Comment by 13415 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 13415 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm baffled by your post because I honestly have made the opposite experience. I've been tracking expert advice on Covid and practically all experts have been right about almost everything related to the disease from the start of February until now. They even predicted the reactions of the population correctly over time, and the second wave in autumn in my region. There were minor disagreements about measures, but overall mostly agreement, and practically every expert has been and is still advising more stringent measures than the governments end up implementing. (Which is not surprising, given the different responsibilities at play.)

I felt not only well-informed, I actually felt and still feel a bit over-informed about the topic. My country of residence handles the crisis relatively well, so it's kind of silly and depressing to me to continue to collect data and look at daily Covid figures.

May I ask where you live? Maybe the US? Did you get your information mostly from print media, online media, or TV?

But which science and experts?

The Swedish epidemiological team? The state of Florida epidemiological team?

Both regions of whom had better outcome per capita with less Covid restrictions than numerous states who followed the mainstream 'experts' advice.

The experts were clearly lying about masks at the beginning of the pandemic as well. That doesn't give you pause in trusting them?

Are you even looking at dissenting experts opinions? Following a single group of experts is not enough to get a reliable measure.

How do you even define correctness in this case?

> May I ask where you live? Maybe the US?

How'd you guess? :)

That explains the different experiences, I live in continental Europe and mostly followed local expert interviews and journal articles. It seems to me that the topic was politicized early in the US. I've followed Fauci's meandering diplomacy from time to time, as well as disagreements between federal and local responses. Maybe some trade-offs were made.

There is one complaint I had about experts in Europe, too, and that is that they resorted to a "king's lie" about masks at the beginning of the pandemic. Certainly none of them said you shouldn't wear a mask, but they downplayed their importance when there weren't enough of them yet for the medical staff. IMHO, they shouldn't have done that. Instead, governments should have regulated mask trade and distribution from the start like in some Asian countries.

> I've followed Fauci's meandering diplomacy from time to time, as well as disagreements between federal and local responses.

It speaks volumes that you identified what country I'm from and the person I was really talking about just from a vague rant about "scientists."

My rant may have been aimed at one or two people who appear to be compulsive liars at this point, but the author of the post is complaining about a problem with science in general. And it's not something you can attribute to anti-intellectualism or the perception of science; it really is a 'dereliction of duty" on behalf of scientists, and the madness of 2020 exposed these problems to the general public. More on that problem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7leWXMr3ayk

As an aside, I would ask those people (not you) who blamed me for feeling this way if they really think browbeating people who speak out will fix the issue. Why do we all have to keep blaming each other? Why not work together to hold our experts to a higher standard?

There wasn't a problem of the information not being there, there was a problem of 30-40% of the country believing angry demagogues over experts, and said demagogues strong arming the scientific community with political and social power. Even the most basic precautions like wearing a mask were politicized while the scientists practically begged for people to wear them. They left the WHO and refused to enter the vaccine pool. How do you fight that? Blame science? It's ridiculous and anyone claiming it's primarily science's fault I seriously question their good faith to debate here.

I was here the entire crisis (and I'm not a US citizen btw) and had easy access to the same advice Canadians, Europeans, and whoever else in the West got as well. The information was here, but the political leaders often downplayed it or simply refused to follow it. What did we get? The numbers don't lie, and take a look at the results of the current political climate and the death count. This wasn't a "good way to go" being overly skeptical of scientists. Like, there are problems with science, but this is if we're being cute "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"--or if we're being less polite--so incredibly stupid it's largely contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

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