The new public health despotism | Hacker News Reader

The new public health despotism

unherd.com

9 pointstimthorn30 comments

It’s a social contract. A disease that has killed more people in this country than the civil war could have been alleviated significantly had people agreed to wear masks and get vaccinated.

Not wearing a mask projects “I don’t care if you live or die”, and is also understood that way.

What I don’t understand is that this social contract is the one that is now chosen as a hill to (often literally) die on. People happily follow other social clothing contracts that bring zero benefit to people other than the possibility to impose their will. Where are the people standing up against “no shirt no shoes no service”, what’s the issue with being topless at a beach or swimming nude altogether.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally choose this hill because 1) the numbers for COVID deaths appear to be inflated; 2) mandates for health and safety are perilously close to what the Nazis and other authoritarians claimed in order to enact their policies; 3) the "experts" telling us to do those things admitted that they lied on purpose about a few things, so I don't trust them with anything anymore; 4) those same experts seem to have a lot to gain by having us do the things they say; and 5) with regards to masks, those experts and politicians don't even follow their own rules, which makes it seem like either the masks don't work, or those elites think COVID is not really a problem.

In other words, the ruling class burned their trust, and without that trust, and they also make COVID seem inconsequential by their actions.

So this social contract you are talking about is entirely pushed by people who don't follow it. Why should I?

So - topless at the beach kills more people?

Not going topless at beaches is a social contract that is followed.

But if you want my real opinion, society is subverted by allowing indecency like that.

Interesting, but not surprising.

So what you’re saying is that actually, you are perfectly fine with imposing completely arbitrary rules unto others, that restrict their liberties, with the only justification being ‘because I say so’. You’re perfectly happy with restricting other people’s lives, even though it does not even affect you whatsoever.

But, if the rules now somehow affect you instead, even if the justification is “this is safe for surgeons, and current data suggest that we can safe hundreds of thousands of lives (and we could have, the US are by far the country with the most COVID cases and deaths)” this is now somehow authoritarian? More authoritarian than a completely arbitrary rule? Even though this massively impacts other people’s health?

You may want to read up on which opinion is actually closer to what the Nazis did.

You are completely misreading what I said.

I said it was my opinion. I didn't say anything about me actually restricting people because I don't. If such a beach exists, I don't go there. I don't tell people that they can't go there. So your claim that I would restrict the liberties of others is not correct. It seems like a baseless accusation to discredit me.

You claim that allowing people to go topless at a beach does not affect me, but it does. It makes it so I can't go to that beach without seeing things I don't want to see, so thus, I don't go to that beach.

Also, saying that not allowing toplessness at a beach is a completely arbitrary rule is also disingenuous because there's a completely non-arbitrary reason: to cover up private parts of a body.

The claim that "this is safe for surgeons, and current data suggest that we can safe hundreds of thousands of lives (and we could have, the US are by far the country with the most COVID cases and deaths)" is so far not shown to be true in all cases. In some cases, yes. In others, no.

For surgeons, they change their masks frequently and wear them in the environment they were designed for. Out in the real world? Not so much.

How much do masks actually help? When it comes to children, it appears not at all. For adults, the claim that masks work appear to only consider one variable: does it reduce the transmission of COVID. That is not enough; in science, all factors matter [1], and the scientists seem focused on that one factor to the detriment of all of the others, such as carbon dioxide intake [2] or how masks might expose wearers to more bacteria [3].

If scientists came out and said, "Here's the data, here's the factors we considered, here's the factors we did not consider," then I might listen. But they don't. Instead, they make claims that just one factor matters, which is not scientific at all.

Also, you claim that these things affect other people's health? By how much? What are the numbers? How much more than vaccinated people? How much more than masked people? If you can't provide those numbers, then why should I believe you?

There have been big sporting events without masks, but we're not seeing the massive spike in cases afterwards.

In other words, I think your arguments are completely disingenuous, that they try to draw parallels where there is none, accuse me of authoritarianism for an opinion I hold but do nothing to actually enforce, and actually desire to exercise authoritarianism with few numbers to actually back up your claims.

By the way, the Nazis allowed a bit of nudity, but they also coerced medical practices.

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2020/08/in-science-all-factors-matte...

[2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2020/08/masks-and-carbon-dioxide/

[3]: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2021/06/15/a-gr...

Ah, what a cheap way trying to sneak your way out: “So your claim that I would restrict the liberties of others is not correct.” The crux here was your intention, and willingness, also you don’t even get to live your “because I say so” tendencies, because, as you wrote previously, it’s not being done in a repressive Puritan country anyway.

“ there's a completely non-arbitrary reason: to cover up private parts of a body.” and there you go again. You’re so entrenched in your “because I say so” mindset that you cannot even see how arbitrary this is.

Finally, you seem to have some major misconceptions about what science is. You demand to have absolute truth from the beginning, and that’s simply not how science works.

Ah, downvotes, the last resort of the wannabe authoritarian who doesn’t feel respected enough, even though they are “clearly right” and “deserve the respect”, because they “say so”.

Ah, complaining about downvotes when the person debating you cannot even downvote the comment.

And now I know you are arguing in bad faith when you give me a label that you know does not apply.

No, I don't deserve respect, but I never said I did, nor did I say that I am "clearly right", nor did I "say so". Thus, you are creating those quotes out of thin air, which means they are straight up lies.

> The crux here was your intention, and willingness, also you don’t even get to live your “because I say so” tendencies, because, as you wrote previously, it’s not being done in a repressive Puritan country anyway.

Again, you are accusing without basis. I simply stated an opinion. I would not stop people from doing something that was allowed. Yes, I would not want to see it, but I would not stop people. So your claim is incorrect, no matter how you would like to spin your narrative.

> and there you go again. You’re so entrenched in your “because I say so” mindset that you cannot even see how arbitrary this is.

Is it arbitrary if the vast majority of societies the world over and throughout history had that as a reason? No, it's not an arbitrary reason, no matter how much sexual revolutionists would like to pretend it is.

It's like Chesterton's Fence: if you don't understand the reason for it, then don't remove it. When you do, then maybe you can.

But understanding the reason for it means that you must understand why societies, by and large, set that as a social contract.

Beyond that reason, a line must be drawn somewhere. If not there, then where? Why would your line not be any more "arbitrary"?

> Finally, you seem to have some major misconceptions about what science is. You demand to have absolute truth from the beginning, and that’s simply not how science works.

Again, what appears to be a deliberate misreading of what I said. Science is a process, yes, no doubt about that.

But science is not about lies, which we know were told. Science is not about agenda, which we know is being pushed.

Science is about evidence now, or otherwise do nothing. That principle is called the Precautionary Principle. It basically says that, without clear evidence that an action will not be harmful, requiring people to do something out of the ordinary should not happen. In other words, we should not throw caution to the wind.

That's why I ask for numbers. I want the evidence before I throw caution to the wind.

No, I don't need to know absolute truth. But I do require evidence. Isn't that what science is about?

Is there any good evidence that masks work to slow the spread of Covid? I've seen lots of evidence that they do not work, in which case they do not signify what you claim, but rather signify an adherence to reality and science.

>Is there any good evidence that masks work to slow the spread of Covid?

Plenty of evidence to that effect can be found with a simple Google search, some of which is presented here, without further discussion.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-mask...

https://www.kxan.com/news/coronavirus/do-face-masks-work-her...

Interesting to consider this analysis [0] of available studies that mentions some if the CDC references. The overall quality of the supporting evidence for masks seems to be not very good. In light of the societal costs if, in fact, they do nothing, I would hope for a stronger signal of their efficacy. It seems particularly cruel to mask children, who do not seem to have adverse outcomes with Covid, if the masks don't work.

[0] https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-e...

The same people uprooting our lives also lied about gain-of-function research: https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1450947395508858880

The social contract was breached from the start.

With ‘people who uproot our lives’ you’re talking about antivaxxers I assume, that needlessly perpetuate a pandemic that we could have defeated months ago? People who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, while still requiring the reasonable rest to pick up the externalities for them (eg people who cannot be vaccinated)?

No, and you've already said all this without dodging the issue.

I’m not dodging anything, and this is precisely the issue.

The uprooting of our lives came before the vaccine existed, so insinuating that the unvaccinated are responsible for it is completely disingenuous.

Also, there were a lot of people who died before the vaccines existed, so to blame the unvaccinated for all of the deaths is disingenuous. (And that's even assuming the unvaccinated are to blame, which they are not.)

Regarding people who cannot be vaccinated, if they exist, how come there are not medical exemptions available for them everywhere there is a vaccine mandate? Sure, some places claim to have such exemptions, but others do not. If you sincerely believe people cannot get the vaccine, why is it okay that mandates exist that do not allow for their exemptions?

And finally, would the pandemic really be defeated if everyone got vaccinated? Since the vaccinated can still spread it, and still end up in the hospital, would the pandemic actually end? The math says no.

It did, and it was the same people who refused to social distance, then refused masks, now refuse vaccination.

For now, kids cannot be vaccinated. Just like some immunocompromised people.

And yes, the pandemic would have been defeated. The math says yes, and more impressively, our experience says the same thing. There is a reason you don’t see epidemics of Polio, small pox, etc. anymore: vaccines. (it’s almost done for measles)

> It did, and it was the same people who refused to social distance, then refused masks, now refuse vaccination.

How do you know? Seriously? Where are the studies? Show me the math.

> And yes, the pandemic would have been defeated. The math says yes, and more impressively, our experience says the same thing. There is a reason you don’t see epidemics of Polio, small pox, etc. anymore: vaccines. (it’s almost done for measles)

All of those vaccines are far more effective than the COVID vaccines. I'm sure if the COVID vaccines were that effective, you could have an argument.

Except...COVID can be carried by animals. Are you going to vaccinate all of the pets in America? Until you do, we will always have COVID around.

COVID is more like the flu than those diseases: always mutating, always needing more vaccines. We haven't eradicated the flu, so why would we succeed with COVID?

I'll take a stab at the 'no shirt, no shoes, no service' one.

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/no-shirt-no-...

https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2019/12/where-did-no-shirt-no-s...

Second source there I haven't run down secondary facts on, so take it with a grain of salt.

However, the gist is, there is no health regulation mandating no shirt, no shoes, no service, people are totally free to attribute their policies to whoever they want, and for the most part, even if the sign is there, who says it's going to be enforced, and if it is, it's not violating any explicit/implicitly granted rights without relevant case law which I'm not digging into right now.

So that policy is more a matter of personal taste in operating a business, whose frequency evolved to a sort of cultural habit.

Masks/vaccines, unfortunately are a bit different due to the admittedly dicey history the entire policy sector known as "Public Health" has had in terms of what gets crammed under it's umbrella.

Examples: The notorious mistreatment and abuse of mental patients in asylums: Public Health

The Tuskegee Syphilis experiments: Public Health

Surreptitious DNA collection by intelligence agencies from needles used to vaccinate people in Africa post 2001: Subverted Public Health, but Public Health nevertheless

Eugenics: Public Health

Adding compounds (gualfenisin) to medicines that have a "recreational use" (dextromorphan), and refusing to sell the unadulterated compound any longer?: Public Health

Think about that last one. You're literally introducing a compound to a substance that poisons more readily to get those damn druggies to stop using it. This is not consistent with cultural understandings of the Hippocratic Oath, which when you're dealing with any sort of medicine or medical derived authority, is critical toward maintaining the necessary trust to even convince patients to let you help them.

When politics and medical science meet, you get Public Health, and it isn't necessarily the medical science that injects the mistrust, but the political hand that controls what science is put out for public review. Organizations have agendas, and the subtextual agenda can sometimes be enough to dissuade overall credibility in light of having "seen it all before".

The fact policymaking flip-flopped as much as it did, and the level of mere appearance of unethical behavior/conflict-of-interest, and loss of impartiality through systemic conflicts of interest between the private sector supplying the public sector with the tools they need to enact their policy justified by science funded by... the private sector... The room for skepticism in a micro-perspective of one person's life, is large enough to comfortably fit a few elephants.

I don't expect you to walk away from reading this with a sense of "Oh, that makes sense, that must be it let's fix that"... However, there is so, so much more to where the distrust and controversy comes from than "people just aren't being logically consistent". In fact, people not being so is the starting point for trying to do anything civically. The challenge is trying to get as much mobilized as you feasibly can. The trick comes in, in that you carry with you all the crimes of your policy making edifice past.

Atonement and trust building, as it turns out, is hard.

Make some sense at least? Or at least shine some light maybe?

P.S. This unintentionally veers into a research interest of mine which is the creation of "shadow laws" via the structuring of incentives by policymaking orgs whereby they create enough uncertainty to get organizations to make privately enforced policies to get something done now, without actually having to commit a rule or regulation to paper to have to get erased or repealed later.

This exploits the human characteristics of "anticipatory obedience", also known as "you get what I mean?" or "telling someone to do something without outright saying it" It isn't something most people talk about, but whenever I observe management or leadership types, I see it all over the place. I call it "hearing the unspoken parts."

I also remember Minneapolis declaring racism a public health crisis:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-racism-public-healt...

There is no area of public policy where you can turn off your critical thinking faculties and defer your judgements to experts, because every single area of public policy has been politicized.

One can say it shouldn't be this way, but that's like insisting on a power vacuum. If you endow any area with political power, it will be taken over by politics.

Agreed. I think everyone idealizes public policy as some sort of machine whose principles of action are ultimately traceable.

Alas... It's a bunch of humans trying to sort out an answer to problems that don't lend themselves to being "solved" especially when the definition of "solved" is once again, politics.

This, seemingly, is why we can't have nice things.

I’ll not even go into the specific comparisons you made, that are completely unjustified. But we can very simply state that masks are not an experiment performed on unsuspecting people. Surgeons do this for a long, long time. It’s fine. It works. There is no relation whatsoever to the other cases you brought up.

Concerning shoes/ shirt /service: sure, that’s not federally mandated. But masks for the most part weren’t either. It’s private companies that choose to have this policy, yet it somehow is now presented as something fundamentally different from other, private, clothing rules? That’s ridiculous.

The HUGE difference is, that with COVID, the people not following science, common sense, or decency now actually kill other people. And while I absolutely respect your right to meet with others and infect each other, I absolutely disagree with the assertion that you somehow have the right to kill me or others.

> I absolutely disagree with the assertion that you somehow have the right to kill me or others.

Prove that they are the ones "killing" others. That's the problem: there are claims with no proof.

People who don't want to be infected by others can social distance, right? You can only be infected if you are close enough to someone who is infected. Stay away from those people.

Actually, the funny thing is that vaccinated people can still get infected, but they are more likely to be asymptomatic. So they are more likely to be out and about infecting people without knowing it.

And that's why I want proof that those who are unvaccinated are spreading the virus. For all we know, it could be the vaccinated.

> “ Prove that they are the ones "killing" others. That's the problem: there are claims with no proof”

You may want to read up on what a disease is, and how it spreads. We know this since Pasteur and Semmelweis.

If people didn't want to die, they could just stay locked down, right? They are choosing to expose themselves by going out in public, so we could say that they are killing themselves.

If you insist they must have the right to go out in public, why are you demanding that those who are unvaccinated not have that right, especially when the vaccinated can still spread the virus?

And that brings up another point: you never did answer for the fact that it could be the vaccinated spreading the virus. What if they are the ones "killing" people? What then? That's why I want proof.

To me, it seems that all you're doing is trying to spin a narrative. It's not really working. At least for me.

Honestly, all of your arguments feel disingenuous. Some feel downright negative and presented in bad faith.

>But masks for the most part weren’t either. It’s private companies that choose to have this policy, yet it somehow is now presented as something fundamentally different from other, private, clothing rules?

Ah... But the masks were mandated by local governments. To the point where people of color were frightened because of pre-existing anti-mask laws, which were historically used to provide a mechanism for selective enforcement against minorities. Yes. That happened. New York was one such state, Oregon I think was another

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/states-with...

This alone elevates it above the realm of no shirt, no shoes, no service, or other dress codes, which never had force of paw in the first place. This is also why I brought up the post-script note in my original post; after a certain point, tight collusion or commonality in policy enforcement by privately owned business starts to look an awful lot like de-facto public policy.

>The HUGE difference is, that with COVID, the people not following science, common sense, or decency now actually kill other people.

So when are we going to start holding everyone accountable for the use of child labor by suppliers for Nabisco/Nestle? I'm bringing this up not as whataboutism, but to illustrate that the length of the chain of blame in who killed who is itself a political question, and taken to it's terminus says everyone who supports Nestle supports use of child labor in Africa.

Now don't get me wrong here; I wear masks if for no other reason than I know it makes others more comfortable, but I do find I resonate with the camp of people against public health measures being anything but voluntary, I find that ethically speaking it puts medicine in a bad spot to do it any other way.

>I absolutely disagree with the assertion that you somehow have the right to kill me or others.

Never asserted I had that right tbqh, but I do wish to point something out: nowhere do you have a "right to safety from others."

The closest you've got is an explicit right to the pursuit of happiness, which to you happiness may include safety from others; you are not guaranteed that, but you are guaranteed the freedom to pursue it. Just as those with a contrary definition are guaranteed the freedom to pursue theirs.

That's the fundamental problem with your assertion. You assert I must have the right to do it, and I'm infringing on a negative sense right you have. The reality is we're both hypothetically just pursuing our own definition of happiness. Somebody comes in without a mask? You're free to relocate. You the proprietor? To a point, you're free to to refuse service.

Welcome to why America was dubbed "land of the free, home of the brave", and why there are phrases like "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance".

Law, rights, etc are explicitly minimally carved/spelled out. It's intended details get worked out not necessarily in the political arena, but betwixt ourselves as reasonable people.

With that comes the responsibility to do things sometimes you don't want or have to do, but also to accept that that thing you really want isn't okay to just force on other people. If we value liberty, some sacrifice will need to be made.

The thing about public policy though, is that once made (remember those anti-mask laws?) it is infrequently repealed.

Again. Nice things. We cannot have. Because this sort of thing.

> I do wish to point something out: nowhere do you have a "right to safety from others."

I don’t know where you got that impression, but in many states you can go so far as to legally kill someone, anywhere, as long as you can make the case that you “felt threatened”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law

You will find fewer states than you think have that policy, and I assure you, if you employed that particular legal strategy to justify use of deadly force against a non-mask wearer, you'd... Well... Good luck. I have a feeling you'd have an uphill battle.

But let's look at that more closely, shalt we? Stand your Ground usually comes into play when there is a clear, present, and immediate danger. The immediacy part is what I'd see as lacking in your scenario.

Further, Stand your Ground doesn't guarantee you safety in the sense of bestowing or making an explicit right. Rather, it guarantees you safe harbor for reasonable employment of lethal force in self-defense, and making clear you have no duty to retreat first. That reasonable bit is generally always at the heart of the matter, one; but more importantly, this guarantees you the chance to secure your safety rather than remaining passive in a life-or-death situation, which the statute acknowledges as possible by its mere existence.

Ergo. No right to safety, but a reification of the right to pursue it, up to and including reasonable employment of lethal force.

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