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At the beginning of the pandemic, health agencies started misrepresenting and overstating the certainty of science, in order to attempt to get more buy-in from

At the beginning of the pandemic, health agencies started misrepresenting and overstating the certainty of science, in order to attempt to get more buy-in from the public. It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't. It continued with tests. It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. To the public, the tests aren't even questioned, most people believe they're pretty accurate, and most people are unaware that they have changed the criteria throughout the last year and a half. They sold it to the public like this because they knew that people would avoid getting tested and staying quarantined if they didn't trust the tests. Lately, it's about the vaccines. There is no serious scientist that believed that the vaccines would prevent COVID from becoming endemic. It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier). There are no serious scientists that believe that 2 shots and a booster is going to be the end of it, and yet they're happy to tell us that we "might" need boosters. Do any serious scientists actually believe that? These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine. It's a prophylactic. We always knew it was a prophylactic, but they sold it to the public as something else, because people wouldn't get it if they didn't lie. We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us.

1helloworld1 5y ago
Your assumption is that everyone is just as rational as you. Scientific agencies should just give out the exact probability numbers and let people decide for themselves. That's not how the world works. Our brains just cannot intuitively grasp probabilities (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-our-brains-do-not-intuitively-grasp-probabilities/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-our-brains-do...). Presenting the precise and most accurate information to the public without any embellishment sounds great in theory, but it doesn't work in practice.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  What alternative do you suggest? Lying to the public? Or the government making every decision for them like they're all children? Both of those sound much, much worse.
  - 1helloworld1 5y ago
    Yeah, lie to the public for the greater good. If lying gets more people to wear masks and get vaccinated, and can prevent thousands of deaths, so be it. What's wrong with lying?
    - antognini 5y ago
      Because invariably the truth eventually comes out and then people trust their government even less? Then when the next crisis comes along it doesn't matter if you lie or tell the truth, the public won't listen anyway.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      > What's wrong with lying Where to start. First of all, dignity. Mental pollution. Problematic instancing of what is «greater good». Retribution. Precendents and possibility of abuse. Alienating all those who immediately cease trust [against the matter] in front of what smells of a lie. Cessation of trust [against the agent]. ...There must be more.
    - Negitivefrags 5y ago
      The problem with it is that you lose trust. If I know you lied about the efficacy of the vaccine then how do I know you didn't lie about the chance of bad side effects too?
    - gizmo 5y ago
      Because democracy is much better than some kind of authoritarian system where the common people are considered stupid and ignorant and undeserving of having a say in how their society is ran. The big problem here is that many people don’t think democracy is worth preserving, and they’re fine being lied to as long as they’re comfortable and have competent leaders. Except…. when the democratic checks and balances that keep the powers that be in check fail everything goes to shit. First slowly, then quickly. I don’t want to turn this into an overly political rant, but if you look at recent history it’s not hard to see how bad things happen when politicians and other authority figures can lie with impunity.
nemothekid 5y ago
>We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. This is the "Science is a Liar sometimes"[1] defense, and it can be used to discredit any sort of scientific research. You are basically asking that our agencies be 100% correct the first time and be perfect predictors of the future. Secondly I don't understand how you were mislead about vaccines. The efficiency rates were always described in preventing you from going to the hospital. With COVID, the main issue has always been overstressing the health system - thats where the breakdown happens and thats why everyone needs to take the vaccine. Even now, ICU beds are not majority unvaccinated COVID cases, which overworks nurses and prevents people with other diseases from getting proper treatment. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  I think they're asking for science not to misrepresent the facts. They're not asking for science to be perfect.
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    It's easy to say the facts were misrepresented in hindsight. The original consensus is that there was no need for widespread mask wearing, and a supply shock would have been dangerous. We only know now (or rather a couple months later), that advice was wrong.
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  > everyone needs to take the vaccine This is simply not true, anyone who claims this is ignoring a vast body of scientific evidence supporting the fact that individuals who’ve recovered from previous infection will be at least as well protected as vaccinated individuals against reinfection. If you were to say “most people who don’t already have natural immunity ought to be vaccinated” that would be a much more sensible recommendation, in-line with general scientific consensus (and public health policies in other countries).
  - 5y ago
gridspy 5y ago
Not all health agencies, for instance in New Zealand they have been very honest about the science and what is known. Regarding the article, I think many people wanted to know that there was an "end" in sight to COVID. This narrative was attached to Vaccines as "the end" by much of the press that I watch in the states. Here in NZ the press is putting pressure on the Govt. to ease lock-down restrictions as the vaccination rate goes up. But we're still reluctant to allow covid in "and just live with it" even as levels of vaccination rise. I think the only realistic "end" is when the multiplicative effect of masks, caution (social distancing for eg) and the vaccine reduces R below 1 in each individual country long enough to achieve elimination over time. It would be a pity if in some communities Covid is never eliminated.
- arglebarglegar 5y ago
  it will never be eliminated at this point, animals can also carry it
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  I feel bad for the population of New Zealand. The amount of lockdowns and Covid restrictions was one of most restrictive in the world. And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started. What a tough situation there. It like all being locked down for years and having the borders closed for years didn't change a thing.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    All of New Zealand's lockdowns saved a heck of a lot of lives over the course of 2020 and early 2021, and now vaccines are available! It wasn't for nothing!
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      This is a good point. Hopefully the vaccine works against the variants. The protection seems to be waning already in Israel. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
davmar 5y ago
> It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't. Inaccurate and dangerously wrong conjecture. Research published long before COVID-19 proved the efficacy of masking in blocking particulate matter. That's why terms like N95 even exist. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7 That study came out last year, but there are similar studies published many years ago. I don't have time to google for them all right now, but they are out there for those who want to find them. The science on masking was clear and your statement is irresponsible.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  If you wouldn't trust a cloth mask to protect you from asbestos dust or second hand smoke, you shouldn't trust it to protect you from a disease that spreads as an aerosol. OSHA doesn't, and you shouldn't either.
  - davmar 5y ago
    Not all cloth masks function the same way. If you read the studies, it depends on the weaving and the material. Cotton vs. denim, for example, is studied. None are as effective as a non-woven material. But they are still more effective than no mask. Edit: > asbestos dust or second hand smoke You have to know what size of particulate matter that you're looking to filter is in order to determine whether that mask material works for the given application. What you're saying is too broad to be useful and isn't very insightful.
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      Aerosol viral loads are (if I heard correctly) 50x smaller than asbestos particles. OSHA doesn't allow cloth masks to be used around asbestos. If this were a flu that spread primarily as droplets, cloth masks would have their place. As it is, we have known since early on that wasn't the case, and that cloth masks are about as useful as a cloth bonnet would be useful as a motorcycle helmet.
lucretian 5y ago
you use the word "lie" here with loose abandon and with astounding confidence in your ability to infer motivations of every single member of a massive and complex system of public health and medical professionals. frankly, this is conspiracy talk and it's pathetic to see it upvoted.
- mcguire 5y ago
  There is a strong trend of anti-intellectualism in modern culture that extends to HN. If someone says something that later turns out to be false, then they are considered to be lying, and their supposed lie is used to justify disbelief in anything any other expert says. It's a violation of basic reasoning skills as well as the HN rules, but it will always will get upvoted because it satisfies a certain kind of hubris: "If I don't know something then no one could possibly know it and therefore the idea I came up with after 10 seconds of thought is just as valid as anyone else's."
  - lucretian 5y ago
    yes. isn't this place supposed to be strongly moderated to prevent this kind of garbage?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shkkmo 5y ago
> It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. I not aware of any evidence that increased cycle counts have a significant effect on false positives. To the best of my knowledge, the false positive rates of of PCR tests are extremely low. My understanding is that cycle counts were changed to balance false negatives against testing time/lab loads. If you have evidence that contradicts this, I would love to see it. > These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine. The polio vaccine is also not 100% effective. Both polio vaccines and covid vaccines reduce but do not eliminate your chance of being infected. In what sense is the covid vaccine not a "true vaccine"? Edit: We have other vaccines that have even lower level of preventative efficacy than the covid vaccines do against delta and we still administer them.
resource0x 5y ago
Counting down to the moment when mainstream media changes its tune to something like "Big Pharma! Rushed (Trump's) (non)-vaccines! $$$! etc."
noasaservice 5y ago
> At the beginning of the pandemic, health agencies started misrepresenting and overstating the certainty of science, in order to attempt to get more buy-in from the public. Sure, the mainstream media oversimplified what the scientists were saying. But much of the actual early data was available in open archives, sci-hub, and library genesis. How much of the real science did you read, or did you use the MSM as a placeholder for scientists? > It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't. It's simple to understand masks when you look at another tech : HVAC filters. The better the filter (keeping surface area =), the harder it is to breathe. The less filtering the filter, the easier to breathe. N95's and better were stupidly hard to get hold of early on. But they have a toll on breathing. Again, it's not "maskless" and "heavy filtration". It's a gradient of filtration... And most materials don't have rated filter properties. That's not to say they can't filter - they do. They're just not as good as an N95. And even surgical masks are there primarily to prevent talking, breathing, coughing, and sniffling from being as impactful to other people. Anybody in IT would know there's no one solution, and no perfect solution. Everything's a tradeoff, and early on, cloth masks were leaps and bounds better than none at all. > It continued with tests. It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. To the public, the tests aren't even questioned, most people believe they're pretty accurate, and most people are unaware that they have changed the criteria throughout the last year and a half. They sold it to the public like this because they knew that people would avoid getting tested and staying quarantined if they didn't trust the tests. A good reason why our testing was so terrible and laggard was because of trump. Elections matter, and his brand of "inject bleach", "take hydroxyclorquine", and continual fall of fake news got a whole hell of a lot of people killed. And he retarded federal government's access to tests, and also severely impacted democratically led states in testing. (citation: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/did-trump-kushner-ignore-blue-state-covid-19-testing-deaths-ncna1235707 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/did-trump-kushner-igno... ) "Trump has made no secret of his ambivalence about testing. "When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people," Trump said in June at an ill-timed rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. "You're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'"" "Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert." I believe those speak for themselves. > Lately, it's about the vaccines. There is no serious scientist that believed that the vaccines would prevent COVID from becoming endemic. It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier). There are no serious scientists that believe that 2 shots and a booster is going to be the end of it, and yet they're happy to tell us that we "might" need boosters. Do any serious scientists actually believe that? These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine. It's a prophylactic. We always knew it was a prophylactic, but they sold it to the public as something else, because people wouldn't get it if they didn't lie. You only need to study your history about the Kansas Military Base Flu... Errr, the "Spanish Flu". Lasted 2.5 years. Had anti-vaxxers. Had anti-maskers. Had nearly the same groups on both sides saying the same stuff. Cats, dogs, and other mammals could also get and spread it (they even masked their cats and dogs). And regular Covid is pretty much gone. Now, it's delta and newer greek char variants. That's because people won't limit the spread using reasonable and working methodologies (vaccine, masking, social distancing, limiting group sizes). And those mutations migrate away from the original vaccine's work on the initial Sars-CoV-n19. I'd be reasonably sure my vacc would protect against the original. > We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us. Scientists aren't lying - you're just listening to the wrong research (protip: main stream media are the usual culprits of lying/oversimplifying/lies of omission). The vaccines work in varying degrees, primarily keeping people who do happen to get a variant out of the hospital.
armchairhacker 5y ago
People need to let go of their pride, so that even if they don't want to listen to authority, they can accept that they should. This might not seem like a big difference but it is. The former creates arbitrary roadblocks: people refusing the vaccines no matter the incentives. It causes people to form junk "science" to justify why 2 + 2 actually equals 5. The latter allows people to compromise: I'm not intrinsically opposed to X, I'm just opposed because of Y, and if you can solve Y than I no longer care about X. People need to accept cognitive dissonance more. And accepting cognitive dissonance means accepting that sometimes you're the dumb guy or the bad guy. But everyone is the dumb guy or bad guy at some point, whether or not they accept it. Accepting means that you can correct your mistakes and be the dumb/bad guy less often. Unfortunately it's against human nature to accept cognitive dissonance: it literally causes stress. I don't even think I can fully accept cognitive dissonances. But I believe we can teach people how to resolve cognitive dissonance better, so that people can accept that they have flaws and make mistakes, without accepting that they're a failure.
- rtikulit 5y ago
  You are making an amazingly important point. If one accepts "all models are wrong, some are useful" then it fairly directly follows that cognitive dissonance is essential and irreducible and when one encounters it maybe examine one's models? Aka how and why one thinks and feels? Zen shout-out: This is non-dualism in another guise, and a key Zen practice is to confront irreducible dissonance and batter yourself against it until you are forced to develop and internalize higher-order cognitive and emotional models that can represent contradictions and reason/feel over them to produce useful results.
ZoomerCretin 5y ago
>It continued with tests. It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. To the public, the tests aren't even questioned, most people believe they're pretty accurate, and most people are unaware that they have changed the criteria throughout the last year and a half. They sold it to the public like this because they knew that people would avoid getting tested and staying quarantined if they didn't trust the tests. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Do you have a source for this?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tablespoon 5y ago
> It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't. That's not how I remember it. IIRC, the CDC dragged their feet on recommending masking because of the same lack of explicit studies you cite and supply chain worries. Then once they did recommend masks, you have a much of people citing their "flip flop" as a reason not to trust them. > It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier). IIRC, no one knew shit in April 2020. Your statement feels like its heavily influenced by hindsight bias. > We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us. I think you're confused. I'm not sure exactly who you're counting as "science agencies," but if it's the kind of agencies I'm thinking of, I wouldn't say their purpose is either to "exact change on society" or to "do good science and tell us honest results." Their purpose it to come up with public policy to solve actual problems in the face of rather severe uncertainty. Hopefully that based on good science (which may be psychology/sociology), but that's often not possible. It's not "lying" to not share your exact level of pessimism/cynicism or to be unable to make statements about the future with the benefit of hindsight.

1helloworld1 5y ago

Your assumption is that everyone is just as rational as you. Scientific agencies should just give out the exact probability numbers and let people decide for themselves. That's not how the world works. Our brains just cannot intuitively grasp probabilities (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-our-brains-do-not-intuitively-grasp-probabilities/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-our-brains-do...). Presenting the precise and most accurate information to the public without any embellishment sounds great in theory, but it doesn't work in practice.

josephcsible 5y ago
What alternative do you suggest? Lying to the public? Or the government making every decision for them like they're all children? Both of those sound much, much worse.
- 1helloworld1 5y ago
  Yeah, lie to the public for the greater good. If lying gets more people to wear masks and get vaccinated, and can prevent thousands of deaths, so be it. What's wrong with lying?
  - antognini 5y ago
    Because invariably the truth eventually comes out and then people trust their government even less? Then when the next crisis comes along it doesn't matter if you lie or tell the truth, the public won't listen anyway.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    > What's wrong with lying Where to start. First of all, dignity. Mental pollution. Problematic instancing of what is «greater good». Retribution. Precendents and possibility of abuse. Alienating all those who immediately cease trust [against the matter] in front of what smells of a lie. Cessation of trust [against the agent]. ...There must be more.
  - Negitivefrags 5y ago
    The problem with it is that you lose trust. If I know you lied about the efficacy of the vaccine then how do I know you didn't lie about the chance of bad side effects too?
  - gizmo 5y ago
    Because democracy is much better than some kind of authoritarian system where the common people are considered stupid and ignorant and undeserving of having a say in how their society is ran. The big problem here is that many people don’t think democracy is worth preserving, and they’re fine being lied to as long as they’re comfortable and have competent leaders. Except…. when the democratic checks and balances that keep the powers that be in check fail everything goes to shit. First slowly, then quickly. I don’t want to turn this into an overly political rant, but if you look at recent history it’s not hard to see how bad things happen when politicians and other authority figures can lie with impunity.

nemothekid 5y ago

>We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. This is the "Science is a Liar sometimes"[1] defense, and it can be used to discredit any sort of scientific research. You are basically asking that our agencies be 100% correct the first time and be perfect predictors of the future. Secondly I don't understand how you were mislead about vaccines. The efficiency rates were always described in preventing you from going to the hospital. With COVID, the main issue has always been overstressing the health system - thats where the breakdown happens and thats why everyone needs to take the vaccine. Even now, ICU beds are not majority unvaccinated COVID cases, which overworks nurses and prevents people with other diseases from getting proper treatment. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ

nickthemagicman 5y ago
I think they're asking for science not to misrepresent the facts. They're not asking for science to be perfect.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  It's easy to say the facts were misrepresented in hindsight. The original consensus is that there was no need for widespread mask wearing, and a supply shock would have been dangerous. We only know now (or rather a couple months later), that advice was wrong.
criticaltinker 5y ago
> everyone needs to take the vaccine This is simply not true, anyone who claims this is ignoring a vast body of scientific evidence supporting the fact that individuals who’ve recovered from previous infection will be at least as well protected as vaccinated individuals against reinfection. If you were to say “most people who don’t already have natural immunity ought to be vaccinated” that would be a much more sensible recommendation, in-line with general scientific consensus (and public health policies in other countries).
- 5y ago

gridspy 5y ago

Not all health agencies, for instance in New Zealand they have been very honest about the science and what is known. Regarding the article, I think many people wanted to know that there was an "end" in sight to COVID. This narrative was attached to Vaccines as "the end" by much of the press that I watch in the states. Here in NZ the press is putting pressure on the Govt. to ease lock-down restrictions as the vaccination rate goes up. But we're still reluctant to allow covid in "and just live with it" even as levels of vaccination rise. I think the only realistic "end" is when the multiplicative effect of masks, caution (social distancing for eg) and the vaccine reduces R below 1 in each individual country long enough to achieve elimination over time. It would be a pity if in some communities Covid is never eliminated.

arglebarglegar 5y ago
it will never be eliminated at this point, animals can also carry it
nickthemagicman 5y ago
I feel bad for the population of New Zealand. The amount of lockdowns and Covid restrictions was one of most restrictive in the world. And after all of that, you all recently had one of the highest rates of infection since the pandemic started. What a tough situation there. It like all being locked down for years and having the borders closed for years didn't change a thing.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  All of New Zealand's lockdowns saved a heck of a lot of lives over the course of 2020 and early 2021, and now vaccines are available! It wasn't for nothing!
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    This is a good point. Hopefully the vaccine works against the variants. The protection seems to be waning already in Israel. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...

davmar 5y ago

zdragnar 5y ago
If you wouldn't trust a cloth mask to protect you from asbestos dust or second hand smoke, you shouldn't trust it to protect you from a disease that spreads as an aerosol. OSHA doesn't, and you shouldn't either.
- davmar 5y ago
  Not all cloth masks function the same way. If you read the studies, it depends on the weaving and the material. Cotton vs. denim, for example, is studied. None are as effective as a non-woven material. But they are still more effective than no mask. Edit: > asbestos dust or second hand smoke You have to know what size of particulate matter that you're looking to filter is in order to determine whether that mask material works for the given application. What you're saying is too broad to be useful and isn't very insightful.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Aerosol viral loads are (if I heard correctly) 50x smaller than asbestos particles. OSHA doesn't allow cloth masks to be used around asbestos. If this were a flu that spread primarily as droplets, cloth masks would have their place. As it is, we have known since early on that wasn't the case, and that cloth masks are about as useful as a cloth bonnet would be useful as a motorcycle helmet.

lucretian 5y ago

you use the word "lie" here with loose abandon and with astounding confidence in your ability to infer motivations of every single member of a massive and complex system of public health and medical professionals. frankly, this is conspiracy talk and it's pathetic to see it upvoted.

mcguire 5y ago
There is a strong trend of anti-intellectualism in modern culture that extends to HN. If someone says something that later turns out to be false, then they are considered to be lying, and their supposed lie is used to justify disbelief in anything any other expert says. It's a violation of basic reasoning skills as well as the HN rules, but it will always will get upvoted because it satisfies a certain kind of hubris: "If I don't know something then no one could possibly know it and therefore the idea I came up with after 10 seconds of thought is just as valid as anyone else's."
- lucretian 5y ago
  yes. isn't this place supposed to be strongly moderated to prevent this kind of garbage?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

shkkmo 5y ago

> It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. I not aware of any evidence that increased cycle counts have a significant effect on false positives. To the best of my knowledge, the false positive rates of of PCR tests are extremely low. My understanding is that cycle counts were changed to balance false negatives against testing time/lab loads. If you have evidence that contradicts this, I would love to see it. > These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine. The polio vaccine is also not 100% effective. Both polio vaccines and covid vaccines reduce but do not eliminate your chance of being infected. In what sense is the covid vaccine not a "true vaccine"? Edit: We have other vaccines that have even lower level of preventative efficacy than the covid vaccines do against delta and we still administer them.

resource0x 5y ago

Counting down to the moment when mainstream media changes its tune to something like "Big Pharma! Rushed (Trump's) (non)-vaccines! $$$! etc."

noasaservice 5y ago

> At the beginning of the pandemic, health agencies started misrepresenting and overstating the certainty of science, in order to attempt to get more buy-in from the public. Sure, the mainstream media oversimplified what the scientists were saying. But much of the actual early data was available in open archives, sci-hub, and library genesis. How much of the real science did you read, or did you use the MSM as a placeholder for scientists? > It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't. It's simple to understand masks when you look at another tech : HVAC filters. The better the filter (keeping surface area =), the harder it is to breathe. The less filtering the filter, the easier to breathe. N95's and better were stupidly hard to get hold of early on. But they have a toll on breathing. Again, it's not "maskless" and "heavy filtration". It's a gradient of filtration... And most materials don't have rated filter properties. That's not to say they can't filter - they do. They're just not as good as an N95. And even surgical masks are there primarily to prevent talking, breathing, coughing, and sniffling from being as impactful to other people. Anybody in IT would know there's no one solution, and no perfect solution. Everything's a tradeoff, and early on, cloth masks were leaps and bounds better than none at all. > It continued with tests. It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. To the public, the tests aren't even questioned, most people believe they're pretty accurate, and most people are unaware that they have changed the criteria throughout the last year and a half. They sold it to the public like this because they knew that people would avoid getting tested and staying quarantined if they didn't trust the tests. A good reason why our testing was so terrible and laggard was because of trump. Elections matter, and his brand of "inject bleach", "take hydroxyclorquine", and continual fall of fake news got a whole hell of a lot of people killed. And he retarded federal government's access to tests, and also severely impacted democratically led states in testing. (citation: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/did-trump-kushner-ignore-blue-state-covid-19-testing-deaths-ncna1235707 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/did-trump-kushner-igno... ) "Trump has made no secret of his ambivalence about testing. "When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people," Trump said in June at an ill-timed rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. "You're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'"" "Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert." I believe those speak for themselves. > Lately, it's about the vaccines. There is no serious scientist that believed that the vaccines would prevent COVID from becoming endemic. It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier). There are no serious scientists that believe that 2 shots and a booster is going to be the end of it, and yet they're happy to tell us that we "might" need boosters. Do any serious scientists actually believe that? These aren't "breakthrough" cases, because it's not truly a vaccine in the sense that the Polio vaccine was a vaccine. It's a prophylactic. We always knew it was a prophylactic, but they sold it to the public as something else, because people wouldn't get it if they didn't lie. You only need to study your history about the Kansas Military Base Flu... Errr, the "Spanish Flu". Lasted 2.5 years. Had anti-vaxxers. Had anti-maskers. Had nearly the same groups on both sides saying the same stuff. Cats, dogs, and other mammals could also get and spread it (they even masked their cats and dogs). And regular Covid is pretty much gone. Now, it's delta and newer greek char variants. That's because people won't limit the spread using reasonable and working methodologies (vaccine, masking, social distancing, limiting group sizes). And those mutations migrate away from the original vaccine's work on the initial Sars-CoV-n19. I'd be reasonably sure my vacc would protect against the original. > We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us. Scientists aren't lying - you're just listening to the wrong research (protip: main stream media are the usual culprits of lying/oversimplifying/lies of omission). The vaccines work in varying degrees, primarily keeping people who do happen to get a variant out of the hospital.

armchairhacker 5y ago

People need to let go of their pride, so that even if they don't want to listen to authority, they can accept that they should. This might not seem like a big difference but it is. The former creates arbitrary roadblocks: people refusing the vaccines no matter the incentives. It causes people to form junk "science" to justify why 2 + 2 actually equals 5. The latter allows people to compromise: I'm not intrinsically opposed to X, I'm just opposed because of Y, and if you can solve Y than I no longer care about X. People need to accept cognitive dissonance more. And accepting cognitive dissonance means accepting that sometimes you're the dumb guy or the bad guy. But everyone is the dumb guy or bad guy at some point, whether or not they accept it. Accepting means that you can correct your mistakes and be the dumb/bad guy less often. Unfortunately it's against human nature to accept cognitive dissonance: it literally causes stress. I don't even think I can fully accept cognitive dissonances. But I believe we can teach people how to resolve cognitive dissonance better, so that people can accept that they have flaws and make mistakes, without accepting that they're a failure.

rtikulit 5y ago
You are making an amazingly important point. If one accepts "all models are wrong, some are useful" then it fairly directly follows that cognitive dissonance is essential and irreducible and when one encounters it maybe examine one's models? Aka how and why one thinks and feels? Zen shout-out: This is non-dualism in another guise, and a key Zen practice is to confront irreducible dissonance and batter yourself against it until you are forced to develop and internalize higher-order cognitive and emotional models that can represent contradictions and reason/feel over them to produce useful results.

ZoomerCretin 5y ago

>It continued with tests. It's much better to have a high rate of false positives than to have any rate of false negatives, so they pumped up the cycle count to accomplish this. They later toned it down. To the public, the tests aren't even questioned, most people believe they're pretty accurate, and most people are unaware that they have changed the criteria throughout the last year and a half. They sold it to the public like this because they knew that people would avoid getting tested and staying quarantined if they didn't trust the tests. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Do you have a source for this?

deleted 5y ago
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tablespoon 5y ago

> It started with masks. The studies that we had about masks really were not great, but they did a risk-reward calculation behind closed doors: worst case scenario, the surgical masks don't impact the spread and it changes nothing; best case scenario, we reduce community spread. The problem with this is that if they told the public that this was how they were thinking about the problem, they wouldn't get people wearing the masks, so they overstated their confidence in it when speaking to the public. A good amount of people truly believe that the science was clear. But it wasn't. That's not how I remember it. IIRC, the CDC dragged their feet on recommending masking because of the same lack of explicit studies you cite and supply chain worries. Then once they did recommend masks, you have a much of people citing their "flip flop" as a reason not to trust them. > It was obvious that this was going to be with us for the rest of our lives back all the way in April of last year (or earlier). IIRC, no one knew shit in April 2020. Your statement feels like its heavily influenced by hindsight bias. > We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. Is their purpose to exact change on society, or is their purpose to do good science and tell us honest results? All of the confusion in this article stems from the misrepresentations they sell us. I think you're confused. I'm not sure exactly who you're counting as "science agencies," but if it's the kind of agencies I'm thinking of, I wouldn't say their purpose is either to "exact change on society" or to "do good science and tell us honest results." Their purpose it to come up with public policy to solve actual problems in the face of rather severe uncertainty. Hopefully that based on good science (which may be psychology/sociology), but that's often not possible. It's not "lying" to not share your exact level of pessimism/cynicism or to be unable to make statements about the future with the benefit of hindsight.