Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

motohagiography

Back in the 90's, artist Jenny Holzer famously wrote, "Lack of charisma can be fatal." The problem in the current pandemic isn't the science, it's that the quality of people in leadership roles is not sufficient for people to align behind them and move together. The explanation with the most predictive power in all of this is that the (mostly conservative) anti-mask people today are the visible face of what is really an anti-lockdown movement. They are revolting against what they perceive to be unworthy leaders, who demand they sacrifice their livelihoods and accept the direct consequence of generational poverty, to protect a group of people (upper middle boomers) who express open contempt for them.

Johnathan Haidt's old "Righteous Mind" was one book that talked about some of these values and mindsets. The mindset also means that they are willing to take a %0.003 risk of death to continue to provide prosperity for their families and communities, but accepting poverty for their families and communities at the behest of people they perceive as not taking the same risk is anathema.

They co-operated in initial stages of the pandemic when the viable action reinforced their cultural heroic understanding of action, but leadership everywhere has forfeited that by using the pandemic as leverage for a pre-existing social management agenda, and now we've got anti-mask protests.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with someone from the Sierra Club about whether they thought better technology could resolve the climate crisis and whether they'd be interested in a VC model for investing in moonshot green tech. Their response was it wouldn't matter because the technology would not provide mobilization for the true goal of global justice. That deceit ended my support. This same conversation is happening everywhere about the pandemic today.

The various conspiracy theories around masks are expressions of this underlying dynamic. If we want to contain the pandemic, there are absolutely ways to do it, but if people find their leadership is using deception against them, the pandemic will be the least of the risks our societies will face, in my opinion. It will have truly been a lack of charisma that was fatal.

During the initial lock downs with government support, many people did not face a choice of death or poverty. They only have that issue now because of lack of support from the Senate (specifically Sen. McConnell, who by rules controls what is voted on). Yet many of the people that attend anti-mask rallies also are ardent Republicans (same as Sen. McConnell). So I have trouble squaring your argument that it is about government over-reach. Likewise, if it about government spending causing issue, where were the rallies about the tax cuts for the highest earning segment last year? That law caused a lot more debt than the stimulus to support lockdown.

Masks help prevent lockdowns, so if we think someone is anti-mask because they're anti-lockdown, we're missing something. Or they are.

What evidence is there that masks prevent lockdowns? We've been wearing masks for months now and lockdowns are coming back regardless.

Only half of us have been wearing masks. For places in which rules were stricter and compliance was wider-spread, see countries that currently don't have lockdowns.

As a counterpoint, in Spain where I live, mask wearing in public is very high (Statista says 95% always wear a mask) and we still have a lot of lockdown measures, as infection numbers are still fairly high. You could argue that we have lockdown in spite of high mask use, due to cultural habits/private meetings/bad laws/low compliance of other measures, but it shows that high mask use alone isn't sufficient to avoid lockdown.

This simple messaging from a credible leader would suffice. What didn't work is the idea that masks prevent something we can't control. The hard problem is solving for credibility.

" it's that the quality of people in leadership roles is not sufficient"

This is rubbish, they are high quality leaders, not only that, they are perceptibly so.

This statement is easily disproven by the examples in almost every other country besides the US where masks are generally not contentious (they are in some small circles, but not broadly), the difference in the US being 1/2 of the countries populist leaders are either against masks or don't openly support them.

'The problem' is that Trump, Fox News, certain famous individuals, and Conservative politicians will not openly support masks, and attack the credibility of the medical system.

If Trump and Brett Favre were to make a 10 second video vignette promoting mask wearing, and Trump+Fox+GOP+Everyone else were behind this ... then there wouldn't be much of an issue.

" but leadership everywhere has forfeited that by using the pandemic as leverage for a pre-existing social management agenda"

Again, this is conspiratorial falsehoods.

"but if people find their leadership is using deception against them"

More conspiratorial falsehoods.

This is a disturbing misunderstanding of the situation: Americans would, by and large, be 'mostly ok' with masks, if 1/2 of the populist leaders told them to be. That's the only issue here.

Turning the pandemic into a political weapon is the problem.

I'm appreciating how ironically we are in agreement. There are people who can influence people, and those who can't. The former are real and credible leaders, the latter are not, and this is the danger. That the U.S. has almost a popular majority who do not believe their mandarin class has the national interest in mind (hence their preoccupation with so-called "globalists") is the evidence of this danger.

It's not enough to be merely correct, you need to be able to prevail on the population to wear masks or make greater personal sacrifices to stop the pandemic. I live in Canada, where our prime minister is amusing to the sort of people he flatters, but the level of tolerance people have for sacrifice based on his word is very low. He'd be called a "lame duck president," in the U.S. My point is that leadership weakness is what puts the whole country in danger if it in fact ever had to unite to do anything. I agree that the U.S. president could get the entire country onside if he chose to, but clearly he is not convinced it's worth destroying the small businesses that would cost the country a generation of growth.

If this were a partisan argument, I'd just bait you into reinforcing more of your prejudices and aspirations, but there is a serious conversation to be had about the the credibility of leadership in bringing people through a crisis like a pandemic. It's not enough for us to blame the outgroup, the virus doesn't care, so we need to look at what adapting to beat it might look like.

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