6 ms·

So much of our early thinking and statements about COVID were wrong. And it was pushed by hysterical media and governments as the truth and you better not think

So much of our early thinking and statements about COVID were wrong. And it was pushed by hysterical media and governments as the truth and you better not think anything else. This is what leads to skepticism and resentment by the public.

weaksauce 6y ago
At the other end of it there is a rationale for it. 1. it gives people agency to not freak out because they can be proactive about something. the reason nuclear energy is a boogieman is that you can't see it and it can kill you and there's is little you can do as an individual to protect yourself against it. 2. they truly didn't know how the spread of the disease is since it was a novel virus. you do however know that the lipid barrier of it makes it susceptible to soap and 70% isopropyl alcohol. 3. saying "there is no evidence that masks are effective" is true in the scientific sense. they didn't do studies so to talk about the effectiveness would have been backwards (also considering at the time they didn't know if it would actually increase the spread due to touching/collection/whatever) scientific illiteracy is a problem. the words and processes have precise meanings and those ignorant to it will glom onto certain words out of context and use that as evidence for their conspiracy theories. (see isolation of the virus et al)
- standardUser 6y ago
  1. Do you like to be manipulated? I don't. 2. It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread. 3. It's the job of government agencies and officials to use communications skills to avoid these issues. If they talk like pedantic scientists then their messaging will fail, and if they don't know that they are in the wrong job.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Rhetorial questions being, of course, one of the very oldest manipulation techniques. https://people.uwplatt.edu/~ciesield/platovsoph.htm https://people.uwplatt.edu/~ciesield/platovsoph.htm
  - srean 6y ago
    > It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread But how could one have been sure that a mutation has not changed certain behaviors in dangerous ways. Given potential adverse impact I have no problems overcompensating in the caution department till more light is shed and at that point one needs to dial down.
    - mikem170 6y ago
      I don't know that anybody can be 100% sure of anything. But all along there have been experts on coronaviruses who have known what to expect from this pandemic [0]. They know that coronaviruses don't mutate into different strains like influenza. They've studied multiple coronaviruses, some far more deadly than this one, and it's never happened before. They expect this one to weaken, if anything. Personally I am very disappointed in the media coverage of the science applicable to this pandemic, specifically how much supposition is interjected by non-experts. For the clicks, I guess. [0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-coronavirus-isnt-contained/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...
- prof-dr-ir 6y ago
  As for your point 3: the current article, amusingly, has the following sentence: "There’s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface." I was not sure what to make of that, precisely for the reason you mention.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Here we have still the message: there is no evidence of a transmission in trains. (because they don't note the names of the passengers, I presume)
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Indeed, "there is no evidence" can just mean "we didn't look very hard." As in, "there is no evidence the attackers accessed PII" (because logging was disabled).
      - anoncake 6y ago
        By now, "we haven't had time to look hard" is no excuse not to provide evidence that disinfecting surfaces works. If there is no evidence for that, it's almost certainly not true.
        andi999 6y ago
        I looked through a few papers, but I couldn't find more than: experts agree now formites are overrated. While saying that lab experiment shows formites can survive for days on surfaces (and then claiming that this experimemt was conducted with artificial high load).
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  About #3, there's a problem when the message is worded exactly the same way for "we didn't have time to test masks yet" and "we have evidence that those medicines are harmful, but we won't seek confirmation because we are looking for helpful ones instead". But that is of secondary importance, because early in the pandemics a lot of health organizations made it very clear that not using masks should be the policy. It wasn't a communication problem, they were just lying to people to get to a goal (masks not disappearing from the market, a good goal). That's wrong on many different ways.
  - ern 6y ago
    What I found deeply troubling was that many healthcare workers who weren’t in on the “noble lie” jumped on the “masks don’t work” bandwagon. They mocked and belittled mask-wearers on social media. They turned into anti-masking fanatics. It was a frightening display of of zealousness from the semi-informed. They just as quickly became pro-mask and ignored their previous stance.
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
      What was really amusing was that Trump and company were busy preaching the use of masks and how they would save us, while the WHO and a lot of medical bodies were busy trying to misrepresent "we don't know" into "masks don't work" so people wouldn't rush into buying them. Then suddenly we got a few studies settling down that masks worked, and on the 2 or 3 days it took for those studies to be known both camps completely reversed their messages and insisted that they always had that new message and never changed their anything.
- eloff 6y ago
  About number 3, it was a blatant lie to keep the PPE for medical workers. I understand the rationale there, but I don't think it's worth treating people like children and lying to them - even if it temporarily gives a better result. Because now when they say masks work, plenty of people are understandably skeptical - and that makes them vulnerable to believing less credible sources of information on the topic. I fully believe masks help, despite as you say, there being little specific evidence for Covid19, because we have good reason to think they reduce transmission just based on how masks work, evidence in general to support masks in a medical setting, and the transmission mechanism of the virus. However, I have zero sympathy for the authorities struggling to get people to take them seriously about masks after they started off by lying about it. And after an established history of authorities and politicians lying, it's little wonder conspiracy theories proliferate. You reap what you sow.
  - weaksauce 6y ago
    Again that missed the point entirely. It certainly wasn't lying. We know and knew that some masks are effective. n95 masks when worn correctly are definitely safer than not having one full stop. we didn't know then which masks were also going to be effective and didn't know if those masks would be worse than not wearing one at all. there was also the issue of shortages of the effective masks for medical pros that needed them. that informed the speaking at the time and at no point was that a lie. and we do have studies now that masks do decrease the likelihood of transmission so we do know now that those cloth masks are effective. 1. shortage of proper n95 masks(look at toilet paper during the beginning) 2. no evidence of other masks being useful or not harmful at the time so they said socially distance yourself as a primary mode of protection and wash your hands often.
    - orangecat 6y ago
      It certainly wasn't lying. It certainly was: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus-surgeon-general-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus.... That's not a statement that mask effectiveness is uncertain, it's an authoritative statement that they don't help.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > they didn't do studies No, they did do lots of studies for flu, and they really struggle to find a benefit for masking. Importantly, the quality of evidence for masks as source control (infected people wear masks to prevent transmission) was really bad. (People should wear masks)
ghaff 6y ago
Cleaning became big in the US at least before much of anything was being pushed by media/government. I was at an event just as things were about to shut down and it was lots of handwashing, no handshakes, and I think some effort to better clean surfaces. But no distancing and people weren't even talking about masks at that point. Somewhere in there, there was also at least one published study that suggested the virus could at least theoretically stay on even surfaces like cardboard for an extended period. Which is how people got to leaving their Amazon boxes for three days and spending two hours to deep clean all their groceries.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
Besides cleaning, another example is strict enforcement of outdoor mask laws. In Poland, the health minister has been criticized by scientists (often the same ones concerned about COVID) for requiring masks to be worn outdoors even in remote places where there are no other people around. Ultimately he admitted that, indeed, there was little scientific basis for the policy like had been claimed previously. He just thought it was more likely that people would have a mask on when entering shops, if they simply had to wear one at all times anyway, but the public was never told that. It turns out that if you give a public official purview over something and don’t make him or her very answerable to other officials, that public official will get comfortable being heavy-handed and failing to adequately explain things to the citizenry.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  I'll wear a mask outside if I'm in a crowded situation like the farmer's market I go to weekly (masks are required there anyway). But if I'm just out walking around where I'm easily 20 feet from the nearest person I don't bother. Although now that it's allergy season I'm finding maskwearing to be beneficial so now I wear it most of the time outside - to avoid pollen.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Nuance in mass communications, especially in high-consequence circumstances, is itself a major risk factor. Drawing a very bright, very wide, strongly-enforced safety line well away from any potential hazard has value. Public health in pandemics is all about consistently breaking transmission chains. And even countries with initial or eventual success can remain at risk of resumed high infection rates, as is evident currently in India (doubling daily infections over a week: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/), Turkey, Brazil, Poland, Germany, and in parts of the US (notably Michigan, at this writing).
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Of course, it doesn't mean people will follow rules they don't feel make sense. Where I live in Massachusetts masks are required in all public spaces whether distanced or not. But my anecdotal observation in the state forests, etc. around where I live is that most people don't when they're well-distanced from everyone. And they may pull up a neck gaiter for a few seconds if they're passing someone on a trail (especially if that other person is wearing a mask).
jayd16 6y ago
It was never hard to understand what was known to work, what was unknown but likely to work, what was unknown but possibly beneficial. Enforcing policy that may be beneficial or neutral in the face of unknowns is perfectly valid. If you felt you were lied to you really just weren't paying attention.
jmull 6y ago
I don’t think this narrative is true. So much of the early discussion around covid was about how little we knew. I think we were generally adequately informed about the likelihood that our early understanding would change. Now, of course, there was hysteria and people making overly strong claims. But that’s nothing new or specific to our covid response. Some people might have problems with the strong recommendations from authorities/experts, given the lack of information. But keep in mind that not recommending action was also a very strong and risky stance, given what we knew. So there was no choice. Guesses had to be made, one way or the other, and of course some of them would turn out to be wrong.
nitwit005 6y ago
> And it was pushed by hysterical media and governments as the truth and you better not think anything else. This seems more than a little exaggerated. Even in the early stuff I saw about cleaning surfaces expressed uncertainty about it. Any time a new disease appears, most of the advice you're going to get will be stuff they thought up in advance. Washing your hands and cleaning more aren't normally going to hurt anything, so you'll probably see that every time some new disease pops up.

weaksauce 6y ago

At the other end of it there is a rationale for it. 1. it gives people agency to not freak out because they can be proactive about something. the reason nuclear energy is a boogieman is that you can't see it and it can kill you and there's is little you can do as an individual to protect yourself against it. 2. they truly didn't know how the spread of the disease is since it was a novel virus. you do however know that the lipid barrier of it makes it susceptible to soap and 70% isopropyl alcohol. 3. saying "there is no evidence that masks are effective" is true in the scientific sense. they didn't do studies so to talk about the effectiveness would have been backwards (also considering at the time they didn't know if it would actually increase the spread due to touching/collection/whatever) scientific illiteracy is a problem. the words and processes have precise meanings and those ignorant to it will glom onto certain words out of context and use that as evidence for their conspiracy theories. (see isolation of the virus et al)

standardUser 6y ago
1. Do you like to be manipulated? I don't. 2. It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread. 3. It's the job of government agencies and officials to use communications skills to avoid these issues. If they talk like pedantic scientists then their messaging will fail, and if they don't know that they are in the wrong job.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Rhetorial questions being, of course, one of the very oldest manipulation techniques. https://people.uwplatt.edu/~ciesield/platovsoph.htm https://people.uwplatt.edu/~ciesield/platovsoph.htm
- srean 6y ago
  > It was't just a novel virus, it was a novel coronavirus and we know all about how those spread But how could one have been sure that a mutation has not changed certain behaviors in dangerous ways. Given potential adverse impact I have no problems overcompensating in the caution department till more light is shed and at that point one needs to dial down.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I don't know that anybody can be 100% sure of anything. But all along there have been experts on coronaviruses who have known what to expect from this pandemic [0]. They know that coronaviruses don't mutate into different strains like influenza. They've studied multiple coronaviruses, some far more deadly than this one, and it's never happened before. They expect this one to weaken, if anything. Personally I am very disappointed in the media coverage of the science applicable to this pandemic, specifically how much supposition is interjected by non-experts. For the clicks, I guess. [0] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-coronavirus-isnt-contained/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...
prof-dr-ir 6y ago
As for your point 3: the current article, amusingly, has the following sentence: "There’s really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface." I was not sure what to make of that, precisely for the reason you mention.
- andi999 6y ago
  Here we have still the message: there is no evidence of a transmission in trains. (because they don't note the names of the passengers, I presume)
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Indeed, "there is no evidence" can just mean "we didn't look very hard." As in, "there is no evidence the attackers accessed PII" (because logging was disabled).
    - anoncake 6y ago
      By now, "we haven't had time to look hard" is no excuse not to provide evidence that disinfecting surfaces works. If there is no evidence for that, it's almost certainly not true.
      - andi999 6y ago
        I looked through a few papers, but I couldn't find more than: experts agree now formites are overrated. While saying that lab experiment shows formites can survive for days on surfaces (and then claiming that this experimemt was conducted with artificial high load).
marcosdumay 6y ago
About #3, there's a problem when the message is worded exactly the same way for "we didn't have time to test masks yet" and "we have evidence that those medicines are harmful, but we won't seek confirmation because we are looking for helpful ones instead". But that is of secondary importance, because early in the pandemics a lot of health organizations made it very clear that not using masks should be the policy. It wasn't a communication problem, they were just lying to people to get to a goal (masks not disappearing from the market, a good goal). That's wrong on many different ways.
- ern 6y ago
  What I found deeply troubling was that many healthcare workers who weren’t in on the “noble lie” jumped on the “masks don’t work” bandwagon. They mocked and belittled mask-wearers on social media. They turned into anti-masking fanatics. It was a frightening display of of zealousness from the semi-informed. They just as quickly became pro-mask and ignored their previous stance.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    What was really amusing was that Trump and company were busy preaching the use of masks and how they would save us, while the WHO and a lot of medical bodies were busy trying to misrepresent "we don't know" into "masks don't work" so people wouldn't rush into buying them. Then suddenly we got a few studies settling down that masks worked, and on the 2 or 3 days it took for those studies to be known both camps completely reversed their messages and insisted that they always had that new message and never changed their anything.
eloff 6y ago
About number 3, it was a blatant lie to keep the PPE for medical workers. I understand the rationale there, but I don't think it's worth treating people like children and lying to them - even if it temporarily gives a better result. Because now when they say masks work, plenty of people are understandably skeptical - and that makes them vulnerable to believing less credible sources of information on the topic. I fully believe masks help, despite as you say, there being little specific evidence for Covid19, because we have good reason to think they reduce transmission just based on how masks work, evidence in general to support masks in a medical setting, and the transmission mechanism of the virus. However, I have zero sympathy for the authorities struggling to get people to take them seriously about masks after they started off by lying about it. And after an established history of authorities and politicians lying, it's little wonder conspiracy theories proliferate. You reap what you sow.
- weaksauce 6y ago
  Again that missed the point entirely. It certainly wasn't lying. We know and knew that some masks are effective. n95 masks when worn correctly are definitely safer than not having one full stop. we didn't know then which masks were also going to be effective and didn't know if those masks would be worse than not wearing one at all. there was also the issue of shortages of the effective masks for medical pros that needed them. that informed the speaking at the time and at no point was that a lie. and we do have studies now that masks do decrease the likelihood of transmission so we do know now that those cloth masks are effective. 1. shortage of proper n95 masks(look at toilet paper during the beginning) 2. no evidence of other masks being useful or not harmful at the time so they said socially distance yourself as a primary mode of protection and wash your hands often.
  - orangecat 6y ago
    It certainly wasn't lying. It certainly was: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus-surgeon-general-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus.... That's not a statement that mask effectiveness is uncertain, it's an authoritative statement that they don't help.
DanBC 6y ago
> they didn't do studies No, they did do lots of studies for flu, and they really struggle to find a benefit for masking. Importantly, the quality of evidence for masks as source control (infected people wear masks to prevent transmission) was really bad. (People should wear masks)

ghaff 6y ago

Cleaning became big in the US at least before much of anything was being pushed by media/government. I was at an event just as things were about to shut down and it was lots of handwashing, no handshakes, and I think some effort to better clean surfaces. But no distancing and people weren't even talking about masks at that point. Somewhere in there, there was also at least one published study that suggested the virus could at least theoretically stay on even surfaces like cardboard for an extended period. Which is how people got to leaving their Amazon boxes for three days and spending two hours to deep clean all their groceries.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

Besides cleaning, another example is strict enforcement of outdoor mask laws. In Poland, the health minister has been criticized by scientists (often the same ones concerned about COVID) for requiring masks to be worn outdoors even in remote places where there are no other people around. Ultimately he admitted that, indeed, there was little scientific basis for the policy like had been claimed previously. He just thought it was more likely that people would have a mask on when entering shops, if they simply had to wear one at all times anyway, but the public was never told that. It turns out that if you give a public official purview over something and don’t make him or her very answerable to other officials, that public official will get comfortable being heavy-handed and failing to adequately explain things to the citizenry.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
I'll wear a mask outside if I'm in a crowded situation like the farmer's market I go to weekly (masks are required there anyway). But if I'm just out walking around where I'm easily 20 feet from the nearest person I don't bother. Although now that it's allergy season I'm finding maskwearing to be beneficial so now I wear it most of the time outside - to avoid pollen.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Nuance in mass communications, especially in high-consequence circumstances, is itself a major risk factor. Drawing a very bright, very wide, strongly-enforced safety line well away from any potential hazard has value. Public health in pandemics is all about consistently breaking transmission chains. And even countries with initial or eventual success can remain at risk of resumed high infection rates, as is evident currently in India (doubling daily infections over a week: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/), Turkey, Brazil, Poland, Germany, and in parts of the US (notably Michigan, at this writing).
- ghaff 6y ago
  Of course, it doesn't mean people will follow rules they don't feel make sense. Where I live in Massachusetts masks are required in all public spaces whether distanced or not. But my anecdotal observation in the state forests, etc. around where I live is that most people don't when they're well-distanced from everyone. And they may pull up a neck gaiter for a few seconds if they're passing someone on a trail (especially if that other person is wearing a mask).

jayd16 6y ago

It was never hard to understand what was known to work, what was unknown but likely to work, what was unknown but possibly beneficial. Enforcing policy that may be beneficial or neutral in the face of unknowns is perfectly valid. If you felt you were lied to you really just weren't paying attention.

jmull 6y ago

I don’t think this narrative is true. So much of the early discussion around covid was about how little we knew. I think we were generally adequately informed about the likelihood that our early understanding would change. Now, of course, there was hysteria and people making overly strong claims. But that’s nothing new or specific to our covid response. Some people might have problems with the strong recommendations from authorities/experts, given the lack of information. But keep in mind that not recommending action was also a very strong and risky stance, given what we knew. So there was no choice. Guesses had to be made, one way or the other, and of course some of them would turn out to be wrong.

nitwit005 6y ago

> And it was pushed by hysterical media and governments as the truth and you better not think anything else. This seems more than a little exaggerated. Even in the early stuff I saw about cleaning surfaces expressed uncertainty about it. Any time a new disease appears, most of the advice you're going to get will be stuff they thought up in advance. Washing your hands and cleaning more aren't normally going to hurt anything, so you'll probably see that every time some new disease pops up.