Belief in Conspiracy Theories Is a Barrier to Controlling Spread of Covid-19
annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org
annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org
I'm still baffled every day at the depths of our own misguided thoughts and beliefs.
But of particular relevance to this subject is his opposition to (1) wearing masks as a role model, (2) mandating masks as a nation's leader. His general suggestions to the public that the virus is not a threat give voice to those who would claim that "it's all a hoax."
If someone has a legitimate question it’s batted away with out weighing evidence or lack there of.
From this POV they cannot be taken at face value. The Vitamin D thing or HCQ thing. Whether or not they prove useful, the media would not even consider whether they were useful or not. It was just “NO!” Likely this knee jerk reaction was due to a certain person floating them as options. If Bill G had floated them as he floats his own favorite solutions, the reaction would have been different.
We know nothing is a silver bullet, but we also know HCQ is prescribed or was to people going to the tropics and in some of those countries it’s OTC, so then labeling it as dangerous as heroin is kind of disingenuous. Sure you don’t want to dose yourself... but it’s also not as dangerous as they made it out to be.
HCQ may be prescribed by a doctor if you are traveling to an area where it is effective, and where the alternatives either are not effective or there's a counterindication (or where they're too expensive if you're in a health system where that's relevant). You will be warned of the risks by the doctor. It wouldn't generally be available over the counter in developed countries.
Heroin would be somewhat rarely prescribed today (though in some developed countries it is used sparingly as a powerful narcotic pain reliever), but even more dangerous opiates are routinely. You will be warned of the risks by the doctor. Heroin, too, was once available over the counter ('Heroin' was originally a trade name; Bayer promoted it as a non-addictive alternative to morphine).
That HCQ might be useful against COVID was widely reported in mainstream media. It was also reported that this was still speculative, but promising enough that tests were starting right away in several places.
Also I think a common thread with people that go for conspiracy theories is a tendency to see the world in black and white. Everything is either 100% good or 100% bad. If the CDC was wrong about something in February then they're always wrong or theres some deep state plan afoot. A politician that tells some lies, sometimes, is the same as Donald Trump constantly lying. There's no room for nuance.
The first problem is that US governing elites have proven themselves to be corrupt and untrustworthy.
People in the tech sector have not been greatly exposed to this, but wages for the median person have remained stagnant for the past four decades. The elite response has been either to deny the problem or make it worse. People do notice when it gets harder to make ends meet, and the failure to address this problem has undermined faith in the elected arms of government.
Other issues such as the bipartisan consensus to invade Iraq on the basis of fabricated evidence and the fact that Trump has told 20,000 lies about objective matters since assuming office have exacerbated the problem.
The second problem is that conservatives--including conservative media--massively overstate the scope of governance problems in the unelected civil service as an electoral strategy. These viewpoints are amplified by Facebook and other social media in search of engagement.
The third problem is low quality education among the bulk of the population. Critical thinking skills are not effectively taught, much less internalized, by the average person. Most people are not able to effectively evaluate information they are given, which leaves them vulnerable to whatever propaganda Facebook et el shovels into their feed.
Even in respected media, journalists try to angle stories from opposite sides. So you’ll have a random person from Facebook take up as much screen time, if not more, as a literal PHD in infective diseases.
It gets worse over time, as the story gets more and more boring. I mean, it basically hasn’t changed in 8 months, but you can’t just re-run information in modern media. So you’ll have days where the top corona virus story is about some social media person getting banned from Instagram for spreading fake news, and not how the amount of infected is exploding in Europe again. I mean, that bit did pick up in the following days, but why was it ever news that some idiot got banned from Instagram?
I spend time with both elites (academic, professional class, government bureaucrats) and with working class people. I can, anecdotally, tell you pretty easily why there's so much mistrust. The elite class has shifted wildly away from traditional narratives about how the world works, and toward post modernism and intersectionality, while the working class has largely stayed with traditional views.
Those two views are fundamentally incompatible. When working class people hear views that don't align with theirs over and over stated as facts, and often forced on them, they cease to trust the people pushing them. This is why they love people like Donald Trump, he understanding this dynamic and panders to it, using it for his own ends.
Elites are largely viewed by the working class as either out of touch, corrupt liars, or malicious social-engineers looking to erode society. It shouldn't be a surprise that they don't trust them. The sad result is that these people then fall back to trying to find "truth" themselves, and end up with some strange, often dangerous, results.
The candle in the dark is being lost in the west.
Specifically, I'm sure their recommendations are all data-driven in isolation, but the overwhelming impression is that there's been no triage based on consideration of what is feasible, in aggregate, for new parents.
The result is that, when you talk with other parents, after a glass of wine or two you all end up admitting that you did all the CDC recommended stuff for a couple weeks, maybe even a couple months, but you couldn't keep it up and you stopped boiling the bottles and you gave him a little security blanket and oh, yeah, he's alive now.
So there are a lot of people out there (including BosWash hispters like my wife and I) basically trained to think of the CDC as an organization that tells you to do a bunch of onerous, in-the-aggregate impossible tasks that you disregard for your own health and sanity.
This is the central dilemma of public health policy and public health messaging everywhere.
I read a fascinating book once about public health messaging.
The gist was, for the health of people, messaging from public institutions has to be extremely over-simplified and made rather blunt, because people in aggregate just won't follow nuanced, "more correct" advice effectively.
But if they overdo the over-simplification, then it's not useful any more.
People who are looking for nuance see that the advice is blunt and over-simplified, and may point out to each other that the institution is giving such advice, undermining trust in it.
So it's a difficult line to walk.
We have seen this recently in the England with Covid-19 advice to the public: It was too complicated, now it's changed to the "rule of six". The former advice was probably better advice if people had followed it, but people didn't follow it, for many reasons. So it had to be simplified into a simple, catchy message, in order to take into account people's reactions in aggregate to the type of advice.
I tend to imagine this is frustrating for well-informed public health scientists.
The US surgeon general and Fauci told people to stop buying masks. Then they reversed themselves, and defended their position at the time.
Media reports "fiery, but mostly peaceful protests".
What intelligent person would trust institutions that are inconsistent and refuse accountability? What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace? Can you blame distrust given this environment?
> Institutional trust has eroded.
I think the biggest problem is social media. A reasonable person would make this same conclusion you have, for example:
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
And yet another person who gets their information from another source, would reach the opposite conclusion. The simple fact is that enough happened in enough locations that if you hone in on one protest here or one riot there you can paint a completely different picture.
For full disclosure, most of the images I got of the protests personally were from a twitch stream called "Woke" which was a compilation stream of about usually 5-10 simultaneous protest streams from different cities. I don't think I ever once witnessed arson or another crime, despite having watched that stream ever night during the height of the protests.
But I don't doubt there was arson and numerous other crimes.
In other words, I am particularly pessimistic that it is possible to have institutional trust anymore, because the events in our world are so numerous and nuanced that it is frankly impossible to give a succinct, consistent, and accountable view of them.
Same with the mask thing: Fauci and the surgeon general were absolutely correct telling people to stop buying masks when there was a shortage and hospitals were running out of them. And they are absolutely correct now telling people that, with no remaining shortage, we should all have masks and wear them to stop the spread (in particular now that most people aren't sheltering in place anymore). But that level of nuance doesn't come through, especially in a world where most "news" comes from headlines on reddit links and facebook posts.
But why with the backdrop of that violence do they characterize that one “as mostly peaceful”. They could at least have been forthcoming and said while most are peaceful this one has devolved into violence you see behind me. But they are like Baghdad Bob ignoring the bombs falling as he broadcasts...
1. Executives at the news agencies told the reporters to cover the protests favorably for corrupt reasons
2. The news reporters and camera crew were at the protests for several hours and genuinely got a lot of footage of peaceful protests; the violence happened at 2 AM when most protestors had gone home, and were both not filmed by the camera crew and seemed unrelated to the protest that the camera crew had covered
3. Most of "them" did in fact cover in the violence in some amount, maybe less footage or less coverage then you think is appropriate but some amount of coverage nonetheless. However, because "they" are an unspecific and presumably large number of media channels that run all day long, you probably weren't watching all of the coverage and you might have missed it (or the sources that tell you "they" didn't cover the violence hadn't mentioned that they actually did cover it a little)
I can't tell you which is true between 1-3, because I don't know who "they" refers to, and I know I don't watch "them" anyways because I never watched mainstream coverage of the protests. Just some food for thought, again that we are quick to turn to instant distrust before we apply nuance and consider the alternative.
Sorry, but this is classical gas-lighting. This is absolutely equivalent to saying - I saw Leni Riefenstahl's movies and there were no people dying in concentration camps, so Nazi propaganda is factually correct. There are tens of thousands of criminal acts documented during those 'peaceful' protests and I don't think that anyone with IQ >80 and the slightest bit of self-respect would ever take what you're saying seriously.
Btw, these days even far-left HN seems to be split in two and I was sure it would be one of the last bastions of group-think. I guess we live and learn.
I sincerely apologize if it came off that way, because it was not my intention.
I'm not trying to deny that there were crimes and arson and whatever else. They did happen, and they are inexcusable.
I am specifically making the point, that the GP had posed the answer:
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
My point is simply trying to add nuance: nobody is saying arson is okay, the people I talk to say things like:
"this protest I was at was OK. I left at 11 PM everything that happened while I was there was super peaceful and wholesome and people even brought their kids!"
The bifurcation comes when we start to group everything that happened all across the country into one label of "protests". There were violent protests, there were peaceful protests. There were protests that started peaceful and became violent. Sometimes there were small violent groups that were literally ousted from the larger protest group for causing trouble.
I'm not denying that there were violent protests. But I'm also not going to deny that there were a whole lot of peaceful protests.
It is interesting thought experiment to keep your sentence the same, but replace "protests" with "police."
Police brutality is wrong, full stop.
Why do you jump straight to social media?
Why wouldn't the fault lay with the authority figures themselves? For decades we have authority figures saying "the science says X therefore you must Y" while at the same time we have an educational system that (correctly) says "science is not authoritative".
Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.
Social media is literally the catalyst for the loss of institutional trust. Maybe in the long run this is a good thing, and we will rebuild our institutions in a way that we can trust them in a hyper-shared hyper-aware world, but currently i just see no way that it can possibly work out.
> Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.
In all honesty, I don't believe this is possible. It's the same problem as how people end up cancelled on twitter for the smallest reasons: humans are flawed, and in our hyper-shared hyper-aware world a single human flaw (or a single systemic flaw in our instutitions) becomes a gigantic crack that makes everyone outraged.
While outrage culture exists I don't think it is possible to have high-trust institutions that are run by human. Period.
And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.
(NOTE: just to be clear, I'm not saying our institutions are in the right. they are frequently wrong. But any wrongness you find, as in your example the way we communicate science as a closed book done deal, is one single flaw in a massive sprawling institution. I'm saying that statistically any large institution WILL have flaws, no matter what, thus in our new world we CANNOT have trust in these institutions the way things are now because any flaws will get blown up into a full model of distrust by social media. That's simply the new world we live in.)
Ban social media? Should we make a government review board for all social media posts to make sure people don't think the bad things?
Even if social media were the problem, I'd start thinking about other places to solve it because social media isn't going anywhere.
We've got a better shot at finding less hubristic leaders all though those odds aren't great either
Just to be clear, I didn't mean to say social media is "a problem" or "the problem", but rather the catalyst of the modern status quo. I should have worded my original post better. Specifically, social media (and I suppose the internet in large) allowed us to much easily share information in a way that sidesteps those institutions. This allows us to easily share information that's negative about those institutions, whereas before we could not. Thus, it was the catalyst towards the modern avalanche of distrust towards once-venerated institutions.
> then what
> Ban social media? Should we make a government review board for all social media posts to make sure people don't think the bad things?
> Even if social media were the problem, I'd start thinking about other places to solve it because social media isn't going anywhere.
I generally agree with what you're saying, I don't have an answer. Pandora's box is open, and from now on it seems impossible to have a big monolithic organization and not have a high level of public distrust (both grassroots and organized by that organizations' opposition).
Ironically you even see this effect for large tech companies. There was a time when people really trusted and loved brands like Google, Apple, Amazon, even Facebook. Nowadays it feels hopeless naive, and the newest cohorts of top startups are often viewed even worse (the Ubers of the world)
I certainly hope the answer isn't an authoritarian control of discourse, because that's probably the only thing worse than having institutions of low trust.
But what is the solution? Heck if I know.
I would say that before forming such conclusions, we should actually try to do it first.
> And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.
I suggest treating it like an engineering problem, something humans are quite good at. Analyze it as a behavior exhibited by systems, in this case, roughly:
- People (the human mind)
- Society (a set of networked human minds, networked via a variety of flawed communication mediums, some of which have human minds filtering and transforming what passes through them).
This is an extremely high level perspective, there is obviously a ton of important complexity (of varying importance) here and there within the system, but a high level perspective like this seems like where an engineer would start when analyzing a misbehaving system.
Making a claim and then reversing it based on new data is the correct thing to do. This isn't an issue at all and shouldn't be considered a violation of trust.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7
Here’s an interview where Fauci discusses point-blank why the American public was mislead, and it had nothing to do with data: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
We need to hold our leaders to a higher standard. All of them. Red, blue, green, whatever.
"The masks are important for someone who is infected to prevent them from infecting someone else. Now when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea and everyone is wearing a mask - right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.
There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is. And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.
When you think mask, you should think of healthcare providers needing them and people who are ill. When you look at the films of foreign countries and you see 85% of the people wearing masks, that's fine, I'm not against it, if you want to do it, that's fine."
"But it can lead to a shortage of masks?"
"Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."
This was in March, before things started really blowing up. That seems pretty upfront to me as to why they are making the recommendation, and it's incorrect in hindsight.
I don't see it as a lie at all.
I see that statement as a lie. Fauci addressed it in the TheStreet interview and explained why he lied. I don’t see how somebody would see that as not-a-lie, but if you’d like to, go ahead.
Lying is a combination of truth + intent to speak untruthfully.
The video you are replying to at least plausibly demonstrates intent to deceive (for arguably good reason imho, but deceit nonetheless)
The video you responded with offers a different perspective, but it does not nullify the prior video. What is True is true from all perspectives, otherwise it is not true.
> "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."
From a Truth perspective, this seems untrue.
> "When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is."
"perfect protection" is an interesting choice of words. Is he suggesting that if masks are not perfect, they should not be worn? Of course not. But then, why did he say that?
> "And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face."
And therefore, we shouldn't wear masks?
> "Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."
Which is the reason he gave in the first video for the deceit. I'm not disputing that this was a decent enough strategy under the circumstances (a mask shortage), but it backfired.
> I don't see it as a lie at all.
They've done a decent job covering this up in most people's minds, but not with conspiracy theorists or highly detail oriented people, and I think it's a shame that people seem frequently unwilling to even acknowledge that they have at least somewhat of a valid point. What is strictly true should perhaps not be ignored. If you want people to "not do your own thinking, trust the experts, without exception, then you would be well advised to be worthy of trust. Or, don't, and reap the rewards Mother Nature bestows upon you.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
- Richard Feynman
Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.
To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.
I fully realize the manner in which I speak is frustrating, and it frustrates me that people find it frustrating (and also that it will get you throttled on HN so you have to wait when replying to posts).
I should also note that the "tone" of this message will be more of the same, because I believe speaking frankly in pedantically objective terms is useful, even if it may offend. If I was able to do it without offending I would, but that is a skill I seem to lack.
> At the time they gave this advice, it hadn't yet hit NYC, and the scope and speed of the future outbreak in the states was unknown.
Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
> in late February/early March it's more than reasonable to think that, like swine flu, the states' response would contain the outbreak to hospitals
It is reasonable to speculate that this is one possible outcome, but I do not believe it is reasonable to speculate that this is the only possible outcome, or choose to ~assume it will be the outcome that will manifest in reality and set strategy on accordingly. I believe when considering and managing risk, worst case scenarios should always be front and centre in people's minds.
> and therefore
I read this is: "and therefore it logically follows that", and therefore disagree.
> a) weren't necessary for the day-to-day
I prefer: may not.
> b) could give a false sense of protection to the people wearing them
Is this harmful? To what degree, and in what way?
Was no other messaging possible that could accommodate this detail?
> c) were best suited to be used by professionals
They may be "best" suited for professionals, but this does not mean that value can only be derived from professionals wearing them, which seems to be what was communicated.
> Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.
Agreed. However, a reader might implicitly infer from this statement that health officials were acting ~perfectly based on available information, when the truth very much seems to be (based on the one Fauci interview video posted here) that at least part of the motivation for the messaging to not wear masks was known to be untruthful, but was done to preserve mask supply for health care personnel. I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact - it seems perfectly plausible to me that if officials were more truthful in this way, they they'd get less blowback from conspiracy theorists and detail oriented people.
> To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.
Mother Nature (and sometimes the real-world behavior of a subset of human beings) is not persuaded by emotion-based [1] rhetoric like this - she behaves the way she does, and we can choose to acknowledge that and respond accordingly [2], or we can choose to ignore objective details and live in a narrative-based fantasy land.
I believe thinking about things in this manner (meta-conversation, meta-cognition) is useful [3]. Is this not the way we think when we are doing engineering and systems analysis? Yes, managing the affairs of humans is different, but it is also similar. What is optimal is unknown, it must be discovered, like anything else humanity has achieved.
[1] affront - an action or remark that causes outrage or offense.
[2] This does not mean that we must tell citizens the truth all the time, but only that it should be acknowledged than when you deceive, you run the risk of being found and suffering consequences.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!"
"If you tell the truth you don't have anything to remember."
I suspect there may be an evolutionary reason why such aphorisms persist across generations.
[3] not "the" "answer", but useful. Perhaps what I say here is 100% incorrect, but to know with some certainty would require actually trying it.
It wasn't so much the manner in which you're speaking, it's the conclusion being drawn.
> Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
It was, absolutely. But historically, we had managed these scenarios well ; we had a perfect storm of incompetence in the administration that set us up for failure.
It's not unreasonable to think that career civil servants would think that we would be able to leverage similar tools to those we used in the past, and it was only after it really broke in the states that we realized that this was qualitatively different than what we had previously seen.
> It is reasonable to speculate that this is one possible outcome, but I do not believe it is reasonable to speculate that this is the only possible outcome
That's correct. It was one of the possible outcomes, and based on their analysis, they deemed it to be the most likely. Considering this is a once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, it's not unreasonable they made this decision.
> I read this is: "and therefore it logically follows that", and therefore disagree.
That's correct. What I was attempting to say was "Given they believed the decision was correct, if the decision was correct, it logically follows ... "
> I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact
He said in his followup that was posted above that he didn't want the N95s to be hoarded, and this was why he gave the advice not to go out and buy masks. What it appears to me is that there is a conflation in his mind between "masks" and surgical masks/N95s.
In the 60 minutes interview, he said that he didn't have a problem with people wearing masks, but that wearing them would do more harm than good because they were uncomfortable and people fidget with them ; based on his response to the BusinessInsider reporter, I believe what he meant to say was, essentially:
"N95 masks are uncomfortable and made for use by professionals. They will grant you some protection, but because they are uncomfortable, you will likely use them in the non-prescribed way, and therefore expose yourself to risk while thinking you are safe. Please don't go out and buy them because they need to be used by doctors that need them.
"If you want to wear a mask like they do in China or Japan, that's fine, but at this point, it's likely not going to do much more than stop a cough or a sneeze and they're not needed."
I think that's what he was trying to communicate. I don't think it's wrong, but he had a failure in the language he was using, and that miscommunication is making people think he is a liar.
I enthusiastically encourage you to point out any specific flaws whatsoever in my logic or conclusion, using strict epistemology and trinary (true/false/unknown) rather than binary (true/false) thinking.
>> Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?
> It was, absolutely.
The assertion: it [was] [absolutely] [unknown] that [the stage was set] for a [serious global pandemic] "in [late February/early March]".
Let's investigate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic
- The disease was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic#History
- A report in The Lancet on 24 January indicated human transmission, strongly recommended personal protective equipment for health workers, and said testing for the virus was essential due to its "pandemic potential".
- On 30 January, the WHO declared the coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...
- The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.
There is much more I could add to this to make my case more persuasively, but I'm lazy. To me, this seems to cast doubt on the certainty of the general notion that risk averse public health officials (aka: The Experts) did not have the necessary information required to form the conclusion that "the stage was set" for a global pandemic. If the people whose job is managing pandemics are unable to recognize that the potential exists for a global pandemic at this point, I believe an in-depth discussion should be had at some point about whether there are shortcomings in the system, or the current personnel are suited for the job.
> we had a perfect storm of incompetence in the administration that set us up for failure
Perhaps, but that is a different discussion. I am happy to have it, but let's try to avoid changing the topic.
> It was one of the possible outcomes, and based on their analysis, they deemed it to be the most likely. Considering this is a once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, it's not unreasonable they made this decision.
When estimating and managing risk, the "most likely" scenario does not seem like the only thing that should be taken into consideration when determining what actions to take. If the CDC disagrees, then I believe we should be reviewing their decision making policies.
> "Given they believed the decision was correct, if the decision was correct, it logically follows ... "
Agreed. What matters is whether the decision was correct. I suspect we have no disagreement here.
>> I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact
> He said in his followup that was posted above that he didn't want the N95s to be hoarded, and this was why he gave the advice not to go out and buy masks. What it appears to me is that there is a conflation in his mind between "masks" and surgical masks/N95s.
What he initially said is the point of contention: was deceit plausibly involved in the initial claims to not buy masks?
Rhetorical muddying of the water by resorting to other he said/she said narratives agitates conspiracy theorists, as well as detail oriented people who are seeking the truth. Perhaps it doesn't bother you, but you are not the problem - conspiracy theorists are (so it is claimed).
> In the 60 minutes interview, he said that he didn't have a problem with people wearing masks, but that wearing them would do more harm than good because they were uncomfortable and people fidget with them ; based on his response to the BusinessInsider reporter, I believe what he meant to say was...
What you personally believe is not the point of contention. The point of contention is what was True, and what he actually said.
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
At 1:30, Fauci says: "Well the reason for that is that we, the public health community, were concerned that it was at a time that personal protective equipment including the N95 masks and surgical masks were in very short supply, and we wanted to make sure that the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in harms way to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected, we did not want them to be without the equipment that they needed, so there was not enthusiasm about going out and buying a mask - we were afraid that would deter away from the people who really needed it."
You can choose to personally interpret that however you would like. However, a literal interpretation seems most appropriate, and fairly unambiguous to me - roughly, they told the public that there's no need to wear a mask because they knew there was a shortage and they wanted to preserve them for health care workers. Again, I'm not saying this was a poor decision, I'm saying that this is where distrust comes from, and it doesn't require "conspiracy thinking" to form that conclusion.
From the meta-perspective, look how complicated the analysis of such a relatively simple scenario is when you roll up you sleeves and get into details. Now, compare that to the discourse in this thread (the entire thread, not just our discussion): broad "truthy" generalizations stated as fact, history revision, mind reading, future predicting, downvotes with an inability (I speculate) to rebut, etc. Coming at this from a system analyst mindset (what we're dealing with here, human society, is a system), it seems rather odd that a community with a heavy concentration of systems-analysis-skilled people seem to be surprised that we have sub-optimal performance, and polarization of opinion & anger among stakeholders.
If we accepted this level of skill in the workplace during systems analysis and management, I doubt anyone here would be surprised if similar outcomes transpired. So then, why is it that most people seem so surprised when a system that is several orders of magnitude more complicated than the ones we deal with at our workplaces is managed in a non-disciplined manner? I have a feeling that the answer to this question may be a lot more important than it may seem at first glance. Perhaps it is getting close to "the" answer.
EDIT: As a fun experiment, and keeping in mind this systems analysis mindset: go through this entire thread an perform a strict epistemic & logical analysis of every single comment, mentally noting whether each one is (True/False) flawless. ("Flawless" is the standard I am using, because that is the standard one uses in proper systems analysis, which is distinct from systems implementation, where flaws are routinely accepted). Even better, do this as a background process when reading all discussions on HN for a while, particularly those of a culture-war flavor.
On the topic of citizens buying up mask:"It can lead to a shortage of masks?" His response: "Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for people who really need it."
He wasn't hiding it, or lying about it.
--------
This is speculation - you do not have access to the information required to make this statement with certainty.
From my prior message:
>> I enthusiastically encourage you to point out any specific flaws whatsoever in my logic or conclusion, using strict epistemology and trinary (true/false/unknown) rather than binary (true/false) thinking.
Under strict epistemology, one should not state speculation as if it is fact because it may actually be an incorrect statement. From a trinary logic perspective, it is unknown whether he is lying.
If you feel the urge to say we can never know when someone is lying, that is often true, but an important difference in this case is that there is evidence that he could have been lying. One goal of exercises like this is to seek as much truth and clarity as possible (even if certainty cannot be reached). Another goal is to practice control over one's mischievous mind, which is harder than you'd think.
> He explicitly says that buying up masks would cause a shortage for healthcare workers in the interview for 60 minutes in early March.
Correct, he did say that on the 60 minutes interview on March 8, 2020.
He also said:
"...right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is."
The assertion: "People should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask." seems to be quite counter-intuitive advice considering the topic (a global pandemic) and what Fauci knew at that point in time (my prior post, and some additional detail below).
Katherine Ross from TheStreet.com interviewed Fauci on Jun 12, 2020 (note: this is a later date than the 60 minutes interview) and asked about this earlier confusion:
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...
In that video Katherine asks: "Why were we told later in the spring to wear them, when initially we were told not to?"
Fauci answers: "Well the reason for that is that we, the public health community, were concerned that it was at a time that personal protective equipment including the N95 masks and surgical masks were in very short supply, and we wanted to make sure that the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in harms way to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected, we did not want them to be without the equipment that they needed, so there was not enthusiasm about going out and buying a mask - we were afraid that would deter away from the people who really needed it."
A decently fair simplification of this:
Q: "Why were we initially told not to wear masks?"
A: "We wanted to make sure that the health care workers who were brave enough to put themselves in harms way to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected. We did not recommend that people go out and buy masks because we were afraid that [restrict supply to] people who really needed it."
If the reason they didn't recommend people to wear masks was because they didn't think there was value in wearing a mask (as stated in the earlier 60 minutes video), then why did he say that the reason was to prevent the public from going out and buying out the supply, disrupting it for health care workers?
So that is one motivation for distrust, that the two stories do not add up.
There is also the timeline issues in my prior post, which raises a valid question of professional competence, does it not?
To that information, I will add:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2235342-covid-19-why-wo... (26 February 2020 , updated 11 March 2020 )
> The World Health Organization confirmed a covid-19 pandemic on 11 March. ((This was added on Mar 11 when a pandemic was formally declared.))
> Prepare for a pandemic, says the World Health Organization, as the global spread of covid-19 soars by the hour. It’s not a matter of if, but when, say US health officials. Yet so far the WHO refuses to actually call covid-19 a pandemic. Why? The answer may lie with what kicks into gear when we deploy the P-word. Countries have pandemic plans that are launched when one is declared, but these plans may not be appropriate for combating covid-19 – and the WHO doesn’t want countries to lurch in the wrong direction.
> The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the covid-19 virus already meets two of its three criteria for a pandemic: it spreads between people, and it kills. The third is that it has to spread worldwide. The virus is now in 38 countries – and counting – on nearly all continents, and those are just the ones we know about. How much more worldwide does it need to be?
COVID had already met 2/3 criteria for pandemic status. The first cases in North America were reported in the United States in January 2020. At the time of writing this article (Feb 26), it was constant headline news, and significant numbers of people were asking why the WHO had not yet officially declared it a pandemic (I recall this period very well, there were conspiracies theories making the rounds about why the WHO wouldn't make the call).
3 days before WHO pandemic declaration, Fauci says on 60 minutes: "People should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."
Subsequently, when questioned about why people were told to not wear masks, he stated that was because they (the health community) didn't want people to go out and buy masks so as to not exhaust the supply for healthcare workers.
Given the evidence, do you believe that it is illogical [1] to have serious concerns with either the medical community's professional judgment, or their truthfulness? (Note that we are dealing only with publicly made statements as opposed to what actually occurred within physical reality which is unknown to us - so we are already being gracious in taking him at his word.)
HOWEVER, I should also add:
a) I don't think the above is any kind of a slam dunk smoking gun against Fauci in any way, even if he was outright lying. But perhaps it can help to see how a different and valid(?) perspective can be taken on the matter even without resorting to conspiracy "thinking".
b) You're a very patient person, so thanks for that.
[1] When I say "illogical", that is to distinguish between your personal feeling on whether this situation is problematic, versus whether someone who does consider it a problem is guilty of a failure in logic, keeping in mind that the topic of conversation is a pandemic.
Agree with this statement, however it does not apply here. There was no new data. They always knew that masks worked, but they needed them for first responders. Confirmation of this from Fauci interview: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...
The responsible, accountable thing to do would have been to say to Americans, "these masks do work, but we need them for first responders, please donate yours!"
Somehow the messaging got muddied over the last few months.
In the article I linked to, the surgeon general said masks were not effective. This is false. They are effective (along with non-N95 masks).
The data on shortages did not need to be remedied with a mischaracterization of PPE's effectiveness. It could have been communicated as I previously suggested, stating, "we messed up and need donations from the world." This would have increased institutional trust (being honest about the situation), and perhaps supported more uniform mask usage in the long-run.
The original mischaracterization and subsequent defense of this communication choice remains a cause of institutional mistrust. And even if you don't agree, you must be able to sympathize with the logic behind this conclusion for others. In fact, two other replies to your first comment similarly agreed with me.
We had a window in late February/early March where we didn't know how nasty this thing was going to get in the states, and the responsible people in charge (namely, Dr. Fauci and not the administration writ large) made a claim based on previous experience ; as soon as it became apparent that it was getting out of control, there were calls for PPE donations, and the Federal Government refused to act, going so far as to steal PPE purchased by states.
There are many reasons for having institutional distrust, but to claim that the singular person in the administration who fought the President on his strategy (and was subsequently muzzled) was actively misleading the public is beyond frustrating.
Even if our logic is faulty, the reality is that people have come to these conclusions in large minority status in this poll: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/19/914233038/poll-climate-become....
The number of distrust has doubled, from 14% in March to 29% in September. So it's possible there is merit and momentum to my reasoning, that government should be transparent and avoid mischaracterization (or the appearance of it) and irresponsibility.
> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?
The first statement sounds more like an ampersand than an equals sign.
An intelligent person would trust institutions that change their mind more, because it's the right thing to do.
Institutions that remain utterly consistent in the face of evolving knowledge are the ones you should be wary of.
I saw an analogous thing in the much simpler world of signal processing and statistical estimation. Estimators and control systems sometimes oscillate as new data is acquired. It seems counterintuitive, more data should just improve accuracy, right? As if to converge toward an underlying true value? No, sometimes the best possible estimate and control output oscillates gently as more data is acquired, without any inconsistency. It took me a while to appreciate that.
Back to the big picture of institutions. Inconsistency over time may seem dissonant, but it shouldn't. It can be the most correct and accurate recommendation over time as new data and knowledge is accumulated. In an evolving situation, you should be seeing this.
The fact is people do cite inconsistency as a reason to disbelieve, and it puts public health policymakers in a dilemma. If they tell the truth and give the best advice to follow, people don't believe it because the truth is complicated and counterintuitive, and best advice rightly changes over time, and in different locations, circumstances, etc. So they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow.
(I don't disagree with your other assertions about accountability etc).
> they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow
I know they are acting in good faith. However, the field also has a lot of received wisdom that may or may not be true. There’s clearly a bag of tricks they believe must be used to achieve a set of self-set goals, and I think a more straightforward approach along with dialogue would have been wiser in this instance.
The alternative is that some people will lose trust and won’t comply. You don’t want that if your plan requires everyone to comply.
The dilemma they face is no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply.
Getting an optimal outcome in the middle of that dilemma is impossible to get right. Not just difficult, but impossible due to the back and forth inter-reactions between individuals, groups and policy.
So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.
I'm not going to say they have got it right. The different points of view and debate have to continue after all, to pursue the "best" outcome whatever it may be.
Only that I have some sympathy with the public health messaging dilemma, and I hope other people can take something useful from the knowledge that public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone.
I get it, it’s hard, which is why we give the CDC a ton of money every year.
I just don’t have much sympathy for people who deploy preplanned psychological tricks and then don’t get what they want. We deserve better, seriously.
This is speculation. There are an infinite set of approaches for complex situations, that we have not found an approach that is consistently effective in no way proves that "no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply", it only proves that they won't trust & comply under the approaches we have tested.
Such things seem to be easy to conceptualize when we are performing computer system analysis, but it seems like when we are embedded within the system being analyzed, we lose this ability.
> So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.
This seems true. But it seems to me that when making strategic decisions about how to go about this, we make plausibly unnecessary mistakes on a regular basis. One problem might be though: if we start discussing some topics in an objective, truthful manner (more facts & logic oriented, less "truthy" narrative oriented), the public might expect us to start discussing all things in this manner.
> public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone
If the government, media, and health professionals would explicitly acknowledge the fallibility and errors of institutions, perhaps people would have more trust. But instead of describing reality as it is, we seem determined to stick with the simplistic fantasy land approach. This approach was extremely effective prior to the internet, but it seems insufficient now (except sometimes, like politics - here it continues to work like a charm, albeit with fairly disastrous outcomes).
The individual things people seem to believe seem to be nearly universally idiotic, but I sympathize with them to the extent that they can see they are being fed bs narratives all the time and just decide to believe whatever they want if it's all bs anyway.
That's of course an over-simplification of the dynamics at play in many US cities this summer, but it's not reasonable to attribute responsibility for the actions of a few to large groups that just happen to be nearby.
The hypothesis that COVID is man-made is an inevitable result of already existing conspiracy theories about Chinese communist plots and "globalist/NWO" population control programs that go back decades. The only novel aspect of this is the degree to which it's been normalized and adopted as part of mainstream Republican identity politics.
And people are willing to believe conspiracies due to fear. The US elected a president who has a trail of failed businesses and marriages, as well as, a moral system that would make hardened criminals squirm. But, like any good con artist, he projects confidence and makes complex topics simple by ignoring details. Scared people cling to those cults of personality like a life preserver. The fear started long before the 2016 election. The US is changing demographically and with it comes change culturally. Some people fear their place in a society in which they're no longer the majority.
There is no real "right" or "wrong" here. Everyone can argue until they are blue in the face whether all these policy decisions are correct or necessary. It all depends on what you believe society should be like.
You show a strong bias here.
I would say "those who would rather save the unlucky".
Dying of Covid-19 or getting Long Covid is not due to "weakness".
Imagine you are emperor of whatever country and you're sitting there in February with a potentially very deadly mostly unknown highly contagious virus. You are forced to shutdown.
The problem is that your bias will leak into that shutdown and make the entire situation appear like a conspiracy.
Then people step back and look at the context. Hong Kong Protests, Yellow Vests + french martial law + banning public protests before covid, black lives matter, canadian oil blockade country wide, etc etc.
Every place that had ongoing anti-government protests were quick to jump to lockdowns.
Then came the squashing of free speech. You're not allowed to 'spread misinformation' on covid. Mass arrests of people for 'spreading misinformation'.
Wait, there's a global recession, global protests against government and the government is restricting speech? We're not allowed to talk about it?
What we need to do is similar to the military. Medical decisions are outside the chain of command. Remove the politicians from this equation. Fix the entire problem.
Which is actually supported by studies that say infection rate is higher than we think (making the mortality rate lower) and by recent data saying that hospitals got 4 times better at not killing patients (mainly by using steroids and not using invasive ventilators). This last peak of infections didn't bring the amount of deaths we were expecting. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/why-is-it-that...
I'll start at the beginning to try to explain how my worldview is different from many people here.
The treatment of the topic in this article appears to assume that simply by labelling these beliefs as conspiracy theories, they are disproven. Why else would beliefs that are held by such a large portion of the public apparently be dismissed out of hand? There is no other explanation given. They are labelled as conspiracy theories and therefore are not true by default.
In my very different worldview, describing these ideas as "conspiracy theories" makes me suspect even more that at least some of them may have an element of truth. Because historically that description has been used for many government actions that they wanted to cover up.
So in my worldview, even the term "conspiracy theory" is potentially a manipulation, and a significant number of conspiracy theories are true instances of government malignment. Normally many of these are acknowledged to some degree up to a certain historical distance. So if you are interested then you can research further to understand my point of view better.
Let's stop spending time on counterfactual complaining and focus on what a serious solution looks like.
From Watergate to Epstein it’s shown that people in power commonly abuse their own power. From Enron to Purdue Pharma it’s shown that some Americans will indirectly kill other Americans for profit.
I’m not sure how we reduce political corruption or individual greed pursed with morals abandoned. However, I think that’s where the conversation should be around. I can’t blame people for believing China manufactured and unleashed a bio weapon that causes a disease we call Covid-19, that’s on par for the type of evil things other people are doing in the world.
But we're going in the opposite direction. Probably straight to 1984.
Vaccine is an interesting one because there’s the conspiracy side — vaccines will be microchipped, a way for Bill Gates to control the population, etc — and then there’s the general skepticism over the safety of something done quickly.
The latter is why the drug makers came together recently with a statement saying they would not cut corners on safety. It stems in large part from the White House pushing a message that a vaccine will be available before the November elections, in contradiction with public health experts who have consistently said it will take longer.
Personally, I think health agencies should be given some latitude in an emerging, novel pandemic. Mistakes are inevitable. Course corrections are inevitable. But in times of so much active disinformation, contradicting and tarnishing the agencies tasked with reigning in the pandemic is incredibly dangerous.
2: On closer re-reading, this number was over 80% in the spring.
Social trust has been completely wiped out, by the same elites complaining about it.
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” --CS Lewis
A group of people with some vaguely common perceived status are lumped together as "elites".
Some of them have lied, obfuscated, concealed so many times.
Others are trying to do good things in the world, and are consistent about that to the best of their ability in a difficult world.
But we reason about them all as if they are single unit.
Same problem as any other kind of lumping people together into a named group - men, woman, white, black, etc.
It leads to false conclusions. But we love doing it, because it's a simpler model of the world than reasoning about the complex interplay of individuals.
It's easy to blame "stupid people" and "the internet" but it seems perfectly rational to me for the average person to view anything coming from elite institutions with scepticism, at best.
There is no need for people to keep track of "all this" in detail with individuals and so forth.
It's already a big skeptical improvement just to take on board the idea that vaguely labelled groups are a misleading simplification, and to think in terms of the interplay of very different individuals as taking place.
For a start, that results in applauding good works (for whatever you consider good) when you see them, rather than applauding which party a person is aligned with. The result would be more sensible politics, imho.
Another thing which comes from that, is you then don't blame person A for person B's misdeeds just because A and B are both inside some labelled group you have defined by convenience. That way lies blaming all "X people" for some "X people"'s behaviour, and that's not as effective as focusing on the actual bad behaviour, as well as being arguably unjust.
I personally don't blame "stupid people" or call people that often, mainly because I think a lot of people who are not stupid still commit the cardinal error of hashing things out in public with vague group labels. Sometimes people could never agree on which actual people are part of those vague groups, but gloss over that as though it's irrelevant, and still reason about the vague group itself as if it's an object in the world with a coordinated intention. Sometimes it is, often it isn't.
I do slightly blame some aspects of "the internet" a bit these days, because, like a lot of people, I'm seeing indications that the social media process appears to be amplifying a polarisation feedback process that is independent of the actual issues, and might be becoming more powerful than our evolved human instincts for a healthy balance of group harmony vs conflict. As an internet idealist from the old days, though, I'd rather we study that and learn ways to improve on it.
That people are politicizing the virus on all sides is 100% certainty. All you have to do is read the news- that's not a conspiracy theory. The degree to which any given aspect (mask effectiveness, CFR, HCQ, etc.) is subject to those politics varies. At least in my circles, most people seem to understand there are legitimate risks and mitigations like masks, quarantine, etc. work to some degree. Again, they believe this on a spectrum. Most people are somewhere between "lick all doorknobs" and "sleep in full body respirator".
The pharma industry creating the virus is the least likely scenario IMO (~0%), but again, it doesn't take much imagination to see pharma making money on all this. I don't even necessarily see anything wrong with that, as long as it's done honestly.
All that to say, the premise of the article is flawed in that it doesn't account for the full range of belief in these "conspiracy theories".
Also, what is the alternative? Unquestioning belief in whom?
As someone living in Europe, I don't care two hoots about Trumps presidency, but I do think that the danger of this virus, and the current responses have been exaggerated.
In the beginning, when so many things were unknown, it was perfectly understandable and appropriate to overreact.
But now that it's largely clear that this virus is not much more lethal than the flu, (and that with the recent surge in cases in Europe, the deaths have remained largely flat), I struggle to understand the fear-mongering and hand-wringing.
My guess is, instead of a conspiracy, it's a case of a massive sunk cost fallacy, whereby politicians and high profile celebrity epidemiologists etc. can't admit that they were wrong in their original estimations.
Absolutely. Remember though the original push was to isolate to the bend the curve so that hospitals could cope. Now hospitals have spare capacity but we're still isolating. The story changed.
Even I believe that one. It really didn't help when public health officials banned outdoor gatherings, but BLM protests were OK.
"Likewise, while it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread of COVID-19 among those who attended the protests, we demonstrate that the protests had little effect on the spread of COVID- 19 for the entire population of the counties with protests during the more than five weeks following protest onset."
It comes across as blatantly partisan and not the least bit driven by the science.
Nevertheless, I agree with the larger point that leadership should have provided more outdoor activities to draw people away from bars and restaurants.
I could understand reducing the attendance at the US Open to a lower level. But to set it to zero while not doing the same for any protests... it undermines credibility.
Also, consider another example.
New York State imposed a travel quarantine on those traveling from other states. Well, except for the MTV Music Awards. Those don't count.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mtv-video-music-awards-new-york...
Why? Because I think the political sensibilities of the award recepients better aligns with those who granted this waiver. This creates an aire of political favoritsm. It's very damaging.
> it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread
> had little effect
I don't know what you're quibbling over. If we're reaching for absolute zero levels of covid spread, then sure protests had a giant effect (just from logic). That's not practical; people need to go outside.
And per the "it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread" is in reference to the article's earlier hypothesis that because people were leaving their homes to protest, you would expect them to get covid at a higher rate than someone who never left their house. The article didn't have any direct evidence that that was actually the case though.
You can expect 3 million and a change funerals each year with a population like us.
How and why did you form that belief? That just doesn't make sense.
Covid Survival Rate:
0-19 years - 99.997%
20-49 years - 99.98%
50-69 years - 99.5%
70+ years - 94.6%
What a complete nonsense argument.
What is different about covid that means we shouldn't try to treat it? We treat cancer, and genetic diseases, and the flu. We actively try to avoid death for a million other reasons. Why should we just throw our hands up with this one and act like it's not there?
Why don't you 'do something' about car crash victims every year? Are you okay with all of them dying from something that is preventable? You're just going to throw your hands in the air? Of course not. Have them wear seat belts. Invent things to reduce deaths, like airbags. But it is possible to go too far, like closing every street in the country.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
IMHO the greatest factor is using steroids and non invasive methods instead of ventilators. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/06/why-is-it-that...
Recent studies point (some say 3 times the number of infected, others 6-24 times) in the direction that we severely undercounted the infected because of its asymptomatic nature in healthy individuals.
Which means the death rate is nothing to cry about.
Religious gatherings typically rely on private property that is subject to health and safety standards. Protests don't typically happen in or on property that is subject to those standards.
Ultimately as a hypocrisy it’s small frys compared to the tidal wave of misinformation and intentionally damaging information, as well as the incompetent response and outright pitting of states against each other, compared to the current administrators actions during COVID as a whole.
TLDR; America’s response to COVID has been a relentless failure compared to all other western countries of similar size and demographics (outside of MAYBE Brazil) such that exaggeration and hypocrisy towards a small number of social gatherings is utterly insignificant by comparison.
There certainly were various BLM supporters who argued the protests were more important than certain covid-19 restrictions.
But that wasn't the CDC. I don't believe the CDC changed its guidance to allow for BLM protests.
It's not a conspiracy to suggest that people are exaggerating the danger posed by the virus. There are many factions, political and otherwise, that have a vested interest to do so, particularly in an election year. To file any exaggeration in the danger of covid as conspiracy is exactly what makes people disbelieve more legitimate science sources.
Almost all conspiracy theories can be disproved if you consider if they are:
1.) Reasonable given the circumstances. (i.e. is there a simpler way to achieve the same ends) 2.) Is the conspiracy theory possible when adjusted for behavioral biology, neuroscience, physics and mathematics. 3.) Is it possible that sufficiently advanced technology is involved but has not been made public. There are many conspiracy theories that can be simply explained by technology that is possible but has not been made public. For instance you can make people paranoid by repeatedly having people walk by them talking about what is going on in their home. The problem is the technology to view and listen into people's homes has been available since the 1970s and is available now for less than $5000. You can modify millimeter wave technology for this purpose today.
If the above two conditions hold true, you need to seriously consider the idea that some of the things that sound like conspiracy theory might be factual.
You can't label everything a conspiracy theory, some of it is just crazy people who need a reason for things they don't want to take the time out to find a rational explanation for.