3 ms·

As a layperson, your best bet is to listen to the experts who aren't politically motivated or just plain batshit crazy (there are always some, regardless of top

As a layperson, your best bet is to listen to the experts who aren't politically motivated or just plain batshit crazy (there are always some, regardless of topic; you can often suss them out by their black-and-white ideology and us-vs-them style speech). As for the day-to-day: - Masks don't protect you from others. They protect others from you. So if nobody around you is wearing a mask, your mask will make no difference. If everyone is wearing one, your mask DOES make a difference. This becomes a "when in Rome" kind of thing when you're traveling (i.e. do what others do, and don't be a dick about it). - Get vaccinated and boosted. This is proven, and you'll feel pretty dumb sitting in an ICU unit when a simple injection could have prevented it. Even with the latest Omicron variant, you can still get extremely sick and possibly even die (90% of ICU patients and almost all deaths are unvaccinated). - Airline travel is one of the most common ways people get infected. Even switching to non-recycled air in the airplane is not enough, apparently. You takes your chances... - Dining is generally safe as long as there's a decent distance between tables. Although Omicron is a LOT more virulent, so who knows how safe it actually is now... Bottom line: Vaccination protects you from the worst parts of an infection, and then it comes down to your risk profile.

benreesman 5y ago
I appreciate your input. I think that listening to the experts who aren't politically motivated is one of my main goals, but it is very difficult (for me at least) to figure out who those people are. I understand that government and private industry are not two clearly distinguishable Lego bricks, I understand that regulators need some industry people to know what they're regulating even at the risk of some revolving-door stuff, and I understand that some profit motive is necessary to get smart people to work on something in large numbers. But the waters seem very muddy (and there seem to be a lot of axes to grind all around) as to who is acting in good faith and who is seeking to push some agenda or to guard some rice bowel even among people with excellent credentials. Historically I've kind of leaned on credentials in deciding who to listen to on topics outside my field (which may or may not have been a good idea), but on this one there seem to be people with multiple advanced degrees from prestigious universities ranging from "being in charge of the CDC" to "banned from Twitter for promoting vaccine hesitancy". How do you personally go about figuring out what the closest thing to a dispassionate group of experts is? I somehow doubt that either A) Fauci is a crook putting a microchip in my arm or B) all the signatures on the Barrington Declaration are all from nutjobs: I imagine there is some balanced debate in the middle but I'm not sure how to find it.
- kstenerud 5y ago
  For me personally, only studying human psychology has proven to be a reliable barometer of peoples motivations. Being an expert doesn't insulate someone from the vagrancies of the human psyche (despite much effort to do so!), so you must study the ways in which the human psyche errs. Very few people are actually intentionally attempting to mislead. More often than not they are deluded themselves. But this is not helped by the other human tendency to demonize wrongdoers and assume the worst of motives. Fauci is an interesting case because he's been in charge of a largely bureaucratic and invisible organization for so long, and was unprepared for being thrust into the spotlight. He wants to do good, but it's getting harder and harder to do that because every mistake he makes is amplified and used against him in the public sphere, and he's not used to reputation management like someone in a more public-facing organization would be (nor do I think he's up to the task - he's too nerdy and will probably be replaced eventually). The waters are muddy because the topic has been politicized. The ebola vaccine was not controversial in the Americans eyes, but it WAS controversial in some African countries, where conspiracy theories ran rampant and hampered the vaccination drive (the biggest one being that it was an American plot to sterilize African women and render them barren). Once counter-campaigns start, it gets progressively harder and harder to push a policy, because everyone will say "there's no smoke without a fire somewhere". At the end of the day, you only have psychology to use as a heuristic, because the people lying and the people telling the truth are almost ALL convinced that they're honest and truthful. The exceptions are the propagandists who actively want to damage another society to influence their politics, gain an objective, or diminish their world reputation - or local propagandists who cynically want to bring in a new policy or enforce an existing one (example: Reefer Madness or the tobacco lobby). And these people work with intention, so they're generally pretty good at covering themselves against blowback. But they usually work via the mainstream media, so you can often (but not always) see the telltale signs of a hard shift in reporting. Iraqi WMDs would be a good example since it was so clumsily done. Last point: The truth is rarely in the middle. The middle is just what lazy people go for because then they don't have to think. We humans like quick and easy rules that yield simple answers, but the world just doesn't work that way.
  - benreesman 5y ago
chefkoch 5y ago
I don't know what type of masks are worn in the US, in Germany FFP2 / N95 masks are required for all but children. And these mask do protect you, the protection is obviously better if everyone is wearing one.
GuB-42 5y ago
> Masks don't protect you from others. It makes no sense. Of course they do. They don't protect that much but they are certainly better than nothing. It is about surgical masks. N95 masks are designed to protect yourself. Masks also protect others, and if both you and others have masks, you are doubly protected. > Get vaccinated and boosted. Yes > Airline travel is one of the most common ways people get infected. Are you sure about that? Do you have sources? From what I've seen Airline travel is surprisingly not that bad. From a late 2020 study, bars and clubs are the worst, followed by restaurants, followed by gyms and churches, I don't know if it is still the case. > Even switching to non-recycled air... Recycled air goes through HEPA filters, which are much more efficient than even N95 masks. Intuitively I'd say that we should have more recycled air, to trap as many virus particles as possible in these filters instead of having them linger around the cabin. > Dining is generally safe as long as there's a decent distance between tables It is more complicated than that and it depends a lot on air currents. I wouldn't consider dining indoors as "safe". Not something worth panicking about, and in general, I don't think it is worth going beyond the official recommendations, but if you are high risk, I would avoid it.

benreesman 5y ago

I appreciate your input. I think that listening to the experts who aren't politically motivated is one of my main goals, but it is very difficult (for me at least) to figure out who those people are. I understand that government and private industry are not two clearly distinguishable Lego bricks, I understand that regulators need some industry people to know what they're regulating even at the risk of some revolving-door stuff, and I understand that some profit motive is necessary to get smart people to work on something in large numbers. But the waters seem very muddy (and there seem to be a lot of axes to grind all around) as to who is acting in good faith and who is seeking to push some agenda or to guard some rice bowel even among people with excellent credentials. Historically I've kind of leaned on credentials in deciding who to listen to on topics outside my field (which may or may not have been a good idea), but on this one there seem to be people with multiple advanced degrees from prestigious universities ranging from "being in charge of the CDC" to "banned from Twitter for promoting vaccine hesitancy". How do you personally go about figuring out what the closest thing to a dispassionate group of experts is? I somehow doubt that either A) Fauci is a crook putting a microchip in my arm or B) all the signatures on the Barrington Declaration are all from nutjobs: I imagine there is some balanced debate in the middle but I'm not sure how to find it.

kstenerud 5y ago
For me personally, only studying human psychology has proven to be a reliable barometer of peoples motivations. Being an expert doesn't insulate someone from the vagrancies of the human psyche (despite much effort to do so!), so you must study the ways in which the human psyche errs. Very few people are actually intentionally attempting to mislead. More often than not they are deluded themselves. But this is not helped by the other human tendency to demonize wrongdoers and assume the worst of motives. Fauci is an interesting case because he's been in charge of a largely bureaucratic and invisible organization for so long, and was unprepared for being thrust into the spotlight. He wants to do good, but it's getting harder and harder to do that because every mistake he makes is amplified and used against him in the public sphere, and he's not used to reputation management like someone in a more public-facing organization would be (nor do I think he's up to the task - he's too nerdy and will probably be replaced eventually). The waters are muddy because the topic has been politicized. The ebola vaccine was not controversial in the Americans eyes, but it WAS controversial in some African countries, where conspiracy theories ran rampant and hampered the vaccination drive (the biggest one being that it was an American plot to sterilize African women and render them barren). Once counter-campaigns start, it gets progressively harder and harder to push a policy, because everyone will say "there's no smoke without a fire somewhere". At the end of the day, you only have psychology to use as a heuristic, because the people lying and the people telling the truth are almost ALL convinced that they're honest and truthful. The exceptions are the propagandists who actively want to damage another society to influence their politics, gain an objective, or diminish their world reputation - or local propagandists who cynically want to bring in a new policy or enforce an existing one (example: Reefer Madness or the tobacco lobby). And these people work with intention, so they're generally pretty good at covering themselves against blowback. But they usually work via the mainstream media, so you can often (but not always) see the telltale signs of a hard shift in reporting. Iraqi WMDs would be a good example since it was so clumsily done. Last point: The truth is rarely in the middle. The middle is just what lazy people go for because then they don't have to think. We humans like quick and easy rules that yield simple answers, but the world just doesn't work that way.
- benreesman 5y ago

chefkoch 5y ago

I don't know what type of masks are worn in the US, in Germany FFP2 / N95 masks are required for all but children. And these mask do protect you, the protection is obviously better if everyone is wearing one.

GuB-42 5y ago

> Masks don't protect you from others. It makes no sense. Of course they do. They don't protect that much but they are certainly better than nothing. It is about surgical masks. N95 masks are designed to protect yourself. Masks also protect others, and if both you and others have masks, you are doubly protected. > Get vaccinated and boosted. Yes > Airline travel is one of the most common ways people get infected. Are you sure about that? Do you have sources? From what I've seen Airline travel is surprisingly not that bad. From a late 2020 study, bars and clubs are the worst, followed by restaurants, followed by gyms and churches, I don't know if it is still the case. > Even switching to non-recycled air... Recycled air goes through HEPA filters, which are much more efficient than even N95 masks. Intuitively I'd say that we should have more recycled air, to trap as many virus particles as possible in these filters instead of having them linger around the cabin. > Dining is generally safe as long as there's a decent distance between tables It is more complicated than that and it depends a lot on air currents. I wouldn't consider dining indoors as "safe". Not something worth panicking about, and in general, I don't think it is worth going beyond the official recommendations, but if you are high risk, I would avoid it.