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The Covid-19 Disaster That Did Not Happen in Texas – Reason.com
- yosito 6y agoI worry that this article seems to suggest that COVID-19 is not a threat. But this was a key sentence: > less disruptive and costly NPIs can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic ones Many public health policies in response to COVID-19 around the world have been more driven by politics that by science. We do need public health measures in response to pandemics, but those measures ought to be smarter, not stricter, which seems to be what happened in Texas: > While Abbott said Texans would no longer be legally required to cover their faces in public, he urged them to keep doing so, and many businesses continued to require masks It wasn't an absence of public health measures, but rather a difference in how they were enforced. In many places, they were enforced by heavy handed authoritarian policies. In Texas, they were enforced by common sense and decency. My hypothesis is that the authoritarian policies actually lead to push back and less compliance, while trusting people to make their own decisions has a potentially better outcome in terms of compliance. Those interested in improving public health outcomes would do well to study and understand how to influence human behavior at scale. There's a good chance that heavy handed governments forcing people to do things isn't the most effective way to make those things happen.