4 ms·

Like discovering the ancient concept of 'Public Communications' by accidental recourse of self aware rhetoric. Every single thing we do, if the public were to

Like discovering the ancient concept of 'Public Communications' by accidental recourse of self aware rhetoric. Every single thing we do, if the public were to have access to the raw facts, it would cause 'outrage'. The entirely of leadership is putting the difficult facts into the difficult context and making the trade offs. We 'don't talk about' the fact that we don't give medical aid to COVID patients past a certain point because we have to put a dollar figure on it (i.e. triage), similarly the fact we have $1200 'solutions' to COVID that could probably wipe it out without vaccines if we could get everyone the tech, but we can't 'afford' it, or that masks do not protect you like wearing a gas mask through a chlorine cloud, rather, they're minimally protective but nevertheless we believe 'do make difference' and we want people to wear them, so we don't talk about it in detail, rather, just suggest or require them as policy in some locales. Because people make decisions based on the emotive strength of the rhetorician, the magnitude of impressions, emotions, group consensus, 'opposition', politics, their instinct for the validity of the source ... and not conscientious and dispassionate civic reasoning ... we worry about what is said on 'mass media'. People will do largely what their favourite 'talking head' say to do ... so we have to be careful about what 'talking heads' say, at least in some situations.

newaccount74 5y ago
I think Covid handling is an example where the public has extensive access to the raw facts; it's quite surprising just how much data is available to the public. I can get time series of covid cases, hospitalisations, vaccination rates, by area and by age... It's really surprising how much info we have.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  What I can't quite tell is whether the mental alarm bells of people with ostensibly responsible mainstream views legitimately aren't going off at all, or they too know what this whole thing is, and they just think their complicity will spare them.
- jollybean 5y ago
  We do, but at the same time, we can't contextualize it very well necessarily. For example 'spikes' can mean all sorts of things. CFRs and test positivity rates have to be hugely contextualized. We also have 'studies' about Ivermectin some of which are good, some of which ar flawed, that lack context i.e. 'study shows Ivermectin works! - if that's all they see, well, then they might be inclined to believe it. And a huge amount of anecdotal data that is very misleading as well. It's good the data is out there, but we also need sources to make sense of it.
908B64B197 5y ago
> We 'don't talk about' the fact that we don't give medical aid to COVID patients past a certain point because we have to put a dollar figure on it (i.e. triage) That's not how triage works. > similarly the fact we have $1200 'solutions' to COVID that could probably wipe it out without vaccines if we could get everyone the tech, but we can't 'afford' it, What is this mysterious cure? > or that masks do not protect you like wearing a gas mask through a chlorine cloud, rather, they're minimally protective but nevertheless we believe 'do make difference' and we want people to wear them, so we don't talk about it in detail, rather, just suggest or require them as policy in some locales. That's a known fact. Masks don't really protect the wearer unless it's a properly fitted N95. They reduce the aerosol emitted which reduces the chances of transmitting it to other people. They protect a group of people if most wear them by limiting transmission. That's high school level biology.
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  > Masks don't really protect the wearer unless it's a properly fitted N95. They reduce the aerosol emitted which reduces the chances of transmitting it to other people. They protect a group of people if most wear them by limiting transmission. Many people seem to respond to this with a line of thought akin to Why would I take on a minor inconvenience merely to help save the lives of other people? Surprisingly few seem to think I'd better get some N95 masks then. They've been in ready supply for months.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Wearing a properly fitted one isn't comfortable at all. Regular masks work great if everyone is wearing them correctly.
- jollybean 5y ago
  --- "That's not how triage works." Triage: "the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties." Seems exactly like triage. --- "What is this mysterious cure?" Monoclonal Antibodies are a very effective treatment that we would use almost ubiquitously were it not for the cost. If they were $1 and easily administered, they are in some ways as effective as vaccines, and pragmatically 'could be the first order solution' " there was a significant reduction in COVID-related hospitalization or death of 71.3% (1.3% vs. 4.6%; p<0.0001) in the 2,400 mg group and 70.4% (1.0% vs. 3.2%) in the 1,200 mg group, as compared to placebo." [1] 70% effective, taken at onset of symptoms, is more protective than my current AZ vaccine. But at $1200 ea. we can only use it in specialized scenarios. FYI - 100% of 'Rich Americans' will have access to this if they contract COVID and want to take it - but only a minority of poor and middle class Americans will. If the Media ever wanted to highlight this discrepancy, there might be a revolution, but it's not in anyone's best interest at this point, i.e. 'We Don't Talk About It'. --- "Mask Protection Are a Known Fact" No, it's not, in the minds of most people, and the specific facts are purposefully avoided in the interest in the simple, basic communication of: "Wear Your Mask" which is in the public interest. My parents and everyone in my family get jitters if 'one person in vicinity' isn't wearing a proper mask, because their 'instinct' is more along the 'N95 belief'. 'One person without a mask' is along the lines of 'working in a smokey nihgtclub for a week'. While not good, it's probably not going to hurt you. If everyone worked in smoke-filled nightclubs, it wold cause harm for sure, just like if we all didn't wear masks, R0 would nudge up. The 'Public Communication' on masks has definitely not been nuanced to the point wherein they spend time going into the details, and so the resulting 'common understanding' isn't perfectly consistent with reality. And it gets much better: Vaccines kill. We knew this, and we have a better understanding of it now, but even the most 'transparent' Public Health communicators completely avoid the subject. The visceral impact of 'So and So Died from a Vaccine', even as we know that on the whole, the vaccines are effectively safe and we want people to take them, is just to much. A single anecdote of 'someone dying' is easily enough for anti-vaxxers to propagandize and misrepresent the materiality of risk. Go ahead and try to get the 'hard data' on exactly where vaccines have materially caused death, good luck, it's hard to find. That is basically a level of 'transparency' that is basically a problem for the 'Public Good' and basically that information is actively suppressed. Maybe not 100% hidden, but absolutely suppressed i.e. 'We Don't Talk About It' [1] https://www.idsociety.org/covid-19-real-time-learning-network/therapeutics-and-interventions/immunomodulators/# https://www.idsociety.org/covid-19-real-time-learning-networ...
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
We don't talk about this stuff because we've lost the ability to have honest adult discussions about the cost/benefit of anything that involves not just harm, but risk of harm, let alone death. There's a classic engineering ethics problem involving an overpass. Build a cheap overpass with a support in the median and eventually someone may die crashing into it. The odds are low and the cost of a bridge with no support is high. Modern, western, white collar society is unable to look itself in the mirror and say "we're building the cheap bridge" for anything but the most ludicrously extreme cases. If it wasn't Covid that made this clear it would have been something else.
- jollybean 5y ago
  It has little to do with 'Modern' 'Educated' or 'White Collar'. 'Public Communications' is more ancient than as the joke goes 'the oldest profession'. PR is probably the oldest profession. Even Egyptian Pharaohs were overwhelmingly concerned with their perception among the Plebes, the Nobles, and their Enemies, and almost everything they did was oriented towards that. Every group or individual in a position of power since then has that as a fundamental concern. Imagine writing a Constitution that says 'Everyone is Created Equal' and then still having slaves, you need some serious narrative formation to keep that paradox from bubbling up. (FYI I'm not taking a postmodern view of history here, just saying the issue is real). COVID is a gigantic example.

newaccount74 5y ago

I think Covid handling is an example where the public has extensive access to the raw facts; it's quite surprising just how much data is available to the public. I can get time series of covid cases, hospitalisations, vaccination rates, by area and by age... It's really surprising how much info we have.

motohagiography 5y ago
What I can't quite tell is whether the mental alarm bells of people with ostensibly responsible mainstream views legitimately aren't going off at all, or they too know what this whole thing is, and they just think their complicity will spare them.
jollybean 5y ago
We do, but at the same time, we can't contextualize it very well necessarily. For example 'spikes' can mean all sorts of things. CFRs and test positivity rates have to be hugely contextualized. We also have 'studies' about Ivermectin some of which are good, some of which ar flawed, that lack context i.e. 'study shows Ivermectin works! - if that's all they see, well, then they might be inclined to believe it. And a huge amount of anecdotal data that is very misleading as well. It's good the data is out there, but we also need sources to make sense of it.

908B64B197 5y ago

> We 'don't talk about' the fact that we don't give medical aid to COVID patients past a certain point because we have to put a dollar figure on it (i.e. triage) That's not how triage works. > similarly the fact we have $1200 'solutions' to COVID that could probably wipe it out without vaccines if we could get everyone the tech, but we can't 'afford' it, What is this mysterious cure? > or that masks do not protect you like wearing a gas mask through a chlorine cloud, rather, they're minimally protective but nevertheless we believe 'do make difference' and we want people to wear them, so we don't talk about it in detail, rather, just suggest or require them as policy in some locales. That's a known fact. Masks don't really protect the wearer unless it's a properly fitted N95. They reduce the aerosol emitted which reduces the chances of transmitting it to other people. They protect a group of people if most wear them by limiting transmission. That's high school level biology.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
> Masks don't really protect the wearer unless it's a properly fitted N95. They reduce the aerosol emitted which reduces the chances of transmitting it to other people. They protect a group of people if most wear them by limiting transmission. Many people seem to respond to this with a line of thought akin to Why would I take on a minor inconvenience merely to help save the lives of other people? Surprisingly few seem to think I'd better get some N95 masks then. They've been in ready supply for months.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Wearing a properly fitted one isn't comfortable at all. Regular masks work great if everyone is wearing them correctly.
jollybean 5y ago
--- "That's not how triage works." Triage: "the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties." Seems exactly like triage. --- "What is this mysterious cure?" Monoclonal Antibodies are a very effective treatment that we would use almost ubiquitously were it not for the cost. If they were $1 and easily administered, they are in some ways as effective as vaccines, and pragmatically 'could be the first order solution' " there was a significant reduction in COVID-related hospitalization or death of 71.3% (1.3% vs. 4.6%; p<0.0001) in the 2,400 mg group and 70.4% (1.0% vs. 3.2%) in the 1,200 mg group, as compared to placebo." [1] 70% effective, taken at onset of symptoms, is more protective than my current AZ vaccine. But at $1200 ea. we can only use it in specialized scenarios. FYI - 100% of 'Rich Americans' will have access to this if they contract COVID and want to take it - but only a minority of poor and middle class Americans will. If the Media ever wanted to highlight this discrepancy, there might be a revolution, but it's not in anyone's best interest at this point, i.e. 'We Don't Talk About It'. --- "Mask Protection Are a Known Fact" No, it's not, in the minds of most people, and the specific facts are purposefully avoided in the interest in the simple, basic communication of: "Wear Your Mask" which is in the public interest. My parents and everyone in my family get jitters if 'one person in vicinity' isn't wearing a proper mask, because their 'instinct' is more along the 'N95 belief'. 'One person without a mask' is along the lines of 'working in a smokey nihgtclub for a week'. While not good, it's probably not going to hurt you. If everyone worked in smoke-filled nightclubs, it wold cause harm for sure, just like if we all didn't wear masks, R0 would nudge up. The 'Public Communication' on masks has definitely not been nuanced to the point wherein they spend time going into the details, and so the resulting 'common understanding' isn't perfectly consistent with reality. And it gets much better: Vaccines kill. We knew this, and we have a better understanding of it now, but even the most 'transparent' Public Health communicators completely avoid the subject. The visceral impact of 'So and So Died from a Vaccine', even as we know that on the whole, the vaccines are effectively safe and we want people to take them, is just to much. A single anecdote of 'someone dying' is easily enough for anti-vaxxers to propagandize and misrepresent the materiality of risk. Go ahead and try to get the 'hard data' on exactly where vaccines have materially caused death, good luck, it's hard to find. That is basically a level of 'transparency' that is basically a problem for the 'Public Good' and basically that information is actively suppressed. Maybe not 100% hidden, but absolutely suppressed i.e. 'We Don't Talk About It' [1] https://www.idsociety.org/covid-19-real-time-learning-network/therapeutics-and-interventions/immunomodulators/# https://www.idsociety.org/covid-19-real-time-learning-networ...

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

We don't talk about this stuff because we've lost the ability to have honest adult discussions about the cost/benefit of anything that involves not just harm, but risk of harm, let alone death. There's a classic engineering ethics problem involving an overpass. Build a cheap overpass with a support in the median and eventually someone may die crashing into it. The odds are low and the cost of a bridge with no support is high. Modern, western, white collar society is unable to look itself in the mirror and say "we're building the cheap bridge" for anything but the most ludicrously extreme cases. If it wasn't Covid that made this clear it would have been something else.

jollybean 5y ago
It has little to do with 'Modern' 'Educated' or 'White Collar'. 'Public Communications' is more ancient than as the joke goes 'the oldest profession'. PR is probably the oldest profession. Even Egyptian Pharaohs were overwhelmingly concerned with their perception among the Plebes, the Nobles, and their Enemies, and almost everything they did was oriented towards that. Every group or individual in a position of power since then has that as a fundamental concern. Imagine writing a Constitution that says 'Everyone is Created Equal' and then still having slaves, you need some serious narrative formation to keep that paradox from bubbling up. (FYI I'm not taking a postmodern view of history here, just saying the issue is real). COVID is a gigantic example.