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Comment by calculatte | Hacker News Reader

The PR Firm Impact Research sent a report to the Democrats on Feb 22, 2022 urging them to lift all restrictions & claim victory for political points. Immediately after, restrictions lifted. Do your own assessment of the facts.

Leaked memo https://punchbowl.news/impact-covid-positioning-strategy-mem...

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So you contend that "the Democrats" (who obviously are a fully united entity who never disagree) should have kept all the restrictions even though the Omicron wave is ending?

What should they have done?

It's just exposing the lie that "following the data" meant "following the polling data."

That's fine, that's how democracy works. But it erodes trust in the political bodies that made all these rules and then just overturn them on a whim.

If the public are also "following the data", then the polling data and scientific consensus are likely to be highly correlated. I don't think it is nefarious at all that the general public and political leaders come to the same conclusions at about the same time when both are reacting same set of factors.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)

It's amazing what people will ignore even though it's directly in front of their eyes.

I don't care who's in charge. I care if suggestions/mandates fit the data. As of today, daily new cases in California are 2x-4x and deaths around 2x what they were in November. If in a week they are 1x then ok, open. But before then? Further, I guess it remains to be seen but I'd suspect lifting the restrictions will just rebound the numbers. Happy if I'm wrong though. I certainly would like to go to meetups, bars, etc...

California is a big place, and that's not what the numbers look like in the Bay Area.

https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboards

https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-wastewater

I actually don't think the numbers will rebound; once everyone is protected from delta+omicron that does _not_ mean a new variant can keep appearing forever. It has to be different from both of them for immune escape, and that gets harder each time.

Also, we have antivirals now (paxlovid) which we didn't have even a month ago and are very effective.

There was no guarantee we got it right (however you define that) six months ago. So it makes zero sense to match today's policy to the policy six months ago just because the case counts are similar. This is just cargo culted public policy.

Secondly, countless times we have seen a negative correlation between restrictions and case/death counts.

Most of the serious cases/deaths are unvaccinated. Since they made that choice to endure that extra risk, there simply is no reason for the rest of us to carry on with the consequences of their choices.

Damned if they did, damned if the didn’t. Republicans have it out for the Democrats, they can’t make a decision that they won’t call out as the wrong one.

Or spin as one, even if it means apologizing for Vladimir Putin.

With covid numbers falling from the inevitable January spike after the holidays, lifting omicron restrictions was always going to happen sometime this spring. (Barring some new deadly hypothetical variant.)

But I don't doubt that both parties factor PR into all of their decisions, down to how they dress.

The implication that a PR firm could dictate that the country would remain shut down until November despite covid numbers this low is silly. But I'm sure timing and messaging and other details are informed by PR studies.

Whether from fear of losing their jobs or wanting to carry out the will of their constituents, lawmakers have to pay attention to what we think either way.

And arguably the covid numbers were only high was because of dishonest and inflated counting. Now they are "low" because the risk policy was changed. https://fee.org/articles/the-cdc-changed-its-covid-risk-form...

Thinking PR doesn't dictate politics is what is really silly. If PR didn't matter, we wouldn't be inundated with ridiculous propaganda 24/7. They aren't "paying attention" to us, they are manufacturing consent and telling you what to think through all forms of media.

Now, how long until this gets censored?

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