61 ms·

A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks

245 points by imartin2k 5y ago

mensetmanusman 5y ago
Instead of talking about risk compensation, talk about why we have no long term planning in this area. We could have had a decades worth of n95 stockpiling for less than the cost of one tank for every living American.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  We did have a pandemic response team and excellent preparedness but the team was disbanded under our last president. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
  - spiderice 5y ago
    And did what with the stockpile of enough n95 masks for every citizen? Threw them all away? Point is, just because at one point there existed a team called the "pandemic response team", doesn't mean we were at all prepared in the way that GP is suggesting, or even that they would have helped at all
    - Larrikin 5y ago
      All medical equipment has expiration dates, including masks. It's possible that a lot was thrown away instead of replaced once the pandemic response team was disbanded.
      - orangepurple 5y ago
        I trust a 10 years expired N95 mask that isn't moldy considering how most masks people wear are basically trash
      - pinko 5y ago
        In this case, an expired stockpile is better than no stockpile (and close to as good as an unexpired stockpile). Those expired masks could have saved a lot of lives.
        Larrikin 5y ago
        Expired stock would have been thrown away every year from 2017 until March 2020 and most likely would have been legally required since it is medical equipment. That is a consequence of cutting funds for future disasters.
        spiderice 5y ago
        You’re literally pretending that the had an n95 mask for every citizen before that team was dissolved. That is a fairytale.
      - dehrmann 5y ago
        I bet the first thing that goes in an n95 mask is actually the rubber for the headband.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        N95's have been shown to last longer than 10 years.
    - addicted 5y ago
      There’s a publicly available playbook that lists in excruciating detail all the steps that should be taken. In fact, for the most part, they include the steps that were taken, except if they were followed as in the playbook they would have been taken a lot earlier. Edit: Here, I found a link for you: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6819268/Pandemic-Playbook.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6819268/Pandemic-Play...
  - hn8788 5y ago
    The N95 mask stockpile was emptied under Obama though, despite recommendations to replenish it. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/03/fact-check-did-obama-administration-deplete-n-95-mask-stockpile/5114319002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/03/fac...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - jonas21 5y ago
      It was emptied due to the swine flu response in 2009-10. The Obama administration included funding to replenish it in the 2011 budget, but that was rejected by Congress.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  In Canada, the Ontario Chief Medical Officer said not to worry because we had learned many lessons from SARS1. Then our medical staff promptly ran out of PPE in the first few weeks, especially n95 masks, just like we did with SARS.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
gjs278 5y ago
don’t listen to experts, they knowingly lie to you. just wait a bit and the truth always comes out. it’s unlikely all the hand washing and not trying to touch your face had any effect overall considering covid can spread through the air. nobody would have been able to keep themselves clean for that long.
billfruit 5y ago
On the subject of electronic cigarettes / vaping also such thinking has propmpted policy making.
raxxorrax 5y ago
The one time boulevard journalism uses abstract concepts results in this? Wrong extrapolation is lying just as well. > safer and better place It is safe in compromise and on there can be consent on that compromise or not.
- omnicognate 5y ago
  Wat
autokad 5y ago
its very true. I worked in a research lab in health and it was unbearable being around those people. 'we can't do that, people will use it wrongly' 'we cant tell the people that, they might use the information wrongly.' on and on again. Just one of many examples was a trauma center application that showed all the trauma centers in the US on a map. you could see the coverages for ambulance and helicopter. I put in a feature where one could see the distance to the closest trauma center, as well as get directions. I was asked to remove it because people might use the information incorrectly. to me, the problem is much more broad than this article suggests. its not just one phenomenon. lying and hiding information is built into their way of thinking.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wahern 5y ago
  If you're going to publish information that people might rely upon, especially in an emergency, you're taking on the responsibility of maintaining the accuracy of that information, including possibly taking on the responsibility of ensuring stale data is retracted. The greater the details, the greater the burden. People naturally make assumptions about credibility according to the depth and breadth of the information provided. If you're not prepared to make the commitment, then it's quite prudent not to publish so many details. If you don't publish it, then people can't mistake it for up-to-date, accurate, and/or comprehensive information, and they'll be more likely seek it out somewhere else or otherwise hedge their reliance. If you do publish and it's inaccurate, then you're misleading people and possibly redirecting them away from other, more reliable sources. It's difficult to say without more details what the fundamental concerns in your case were. But note that the real, nuanced reasons for certain decisions aren't or can't always be adequately explained to employees. A lawyer or emergency services expert might give the sophisticated analysis, but by the time the directive makes it down to people implementing it the rationale is "because people are dumb". But in truth it's really more that people are trusting.
  - moolcool 5y ago
    > including possibly taking on the responsibility of ensuring stale data is retracted SO much of the current covid conspiracy stuff relies on redacted studies. The thing is, the conspiracy theorists either think that they've been redacted because of "the man", or don't know how redaction works full stop.
nextos 5y ago
I think the masks issue was a bit different. In the past, medicine was practiced without adhering to the scientific method. This is luckily no longer the case. However, medicine has not fully embraced the scientific method but some strange "evidence-based" variant. During the early stages of the pandemic, high ranking officials suggested we should not use masks because it was not yet "proven" the virus was transmitted via aerosols. And this was a catastrophic decision. We always need to reason under uncertainty. The correct interpretation of the scientific method would have led to the conclusion that COVID was likely to be transmitted via aerosols (e.g. due to sequence similarity with other coronaviruses, which are known to be transmitted via aerosols) and imposing mandatory masks (because this is a very innocuous intervention).
- timr 5y ago
  The masks issue is different because we have very little actual evidence that masks in the hands of the general public have a substantial effect. The best evidence out there suggests a small impact (~11%) for surgical masks in an unvaccinated population, and none for cloth masks [1] The evidence quality is roughly as poor as that for ivermectin, vitamin D, etc., except that it has become a wildly political issue, fraught with propaganda to the point that most people will vehemently insist that the evidence quality is higher than it is. It is therefore deeply ironic that Slate is arguing about risk compensation, while using NPIs as an example of the kind of safety behavior being deterred by discussions of risk compensation. Did any of those NPIs do anything at all? We never did proper randomized studies, so we really have no idea. This feels like so much more propaganda: one side said that risk compensation is a thing, so now we must attack the notion, to ensure that $MY_PREFERRED_INTERVENTION is properly imposed on society. But nobody much cares if the intervention works... [1] https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk-of-covid19-by https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk...
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    The masks are secondary to the issue of refusing to acknowledge the high probability of airborne transmission. People were washing their hands, using hand sanitizer, opening doors with crazy key-chains, basically not touching anything, wearing gloves, fist and elbow bumping ... when they really needed to not be breathing each others air.
Ensorceled 5y ago
I used to work at a company that did HIV research ... the virologists that use to work there were losing their minds last year. The "people will take stupid risks" if we give them protective measures was in full force, right down to Dr. Tam telling Canadians that we didn't need masks, that the public "wouldn't know how to use them correctly anyway" and just endanger ourselves even more, so save the masks for the medical profession.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  At the time there was a severe shortage of even surgical masks, so it was a very good decision to ensure medical professionals have a plentiful supply. The panic/hoarding of masks would have endangered their lives in March and April of 2020. Note how the advice on mask wearing took a steep turn right around the time the supply issues were essentially resolved. Not a coincidence.
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    The bulk purchase, hoarding and exfiltration of masks, disinfectant and similar goods by Chinese nationals living abroad under direction of the party into the home country to the detriment of the domestic populations happened anyway.
  - jnwatson 5y ago
    It isn’t hard to make a mask. Distributing instructions so everyone could make their own would have saved lives.
    - gowld 5y ago
      They did that in April/May 2020, but the Freedom Patriot trolls were already committed to stymying efforts to control the pandemic.
      - marcosdumay 5y ago
        The freedom patriot trolls were spreading masks designs before they committed into increasing the pandemics levels. That's the most difficult thing to accept. Those people were just contrarians, "freedom" (however stupid one may think their concept of it is) or "truth" were irrelevant.
salford 5y ago
I get the feeling that there's a virtue aspect here. In absence of seat-belts, birth control, and vaccines, safety is possible—if you are careful and prudent. Therefore, up to the point where such options are available, public health initiatives encourage and celebrate prudence and carefulness. Once a work-around becomes available, where one can be just as safe with half the prudence, it feels like cheating: now all these careless people can be safe without any of the admirable virtue in being prudent and following rules. So those in charge resist giving the people an easy way out, because doing so represents a path towards loss of credibility of the authority institution, who is constantly advocating for virtue in the people.
Eelongate 5y ago
> diet soda (what if people chug the stuff and it makes the obesity epidemic worse?). Isn't that one true though? Anecdotally, since the introduction of the stuff Americans have only gotten fatter. It makes intuitive sense to me that artificial sugars also contribute to insulin resistance, increasing the risk of diabetes. And while for any X you can pretty easily find nutrition studies that say "X kills you" and "X makes you live longer", it's not too hard to find studies linking diet soda to obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498394/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498394/
- hn8788 5y ago
  I forget where I read it, but the reasoning I heard for it is that your body still thinks the zero calorie sweeteners are sugar, so it will store more calories from the food you're eating because your body is compensating for the lack of calories in the "sugar". I've also heard that the causation is reversed though, and that obese people are more likely to drink diet soda because it's a low effort way to try and lose weight. I don't know which is true though, so I just try to stick to water or fruit/vegetable juice if I want some more flavor.
  - orangepurple 5y ago
    Insulin is the mechanism through which body fat is stored, and you are implying that zero calorie sweeteners trigger an insulin response, but this is not true. The mechanism is more related to too little time between meals and excessive volume of food intake per meal, both of which help maintain high insulin levels and subsequent weight gain. Zero calorie sweeteners seem to reinforce the desire to eat for pleasure.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Perhaps, but some research indicates that artificial sweeteners could be causing metabolic disorders. It's not clear yet whether there's a real causative effect. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/310909 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/310909
    - 5y ago
lr4444lr 5y ago
When oral contraceptives were first approved by the FDA in 1960, critics at the time warned that “the foundations of contemporary sexual morality may be threatened” by the ensuing promiscuity Were they wrong?
- harry8 5y ago
  >> When oral contraceptives were first approved by the FDA in 1960, critics at the time warned that “the foundations of contemporary sexual morality may be threatened” by the ensuing promiscuity > Were they wrong? Yes. Totally and absolutely wrong. Practice based on fear of consequence is not morality. Weakening the affect of consequence changed exactly nobody's morality. Anyone who claims a morality that is followed only by being based on enforcement through physical harm is pretty messed up. Promiscuity levels changed with the change in cost of the alternatives. Morality of people making those choices did not budge one iota.
  - iratewizard 5y ago
    Morality is impacted by perceived norms. Perceived norms are impacted by incentivization. Underage kids making non-nude porn en masse on MySpace would not fly in 2005. Thirst baiting is normal on tiktok today.
    - harry8 5y ago
      Again practice is impacted by perceived norms. If you thought it was constrained by morality and it changed through change of norms and incentives then you just found out it wasn't. You don't have to like that. I sure don't.
      - iratewizard 5y ago
        There is no fear of punishment for not bringing your shopping cart back. No fine or social stigma. Yet most civilized people bring back their cart. Except where there is visible moral decay around them. I don't subscribe to a nihilistic view that any moral principles that a group of people can give up on were never moral principles.
dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
Are we really still yammering on about all this COVID-19 bullshit? We've got the vaccines, we've got antivirals on the way, and 85%+ of the US population has antibodies from either catching it or vaccinations. Move on. It really cracks me up to see people acting the same as they did during Week 1, like who are these people still cowering in their homes in fear who are more than eager to keep everyone else in a perpetual state of anxiety? Maybe we ought to hand out some Xanax to the anxious folks driving all these fear-based policy decisions and constant churn of new articles that functionally try to weld the door shut on people's lives over a risk (at this point) that is far greater in the imagination than actual reality.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  We've all learned about friends and family, which of them is fundamentally a coward to their core. If they haven't turned off their TV or started filtering out the shepherd's tone of fear mongering at this point, nothing would ever change their cowardice.
- ABoredBirb 5y ago
  There is a whole world out there beyond the borders of USA.
- human 5y ago
  I support giving Xanax to all these vaccinated people wearing masks alone in their car.
  - doubled112 5y ago
    Maybe they drive for Uber? Or they're a driving instructor between students? At least I can come up with a reasonable explanation for in the car. What about those people walking alone in the suburbs with masks on? There's nobody else on foot for 2 blocks.
    - human 5y ago
      Worst: I’ve seen people biking in parks with a mask on, but no helmet.
strken 5y ago
From a quick search, I think the Charles Murray quote is talking about perverse incentives and time preference rather than risk compensation. It's a weird choice.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
human 5y ago
The day I realized the government and health officials are not telling me the full picture because they don’t trust me to act intelligently is when I completely stopped listening to their advice.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- valleyer 5y ago
  Something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, then, huh.
  - epicureanideal 5y ago
    Which the officials created, not the intelligent individuals who don’t think it wise to follow advice that is likely not accurate and for unknown reasons.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  I think I first had that day while going through the D.A.R.E. program.
- gowld 5y ago
  Are you finding a better source of info? Are you doing the opposite of what they advise, or merely disregarding?
  - human 5y ago
    I’ve mostly decided to take normal precautions and not to live in fear. I’ve also decided to wait for more information before getting vaccinated. I work from home and have little risk of contracting the disease. I’m taking a break on social gatherings and travel for a few years and then I’ll see what I do.
    - moritonal 5y ago
      It's eerie how almost anyone that talks about how they're "not to live in fear" almost always instantly follows that up with some kind of lone-wolf fantasy.
addicted 5y ago
Risk compensation was my excuse to not wear a helmet when I biked to work. My argument was that the false sense of security meant that I would bike more rashly increasing my chances of getting into an accident. In reality, when I did wear a helmet, I did not bike more rashly. If anything, the helmet was a constant reminder of the dangers involved in city biking which meant I was possibly more alert than I would have been without it.
- blahedo 5y ago
  IME the argument on bike helmets is a little different: it's not that requiring helmets will encourage riskier biking behaviour, it's that requiring helmets will shift people to drive instead (and that an extra car on the road is increasing danger to _others_). It may still be a bogus argument, but it's definitely distinct from the risk compensation argument given in the article.
- mjmahone17 5y ago
  The one thing helmet laws seem to do that may be a public health risk, at least in cities with bike share systems, is suppress how many people ride. When you cannot ride a bike without a helmet, a good chunk of people will opt to take a car or walk instead of using a bike share. To my knowledge, the number of cyclist collisions stays relatively constant with the number of cyclists: more cyclists mean around the same total number of collisions, which is fewer on a per trip basis. As a benefit, by acting as a natural barrier between deadly fast steel boxes and pedestrians, having a lot of cyclists also saves pedestrian lives.
- NoPicklez 5y ago
  Coming from a country where we all have to wear helmets by law (Australia) I've personally not understood the risk compensation aspect as I never experiencing biking without a helmet. However, I can understand the argument of it potentially reducing the number of people wanting to ride a bike. Especially for casual riding inner city or suburbs.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  On the road, especially as a bike user, your behaviour is not the most important factor. By far the biggest risk to you on the road are motorists. There is evidence [0] to show that motorists pass helmeted cyclists more closely and humanoids with long (feminine) hair less closely. Similarly, purely anecdotal (but may have been studied), those white lines they paint on the road and call "bike lanes" cause motorists to pass closer (they drive right up to the white line). [0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5334208.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5334208.stm
Borrible 5y ago
So, the underlying concept is not that decision under uncertainty is risky and people tend to shy away from it? Especially people that are trained to think long, hard and nuanced about problems before coming to a conclusion? Because their scientific reputation is at stake? The coin their business is build around? The prospect of (a)social/classic media lynch mob, be it on facebook or yellowpress doesn't make the alternative more attractive. The mob side of the problem is much easier to understand. It's just the little ham actor in their mind, acting out his temper tantrums on the stage he calls his mind. "It's me, I must be right. They tell me I have to change!? That can't be, finally its me and therefore I know and therefore I'm right. Beside I don't like to change, it hurts. Okay, it's just inconvenient, but...but that hurts too, mum" Who could or would argue with that? Well, for the most part politicians. Often leaders. Seldom good and inspired leaders. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9ncAkKSNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9ncAkKSNM
csours 5y ago
Risk Compensation is one of those marginal effects that make things hard to reason about. In the same vein - embodied costs of renewable energy.
jimmySixDOF 5y ago
There is no harm examining the law of unintended consequences and policy makers should do that more often in fact. As TFA makes clear through it's examples, a second or third order effect cost/benefit analysis should not be taken to the point of absurdity or inaction; but you should always remember that fixing something risks breaking something else in the process.
nielsbot 5y ago
Saved you a click: It's "risk compensation". "It’s an idea that ...posits that people adjust their behavior in response to perceived risk: the safer you feel, the more risks you’ll take." regarding road guardrails, for example: "...proponents of the idea make a stronger claim: that guardrails cause so much reckless driving that any potential safety benefits of guardrails are offset or even reversed."
- stephen_g 5y ago
  I don't think that quite saves a click. Yes, you've posted what the idea is, but completely cut out the entire point of the article (that the actual amount of risk compensation that happens is usually low, and policy based on the idea tends to be more harmful)... Take the guardrail thing for example - you posted the arguments of proponents, but cut out the response where it goes through how the actual evidence shows it's not at all the case that guardrails increase risky behaviour!
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    Sorry, I thought that was implied by the negative framing of the headline, but maybe not. The current headline is a bit clickbaity--I wish they'd give a preview of what the article is about (like the old days?) and if people are interested, they can read the whole thing.
- neogodless 5y ago
  > But whenever risk compensation has been subjected to empirical scrutiny, the results are usually ambiguous, or the hypothesis fails spectacularly. And when risk compensation does play a part in behavior, it tends to do so in small and specific ways... > The question—for driver safety, sexual activity, or public health—isn’t whether some individuals change their behavior in response to perceived risk. It’s whether, at the population level, an intervention makes the world a safer and better place. Just to make it clear how the article is arguing that "risk compensation" is generally a bogus concept.
gm3dmo 5y ago
> Throughout the pandemic, each time a public safety measure arrives on the scene, some experts fret that the masses will simply use the newfound sense of security as license to behave recklessly, canceling out or even reversing any benefits of the safety measure. The public did recklessly go out and panic buy toilet paper. I suspect the experts may have a point.
- neogodless 5y ago
  That's a non sequitur. People didn't "feel an extra sense of security" and therefore buy lots of toilet paper (recklessly.) Rather, they felt a sense of insecurity about running out of toilet paper.
Laforet 5y ago
Two random thoughts: 1. Humans cannot always interact with their surroundings at 100% mental clarity. Stupid mistakes can and will be made even by the most careful and skilled person. Fool-proof or defensive design features are very well embraced by engineers and the results have been a resounding positive. 2. Some interventions are probably not as benign as people assume, and this could become a confounding factor when it comes to analysing the outcome. Some motorcycle helmets, for example, have been found to trap CO2 at concentrations known to have a negative cognitive effect. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/O-2-Concentrations-in-Integral-Motorcycle-Helmets-%3A-Br%C3%BChwiler-Staempfli/6498725e3b95adbd5b99eaee1b131753cfd41b15?p2df https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/O-2-Concentrations-in-...
js8 5y ago
It's just a knee-jerk rationalization of conservative portion of our brains, fundamentally based on distrust in other people. I have my own story: These days many trans people are coming out, and sex change operation is becoming more socially acceptable. I was, for a moment, worried that trans people might be deciding on a whim/fashion to permanently alter themselves. But then I realized I miscounted - the number of people with gender dysphoria will always be greater than number of people unhappy with the change. So I changed my mind on this - it's always worth to change if someone really desires to. Ultimately, the idea that "other people will do it wrong" is a very anti-democratic sentiment.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
littlestymaar 5y ago
And of course, behind it there is an anti-regulation economist from the Chicago school. God nows how many people these cultist have killed overall in the past 50 years…
roeles 5y ago
I think this gives an interesting perspective on the recent discussions that I read here about eBikes and the fact that in The Netherlands we don't wear bike helmets. The argument I saw online[1] was exactly the pitfall the article describes: "everybody will behave safer because cyclists are so obviously fragile". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVncWxyMJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVncWxyMJw
- scatters 5y ago
  There's a difference between "cyclists will take more risks (with their own lives) if they wear a helmet" and "drivers will take more risks (with cyclists' lives) if they see cyclists wearing a helmet". And you're leaving out by far the most important argument, which is "people are less likely to cycle if they're required to wear helmets".
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    To continue that last thought, less cycling means more deaths via lost health benefits, more deaths via more car journeys and more deaths due to pollution. The remaining cyclists being run over by the increased motor traffic is a vicious cycle it's hard to break out of.
- throw63738 5y ago
  There was a study that proved helmets were harmfull. It basically said that cycling has health benefits, and if helmets were compulsory less people will cycle. And more people would die from obesity and relevant healtu issues, than were saved by helmets.
GuB-42 5y ago
I think it is just bad faith, for most parts. Wearing masks is annoying, they cost money and in the beginning of the pandemic, we simply didn't have them. So we find all sorts of excuses against masks. Same for seat belts, they cost money and people didn't want to be tied to their seats. It is not so different from companies that prevent you to repair your devices because "you may hurt yourself" when in reality, they just want to sell you a new one or go through their own overpriced service. It is not the only argument you can use. You can say that masks are bad for the environment, it is single use plastic after all, that they promote crime and make communication harder by concealing one's face, that it impairs breathing, which is mostly debunked but who cares. It is the opposite of "think of the children". False sense of security is used when you have a safety that works but don't want, and "think of the children" is when you want it but it doesn't work.
rob74 5y ago
Ok, so there were warnings that vaccines will lead to a false sense of security. And, guess what? Those warnings were right! One only has to take a look at the numbers in, say, Germany to see that the current wave of the pandemic is the worst yet, and vaccines contributed to that negatively on several levels: - they gave the government a false sense of security, so they are only now reacting to the dramatic rise in Covid cases. - vaccinated people can both get Covid (with the current Delta variant) and transmit it, they just don't get as sick as unvaccinated people. Still, restrictions were eased for vaccinated people as a motivational measure to get vaccinated, and now the virus is being transmitted from vaccinated person to vaccinated person until it finds an unvaccinated one. - vaccination is actually impeding the measures that can be taken in the future: there is the argument that restricting the freedom of movement of a vaccinated person may be an undue breach of their constitutional rights, so there will be even more hesitation before extreme measures (lockdown). I'm currently isolating at home with Covid despite being vaccinated, so please excuse me if I sound harsh. I'm actually glad that I am vaccinated, but I now see that the vaccine was more than just a bit hyped up by the authorities...

245 points by imartin2k 5y ago

Instead of talking about risk compensation, talk about why we have no long term planning in this area. We could have had a decades worth of n95 stockpiling for less than the cost of one tank for every living American.

twobitshifter 5y ago
We did have a pandemic response team and excellent preparedness but the team was disbanded under our last president. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
- spiderice 5y ago
  And did what with the stockpile of enough n95 masks for every citizen? Threw them all away? Point is, just because at one point there existed a team called the "pandemic response team", doesn't mean we were at all prepared in the way that GP is suggesting, or even that they would have helped at all
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    All medical equipment has expiration dates, including masks. It's possible that a lot was thrown away instead of replaced once the pandemic response team was disbanded.
    - orangepurple 5y ago
      I trust a 10 years expired N95 mask that isn't moldy considering how most masks people wear are basically trash
    - pinko 5y ago
      In this case, an expired stockpile is better than no stockpile (and close to as good as an unexpired stockpile). Those expired masks could have saved a lot of lives.
      - Larrikin 5y ago
        Expired stock would have been thrown away every year from 2017 until March 2020 and most likely would have been legally required since it is medical equipment. That is a consequence of cutting funds for future disasters.
        spiderice 5y ago
        You’re literally pretending that the had an n95 mask for every citizen before that team was dissolved. That is a fairytale.
    - dehrmann 5y ago
      I bet the first thing that goes in an n95 mask is actually the rubber for the headband.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      N95's have been shown to last longer than 10 years.
  - addicted 5y ago
    There’s a publicly available playbook that lists in excruciating detail all the steps that should be taken. In fact, for the most part, they include the steps that were taken, except if they were followed as in the playbook they would have been taken a lot earlier. Edit: Here, I found a link for you: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6819268/Pandemic-Playbook.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6819268/Pandemic-Play...
- hn8788 5y ago
  The N95 mask stockpile was emptied under Obama though, despite recommendations to replenish it. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/03/fact-check-did-obama-administration-deplete-n-95-mask-stockpile/5114319002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/03/fac...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonas21 5y ago
    It was emptied due to the swine flu response in 2009-10. The Obama administration included funding to replenish it in the 2011 budget, but that was rejected by Congress.
Ensorceled 5y ago
In Canada, the Ontario Chief Medical Officer said not to worry because we had learned many lessons from SARS1. Then our medical staff promptly ran out of PPE in the first few weeks, especially n95 masks, just like we did with SARS.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

gjs278 5y ago

don’t listen to experts, they knowingly lie to you. just wait a bit and the truth always comes out. it’s unlikely all the hand washing and not trying to touch your face had any effect overall considering covid can spread through the air. nobody would have been able to keep themselves clean for that long.

billfruit 5y ago

On the subject of electronic cigarettes / vaping also such thinking has propmpted policy making.

raxxorrax 5y ago

The one time boulevard journalism uses abstract concepts results in this? Wrong extrapolation is lying just as well. > safer and better place It is safe in compromise and on there can be consent on that compromise or not.

omnicognate 5y ago
Wat

autokad 5y ago

its very true. I worked in a research lab in health and it was unbearable being around those people. 'we can't do that, people will use it wrongly' 'we cant tell the people that, they might use the information wrongly.' on and on again. Just one of many examples was a trauma center application that showed all the trauma centers in the US on a map. you could see the coverages for ambulance and helicopter. I put in a feature where one could see the distance to the closest trauma center, as well as get directions. I was asked to remove it because people might use the information incorrectly. to me, the problem is much more broad than this article suggests. its not just one phenomenon. lying and hiding information is built into their way of thinking.

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wahern 5y ago
If you're going to publish information that people might rely upon, especially in an emergency, you're taking on the responsibility of maintaining the accuracy of that information, including possibly taking on the responsibility of ensuring stale data is retracted. The greater the details, the greater the burden. People naturally make assumptions about credibility according to the depth and breadth of the information provided. If you're not prepared to make the commitment, then it's quite prudent not to publish so many details. If you don't publish it, then people can't mistake it for up-to-date, accurate, and/or comprehensive information, and they'll be more likely seek it out somewhere else or otherwise hedge their reliance. If you do publish and it's inaccurate, then you're misleading people and possibly redirecting them away from other, more reliable sources. It's difficult to say without more details what the fundamental concerns in your case were. But note that the real, nuanced reasons for certain decisions aren't or can't always be adequately explained to employees. A lawyer or emergency services expert might give the sophisticated analysis, but by the time the directive makes it down to people implementing it the rationale is "because people are dumb". But in truth it's really more that people are trusting.
- moolcool 5y ago
  > including possibly taking on the responsibility of ensuring stale data is retracted SO much of the current covid conspiracy stuff relies on redacted studies. The thing is, the conspiracy theorists either think that they've been redacted because of "the man", or don't know how redaction works full stop.

nextos 5y ago

I think the masks issue was a bit different. In the past, medicine was practiced without adhering to the scientific method. This is luckily no longer the case. However, medicine has not fully embraced the scientific method but some strange "evidence-based" variant. During the early stages of the pandemic, high ranking officials suggested we should not use masks because it was not yet "proven" the virus was transmitted via aerosols. And this was a catastrophic decision. We always need to reason under uncertainty. The correct interpretation of the scientific method would have led to the conclusion that COVID was likely to be transmitted via aerosols (e.g. due to sequence similarity with other coronaviruses, which are known to be transmitted via aerosols) and imposing mandatory masks (because this is a very innocuous intervention).

timr 5y ago
The masks issue is different because we have very little actual evidence that masks in the hands of the general public have a substantial effect. The best evidence out there suggests a small impact (~11%) for surgical masks in an unvaccinated population, and none for cloth masks [1] The evidence quality is roughly as poor as that for ivermectin, vitamin D, etc., except that it has become a wildly political issue, fraught with propaganda to the point that most people will vehemently insist that the evidence quality is higher than it is. It is therefore deeply ironic that Slate is arguing about risk compensation, while using NPIs as an example of the kind of safety behavior being deterred by discussions of risk compensation. Did any of those NPIs do anything at all? We never did proper randomized studies, so we really have no idea. This feels like so much more propaganda: one side said that risk compensation is a thing, so now we must attack the notion, to ensure that $MY_PREFERRED_INTERVENTION is properly imposed on society. But nobody much cares if the intervention works... [1] https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk-of-covid19-by https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/do-masks-reduce-risk...
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  The masks are secondary to the issue of refusing to acknowledge the high probability of airborne transmission. People were washing their hands, using hand sanitizer, opening doors with crazy key-chains, basically not touching anything, wearing gloves, fist and elbow bumping ... when they really needed to not be breathing each others air.

Ensorceled 5y ago

I used to work at a company that did HIV research ... the virologists that use to work there were losing their minds last year. The "people will take stupid risks" if we give them protective measures was in full force, right down to Dr. Tam telling Canadians that we didn't need masks, that the public "wouldn't know how to use them correctly anyway" and just endanger ourselves even more, so save the masks for the medical profession.

kspacewalk2 5y ago
At the time there was a severe shortage of even surgical masks, so it was a very good decision to ensure medical professionals have a plentiful supply. The panic/hoarding of masks would have endangered their lives in March and April of 2020. Note how the advice on mask wearing took a steep turn right around the time the supply issues were essentially resolved. Not a coincidence.
- bmn__ 5y ago
  The bulk purchase, hoarding and exfiltration of masks, disinfectant and similar goods by Chinese nationals living abroad under direction of the party into the home country to the detriment of the domestic populations happened anyway.
- jnwatson 5y ago
  It isn’t hard to make a mask. Distributing instructions so everyone could make their own would have saved lives.
  - gowld 5y ago
    They did that in April/May 2020, but the Freedom Patriot trolls were already committed to stymying efforts to control the pandemic.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      The freedom patriot trolls were spreading masks designs before they committed into increasing the pandemics levels. That's the most difficult thing to accept. Those people were just contrarians, "freedom" (however stupid one may think their concept of it is) or "truth" were irrelevant.

salford 5y ago

I get the feeling that there's a virtue aspect here. In absence of seat-belts, birth control, and vaccines, safety is possible—if you are careful and prudent. Therefore, up to the point where such options are available, public health initiatives encourage and celebrate prudence and carefulness. Once a work-around becomes available, where one can be just as safe with half the prudence, it feels like cheating: now all these careless people can be safe without any of the admirable virtue in being prudent and following rules. So those in charge resist giving the people an easy way out, because doing so represents a path towards loss of credibility of the authority institution, who is constantly advocating for virtue in the people.

Eelongate 5y ago

> diet soda (what if people chug the stuff and it makes the obesity epidemic worse?). Isn't that one true though? Anecdotally, since the introduction of the stuff Americans have only gotten fatter. It makes intuitive sense to me that artificial sugars also contribute to insulin resistance, increasing the risk of diabetes. And while for any X you can pretty easily find nutrition studies that say "X kills you" and "X makes you live longer", it's not too hard to find studies linking diet soda to obesity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498394/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4498394/

hn8788 5y ago
I forget where I read it, but the reasoning I heard for it is that your body still thinks the zero calorie sweeteners are sugar, so it will store more calories from the food you're eating because your body is compensating for the lack of calories in the "sugar". I've also heard that the causation is reversed though, and that obese people are more likely to drink diet soda because it's a low effort way to try and lose weight. I don't know which is true though, so I just try to stick to water or fruit/vegetable juice if I want some more flavor.
- orangepurple 5y ago
  Insulin is the mechanism through which body fat is stored, and you are implying that zero calorie sweeteners trigger an insulin response, but this is not true. The mechanism is more related to too little time between meals and excessive volume of food intake per meal, both of which help maintain high insulin levels and subsequent weight gain. Zero calorie sweeteners seem to reinforce the desire to eat for pleasure.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Perhaps, but some research indicates that artificial sweeteners could be causing metabolic disorders. It's not clear yet whether there's a real causative effect. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/310909 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/310909
  - 5y ago

lr4444lr 5y ago

When oral contraceptives were first approved by the FDA in 1960, critics at the time warned that “the foundations of contemporary sexual morality may be threatened” by the ensuing promiscuity Were they wrong?

harry8 5y ago
>> When oral contraceptives were first approved by the FDA in 1960, critics at the time warned that “the foundations of contemporary sexual morality may be threatened” by the ensuing promiscuity > Were they wrong? Yes. Totally and absolutely wrong. Practice based on fear of consequence is not morality. Weakening the affect of consequence changed exactly nobody's morality. Anyone who claims a morality that is followed only by being based on enforcement through physical harm is pretty messed up. Promiscuity levels changed with the change in cost of the alternatives. Morality of people making those choices did not budge one iota.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Morality is impacted by perceived norms. Perceived norms are impacted by incentivization. Underage kids making non-nude porn en masse on MySpace would not fly in 2005. Thirst baiting is normal on tiktok today.
  - harry8 5y ago
    Again practice is impacted by perceived norms. If you thought it was constrained by morality and it changed through change of norms and incentives then you just found out it wasn't. You don't have to like that. I sure don't.
    - iratewizard 5y ago
      There is no fear of punishment for not bringing your shopping cart back. No fine or social stigma. Yet most civilized people bring back their cart. Except where there is visible moral decay around them. I don't subscribe to a nihilistic view that any moral principles that a group of people can give up on were never moral principles.

dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago

Are we really still yammering on about all this COVID-19 bullshit? We've got the vaccines, we've got antivirals on the way, and 85%+ of the US population has antibodies from either catching it or vaccinations. Move on. It really cracks me up to see people acting the same as they did during Week 1, like who are these people still cowering in their homes in fear who are more than eager to keep everyone else in a perpetual state of anxiety? Maybe we ought to hand out some Xanax to the anxious folks driving all these fear-based policy decisions and constant churn of new articles that functionally try to weld the door shut on people's lives over a risk (at this point) that is far greater in the imagination than actual reality.

iratewizard 5y ago
We've all learned about friends and family, which of them is fundamentally a coward to their core. If they haven't turned off their TV or started filtering out the shepherd's tone of fear mongering at this point, nothing would ever change their cowardice.
ABoredBirb 5y ago
There is a whole world out there beyond the borders of USA.
human 5y ago
I support giving Xanax to all these vaccinated people wearing masks alone in their car.
- doubled112 5y ago
  Maybe they drive for Uber? Or they're a driving instructor between students? At least I can come up with a reasonable explanation for in the car. What about those people walking alone in the suburbs with masks on? There's nobody else on foot for 2 blocks.
  - human 5y ago
    Worst: I’ve seen people biking in parks with a mask on, but no helmet.

strken 5y ago

From a quick search, I think the Charles Murray quote is talking about perverse incentives and time preference rather than risk compensation. It's a weird choice.

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human 5y ago

The day I realized the government and health officials are not telling me the full picture because they don’t trust me to act intelligently is when I completely stopped listening to their advice.

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valleyer 5y ago
Something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, then, huh.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  Which the officials created, not the intelligent individuals who don’t think it wise to follow advice that is likely not accurate and for unknown reasons.
__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
I think I first had that day while going through the D.A.R.E. program.
gowld 5y ago
Are you finding a better source of info? Are you doing the opposite of what they advise, or merely disregarding?
- human 5y ago
  I’ve mostly decided to take normal precautions and not to live in fear. I’ve also decided to wait for more information before getting vaccinated. I work from home and have little risk of contracting the disease. I’m taking a break on social gatherings and travel for a few years and then I’ll see what I do.
  - moritonal 5y ago
    It's eerie how almost anyone that talks about how they're "not to live in fear" almost always instantly follows that up with some kind of lone-wolf fantasy.

addicted 5y ago

Risk compensation was my excuse to not wear a helmet when I biked to work. My argument was that the false sense of security meant that I would bike more rashly increasing my chances of getting into an accident. In reality, when I did wear a helmet, I did not bike more rashly. If anything, the helmet was a constant reminder of the dangers involved in city biking which meant I was possibly more alert than I would have been without it.

blahedo 5y ago
IME the argument on bike helmets is a little different: it's not that requiring helmets will encourage riskier biking behaviour, it's that requiring helmets will shift people to drive instead (and that an extra car on the road is increasing danger to _others_). It may still be a bogus argument, but it's definitely distinct from the risk compensation argument given in the article.
mjmahone17 5y ago
The one thing helmet laws seem to do that may be a public health risk, at least in cities with bike share systems, is suppress how many people ride. When you cannot ride a bike without a helmet, a good chunk of people will opt to take a car or walk instead of using a bike share. To my knowledge, the number of cyclist collisions stays relatively constant with the number of cyclists: more cyclists mean around the same total number of collisions, which is fewer on a per trip basis. As a benefit, by acting as a natural barrier between deadly fast steel boxes and pedestrians, having a lot of cyclists also saves pedestrian lives.
NoPicklez 5y ago
Coming from a country where we all have to wear helmets by law (Australia) I've personally not understood the risk compensation aspect as I never experiencing biking without a helmet. However, I can understand the argument of it potentially reducing the number of people wanting to ride a bike. Especially for casual riding inner city or suburbs.
globular-toast 5y ago
On the road, especially as a bike user, your behaviour is not the most important factor. By far the biggest risk to you on the road are motorists. There is evidence [0] to show that motorists pass helmeted cyclists more closely and humanoids with long (feminine) hair less closely. Similarly, purely anecdotal (but may have been studied), those white lines they paint on the road and call "bike lanes" cause motorists to pass closer (they drive right up to the white line). [0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5334208.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/5334208.stm

Borrible 5y ago

So, the underlying concept is not that decision under uncertainty is risky and people tend to shy away from it? Especially people that are trained to think long, hard and nuanced about problems before coming to a conclusion? Because their scientific reputation is at stake? The coin their business is build around? The prospect of (a)social/classic media lynch mob, be it on facebook or yellowpress doesn't make the alternative more attractive. The mob side of the problem is much easier to understand. It's just the little ham actor in their mind, acting out his temper tantrums on the stage he calls his mind. "It's me, I must be right. They tell me I have to change!? That can't be, finally its me and therefore I know and therefore I'm right. Beside I don't like to change, it hurts. Okay, it's just inconvenient, but...but that hurts too, mum" Who could or would argue with that? Well, for the most part politicians. Often leaders. Seldom good and inspired leaders. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9ncAkKSNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9ncAkKSNM

csours 5y ago

Risk Compensation is one of those marginal effects that make things hard to reason about. In the same vein - embodied costs of renewable energy.

jimmySixDOF 5y ago

There is no harm examining the law of unintended consequences and policy makers should do that more often in fact. As TFA makes clear through it's examples, a second or third order effect cost/benefit analysis should not be taken to the point of absurdity or inaction; but you should always remember that fixing something risks breaking something else in the process.

nielsbot 5y ago

Saved you a click: It's "risk compensation". "It’s an idea that ...posits that people adjust their behavior in response to perceived risk: the safer you feel, the more risks you’ll take." regarding road guardrails, for example: "...proponents of the idea make a stronger claim: that guardrails cause so much reckless driving that any potential safety benefits of guardrails are offset or even reversed."

stephen_g 5y ago
I don't think that quite saves a click. Yes, you've posted what the idea is, but completely cut out the entire point of the article (that the actual amount of risk compensation that happens is usually low, and policy based on the idea tends to be more harmful)... Take the guardrail thing for example - you posted the arguments of proponents, but cut out the response where it goes through how the actual evidence shows it's not at all the case that guardrails increase risky behaviour!
- nielsbot 5y ago
  Sorry, I thought that was implied by the negative framing of the headline, but maybe not. The current headline is a bit clickbaity--I wish they'd give a preview of what the article is about (like the old days?) and if people are interested, they can read the whole thing.
neogodless 5y ago
> But whenever risk compensation has been subjected to empirical scrutiny, the results are usually ambiguous, or the hypothesis fails spectacularly. And when risk compensation does play a part in behavior, it tends to do so in small and specific ways... > The question—for driver safety, sexual activity, or public health—isn’t whether some individuals change their behavior in response to perceived risk. It’s whether, at the population level, an intervention makes the world a safer and better place. Just to make it clear how the article is arguing that "risk compensation" is generally a bogus concept.

gm3dmo 5y ago

> Throughout the pandemic, each time a public safety measure arrives on the scene, some experts fret that the masses will simply use the newfound sense of security as license to behave recklessly, canceling out or even reversing any benefits of the safety measure. The public did recklessly go out and panic buy toilet paper. I suspect the experts may have a point.

neogodless 5y ago
That's a non sequitur. People didn't "feel an extra sense of security" and therefore buy lots of toilet paper (recklessly.) Rather, they felt a sense of insecurity about running out of toilet paper.

Laforet 5y ago

Two random thoughts: 1. Humans cannot always interact with their surroundings at 100% mental clarity. Stupid mistakes can and will be made even by the most careful and skilled person. Fool-proof or defensive design features are very well embraced by engineers and the results have been a resounding positive. 2. Some interventions are probably not as benign as people assume, and this could become a confounding factor when it comes to analysing the outcome. Some motorcycle helmets, for example, have been found to trap CO2 at concentrations known to have a negative cognitive effect. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/O-2-Concentrations-in-Integral-Motorcycle-Helmets-%3A-Br%C3%BChwiler-Staempfli/6498725e3b95adbd5b99eaee1b131753cfd41b15?p2df https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/O-2-Concentrations-in-...

js8 5y ago

It's just a knee-jerk rationalization of conservative portion of our brains, fundamentally based on distrust in other people. I have my own story: These days many trans people are coming out, and sex change operation is becoming more socially acceptable. I was, for a moment, worried that trans people might be deciding on a whim/fashion to permanently alter themselves. But then I realized I miscounted - the number of people with gender dysphoria will always be greater than number of people unhappy with the change. So I changed my mind on this - it's always worth to change if someone really desires to. Ultimately, the idea that "other people will do it wrong" is a very anti-democratic sentiment.

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littlestymaar 5y ago

And of course, behind it there is an anti-regulation economist from the Chicago school. God nows how many people these cultist have killed overall in the past 50 years…

roeles 5y ago

I think this gives an interesting perspective on the recent discussions that I read here about eBikes and the fact that in The Netherlands we don't wear bike helmets. The argument I saw online[1] was exactly the pitfall the article describes: "everybody will behave safer because cyclists are so obviously fragile". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVncWxyMJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpVncWxyMJw

scatters 5y ago
There's a difference between "cyclists will take more risks (with their own lives) if they wear a helmet" and "drivers will take more risks (with cyclists' lives) if they see cyclists wearing a helmet". And you're leaving out by far the most important argument, which is "people are less likely to cycle if they're required to wear helmets".
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  To continue that last thought, less cycling means more deaths via lost health benefits, more deaths via more car journeys and more deaths due to pollution. The remaining cyclists being run over by the increased motor traffic is a vicious cycle it's hard to break out of.
throw63738 5y ago
There was a study that proved helmets were harmfull. It basically said that cycling has health benefits, and if helmets were compulsory less people will cycle. And more people would die from obesity and relevant healtu issues, than were saved by helmets.

GuB-42 5y ago

I think it is just bad faith, for most parts. Wearing masks is annoying, they cost money and in the beginning of the pandemic, we simply didn't have them. So we find all sorts of excuses against masks. Same for seat belts, they cost money and people didn't want to be tied to their seats. It is not so different from companies that prevent you to repair your devices because "you may hurt yourself" when in reality, they just want to sell you a new one or go through their own overpriced service. It is not the only argument you can use. You can say that masks are bad for the environment, it is single use plastic after all, that they promote crime and make communication harder by concealing one's face, that it impairs breathing, which is mostly debunked but who cares. It is the opposite of "think of the children". False sense of security is used when you have a safety that works but don't want, and "think of the children" is when you want it but it doesn't work.

rob74 5y ago

Ok, so there were warnings that vaccines will lead to a false sense of security. And, guess what? Those warnings were right! One only has to take a look at the numbers in, say, Germany to see that the current wave of the pandemic is the worst yet, and vaccines contributed to that negatively on several levels: - they gave the government a false sense of security, so they are only now reacting to the dramatic rise in Covid cases. - vaccinated people can both get Covid (with the current Delta variant) and transmit it, they just don't get as sick as unvaccinated people. Still, restrictions were eased for vaccinated people as a motivational measure to get vaccinated, and now the virus is being transmitted from vaccinated person to vaccinated person until it finds an unvaccinated one. - vaccination is actually impeding the measures that can be taken in the future: there is the argument that restricting the freedom of movement of a vaccinated person may be an undue breach of their constitutional rights, so there will be even more hesitation before extreme measures (lockdown). I'm currently isolating at home with Covid despite being vaccinated, so please excuse me if I sound harsh. I'm actually glad that I am vaccinated, but I now see that the vaccine was more than just a bit hyped up by the authorities...