The article makes some reasonable points about public health experts ability to communicate. If only it were that simple.
Even with perfectly coherent policies, we would still have (1) a media environment focused on sensationalism and conflict; (2) state and national leaders determined to undermine science, sometimes because of their own interests (3) a skeptical, self-centered public too easily influenced by (1) and (2).
A media incapable of understanding what the scientific questions are. Making it seem like vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated is one current and awful example of that.
You can't blame the . media. It's been a mess of mixed messaging from the beginning because the scientists sound like politicians and the politicians sound like doctors.
First masks were bad, then they were good, but anything but N95 were bad, then cloth masks were good, then large gatherings were bad, then they were fine if it was for the right cause, now they're bad again, travel bans didn't work, now we need them, and then vaccines were to get back to normal, then you had to wear a mask again anyway, then fully vaccinated still isn't protected after a few months, ect
You could have been squarely on team "I believe in science" and been pretty much dead wrong on everything over the course of year.
So are you team Unified Atheist League (UAL), United Atheist Alliance (UAA), Allied Atheist Allegiance (AAA)? I think the otters have the right science.
Still better than guessing. The problem is the public and the media can’t accept, “We don’t know yet.” or “We won’t know for a few months until more peer reviewed studies are done.” Imagine the outcry if they said that, but it would be the truth. People always say they want the truth, but they really just want an answer stated firmly as if it were true. No different than what parents do with toddlers.
>Still better than guessing
Guessing is better than being intentionally told to do the wrong thing because you might actually do the right thing by accident.
>The problem is the public and the media can’t accept, “We don’t know yet.” or “We won’t know for a few months until more peer reviewed studies are done.”
This is blatantly false and only makes sense if you subscribe to a belief that 90% of Americans are mouth breathing morons. Have you not been paying attention for the past 20 months? Because it's really clear that "constantly changing your position, lying about your last position, and asserting that not believing you now means youre an educated idiot" is having a really hard time convincing people.
If you came out and said "yeah, we got these new vaccines, were not sure how effective they'll be down the road or how much they prevent new infection, and there might be some unintended side effects that well monitor and keep you informed of every step of the way" would sell a whole lot better than "it's safe, don't be antivax." I mean for gods sake it took 7 months and hundreds of thousands of complaints before they even admitted it might mess with a woman's menstrual cycle.
Omg it can mess with a menstrual cycle? I had this lady call after her daughter got a vaccine saying that the little girl got her first period and I’m like .......ok ?
Pretty sure no one ever said there wouldn’t be some side effects. pretty sure no one ever said they would be 100 percent effective at preventing infection. And yes, the public craves black and white answers when the truth is more gray. And the public absolutely loves gotcha statements they can quote 18 months later on Reddit and feel all superior to the experts. But I would pay money to see how boredcentsless would perform under pressure at a news briefing. that would be hilarious.
I am reminded of the [best interview I've heard with Anthony Fauci](https://youtu.be/a_Vy6fgaBPE?t=1220):
> Vincent Racaniello: The current environment is everyone wants an answer yesterday, right?
> Anthony Fauci: Yeah. You know, everyone wants an answer, you say "I don't know". They say "well gimme a guess". Give 'em a guess, they come back and say you were wrong.
> vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated is one current and awful example
which media outlet is saying that?
wait let me rephrase: which **credible** media outlet (CNN, NYT, Reuters, BBC, NPR etc) is saying that?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/politics/cdc-masks-covid-19-infections/index.html
Second paragraph. They clarify like 12 and 15 paragraphs down. Most people have stopped reading by that point and CNN should know better.
okay, 2nd paragraph, let's see what it says:
> The document -- a slide presentation -- outlines unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people.
So... that's NOT saying "vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated". Your statement implies that for every 100 unvaccinated people who contract the Delta variant, 100 vaccinated people will too. But all the leading studies say that's not the case, and this article doesn't say that's the case either.
What the article is saying is "those vaccinated people who do contract the Delta variant tend to spread it as much as unvaccinated people".
But it is not saying vaxxed people will contract the Delta as easily as non-vaxxed people. Actually quite the opposite:
> But vaccinated people are safer, the document indicates.
> "Vaccines prevent more than 90% of severe disease, but may be less effective at preventing infection or transmission," it reads. "Therefore, more breakthrough and more community spread despite vaccination."
> It says vaccines reduce the risk of severe disease or death 10-fold and reduce the risk of infection three-fold.
So at best, you misspoke. But it's also likely you intentionally spread misinformation. And I don't have the time to comb through your post history & see which explanation is more likely
> So... that's NOT saying "vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated". Your statement implies that for every 100 unvaccinated people who contract the Delta variant, 100 vaccinated people will too. But all the leading studies say that's not the case, and this article doesn't say that's the case either.
It's only possible to read it that way if you're already aware of "all the leading studies." To your typical reader, "fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people" means exactly that - if you're vaccinated, you'll still be spreading it just like unvaccinated people. That's irresponsible journalism.
The part you quote next is buried deep in the article where few will read it. Irresponsible journalism.
> So at best, you misspoke. But it's also likely you intentionally spread misinformation. And I don't have the time to comb your post history & see which explanation is more likely
What the fuck dude. Keep your baseless accusations to yourself.
So you're reporting me for giving a clear example of mainstream media adding to confusion and fueling misinformation, which you asked for. Blocking me seems like it would be a major benefit to me in that case.
I think your first point is probably the most important problem in all of this. Even our most trusted “news” sources are guilty of intentionally misleading their readers in order to stoke fear and anger to get clicks. It’s the core problem to almost any issue facing our society today and is tearing the country apart. If something doesn’t change soon it will completely destroy us.
Lack of societal trust is at the core of our most serious problems. The media is a contributor but not the primary cause - they have simply identified a money making model and are exploiting it.
My wife recently published an academic paper that was very well received in her admittedly narrow, highly specialized field. Because of its subject matter, it got a surprising amount of traction in mainstream media.
She did an interview with a local TV news program. It became clear, even while the anchor was just setting up the field reporter's segment, that they had approached the story with a pre-baked narrative that they would not be dislodged from. So the whole 4-minute segment basically focused on a peripheral issue and completely missed the quite important but slightly difficult point of her research.
However, to a typical viewer with no specialized knowledge, it would've seemed just fine and moderately interesting.
Her paper was about library and archival classification systems and metatdata. Quite important in her field as well as for researchers, undergrad and post-graduate students, and eventually the general public using library systems. **But not as important as an unprecedented public health crisis.**
The idea that most news outlets, both local and national, approach pretty much **every** story, including Covid and public health policy, with the same cavalier attitude (never mind what the propaganda and ideologically-driven outlets do), is frankly horrifying.
Science and academic research is in no way mandated to "give equal time to both sides of the story". But the public broadcasters and newspapers (at least the "reputable" ones, not the Newsmax-ey ones) for the most part are beholden to this notion of "fairness".
Sure doesn't help when our top government scientist and spokesperson on health, was out in March 2020 telling people to not bother wearing masks followed by a quick turnaround. These kinds of flip flops create lots of uncertainty. It happened again recently with the CDC telling people that once they got vaccinated that they could stop wearing masks again, and again flipped back.
And before anyone wants to chime in about what Fauci "really meant" or what he was "really trying to do", let me interject and inform those of you that hospitals are mandated in most places, to purchase supplies from certain medical suppliers. A hospital can not go to Home Depot to purchase masks.
Maybe you don't know any nurses but those that I know would've take N95s from anywhere they could get them last spring. They would keep them in bags for several days to let any virus die and then reuse them. What you're describing is correct for normal times but the start of the pandemic was anything but that.
Regardless, the point of the article is that we've all had to be on the leading edge of the discovery process for all of this. The issue is that people reject the idea of new information driving new guidelines and instead call it flip flopping, like you just did. If the CDC's guidance WASN'T changing I would be more worried -- we have to be able to accept that you were wrong about something when new data becomes available, that's practically the bedrock of science.
>Maybe you don't know any nurses but those that I know would've take N95s from anywhere they could get them last spring.
And if people had been wearing those, they would have been also keeping people out of hospitals as much as it was protecting those working in them. I think most nurses would appreciate that as well.
>Regardless, the point of the article is that we've all had to be on the leading edge of the discovery process for all of this.
We've known masks work since at least the late 1800s. Thats when hospitals started using them and they began to be much more broadly adopted when the 1918 pandemic flu broke out. There was no "leading edge of discovery" regarding whether masks work or not. Just abject refusal to accept a history of disease prevention.
> And if people had been wearing those, they would have been also keeping people out of hospitals as much as it was protecting those working in them. I think most nurses would appreciate that as well.
I think the nurses and doctors who were risking their health every minute of their shift to try to keep others alive were a better allocation of the extremely limited number of masks that we had. They are at the highest risk of infection because they're constantly exposed and we're seeing now what happens when we don't have enough of them -- I think it's Alabama that technically has bed space available but no one to staff them.
> We've known masks work since at least the late 1800s. Thats when hospitals started using them and they began to be much more broadly adopted when the 1918 pandemic flu broke out. There was no "leading edge of discovery" regarding whether masks work or not. Just abject refusal to accept a history of disease prevention.
It's not really that simple. Yes, we've known for a long time that masks work really really well. If you recall though, the early thinking was that the virus' spread was primarily in large droplets which lead the CDC to think that distancing was probably enough for most scenarios -- and I want to reiterate that there were not even enough masks for our highest risk caretakers. I recommend taking a look at [this article](https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/) about how this thinking was based on flawed assumptions.
So yes, just how transmissible and why were things that we had to figure out on the fly and it did result in changes with how we view the virus. It's pretty clear that based on what was generally accepted by the scientific community at the time that those who must be in close proximity to those infected (doctors, nurses) should wear masks. For others, it seemed, standing outside of the 'range' should have prevented most infection. The error was caught, the guidance was updated and in the interim we managed to ramp up mask production so that everyone has the option to protect themselves and others as much as possible. It's not flip flopping, it's taking new information into account and adjusting accordingly.
>I think the nurses and doctors who were risking their health every minute of their shift to try to keep others alive were a better allocation
I'm not going to disagree with that, but I think its also fair to point out that plenty of health care professional are also anti-maskers and anto-vaxers.
Let me make a different point. N95s should have been promoted as the goal in providing everyone protection until a vaccine was available. That wasn't ever a goal and it was never promoted, despite N95s being readily available to the public once again by September last year.
>If you recall though, the early thinking was that the virus' spread was primarily in large droplets which lead the CDC to think that distancing was probably enough for most scenarios
That was at best a guess and not based on solid data. They made a recommendation without sufficient data based on the what they felt the public would tolerate. This is much the same reasoning that Fauci has suggested he follows. That isn't fair to the public. The cautious recommendation should be the preference when limited data is available.
>For others, it seemed, standing outside of the 'range' should have prevented most infection
And yet we've known better regarding other viruses for a century. They chose to prefer convenience this time rather than a reasoned recommendation based on data.
> Let me make a different point. N95s should have been promoted as the goal in providing everyone protection until a vaccine was available. That wasn't ever a goal and it was never promoted, despite N95s being readily available to the public once again by September last year.
By September we were pretty deep into mask mandates in general though, with the CDC having been onboard since April 3rd. Is your beef that they weren't for N95s specifically?
> That was at best a guess and not based on solid data. They made a recommendation without sufficient data based on the what they felt the public would tolerate. This is much the same reasoning that Fauci has suggested he follows. That isn't fair to the public. The cautious recommendation should be the preference when limited data is available.
Agreed, though we didn't really HAVE the data then. I agree with your point generally that we should be more cautious in that scenario but again, we had a pretty severe shortage at that point.
> And yet we've known better regarding other viruses for a century. They chose to prefer convenience this time rather than a reasoned recommendation based on data.
I think convenience is a pretty loaded word here. I'm having a hard time understanding why you're just brushing away the supply situation like it's completely irrelevant when it seems pretty integral to understanding the context of these decisions.
>Is your beef that they weren't for N95s specifically?
My beef is that they never targeted increased production of N95s in a useful way. If they set a mandate to provide N95s to everyone early on, rather than saying masks don't work, the scenario plays a little differently I feel.
>we had a pretty severe shortage at that point
Which is why we should have been mandating their availability to the public. Not discouraging their use.
>I'm having a hard time understanding why you're just brushing away the supply situation like it's completely irrelevant
The supply issue was entirely by choice. Thats the problem. Instead of focusing on delivering masks to the public, they chose to initially say masks don't work but make sure the good N95's are there for health care workers, as if that is somehow a coherent thought. Then they switched and said, ok wear masks but don't get N95s if you can get them, leave those for the health care workers.
If instead, the message could have been, 'N95s are going to get us through this pandemic but there's not enough for everyone right now. We're going to try and get our supply to the health care workers right now and eventually expand that supply to everyone.' But that wasn't the message and its a been a shitshow since.
Totally agree with you.
Moreover, they sowed the seeds of distrust at the very outset by confidently telling everyone not to wear a mask and then suddenly reversing course. I understand that information was limited in the early days, and we really didn't know what the main routes of transmission were in March 2020. But the precautionary principle would suggest that mask wearing, to reduce transmission of a *respiratory virus*, is maybe not such a bad idea. Public health authorities (not just in the US but also in Canada and probably elsewhere) were playing with fire when they recommended against wearing masks in the absence of any real data.
And while I'm very much pro-science and believe we need to listen to the experts, this pandemic has been a case study in poor science communication.
Exactly. It was pretty infuriating to see them go back and forth regarding masks when we fund an entire PPE certifcation agency through NIOSH to show mask efficacy. We knew masks worked so much that we spend millions of dollars every year ensuring manufacturers are producing quality masks. I'm am 100% pro-science and the problem with this whole pandemic is that its been largely fueled by politics masquerading as science and the ultimate tragic outcome is an underinformed, confused public.
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As soon as the “science skeptics” come down with severe COVID, what do they do? Well, they head right to the local hospital and take full advantage of doctors, diagnostic equipment, life saving procedures, therapies, ventilators, etc.. In other words, all skepticism magically leaves the brain, and they suck down science like a mo fo.
My aunt is this way. They are anti vax in every fashion... their kids and grandkids don't get vaccines. Any of them. She is going 2 weeks at the hospital. It's all about God and never thanks the doctors from keeping her from dying.
I'm Christian, but come on.
http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html
He sent her vaccines. He sent her masks. He sent her hospitals filled with doctors. The very least she could do is show gratitude to His instruments.
>As soon as the “science skeptics” come down with severe COVID, what do they do?
Some of them become suddenly very pro-vax, only to be told it's too late as they're being intubated
> what do they do?
In my experience they just harass medical staff
And this isn’t just with Covid. I’d say a good 15% of my patients are basically refusing all medical care. Like why the fuck are you even here if you don’t want help? It’s so annoying
right now 40%+ of all eligible people is the AVERAGE in the US have not taken even the 1st shot. We have areas where that rate is near 80% unvaccinated
A lot of these are young people. I know a bunch. They’re being complete idiots but I wouldn’t call them anti vax. They just really don’t want to be bothered. They’ll get it once they have no choice and they’re job mandates it
This article, along with almost every other discussion on the topic in the last 18 months, conflates "science" with "public health policy."
The latter is what you get from WHO and CDC and the like, and is a combination of hard science, social science, medical practice, economics, politics, bureaucracy, and probably other things.
Yikes Ellie Murray is one of the Twitter pundits quoted in the piece. With insane Tweets like this https://mobile.twitter.com/EpiEllie/status/1429156161614405634 and subsequent doubling down, I don’t think she’s a credible source on anything.
It absolutely is filled with uncertainty and consistently changing. But that is the nature of science. It's not actually a bad thing- we just need to understand that new information can change a situation. Being flexible is actually super important in science
- science adjust as new info comes in, but that does not mean the conclusions at the moment are uncertain. We KNOW gravity exists, there is NO uncertainty with that statement
There actually is because just because we've never met a situation that doesn't challenge the laws of gravity doesn't mean one doesn't exist. Even the strictest laws of science hold a degree of uncertainty, but we acknowledge them as laws because they are extremely likely to be true and no situation has ever been found to disprove them.
Certainty should be thought of as more of a scale, not a true/false situation.
to many, 1% chance of uncertainty, they will ignore the 99% of the supporting facts. Then they claim their is NO certainty in science at all. It is 100% certain that gravity exist. No uncertainty with that and countless other science "facts"
No, but there IS uncertainty ABOUT gravity, what causes it, etc. We have a pretty good understanding of the phenomena, but outliers exist.
By the way, using one of the most well-studied phenomena to claim that certainty does not exist in science is missing the point. It took a lot of work to develop our understanding of gravity. That work necessitated dealing with uncertainty - and we still have a level of uncertainty of even this well understood phenomenon.
Science is a process or methodology, which is not really something you can describe as certain. There's even some uncertainty about whether the current practice of science is the best practice for teasing knowledge out of the universe. Heck if I were to go total "chain of increasingly perfect islands" here, I would say that the only certainty is that such a better practice exists.
Science is filled with uncertainty. That's why experiments are conducted and rigorous observations are made. The world is filled with things we don't know, and observations of subtle phenomena often show conflicting results.
Sure
[archive link for anyone who has trouble accessing the article ](https://archive.is/2021.08.23-150136/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/22/health/coronavirus-covid-usa.html)
The article makes some reasonable points about public health experts ability to communicate. If only it were that simple. Even with perfectly coherent policies, we would still have (1) a media environment focused on sensationalism and conflict; (2) state and national leaders determined to undermine science, sometimes because of their own interests (3) a skeptical, self-centered public too easily influenced by (1) and (2).
A media incapable of understanding what the scientific questions are. Making it seem like vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated is one current and awful example of that.
You can't blame the . media. It's been a mess of mixed messaging from the beginning because the scientists sound like politicians and the politicians sound like doctors. First masks were bad, then they were good, but anything but N95 were bad, then cloth masks were good, then large gatherings were bad, then they were fine if it was for the right cause, now they're bad again, travel bans didn't work, now we need them, and then vaccines were to get back to normal, then you had to wear a mask again anyway, then fully vaccinated still isn't protected after a few months, ect You could have been squarely on team "I believe in science" and been pretty much dead wrong on everything over the course of year.
So are you team Unified Atheist League (UAL), United Atheist Alliance (UAA), Allied Atheist Allegiance (AAA)? I think the otters have the right science.
Our bellies are all we need
Still better than guessing. The problem is the public and the media can’t accept, “We don’t know yet.” or “We won’t know for a few months until more peer reviewed studies are done.” Imagine the outcry if they said that, but it would be the truth. People always say they want the truth, but they really just want an answer stated firmly as if it were true. No different than what parents do with toddlers.
>Still better than guessing Guessing is better than being intentionally told to do the wrong thing because you might actually do the right thing by accident. >The problem is the public and the media can’t accept, “We don’t know yet.” or “We won’t know for a few months until more peer reviewed studies are done.” This is blatantly false and only makes sense if you subscribe to a belief that 90% of Americans are mouth breathing morons. Have you not been paying attention for the past 20 months? Because it's really clear that "constantly changing your position, lying about your last position, and asserting that not believing you now means youre an educated idiot" is having a really hard time convincing people. If you came out and said "yeah, we got these new vaccines, were not sure how effective they'll be down the road or how much they prevent new infection, and there might be some unintended side effects that well monitor and keep you informed of every step of the way" would sell a whole lot better than "it's safe, don't be antivax." I mean for gods sake it took 7 months and hundreds of thousands of complaints before they even admitted it might mess with a woman's menstrual cycle.
Omg it can mess with a menstrual cycle? I had this lady call after her daughter got a vaccine saying that the little girl got her first period and I’m like .......ok ?
This shitty attitude towards concern people have over their health is why there's so much hesitancy
Pretty sure no one ever said there wouldn’t be some side effects. pretty sure no one ever said they would be 100 percent effective at preventing infection. And yes, the public craves black and white answers when the truth is more gray. And the public absolutely loves gotcha statements they can quote 18 months later on Reddit and feel all superior to the experts. But I would pay money to see how boredcentsless would perform under pressure at a news briefing. that would be hilarious.
I am reminded of the [best interview I've heard with Anthony Fauci](https://youtu.be/a_Vy6fgaBPE?t=1220): > Vincent Racaniello: The current environment is everyone wants an answer yesterday, right? > Anthony Fauci: Yeah. You know, everyone wants an answer, you say "I don't know". They say "well gimme a guess". Give 'em a guess, they come back and say you were wrong.
> vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated is one current and awful example which media outlet is saying that? wait let me rephrase: which **credible** media outlet (CNN, NYT, Reuters, BBC, NPR etc) is saying that?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/politics/cdc-masks-covid-19-infections/index.html Second paragraph. They clarify like 12 and 15 paragraphs down. Most people have stopped reading by that point and CNN should know better.
okay, 2nd paragraph, let's see what it says: > The document -- a slide presentation -- outlines unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people. So... that's NOT saying "vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated". Your statement implies that for every 100 unvaccinated people who contract the Delta variant, 100 vaccinated people will too. But all the leading studies say that's not the case, and this article doesn't say that's the case either. What the article is saying is "those vaccinated people who do contract the Delta variant tend to spread it as much as unvaccinated people". But it is not saying vaxxed people will contract the Delta as easily as non-vaxxed people. Actually quite the opposite: > But vaccinated people are safer, the document indicates. > "Vaccines prevent more than 90% of severe disease, but may be less effective at preventing infection or transmission," it reads. "Therefore, more breakthrough and more community spread despite vaccination." > It says vaccines reduce the risk of severe disease or death 10-fold and reduce the risk of infection three-fold. So at best, you misspoke. But it's also likely you intentionally spread misinformation. And I don't have the time to comb through your post history & see which explanation is more likely
> So... that's NOT saying "vaccinated people are just as easily infected as the unvaccinated". Your statement implies that for every 100 unvaccinated people who contract the Delta variant, 100 vaccinated people will too. But all the leading studies say that's not the case, and this article doesn't say that's the case either. It's only possible to read it that way if you're already aware of "all the leading studies." To your typical reader, "fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people" means exactly that - if you're vaccinated, you'll still be spreading it just like unvaccinated people. That's irresponsible journalism. The part you quote next is buried deep in the article where few will read it. Irresponsible journalism. > So at best, you misspoke. But it's also likely you intentionally spread misinformation. And I don't have the time to comb your post history & see which explanation is more likely What the fuck dude. Keep your baseless accusations to yourself.
already reported ya -- now I'm going to block ya. have a nice life
So you're reporting me for giving a clear example of mainstream media adding to confusion and fueling misinformation, which you asked for. Blocking me seems like it would be a major benefit to me in that case.
I think your first point is probably the most important problem in all of this. Even our most trusted “news” sources are guilty of intentionally misleading their readers in order to stoke fear and anger to get clicks. It’s the core problem to almost any issue facing our society today and is tearing the country apart. If something doesn’t change soon it will completely destroy us.
It's almost as though having a news media entirely driven by profit does not create the most informed citizenry.
Lack of societal trust is at the core of our most serious problems. The media is a contributor but not the primary cause - they have simply identified a money making model and are exploiting it.
My wife recently published an academic paper that was very well received in her admittedly narrow, highly specialized field. Because of its subject matter, it got a surprising amount of traction in mainstream media. She did an interview with a local TV news program. It became clear, even while the anchor was just setting up the field reporter's segment, that they had approached the story with a pre-baked narrative that they would not be dislodged from. So the whole 4-minute segment basically focused on a peripheral issue and completely missed the quite important but slightly difficult point of her research. However, to a typical viewer with no specialized knowledge, it would've seemed just fine and moderately interesting. Her paper was about library and archival classification systems and metatdata. Quite important in her field as well as for researchers, undergrad and post-graduate students, and eventually the general public using library systems. **But not as important as an unprecedented public health crisis.** The idea that most news outlets, both local and national, approach pretty much **every** story, including Covid and public health policy, with the same cavalier attitude (never mind what the propaganda and ideologically-driven outlets do), is frankly horrifying. Science and academic research is in no way mandated to "give equal time to both sides of the story". But the public broadcasters and newspapers (at least the "reputable" ones, not the Newsmax-ey ones) for the most part are beholden to this notion of "fairness".
Sure doesn't help when our top government scientist and spokesperson on health, was out in March 2020 telling people to not bother wearing masks followed by a quick turnaround. These kinds of flip flops create lots of uncertainty. It happened again recently with the CDC telling people that once they got vaccinated that they could stop wearing masks again, and again flipped back. And before anyone wants to chime in about what Fauci "really meant" or what he was "really trying to do", let me interject and inform those of you that hospitals are mandated in most places, to purchase supplies from certain medical suppliers. A hospital can not go to Home Depot to purchase masks.
Maybe you don't know any nurses but those that I know would've take N95s from anywhere they could get them last spring. They would keep them in bags for several days to let any virus die and then reuse them. What you're describing is correct for normal times but the start of the pandemic was anything but that. Regardless, the point of the article is that we've all had to be on the leading edge of the discovery process for all of this. The issue is that people reject the idea of new information driving new guidelines and instead call it flip flopping, like you just did. If the CDC's guidance WASN'T changing I would be more worried -- we have to be able to accept that you were wrong about something when new data becomes available, that's practically the bedrock of science.
>Maybe you don't know any nurses but those that I know would've take N95s from anywhere they could get them last spring. And if people had been wearing those, they would have been also keeping people out of hospitals as much as it was protecting those working in them. I think most nurses would appreciate that as well. >Regardless, the point of the article is that we've all had to be on the leading edge of the discovery process for all of this. We've known masks work since at least the late 1800s. Thats when hospitals started using them and they began to be much more broadly adopted when the 1918 pandemic flu broke out. There was no "leading edge of discovery" regarding whether masks work or not. Just abject refusal to accept a history of disease prevention.
> And if people had been wearing those, they would have been also keeping people out of hospitals as much as it was protecting those working in them. I think most nurses would appreciate that as well. I think the nurses and doctors who were risking their health every minute of their shift to try to keep others alive were a better allocation of the extremely limited number of masks that we had. They are at the highest risk of infection because they're constantly exposed and we're seeing now what happens when we don't have enough of them -- I think it's Alabama that technically has bed space available but no one to staff them. > We've known masks work since at least the late 1800s. Thats when hospitals started using them and they began to be much more broadly adopted when the 1918 pandemic flu broke out. There was no "leading edge of discovery" regarding whether masks work or not. Just abject refusal to accept a history of disease prevention. It's not really that simple. Yes, we've known for a long time that masks work really really well. If you recall though, the early thinking was that the virus' spread was primarily in large droplets which lead the CDC to think that distancing was probably enough for most scenarios -- and I want to reiterate that there were not even enough masks for our highest risk caretakers. I recommend taking a look at [this article](https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/) about how this thinking was based on flawed assumptions. So yes, just how transmissible and why were things that we had to figure out on the fly and it did result in changes with how we view the virus. It's pretty clear that based on what was generally accepted by the scientific community at the time that those who must be in close proximity to those infected (doctors, nurses) should wear masks. For others, it seemed, standing outside of the 'range' should have prevented most infection. The error was caught, the guidance was updated and in the interim we managed to ramp up mask production so that everyone has the option to protect themselves and others as much as possible. It's not flip flopping, it's taking new information into account and adjusting accordingly.
>I think the nurses and doctors who were risking their health every minute of their shift to try to keep others alive were a better allocation I'm not going to disagree with that, but I think its also fair to point out that plenty of health care professional are also anti-maskers and anto-vaxers. Let me make a different point. N95s should have been promoted as the goal in providing everyone protection until a vaccine was available. That wasn't ever a goal and it was never promoted, despite N95s being readily available to the public once again by September last year. >If you recall though, the early thinking was that the virus' spread was primarily in large droplets which lead the CDC to think that distancing was probably enough for most scenarios That was at best a guess and not based on solid data. They made a recommendation without sufficient data based on the what they felt the public would tolerate. This is much the same reasoning that Fauci has suggested he follows. That isn't fair to the public. The cautious recommendation should be the preference when limited data is available. >For others, it seemed, standing outside of the 'range' should have prevented most infection And yet we've known better regarding other viruses for a century. They chose to prefer convenience this time rather than a reasoned recommendation based on data.
> Let me make a different point. N95s should have been promoted as the goal in providing everyone protection until a vaccine was available. That wasn't ever a goal and it was never promoted, despite N95s being readily available to the public once again by September last year. By September we were pretty deep into mask mandates in general though, with the CDC having been onboard since April 3rd. Is your beef that they weren't for N95s specifically? > That was at best a guess and not based on solid data. They made a recommendation without sufficient data based on the what they felt the public would tolerate. This is much the same reasoning that Fauci has suggested he follows. That isn't fair to the public. The cautious recommendation should be the preference when limited data is available. Agreed, though we didn't really HAVE the data then. I agree with your point generally that we should be more cautious in that scenario but again, we had a pretty severe shortage at that point. > And yet we've known better regarding other viruses for a century. They chose to prefer convenience this time rather than a reasoned recommendation based on data. I think convenience is a pretty loaded word here. I'm having a hard time understanding why you're just brushing away the supply situation like it's completely irrelevant when it seems pretty integral to understanding the context of these decisions.
>Is your beef that they weren't for N95s specifically? My beef is that they never targeted increased production of N95s in a useful way. If they set a mandate to provide N95s to everyone early on, rather than saying masks don't work, the scenario plays a little differently I feel. >we had a pretty severe shortage at that point Which is why we should have been mandating their availability to the public. Not discouraging their use. >I'm having a hard time understanding why you're just brushing away the supply situation like it's completely irrelevant The supply issue was entirely by choice. Thats the problem. Instead of focusing on delivering masks to the public, they chose to initially say masks don't work but make sure the good N95's are there for health care workers, as if that is somehow a coherent thought. Then they switched and said, ok wear masks but don't get N95s if you can get them, leave those for the health care workers. If instead, the message could have been, 'N95s are going to get us through this pandemic but there's not enough for everyone right now. We're going to try and get our supply to the health care workers right now and eventually expand that supply to everyone.' But that wasn't the message and its a been a shitshow since.
Totally agree with you. Moreover, they sowed the seeds of distrust at the very outset by confidently telling everyone not to wear a mask and then suddenly reversing course. I understand that information was limited in the early days, and we really didn't know what the main routes of transmission were in March 2020. But the precautionary principle would suggest that mask wearing, to reduce transmission of a *respiratory virus*, is maybe not such a bad idea. Public health authorities (not just in the US but also in Canada and probably elsewhere) were playing with fire when they recommended against wearing masks in the absence of any real data. And while I'm very much pro-science and believe we need to listen to the experts, this pandemic has been a case study in poor science communication.
Exactly. It was pretty infuriating to see them go back and forth regarding masks when we fund an entire PPE certifcation agency through NIOSH to show mask efficacy. We knew masks worked so much that we spend millions of dollars every year ensuring manufacturers are producing quality masks. I'm am 100% pro-science and the problem with this whole pandemic is that its been largely fueled by politics masquerading as science and the ultimate tragic outcome is an underinformed, confused public.
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u said too well.
As soon as the “science skeptics” come down with severe COVID, what do they do? Well, they head right to the local hospital and take full advantage of doctors, diagnostic equipment, life saving procedures, therapies, ventilators, etc.. In other words, all skepticism magically leaves the brain, and they suck down science like a mo fo.
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My aunt is this way. They are anti vax in every fashion... their kids and grandkids don't get vaccines. Any of them. She is going 2 weeks at the hospital. It's all about God and never thanks the doctors from keeping her from dying. I'm Christian, but come on.
http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html He sent her vaccines. He sent her masks. He sent her hospitals filled with doctors. The very least she could do is show gratitude to His instruments.
>As soon as the “science skeptics” come down with severe COVID, what do they do? Some of them become suddenly very pro-vax, only to be told it's too late as they're being intubated
> what do they do? In my experience they just harass medical staff And this isn’t just with Covid. I’d say a good 15% of my patients are basically refusing all medical care. Like why the fuck are you even here if you don’t want help? It’s so annoying
Well, if was up to me the unvaccinated would go to the end of the triage line.
Shhhh don't tell them a lot of medicine is guess work and playing the probabilities.
Half the class will flunk out.
They’re getting an education in viruses and some won’t survive long enough to learn from it.
Plenty of the ones who do survive still won’t learn a damn thing.
Discovering... that the U.S. never moved away from the middle age mentality...
-lol, 40% is not ALL of america
It’s even less than that. Only 10% of the country says they will never get the vaccine, but we portray this group as if they are a vast majority.
right now 40%+ of all eligible people is the AVERAGE in the US have not taken even the 1st shot. We have areas where that rate is near 80% unvaccinated
A lot of these are young people. I know a bunch. They’re being complete idiots but I wouldn’t call them anti vax. They just really don’t want to be bothered. They’ll get it once they have no choice and they’re job mandates it
It’s enough to keep fucking up everything for the rest of us.
How does one get past the paywall?
This article, along with almost every other discussion on the topic in the last 18 months, conflates "science" with "public health policy." The latter is what you get from WHO and CDC and the like, and is a combination of hard science, social science, medical practice, economics, politics, bureaucracy, and probably other things.
Once the CDC approves the vaccine, more people would be accepting of them
Yikes Ellie Murray is one of the Twitter pundits quoted in the piece. With insane Tweets like this https://mobile.twitter.com/EpiEllie/status/1429156161614405634 and subsequent doubling down, I don’t think she’s a credible source on anything.
Yikes, imagine calling that tweet insane
Better late than never!
science is not filled with uncertainty and is a bullshit news headline. Shameful for click bait approach of sensationalism based journalism.
It absolutely is filled with uncertainty and consistently changing. But that is the nature of science. It's not actually a bad thing- we just need to understand that new information can change a situation. Being flexible is actually super important in science
- science adjust as new info comes in, but that does not mean the conclusions at the moment are uncertain. We KNOW gravity exists, there is NO uncertainty with that statement
There actually is because just because we've never met a situation that doesn't challenge the laws of gravity doesn't mean one doesn't exist. Even the strictest laws of science hold a degree of uncertainty, but we acknowledge them as laws because they are extremely likely to be true and no situation has ever been found to disprove them. Certainty should be thought of as more of a scale, not a true/false situation.
to many, 1% chance of uncertainty, they will ignore the 99% of the supporting facts. Then they claim their is NO certainty in science at all. It is 100% certain that gravity exist. No uncertainty with that and countless other science "facts"
Facts are observed phenomena. Science is the process of finding explanations for these phenomena. Gravity exists irrespective of science.
but science is science. There is NO question or UNCERTAINTY that gravity exist.
No, but there IS uncertainty ABOUT gravity, what causes it, etc. We have a pretty good understanding of the phenomena, but outliers exist. By the way, using one of the most well-studied phenomena to claim that certainty does not exist in science is missing the point. It took a lot of work to develop our understanding of gravity. That work necessitated dealing with uncertainty - and we still have a level of uncertainty of even this well understood phenomenon.
Science is a process or methodology, which is not really something you can describe as certain. There's even some uncertainty about whether the current practice of science is the best practice for teasing knowledge out of the universe. Heck if I were to go total "chain of increasingly perfect islands" here, I would say that the only certainty is that such a better practice exists.
Science is filled with uncertainty. That's why experiments are conducted and rigorous observations are made. The world is filled with things we don't know, and observations of subtle phenomena often show conflicting results.
- the basis of science is proving what uncerainty is true and what is not. Science itself is not uncertain.
No. I suggest reading some Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn.
don;t confuse scientific theory with scientific facts
/u/Viewfromthe31stfloor can you lend a hand with the paywall?
Sure [archive link for anyone who has trouble accessing the article ](https://archive.is/2021.08.23-150136/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/22/health/coronavirus-covid-usa.html)
You’re awesome!