Hacker News Reader

Comment by jowday | Hacker News Reader

I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true.

I've got family in a small town in the south - the countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.

View on HN

Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.

> skepticism that resulted from the lies

Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are just being used as post-hoc rationalization.

The lies have been coming for decades, these are just new lies.

Vaccination rates were equal between democrats and Republicans as late as the end of April.

This is as false at it can get: https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/poll-finds-startli...

Comment dated April, article dated July.

Yes: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covi...

As of April 22, the vaccination rates between the parties was almost identical.

The differential in vaccination rates is largely about people under 65. If you look at over 65 rates red states and blue states are much closer. 88.4% of people over 65 in Kansas are fully vaccinated. That’s higher than California, Illinois, and New York.

I've noticed that as the risk becomes too high to ignore, people do finally put their politics aside when they have a reasonable expectation that their life actually does ride on the decision.

I would probably frame that the opposite way. People under 65 have a pretty low risk of COVID. Less than 20% of COVID deaths are for people under 65, and only 3% are people under 45. Liberal politics might convince a young, healthy 35 year old to get vaccinated out of concern for others. Geography also matters. There is a visceral awareness of being exposed to others’ germs in a place like NYC that’s simply absent in Iowa or Utah. A guy who takes a bus to work every day is going to be acutely aware of transmission risks in a way that a guy who drives to work every day won’t.

The 65-115 year old category is too big to compare with other age deciles.

For representative comparison deaths in 65-75 age group is 144K and 50-65 age group is 106K, they are a comparable risk group[1]. In my urban county of 2M whites in 50-64 have the lowest vaccination rate in the 60s. Asians have a 95% vaccination rate in the same age group.

The simple fact that Republican dominated counties have their beds and ICUs overflowing[2] after wide vaccine availability while congested New York does not paints a very clear picture that it is not liberal politics that is causing pandemic issues, but conservative politics.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/us/alabama-icu-shortage.h...

> end of April

What's so special about vaccination rates in April? By late August this NBC poll shows a huge gap. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/nbc-news-pol...

Already vaccinated:

- Democrats: 88 percent

- Republicans: 55 percent

- Biden voters in 2020 general election: 91 percent

- Trump voters in 2020 general election: 50 percent

Another analysis from September comparing electoral results and vaccination rates by county shows the same trend. https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covi...

The first vocal skeptics were Kamala Harris and Joe Biden back when they were referred to as the Trump vaccines.

Harris: If doctors say I should take it I'll be the first in line but if Donald Trumps says I should take it I won't take it.

What she wanted is what everyone should want is for the vaccine to be vetted. When it was she took it. She expressed doubt not in medical science, not in the vaccine, but in the claims of Donald Trump.

That would maybe be a passing defense if you legitimately thought Donald Trump created the vaccines by himself and they weren't a product from Pfizer etc.

With the history that Trump had for firing people who did follow unreasonable orders (e.g. Rod Rosenstein), it becomes entirely plausible that he would fire any FDA head who did not support a vaccine, regardless of the science behind them. As things turned out, the studies did support the vaccine, but it was not unreasonable to draw a distinction between unbiased experts and experts under threat of firing.

The vaccines didn't exist at that point; We didn't know how effective or safe they would turn out to be (at least in their first iteration), so obviously it would have been ridiculous to commit blindly to taking them.

Once trial results were released, we learned that they're highly effective and that risks of bad reactions are exceedingly rare (especially when compared to the effects of the virus itself).

Probably from when Trump said he was going to get the vaccine out early, a couple days before the election:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/30/white-house-aide-sa...

I think you'd have a better point if you blamed skepticism on something Fauci said (though I'd like to see context on that, too). I've not once relied on a politician of any kind for medical advice. If the only person telling me to get the vaccine was Joe Biden, I'd be very skeptical indeed.

But again, this is cherry picking. The consensus opinion amongst medical experts is heavily in favor of the vaccine, and they have data to back up their judgement. The contrarian advice from skeptics is decidedly lacking in evidence and relies almost entirely on hearsay and non-scientific anecdotes.

> I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true.

I agree. For someone whose threshold of 'did the authorities lie about masks' is one cherry-picked example, there was never any hope. They were absolutely going to find someone to confirm their already-existing beliefs.

Nonsense. There's such a thing as people on the margin. On any binary issue most pieces of evidence "won't matter" to most people, in that that one piece of evidence is unlikely to be the one that "flips" the person, but that doesn't mean people are ignoring the evidence - it's just that most of the time any given piece of evidence is the difference between 99% believing and 98% believing rather than the difference between 50% believing and 49% believing.

There’s a whole list of lies from the pst 19 months.

- There is no pandemic”

- “Masks don’t work”

- “Border closures are racist”

- “3 weeks to stop the spread”

- “The virus definitely didn’t come from a lab”

- “Antibodies only last 3 months”

- “There will be no vaccine passports”

- “We’re not manipulating COVID data”

- “Vaccines are 100% safe”

- “Lockdowns are for your own safety”

- “Don’t take drugs meant for horses”

- “Measures are guided by science”

- “We’re all in this together”

- “If you get vaccinated you’ll get your freedom back”

> if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff

When did authorities lie? The position on masks changed over time as data was acquired. Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about.

But I think ascribing a malicious intent to that learning process is disingenuous.

The only people that have made literally malicious claims have been people on the far-right, which unfortunately are some authorities so I guess you're right about Trump and his bootlicks who intentionally lied for personal gain. And continue to do so.

They lied about masks. It's plain and simple.

The science on masks is not exactly new or bleeding edge.

You have to be unbelievably naive to accept that "the position changed".

They were usually very careful in the wording, saying no evidence outside of a medical setting for this type of virus. And mentioned it usually insane breath as conserving masks for medical workers.

It was manipulative and steering behavior, but in most cases I've seen not lying.

*in the same breath

> You have to be unbelievably naive to accept that "the position changed".

...or have a functioning knowledge of science. Your trail of anti-vax nonsense doesn't really serve you well in this modality.

What specifically was the lie told. This is what I'm confused about.

There was a point where it wasn't believed that asymptomatic infection was likely. In that case, wearing masks is less beneficial.

> Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about.

Were they? I imagine federal government has the power to expropriate and ration masks, if necessary. This is way better than lying and then making a surprised pikachu face "why don't they trust us?", no?

They don't want to open the flood gates on people expecting the government to do things to make their lives better.

Did you forget who the president was at the time? It took almost a year for him to think it was even real.

> Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about.

Lying for what you believe to be a good reason is still lying.

The CDC literally cited mask scarcity for medical workers as a reason the public shouldn't get masks. The whole "CDC lied about masks being necessary" is bullshit. The difference between the CDC and the anti-vaxx crowd is the CDC makes decisions in the public interest and explains the rational behind their decision making.

>The CDC literally cited mask scarcity for medical workers as a reason the public shouldn't get masks.

As one of the reasons. They also (according to Time) gave the reason that they don't prevent you from getting Covid:

>The science, according to the CDC, says that surgical masks won’t stop the wearer from inhaling small airborne particles, which can cause infection.

>Doctors and health experts keep spreading the word. “Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!” tweeted Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. Surgeon General, on Feb. 29. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

https://time.com/5794729/coronavirus-face-masks/

You're still being dishonest when you leave out that THE CDC SAID AT THE TIME THAT THEIR CURRENT RECOMMENDATIONS WERE BASED ON THE A AVAILABILITY OF MASKS TO MEDICAL WORKERS.

The CDC states what their rational is, they update their recommendations with new information, and they act in the public interest. Anti-vaxxers do none of those.

I don't think I left that out. I said "one of the reasons" the CDC gave was scarcity of masks for medical workers.

I also quoted "but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!"

So I don't think I was being dishonest.

Sibling commenter pointed out why this is wrong, but on a broader level, I don't understand the need to retcon the CDC's incompetence to score points against the anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaxx position is wrong whether or not the CDC is good at its job. The two questions are completely orthogonal.

I'd put the whole censorship of debate and deplatforming dissenters in the left leaning media and tech companies. That made compliance very difficult for me personally as all trust was gone after that.

> When did authorities lie? The position on masks changed over time as data was acquired. Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about.

The fact that they say it was intended to prevent a run on masks proves that it was a lie and they knew it was a lie, which is inherently malicious in my book.

Here are a few to get you started: https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-...

Your team allegiance is showing.

At least I'm on the right team, and didn't ignore it for a year and spread massive amounts of disinfo to this day.

Which side did you choose? Oh wait, I can smell it from here...

Did your sad little downvote make you feel better? sadflex

Reply on news.ycombinator.com