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The main problem is changing recommendations without new information, just a new politically driven "right-think." Also, there were several shifts in course tha

The main problem is changing recommendations without new information, just a new politically driven "right-think." Also, there were several shifts in course that directly contradicted science but virtue signaled the right message at the time. It's very hard to build trust in the government, and once it's lost even the most reasonable requests will be questioned. A relevant comment I saved but no longer have the source for: "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."

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
^ yep, all of this. Plus of course the "just do this, and it'll be over" (eg. "just 14 days to flatten the curve"), with ever chancing rules and moving the goalposts. Just a few weeks ago, our government was pointing fingers at denmark, how great they're doing with 85% of population (12yo+) vaccinated, and how we'd be doing the same if we reached those numbers.... two weeks go by, and denmark is implementing new measures due to many new cases even with high vaccinations. People are basically fed up and are willing to live with the risk. Young people have given up two years of their lives to "save grandma", and they're fed up with that, and just want to live normally. We have record high cases, and instead of "vaccinating grandma", we closed down nightclubs and changed weekly home-testing of kids to mandatory in-school testing two times weekly.... and the reaction? A new protest tomorrow. The testing was said to be to keep schools open, and literally at this moment, they're mentioning remote schooling again.
ViViDboarder 5y ago
Those _are_ due to new information. Nearly everything you mentioned changed because we saw how the policies put in place panned out. Everyone thought that since the infectious period was 2 weeks that locking up for 2 weeks would do the trick, well, turns out that it’s impossible to “completely” isolate and rates kept going up. Should we have just stuck to our guns and celebrated the “end of COVID?” That wouldn’t make sense. The biggest recommendation that really didn’t make sense was the “don’t mask” one. My personal believe is that it was likely to prevent a run on PPE, but I think that still harms trust. Who knows what will be or would have been more damaging in the long run though. If hospitals couldn’t get masks, staff would have gotten sick possibly causing more deaths. However the lie has harmed trust and could be one of the reasons for our low vaccination rates in the US, causing more deaths. Hard to know what the right call was. I would lean towards not lying being right though.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

^ yep, all of this. Plus of course the "just do this, and it'll be over" (eg. "just 14 days to flatten the curve"), with ever chancing rules and moving the goalposts. Just a few weeks ago, our government was pointing fingers at denmark, how great they're doing with 85% of population (12yo+) vaccinated, and how we'd be doing the same if we reached those numbers.... two weeks go by, and denmark is implementing new measures due to many new cases even with high vaccinations. People are basically fed up and are willing to live with the risk. Young people have given up two years of their lives to "save grandma", and they're fed up with that, and just want to live normally. We have record high cases, and instead of "vaccinating grandma", we closed down nightclubs and changed weekly home-testing of kids to mandatory in-school testing two times weekly.... and the reaction? A new protest tomorrow. The testing was said to be to keep schools open, and literally at this moment, they're mentioning remote schooling again.

ViViDboarder 5y ago

Those _are_ due to new information. Nearly everything you mentioned changed because we saw how the policies put in place panned out. Everyone thought that since the infectious period was 2 weeks that locking up for 2 weeks would do the trick, well, turns out that it’s impossible to “completely” isolate and rates kept going up. Should we have just stuck to our guns and celebrated the “end of COVID?” That wouldn’t make sense. The biggest recommendation that really didn’t make sense was the “don’t mask” one. My personal believe is that it was likely to prevent a run on PPE, but I think that still harms trust. Who knows what will be or would have been more damaging in the long run though. If hospitals couldn’t get masks, staff would have gotten sick possibly causing more deaths. However the lie has harmed trust and could be one of the reasons for our low vaccination rates in the US, causing more deaths. Hard to know what the right call was. I would lean towards not lying being right though.