6 ms·

The new public health despotism

9 points by timthorn 5y ago

nautilius 5y ago
It’s a social contract. A disease that has killed more people in this country than the civil war could have been alleviated significantly had people agreed to wear masks and get vaccinated. Not wearing a mask projects “I don’t care if you live or die”, and is also understood that way. What I don’t understand is that this social contract is the one that is now chosen as a hill to (often literally) die on. People happily follow other social clothing contracts that bring zero benefit to people other than the possibility to impose their will. Where are the people standing up against “no shirt no shoes no service”, what’s the issue with being topless at a beach or swimming nude altogether.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  The same people uprooting our lives also lied about gain-of-function research: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1450947395508858880 https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1450947395508858880 The social contract was breached from the start.
  - nautilius 5y ago
    With ‘people who uproot our lives’ you’re talking about antivaxxers I assume, that needlessly perpetuate a pandemic that we could have defeated months ago? People who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, while still requiring the reasonable rest to pick up the externalities for them (eg people who cannot be vaccinated)?
    - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
      No, and you've already said all this without dodging the issue.
      - nautilius 5y ago
        I’m not dodging anything, and this is precisely the issue.
    - gavinhoward 5y ago
      The uprooting of our lives came before the vaccine existed, so insinuating that the unvaccinated are responsible for it is completely disingenuous. Also, there were a lot of people who died before the vaccines existed, so to blame the unvaccinated for all of the deaths is disingenuous. (And that's even assuming the unvaccinated are to blame, which they are not.) Regarding people who cannot be vaccinated, if they exist, how come there are not medical exemptions available for them everywhere there is a vaccine mandate? Sure, some places claim to have such exemptions, but others do not. If you sincerely believe people cannot get the vaccine, why is it okay that mandates exist that do not allow for their exemptions? And finally, would the pandemic really be defeated if everyone got vaccinated? Since the vaccinated can still spread it, and still end up in the hospital, would the pandemic actually end? The math says no.
      - nautilius 5y ago
        It did, and it was the same people who refused to social distance, then refused masks, now refuse vaccination. For now, kids cannot be vaccinated. Just like some immunocompromised people. And yes, the pandemic would have been defeated. The math says yes, and more impressively, our experience says the same thing. There is a reason you don’t see epidemics of Polio, small pox, etc. anymore: vaccines. (it’s almost done for measles)
        gavinhoward 5y ago
        > It did, and it was the same people who refused to social distance, then refused masks, now refuse vaccination. How do you know? Seriously? Where are the studies? Show me the math. > And yes, the pandemic would have been defeated. The math says yes, and more impressively, our experience says the same thing. There is a reason you don’t see epidemics of Polio, small pox, etc. anymore: vaccines. (it’s almost done for measles) All of those vaccines are far more effective than the COVID vaccines. I'm sure if the COVID vaccines were that effective, you could have an argument. Except...COVID can be carried by animals. Are you going to vaccinate all of the pets in America? Until you do, we will always have COVID around. COVID is more like the flu than those diseases: always mutating, always needing more vaccines. We haven't eradicated the flu, so why would we succeed with COVID?
- gavinhoward 5y ago
  I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally choose this hill because 1) the numbers for COVID deaths appear to be inflated; 2) mandates for health and safety are perilously close to what the Nazis and other authoritarians claimed in order to enact their policies; 3) the "experts" telling us to do those things admitted that they lied on purpose about a few things, so I don't trust them with anything anymore; 4) those same experts seem to have a lot to gain by having us do the things they say; and 5) with regards to masks, those experts and politicians don't even follow their own rules, which makes it seem like either the masks don't work, or those elites think COVID is not really a problem. In other words, the ruling class burned their trust, and without that trust, and they also make COVID seem inconsequential by their actions. So this social contract you are talking about is entirely pushed by people who don't follow it. Why should I?
  - nautilius 5y ago
    So - topless at the beach kills more people?
    - ghoward 5y ago
      Not going topless at beaches is a social contract that is followed. But if you want my real opinion, society is subverted by allowing indecency like that.
      - nautilius 5y ago
        Interesting, but not surprising. So what you’re saying is that actually, you are perfectly fine with imposing completely arbitrary rules unto others, that restrict their liberties, with the only justification being ‘because I say so’. You’re perfectly happy with restricting other people’s lives, even though it does not even affect you whatsoever. But, if the rules now somehow affect you instead, even if the justification is “this is safe for surgeons, and current data suggest that we can safe hundreds of thousands of lives (and we could have, the US are by far the country with the most COVID cases and deaths)” this is now somehow authoritarian? More authoritarian than a completely arbitrary rule? Even though this massively impacts other people’s health? You may want to read up on which opinion is actually closer to what the Nazis did.
- ctrlp 5y ago
  Is there any good evidence that masks work to slow the spread of Covid? I've seen lots of evidence that they do not work, in which case they do not signify what you claim, but rather signify an adherence to reality and science.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >Is there any good evidence that masks work to slow the spread of Covid? Plenty of evidence to that effect can be found with a simple Google search, some of which is presented here, without further discussion. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-here-are-49-scientific-studies-that-explain-why-they-do/ https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-her...
    - ctrlp 5y ago
      Interesting to consider this analysis [0] of available studies that mentions some if the CDC references. The overall quality of the supporting evidence for masks seems to be not very good. In light of the societal costs if, in fact, they do nothing, I would hope for a stronger signal of their efficacy. It seems particularly cruel to mask children, who do not seem to have adverse outcomes with Covid, if the masks don't work. [0] https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-evidence https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-e...
- salawat 5y ago
  I'll take a stab at the 'no shirt, no shoes, no service' one. https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/no-shirt-no-mask-no-service/ https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/no-shirt-no-... https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2019/12/where-did-no-shirt-no-shoes-no-service-come-from/ https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2019/12/where-did-no-shirt-no-s... Second source there I haven't run down secondary facts on, so take it with a grain of salt. However, the gist is, there is no health regulation mandating no shirt, no shoes, no service, people are totally free to attribute their policies to whoever they want, and for the most part, even if the sign is there, who says it's going to be enforced, and if it is, it's not violating any explicit/implicitly granted rights without relevant case law which I'm not digging into right now. So that policy is more a matter of personal taste in operating a business, whose frequency evolved to a sort of cultural habit. Masks/vaccines, unfortunately are a bit different due to the admittedly dicey history the entire policy sector known as "Public Health" has had in terms of what gets crammed under it's umbrella. Examples: The notorious mistreatment and abuse of mental patients in asylums: Public Health The Tuskegee Syphilis experiments: Public Health Surreptitious DNA collection by intelligence agencies from needles used to vaccinate people in Africa post 2001: Subverted Public Health, but Public Health nevertheless Eugenics: Public Health Adding compounds (gualfenisin) to medicines that have a "recreational use" (dextromorphan), and refusing to sell the unadulterated compound any longer?: Public Health Think about that last one. You're literally introducing a compound to a substance that poisons more readily to get those damn druggies to stop using it. This is not consistent with cultural understandings of the Hippocratic Oath, which when you're dealing with any sort of medicine or medical derived authority, is critical toward maintaining the necessary trust to even convince patients to let you help them. When politics and medical science meet, you get Public Health, and it isn't necessarily the medical science that injects the mistrust, but the political hand that controls what science is put out for public review. Organizations have agendas, and the subtextual agenda can sometimes be enough to dissuade overall credibility in light of having "seen it all before". The fact policymaking flip-flopped as much as it did, and the level of mere appearance of unethical behavior/conflict-of-interest, and loss of impartiality through systemic conflicts of interest between the private sector supplying the public sector with the tools they need to enact their policy justified by science funded by... the private sector... The room for skepticism in a micro-perspective of one person's life, is large enough to comfortably fit a few elephants. I don't expect you to walk away from reading this with a sense of "Oh, that makes sense, that must be it let's fix that"... However, there is so, so much more to where the distrust and controversy comes from than "people just aren't being logically consistent". In fact, people not being so is the starting point for trying to do anything civically. The challenge is trying to get as much mobilized as you feasibly can. The trick comes in, in that you carry with you all the crimes of your policy making edifice past. Atonement and trust building, as it turns out, is hard. Make some sense at least? Or at least shine some light maybe? P.S. This unintentionally veers into a research interest of mine which is the creation of "shadow laws" via the structuring of incentives by policymaking orgs whereby they create enough uncertainty to get organizations to make privately enforced policies to get something done now, without actually having to commit a rule or regulation to paper to have to get erased or repealed later. This exploits the human characteristics of "anticipatory obedience", also known as "you get what I mean?" or "telling someone to do something without outright saying it" It isn't something most people talk about, but whenever I observe management or leadership types, I see it all over the place. I call it "hearing the unspoken parts."

9 points by timthorn 5y ago

It’s a social contract. A disease that has killed more people in this country than the civil war could have been alleviated significantly had people agreed to wear masks and get vaccinated. Not wearing a mask projects “I don’t care if you live or die”, and is also understood that way. What I don’t understand is that this social contract is the one that is now chosen as a hill to (often literally) die on. People happily follow other social clothing contracts that bring zero benefit to people other than the possibility to impose their will. Where are the people standing up against “no shirt no shoes no service”, what’s the issue with being topless at a beach or swimming nude altogether.

readflaggedcomm 5y ago
The same people uprooting our lives also lied about gain-of-function research: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1450947395508858880 https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1450947395508858880 The social contract was breached from the start.
- nautilius 5y ago
  With ‘people who uproot our lives’ you’re talking about antivaxxers I assume, that needlessly perpetuate a pandemic that we could have defeated months ago? People who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, while still requiring the reasonable rest to pick up the externalities for them (eg people who cannot be vaccinated)?
  - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
    No, and you've already said all this without dodging the issue.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      I’m not dodging anything, and this is precisely the issue.
  - gavinhoward 5y ago
    The uprooting of our lives came before the vaccine existed, so insinuating that the unvaccinated are responsible for it is completely disingenuous. Also, there were a lot of people who died before the vaccines existed, so to blame the unvaccinated for all of the deaths is disingenuous. (And that's even assuming the unvaccinated are to blame, which they are not.) Regarding people who cannot be vaccinated, if they exist, how come there are not medical exemptions available for them everywhere there is a vaccine mandate? Sure, some places claim to have such exemptions, but others do not. If you sincerely believe people cannot get the vaccine, why is it okay that mandates exist that do not allow for their exemptions? And finally, would the pandemic really be defeated if everyone got vaccinated? Since the vaccinated can still spread it, and still end up in the hospital, would the pandemic actually end? The math says no.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      It did, and it was the same people who refused to social distance, then refused masks, now refuse vaccination. For now, kids cannot be vaccinated. Just like some immunocompromised people. And yes, the pandemic would have been defeated. The math says yes, and more impressively, our experience says the same thing. There is a reason you don’t see epidemics of Polio, small pox, etc. anymore: vaccines. (it’s almost done for measles)
      - gavinhoward 5y ago
        > It did, and it was the same people who refused to social distance, then refused masks, now refuse vaccination. How do you know? Seriously? Where are the studies? Show me the math. > And yes, the pandemic would have been defeated. The math says yes, and more impressively, our experience says the same thing. There is a reason you don’t see epidemics of Polio, small pox, etc. anymore: vaccines. (it’s almost done for measles) All of those vaccines are far more effective than the COVID vaccines. I'm sure if the COVID vaccines were that effective, you could have an argument. Except...COVID can be carried by animals. Are you going to vaccinate all of the pets in America? Until you do, we will always have COVID around. COVID is more like the flu than those diseases: always mutating, always needing more vaccines. We haven't eradicated the flu, so why would we succeed with COVID?
gavinhoward 5y ago
I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally choose this hill because 1) the numbers for COVID deaths appear to be inflated; 2) mandates for health and safety are perilously close to what the Nazis and other authoritarians claimed in order to enact their policies; 3) the "experts" telling us to do those things admitted that they lied on purpose about a few things, so I don't trust them with anything anymore; 4) those same experts seem to have a lot to gain by having us do the things they say; and 5) with regards to masks, those experts and politicians don't even follow their own rules, which makes it seem like either the masks don't work, or those elites think COVID is not really a problem. In other words, the ruling class burned their trust, and without that trust, and they also make COVID seem inconsequential by their actions. So this social contract you are talking about is entirely pushed by people who don't follow it. Why should I?
- nautilius 5y ago
  So - topless at the beach kills more people?
  - ghoward 5y ago
    Not going topless at beaches is a social contract that is followed. But if you want my real opinion, society is subverted by allowing indecency like that.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      Interesting, but not surprising. So what you’re saying is that actually, you are perfectly fine with imposing completely arbitrary rules unto others, that restrict their liberties, with the only justification being ‘because I say so’. You’re perfectly happy with restricting other people’s lives, even though it does not even affect you whatsoever. But, if the rules now somehow affect you instead, even if the justification is “this is safe for surgeons, and current data suggest that we can safe hundreds of thousands of lives (and we could have, the US are by far the country with the most COVID cases and deaths)” this is now somehow authoritarian? More authoritarian than a completely arbitrary rule? Even though this massively impacts other people’s health? You may want to read up on which opinion is actually closer to what the Nazis did.
ctrlp 5y ago
Is there any good evidence that masks work to slow the spread of Covid? I've seen lots of evidence that they do not work, in which case they do not signify what you claim, but rather signify an adherence to reality and science.
- krapp 5y ago
  >Is there any good evidence that masks work to slow the spread of Covid? Plenty of evidence to that effect can be found with a simple Google search, some of which is presented here, without further discussion. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask... https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-here-are-49-scientific-studies-that-explain-why-they-do/ https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-her...
  - ctrlp 5y ago
    Interesting to consider this analysis [0] of available studies that mentions some if the CDC references. The overall quality of the supporting evidence for masks seems to be not very good. In light of the societal costs if, in fact, they do nothing, I would hope for a stronger signal of their efficacy. It seems particularly cruel to mask children, who do not seem to have adverse outcomes with Covid, if the masks don't work. [0] https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-evidence https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-e...
salawat 5y ago
I'll take a stab at the 'no shirt, no shoes, no service' one. https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/no-shirt-no-mask-no-service/ https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/no-shirt-no-... https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2019/12/where-did-no-shirt-no-shoes-no-service-come-from/ https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2019/12/where-did-no-shirt-no-s... Second source there I haven't run down secondary facts on, so take it with a grain of salt. However, the gist is, there is no health regulation mandating no shirt, no shoes, no service, people are totally free to attribute their policies to whoever they want, and for the most part, even if the sign is there, who says it's going to be enforced, and if it is, it's not violating any explicit/implicitly granted rights without relevant case law which I'm not digging into right now. So that policy is more a matter of personal taste in operating a business, whose frequency evolved to a sort of cultural habit. Masks/vaccines, unfortunately are a bit different due to the admittedly dicey history the entire policy sector known as "Public Health" has had in terms of what gets crammed under it's umbrella. Examples: The notorious mistreatment and abuse of mental patients in asylums: Public Health The Tuskegee Syphilis experiments: Public Health Surreptitious DNA collection by intelligence agencies from needles used to vaccinate people in Africa post 2001: Subverted Public Health, but Public Health nevertheless Eugenics: Public Health Adding compounds (gualfenisin) to medicines that have a "recreational use" (dextromorphan), and refusing to sell the unadulterated compound any longer?: Public Health Think about that last one. You're literally introducing a compound to a substance that poisons more readily to get those damn druggies to stop using it. This is not consistent with cultural understandings of the Hippocratic Oath, which when you're dealing with any sort of medicine or medical derived authority, is critical toward maintaining the necessary trust to even convince patients to let you help them. When politics and medical science meet, you get Public Health, and it isn't necessarily the medical science that injects the mistrust, but the political hand that controls what science is put out for public review. Organizations have agendas, and the subtextual agenda can sometimes be enough to dissuade overall credibility in light of having "seen it all before". The fact policymaking flip-flopped as much as it did, and the level of mere appearance of unethical behavior/conflict-of-interest, and loss of impartiality through systemic conflicts of interest between the private sector supplying the public sector with the tools they need to enact their policy justified by science funded by... the private sector... The room for skepticism in a micro-perspective of one person's life, is large enough to comfortably fit a few elephants. I don't expect you to walk away from reading this with a sense of "Oh, that makes sense, that must be it let's fix that"... However, there is so, so much more to where the distrust and controversy comes from than "people just aren't being logically consistent". In fact, people not being so is the starting point for trying to do anything civically. The challenge is trying to get as much mobilized as you feasibly can. The trick comes in, in that you carry with you all the crimes of your policy making edifice past. Atonement and trust building, as it turns out, is hard. Make some sense at least? Or at least shine some light maybe? P.S. This unintentionally veers into a research interest of mine which is the creation of "shadow laws" via the structuring of incentives by policymaking orgs whereby they create enough uncertainty to get organizations to make privately enforced policies to get something done now, without actually having to commit a rule or regulation to paper to have to get erased or repealed later. This exploits the human characteristics of "anticipatory obedience", also known as "you get what I mean?" or "telling someone to do something without outright saying it" It isn't something most people talk about, but whenever I observe management or leadership types, I see it all over the place. I call it "hearing the unspoken parts."