Hacker News Reader

>CDC's ever changing guidelines

this was much more of a presentation problem then anything. of course the science will change in the middle of new viral outbreak, people's perception of science just isn't that.

>liability-free, fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually mitigate transmission

of course you'll fast track a solution when you have a global pandemic? seems like a no brainer? and I don't recall transmission ever being promised, only a substantial lower chance of severe infection and death - which was a main goal to help reduce loads on hospitals?

>labeling of media pushed medical hypothesis as "science" and any debate as heresy

medical hypothesis are a part of science? and I think there's definitely room for debate on how vaccines, closures, masks, etc. could have been done - but when the debate is just over if masks or vaccines even work it's kinda silly to be wasting time talking with the "opposition"

>the effortless militarization of common citizens to socially pressure and attack their neighbors into compliance

I don't see the problem with this sort of social pressure in regards to a pandemic. it's not like being reported to the "covid gestapo" for not social distancing for something

> of course the science will change in the middle of new viral outbreak

No. Science very very rarely changes. The confidence in the possible explanations is what changes. They communicated low confidence information with high confidence. The trust was destroyed with, what appeared to be, a concerted effort to silence those that accurately communicated the low confidence, or presented other equally possible, and far too often eventually-correct, understandings. I think this covers all the other points, above.

"We're sorry millions of you are dying, but we got nothing for ya'" may be good science but horrific politics.

That’s, obviously, nonsense/hyperbole. I would suggest looking at the communication in Germany for a good example of science communication.

> I don't recall transmission ever being promised, only a substantial lower chance of severe infection and death

No, that was the spin after it became clear they didn’t prevent infection or transmission. When they were given EUA they were sold as 95% effective at preventing covid[0], and there are plenty of clips of officials including the president of the US saying if you get vaccinated you won’t get or spread covid. Nothing about reducing symptoms. Heck, read the prescribing info[1]. It still says the indication is to prevent covid, not reduce symptoms.

[0] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

[1] https://labeling.pfizer.com/ShowLabeling.aspx?id=15623&forma...

No, "prevent covid" means people didn't get sick, which is defined by symptoms. That press release isn't conflating SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) with COVID-19 (the disease); it says nothing about stopping infection/transmission.

That outcome could have been reached by either preventing infection or just reducing symptoms, and they made no attempt to claim which it was because they didn't test for it.

> 95% effective at preventing covid [sic]

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID are not the same thing. All of the main media outlets reporting on this were pretty clear that 95% was prevention of severe symptoms and death.

> It still says the indication is to prevent covid, not reduce symptoms

Again, we need to focus on SARS-CoV-2 vs. COVID here. Getting "COVID" implies you A) were exposed to the virus and it entered your body and B) it is causing symptoms. Preventing COVID is not synonymous with preventing infection by SARS-CoV-2.

I think this has been a particularly confusing point for most because the traditional battery of vaccines we all get as kids generally do prevent the actual disease, and that has led to much misinterpretation as far as I can tell.

Science is a deeply personal philosophy that guides how an individual interacts with the rest of society. Skepticism, reproducibility, and verification. It is fundamentally _not_ trust based. The body of scientific knowledge is distinct from other forms of knowledge in that it is documented in such a way that you are able to independently validate it to reach the same conclusions yourself. Anything short of that is not science. If you are not able to review the methodology and data yourself - it is not science from where you are standing. If you are not able to reproduce the results - it is not scientifically true from where you are standing.

What I perceived during the pandemic was a conflation of _trust_ with science. When a high ranking public official went on television and said "trust the science" - what they meant was "trust me when I say some people are following the philosophy of science, and that everyone along the chain of trust between me and those people have assured me that the conclusions they've reached are sound enough to base policy on. You should trust me, and by proxy everyone between me and those people practicing science."

What they were _not_ saying was "you should follow the philosophy of science yourself."

Science would require the data and methodology be published and readily available at the time of a press release encouraging independent verification from anyone and everyone. Folks who fail to generate the same results should be allowed to share those negative results for others to vet. Science would dictate that each individual person who receives the information start from a position of skepticism until the information has been vetted and validated on a personal level.

Some people - likely most people - will choose to substitute trust for science on a personal level; but anyone who dictates that decision for others is not practicing science.

Man that pissed me off. You’d get people you know in real life yelling at you for showing public data that went against the narrative. Society did anything but “follow the science”. In fact, it was completely the opposite. It was appeals to authority all the way down.

I think you’re leaving out the part where, for political or other reasons, there are and were groups motivated to sell distrust in American institutions as well as their political rivals.

You cannot seriously have a debate about this mistrust without acknowledging the role of misinformation and motivated actors looking to sew mistrust.

Remember when 5G causing Covid was trending? Or memes about how hot water in a netipot would kill it? Or that if you had a strange cold anytime in 2019 you probably already had it?

Theories about microchips in the vaccine started spreading before the vaccine was announced. People becoming magnetic after the vaccine was trending.

>I think you’re leaving out the part where, for political reasons, there are and were groups motivated to sell distrust in American institutions as well as their political rivals.

The conversations on HN about the lab leak hypothesis always leave this out. They often imply the politicization of covid came from scientists trying to protect themselves rather than from politicians. Maybe the lab leak theory is true, but you can't dismiss the fact that it first rose to public prominence because politicians pushed it as a way to shift the blame for the pandemic. Therefore the anti-lab leak argument was heavily political specifically because it was responding to an already politicized argument that had little evidence to support it.

Not true.

Lab leak hypothesis came up early from NIH's own people. We have the emails. Government officials had these emails before "We the people" did so would have been first to sound the alarm publicly.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/24/emails-reveal-suspected-covid-...

https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114270/documents/...

I'm unclear what specifically in those links do you think contradicts what I said. The lab theory being discussed in scientific circles does not change the fact that politicians are the ones who pushed it into public discourse for their own gain and not because of any scientific pursuit of truth.

Also side note, an opinion piece from the New York Post isn't exactly the most trustworthy source.

The theory is popular because it's logical and has tons of circumstantial evidence. Full stop.

Many institutions are handling Covid in the worst possible way. The clinic of the University of Heidelberg (a scientific institution tasked with educating physicians) for instance insists on the 3G rule for admittance (either vaccinated, recovered or tested for COVID). Either COVID is dangerous, then only testing helps, or it is not dangerous, than testing only a subgroup is irrational.

The entire health policy in Germany is in denial of the fact that the vaccination doesn't help against transmission. Refreshers are sold as helping against post- and long-COVID where there is only little scientific evidence for it.

I don't think that it is necessary for anybody to sow mistrust in institutions. Those handle that on their own pretty well.

The Rubikon was crossed with telling that masks don't help - against better knowledge. Only to avoid a run on masks and to reserve them for health workers. After that, I took everything being told with good chunk of salt.

> Either COVID is dangerous, then only testing helps, or it is not dangerous, than testing only a subgroup is irrational.

You’d like it to be such a binary choice, but like most everything else in the world it’s not.

Regardless of the faults or mistakes I think it’s incumbent on our leaders to try to improve the situation not make it worse for political gain.

Another big one is how they purposefully lied about masks not working at first to protect supplies (or at least didn’t bother recommending them), then turned to everyone should use cloth masks, then cloth masks don’t work, and then masking kids all day long at school was pointless, etc.

The whole back and forth, unquestioning compliance at all costs strategy, and purposeful deception just makes everyone exhausted, skeptical, and builds resentment.

The worst part is that there isn’t any big plans in place to get supplies for better-than-N95 respirators for hospital workers. I have doubts even N95s will be widely available to the public by the next pandemic.

http://web.archive.org/web/20200301001854/https://twitter.co...

U.S. Surgeon-General on Twitter, 2022-02-29:

> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

> 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!

Classic

N95 masks have been widely available to the public for a long time, via any department or store that carries home improvement supplies. They’re used for a variety of things.

Like a year ago I walked into Home Depot and bought a 3 pack to wear while doing some sanding.

The liability-free fast tracked vaccine that doesn't actually mitigate transmission greatly restored my belief that we might survive the next large event. It was rolled out quickly, and it actually greatly reduced mortality. Reducing transmission would've been epic, but we can't win them all.

The CDC's ever changing guidelines were good, but their not admitting that at some point the had been wrong or worse were flat out lying did hurt societal trust a lot. The fact that social pressure on our neighbours and government recommendations failed to such an extent that we needed extra policing just to get people to keep to reasonable curfews sucked.

I don't know where you pull the "effortless militarization of common citizens .. who attack" from, but a. that didn't happen, and b. it was the people who did not follow government recommendations and social pressure that were out there militarizing and attacking their neighbours.

People are asking questions, that's how science works. But basing laws and regulations on established science and expert advice, that's how society is supposed to work. You can be angry about the state of science, or about the corrupting influence of pharmaceutical companies, but don't throw out the baby with the bath water. The fact that we've been able to respond swiftly based on expert advice and on established science is a good thing. Maybe next time we'll make sure those experts and scientists have more competence and better alignment to our ethical values.

Imposing mandatory curfews was never reasonable. That was never justified on an evidence-based medicine basis, and it violated the fundamental human right of free assembly. Those involved in policing such policies should be ashamed of themselves.

Shame this gets downvotes. If we are following the science there should be ample reproducible research out there (conduced before the pandemic) showing that curfews had enough benefits to justify their extreme costs.

But there is nothing. There is no research that lockdowns would be worth their cost either but here we are…

What mortality rate does the virus need to have before you accept that people's right to survive a plague temporarily overrides your right to free assembly? And by the way, lockdowns absolutely do work at stemming virus spread, China, New Zealand and other countries are evidence of that.

two weeks to assess the danger seemed reasonable to me at the time. What it turned into, though...

With the latest being: EUA approval, and the preemptive purchase of over 100M doses, of the new Pfizer/Moderna omicron vaccine after only being tested in mice.

Sure, its similar to previous iterations which have undergone human testing. Sure, we have a good understanding of how they work, theoretically. The FDA isn't an entirely corrupt and incompetent organization. But without human efficacy and safety data, it feels beyond likely to me that acceptance rates among even the "silent majority" of people will be low.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-authorize-new...

[2] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/06/29/biden-harris-admin...

The question I want to know is how much of this is "bad" corruption (worse than you would find in a 350 million population relatively free democracy/republic) and how much of this is sausage making. Was there any reasonable way for this to go well, given the realities of living in a complex democracy where we don't agree on how it should have gone? Is it inevitable that societal trust breaks down just because societies are complex things? So far, I've been losing more sleep over the people losing trust than the people breaking trust.

Are you claiming that all authorities, organizations, businesses and experts acted (and are continuing to act) largely in bad faith?

It seems pretty clear to me that regarding the origin of the virus specifically, there has been bad-faith dismissal of the lab leak theory due to the politicization of GoF research.