4 ms·

I gotta wonder if some of this is liability CYA. Like if the guy in the alert runs amuck and kills someone, the agencies will get asked "why didn't you do X to

I gotta wonder if some of this is liability CYA. Like if the guy in the alert runs amuck and kills someone, the agencies will get asked "why didn't you do X to stop him", such as wake up everyone in Texas at 5 in the morning. I had a buddy who worked as a lifeguard at a local swimming hole. If there was a major accident (person needs immediate medical attention), they'd call an ambulance "code three", i.e. lights and sirens and run over any pedestrians in the way, or something like that. If the situation was less dire, they'd call it as code two, getting a less risky intervention. So of course at some point, someone in a minor accident got taken in on a code two call and developed some complications that might have been avoided with slightly less delay. IDK if there was a lawsuit or what, but from then on, even minor incidents had to be called as code 3. This is why we can't have nice things.

Eisenstein 2y ago
These are Texas public alerts. I don't think they are CYA. I think they are due to lack of investment in government.
AlbertCory 2y ago
The only solution to CYA is a written policy: this is the criteria for when we Code Three, and only then. "Why didn't this incident get Code Three?" "Because it didn't meet the criteria." You'll still get complaints, but at least it's in writing.
- Analemma_ 2y ago
  The problem is, written policy doesn't count for anything if you can still be sued for obeying the policy. And if you can't be sued for following the policy, that's guaranteed release from liability, and the public haaaaates that. Vaccine companies have release from liability, for example, because otherwise nobody would make a product which is more-or-less mandatory and guarantees at least some complications over a large enough sample size, and this has spawned an entire culture of angry conspiracy theories. There's no mechanistic way around this problem other than user education.
  - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
    It’s not necessarily about education, it’s just hard to cope with psychologically. Lives aren’t valued with unlimited resources. When it’s someone you care about you wish more was done.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - geysersam 2y ago
      I'm genuinely curious. How can you be sure natural immunity cured Covid and not the vaccination? The vaccinations were correlated with steep declines in deaths and severe illness, isn't that good enough to motivate the vaccinations? Or is your point that the vaccine just gave a temporary respite that ultimately saved few lives relative to the cost?
      - fsckboy 2y ago
        countries around the world, rich and poor, pursued different public health responses, some because of choices, some had no choices. But people around the world are not getting serious covid any more, it's just not something anybody even thinks about more than say the flu. That's the attenuation of the virus and natural immunity (and you might as well lump attenutation of the virus with natural immunity because they occur on the same timescale in the same interactions), which was predictable and was predicted. The UK initially followed that idea as a strategy, and Sweden followed it, it was accepted science. The people who died with covid didn't necessarily die of covid, but public health officials followed policies of lumping them together, and govts incented them to do it: "more money for covid". Old and infirm people, the morbidly obese, respiratory illnesses, etc. suffered the worst, as they do from the flu. Young people were hardly affected, though young people seem to have suffered more from the vaccine side effects and the socialization developmental deficit. The conferred immunity from catching covid protects you from reinfection far longer than the so-called vaccines, because these mRNA vaccines don't work as traditional vaccines do, that's why (along with the profit motive) we were all told to start getting boosters essentially right away. When an event like this causes excess deaths, it is followed by a period with a death deficit, simply because many of people "who were going to die soon anyway" died early, and they aren't around to die later, it's accepted science. That has to have happened with covid because they told us those people were dying, but try to get your hands on the statistics. I'm not saying people didn't get sick from covid or that it wasn't serious, But the coverups and stonewalling stop us from getting to the truth about what happened. but it is not because of vaccinations that we don't worry about covid today, and the vaccinations we got had more side effects (in no small part because they were not tested). I knew I would get downvoted for this because there is a political class that is, in HN terms, not comfortable with people "being curious" about it, they'd rather censor. But since GP engaged in gratuitous soapboxing and propagandizing I thought I'd spend some karma to speak up.
Aerroon 2y ago
At some point somebody's going to argue alert fatigue in court and probably win, if they haven't already. CYA works until people stop believing that you were doing your due diligence. After that it becomes a contributing factor.

Eisenstein 2y ago

These are Texas public alerts. I don't think they are CYA. I think they are due to lack of investment in government.

AlbertCory 2y ago

The only solution to CYA is a written policy: this is the criteria for when we Code Three, and only then. "Why didn't this incident get Code Three?" "Because it didn't meet the criteria." You'll still get complaints, but at least it's in writing.

Analemma_ 2y ago
The problem is, written policy doesn't count for anything if you can still be sued for obeying the policy. And if you can't be sued for following the policy, that's guaranteed release from liability, and the public haaaaates that. Vaccine companies have release from liability, for example, because otherwise nobody would make a product which is more-or-less mandatory and guarantees at least some complications over a large enough sample size, and this has spawned an entire culture of angry conspiracy theories. There's no mechanistic way around this problem other than user education.
- tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  It’s not necessarily about education, it’s just hard to cope with psychologically. Lives aren’t valued with unlimited resources. When it’s someone you care about you wish more was done.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - geysersam 2y ago
    I'm genuinely curious. How can you be sure natural immunity cured Covid and not the vaccination? The vaccinations were correlated with steep declines in deaths and severe illness, isn't that good enough to motivate the vaccinations? Or is your point that the vaccine just gave a temporary respite that ultimately saved few lives relative to the cost?
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      countries around the world, rich and poor, pursued different public health responses, some because of choices, some had no choices. But people around the world are not getting serious covid any more, it's just not something anybody even thinks about more than say the flu. That's the attenuation of the virus and natural immunity (and you might as well lump attenutation of the virus with natural immunity because they occur on the same timescale in the same interactions), which was predictable and was predicted. The UK initially followed that idea as a strategy, and Sweden followed it, it was accepted science. The people who died with covid didn't necessarily die of covid, but public health officials followed policies of lumping them together, and govts incented them to do it: "more money for covid". Old and infirm people, the morbidly obese, respiratory illnesses, etc. suffered the worst, as they do from the flu. Young people were hardly affected, though young people seem to have suffered more from the vaccine side effects and the socialization developmental deficit. The conferred immunity from catching covid protects you from reinfection far longer than the so-called vaccines, because these mRNA vaccines don't work as traditional vaccines do, that's why (along with the profit motive) we were all told to start getting boosters essentially right away. When an event like this causes excess deaths, it is followed by a period with a death deficit, simply because many of people "who were going to die soon anyway" died early, and they aren't around to die later, it's accepted science. That has to have happened with covid because they told us those people were dying, but try to get your hands on the statistics. I'm not saying people didn't get sick from covid or that it wasn't serious, But the coverups and stonewalling stop us from getting to the truth about what happened. but it is not because of vaccinations that we don't worry about covid today, and the vaccinations we got had more side effects (in no small part because they were not tested). I knew I would get downvoted for this because there is a political class that is, in HN terms, not comfortable with people "being curious" about it, they'd rather censor. But since GP engaged in gratuitous soapboxing and propagandizing I thought I'd spend some karma to speak up.

Aerroon 2y ago

At some point somebody's going to argue alert fatigue in court and probably win, if they haven't already. CYA works until people stop believing that you were doing your due diligence. After that it becomes a contributing factor.