of physical principles into a set of guidelines, forgot the underlying physical principles and now operate purely in the world of the manmade guidelines, totally oblivious to when the guidelines are no longer reflecting the physical reality.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Unless you say something like “look it’s airborne but that fact shall not be admissible into any future lawsuits on any topic” (and have certainty that that will stand up to review), I’m not sure you can fully equate to the current “it’s not been declared to be airborne transmissible.”
- jchw 6y ago
  While I understand the frustration, the reality is we shouldn’t be making fun of either. Just because the end result of something is inarguably “stupid” does not mean that any of the things that went into it are “stupid.” To do the Hacker News thing and make a bad analogy to computer science topics in a totally irrelevant thread, this is how I view a lot of stuff people complain about these days (think JavaScript, or Electron apps.) Real life is hard. To be a bit more concrete, consider the following: if you have a system where people are not encouraged to follow the rules as written, they will work against the spirit of what is written as well as what is actually written. If you have a system where people are discouraged from not following the rules, they may still engage in things that do not follow the spirit or written rules, but there is some accountability. But you can also try to work around what’s written to follow the intent as well, and I think that is where you get weird, counterintuitive, “stupid” results that can still “make sense” (as opposed to clearly corrupt cases where it is “stupid” and also does not make sense.) I think people, especially literal minded as many here are, prefer concrete rules. But the knock-on effect is that its not easy to simply proclaim they’re made up any time it’s inconvenient, and it really shouldn’t be. Perhaps, in fact in my opinion, definitely, the “escape hatches“ for when rules don’t work out practically are broken, but I still do prefer having rigid standards, especially for health. Hopefully, although it is probably not going to happen, organizations can have some postmortem-style reflections on what went wrong, so that hopefully next time we can be better prepared. History loves repeating though, so, you know.
  - wbl 6y ago
    The people who will die because we haven't told them how to protect themselves don't care.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - jchw 6y ago
      OK. But not caring about how we get into no-win situations is exactly how we get into no-win situations. Or perhaps in a different light, neither do the people who would've died if we had chosen a different branching path with negative consequences. There is some implication that there was a better outcome easily available and that is not clear at all. There should've been one, but there wasn't necessarily.
  - hahajk 6y ago
    Keeping information from the public to avoid mass hysteria is one thing, but keeping information from hospitals so they don’t have to implement prohibitive protocols is daft. If the healthcare response would be unreasonable, the right thing to do is to deliberately modify the protocols, not pretend the problem isn’t happening.
    - jchw 6y ago
      I'm not saying that the end result isn't stupid, just that sometimes no stupidity is actually required for us to end up in situations like this.
    - hackerfromthefu 6y ago
      In a perfect world, with a responsive and easily adaptable healthcare system .. Also how do you keep information from the public without keeping it from hospitals. Widespread publicising of a controversial tidbit to hospitals would leak within the minute if not within the hour .. I'm not saying I agree with how it was handled at all .. I'm merely pointing out the fairly obvious realities to the claims made, which seem strong on principle but lacking in pragmatism and consideration of the realities.
maxerickson 6y ago
It's useless to say this without evidence.

endgame 6y ago

Not the first time we were lied to as part of this disaster: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/ski-party-pandemic-travel-coronavirus.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/world/europe/ski-party-pa... Turns out the "don't close borders" advice was a cached thought related to a plague outbreak in India over 25 years ago, and welded in place by politics.

throwmeaway_pls 6y ago
This culture of deceit needs to change. I don’t blame anybody for not following the rules.
- jakear 6y ago
  Agreed. US official response has been to lie to the population so as to “not cause a panic” then act shocked when that same population doesn’t trust the officials anymore. Go figure.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

It seems leaders think “you can’t handle the truth” is a proper response to citizens. We would have had to prepare with 10 years of 24/6 manufacturing of N95s to stop an airborne virus, which is why the most effective response is social distancing (not going to work, the 6 ft thing is bunk).