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While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to manipulate populations into a desir

by isolli 5y ago

While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.

jowday 5y ago
I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true. I've got family in a small town in the south - the countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.
- errantmind 5y ago
  Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > skepticism that resulted from the lies Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are just being used as post-hoc rationalization.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Vaccination rates were equal between democrats and Republicans as late as the end of April.
      - endymi0n 5y ago
        This is as false at it can get: https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/poll-finds-startling-difference-vaccinations-among-us-republicans-and-democrats https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/poll-finds-startli...
        SamReidHughes 5y ago
        Comment dated April, article dated July.
        rayiner 5y ago
        Yes: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rates/ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covi... As of April 22, the vaccination rates between the parties was almost identical. The differential in vaccination rates is largely about people under 65. If you look at over 65 rates red states and blue states are much closer. 88.4% of people over 65 in Kansas are fully vaccinated. That’s higher than California, Illinois, and New York.
        rootusrootus 5y ago
        I've noticed that as the risk becomes too high to ignore, people do finally put their politics aside when they have a reasonable expectation that their life actually does ride on the decision.
        rayiner 5y ago
        I would probably frame that the opposite way. People under 65 have a pretty low risk of COVID. Less than 20% of COVID deaths are for people under 65, and only 3% are people under 45. Liberal politics might convince a young, healthy 35 year old to get vaccinated out of concern for others. Geography also matters. There is a visceral awareness of being exposed to others’ germs in a place like NYC that’s simply absent in Iowa or Utah. A guy who takes a bus to work every day is going to be acutely aware of transmission risks in a way that a guy who drives to work every day won’t.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      The lies have been coming for decades, these are just new lies.
    - TheBlight 5y ago
      The first vocal skeptics were Kamala Harris and Joe Biden back when they were referred to as the Trump vaccines.
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
        Harris: If doctors say I should take it I'll be the first in line but if Donald Trumps says I should take it I won't take it. What she wanted is what everyone should want is for the vaccine to be vetted. When it was she took it. She expressed doubt not in medical science, not in the vaccine, but in the claims of Donald Trump.
        TheBlight 5y ago
        That would maybe be a passing defense if you legitimately thought Donald Trump created the vaccines by himself and they weren't a product from Pfizer etc.
        MereInterest 5y ago
        With the history that Trump had for firing people who did follow unreasonable orders (e.g. Rod Rosenstein), it becomes entirely plausible that he would fire any FDA head who did not support a vaccine, regardless of the science behind them. As things turned out, the studies did support the vaccine, but it was not unreasonable to draw a distinction between unbiased experts and experts under threat of firing.
        BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
        The vaccines didn't exist at that point; We didn't know how effective or safe they would turn out to be (at least in their first iteration), so obviously it would have been ridiculous to commit blindly to taking them. Once trial results were released, we learned that they're highly effective and that risks of bad reactions are exceedingly rare (especially when compared to the effects of the virus itself).
      - cma 5y ago
        Probably from when Trump said he was going to get the vaccine out early, a couple days before the election: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/white-house-aide-says-trumps-vaccine-by-election-day-promise-was-arbitrary-433670 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/white-house-aide-sa...
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true. I agree. For someone whose threshold of 'did the authorities lie about masks' is one cherry-picked example, there was never any hope. They were absolutely going to find someone to confirm their already-existing beliefs.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Nonsense. There's such a thing as people on the margin. On any binary issue most pieces of evidence "won't matter" to most people, in that that one piece of evidence is unlikely to be the one that "flips" the person, but that doesn't mean people are ignoring the evidence - it's just that most of the time any given piece of evidence is the difference between 99% believing and 98% believing rather than the difference between 50% believing and 49% believing.
  - tomp 5y ago
    There’s a whole list of lies from the pst 19 months. - There is no pandemic” - “Masks don’t work” - “Border closures are racist” - “3 weeks to stop the spread” - “The virus definitely didn’t come from a lab” - “Antibodies only last 3 months” - “There will be no vaccine passports” - “We’re not manipulating COVID data” - “Vaccines are 100% safe” - “Lockdowns are for your own safety” - “Don’t take drugs meant for horses” - “Measures are guided by science” - “We’re all in this together” - “If you get vaccinated you’ll get your freedom back”
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  > if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff When did authorities lie? The position on masks changed over time as data was acquired. Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about. But I think ascribing a malicious intent to that learning process is disingenuous. The only people that have made literally malicious claims have been people on the far-right, which unfortunately are some authorities so I guess you're right about Trump and his bootlicks who intentionally lied for personal gain. And continue to do so.
  - borplk 5y ago
    They lied about masks. It's plain and simple. The science on masks is not exactly new or bleeding edge. You have to be unbelievably naive to accept that "the position changed".
    - cma 5y ago
      They were usually very careful in the wording, saying no evidence outside of a medical setting for this type of virus. And mentioned it usually insane breath as conserving masks for medical workers. It was manipulative and steering behavior, but in most cases I've seen not lying.
      - cma 5y ago
        *in the same breath
    - SavantIdiot 5y ago
      > You have to be unbelievably naive to accept that "the position changed". ...or have a functioning knowledge of science. Your trail of anti-vax nonsense doesn't really serve you well in this modality.
    - jonnycomputer 5y ago
      What specifically was the lie told. This is what I'm confused about. There was a point where it wasn't believed that asymptomatic infection was likely. In that case, wearing masks is less beneficial.
- tommymachine 5y ago
  And that whole side of your family is dead, right?
  - jowday 5y ago
    No, but we had to put off a lot of medical procedures my grandparents needed done because the hospital beds were so full that they were airlifting people to other states. We also had to move them out of the assisted living facility they were in and provide 24/7 care because the facility started allowing visitors without any screenings.
bedhead 5y ago
Amen. We have been so unbelievably myopic with COVID it truly hurts my head. Even today, ask someone who's COVID-obsessed, "What exactly is your longer-term plan here?" and watch as their mind breaks down. Too many people have completely stopped thinking about what they're trying to achieve and how they're going to do it. Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous. Which half?
  - syshum 5y ago
    The 1/2 at the extremes ends of the Horseshoe of Politics... The Covid Deniers, and the Authoritarian "new normal" types that believe government is our parent. People that believe when it comes to COVID I should have no personal choice, I have to either be forced to vaxx, or the vaxx should be banned, I should be forced to mask, or the mask should be banned... People that reject liberty in the face of emergency
    - wavefunction 5y ago
      The problem is that we tried to allow people to be "personally responsible" and we ended up with a worse wave of the pandemic than the original one. People were not responsible, and they were definitely not "personally responsible" seeing how they've tied up our medical system, burnt out medical workers and kept people with normal medical emergencies or conditions from getting the care they require. Liberty is freedom+responsibility. All I hear about is freedom without responsibility though.
      - syshum 5y ago
        So your rebuttable is "we gave you a choice, and you choose wrong" That is not really a choice. Does the mugger give me a "choice" when he holds a gun to my head and threatens me with violence if do not do as he desire.
wpietri 5y ago
I think there's a big difference between lying and saying "most people want very simple answers, so let's boil all of this down to something that fits in a 30-second PSA". And honestly, 30-seconds is pretty long these days in terms of attention span. I agree they should also have more information at various levels so people who want to know more can dig in. But people don't make most choices on anything like a purely rational basis. Asking doctors and public health experts to pretend otherwise when designing their general-audience comms guarantees a higher death toll for no appreciable gain. As an example, take a look at how we've tackled drunk driving over the last 40 years. Groups like MADD definitely can make rational, data driven appeals. But the reason they were so successful is that they were extremely good at making emotional appeals. Take MADD itself, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The founder, Cindi Lightner lost her 13-year-old daughter to drunk driving. The driver, who drove off and left her body behind, recently had been arrested for DUI. Lightner's personal story, which is heartbreaking, is central to their effectiveness. The result: drunk driving, which was laughed off previously, is now taken very seriously, and deaths are down 40% despite VMT doubling.
- sneakymichael 5y ago
  What is 'VMT'?
  - cm2012 5y ago
    Vehicle miles traveled
- el-salvador 5y ago
  Would a catchy song like the one from Singapore work? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2T3YgyaHA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2T3YgyaHA
nsxwolf 5y ago
I believe we'd see more people choose to be vaccinated if we'd: * Stop lying * Stop threatening * Stop mocking people when they die
- nielsbot 5y ago
  You think not mocking people when they die will increase vaccination rates? I honestly don't really know, but I'm skeptical. Adding social pressure to vaccinate is useful I think tho. We will see what happens with these new mandates.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >You think not mocking people when they die will increase vaccination rates? I honestly don't really know, but I'm skeptical. Sure, say you had a parent or close family member die, then someone mocked that. How would you feel about that person? Would you listen to anything they had to say, or just want to punch them in the face? >Adding social pressure to vaccinate is useful I think tho. I don't know the answer, but shaming people and mocking them hasn't worked in the last 20 years; in fact it's made us even more partisan, divided and hateful towards each other. Why do you think it would work now?
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      > Would you listen to anything they had to say, or just want to punch them in the face? They're not listening now. We've passed the point where persuadable people in good faith are holding out (for what? The full FDA approval was two weeks ago.) It's time to go the other way and mandate the vaccine -or- frequent testing (I think 1/week is too infrequent) -or- they can preemptively isolate themselves from society.
      - Clubber 5y ago
        So you are making a common mistake, you are considering a huge swath of people from a wide range of demographics and political persuasions as a single cognitive entity. They are not. Let's say you don't shame, you get an additional 15% uptake. Let's say you do shame, you only get 5%. Shaming is part of the problem for reasons I stated above. It certainly makes the people shaming feel better about themselves, but it's a net negative to the outcome of which those people are purporting solve. Bottom line, shitting on people is never effective.
tshaddox 5y ago
But where's the lie? If it's true that public health would be better if nearly everyone got the vaccine, then it isn't a lie to say that nearly everyone should get the vaccine in order to improve public health.
HWR_14 5y ago
It's not lying to them. It's saying "regardless of if it is medically effective, we as a society will not accept it."
sneak 5y ago
No, that's not lying.
ryandrake 5y ago
OP's statement recognizes that incentives matter. If you remove the incentive to do the right thing, people will simply not do the right thing--If 2020 has taught us anything it has to be that! You can't just rely on everyone being a rational actor and let Nash Equilibrium keep society functioning. It becomes a gigantic Prisoners Dilemma with everyone choosing DEFECT. You complain that "not recognizing natural immunity" is lying, but you did not address the fact that doing so incentivizes behavior leading to better long-term results for society. Think of all the untrue things that are said every day in order to not induce panic in our financial system, to discourage bank runs, to discourage hoarding/scalping, to generally promote a functional society. This isn't lying, it's results-driven communication.
- peteradio 5y ago
  You fail to recognize that 30% plus genuinely did have covid. Why focus on a handful of potential bad actors when largely you should give the benefit of the doubt.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    We shouldn't give the benefit of the doubt. We should define what an acceptable post-infection antibody level is, have people get blood tests, and issue something similar to the CDC vaccination card that attests that the bearer has natural immunity. Those should be accepted as equivalent to a CDC vax card where one is needed. I do agree that doing this would likely further slow down vaccination rates, even among unvaccinated people who have not yet gotten COVID. Many will just accept the risk of getting the virus, and then some will end up in the hospital, and some will die. So while I'm uncomfortable with the lack of acceptance around post-infection immunity when appropriate, I do think it's understandable.
- kardianos 5y ago
  You're an elitist. Go talk to regular people who value truth.
- dnissley 5y ago
  The reason that it's lying is that natural immunity does provide decent protection. You're so focused on incentives in the small that you forgot about incentives in the large -- this type of bs is exactly why people feel entitled to opt into believing "alternative facts".
TheCondor 5y ago
What lies are you referring to? Just out of curiosity.
arwhatever 5y ago
Mark Twain - “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
deleted 5y ago
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ineptech 5y ago
> Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run. Manipulating populations is what governments do. Subsidizing milk prices, fining people who litter, inspecting the electrical work in new houses, those are all "trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior". As for the "lying" part, I don't see it. What I assume that the antivax side wants is some sort of rule like, "If you get a test showing some level of antibodies, you can be exempt from vaccine mandates" policy. That might be sound policy or it might not, I dunno, but "the government isn't implementing my preferred policy" is very different from "the government is lying".
- bobbytit 5y ago
  People like this need to be reminded that they are public servants, not masters. Very severely.
enkid 5y ago
But it's not lying. If you have had COVID, you should still get the shot. The science is not close on this, the vaccine provides additional immunity in addition to what you get from catching COVID.
- isolli 5y ago
  The science is actually far from settled on this. There is no randomized controlled trial of vaccinating the previously infected. And while this pre-print [0] establishes that natural immunity is far stronger than vaccine-only immunity, the result is not conclusive for natural immunity + vaccine: “Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 seem to gain additional protection from a subsequent single-dose vaccine regimen. Though this finding corresponds to previous reports, we could not demonstrate significance in our cohort.” [0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
  - enkid 5y ago
    If you are talking about significance, you are taking that quote completely out of context. There's a reason we give people two doses, but this study only looked at one dose and still found an effect. It didn't reach the technical level of "significance," but that does not mean it is not there. If your saying it supports me, that's not enough evidence. Here's a different study that looked at both doses and found you were twice as likely to be reinfected if you didn't get the vaccine. [0] So, what did we learn? The science seems confident that getting the full regimen of the vaccine is a good idea because it lowers you chance of getting reinfected and the likelihood of side effects are extremely small. [0]
deleted 5y ago
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BoxOfRain 5y ago
I couldn't agree more. I get that it's tempting short-term, but lies aren't free and the interest on that debt is extremely expensive. If you're a public authority, the price of lies is an inevitable corrosion of your abilty to govern even if you're successful in the short term. Everything about our public health response has been fairly short-termist without any kind of consideration for the enormous long-term collateral damage that has been done to public institutions and people's faith in them. History will particularly condemn the lying and the abuse of behavioural psychology I think, even if people think it's justified now because of the pandemic. May the record for future generations be be accurate, because that's the bleak legacy our leaders deserve.

by isolli 5y ago

jowday 5y ago

I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true. I've got family in a small town in the south - the countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.

errantmind 5y ago
Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > skepticism that resulted from the lies Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are just being used as post-hoc rationalization.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Vaccination rates were equal between democrats and Republicans as late as the end of April.
    - endymi0n 5y ago
      This is as false at it can get: https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/poll-finds-startling-difference-vaccinations-among-us-republicans-and-democrats https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/poll-finds-startli...
      - SamReidHughes 5y ago
        Comment dated April, article dated July.
        rayiner 5y ago
        Yes: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rates/ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covi... As of April 22, the vaccination rates between the parties was almost identical. The differential in vaccination rates is largely about people under 65. If you look at over 65 rates red states and blue states are much closer. 88.4% of people over 65 in Kansas are fully vaccinated. That’s higher than California, Illinois, and New York.
        rootusrootus 5y ago
        I've noticed that as the risk becomes too high to ignore, people do finally put their politics aside when they have a reasonable expectation that their life actually does ride on the decision.
        rayiner 5y ago
        I would probably frame that the opposite way. People under 65 have a pretty low risk of COVID. Less than 20% of COVID deaths are for people under 65, and only 3% are people under 45. Liberal politics might convince a young, healthy 35 year old to get vaccinated out of concern for others. Geography also matters. There is a visceral awareness of being exposed to others’ germs in a place like NYC that’s simply absent in Iowa or Utah. A guy who takes a bus to work every day is going to be acutely aware of transmission risks in a way that a guy who drives to work every day won’t.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    The lies have been coming for decades, these are just new lies.
  - TheBlight 5y ago
    The first vocal skeptics were Kamala Harris and Joe Biden back when they were referred to as the Trump vaccines.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      Harris: If doctors say I should take it I'll be the first in line but if Donald Trumps says I should take it I won't take it. What she wanted is what everyone should want is for the vaccine to be vetted. When it was she took it. She expressed doubt not in medical science, not in the vaccine, but in the claims of Donald Trump.
      - TheBlight 5y ago
        That would maybe be a passing defense if you legitimately thought Donald Trump created the vaccines by himself and they weren't a product from Pfizer etc.
        MereInterest 5y ago
        With the history that Trump had for firing people who did follow unreasonable orders (e.g. Rod Rosenstein), it becomes entirely plausible that he would fire any FDA head who did not support a vaccine, regardless of the science behind them. As things turned out, the studies did support the vaccine, but it was not unreasonable to draw a distinction between unbiased experts and experts under threat of firing.
        BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
        The vaccines didn't exist at that point; We didn't know how effective or safe they would turn out to be (at least in their first iteration), so obviously it would have been ridiculous to commit blindly to taking them. Once trial results were released, we learned that they're highly effective and that risks of bad reactions are exceedingly rare (especially when compared to the effects of the virus itself).
    - cma 5y ago
      Probably from when Trump said he was going to get the vaccine out early, a couple days before the election: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/white-house-aide-says-trumps-vaccine-by-election-day-promise-was-arbitrary-433670 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/white-house-aide-sa...
rootusrootus 5y ago
> I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true. I agree. For someone whose threshold of 'did the authorities lie about masks' is one cherry-picked example, there was never any hope. They were absolutely going to find someone to confirm their already-existing beliefs.
- lmm 5y ago
  Nonsense. There's such a thing as people on the margin. On any binary issue most pieces of evidence "won't matter" to most people, in that that one piece of evidence is unlikely to be the one that "flips" the person, but that doesn't mean people are ignoring the evidence - it's just that most of the time any given piece of evidence is the difference between 99% believing and 98% believing rather than the difference between 50% believing and 49% believing.
- tomp 5y ago
  There’s a whole list of lies from the pst 19 months. - There is no pandemic” - “Masks don’t work” - “Border closures are racist” - “3 weeks to stop the spread” - “The virus definitely didn’t come from a lab” - “Antibodies only last 3 months” - “There will be no vaccine passports” - “We’re not manipulating COVID data” - “Vaccines are 100% safe” - “Lockdowns are for your own safety” - “Don’t take drugs meant for horses” - “Measures are guided by science” - “We’re all in this together” - “If you get vaccinated you’ll get your freedom back”
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff When did authorities lie? The position on masks changed over time as data was acquired. Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about. But I think ascribing a malicious intent to that learning process is disingenuous. The only people that have made literally malicious claims have been people on the far-right, which unfortunately are some authorities so I guess you're right about Trump and his bootlicks who intentionally lied for personal gain. And continue to do so.
- borplk 5y ago
  They lied about masks. It's plain and simple. The science on masks is not exactly new or bleeding edge. You have to be unbelievably naive to accept that "the position changed".
  - cma 5y ago
    They were usually very careful in the wording, saying no evidence outside of a medical setting for this type of virus. And mentioned it usually insane breath as conserving masks for medical workers. It was manipulative and steering behavior, but in most cases I've seen not lying.
    - cma 5y ago
      *in the same breath
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    > You have to be unbelievably naive to accept that "the position changed". ...or have a functioning knowledge of science. Your trail of anti-vax nonsense doesn't really serve you well in this modality.
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    What specifically was the lie told. This is what I'm confused about. There was a point where it wasn't believed that asymptomatic infection was likely. In that case, wearing masks is less beneficial.
tommymachine 5y ago
And that whole side of your family is dead, right?
- jowday 5y ago
  No, but we had to put off a lot of medical procedures my grandparents needed done because the hospital beds were so full that they were airlifting people to other states. We also had to move them out of the assisted living facility they were in and provide 24/7 care because the facility started allowing visitors without any screenings.

bedhead 5y ago

Amen. We have been so unbelievably myopic with COVID it truly hurts my head. Even today, ask someone who's COVID-obsessed, "What exactly is your longer-term plan here?" and watch as their mind breaks down. Too many people have completely stopped thinking about what they're trying to achieve and how they're going to do it. Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous.

rootusrootus 5y ago
> Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous. Which half?
- syshum 5y ago
  The 1/2 at the extremes ends of the Horseshoe of Politics... The Covid Deniers, and the Authoritarian "new normal" types that believe government is our parent. People that believe when it comes to COVID I should have no personal choice, I have to either be forced to vaxx, or the vaxx should be banned, I should be forced to mask, or the mask should be banned... People that reject liberty in the face of emergency
  - wavefunction 5y ago
    The problem is that we tried to allow people to be "personally responsible" and we ended up with a worse wave of the pandemic than the original one. People were not responsible, and they were definitely not "personally responsible" seeing how they've tied up our medical system, burnt out medical workers and kept people with normal medical emergencies or conditions from getting the care they require. Liberty is freedom+responsibility. All I hear about is freedom without responsibility though.
    - syshum 5y ago
      So your rebuttable is "we gave you a choice, and you choose wrong" That is not really a choice. Does the mugger give me a "choice" when he holds a gun to my head and threatens me with violence if do not do as he desire.

wpietri 5y ago

I think there's a big difference between lying and saying "most people want very simple answers, so let's boil all of this down to something that fits in a 30-second PSA". And honestly, 30-seconds is pretty long these days in terms of attention span. I agree they should also have more information at various levels so people who want to know more can dig in. But people don't make most choices on anything like a purely rational basis. Asking doctors and public health experts to pretend otherwise when designing their general-audience comms guarantees a higher death toll for no appreciable gain. As an example, take a look at how we've tackled drunk driving over the last 40 years. Groups like MADD definitely can make rational, data driven appeals. But the reason they were so successful is that they were extremely good at making emotional appeals. Take MADD itself, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The founder, Cindi Lightner lost her 13-year-old daughter to drunk driving. The driver, who drove off and left her body behind, recently had been arrested for DUI. Lightner's personal story, which is heartbreaking, is central to their effectiveness. The result: drunk driving, which was laughed off previously, is now taken very seriously, and deaths are down 40% despite VMT doubling.

sneakymichael 5y ago
What is 'VMT'?
- cm2012 5y ago
  Vehicle miles traveled
el-salvador 5y ago
Would a catchy song like the one from Singapore work? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2T3YgyaHA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2T3YgyaHA

nsxwolf 5y ago

I believe we'd see more people choose to be vaccinated if we'd: * Stop lying * Stop threatening * Stop mocking people when they die

nielsbot 5y ago
You think not mocking people when they die will increase vaccination rates? I honestly don't really know, but I'm skeptical. Adding social pressure to vaccinate is useful I think tho. We will see what happens with these new mandates.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >You think not mocking people when they die will increase vaccination rates? I honestly don't really know, but I'm skeptical. Sure, say you had a parent or close family member die, then someone mocked that. How would you feel about that person? Would you listen to anything they had to say, or just want to punch them in the face? >Adding social pressure to vaccinate is useful I think tho. I don't know the answer, but shaming people and mocking them hasn't worked in the last 20 years; in fact it's made us even more partisan, divided and hateful towards each other. Why do you think it would work now?
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > Would you listen to anything they had to say, or just want to punch them in the face? They're not listening now. We've passed the point where persuadable people in good faith are holding out (for what? The full FDA approval was two weeks ago.) It's time to go the other way and mandate the vaccine -or- frequent testing (I think 1/week is too infrequent) -or- they can preemptively isolate themselves from society.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      So you are making a common mistake, you are considering a huge swath of people from a wide range of demographics and political persuasions as a single cognitive entity. They are not. Let's say you don't shame, you get an additional 15% uptake. Let's say you do shame, you only get 5%. Shaming is part of the problem for reasons I stated above. It certainly makes the people shaming feel better about themselves, but it's a net negative to the outcome of which those people are purporting solve. Bottom line, shitting on people is never effective.

tshaddox 5y ago

But where's the lie? If it's true that public health would be better if nearly everyone got the vaccine, then it isn't a lie to say that nearly everyone should get the vaccine in order to improve public health.

HWR_14 5y ago

It's not lying to them. It's saying "regardless of if it is medically effective, we as a society will not accept it."

sneak 5y ago

No, that's not lying.

ryandrake 5y ago

OP's statement recognizes that incentives matter. If you remove the incentive to do the right thing, people will simply not do the right thing--If 2020 has taught us anything it has to be that! You can't just rely on everyone being a rational actor and let Nash Equilibrium keep society functioning. It becomes a gigantic Prisoners Dilemma with everyone choosing DEFECT. You complain that "not recognizing natural immunity" is lying, but you did not address the fact that doing so incentivizes behavior leading to better long-term results for society. Think of all the untrue things that are said every day in order to not induce panic in our financial system, to discourage bank runs, to discourage hoarding/scalping, to generally promote a functional society. This isn't lying, it's results-driven communication.

peteradio 5y ago
You fail to recognize that 30% plus genuinely did have covid. Why focus on a handful of potential bad actors when largely you should give the benefit of the doubt.
- kelnos 5y ago
  We shouldn't give the benefit of the doubt. We should define what an acceptable post-infection antibody level is, have people get blood tests, and issue something similar to the CDC vaccination card that attests that the bearer has natural immunity. Those should be accepted as equivalent to a CDC vax card where one is needed. I do agree that doing this would likely further slow down vaccination rates, even among unvaccinated people who have not yet gotten COVID. Many will just accept the risk of getting the virus, and then some will end up in the hospital, and some will die. So while I'm uncomfortable with the lack of acceptance around post-infection immunity when appropriate, I do think it's understandable.
kardianos 5y ago
You're an elitist. Go talk to regular people who value truth.
dnissley 5y ago
The reason that it's lying is that natural immunity does provide decent protection. You're so focused on incentives in the small that you forgot about incentives in the large -- this type of bs is exactly why people feel entitled to opt into believing "alternative facts".

TheCondor 5y ago

What lies are you referring to? Just out of curiosity.

arwhatever 5y ago

Mark Twain - “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

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ineptech 5y ago

> Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run. Manipulating populations is what governments do. Subsidizing milk prices, fining people who litter, inspecting the electrical work in new houses, those are all "trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior". As for the "lying" part, I don't see it. What I assume that the antivax side wants is some sort of rule like, "If you get a test showing some level of antibodies, you can be exempt from vaccine mandates" policy. That might be sound policy or it might not, I dunno, but "the government isn't implementing my preferred policy" is very different from "the government is lying".

bobbytit 5y ago
People like this need to be reminded that they are public servants, not masters. Very severely.

enkid 5y ago

But it's not lying. If you have had COVID, you should still get the shot. The science is not close on this, the vaccine provides additional immunity in addition to what you get from catching COVID.

isolli 5y ago
The science is actually far from settled on this. There is no randomized controlled trial of vaccinating the previously infected. And while this pre-print [0] establishes that natural immunity is far stronger than vaccine-only immunity, the result is not conclusive for natural immunity + vaccine: “Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 seem to gain additional protection from a subsequent single-dose vaccine regimen. Though this finding corresponds to previous reports, we could not demonstrate significance in our cohort.” [0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
- enkid 5y ago
  If you are talking about significance, you are taking that quote completely out of context. There's a reason we give people two doses, but this study only looked at one dose and still found an effect. It didn't reach the technical level of "significance," but that does not mean it is not there. If your saying it supports me, that's not enough evidence. Here's a different study that looked at both doses and found you were twice as likely to be reinfected if you didn't get the vaccine. [0] So, what did we learn? The science seems confident that getting the full regimen of the vaccine is a good idea because it lowers you chance of getting reinfected and the likelihood of side effects are extremely small. [0]

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BoxOfRain 5y ago

I couldn't agree more. I get that it's tempting short-term, but lies aren't free and the interest on that debt is extremely expensive. If you're a public authority, the price of lies is an inevitable corrosion of your abilty to govern even if you're successful in the short term. Everything about our public health response has been fairly short-termist without any kind of consideration for the enormous long-term collateral damage that has been done to public institutions and people's faith in them. History will particularly condemn the lying and the abuse of behavioural psychology I think, even if people think it's justified now because of the pandemic. May the record for future generations be be accurate, because that's the bleak legacy our leaders deserve.