Comment by crystalmeph | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crystalmeph | Hacker News Reader

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>I've heard literally nothing from the medical community about tips, methods, or instructions for ensuring protestors do not cause a new outbreak.

I think this is a typical example of the medical community's method of communicating with the public - until they've studied something to death, they're too afraid to say anything, and if pressed, will just tell you to keep doing what you're doing, even if emerging evidence to the contrary and widespread anecdotal counter-examples are starting to surface.

Think about the whole mask fiasco at the beginning of this mess. The CDC actually told Americans that wearing masks might make them more likely to get the virus, despite masks being an effective preventive measure against all other known respiratory viruses to my knowledge, plus the widespread usage of masks by literally billions of people in Asia is a pretty good indicator that it can be done safely.

During "normal" times, this general approach may be 100% right, you need to be very sure you understand even low-incidence side effects before you tell 8 billion people what is good for them and what isn't. But that's simply the wrong approach in the face of a fast-moving pandemic - you need to be able to do basic risk/reward analysis quickly and recommend the path that is most likely to work, even if you're not 100% sure, and you're operating on some educated guesses in the absence of hard data.

Basically, they need to operate more like engineers and less like doctors, at least for a little while =)

> until they've studied something to death

Yeah, or they just say stuff anyway. Yesterday Slate reported [0][1] that a large body of the experts (I refrain from scare quotes, but they seem apropos these days) are saying the protests take priority over the public health emergency.

[0] https://slate.com/technology/2020/06/protests-coronavirus-pa... [1] https://reason.com/2020/06/03/what-happened-to-the-public-he...

It seems to depend on what specifically is being protested.

Last month when people were protesting the shutdown itself I recall the predominant response was that protestors were violating social distancing protocols, endangering public safety, and should desist.

For people that are against the shutdown, this reaffirms the purely political nature of the policy.

What you are saying make no sense. The protesters you talk about were against lockdown. it's valid to say they endanger public health if you believe shutdown is protecting public health.

> For people that are against the shutdown, this reaffirms the purely political nature of the policy

What does that mean? What is the nature of the policy and how is it purely political? (Obviously any policy is political, because it's a choice effecting the population)

Large public gatherings are either dangerous or they are not. The current gatherings are not being framed as dangerous, whereas the former were. The only difference between them is the reason for them. Do the math.

That would be arguing the goal of the protesters endangered public health. They were actually arguing that the physical act of protesting itself was a public health danger, which is a different thing entirely.

It's clear by now that many of the so-called "experts" are ideologically driven. For instance the highly influential Professor Ferguson told governments around the world they needed drastic lockdowns, which he then repeatedly violated himself to sleep with his left-wing activist girlfriend.

One of the other 50 "experts" in the UK government's advisory group (SAGE) is not only a left-wing political activist who made huge donations to Labour but is actually a life long member of the Communist Party. That's totally absurd given the tiny membership it has, but somehow the government managed to recruit a literal communist to make policy.

Lockdowns have been designed by these people and are a nearly pure implementation of hard-left policies, of the sort normally only found in communist states. Censorship is rife, a pass is required to go outside, protest is banned, the private sector is being destroyed. Maybe it shouldn't be a big surprise when you look at who's been coming up with them.

The need for hyperrigour is one thing, but I think that unfamiliarity with the literature and poor science communication comes in play as well. I'm a biologist, so I have access to the scientific literature. When the mask debate came up, I did a small literature review to see what the science said. I was surprised to find that the science was pretty nuanced and subject to debate. Some papers suggested that masks are ineffective,but others suggested that they could play a role. Many of these studies had strong limitations and only provided insight for very specific scenarios. For example, some papers treated infections as a binary (they either prevent infections or not, rather than looking at reducing infections), many papers looked at preventing the mask wearer from getting infected, but not at reducing the spread by infected mask wearers, etc.

Any scientist can tell you that it's hard to keep up with the literature, and it's very likely that many of them spoke out against make without reading the papers. I was taught as an undergrad that they don't work. Many of these things are passed down uncritically.

This issue demonstrates that we need to improve science communication. Many scientists and public health professionals declared outright that make don't work. This shows that they are either unfamiliarity with the totality of the literature or that they feel the need to give definitive statements. When some people provided evidence in favour of masks, some of them switched to saying that make are needed by medical professionals and that improper usage can increase your risk. A better approach would be to acknowledge that there is uncertainty at that in their view the evidence against masks outweighs that in favour. If they took this approach, it wouldn't seem like they just flip flopped when they started recommending make. Also, it's not hard to train people to use them, and condescending to treat people as being too stupid to wear them.

In this case, simple risk management should have ruled the day. Regardless of research, it seems fairly obvious (though perhaps not?) that mask wearing has effectively zero negative health risks. It doesn't take a genius to realize that blocking just a single sneeze confers benefits.

Given the risk/reward, and the high stakes nature of what we were about to go through, stating "no comment" on masks was pants-on-head stupid, because when medical folks say "there is no evidence to support" the press inevitably spins it to mean "this doesn't work." It highlights just how behind the medical field is when it comes to understanding how to incorporate human psychology, risk management, and other areas mastered by other industries to minimize harm.

I thought the same and it seems obvious. Maybe it was politicised in the sense that they got caught pants down unprepared when even the medical staff didnt have masks, so certain actors or a whole chain of command who were to blame for the lack of supplies spined it out this way. Or maybe it was simply a miscommumication in the cacophony of voice and messages that first came out.

I seem to recall that we were shipping a lot of masks to China back in January, perhaps that’s part of the reason.

Aren’t these masks largely manufactured outside the US? Were these masks made in China which were shipped back?

Or maybe it highlights how behind the media is in reporting reality?

I mean I agree that science community should consider some aspects of communication, but every participant in this chain should act responsibly. Once we put the blame squarly on the scientists, we absolve the actual bad actors.

With the situation you describe above, the fault is with the press for not doing due diligence. Not with the scientists telling the facts.

It was obvious, that's why most every other country across the world started wearing masks while the US didn't.

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