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Government messaging around this was poor all around. In many places masks were pushed to "protect yourself" (so half the people would automatically not do it o

Government messaging around this was poor all around. In many places masks were pushed to "protect yourself" (so half the people would automatically not do it out of machismo) rather than "protect others" (which is how regular masks mostly work in reality). Vaccines fully preventing transmission is also technically not true, personally I never watched the news and only skimmed the actual studies so I knew it but a lot of the population would probably feel duped. However they do reduce transmission and in fact "protect grandma"---if you don't fall sick you don't cough as much so they reduce the number of infected droplets you fire, though of course this implies you also take other precautions like following the isolation guidelines and not being near your grandma in an enclosed space without a mask while talking a lot. Further if you fall sick and occupy medical facilities during a wave of COVID this may directly affect the ability of your grandma to get any treatment (not just for COVID). I wish we could expect public messaging to convey all this nuance!

simonh 4y ago
There was a lot of mixed messaging rom governments, but frankly that was largely because for the first 6 months to a year we knew very little about the virus. A lot of recommendations and policy was based on best estimates and working assumptions, and some of these turned out to be wrong. Mistakes were made, lockdowns were introduced earlier or later than they should have been, assumptions about transmissibility were made based on super-spreader events that turned out to be statistical outliers. Mistakes were inevitable, I remember having a conversation with my brother back in March 2020 where we came to the conclusion that given the lack of data mistakes would be made, and these would be used by conspiracy theorists and be politicised to spread dangerous and even deadly propaganda that would get a lot of people killed. I dearly wish we had been wrong, but here we are.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  I mean messaging even long after the research was published, but yeah.

simonh 4y ago

There was a lot of mixed messaging rom governments, but frankly that was largely because for the first 6 months to a year we knew very little about the virus. A lot of recommendations and policy was based on best estimates and working assumptions, and some of these turned out to be wrong. Mistakes were made, lockdowns were introduced earlier or later than they should have been, assumptions about transmissibility were made based on super-spreader events that turned out to be statistical outliers. Mistakes were inevitable, I remember having a conversation with my brother back in March 2020 where we came to the conclusion that given the lack of data mistakes would be made, and these would be used by conspiracy theorists and be politicised to spread dangerous and even deadly propaganda that would get a lot of people killed. I dearly wish we had been wrong, but here we are.

throwaway290 4y ago
I mean messaging even long after the research was published, but yeah.