I was referring to your family doctor.
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COVID-19
- Thread starter Treetop Flyer
- Start date
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
This thread is about COVID-19. My family doctor stopped seeing patients with acute illnesses once the pandemic started, and you have to jump through hoops to get past an HM2 in the Navy, so excuse my confusion.
Thanks for the vector!! I remember reading a review of this book back when it was published. I recall not particularly agreeing with Mr Nichols based on the review, which was positive. I don't remember why. I wanted to read the book to get a more fair understanding, but forgot title and author. Mrs Wink will be interested as well. Her cases often come down to battling experts witnesses. Because she is interested in her experts acceptance and comprehension by the jury, as well as improving her own craft, she always interviews jurors after a verdict is rendered. In the vast majority of the cases, jurors clearly state that they disregard the experts. They either feel at least one is just a paid mouth piece, or either opinion is just as likely to be the truth as the other, and they can't determine which.
I mean, you brought up your dead family members two posts ago. Seemed germane to the book I suggested. Did you buy it yet? I think you'll like it.
Free copy here
The book Thinking Fast & Slow has a long discussion on the predictive accuracy of experts, and how for a lot of scenarios, coin tossing or simple heuristics prove better. An example they used was experts predicting the success or failure of marriages. All of them came out distant second place to the simple statistic #sex - #fights. Positive number = likely successful, negative = likely failure. Boom.
A problem now is that rather than replacing this trust in experts with enlightened pragmatic doubt, trust is just being redirected to morons and nutcases (e.g., Alex Jones). But it's still the same blind trust.
I am much more willing to trust someone who has skin in the game. I tell my engineering students that they aren't really engineers until they've used something they designed, that their life depends on.
Crap. Just bought it.
On skin in the game, that is frequently how Mrs Wink elevates her expert over another. A PE civil engineer who has put his stamp on dozens of roadway designs should get the edge over a critic that doesn't have a stamp, let alone experience in design. The law enforcement expert who has a Phd in Public Administration, and was a senior officer in the training depart of a large police force, is published in professional journals, had written training plans and defended them in court, should be more believable than an academic who never qualified a guy to carry and gun and use deadly force. But alas humans are fickle animals.
My criticism of so many experts spouting off on both sides is that they don't have skin in the game. Their jobs are not on the line. They usually don't know shit outside their narrow lane. The experts on epidemiology don't know anything about economics, early childhood development or mental health. Not their job. Sone else needs to take other factors into consideration. The NTSB is always recommending changes that would likely make air travel safer. But their charter is strictly safety with out regard for cost or operating efficiency. That is why the FAA, with a different broader charter, leaves NTSB wants on their wish list for many years. There has been no moderating effect on COVID policy such as that. That leaves a vacuum for nut cases on both sides.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
A failure of our political leadership, who have willingly abdicated their responsibility to public health agencies. The office of the President across two political parties as well as the majority of governors decided to sign executive orders to auto-implement CDC recommendations for COVID-19. Legislatures at the state and federal levels don't want to go anywhere near debating actual legislation on the issue.
Prior to March 2020, no one outside of some niche groups really gave two craps what the CDC had to say about basically anything. It doesn't make any policy without political leadership deciding to implement it.
I dunno. Leadership directly undermined public health agency messaging almost from the very beginning of the pandemic. Who knows how it might have played out if they had all been on the same page.
I have noticed no change in public health agency messaging. Admistrations have changed and presumably there have been lessons learned.
Keep in mind, the real lifting in public health is local. I don't think the Presidential Administration had hardly any bearing on state local messaging.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
I disagree there. The President is the de facto leader of his political party. By continuing to promote mandatory vaccination, masks, social distancing, quarantines, etc., regardless of immunization status, the President can frame a media narrative that we should be doing these things, which will in turn put public pressure on political leadership to implement, which makes it more likely that state and local leaders follow the CDC's recommendations.
Additionally, the President has ordered mask and vaccine mandates for pretty much all federal agencies, which touches quite a lot of people on a daily basis. For example, it doesn't matter if your state has lifted mask mandates if you need to wear one to get on a plane.
Political leadership has undermined its own credibility through not realizing how its guidance is logically contradictory.
"Go get this vaccine that totally works. It works so well that we're going to mandate that you get it in order to do things like go to work or get on a plane. But even if you do get the vaccine, you still have to wear masks and stay 6 feet apart from people. You even need to do this if 100% of the people in your setting are vaccinated. Also, if someone around you gets COVID, you should self-isolate for at least 2 days and test yourself, and even if that test is negative you should stay home for another 3 days then follow strict mask usage for another 5."
Define what you think “totally works” means.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
I can't do that because the CDC has changed the definition at least 3 times in the last year. But that's not stopping government agencies from mandating it.
What I can say is that while the federal government was on the 'get vaccinated even if you had covid because it offers better long term immunity campaign' I had an actual person who signed their name with MD brief us that the vaccine only lasts 3 months.
We’ve had at least three variants in the last year, each of which has rewritten the book on how well the vaccine works.
Also, the uptake of the vaccine hasn’t been as predicted/hoped either, so it’s impact on the community (not individuals) has been different from what was expected.
And we’ve learned things that you can only learn over a year, vice a few month’s trial.
So of course it’s a moving target. How could it not be?
This kind of brings up a bigger issue of how we communicate anything to the public that isn't black or white, that has a lot of uncertainty going forward. I don't know the best way to do it, I do know the CDC and leadership didn't do it the best way.
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Bingo. We’re asking people to vaccinate and boost for a variant that has been replaced by not one, but three follow-on variants. I’m vaccinated, but not sold on boosters for exactly this reason. If someone hesitated to get the Covid vaccine when it was new and game-changing, I see no reason why they’d suddenly change their mind now that everyone is getting “Omicron”.
A while back, I kept reading about “100 day timeline” to update vaccines, and people were predicting an annual shot, like the flu (which I’m told IS updated annually to account for anticipated variants of concern). It’s been over a year since the Covid vaccine was first available to members of the public. Where is the updated version?
???
This . . . X 1,000
It’s called intellectual integrity from government officials, the ones were supposed to trust. It’s OK to say “we’re not sure” or “we need some more time/data” before we’ll know for sure.”
The CDC, NIH, WHO failed miserably at this. And that’s why people are pissed. And we’re all still waiting for some level of “official” acknowledgment and accountability.