A Misleading CDC Number

"Throughout this book, six principles of effective crisis and risk communication are emphasized:

1. Be First: Crises are time-sensitive. Communicating information quickly is almost always important. For members of the public, the first source of information often becomes the preferred source.

2. Be Right: Accuracy establishes credibility. Information can include what is known, what is not known, and what is being done to fill in the gaps.

3. Be Credible: Honesty and truthfulness should not be compromised during crises.

4. Express Empathy: Crises create harm, and the suffering should be acknowledged in words. Addressing what people are feeling, and the challenges they face, builds trust and rapport.

5. Promote Action: Giving people meaningful things to do calms anxiety, helps restore order, and promotes a restored sense of control.

6. Show Respect: Respectful communication is particularly important when people feel vulnerable. Respectful communication promotes cooperation and rapport."

Effectively, they're in-house politicians who serve the (PR) interests of elected politicians.

Actual independent health professionals aren't the ones doing the communication; and have been generally forbidden from doing so.

There's one trick they can do to regain trust—move their website, publications, datasets, press releases, *everything* to git (https://breckyunits.com/how-to-fix-the-cdc.html).

I wish they came out and said:

"We understand we will constantly make mistakes and bad actors will constantly try to influence us. To counter that, we will make it painless for people to fork and correct. Every change will be open, attributable and signed."

A less charitable/borderline hostile take: Biden is extremely likely to not run for re-election (due to his health), and has some extremely ambitious legislation he is pushing which will cement his legacy. He and his advisers don't believe they will maintain control of the House of Representatives in 2022, and are justifying many of these changes with the crisis of the pandemic. If the pandemic doesn't appear to be a crisis, the odds of this legislation being passed are lower.

Probably the most frustrating part of all of this is the fact that the April job's numbers (1 million jobs predicted, actual was a 1/4 of that) were hand-waved away with "people can't work when their kid's schools are shut", as if the administration hasn't helped justify schools remaining closed in certain states. (I live in Colorado, a blue state, and our schools have been open since January with no issues, as opposed to Oregon, where they are still closed.)

I have the board game "pandemic" which came out some years before COVID, and I remember thinking about how cool the CDC was, as though it was one of the few agencies that had its shit somewhat together (the only other which springs to mind is NASA though no doubt NASA also has its share of mismanagement). Boy was I wrong.

"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it."

If you look at the data, there does not appear to be a decrease in infection numbers relative to their neighbors after the switch to FFP2[3].

[0] https://orf.at/stories/3197782/

[1] https://www.focus.de/finanzen/recht/verschaerfte-massnahmen-...

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...

[3] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

But the CDC recommendations have been so poorly thought out so far, it's hard to blame anyone who would say "screw your judgment of evidence, give us a number"

Also: For a disease that we now know is airborne/aerosol spread rather than airborne/droplet, N95 and KN95 masks are highly effective, a two layer cloth mask fit tightly over a surgical mask is moderately effective, and a cloth mask by itself is largely for show. I still see people saying you should NOT use N95 masks (they're cheaply and widely available now) while donning a neck gaiter pulled up over their mouth. It's another area where the initial messaging was terrible (in this case out of the good intention of reserving them for healthcare workers) and unfortunately has persisted.

If you need more nuance to avoid miscommunicating but you do not give it, you have miscommunicated.

That is an illogerate statement. 10%, and 1%, and .1% are vastly different and lead to vastly different decision making.

Just like when my boss asks for a schedule: 1 to 100 days.

I don't envy the CDC, it is almost impossible to communicate anything even slightly complicated. When they announced that vaccinated people could gather in small groups, at least one person I know interpreted that as saying it was low-risk to go to church in a large gathering with singing.

I feel like a given citizenry can tolerate in-the-moment-incompetence, but they expect to be validated later in turn, and not just in the history books.

So people will meet inside rather than outside, not realising what a huge difference it makes, thus increasing infection.

I have family members who still disinfect all their shopping, but don't even open the windows when they have guests round. Prioritisation is essential here, not everybody is going to be perfect, and if they are compromising on the wrong measures due to miscommunication then that's a massive failure.

Talking to them about the actual risks triggers an emotional response. Even relating the risk level to something they do every day like driving seems to have no effect.

These are people who are educated and consume news from respectable sources.

A walk in a park vs a picnic of 20 people in a park from different households.

The former's risk is probably nil; the latter's not. However, I've seen this last fall...

If outdoor transmission happened, you would see some documented cases. It’s not just all strangers walking past each other on the street.

2. It's not a given that a vaccine prevents transmission. Being an asymptomatic carrier is a real thing.

3. This statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccination works. The vaccine is only 90% effective. If vaccinated people are swimming in a sea of COVID, then roughly 10% of them will go on to get COVID. You're also ignoring the fact that as of today children under 16 can't get vaccinated AT ALL, and so beyond whether they die or get critically ill from it, they are contributing to the sea of COVID that can infect vaccinated senior citizens.

3. Studies take time. Knowing how variants perform vs. vaccines is not a matter of people flying on a plane. It's a matter of running a study long enough to see who gets infected and who doesn't. You seem to be completely unaware of the classic project management warning that it takes 9 months to have a baby, 9 mothers can't have one in one month.

On masking in public, you also need to understand that we have to have rules that are manageable. You can't say "oh vaccinated people, you can stop wearing masks in public", because then every storekeeper needs to query every non-masker to ask whether they are vaccinated - and of course they are all going to say yes, and they are even going to carry fake vaccination cards to prove their point. It's just an untenable situation, and additionally as long as COVID is in open spread with tens of thousands of cases per day, vaccinated people are still vulnerable.