>When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, s

>When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it. >... >I realize it doesn't sound like it, but I'm trying to excuse the CDC here. I'm not just saying they're corrupt. I'm saying they have to deal with the inevitable amount of corruption which it takes to be part of a democratic government, and they're handling it as well as they can under the circumstances. >... >Dr. Fauci (and WebMD) are legibly good (or at least legibly okay). They sit on a giant golden throne, with a giant neon arrow pointing to them saying "TRUST THIS GUY". If a random shmuck who doesn't know anything about anything Googles "who should I trust about COVID?", Google will return Dr. Fauci's name. This is a position of great power; Dr. Fauci is able to make decisions that will affect billions of dollars in wealth, Senate seats, Twitter likes, and other extremely valuable resources. Thousands of people who would prefer that they get the dollars and seats and likes will be gunning for him. In order to stay on that throne, Dr. Fauci will need to get and keep lots of powerful allies (plus be the sort of person who thinks in terms of how to get allies rather than being minimaxed for COVID-prediction). Quotes from https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-of-legible https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-.... I think it's a good read overall, maybe a bit long for some. I share your concerns for apparent bad public policy. Having a government that messes things up and then patronizingly dodges all criticism while lapping up unearned praise (looking at you Cuomo) is frustrating and makes people lose faith in experts and "the system". The general social and media environment we live in today is definitely not helping.