The biggest problem was how politicized it gotten. With any large developing crisis public trust is very important but with this crisis almost from the beginning it was politicized. Every move was viewed from a political lens rather a public health lens.
I think it's even worse. Due to stupid politicization of public health, Measles vaccination rates among kids continue to decline. Never mind the next pandemic and people responding to updated recommendations from epidemiologists (or others who, you know, studied relevant topics in college and, well, don't drink bleach or horse dewormer)... US Americans are starting to ignore decades-old accepted health practices that prevented a ton of harm to kids in this country. Just, wow. I understand you not laughing, but I think we have to. It's not like there's any cure for the increasing idiocy. It's a landslide at this point.
They are declining because once people get lied to like they did during Covid, they lose trust in public health officials. And that's a shame, because measles vaccinations should NOT decline.
Trust has undoubtedly been eroded, mostly due to the political lens that has been applied to medicine and public policies during the early days of the pandemic, when everyone was still learning and trying their best to determine the best course of action for public health. This has left little room for policymakers and institutions to make mistakes, despite the fact that the situation was characterized by more unknowns than knowns. While they certainly should learn from their mistakes and improve, it is an impossible task in a more unknown than known enviroments that was evolving and fast changing. The prioritization of politics over public health was a disastrous approach initiated by Trump and one the US will suffer from for generations.
Agree with this part very much. Hopefully enough people can set aside all the rancor over COVID and keep getting the basic vaccines like measles and MMR or what-have-you. For what it's worth, and as I've said before, some of the least vaccinated areas now are the most liberal. Distrust has many starting points, and the internet makes all of the mistrust vectors worse than they need to be, IMO.
Because some people are still confused about the Cochrane mask study and continue to insist that wearing masks 'did not work' based on that study... All Cochrane authors: the study does not confirm that wearing masks did not work
The conclusion was never 'wearing mask didn't work'. They are clarifying it due to misunderstandings by many journalists and lay people (which is understandable since reading studies can be very difficult).
That's right. I was trying to be nice. Some people misunderstood the study, some only read a few sentences and jumped to conclusions, while others simplly believe what was told to them. This led to a widespread 'misunderstanding' that started from a New York OpEd. Pressure or not, the researchers did not alter their findings. Instead, they simply provided clarification to address the mass misunderstanding.
There wasn't any "misunderstanding". The study showed that masks are useless. Then the scientists got put under a lot of political pressure. Then they caved. Then idiots on basketball message boards said "they clarified the misunderstanding". The end.
Thank you -- unless you have some agenda (ahem), the study is less about "mask wearing" and more about mask wearing "policy" -- we can all admit, as I feel like I've posted a million times: requiring masks doesn't work because humans are humans. You can compare counties with identical policies and find wildly divergent outcomes b/c of the local culture of the people. Did they embrace the policy, did the wear the masks sagging under their chins, did they ignore the policy? Did they do my local favorite, half-assed wearing a shitty cloth mask and then pulling it down to sneeze or cough? Yeah, it's very very tough to mandate something like mask-wearing in a more-or-less freedom-accustomed society. Hopefully public policy folks learn from this. Okay, that's the last damn time I type that. People can believe what they want about N95s and catching/transmitting aerosol-mediated viruses. LOL. Done with these old arguments.
