3 ms·

Imagine showing this article headline to someone from 2018.

tomohawk 5y ago
mindslight 5y ago
Imagine showing this article, complete with the date, to someone from March 2020. Two years into the pandemic and the news media is just finally getting around to recommending that people wear basic respiratory protection? They would wonder if our manufacturing capacity had been destroyed in a war! This whole pandemic has demonstrated abject failure of our institutions. It was very easy to pin it on a terrible micromanager whose most intelligent moment was brainstorming that people could inject bleach, but it's not like the CDC did an about face when the "experts" were left to their own devices either. High quality N95+ masks and face shields should have been distributed door to door by USPS as soon as the manufacturing capacity became available, as well as testing kits that they're just finally rolling out (credit where credit is due), hand sanitizer, and whatever other Covid paraphernalia I'm forgetting from the past two decades^Wyears. Using any of these things is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but the point of leadership is to show people the right direction, ask them to do the work, and to acknowledge that it is indeed work. Instead we got pandering to irresponsibility and performative altruism, and laissez faire choose-your-own-solipsistic-adventure - want to sew ersatz masks from old shirts and pretend you're not in an industrialized society? Cool! Want to pretend to fight creeping totalitarianism by assaulting a grocery clerk? Also cool! Unsurprisingly, Covid Likes This :thumbsup: One of the last things we need is even less faith in our public institutions and general society, but downplaying the scope of the failure out of tribal loyalty isn't the right thing either.
- pugworthy 5y ago
  Imagine showing this to some people on January 15, 2022 and having them tell you it's crap. That's the way it is at times and that's depressing.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  Those masks and face shields should sport US flags and bald eagles and nationalist slogans. Not only should we all have them, distributed by the government, but wearing them should be a visible form of patriotism.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    I assume you're being sarcastic, equating wearing protective gear to fascist fashion like say the aftermath of 9/11. But when a fire alarm goes off and everybody leaves a building, you're not being clever by staying. Sometimes conditions change and it really does make individual sense for everybody to move in the same general direction. As I've gotten older, and especially as hammered home by the pandemic, I've accepted that groupthink is unfortunately going to exist regardless. As such, it may as well be nudged towards positive ends like encouraging people to protect themselves and their community, rather than destructive ends like denying that a problem exists.
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      I haven't been in a fire alarm caused by an actual dangerous fire. I have been annoyed by several false alarms and fire tests. Staying behind had actually been the smart move.
      - mindslight 5y ago
        s/smart/post hoc optimal/ For something that has wasted perhaps ten cumulative hours of my life, deferring to commonly accepted wisdom seems like the smarter choice.

Imagine showing this article, complete with the date, to someone from March 2020. Two years into the pandemic and the news media is just finally getting around to recommending that people wear basic respiratory protection? They would wonder if our manufacturing capacity had been destroyed in a war! This whole pandemic has demonstrated abject failure of our institutions. It was very easy to pin it on a terrible micromanager whose most intelligent moment was brainstorming that people could inject bleach, but it's not like the CDC did an about face when the "experts" were left to their own devices either. High quality N95+ masks and face shields should have been distributed door to door by USPS as soon as the manufacturing capacity became available, as well as testing kits that they're just finally rolling out (credit where credit is due), hand sanitizer, and whatever other Covid paraphernalia I'm forgetting from the past two decades^Wyears. Using any of these things is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but the point of leadership is to show people the right direction, ask them to do the work, and to acknowledge that it is indeed work. Instead we got pandering to irresponsibility and performative altruism, and laissez faire choose-your-own-solipsistic-adventure - want to sew ersatz masks from old shirts and pretend you're not in an industrialized society? Cool! Want to pretend to fight creeping totalitarianism by assaulting a grocery clerk? Also cool! Unsurprisingly, Covid Likes This :thumbsup: One of the last things we need is even less faith in our public institutions and general society, but downplaying the scope of the failure out of tribal loyalty isn't the right thing either.

pugworthy 5y ago
Imagine showing this to some people on January 15, 2022 and having them tell you it's crap. That's the way it is at times and that's depressing.
drewcoo 5y ago
Those masks and face shields should sport US flags and bald eagles and nationalist slogans. Not only should we all have them, distributed by the government, but wearing them should be a visible form of patriotism.
- mindslight 5y ago
  I assume you're being sarcastic, equating wearing protective gear to fascist fashion like say the aftermath of 9/11. But when a fire alarm goes off and everybody leaves a building, you're not being clever by staying. Sometimes conditions change and it really does make individual sense for everybody to move in the same general direction. As I've gotten older, and especially as hammered home by the pandemic, I've accepted that groupthink is unfortunately going to exist regardless. As such, it may as well be nudged towards positive ends like encouraging people to protect themselves and their community, rather than destructive ends like denying that a problem exists.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I haven't been in a fire alarm caused by an actual dangerous fire. I have been annoyed by several false alarms and fire tests. Staying behind had actually been the smart move.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      s/smart/post hoc optimal/ For something that has wasted perhaps ten cumulative hours of my life, deferring to commonly accepted wisdom seems like the smarter choice.