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The pandemic has also made me more aware of the same thing. I already knew that people were selfish and bad at risk analysis, but the degree to which they are i

by ziml77 5y ago

The pandemic has also made me more aware of the same thing. I already knew that people were selfish and bad at risk analysis, but the degree to which they are is what astounded me. I wish there was some good answer to how to deal with the problem. The government can't get too heavy-handed because that will just drive even more distrust and possibly lead to revolution (the distrust has already happened after lockdowns and vaccine mandates, compounded with any distrust that was already there). There'd have to be a big culture shift if we wanted people to take societal issues seriously. It's pretty clear this is the case when you consider that people are actually losing friends if they decide to get vaccinated. So much for "my body, my choice" (a phrase which has been stolen and twisted by people opposing the vaccines).

angelzen 5y ago
"the government" is just people, perhaps selected for even higher levels of selfishness and poor risk analysis skills.
native_samples 5y ago
So much for "my body, my choice" (a phrase which has been stolen and twisted by people opposing the vaccines). Twisted how. It's exactly the same argument, identical in every way, to the one used for years by abortion supporters. It was seen as noble and obvious correct back then by the same people who deem it to be beyond the pale now. It's obvious they have no internal consistency.
- ziml77 5y ago
  Twisted because a contagious virus is not just a personal issue. The virus will continue to mutate and weaken the efficacy of both natural immunity and the vaccine if its spread is not halted.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Abortion isn't a personal issue - it affects the life of the unborn baby. That's why abortion activists have talk about bodily autonomy so heavily. Meanwhile, vaccines not only don't stop you spreading COVID but they appear to make it worse as UK and Swedish data shows. Thus there could easily be an argument to force you to not take the vaccine, on the grounds that you don't personally need the protection and it makes the epidemic worse. Would you like that?
- cletus 5y ago
  > Twisted how. It doesn't apply. It makes the (false) claim that anti-vaxxers don't have body autonomy. They do. No one is holding them down and making them take a vaccine. You've given the choice: get the vaccine or don't. But if you don't there are some negative consequences. This was already the case prior to Covid. For example: sending unvaccinated children to public school.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    When the penalty is having your livelihood destroyed yes, people are being forced to take it. No different to how people are "forced" to pay fines or do anything else the government wants - being physically forced is the very last step and most people never get there because they know what happens next. After all, what do you think happens to businesses that refuse to comply? The police turn up and punish them until they do comply. Stop engaging in mental gymnastics and admit what you are supporting: mass forced violation of people's bodily autonomy.
Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
> The government can't get too heavy-handed because that will just drive even more distrust and possibly lead to revolution The pandemic has taught me to be even more cynic about the limits of democracy that I already was. My country's government, like many others (including the US, I think?), blatantly lied about masks at the beginning, saying that they didn't work or were counterproductive for laypeople which, honestly, was very hard to believe in the face of common sense as well as the know-how from Asian countries that have been using them routinely for years. When mask shortages ended, the messaging changed and suddenly masks began to be useful or even mandatory. The purpose of the lies was clearly to guarantee supply to medical workers. Later on, a lot of hyperboles were suggested about vaccines, like that they made you "immune", that vaccination would mean that no restrictions would be needed anymore, or that once a threshold of 70% was reached we would have herd immunity and the pandemic would be over. This was clearly not true, but it pushed many hesitant people into vaccination. The thing is, I'm a person with principles and thus my gut reaction is that a lying government is a bad thing. But if I place myself in the government's shoes and go back to March 2020, I don't think I can really defend that things should have been done differently. If the efficacy of masks had been acknowledged from the beginning, laypeople would have depleted the supplies, shortages in medical settings would be more severe, and more people would have died. If vaccines or herd immunity had been hyped less, vaccination takeup would be smaller (because many people only seem to think in absolutes, they don't care about risk reduction or spread reduction if they don't have a boolean goalpost) and more people would have died. With this I don't mean that I'm against democracy, of course. In my own country we had an authoritarian leader who was also a bigot and a moron, so I'm fully vaccinated against authoritarianism. But it seems difficult to dismiss the idea that there are some things, like pandemic management, where you can't really count on laypeople to decide anything.
- nuerow 5y ago
  > My country's government, like many others (including the US, I think?), blatantly lied about masks at the beginning, saying that they didn't work or were counterproductive for laypeople (...) You should really revisit those claims because it's quite likely you got them all completely wrong. I'm also living in a country where its government argued against mass adoption of surgical masks and gloves, but the argument was no way close to your claim. The rationale was that this mass increase in demand for surgical masks and gloves would deplete the current stockpile and production capacity, thus leaving healthcare professionals and other frontline workers without access to basic protective equipment. We're talking about a spike in demand that directly lead to the death of healthcare and frontline workers[1]. Consequently, we've saw multiple governments and health officials stating that the public should not go on a shopping binge for protective equipment to lower the pressure from the supply-side. The same problem was also observed in a run for respirators. In all these cases, once the production capacity was ramped up, governments naturally started providing incentives and even mandating their use. [1] https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/comment/healthcare-worker-deaths-covid-19/ https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/comment/healthcare-wor...

by ziml77 5y ago

angelzen 5y ago

"the government" is just people, perhaps selected for even higher levels of selfishness and poor risk analysis skills.

native_samples 5y ago

So much for "my body, my choice" (a phrase which has been stolen and twisted by people opposing the vaccines). Twisted how. It's exactly the same argument, identical in every way, to the one used for years by abortion supporters. It was seen as noble and obvious correct back then by the same people who deem it to be beyond the pale now. It's obvious they have no internal consistency.

ziml77 5y ago
Twisted because a contagious virus is not just a personal issue. The virus will continue to mutate and weaken the efficacy of both natural immunity and the vaccine if its spread is not halted.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Abortion isn't a personal issue - it affects the life of the unborn baby. That's why abortion activists have talk about bodily autonomy so heavily. Meanwhile, vaccines not only don't stop you spreading COVID but they appear to make it worse as UK and Swedish data shows. Thus there could easily be an argument to force you to not take the vaccine, on the grounds that you don't personally need the protection and it makes the epidemic worse. Would you like that?
cletus 5y ago
> Twisted how. It doesn't apply. It makes the (false) claim that anti-vaxxers don't have body autonomy. They do. No one is holding them down and making them take a vaccine. You've given the choice: get the vaccine or don't. But if you don't there are some negative consequences. This was already the case prior to Covid. For example: sending unvaccinated children to public school.
- native_samples 5y ago
  When the penalty is having your livelihood destroyed yes, people are being forced to take it. No different to how people are "forced" to pay fines or do anything else the government wants - being physically forced is the very last step and most people never get there because they know what happens next. After all, what do you think happens to businesses that refuse to comply? The police turn up and punish them until they do comply. Stop engaging in mental gymnastics and admit what you are supporting: mass forced violation of people's bodily autonomy.

Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago

> The government can't get too heavy-handed because that will just drive even more distrust and possibly lead to revolution The pandemic has taught me to be even more cynic about the limits of democracy that I already was. My country's government, like many others (including the US, I think?), blatantly lied about masks at the beginning, saying that they didn't work or were counterproductive for laypeople which, honestly, was very hard to believe in the face of common sense as well as the know-how from Asian countries that have been using them routinely for years. When mask shortages ended, the messaging changed and suddenly masks began to be useful or even mandatory. The purpose of the lies was clearly to guarantee supply to medical workers. Later on, a lot of hyperboles were suggested about vaccines, like that they made you "immune", that vaccination would mean that no restrictions would be needed anymore, or that once a threshold of 70% was reached we would have herd immunity and the pandemic would be over. This was clearly not true, but it pushed many hesitant people into vaccination. The thing is, I'm a person with principles and thus my gut reaction is that a lying government is a bad thing. But if I place myself in the government's shoes and go back to March 2020, I don't think I can really defend that things should have been done differently. If the efficacy of masks had been acknowledged from the beginning, laypeople would have depleted the supplies, shortages in medical settings would be more severe, and more people would have died. If vaccines or herd immunity had been hyped less, vaccination takeup would be smaller (because many people only seem to think in absolutes, they don't care about risk reduction or spread reduction if they don't have a boolean goalpost) and more people would have died. With this I don't mean that I'm against democracy, of course. In my own country we had an authoritarian leader who was also a bigot and a moron, so I'm fully vaccinated against authoritarianism. But it seems difficult to dismiss the idea that there are some things, like pandemic management, where you can't really count on laypeople to decide anything.

nuerow 5y ago
> My country's government, like many others (including the US, I think?), blatantly lied about masks at the beginning, saying that they didn't work or were counterproductive for laypeople (...) You should really revisit those claims because it's quite likely you got them all completely wrong. I'm also living in a country where its government argued against mass adoption of surgical masks and gloves, but the argument was no way close to your claim. The rationale was that this mass increase in demand for surgical masks and gloves would deplete the current stockpile and production capacity, thus leaving healthcare professionals and other frontline workers without access to basic protective equipment. We're talking about a spike in demand that directly lead to the death of healthcare and frontline workers[1]. Consequently, we've saw multiple governments and health officials stating that the public should not go on a shopping binge for protective equipment to lower the pressure from the supply-side. The same problem was also observed in a run for respirators. In all these cases, once the production capacity was ramped up, governments naturally started providing incentives and even mandating their use. [1] https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/comment/healthcare-worker-deaths-covid-19/ https://www.medicaldevice-network.com/comment/healthcare-wor...