5 ms·

What did the CDC lie about? (Honest question)

satellite2 5y ago
About the efficacy of masks. They said they were not efficace to avoid hoarding and to reserve the small existing stock for medical professionals.
- mitigating 5y ago
  A lie is intentional. I'm not saying this is the case here because I haven't checked but if they believed that masks weren't effective then later changed their view because of new information or whatever that's not lying.
  - satellite2 5y ago
    As a scientific organisation the public expect them to have opinions that are supported by data. Already, today appealing to the autority argument while data are widely accessible is graceless. But abusing your expert position is outright deceitful. A scientific should be able to say that they don't have enough information to form a position. I think medicine more widely is in crisis as they still have not incorporated the digital transformation. And that can be seen even at your local doctor level. The patients are very informed (and often wrongly) and are coming to the appointment with a lot of data. A lot of doctors simply brush off those concern and go about with their standard diagnostic process. What patients expect is that the doctor take their proposition at face value, congratulate them for listing their symptoms and coming with a lead, and repeat the process with them, pinpointing the eventual inconsisencies in the symptoms or simply offering them another diagnostic that is also compatible but statistically more probable. That's the behaviour of the new expert, enjoy sharing informations and discussing them.
freebuju 5y ago
Am sure you can find plenty when you go down this rabbit hole but you can start here: https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839 https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839
- philovivero 5y ago
  Thanks for trying to help out, but that's the FDA, not CDC. And this is a much murkier situation. Ivermectin does seem to help Covid, but it looks like that's correlation, not causation. Astral Codex Ten has a great writeup on this, and a big controversial debate with the ivermectin crowd. It's pretty glorious, and I do recommend reading it in its entirety. If you do want to call this a lie, I suppose I could see it. Someone claims something helps Covid, but it shouldn't, because it doesn't make sense, so instead of trusting the studies, they go out making a bold claim like this, that ivermectin is completely ineffective. In any case, this does reduce trust in those agencies, when they ignore science and instead spout off politically-expedient dismissals of data. But I wouldn't call it lying, really.
  - freebuju 5y ago
    You are right. Had a brain fart moment there. Still a good place to check as some of these official statements from the two leading public health bodies communicate the agreed-upon response to the disease. On Astral Codex Ten's piece, I assume you are talking about this one [0] The whole piece is such a doosie. Am almost sure 90%+ of the non-core audiences that landed on the page never scrolled to the end. If you are going to debunk a controversial subject, KISS. Not to say he didn't do a good job at poring through the numerous inconsistent data and studies carried out on the possibility of use of ivermectin for treatment. But am sure I came across some of his material on the interwebs. Back to the source material of this post, FDA were completely malicious by tweeting that. Their linked post even goes to mention that taking ivermectin could be lethal for you. What happens when the body whose sole job is to be the arbiter of truth and science regarding safety of drugs knowingly makes obviously dubious false verifiable claims? They are either knowingly participating in a lie or they are incompetent. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
  - poopypoopington 5y ago
    Read on hacker news that Ivermectin is correlated with helping covid because often people with covid in developing countries also have parasites, so the covid + parasite can kill them. So if you give everyone in a developing country ivermectin the ivermectin will kill the parasite and they won't have to fight two things at once. Turns out giving ivermectin (parasite killer) in a country where a lot of people have parasites is good public health policy. It's just butt stupid to use in a developed country like the US where ivermectin probably won't help people, but that doesn't stop people from taking horse dewormer in Florida :/.
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
During the early days of the pandemic the CDC discouraged mask wearing, saying that it increased the need to touch one's face and that would increase transmission of COVID. This turned out not to be true, and they said they disseminated this information to avoid a run on masks and a shortage of PPE for medical settings / essential services. This is how I remember it. May be wrong

About the efficacy of masks. They said they were not efficace to avoid hoarding and to reserve the small existing stock for medical professionals.

mitigating 5y ago
A lie is intentional. I'm not saying this is the case here because I haven't checked but if they believed that masks weren't effective then later changed their view because of new information or whatever that's not lying.
- satellite2 5y ago
  As a scientific organisation the public expect them to have opinions that are supported by data. Already, today appealing to the autority argument while data are widely accessible is graceless. But abusing your expert position is outright deceitful. A scientific should be able to say that they don't have enough information to form a position. I think medicine more widely is in crisis as they still have not incorporated the digital transformation. And that can be seen even at your local doctor level. The patients are very informed (and often wrongly) and are coming to the appointment with a lot of data. A lot of doctors simply brush off those concern and go about with their standard diagnostic process. What patients expect is that the doctor take their proposition at face value, congratulate them for listing their symptoms and coming with a lead, and repeat the process with them, pinpointing the eventual inconsisencies in the symptoms or simply offering them another diagnostic that is also compatible but statistically more probable. That's the behaviour of the new expert, enjoy sharing informations and discussing them.

freebuju 5y ago

Am sure you can find plenty when you go down this rabbit hole but you can start here: https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839 https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839

philovivero 5y ago
Thanks for trying to help out, but that's the FDA, not CDC. And this is a much murkier situation. Ivermectin does seem to help Covid, but it looks like that's correlation, not causation. Astral Codex Ten has a great writeup on this, and a big controversial debate with the ivermectin crowd. It's pretty glorious, and I do recommend reading it in its entirety. If you do want to call this a lie, I suppose I could see it. Someone claims something helps Covid, but it shouldn't, because it doesn't make sense, so instead of trusting the studies, they go out making a bold claim like this, that ivermectin is completely ineffective. In any case, this does reduce trust in those agencies, when they ignore science and instead spout off politically-expedient dismissals of data. But I wouldn't call it lying, really.
- freebuju 5y ago
  You are right. Had a brain fart moment there. Still a good place to check as some of these official statements from the two leading public health bodies communicate the agreed-upon response to the disease. On Astral Codex Ten's piece, I assume you are talking about this one [0] The whole piece is such a doosie. Am almost sure 90%+ of the non-core audiences that landed on the page never scrolled to the end. If you are going to debunk a controversial subject, KISS. Not to say he didn't do a good job at poring through the numerous inconsistent data and studies carried out on the possibility of use of ivermectin for treatment. But am sure I came across some of his material on the interwebs. Back to the source material of this post, FDA were completely malicious by tweeting that. Their linked post even goes to mention that taking ivermectin could be lethal for you. What happens when the body whose sole job is to be the arbiter of truth and science regarding safety of drugs knowingly makes obviously dubious false verifiable claims? They are either knowingly participating in a lie or they are incompetent. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...
- poopypoopington 5y ago
  Read on hacker news that Ivermectin is correlated with helping covid because often people with covid in developing countries also have parasites, so the covid + parasite can kill them. So if you give everyone in a developing country ivermectin the ivermectin will kill the parasite and they won't have to fight two things at once. Turns out giving ivermectin (parasite killer) in a country where a lot of people have parasites is good public health policy. It's just butt stupid to use in a developed country like the US where ivermectin probably won't help people, but that doesn't stop people from taking horse dewormer in Florida :/.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago

During the early days of the pandemic the CDC discouraged mask wearing, saying that it increased the need to touch one's face and that would increase transmission of COVID. This turned out not to be true, and they said they disseminated this information to avoid a run on masks and a shortage of PPE for medical settings / essential services. This is how I remember it. May be wrong