In her Wall Street Journal column after a lengthy discourse on Anthony Fauci diary and Congressional testimony, Peggy Noonan has some thoughts I found worthy of reflection:
Looking back on the public-leadership aspect of the pandemic—while we were in the trauma and fear of the first months, while we were banging pots at 7 p.m. to thank hospital workers, and scientists were zooming to find out more about treatments and protocols, and earnest medical officials were showing up on cable explaining what they believed to be true—a lot of people tried to do a lot of good things. But it all became pretty political pretty fast, pretty insidery and groupthinky, and pretty smug as the previously obscure became famous overnight.
It all came together and yielded a little societal Chernobyl.
The reactor blew, causing a calamity. The politicians lied and couldn’t be trusted, the bureaucrats lied and couldn’t be trusted, the government scientists lied about the data in front of their eyes, the national press was a propaganda machine. As much as anything, Chernobyl contributed to the toppling of the Soviet Union.
She concludes:
Looking back on the Covid crisis, a lot of professionals were trusted beyond the point they deserved. So were many politicians. As people on the ground in America rose up against lockdowns, closed schools, mask mandates, closed churches, they were often unheard, or heard slowly, reluctantly and disrespectfully. The medical and scientific establishment didn’t seem to be a part of the public anymore, but handling the public.
And by the end, a lot of people thought they couldn’t trust the politicians and couldn’t trust the scientists.
My fear is that next time, and there likely will be a next time, regular people will think: There’s no one to trust. We’re on our own.
That won’t be a good thing.
I see things a little differently from Ms. Noonan. I don’t think the pandemic made politicians, bureaucrats, physicians, or scientists less trustworthy. It revealed institutional incentives that had always existed but had rarely been so visible. Given sufficient authority and sufficient time, institutions tend to evolve in ways that serve their own interests as well as their stated missions. More than a century ago Max Weber noted that bureaucracies, in particular, gradually come to place institutional interests ahead of institutional purposes. The pandemic did not create that tendency; it exposed it.
And the reality is that we are on our own. We always have been and always will be. Ultimately, each of us remains responsible for exercising judgment rather than surrendering it to authority. We simply shouldn’t allow elected officials and appointed bureaucrats to remain in positions of authority indefinitely. They cannot be a substitute for prudence. Free citizens should seek expert advice but they should never surrender their own judgment to experts, politicians, or bureaucracies. Institutions can inform prudence; they cannot replace it.
They keep claiming there were all of these lies but dont say what they were.
Steve
Dave Schuler: Ultimately, each of us remains responsible for exercising judgment rather than surrendering it to authority.
Uh, no. While policy should be set by civilian government after conferring with expert opinion, leaving each individual to decide what to do in an epidemic is not tenable. Consider, a person with smallpox who insists on walking down a crowded public street.
Dave- I think your sentiment is good, but what happens when people who dont have the expertise, experience or judgment needed to make decisions? With the internet and social media you can always find a source that will confirm what you want to believe. I think I would phrase it as you should not blindly accept what anyone tells you but if you dont have the ability to judge for yourself seek out multiple credible sources including ones with which you ideologically disagree. That source should never be a politician and rarely youtube and the source should be able to cite and explain basic science supporting their claims. Understand and accept your own limitations especially in understanding study designs and statistics. Finally, if 95% of those with expertise on a topic there is usually a reason for that. There is always that 5% that believe in a flat earth.
Steve
That’s what happens now in the civil bureaucracy. And as specialization increases it will be increasingly the case.
It’s what happens when they ignore true expertise. Much/most of it is driven by politicians.
Steve
“I see things a little differently from Ms. Noonan. I don’t think the pandemic made politicians, bureaucrats, physicians, or scientists less trustworthy. It revealed institutional incentives that had always existed but had rarely been so visible.”
Yeah, but SHE can’t say that!
Some of the lies told:
1) “Masks don’t work, stop buying them” followed six weeks later by “Masks DO work, and you must wear them all the time in public, even alone in your car.”
2) “Public gatherings are superspreader events, and cannot be allowed. So you cannot visit your elderly relatives at all, even if they’re dying alone. Unless of course it is the five massive funerals for a piece of shit armed robber ot the kill whitey riots – no one will get sick from those!”
3) “The vaccines will completely eliminate the disease, and have been thoroughly tested.”
I could go on, but what’s the point?
1) Already acknowledged that one.
2) The official CDC recommendation was not to attend the events. There was a later by a number of medical people claiming it was worth going even with the known risk, providing people masked. In context, there was a lot of literature at that point noting that the risk of spread was minimal in the outdoors as the virus was sensitive to sunlight. There was active disagreement among clinicians as to when that evidence was strong enough to release that recommended restriction. There was no lie.
3) The literature never made those claims and neither did anyone of note that I can find either via Chat-GPT or google. It’s a common lie spread by anti-vaxxers. The vaccine did indeed pass all 3 phases of testing any vaccine would face. Did they use a large enough test group in phase 3? If you will recall, I would be surprised if you ever knew, they delayed the release a few weeks to increase the number of volunteers in phase 3.
That was criticized as it was claimed it was done to delay the release to harm Trump in the election as the release would be after the election. After the release it was then claimed, by many of the same people that they had not included enough people and done enough tests. How many is enough? We never know that answer for any drug. More is usually better but you face diminishing returns. But it wasn’t a lie.
The point? You are repeating third hand stuff. A key point I missed above is that you should always read primary sources. Too often people dont do that (and dont know how to do it and how to deternmine if the source is good or bad) but rather are citing a politician or some influencer. Anyway, the point is that almost everything you think is a lie is not.
Steve
Tasty Bits: 1) “Masks don’t work, stop buying them”
Don’t see that exact quote anywhere. However, before the virus spread widely, and as the extent of asymptomatic spread was not well-understood, masking other than for those who were sick was a reasonable position at the time. If there was a flaw in messaging, it was leaving the impression that masking didn’t work, when clearly healthcare workers used masking. The closest seems to be this: Surgeon General Jerome Adams (February 2020): “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if health care providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!” Adams says his position changed to support masking as new information about asymptomatic spread accumulated. But the original statement was clearly an overstatement. Fauci’s position was always more nuanced.
Keep in mind that people overreacted on both sides; many people panicked, while other people pooh-poohed the real danger—and some people still do. However, clear and accurate messaging is essential in public officials.
@Zachriel
TastyBits, WTF?
Sorry, that should have been attributed to Icepick who was paraphrasing official messaging.
Icepick: 1) “Masks don’t work, stop buying them”