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As a European I'm quite surprised how deep the conspiracy theories and suspicions against the state go in the US. You don't need tp take everything at face valu

As a European I'm quite surprised how deep the conspiracy theories and suspicions against the state go in the US. You don't need tp take everything at face value, but to be so suspicious of essential institutions like the CDC seems crazy to me. Except for a vocal but tiny minority there's a lot of trust in the institutions of the EU and (Western) Europe, where citizrns at most worry about incompetence, not malicious manipulation. On the contrary societal trust in the US seems immensely low.

Rebelgecko 5y ago
I think the CDC's original statements on masks (they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc) contributed a lot to the distrust and politicization of mask wearing. When you expect an institution to always be impartial and tell the truth, those sorts of white lies can quickly erode trust.
- harry8 5y ago
  Please also note it is unnecessary to do any additional analysis to describe the example cited as a "lie." We know it was a deliberate lie because the then head of the CDC has said so [1] - unless he was lying about claiming he was lying there's not much doubt in that case. The CDC lie when it suits them isn't something that's really debatable. Does it matter that they lied? This is the proposition that can be debated sensibly and rationally - but will likely be overwhelmed with emotion. In my own observation there seems to be rather a lot of people who have almost no faith in their fellow humans and believe the only way "people" believe a thing and will act is because they have been told to believe it by someone. Misinformation takes all the blame in this paradigm. The populations is dominated by people who have outsourced their critical thinking. It may be true, I don't know. But it seems to me to be really quite worrying if a population has to be told lies to get them to do the right thing or lies have to be censored because people will not be able to assess competing evidence and reject bullshit. Does it have to be this way? Was it always? Is it fixable? Is it really a thing at all? I have no answers there. It's my observation that even in the service of "good", the debt to the truth always comes due and the interest rate is super steep. Many will disagree. [1] Lack of PPE for medical professionals in the front line of pandemic response is the justification. This may well be a very good justification.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    I know this gets repeated a lot, but that doesn't make it more true. Show me the quote where he said "we lied about masks", and "we changed our message about masks" doesn't count. The reality is that the knowledge about Covid changed significantly in march/April last year. In particular the understanding about unsymptomatic spread lead to a significant change of thinking. That makes sense, if the virus only spreads from sick people, the advice for everyone to wear a mask is not good health policy especially if there is a shortage. You want to prioritise people who get in contact with sick people and prevent sick people to go out. However, if unsymptomatic people spread the virus, you want everyone to wear masks, because you can't prevent spreaders to go out. But the masks are different, you want cloth masks more than n95, because it is about protecting others. The below article is one which elaborates on the whole discussion https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-anthony-fauci-lie-masks-march-marco-rubio-said/4068162001/ https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-...
    - avereveard 5y ago
      If they didn't suspect that an "atypical pneumonia" as it was called since the beginning had an aereosol component a case can be made that they were unfit for their job If mask initial recommendation actually was a white lie a case can be made that they are unfit for communicating their results to the masses as they think their peers to be petulant children unfit for handling truths, and they should be stripped of that function The other cases just convert into variations of them politicising a pandemic to unknown ends As for the WHO, these organisations shouldn't have an easy way out of their responsibilities
      - cycomanic 5y ago
        Have you read what I wrote? Because you sure are not responding to it.
      - usrusr 5y ago
        The “not aerosol“ hypothesis was based on the assumption that the spread rate would have been much higher than observed with an aerosol capable virus. Turns out this one just happened to be quite bad at spreading amongst humans, despite being capable of residing in the air for quite a while. It's rather unsurprising then that we now see many mutations that fix some low hanging fruit "bugs", bringing the spread closer to what people would have expected. Arguably hope may have been a factor in weighing that hypothesis, but that's truly nothing anyone should be blamed for.
- jader201 5y ago
  Exactly this. I normally would agree with folks saying that the CDC has little reason to be dishonest, but with COVID in particular, we see enough historical reversal to cause at least some uncertainty around their guidance. Plus, it also makes sense, if their and the government’s interests are for the greater good. E.g. being cautious about promoting early use of masks when supplies were scarce/preserving them for the front line medical workers. Theoretically it would also make sense for current guidance to incentivize vaccines when the remaining unvaccinated population is hesitant. To be clear, I’m not saying I have certainly that this is what’s happening. But the theories aren’t unreasonable, and CDC’s past reversal on guidance doesn’t help the confidence others have in their guidance. So the uncertainty isn’t completely unreasonable.
- sitkack 5y ago
  I had COVID in NYC in Feb, the only way to get a test was to claim you just flew from Wuhan. Which even if you did, I have no idea how they were setup to respond. Everyone else in the hotel was sick, there was a tensor of coughing, all I could do was sit in my hotel room and watch politicians go back and forth about how we should all patronize stores in Chinatown and not be horrible racists. All I can say is the is that the CDC performed extremely poorly in their response to this, over and over again. Mishandling tests, allowing the FDA to actively block testing. Even the pausing of the J&J vaccine was an extreme CYA blunder. NASA had Challenger, NIST had Dual_EC_DRBG and the CDC had COVID. Not the same in scope, but the systemic dysfunction was similar in its structure.
- x3iv130f 5y ago
  I don't blame the professionals for getting things wrong on this. My personal feeling is that it was hard to know if masks worked for the general populace before Covid-19. There are so many confounding variables that it very difficult to study masks from a public health side. The best approximation was studies of health professionals in hospitals or clinics which doesn't exactly translate for a multitude of reasons.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small. It's totally worth it to bend an exponential function. But the individual benefit from mask wearing in any given interaction is negligible.
    - sharken 5y ago
      Which leads to huge arguments which really benefits nobody as we just establish that we disagree. Common sense seems to say that masks make s difference, but if that is the strongest argument, then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense.
      - lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
        Because if you get it wrong, lots of people die, so you err on the side of caution.
      - JohnBooty 5y ago
        Mere common sense? I wouldn't characterize it that way. The wearing of masks to combat airborne disease spread is a decidedly not a new thing. That was never a novel concept, at least since the early part of the 20th century. Coronaviruses in general aren't a novel concept either; we have a pretty good idea how they're spread. So, when confronted with a new coronavirus, it's a little bit stronger than "common sense" to surmise that masks will be effective to some extent. The burden of proof would be on anybody suggesting that this virus is somehow so different than other airborne disease that the wearing of masks had no benefit. then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense. If masks are not effective, the downside to wearing masks was that we waste a relatively modest amount of time and money on masks and perhaps damage our credibility in the future when we recommend their use. If masks are effective to some degree, the downside to not wearing masks was that millions of additional people would suffer and die worldwide, and we would incur a financial and human cost orders of magnitude greater than the modest cost of masks.
- flukus 5y ago
  > they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc Everyone seems to also forget that a lot of this took place when they wrongly thought surface transmission was the main vector. The bigger problem was the delay in recognizing aerosol transmission, Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early but the CDC and WHO dragged their feet. We also saw everything play out and get politicized in real time in a way that's never happened before. There are lags between data and science, further lags between science and science communication and then even more from science communication to government policy. On one end of this lag you've got scientist warning of aerosol transmission, on the other side you've got Fauci still operating under the surface transmission advice leading to some very mixed messaging. Reducing this lag will be important in future.
  - bonzini 5y ago
    > Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 since there are suspect cases in Europe already at the beginning of December, of people that had never been in Wuhan.
    - flukus 5y ago
      > China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. Because it was even newer and more unknown at that point. Wuhan was in lockdown on the 23rd of January, so they had a pretty good idea by then. Meanwhile the rest of the world twiddled their thumbs and lost the opportunity to contain it. > They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads.
      - cycomanic 5y ago
        > How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads. Actually, this is not so clear. The evidence of community cases in November/December in e.g. France were not picked up at the time either. There is a phase were a new disease can fly completely under the radar, because we are still in a very slow growth and only see a few isolated cases, which often don't even get seen by the same health professionals. This is particularly true in the case of covid were there is evidence that spreading is disproportionately from "superspreaders" (unless some of that information changed now?). So unless there was a superspreader, you only have few isolated cases.
- dguaraglia 5y ago
  Meh, I understand your point, but as someone who follows the conspiratorial world passively, I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. In reality, the usual suspects were pushing conspiracy theories about the CDC even before they determined masks were useful. A famous conspiracy peddler famously claimed the CDC was downplaying how bad the virus was and 'it was over for humanity, it'll only be lone survivors' when we only had a handful of cases in the US. In other words: the CDC could've nailed every single guideline and we'd still have half of the population making up conspiracy theories about it. It's just too politically convenient.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    > I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. So is the post-facto realization of "we knew masks work, we just didn't want the people to grab all the supply".
    - dguaraglia 5y ago
      As I explained in another post, originally the consensus was that only N95 masks were somewhat effective. There were no studies on the effectiveness of other masks. Recommending people use masks could've given people a false sense of security in people and probably acted against more effective measures such as social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms matching those of Covid-19 ('well, I know I have a cough, but I'll just wear a mask and it'll be fine'). Recommending people use the only masks we knew to somewhat work - N95s - would've created a huge problem for hospitals that already were having issues procuring PPE to protect the professionals who were dealing with Covid-19 patients. Basically, there was no reason for the CDC to recommend masks. Again, there's no need for some nefarious explanation.
    - dguaraglia 5y ago
      That's an oversimplification. The first thing to consider is that there's two types of masks: * N95 masks * Everything else We knew N95 masks worked because that's what professionals use in hospitals. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of PPE so telling people to buy them would put them in direct competition with professionals treating very sick patients. In April 2020 we were looking at a really bleak scenario so there was a very strong incentive to keep professionals alive even if it came at the expense of some citizens (think: doomsday scenario). We also had no idea whether 'everything else' helped at all. Recommending non-N95 use might have given people a false sense of security that might have played against more effective measures such as extreme social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms. As knowledge improved, guidance changed. Nothing crazy to see here.
- evandijk70 5y ago
  The Dutch CDC (RIVM) made the same statements. As a result, people don't really believe in masks here either, but it not a big political issue. I am not sure why the mask became such a symbol for the corona measures in the US, but not here.
  - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
    It's pretty simple: A lot of Americans are dogshit-stupid. They voted for Trump. They're deliberately and belligerently ignorant children, just like the former (and disgraced) "president."
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Your population no doubt trusts government a lot more. Also republicans here more or less turned trump into a Messianic figure and quit listening to science. It’s getting scary over here to be honest
    - tinus_hn 5y ago
      It’s just that most people don’t really care about wearing a mask in a supermarket and those that do don’t really get bothered with it when they refuse. But it does polarize society between people who love pointing their fingers at others who don’t adhere to their favorite mitigation strategy (‘they’re killing grandma’, ‘If only they had done X’). And of course masks are a pretty visible virtue signal. People are a lot more critical about the other rules, the curfews, the ban on outdoor dining and bars and the closure of sports facilities. And the ‘you can’t have more than one person over’ rule is generally ignored. By the way the official Dutch position still is that surface transmission is significant and one of the three ‘main rules’ is to wash your hands a lot.
  - varjag 5y ago
    All national authorities did this, because the advice originated at WHO.
  - podgaj 5y ago
    Because "Freedom". Seriously. I have explained this many times to my European friends. It is difficult to appreciate how people here will always want to push their own personal freedom of choice out as far as they can no matter how much someone else suffers.
- anoncake 5y ago
  Lying to the public should be a jailable crime. That would greatly increase trust in public institutions.
garmaine 5y ago
One need only go back about 80 years to find horrific abuses by public health officials in both Europe and America (e.g. involuntary sterilization, to say nothing of Nazi experimentation). What I find strange is that Europeans have such a short memory regarding these things…
- deleted 5y ago
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- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  As a European I believe in science and medicine. But I have read the history books: there were a bunch of Christ idiots in the 1970s who refused the polio vaccination and it did not end well for them.
  - dang 5y ago
    Could you please stop posting flamewar comments and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? We're trying for something other than this here.
- Thorrez 5y ago
  Unfortunately involuntary sterilizations were happening more recently than 80 years ago too. Virginia's compulsory sterilization law was repealed in 1974[1]. Oregon performed its last compulsory sterilization in 1981[2]. Japan didn't abolish compulsory sterilization until 1996[3]. There are reports that detained immigrants were involuntarily sterilized in 2020 in the US[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Compulsory_sterilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#Unite... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3952537/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3952537/
- 8note 5y ago
  You don't have to go back far at all to find corporations doing evil either, and yet America forgets how bad they are on a daily basis.
cmckn 5y ago
I think this stems from the perception that the US federal government is monolithic, secretive, and imperceptible. The reality is that it's wildly diverse, staffed by "everyday" Americans, takes place almost entirely in the open, and very knowable (even if there is complexity -- just like computers). In the same way that many modern humans have grown distant from "nature," Americans have grown distant from our own government. I knew few Americans who truly believe our government is of the people, by the people, for the people. It's sad. :(
- herbst 5y ago
  From and outside perspective this government you are describing is only hard to visualize. For years now voting comes down to the lesser of two evils where everywhere else in the world new parties form and establish new ideas America still has two of them only, kinda. As Swiss it's also far from our understanding what democracy is supposed to be.
  - cmckn 5y ago
    A ton of Americans think of it as a lesser of two evils; because many (most?) Americans have the luxury of being comfortable. They don’t really think about politics, they don’t really have policy wants/needs. It’s just sensationalism on Facebook and celebrity on Instagram. It’s more about sports-team tribalism than participating in a society. At the risk of sounding morose, I don’t know where we go from here. Everyone, myself included, is going insane.
    - disabled 5y ago
      Here is a good read on where it goes: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html All I know is that there is no way that I am going to be physically in the US for the next presidential election(s), if there is a neoliberal political candidate in that election.
      - stjohnswarts 5y ago
bcrosby95 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study This was ended only 50 years ago. Suspicion of the CDC is not crazy if they've pulled this sort of shit within living memory.
- deleted 5y ago
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irrational 5y ago
Didn’t the Panama Papers affect your trust at all?
refurb 5y ago
I find that surprising. It's pretty clear the EU health regulatory agencies aren't much better. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60334-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... 500 to 2000 people died in France because the regulatory authorities choose to ignore multiple warning signs the drug has issues. Maybe you shouldn't be so trusting?
- distances 5y ago
  It's not like we expect everything to go perfectly. I do trust that bureaucrats and officials are competent with good intentions though. I do trust the police, tax authorities, medical authorities, statistics department. I even trust the politicians work towards their stated goals and ideals, each aiming for what they consider the best for the country. I'm from the Nordics, with a pretty good track record of honesty and societal trust. I would find that continuous mistrust immensely tiring. That would just be a sad, sad world.
  - refurb 5y ago
    It might be a sad world but it’s reality. Better than pretending your politicians are altruistic.
deleted 5y ago
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stjohnswarts 5y ago
Because our government has been caught many many times lying to us. In particular the CIA and various police organizations are constantly covering their asses. In general when the CDC goofs that’s just what happens, diseases and health is hard, but I don’t recall a lot of reports where they were actively murdering people
_nosewings_ 5y ago
The mistrust runs in both directions (although the timbre is different). I believe that the CDC has had nothing but the best of intentions throughout the pandemic, but it's clear that they don't really trust US citizens enough to say what they really think. They see us through the lens of management; e.g., "How do we manage these people?" Now, it's perhaps inevitable that they would use that lens, but it seems like it's the only lens they use. Perhaps they're even right -- perhaps the average US citizen really is selfish and lacking in independent critical thinking skills, and perhaps we can't be trusted with the truth. But it means that anyone who knows better is constantly trying to read between the lines. I blame the pervasive PR culture in the US, as well as basic stuff like a shit education system.
- fl0wenol 5y ago
  I think that, considering the mandate of the CDC, a certain amount of cynical understanding of the average American in its messaging is the only practical thing to do. That's a really tough line to take, and I do not envy the PR guys that have to negotiate it. You may not like this, but what it boils down to (as you indicated) is that unless you can improve the average American through education or cultural shift, you've got this pretty grim baseline. The PR culture is a response to that reality.
  - _nosewings_ 5y ago
    It's also worth pointing out that, in a world where the Web is so pervasive, being honest (and, in particular, developing a reputation for being honest) has substantial advantages. Conspiracy theories and general suspicion spread extremely easily these days. If you ask the average American about the CDC today, I guarantee you a lot of them will mention the fact that the CDC initially said masks were unnecessary, and that they have since admitted that they were lying to protect supplies for healthcare workers. Does that mean that being honest is necessarily always the best thing to do? I'm not sure. It's worth considering. But I suspect that it will take a while for that kind of understanding to make headway in the higher levels of government. (This goes with the caveat that people and organizations who simply lie all the time can get away with it. Basically, you either have to live firmly in reality, or you have to sell a version of the real world that's been thoroughly modified in order to conform to some vision. Living mostly in reality while occasionally lying is becoming an untenable strategy.)
Bombthecat 5y ago
It's called low trust society. Its a thing :https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_soc...
JPKab 5y ago
As an American, I'm surprised by the LACK of anger and distrust towards the EU by Europeans, specifically in the wake of the vaccine fiasco where the EU was so dramatically behind in procuring and administering vaccines to the population. But yes, I agree that the skepticism of the Federal government in the US is far too skewed towards assumptions of malevolence, when it really should be skewed towards incompetence. If you've ever travelled to the US, it's absolutely embarrassing how incompetent and awful of an experience it is to enter the country. Compared to when I go to basically ANY other country, the US customs personnel are rude, unprofessional, and just outright incompetent. It's such a massive difference in experience that you it slaps you in the face, every time. Instead of a debate limited to how big or small the Federal government in the US should be, we should be having a debate about how efficient it is. We don't, due to the absurd, theatrical polarization we have baked into our system.
zamalek 5y ago
This zeitgeist goes back to the creation of America: the people were mistreated by the monarchy. Distrust and accountability to the government is baked into the American constitution (that accountability has succeeded in some areas, as much as it has failed in others). It seems that many confuse science for government, which is understandable given the very recent muzzling of science for political gain. Fauci's facial expressions during and after the recent regime have been a pretty good litmus for me: he's a scientist that's bad a hiding his emotions. That allows me to figure out when to trust what him and his colleagues want to, or have been forced to, say.
giardini 5y ago
"...to be so suspicious of essential institutions like the CDC seems crazy to me." To NOT be suspicious of institutions, essential or not, seems crazy to me. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." "It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. . . . A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows, and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary. An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole." – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X.

Rebelgecko 5y ago

I think the CDC's original statements on masks (they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc) contributed a lot to the distrust and politicization of mask wearing. When you expect an institution to always be impartial and tell the truth, those sorts of white lies can quickly erode trust.

harry8 5y ago
Please also note it is unnecessary to do any additional analysis to describe the example cited as a "lie." We know it was a deliberate lie because the then head of the CDC has said so [1] - unless he was lying about claiming he was lying there's not much doubt in that case. The CDC lie when it suits them isn't something that's really debatable. Does it matter that they lied? This is the proposition that can be debated sensibly and rationally - but will likely be overwhelmed with emotion. In my own observation there seems to be rather a lot of people who have almost no faith in their fellow humans and believe the only way "people" believe a thing and will act is because they have been told to believe it by someone. Misinformation takes all the blame in this paradigm. The populations is dominated by people who have outsourced their critical thinking. It may be true, I don't know. But it seems to me to be really quite worrying if a population has to be told lies to get them to do the right thing or lies have to be censored because people will not be able to assess competing evidence and reject bullshit. Does it have to be this way? Was it always? Is it fixable? Is it really a thing at all? I have no answers there. It's my observation that even in the service of "good", the debt to the truth always comes due and the interest rate is super steep. Many will disagree. [1] Lack of PPE for medical professionals in the front line of pandemic response is the justification. This may well be a very good justification.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  I know this gets repeated a lot, but that doesn't make it more true. Show me the quote where he said "we lied about masks", and "we changed our message about masks" doesn't count. The reality is that the knowledge about Covid changed significantly in march/April last year. In particular the understanding about unsymptomatic spread lead to a significant change of thinking. That makes sense, if the virus only spreads from sick people, the advice for everyone to wear a mask is not good health policy especially if there is a shortage. You want to prioritise people who get in contact with sick people and prevent sick people to go out. However, if unsymptomatic people spread the virus, you want everyone to wear masks, because you can't prevent spreaders to go out. But the masks are different, you want cloth masks more than n95, because it is about protecting others. The below article is one which elaborates on the whole discussion https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-anthony-fauci-lie-masks-march-marco-rubio-said/4068162001/ https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/29/did-...
  - avereveard 5y ago
    If they didn't suspect that an "atypical pneumonia" as it was called since the beginning had an aereosol component a case can be made that they were unfit for their job If mask initial recommendation actually was a white lie a case can be made that they are unfit for communicating their results to the masses as they think their peers to be petulant children unfit for handling truths, and they should be stripped of that function The other cases just convert into variations of them politicising a pandemic to unknown ends As for the WHO, these organisations shouldn't have an easy way out of their responsibilities
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      Have you read what I wrote? Because you sure are not responding to it.
    - usrusr 5y ago
      The “not aerosol“ hypothesis was based on the assumption that the spread rate would have been much higher than observed with an aerosol capable virus. Turns out this one just happened to be quite bad at spreading amongst humans, despite being capable of residing in the air for quite a while. It's rather unsurprising then that we now see many mutations that fix some low hanging fruit "bugs", bringing the spread closer to what people would have expected. Arguably hope may have been a factor in weighing that hypothesis, but that's truly nothing anyone should be blamed for.
jader201 5y ago
Exactly this. I normally would agree with folks saying that the CDC has little reason to be dishonest, but with COVID in particular, we see enough historical reversal to cause at least some uncertainty around their guidance. Plus, it also makes sense, if their and the government’s interests are for the greater good. E.g. being cautious about promoting early use of masks when supplies were scarce/preserving them for the front line medical workers. Theoretically it would also make sense for current guidance to incentivize vaccines when the remaining unvaccinated population is hesitant. To be clear, I’m not saying I have certainly that this is what’s happening. But the theories aren’t unreasonable, and CDC’s past reversal on guidance doesn’t help the confidence others have in their guidance. So the uncertainty isn’t completely unreasonable.
sitkack 5y ago
I had COVID in NYC in Feb, the only way to get a test was to claim you just flew from Wuhan. Which even if you did, I have no idea how they were setup to respond. Everyone else in the hotel was sick, there was a tensor of coughing, all I could do was sit in my hotel room and watch politicians go back and forth about how we should all patronize stores in Chinatown and not be horrible racists. All I can say is the is that the CDC performed extremely poorly in their response to this, over and over again. Mishandling tests, allowing the FDA to actively block testing. Even the pausing of the J&J vaccine was an extreme CYA blunder. NASA had Challenger, NIST had Dual_EC_DRBG and the CDC had COVID. Not the same in scope, but the systemic dysfunction was similar in its structure.
x3iv130f 5y ago
I don't blame the professionals for getting things wrong on this. My personal feeling is that it was hard to know if masks worked for the general populace before Covid-19. There are so many confounding variables that it very difficult to study masks from a public health side. The best approximation was studies of health professionals in hospitals or clinics which doesn't exactly translate for a multitude of reasons.
- mlyle 5y ago
  To be honest, we still don't really know if masks work. They look like they probably do something, but the evidence is weak and the effect size small. It's totally worth it to bend an exponential function. But the individual benefit from mask wearing in any given interaction is negligible.
  - sharken 5y ago
    Which leads to huge arguments which really benefits nobody as we just establish that we disagree. Common sense seems to say that masks make s difference, but if that is the strongest argument, then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense.
    - lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
      Because if you get it wrong, lots of people die, so you err on the side of caution.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      Mere common sense? I wouldn't characterize it that way. The wearing of masks to combat airborne disease spread is a decidedly not a new thing. That was never a novel concept, at least since the early part of the 20th century. Coronaviruses in general aren't a novel concept either; we have a pretty good idea how they're spread. So, when confronted with a new coronavirus, it's a little bit stronger than "common sense" to surmise that masks will be effective to some extent. The burden of proof would be on anybody suggesting that this virus is somehow so different than other airborne disease that the wearing of masks had no benefit. then why not let people decide for themselves using common sense. If masks are not effective, the downside to wearing masks was that we waste a relatively modest amount of time and money on masks and perhaps damage our credibility in the future when we recommend their use. If masks are effective to some degree, the downside to not wearing masks was that millions of additional people would suffer and die worldwide, and we would incur a financial and human cost orders of magnitude greater than the modest cost of masks.
flukus 5y ago
> they aren't necessary, they're only effective at preventing the spread of COVID if the wearer has a medical degree, don't wear masks on planes, etc Everyone seems to also forget that a lot of this took place when they wrongly thought surface transmission was the main vector. The bigger problem was the delay in recognizing aerosol transmission, Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early but the CDC and WHO dragged their feet. We also saw everything play out and get politicized in real time in a way that's never happened before. There are lags between data and science, further lags between science and science communication and then even more from science communication to government policy. On one end of this lag you've got scientist warning of aerosol transmission, on the other side you've got Fauci still operating under the surface transmission advice leading to some very mixed messaging. Reducing this lag will be important in future.
- bonzini 5y ago
  > Chinese scientists cottoned on to this very early China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 since there are suspect cases in Europe already at the beginning of December, of people that had never been in Wuhan.
  - flukus 5y ago
    > China didn't even admit human to human transmission until mid January. Because it was even newer and more unknown at that point. Wuhan was in lockdown on the 23rd of January, so they had a pretty good idea by then. Meanwhile the rest of the world twiddled their thumbs and lost the opportunity to contain it. > They haven't even admitted when the outbreak started, which almost certainly wasn't November 2019 How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      > How do you "admit" something unknown? Either way we know it couldn't have been too much before November/December, considering everything we know about how fast it spreads. Actually, this is not so clear. The evidence of community cases in November/December in e.g. France were not picked up at the time either. There is a phase were a new disease can fly completely under the radar, because we are still in a very slow growth and only see a few isolated cases, which often don't even get seen by the same health professionals. This is particularly true in the case of covid were there is evidence that spreading is disproportionately from "superspreaders" (unless some of that information changed now?). So unless there was a superspreader, you only have few isolated cases.
dguaraglia 5y ago
Meh, I understand your point, but as someone who follows the conspiratorial world passively, I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. In reality, the usual suspects were pushing conspiracy theories about the CDC even before they determined masks were useful. A famous conspiracy peddler famously claimed the CDC was downplaying how bad the virus was and 'it was over for humanity, it'll only be lone survivors' when we only had a handful of cases in the US. In other words: the CDC could've nailed every single guideline and we'd still have half of the population making up conspiracy theories about it. It's just too politically convenient.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  > I can tell you the whole 'but they told you masks were useless' thing is a post-facto rationalization to gain some common ground with the less conspiratorial people. So is the post-facto realization of "we knew masks work, we just didn't want the people to grab all the supply".
  - dguaraglia 5y ago
    As I explained in another post, originally the consensus was that only N95 masks were somewhat effective. There were no studies on the effectiveness of other masks. Recommending people use masks could've given people a false sense of security in people and probably acted against more effective measures such as social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms matching those of Covid-19 ('well, I know I have a cough, but I'll just wear a mask and it'll be fine'). Recommending people use the only masks we knew to somewhat work - N95s - would've created a huge problem for hospitals that already were having issues procuring PPE to protect the professionals who were dealing with Covid-19 patients. Basically, there was no reason for the CDC to recommend masks. Again, there's no need for some nefarious explanation.
  - dguaraglia 5y ago
    That's an oversimplification. The first thing to consider is that there's two types of masks: * N95 masks * Everything else We knew N95 masks worked because that's what professionals use in hospitals. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of PPE so telling people to buy them would put them in direct competition with professionals treating very sick patients. In April 2020 we were looking at a really bleak scenario so there was a very strong incentive to keep professionals alive even if it came at the expense of some citizens (think: doomsday scenario). We also had no idea whether 'everything else' helped at all. Recommending non-N95 use might have given people a false sense of security that might have played against more effective measures such as extreme social distancing and self-quarantining of people with symptoms. As knowledge improved, guidance changed. Nothing crazy to see here.
evandijk70 5y ago
The Dutch CDC (RIVM) made the same statements. As a result, people don't really believe in masks here either, but it not a big political issue. I am not sure why the mask became such a symbol for the corona measures in the US, but not here.
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  It's pretty simple: A lot of Americans are dogshit-stupid. They voted for Trump. They're deliberately and belligerently ignorant children, just like the former (and disgraced) "president."
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Your population no doubt trusts government a lot more. Also republicans here more or less turned trump into a Messianic figure and quit listening to science. It’s getting scary over here to be honest
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    It’s just that most people don’t really care about wearing a mask in a supermarket and those that do don’t really get bothered with it when they refuse. But it does polarize society between people who love pointing their fingers at others who don’t adhere to their favorite mitigation strategy (‘they’re killing grandma’, ‘If only they had done X’). And of course masks are a pretty visible virtue signal. People are a lot more critical about the other rules, the curfews, the ban on outdoor dining and bars and the closure of sports facilities. And the ‘you can’t have more than one person over’ rule is generally ignored. By the way the official Dutch position still is that surface transmission is significant and one of the three ‘main rules’ is to wash your hands a lot.
- varjag 5y ago
  All national authorities did this, because the advice originated at WHO.
- podgaj 5y ago
  Because "Freedom". Seriously. I have explained this many times to my European friends. It is difficult to appreciate how people here will always want to push their own personal freedom of choice out as far as they can no matter how much someone else suffers.
anoncake 5y ago
Lying to the public should be a jailable crime. That would greatly increase trust in public institutions.

garmaine 5y ago

One need only go back about 80 years to find horrific abuses by public health officials in both Europe and America (e.g. involuntary sterilization, to say nothing of Nazi experimentation). What I find strange is that Europeans have such a short memory regarding these things…

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MomoXenosaga 5y ago
As a European I believe in science and medicine. But I have read the history books: there were a bunch of Christ idiots in the 1970s who refused the polio vaccination and it did not end well for them.
- dang 5y ago
  Could you please stop posting flamewar comments and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? We're trying for something other than this here.
Thorrez 5y ago
Unfortunately involuntary sterilizations were happening more recently than 80 years ago too. Virginia's compulsory sterilization law was repealed in 1974[1]. Oregon performed its last compulsory sterilization in 1981[2]. Japan didn't abolish compulsory sterilization until 1996[3]. There are reports that detained immigrants were involuntarily sterilized in 2020 in the US[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Compulsory_sterilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#Unite... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3952537/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3952537/
8note 5y ago
You don't have to go back far at all to find corporations doing evil either, and yet America forgets how bad they are on a daily basis.

cmckn 5y ago

I think this stems from the perception that the US federal government is monolithic, secretive, and imperceptible. The reality is that it's wildly diverse, staffed by "everyday" Americans, takes place almost entirely in the open, and very knowable (even if there is complexity -- just like computers). In the same way that many modern humans have grown distant from "nature," Americans have grown distant from our own government. I knew few Americans who truly believe our government is of the people, by the people, for the people. It's sad. :(

herbst 5y ago
From and outside perspective this government you are describing is only hard to visualize. For years now voting comes down to the lesser of two evils where everywhere else in the world new parties form and establish new ideas America still has two of them only, kinda. As Swiss it's also far from our understanding what democracy is supposed to be.
- cmckn 5y ago
  A ton of Americans think of it as a lesser of two evils; because many (most?) Americans have the luxury of being comfortable. They don’t really think about politics, they don’t really have policy wants/needs. It’s just sensationalism on Facebook and celebrity on Instagram. It’s more about sports-team tribalism than participating in a society. At the risk of sounding morose, I don’t know where we go from here. Everyone, myself included, is going insane.
  - disabled 5y ago
    Here is a good read on where it goes: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html All I know is that there is no way that I am going to be physically in the US for the next presidential election(s), if there is a neoliberal political candidate in that election.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago

bcrosby95 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study This was ended only 50 years ago. Suspicion of the CDC is not crazy if they've pulled this sort of shit within living memory.

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irrational 5y ago

Didn’t the Panama Papers affect your trust at all?

refurb 5y ago

I find that surprising. It's pretty clear the EU health regulatory agencies aren't much better. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60334-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... 500 to 2000 people died in France because the regulatory authorities choose to ignore multiple warning signs the drug has issues. Maybe you shouldn't be so trusting?

distances 5y ago
It's not like we expect everything to go perfectly. I do trust that bureaucrats and officials are competent with good intentions though. I do trust the police, tax authorities, medical authorities, statistics department. I even trust the politicians work towards their stated goals and ideals, each aiming for what they consider the best for the country. I'm from the Nordics, with a pretty good track record of honesty and societal trust. I would find that continuous mistrust immensely tiring. That would just be a sad, sad world.
- refurb 5y ago
  It might be a sad world but it’s reality. Better than pretending your politicians are altruistic.

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stjohnswarts 5y ago

Because our government has been caught many many times lying to us. In particular the CIA and various police organizations are constantly covering their asses. In general when the CDC goofs that’s just what happens, diseases and health is hard, but I don’t recall a lot of reports where they were actively murdering people

_nosewings_ 5y ago

The mistrust runs in both directions (although the timbre is different). I believe that the CDC has had nothing but the best of intentions throughout the pandemic, but it's clear that they don't really trust US citizens enough to say what they really think. They see us through the lens of management; e.g., "How do we manage these people?" Now, it's perhaps inevitable that they would use that lens, but it seems like it's the only lens they use. Perhaps they're even right -- perhaps the average US citizen really is selfish and lacking in independent critical thinking skills, and perhaps we can't be trusted with the truth. But it means that anyone who knows better is constantly trying to read between the lines. I blame the pervasive PR culture in the US, as well as basic stuff like a shit education system.

fl0wenol 5y ago
I think that, considering the mandate of the CDC, a certain amount of cynical understanding of the average American in its messaging is the only practical thing to do. That's a really tough line to take, and I do not envy the PR guys that have to negotiate it. You may not like this, but what it boils down to (as you indicated) is that unless you can improve the average American through education or cultural shift, you've got this pretty grim baseline. The PR culture is a response to that reality.
- _nosewings_ 5y ago
  It's also worth pointing out that, in a world where the Web is so pervasive, being honest (and, in particular, developing a reputation for being honest) has substantial advantages. Conspiracy theories and general suspicion spread extremely easily these days. If you ask the average American about the CDC today, I guarantee you a lot of them will mention the fact that the CDC initially said masks were unnecessary, and that they have since admitted that they were lying to protect supplies for healthcare workers. Does that mean that being honest is necessarily always the best thing to do? I'm not sure. It's worth considering. But I suspect that it will take a while for that kind of understanding to make headway in the higher levels of government. (This goes with the caveat that people and organizations who simply lie all the time can get away with it. Basically, you either have to live firmly in reality, or you have to sell a version of the real world that's been thoroughly modified in order to conform to some vision. Living mostly in reality while occasionally lying is becoming an untenable strategy.)

Bombthecat 5y ago

It's called low trust society. Its a thing :https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_soc...

JPKab 5y ago

As an American, I'm surprised by the LACK of anger and distrust towards the EU by Europeans, specifically in the wake of the vaccine fiasco where the EU was so dramatically behind in procuring and administering vaccines to the population. But yes, I agree that the skepticism of the Federal government in the US is far too skewed towards assumptions of malevolence, when it really should be skewed towards incompetence. If you've ever travelled to the US, it's absolutely embarrassing how incompetent and awful of an experience it is to enter the country. Compared to when I go to basically ANY other country, the US customs personnel are rude, unprofessional, and just outright incompetent. It's such a massive difference in experience that you it slaps you in the face, every time. Instead of a debate limited to how big or small the Federal government in the US should be, we should be having a debate about how efficient it is. We don't, due to the absurd, theatrical polarization we have baked into our system.

zamalek 5y ago

This zeitgeist goes back to the creation of America: the people were mistreated by the monarchy. Distrust and accountability to the government is baked into the American constitution (that accountability has succeeded in some areas, as much as it has failed in others). It seems that many confuse science for government, which is understandable given the very recent muzzling of science for political gain. Fauci's facial expressions during and after the recent regime have been a pretty good litmus for me: he's a scientist that's bad a hiding his emotions. That allows me to figure out when to trust what him and his colleagues want to, or have been forced to, say.

giardini 5y ago

"...to be so suspicious of essential institutions like the CDC seems crazy to me." To NOT be suspicious of institutions, essential or not, seems crazy to me. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." "It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. . . . A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows, and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary. An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole." – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X.