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> I agree public health officials in certain countries did a poor job. For the most part they were medical professionals who aren't necessarily experts (though
by roenxi 2y ago
> I agree public health officials in certain countries did a poor job. For the most part they were medical professionals who aren't necessarily experts (though some of them were and some countries had expert advisers to set policy). There were many unknowns and it wasn't clear what to optimize for.
That is a bold claim you might want to walk away from. 3 posts ago you were holding up vaccine conspiracy theorists as people who, and I quote, "Despite overwhelming evidence they stick to their version of "reality", they never seek counter-evidence, they believe everyone but them is part of a ploy to hide the real reality from everyone. They don't trust experts or scientists.".
Now a few posts later you're suggesting that That the public health officials aren't experts in public health and that their policies were not based on settled science.
When you are insulting a large group of people who's position was, basically, "we don't think public health officials are doing a good job, we aren't satisfied with the evidence you're showing us and we want freedom to make our own decisions" it is probably a mistake to suggest that the public health officials were doing a bad job, often not experts and caught lying with the purpose of stopping people acting in their own best interests. It makes the conspiracy-minded theorists seem pretty reasonable.
Of course in the pandemic, this is the point where people who were claiming to be following science bought up the fact that the vaccine was certain to stop transmission of COVID and it was basically advocating in favour of murder to say otherwise. Turns out that was not the case so they've had to stop doing that.
- nsguy 2y agoMaybe it's a bit too strong. I do think there was a real problem with having medical professional in charge when their discipline and expertise were not the perfect match to the real world problems we were facing. Their policies might have been based on "settled science" (e.g. research on respiratory diseases from the 70's) but I think that wasn't really the appropriate way to handle things as the pandemic developed. It might have been appropriate for day 1 but officials IMO lacked the ability to adapt to the changing reality. The actual policies varied a lot between countries which is why I qualified my statement. At the end of the day, you can be critical without being conspiratorial. I'm open to new information that supports the idea that the way health officials handled the pandemic was optimal but given that different jurisdiction gave conflicting advice so that seems counter evidence. There are many specific examples that come to mind. If we can't critique the response then there's not going to be any learning. Experts and science are not perfect. Again, point taken and maybe I'm a bit too strong, but that's what I'm trying to get at. EDIT: i.e. I've no issue with people that are being critical after examining the evidence. These people are not conspiracy theorists and that process is a healthy part of making progress in science and policy. That's not the same thing as people saying Bill Gates put 4G chips in the vaccines or some other mysterious behind the scenes forces or conspiracies.