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I recommend spending some time as a public health official; it helps understand the logic that PH people apply when they make policy. I also recommend reading

• kcplate 1y ago
  Nope, they don’t get a pass for being incompetent from me just because a job is difficult. I’ll also never accept a “well their intentions were good” type of argument—-If the results suck, the results suck. Our country moved towards antivax mentality in a big way because of how our government handled that pandemic. That’s unforgivable and I am not someone who will blame the effect instead of the cause.
  • sarchertech 1y ago
    Our country handled the pandemic nearly the same as other developed countries, but none of them have had such an extreme reaction. What happened is that our country is extremely polarized and one side picked vaccines, masks, and lockdowns, so the other side took the opposite stance. Then the vaccine, mask, and lockdown side reacted by leaning farther in (probably a bit too far near the end of things). On the one side you had people yelling about masks causing them to asphyxiate and on the other you had people wearing masks alone in the car.
    • amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      I'm sure I was one of the people wearing the mask alone in the car, but that was only because it was easier to leave it on when I left the house than to continually put it on and take it off when I was out running errands. I guess I never found them that uncomfortable.
      • sarchertech 1y ago
        That’s fair. I was mostly looking for a hyperbolic example of people on the pro mask side, but that’s a good point.
  • YZF 1y ago
    I agree and this is also true in other countries. I'm not sure why this is even a question. The results of the pandemic sucked big time and people lost trust over masks vs. no masks, boosters, lock downs, and many other pseduo-random rules not backed by any real evidence. This loss of trust was broader than just the vaccines. We don't even seem to be learning in retrospect. I've yet to see one article from health officials to the public about how they could have done better and what mistakes were made.
• Workaccount2 1y ago
  Like the fact that wearing masks in public is primarily done so that sick people have a mask over their coughing mouth. But if only sick people had to wear masks, it would single you out as sick, so nobody would wear a mask. So the solution is for everyone to wear a mask, so a mask isn't a sign of illness. Of course, this level of thinking requires an IQ of at least 100, which half the population is under. So "Wear a mask, because masks stop the spread of illness" is used to allude to masks being a tool for protection primarily, rather than a tool of containment.
  • refurb 1y ago
    “People are too dumb to understand so we have to lie to them” How’s that working out so far?
  • kcplate 1y ago
    Was that after the first Fauci lie about them not being helpful or the second lie where he said they were? Now you are suggesting it was all some form of performative behavior modification theater? It’s no wonder our public trust in our health authorities has decreased.
    • Workaccount2 1y ago
      There a no pieces that don't fit here, except being over the intelligence threshold to understand what was going on. - He said masks are not effective because they aren't. Surgical masks won't stop much and N95 needs special procedure to use properly. 95% of people clamoring for masks would be healthy unsick people who want protection from the virus, which masks aren't that great at (in general public hands). - At the time people needed to stay home and medical workers who understand masks and using them properly needed them. There was a huge shortage. - The number of sick people going out in public, the ones where a mask is very effective (picture a sweatshirt hanging over a garden hose, now spray someone with it) would be very small, requiring very few masks. - If the public understood that only sick people needed to wear masks -no one would wear a mask- Health officials deeply understand this. You kill your whole program if the public associates masks with being sick. Fauci had no lies, maybe misteps, but he could not reveal the true motivation of "Wear a mask" (stated in the line abaove) because it kills the whole initiative(as stated in the line above). So now, lets see who can clear the hurdle: How do you as a public health communicator get all sick people to wear masks in public? Fauci was stuck in a game theory problem, and you need some hidden information (which I now revealed) and mild intelligence to understand it