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Did you support them lying about mask effectiveness, destroying their credibility and leading to deaths? There's no question the CDC increased deaths by callin

by 0xy 4y ago

Did you support them lying about mask effectiveness, destroying their credibility and leading to deaths? There's no question the CDC increased deaths by calling masks ineffective at the beginning of the pandemic. Their credibility never recovered, especially not when they are still flip flopping to this day (recommendations on masks oscillated by the week, often in response to public sentiment/political pressure -- not science).

mike503 4y ago
Documented reasoning behind that. Nobody said toilet paper was important and it became scarce. Imagine if they said masks were important. PPE would be impossible to get. Even worse than it already was. With stories like this coming to mind: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/illinois-comptrollers-office-finds-itself-paying-3-5-million-for-ppe-in-mcdonalds-parking-lot-during-coronavirus-crisis/ https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/illinois-comptrollers-o...
- somenameforme 4y ago
  In a democracy in particular, trust is the most important thing in society. Because actions are not guided by the truth, but by what people think the truth is. And when you lose trust, you lose the ability to influence people's perception of that. In a society where a group is perceived as partisan, they end up only being able to influence a fraction of society. There was a poll [1] on this specific question (from May 2021 - so right in the middle of the pandemic), and as of then only 52% of Americans felt that the CDC was trustworthy. That factor alone is going to dramatically outweigh any sort of benefit of their lie. And of course it wasn't just the lie, but their general behavior which frequently came off as extremely disingenuous. In anything even vaguely approaching the longrun, honesty always win. Because while lies may create more optimal outcomes in the extreme shortrun, the decline in trust it causes ultimately means we start getting to play out the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf on a societal level. And that's not pleasant. [1] - https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2021/05/RWJF-Harvard-Report_FINAL-051321.pdf https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/202...

by 0xy 4y ago

mike503 4y ago

Documented reasoning behind that. Nobody said toilet paper was important and it became scarce. Imagine if they said masks were important. PPE would be impossible to get. Even worse than it already was. With stories like this coming to mind: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/illinois-comptrollers-office-finds-itself-paying-3-5-million-for-ppe-in-mcdonalds-parking-lot-during-coronavirus-crisis/ https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/illinois-comptrollers-o...

somenameforme 4y ago
In a democracy in particular, trust is the most important thing in society. Because actions are not guided by the truth, but by what people think the truth is. And when you lose trust, you lose the ability to influence people's perception of that. In a society where a group is perceived as partisan, they end up only being able to influence a fraction of society. There was a poll [1] on this specific question (from May 2021 - so right in the middle of the pandemic), and as of then only 52% of Americans felt that the CDC was trustworthy. That factor alone is going to dramatically outweigh any sort of benefit of their lie. And of course it wasn't just the lie, but their general behavior which frequently came off as extremely disingenuous. In anything even vaguely approaching the longrun, honesty always win. Because while lies may create more optimal outcomes in the extreme shortrun, the decline in trust it causes ultimately means we start getting to play out the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf on a societal level. And that's not pleasant. [1] - https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2021/05/RWJF-Harvard-Report_FINAL-051321.pdf https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/202...