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Just so I understand, the one thing about flip flopping on masks cost them to lose faith in all medical experts? Doesn't that seem a little unreasonable? I ag

Just so I understand, the one thing about flip flopping on masks cost them to lose faith in all medical experts? Doesn't that seem a little unreasonable? I agree we shouldn't have flip flopped on masks, but I don't think making a whole narrative out of that makes sense.

speedybird 5y ago
It's much easier to lose trust than it is to earn it. Lie just once and you can wipe out years of hard-won good will. Isn't it a bit unreasonable to lie but expect people to still trust you as they did before? This is not some new premise that the authorities got blindsided by; Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They should have known better than to lie, no matter the motivation for a lie.
- hackingforfun 5y ago
  I saw the flip flopping on masks and thought it was silly for them to do that. However, I also was not going to not get the COVID shot over that, because, based on my own assessment, getting the shot made sense. Anyway, I'm just surprised a whole narrative was built around something I would consider really not a huge deal. Folks could buy masks anyway, even without them being recommended (I did). It's not like masks were illegal to buy or something.
  - speedybird 5y ago
    Different people have different experiences. Different people have different thresholds for trust. Different people have different prior experiences. Some people have witnessed and been harmed by more lies than others. What does or doesn't seem like an overreaction to you, me, or others is going to be different to one degree or another to every individual. What you judge to be a small inconsequential lie may seem like a much bigger deal to other people who have other experiences and viewpoints. That's why the mask lie was not merely silly, it was flat out idiotic. Those responsible, the liars, assumed that everybody else would have the same tolerance for falsehoods as themselves. That was a myopic assumption to say the least. (I got vaccinated too, but I have no particular animosity towards those that haven't. They are, if anything, victims of the government's long history of being untrustworthy.)
    - hackingforfun 5y ago
      Yeah, based on what you said, I agree it was idiotic. I personally still don't think it's a hill worth dying on though, but that's just my opinion.
  - colpabar 5y ago
    > Folks could buy masks anyway They couldn't for a while though, and that's an aspect of the whole fiasco that really bugged me personally. The initial claim was that we do not need masks, because they are not effective and because if we all buy them then hospitals will run out, so I did not buy any. Then, we were told that we all must wear masks, and there were none available. I was re-using a disposable mask for several days at a time because I had no idea where to get them. It was really frustrating to see wealthy politicians and celebrities telling everyone to "just wear your mask!" because the rest of us could not find any to wear.
    - hackingforfun 5y ago
      Yeah, fair, I still don't know what them recommending this earlier would've done though. It just would've made the shortage sooner, right? It seems that's what they were trying to prevent. I do get that people don't like that they were lied to though, and then mandates were hard to follow when implemented, if people couldn't acquire masks. The pandemic exposed, and continues to expose, issues with our supply chains. If there was an abundance of masks to start with, I don't think the government would've flip flopped on masks in the first place, but since supplies were what they were, I'm not sure there's a good answer here.
      - colpabar 5y ago
        I don't have a good answer either. I understand public health at a national level is about being pragmatic and doing things that actually work, and I can honestly understand if they acted the way they did to try and give hospitals some lead time to stock up before the masses did. But even if this was the case, they have not told us about it, and continue to deny that anyone ever said not to mask up. The tweet[0] from the surgeon general was deleted. The CDC page[1] has been taken down. So not only did they lie, they are now lying about lying, and I'm not going to forget that the next time I'm told to "trust the experts." [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1233725785283932160 https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://twitter.c... [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229164715/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200229164715/https://www.cdc.g...
evandwight 5y ago
Sorry, I don't have an answer for you. I was just trying to clarify the context with a more charitable interpretation of GP's point.
Jensson 5y ago
> Just so I understand, the one thing about flip flopping on masks cost them to lose faith in all medical experts? Doesn't that seem a little unreasonable? Have you never heard of racism, bias etc? Yes, when a representative for a group does something then that will affect peoples views of that entire group and not just that person. Humans are irrational like that.
- hackingforfun 5y ago
  Yes I do understand that. I just hope people would put things in perspective and be a bit more rational. I think racism, bias and all that comes from people taking hard line stances on things, possibly things they inherited from their upbringing, political party, etc. If we take a hard line stance on this as well, I don't see what value we are adding. The way I look at the mask guideline was that it was a mistake but it was an evolving situation with the pandemic, so I understand why some of the actions taken, in retrospect, were not ideal.
  - pandaman 5y ago
    Trust is irrational by definition: you are trusting somebody is being truthful without any proof. However, refusing trust after it has been broken even once is rational: not only you still don't have any proof but now you have the evidence that that person/entity can lie to you. You might have heard this saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" what do you think it's about?
    - hackingforfun 5y ago
      What you are saying makes sense in a limited context, however, applying it to changing mask guidelines does not make sense to me. I think rationality is also figuring in all the factors, like an evolving pandemic and supply chain issues, but that's just my opinion.
- paul_f 5y ago
  We were told that Fauci and the CDC speak for the medical establishment. And that if you disagree with them you were anti-science, and Google/Twitter/Facebook would censor you. I still trust my doctor, I long ago stopped trusting the political "doctors."
thedrbrian 5y ago
Not just that. In the UK the government are claiming that the virus effects everyone equally and yet everyday the deaths are concentrated in the 60+ brackets. Their latest program has them claiming all pregnant women need the vaccine because it's putting them at massive risk of the worst ventilator and yet the figures show just 20 pregnant women in the last 4 months needed the machine and the other 100 people were fully vaxxed. EDIT:Forgot the bit where the JCVI recommended against vaccinating the under 18s but the government ignored the science because vaccines=good https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-august-2021-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-aged-12-to-17-years/jcvi-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-aged-12-to-17-years-4-august-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-au... And I also forgot the Whitty charts which led to a winter lockdown and 4000 deaths per day. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8908503/Was-lockdown-sold-LIE-Oxford-scientist-says-4-000-deaths-graph-NOT-used.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8908503/Was-lockdow... And then there's immunity through infection which stopped being a thing in 2020.
- concordDance 5y ago
  > In the UK the government are claiming that the virus effects everyone equally No they aren't. Some disreputable news sites may imply that, but government representatives have not said this.
- CaptainMarvel 5y ago
  I’m going to call bullshit on everything you just said. > the UK the government are claiming that the virus effects everyone equally I haven’t heard anyone from the government say that. > claiming all pregnant women need the vaccine because it's putting them at massive risk of the worst ventilator and yet the figures show just 20 pregnant women in the last 4 months needed the machine and the other 100 people were fully vaxxed. Here is literally an article from a few days ago that shows 1-in-6 are pregnant women and that the vast majority have NOT had the vaccine. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/11/one-in-six-most-critically-ill-patients-are-unvaccinated-pregnant-women-with-covid https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/11/one-in-... You know what, forgot it. If this doesn’t prompt you to reconsider your sources, refuting every single point you made won’t either.
CWuestefeld 5y ago
No, masks aren't the only thing, it's just that it's somehow become the symbol for the whole thing. But we've got a whole series of documented lies from Fauci. He's admitted to lying about herd immunity numbers [1]. He's had a whole sequence of confrontations with Rand Paul, first claiming that the USA wasn't funding the research there (we were), and then claiming that it wasn't "gain of function" research (it didn't precisely fit the technical definition, but a common sense parsing of the description is that it's exactly what they were doing). And right from the start, we've got the WHO lying, apparently to cover China's butt. The WHO demonstrably knew that covid-19 could be transmitted between people, and that it was airborne, yet claimed publicly that it had no evidence of either, and went as far as to praise China's response to the outbreak. [2] [1] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/25/dr-fauci-admits-to-misleading-the-public-on-health-information-n2582119 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/25/dr-fau... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-china-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-china-in...
kcplate 5y ago
Closing borders is racist. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Don’t mask. Mask. Stay Inside. Trump didn’t close the borders fast enough! Double mask. Protest crowds are not superspreaders. Trump Rallies are superspreaders. School is dangerous, distance learning is good. Go outside, inside is bad. Dems-don’t trust Trump Vaccines. Biden/Pelosi - we can’t mandate vaccination. Dems-you must trust our vaccines, they are effective. Biden/Pelosi- we are mandating vaccines. No mask if vaccinated. School is good, kids don’t get it. Still mask if vaccinated. School is bad, kids are getting it. Vaccine boosters because they are not as effective as we thought. Did I miss anything? Edit: added some punctuation for clarity
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Ya, people who have problems with dynamic situations (e.g. best practices continually changing via new information coming in) have had real problems with this pandemic. They wanted a static stable unchanging story from the onset, and were very disappointed and anxious when they didn't get that. But everything you’ve written above is simply condemning authorities because they didn’t have the best solution from the onset.
  - kcplate 5y ago
    This wasn’t an evolutionary change of best practices. This was waffling from one extreme to another, then back again. When you do that, people will lose confidence in leadership. Everything I wrote above condemns authorities not because they didn’t have the best solution from the start, but by all appearances never had a solution at all. Additionally, one party by my observation spent more time trying to exploit the pandemic for political power gains rather than treating it as a problem to solve.
    - paul_f 5y ago
      Exactly. The CDC went from masks don't work, to everyone wear masks, to no masks if vaccinated, to wear a mask even if vaccinated. In 18 months.

speedybird 5y ago

It's much easier to lose trust than it is to earn it. Lie just once and you can wipe out years of hard-won good will. Isn't it a bit unreasonable to lie but expect people to still trust you as they did before? This is not some new premise that the authorities got blindsided by; Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They should have known better than to lie, no matter the motivation for a lie.

hackingforfun 5y ago
I saw the flip flopping on masks and thought it was silly for them to do that. However, I also was not going to not get the COVID shot over that, because, based on my own assessment, getting the shot made sense. Anyway, I'm just surprised a whole narrative was built around something I would consider really not a huge deal. Folks could buy masks anyway, even without them being recommended (I did). It's not like masks were illegal to buy or something.
- speedybird 5y ago
  Different people have different experiences. Different people have different thresholds for trust. Different people have different prior experiences. Some people have witnessed and been harmed by more lies than others. What does or doesn't seem like an overreaction to you, me, or others is going to be different to one degree or another to every individual. What you judge to be a small inconsequential lie may seem like a much bigger deal to other people who have other experiences and viewpoints. That's why the mask lie was not merely silly, it was flat out idiotic. Those responsible, the liars, assumed that everybody else would have the same tolerance for falsehoods as themselves. That was a myopic assumption to say the least. (I got vaccinated too, but I have no particular animosity towards those that haven't. They are, if anything, victims of the government's long history of being untrustworthy.)
  - hackingforfun 5y ago
    Yeah, based on what you said, I agree it was idiotic. I personally still don't think it's a hill worth dying on though, but that's just my opinion.
- colpabar 5y ago
  > Folks could buy masks anyway They couldn't for a while though, and that's an aspect of the whole fiasco that really bugged me personally. The initial claim was that we do not need masks, because they are not effective and because if we all buy them then hospitals will run out, so I did not buy any. Then, we were told that we all must wear masks, and there were none available. I was re-using a disposable mask for several days at a time because I had no idea where to get them. It was really frustrating to see wealthy politicians and celebrities telling everyone to "just wear your mask!" because the rest of us could not find any to wear.
  - hackingforfun 5y ago
    Yeah, fair, I still don't know what them recommending this earlier would've done though. It just would've made the shortage sooner, right? It seems that's what they were trying to prevent. I do get that people don't like that they were lied to though, and then mandates were hard to follow when implemented, if people couldn't acquire masks. The pandemic exposed, and continues to expose, issues with our supply chains. If there was an abundance of masks to start with, I don't think the government would've flip flopped on masks in the first place, but since supplies were what they were, I'm not sure there's a good answer here.
    - colpabar 5y ago
      I don't have a good answer either. I understand public health at a national level is about being pragmatic and doing things that actually work, and I can honestly understand if they acted the way they did to try and give hospitals some lead time to stock up before the masses did. But even if this was the case, they have not told us about it, and continue to deny that anyone ever said not to mask up. The tweet[0] from the surgeon general was deleted. The CDC page[1] has been taken down. So not only did they lie, they are now lying about lying, and I'm not going to forget that the next time I'm told to "trust the experts." [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1233725785283932160 https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://twitter.c... [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200229164715/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200229164715/https://www.cdc.g...

evandwight 5y ago

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you. I was just trying to clarify the context with a more charitable interpretation of GP's point.

Jensson 5y ago

> Just so I understand, the one thing about flip flopping on masks cost them to lose faith in all medical experts? Doesn't that seem a little unreasonable? Have you never heard of racism, bias etc? Yes, when a representative for a group does something then that will affect peoples views of that entire group and not just that person. Humans are irrational like that.

hackingforfun 5y ago
Yes I do understand that. I just hope people would put things in perspective and be a bit more rational. I think racism, bias and all that comes from people taking hard line stances on things, possibly things they inherited from their upbringing, political party, etc. If we take a hard line stance on this as well, I don't see what value we are adding. The way I look at the mask guideline was that it was a mistake but it was an evolving situation with the pandemic, so I understand why some of the actions taken, in retrospect, were not ideal.
- pandaman 5y ago
  Trust is irrational by definition: you are trusting somebody is being truthful without any proof. However, refusing trust after it has been broken even once is rational: not only you still don't have any proof but now you have the evidence that that person/entity can lie to you. You might have heard this saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" what do you think it's about?
  - hackingforfun 5y ago
    What you are saying makes sense in a limited context, however, applying it to changing mask guidelines does not make sense to me. I think rationality is also figuring in all the factors, like an evolving pandemic and supply chain issues, but that's just my opinion.
paul_f 5y ago
We were told that Fauci and the CDC speak for the medical establishment. And that if you disagree with them you were anti-science, and Google/Twitter/Facebook would censor you. I still trust my doctor, I long ago stopped trusting the political "doctors."

thedrbrian 5y ago

Not just that. In the UK the government are claiming that the virus effects everyone equally and yet everyday the deaths are concentrated in the 60+ brackets. Their latest program has them claiming all pregnant women need the vaccine because it's putting them at massive risk of the worst ventilator and yet the figures show just 20 pregnant women in the last 4 months needed the machine and the other 100 people were fully vaxxed. EDIT:Forgot the bit where the JCVI recommended against vaccinating the under 18s but the government ignored the science because vaccines=good https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-august-2021-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-aged-12-to-17-years/jcvi-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-and-young-people-aged-12-to-17-years-4-august-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-au... And I also forgot the Whitty charts which led to a winter lockdown and 4000 deaths per day. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8908503/Was-lockdown-sold-LIE-Oxford-scientist-says-4-000-deaths-graph-NOT-used.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8908503/Was-lockdow... And then there's immunity through infection which stopped being a thing in 2020.

concordDance 5y ago
> In the UK the government are claiming that the virus effects everyone equally No they aren't. Some disreputable news sites may imply that, but government representatives have not said this.
CaptainMarvel 5y ago
I’m going to call bullshit on everything you just said. > the UK the government are claiming that the virus effects everyone equally I haven’t heard anyone from the government say that. > claiming all pregnant women need the vaccine because it's putting them at massive risk of the worst ventilator and yet the figures show just 20 pregnant women in the last 4 months needed the machine and the other 100 people were fully vaxxed. Here is literally an article from a few days ago that shows 1-in-6 are pregnant women and that the vast majority have NOT had the vaccine. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/11/one-in-six-most-critically-ill-patients-are-unvaccinated-pregnant-women-with-covid https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/11/one-in-... You know what, forgot it. If this doesn’t prompt you to reconsider your sources, refuting every single point you made won’t either.

CWuestefeld 5y ago

No, masks aren't the only thing, it's just that it's somehow become the symbol for the whole thing. But we've got a whole series of documented lies from Fauci. He's admitted to lying about herd immunity numbers [1]. He's had a whole sequence of confrontations with Rand Paul, first claiming that the USA wasn't funding the research there (we were), and then claiming that it wasn't "gain of function" research (it didn't precisely fit the technical definition, but a common sense parsing of the description is that it's exactly what they were doing). And right from the start, we've got the WHO lying, apparently to cover China's butt. The WHO demonstrably knew that covid-19 could be transmitted between people, and that it was airborne, yet claimed publicly that it had no evidence of either, and went as far as to praise China's response to the outbreak. [2] [1] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/25/dr-fauci-admits-to-misleading-the-public-on-health-information-n2582119 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/25/dr-fau... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-china-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-china-in...

kcplate 5y ago

Closing borders is racist. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Don’t mask. Mask. Stay Inside. Trump didn’t close the borders fast enough! Double mask. Protest crowds are not superspreaders. Trump Rallies are superspreaders. School is dangerous, distance learning is good. Go outside, inside is bad. Dems-don’t trust Trump Vaccines. Biden/Pelosi - we can’t mandate vaccination. Dems-you must trust our vaccines, they are effective. Biden/Pelosi- we are mandating vaccines. No mask if vaccinated. School is good, kids don’t get it. Still mask if vaccinated. School is bad, kids are getting it. Vaccine boosters because they are not as effective as we thought. Did I miss anything? Edit: added some punctuation for clarity

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Ya, people who have problems with dynamic situations (e.g. best practices continually changing via new information coming in) have had real problems with this pandemic. They wanted a static stable unchanging story from the onset, and were very disappointed and anxious when they didn't get that. But everything you’ve written above is simply condemning authorities because they didn’t have the best solution from the onset.
- kcplate 5y ago
  This wasn’t an evolutionary change of best practices. This was waffling from one extreme to another, then back again. When you do that, people will lose confidence in leadership. Everything I wrote above condemns authorities not because they didn’t have the best solution from the start, but by all appearances never had a solution at all. Additionally, one party by my observation spent more time trying to exploit the pandemic for political power gains rather than treating it as a problem to solve.
  - paul_f 5y ago
    Exactly. The CDC went from masks don't work, to everyone wear masks, to no masks if vaccinated, to wear a mask even if vaccinated. In 18 months.