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The goal of public health officials is to reduce the overall amount of deaths / infections / disease spread. The goal is not to ensure maximum survivability fo

by kccqzy 5y ago

The goal of public health officials is to reduce the overall amount of deaths / infections / disease spread. The goal is not to ensure maximum survivability for a specific individual. The mask guidance made perfect sense in this light. For the overall benefit of the society, masks were prioritized for health care professionals rather than the general public, in the face of limited supply. But of course wearing a mask improves your individual survivability so you should wear one even if public health officials tell you not to. The same thing is currently happening with booster (third) shots. For the pandemic to ease worldwide, it is deemed more important to send vaccines to poorer countries with low vaccination rates rather than using them as third shots in rich countries. But if you want to maximize your own chances, of course you should get a third shot. Public health officials deal with the whole population. You deal with a population size of one. It's a net win for them if their health policy reduced disease by a large proportion in one half of a population but increased it slightly in a different half. It's game over for you if you happen to be on the wrong side.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
But public health officials are royally screwed if nobody trusts them. Importantly, I am NOT arguing that health officials should have changed their guidance in early 2020, I'm arguing they should have changed their messaging. "It's vital that people don't go out and buy masks because if you do hospitals will run out of masks and then we're all screwed" is very different from "masks worn by the public don't work".
virtuous_signal 5y ago
I think of myself as someone who "follows the science" and the fact you present is what keeps me skeptical of expert advice. Another example was when the question of which vaccine to get was being asked. Any doctor who knew they were being interviewed, said to get the first one that's available to you. I can see this making sense from a population standpoint, but if I'm personally not trying to get COVID, then of course I'm willing to wait some amount of time to get Moderna/Pfizer rather than J&J. It's just like being told "don't panic", and I honestly don't know if there's any resolution that doesn't involve light deception.

by kccqzy 5y ago

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

But public health officials are royally screwed if nobody trusts them. Importantly, I am NOT arguing that health officials should have changed their guidance in early 2020, I'm arguing they should have changed their messaging. "It's vital that people don't go out and buy masks because if you do hospitals will run out of masks and then we're all screwed" is very different from "masks worn by the public don't work".

virtuous_signal 5y ago

I think of myself as someone who "follows the science" and the fact you present is what keeps me skeptical of expert advice. Another example was when the question of which vaccine to get was being asked. Any doctor who knew they were being interviewed, said to get the first one that's available to you. I can see this making sense from a population standpoint, but if I'm personally not trying to get COVID, then of course I'm willing to wait some amount of time to get Moderna/Pfizer rather than J&J. It's just like being told "don't panic", and I honestly don't know if there's any resolution that doesn't involve light deception.