Hacker News Reader

Comment by epgui | Hacker News Reader

And?

And we had people believing he was telling the truth long after he changed course. His lie cost us all.

Where is the lie?

Really? Fauci understood that masks were effective for health care workers. Instead of saying we want to reserve them for health care workers, he downplayed their effectiveness to achieve the goal of reserving them for health care workers. That destroys trust.

This is the same society that was already hoarding *toilet paper*. There is a very strong streak of selfishness in American culture, so telling people "here's all the information, now be nice and don't ruin things for everyone" means that 100% of the time someone will ruin things for everyone to try to make a buck.

Fine. That's how he justified his actions. And maybe that produces a good short term result. The result is you lose trust and people don't believe you the next time you need them to.

Early in the pandemic, my girlfriend paid hundreds of dollars for a respirator to use in an emergency at her job at the hospital. It was a basic Honeywell respirator, but one of the few the hospital could approve for her to use. The same respirator costs ~$40 on Amazon today.

I'm an airline brat and have flown millions of miles and been in two emergency landings involving fires. If you're ever in a similar situation, you and everybody around you better hope the crew sticks to protocol rather than worrying about bruising your precious long-term trust.

What's your point? The airline stuck to a protocol that was worked out in advance and effective. The CDC apparently had no protocol or one that Fauci threw out the window because he thought he knew better. Now when we're in a similar situation, we have a problem.

The people screaming like children during an emergency fare even worse when told the truth. It's tricky, because as you illustrate, they're incapable of accepting that working toward the benefit of the group in such a situation is the best approach to solving the problem.

In case you didn't understand my point because you don't work in healthcare, PPE for people dealing with the crisis was real fucking slim.

What would you have said, in the CDC's position, with a country full of scared people who want to survive and do what's best for the community, but also with a sizable number of selfish, greedy assholes, hoarding groceries to make a buck off their neighbor, and coughing on people for the lulz, who were unfortunately capable of ruining it for everyone?

You're Fauci, trying to convince assholes to do the right thing. Go:

You continue to willfully interpret these words as if they reflect malice or deception, even after receiving a very simple explanation. You’re doing it on purpose at this point.

No, it's not.

First, it's not clear that a significant number of people were hoarding TP at all. The best info I've read suggests that the reason for shortages were changing usage patterns: people would have been pooping at work, but since they weren't going to work, they pooped at home. Thus, sales changed from bulk institutional packaging to retail consumer products. The shortage was because the pipeline for retail products emptied, and manufacturers couldn't switch gears and distribute the alternative fast enough.

Second, you have the timeline wrong. On February 29, the Surgeon General told the public to stop buying masks. On March 8, Fauci told 60 Minutes "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."

Only later, during the week of March 16, 2020, toilet paper panic buying exploded. According to NCSolutions (a retail data tracker), toilet paper sales skyrocketed compared to the previous month. And as of April 19, 2020, almost half of U.S. grocery stores experienced stockouts of toilet paper at some point during the day.

The TP hoarding was indicative of known trends, not a shocking revelation about the state of American culture. Hoarding and gouging bottled water during hurricanes, ticket scalping at arenas, high frequency trading - our entire society is full of people whose first reaction to any piece of information is "how can I exploit this to take advantage of other people"?

I think what you're saying is plausible, although I don't necessarily buy it in this particular case. I personally never expected the TP thing.

But more to the point, though, let's assume your right. Is it right for our leaders to manipulate our behavior by lying to us? For me, it seems like the minute that starts happening, we're a democracy in name only. The fact that the government is "of the people" is really then just a technicality.

Yes, when the alternative is "our entire healthcare system is collapsing because an incredibly contagious disease infected a significant percentage of our healthcare professionals and more patients because the healthcare professionals didn't have access to PPE".

What I hear when people make these excuses is that democracy is just for when it's convenient. For important matters, a technocratic oligarchy should rule.

To me, the liberal enlightenment ideals in our Constitution and Bill of Rights are what have made us the greatest power the world has ever seen. This is a philosophical thing that I don't think anyone can prove or disprove (until maybe after it's too late), but I think we should follow those ideals at all times, and not consider them inconveniences to be swept out of the way when technocrats find them problematic.

At no point did "democracy" or its principles come into this discussion. Democracy does not mean universal disclosure. It never has.

If your claim is that giving people access to "all the information" will allow them to make informed decisions and lead to utopia, the internet disproved that long ago.

At no point did "democracy" or its principles come into this discussion.

Yes, it did. Just a few minutes ago when I pointed it out. Or are you the only one who's allowed to identify what principles are implicateed in the conversation?

I have no idea what you mean by "the internet disproved that long ago". But you seem to be setting this up as a false choice fallacy.

It can be simultaneously true that, on one hand, there's no need to exhaustively publicize every fact all the time; while also true that the leadership of a democracy providing false information to its citizens subverts the very foundations of democracy.

When full disclosure of the truth means that people will panic and cause bigger harms, you have to take the good of society into consideration.

"Ducking and covering" isn't going to do anything in a nuclear strike, but if telling people that it will do something means they stay calm and don't go into a panic stockpiling guns and food (or abandoning all civilized principles altogether in a nihilistic fit), then telling them that is justified.

When full disclosure of the truth means that people will panic and cause bigger harms, you have to take the good of society into consideration.

OK, so at least we're being honest now and not pretending it's a democracy anymore. But who is it that decides when it's something of sufficient severity that we must lie?

You’re reading malice or deception where there is none, and are being very selective in your context window.

You want to allocate resources to where they will have the biggest impact, and you want to ensure you don’t run out of resources for the most critical uses. They were transparent about this from the beginning.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200229123317/https://twitter.c...

I'm reading deception (not malice) because he said he was being deceptive. He was not transparent at all.

He chose to allocate resources for the contemporaneous crisis at the expense of the trust needed to manage future crises. Maybe you objectively think that was the correct choice, but it's revisionist to claim that that wasn't the choice he made.

Where does he say he was being deceptive? I reject both your premise and your interpretation: you either don’t remember well or didn’t understand anything.

I'm surprised that your simlple "And?" comment, requesting explanation, got such a downvoting. We can't even try to seek understanding of each others' opinions in this discussion, apparently.

Maybe you're new to these discussions but replying with "And?" is not evidence of an earnest and dispassionate desire to communally discover a foundational truth.