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I’m confused by this sentiment. How was science at fault for the collective government response to a global pandemic when the hospitals were full, millions died
by icameron 2y ago
I’m confused by this sentiment. How was science at fault for the collective government response to a global pandemic when the hospitals were full, millions died, and countries closed their borders in attempts to slow the spread? With hindsight you may find some poor choices but at the time, what could a scientist have done differently in your opinion?
- dekhn 2y agoThere is an entire litany of complaints that I've seen. It typically centers around "we shouldn't have funded this virology research in the first place" and "the government should have been totally transparent about every single piece of knowledge it had, and clearer about things that were ambiguous" and "it was a mistake to lie about masks not working to save masks for health workers" and freedom of choice around vaccination. Doing public health at scale is incredibly hard. Doing so in a politicized environment with active disinformation is even harder. I'm not going to fault the government response. By and large it did what I expected it to do. Ideally, there would be an honest postmortem and we'd improve our techniques for the future, but I worry that won't every happen again.