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Comment by ssully | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for clarifying.

This is why I don't know what the right answer is on the messaging. The US government, and nearly every government, has a history of lying to people. The other side of the coin though is that during those early months, and well into lock down, everything was up in the air about the virus, how it transmitted, and how to fight it. If I was in the position of how to convey that information to people, in the most honest way possible, I don't know if I would have done a better job (or fucked it up even more).

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I've disagreed with the general global response at essentially every step. I think any reasonable person would have done better, and get the feeling that there are likely ulterior motives and disgraceful politicised actions to explain how bad the response was.

In particular, in the beginning there were very clear indications given by Taiwan and China that there was a dangerous virus spreading among the people. Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. They practiced the opposite of the precautionary principle and horrendous risk management.

When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies?

> Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it. They practiced the opposite of the precautionary principle and horrendous risk management.

At what point did the spread in the US stop being driven by sick Chinese people? I don't know the answer, but my impression was pretty darn early - far before politicians were taking the virus seriously as a policy issue. Sometime like early February or even late January.

> At what point did the spread in the US stop being driven by sick Chinese people?

After the first initial cases (that could be tracked directly to travel from China; e.g. that one guy in Snohomish county in the Seattle area), it was already spreading on its own by then.

Yeah if that's the case, the GP seems dumb.

> Yet sick Chinese people were free to spread over the world for months with no response except down-playing it.

> When politicians knowingly lie to everyone's faces and take harmful actions against the people, pushing toward a more authoritarian society at every opportunity, how can you have any trust and not wonder about conspiracies?

Wouldn't pushing toward a more authoritarian society been not allowing sick Chinese people to travel?

Do you think it would have been OK to implement restrictions at the start of the pandemic, just not now?

Doing health checks and restricting foreign nationals arriving from specific high risk areas is not extreme at all, that has been done plenty of times. I don't think it is comparable at all to the unprecedented restrictions that become normal in the last 1-2 years.

>Do you think it would have been OK to implement restrictions at the start of the pandemic, just not now?

Yes. In the beginning nobody knew how dangerous the virus was, so risk management should have been much more strict. It could have been a virus orders of magnitude worse than covid.

> In the beginning nobody knew how dangerous the virus was, so risk management should have been much more strict.

That won't work. Right now we have a pretty good idea of how dangerous the virus is, and plenty of US citizens don't want to participate the risk management of wearing a mask or even vaccinating. Hell many governors are outright forbidding vaccine mandates. Those same people aren't going to go along with strict risk management when the risk is unknown.

The same people I knew who were buying canned food and masks in the beginning of 2020 while the governments and health organisations said it was nothing are now the "antivaxxers". Humans are rightfully afraid of the unknown. I fit into this group

However, the next pandemic could be very different now that covid has been used as a political tool and people think of such a relatively mild illness when they think of 'pandemic'.

I still think the pandemic should be managed. I agree the world could've done better at the start, but I don't think that nothing should be done now. Just my opinion.

My understanding is that US outbreaks weren’t even usually sourced by Chinese travelers. Wasn’t the early NY outbreak actually found to have been through Europe? And that was pretty early. I doubt any restrictions from only certain countries would’ve slowed anything down. We would’ve had to do shit Australia did, total closed borders even to our own citizens abroad…

> The US government, and nearly every government, has a history of lying to people.

This is something you should work to fix rather than just say things like "but the other party lies a bit more, so I also have to lie to defend myself! And people doesn't listen anyway so why does it matter if I lie?" etc. I see so much bullshit people use to defend their sides lies and deception here.

To me ensuring the government stops lying and deceiving the public is priority number 1, every other issue is second to that (as long as the country remains a democracy). This goes for your side, no matter which side it is, and no matter how much the other side lies and deceives, I'll condemn you if you lie and deceive. If you disagree then you are a part of the problem, and people like you are the reason the government can freely lie and deceive the public as they do. Governments only stops lying and deceiving when the public strongly reacts to it every time they do, ignoring it just because it helps your cause is how they can continue to lie and deceive.

I agree to an extent, but at the end of the day it's unrealistic. The government is an entity made up of people with their own biases, problems, and their job on the line if they fuck up. I think there is a meme of honorable government employee who will resign before letting down the American people, but the reality is most people (and government employee's) would be more concerned about covering their ass.

This is a long way of me saying that people are liars, the government is made of people, so the government will always lie. Same for partisan pissing matches. The important thing to me is how they react when new information comes to light, or they are caught out on their lies. Or when the lies are big enough (I.E. lead to great suffering), repercussions are put on the table.

> This is a long way of me saying that people are liars, the government is made of people, so the government will always lie.

I live in Sweden, and our politicians seems to be a lot more honest than both sides of American politics. So from my perspective you aren't even close to hit the theoretical "politicians are people, people lie" limit. And until you at least gets somewhat close to it I'd argue that you should strive for it rather than let politicians run wild with lies and deception as you do now.

A good start would be to stop with the "Bundle a million unrelated bills and call it the 'Bill of Freedom!'" thing that is going on. Those bills are there to sow division and hate by saying things like "Our enemy are against freedom, vote for us to get the bill of freedom accepted!" etc.

I am willing to admit being wrong on this. I limited by my experience being only with the American system. From the inside looking out, it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking fixing this system is impossible.

"Our politicans seems to be a lot more hoenst". Are they though?

I know in Canada the government is just as corrupt, it's just better at keeping out of the press and squashing it quickly.

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