What about when the government scientists initially lie about the need for masks, so as to ensure a greater supply for first responders?
Some of these numbskulls want the scientists and doctors to tell them not the year, but the DAY that the pandemic will be over. They have zero critical thinking skills. They seem to think that “If they’re so smart, why can’t they tell us when it will be over” And in doing so put additional variables into the pot by not getting vaccinated.
And re minorities. Yes there is distrust. But there is also the issue of being ABLE to get a vaccine. Be it work, transportation, or how available and close it is.
At my job, we where all notified about when where and how to get a vaccine. It was mass emails. And many options. We all have personal transportation and could take any time as needed to get the vaccine. The County set up drive through vax centers where you did not have to get out of the car. Yes traffic got screwed up a few times for the thousands and thousands getting the vax, but Road and Bridge, the Sherriff and Nurses office all got it figured out. My department (GIS) made maps to make this as painless as possible for every resident of the county.
Notifications about vaccines and how to do it also in the local free paper. This IMHO, is how you do it.
The county as a whole is 70+% vaccinated. But we need to do more.
At that time, back in February and March of 2020 IIRC, the best evidence we had supported that recommendation.
No, it didn’t. It was for policy reasons.
In other words, they knew that masks were very effective, but didn’t want to risk a shortage.
This reminds me of a talk I heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson give one time about the eclipse that happened a few years ago. These same people (mentioned in the quote above) will travel thousands of miles and incur significant expense to be in the path of the total eclipse – but will never consider listening to a scientist telling them climate change is correct.
Many might say these are people who believe what they already believe and resist whatever they don’t agree with. I think it is different, but similar. They are comfortable with science which has been established when they are in high school, but nothing newer! They know scientists can tell them the time, day, and location of any old eclipse because their parents believed it. (It is old science that has been well established.) But until they kill off a few more species – climate change is a myth. The fact that almost exclusively only unvaccinated die (or even require hospitalization) doesn’t seem to be having much effect. But a few years from now if you tried to deny them the vaccine they would be apoplectic over it!
There is the test! These people are so reactive and knee jerk; tell them they have two weeks to take the vaccine or we are going to send all the extra doses to some Muslim country (and not a wealthy one- one of those “shithole” countries). Yep, in two weeks all that good American tax money spent on vaccines will go to [insert proper stereotype here]. Deny them the vaccine unless they register as Democrats or Independents and they will insist they get the vaccine while remaining registered Republicans!! That is as likely to change minds as anything else I have heard proposed. (Yes, I admit I feel guilty for suggesting we play mind games with the test animals.)
I sincerely believe that one hundred years from now, Christians will support stem cell research (because it will be proven to their satisfaction by then), they will embrace homosexuality (despite all the scriptures-- not many Christians keep Kosher after all [I know that is a weak argument]), and they may even embrace evolution to a degree (damn few of them are short earth creationists even now) by then. In a hundred years those will all be subjects where their daddy and grandaddy before them were believers. (It isn’t what the words say- it is what someone tells them the words mean.)
I believe the actual number for the United States is closer to 49.83% of the population is fully vaccinated, with an additional 8.63% who have only had one shot.
Your number may refer to the percentage of eligible population, which excludes children 12 and younger. The ones who will be returning to school soon in an environment of few precautions and the Delta variant.
Wasn’t real clear I guess. I was refering to the county (not country) I work for and live in. So we are doing pretty good.
I tend to think that the distrust is not so much due to discrete events of elected officials or government explicitly lying, or at best, telling the best possible outcome like it’s a foregone conclusion. Rather it’s because of various policies of the government over the past half-century or so that while maybe economically or environmentally sound and necessary, aren’t explained in a way that holds a lot of water with some people, and the impacts aren’t sufficiently mitigated.
Specifically the move toward globalization and the subsequent decline of US manufacturing is something that is perceived as a betrayal by the government. Same with the decline of coal. A lot of emissions controls are seen in a similar light.
Granted, a lot of this is due to sheer ignorance; what I’ve heard from a few more… rustic acquaintances is that they blame emissions controls and legal reasons for the declining size of cars, and the rising cost. They don’t really understand WHY emissions controls are a good thing, and nor do they understand the idea of inflation, so they see that an average car costs $40k today, and compare that to 25 years ago, and then notice that not only is it considerably more expensive, but it’s also smaller and has a smaller engine, and comes with computer gew-gaws and various emissions control systems. They conflate all this together into not getting value for their money, or simply being unable to afford it at all, and blame it on the government for imposing all this on them, and costing them money, or driving prices out of their range. One particularly stupid acquaintance blamed Obama for making fuel prices go up so that he could cause hardship on country people. (this is the same moron who ranted about the (according to him) imminent adoption of the “Amero”)
I mean, I get why people in the hinterlands are upset- there’s precious little economic activity out there relative to the number of people who live there. I mean, if there aren’t any mines or factories, and farming isn’t particularly lucrative, what else is there? So they blame the government for letting this happen, and certain policies are lumped in with that, especially if they have locally detrimental effects.
I’ll use my grandparents as an example. My grandfather worked for Union Carbide for about 30 years, and my grandparents were staunch fans of the company and the associated other petrochemical companies in the same complex in the next town over (their town was a bedroom community for a slightly larger port and petrochemical complex adjacent to their town), as they provided the vast majority of not only jobs, but well paying, post-WWII style blue collar jobs in their area.
If the Federal government had passed some sort of environmental legislation that caused one or more of those companies to shut down or scale back, my grandparents wouldn’t have understood the whole “You can’t emit dioxin into the bay” argument as a valid reason; they’d have blamed the Feds for causing people to be out of work and for the economic distress in the community. And they’d probably have felt betrayed and be disinclined to trust that the Feds have their best interests in mind.
We’re seeing that writ large now, with the decline in American manufacturing and consolidation of major economic activity in cities and large towns. Everyone else feels betrayed and doesn’t trust the government.
I don’t think that recent examples of governmental distrust are the way to gauge this question. Governmental distrust has apparently been with us a long time. It’s a tradition now, a meme, not a new thing. It has inertia.
My take isn’t that it’s just the big events, it’s the smaller things that grind you down. The IRS and the fear of their audits, the hoops you have to jump through for any sort of help, the red tape, the bureaucracy. Getting turned down when you really need the help. Complete and utter bullshit coming out of the TV screen or the radio from our representatives. Not trusting them to help.
The horror stories you constantly hear about so and so not getting help from the VA, Medicare, etc are the ones that get amplified, not the stories of someone actually getting the help they need. Small stuff, but a constant stream of them adds up. It’s not new.
My bad. Misread.
I think there’s also a big feeling that they’re paying a lot in taxes, and not getting much in return, while they see big-ticket Federal expenditures and programs that they don’t feel benefits them- money down the toilet, so to speak.
This engenders a certain skepticism of the government that I think has more or less morphed into outright distrust.
Granted, a lot of it may not be visible to your average rural resident- they just see what’s on the news/in the papers, and if they’re self-selecting their news sources to create an echo chamber, that just feeds the distrust.
If it’s about the vaccine, I think it’s not just distrust of the government, but of public health experts, and their reaction to the BLM protests was a big reason for that:
Firstly it showed that their recommendations were not impartial and based only on the science, but were influenced by their political beliefs, and this created lack of trust. Secondly, experts saying a protest was more important than stopping the pandemic made many people think the danger had been greatly exaggerated.
Studies suggest that there was no significant uptick in COVID infections as a result of the BLM protest:
However, it’s reasonable to criticize the co-signers of the letter because they had no way of knowing that the infection rates would be negligible and should have advocated for social distancing and erring on the side of caution rather than promoting activism.
That suggests the guidelines stopping people meeting outside (assuming masks and social distancing) were never necessary, yet England still had restrictions on outdoor gatherings into this summer.
They should have been consistent in their recommendations, rather than claiming demonstrations were somehow more important than containing a deadly pandemic.
I agree with a lot of this. Dealing with any government entity is a dreaded event for most of us.
I tried for weeks to get through to unemployment awhile back, but had no success. I need a real ID and I can’t believe what a pain in the butt it’s going to be for me to get one.
I think too many of these government offices are underfunded, which leads to ineptness, which leads to people thinking all government is bad. I think some of that underfunding is even done with just this purpose in mind, but I’m sure that’s just me being paranoid.
From DemonTree’s CNN reference:
Support the health of protesters by encouraging the following:
○ Use of face coverings.
○ Distance of at least 6 feet between protesters, where possible.
○ Demonstrating consistently alongside close contacts and moving together as a group, rather than extensively intermingling with multiple groups.
○ Staying at home when sick, and using other platforms to oppose racism for high-risk individuals, and those unable or uncomfortable to attend in person.
So health professional letter did advocate for social distancing, and taking measures to keep the demonstrations from becoming superspreader events.
We didn’t know it as well at the time - it was known somewhat - but the risk of transmission in the usual circumstances for such a protest are pretty minimal, as was empirically shown by your cite. As such, I don’t think we can say that the recommendations were not based on the science.
The tone of the letter, in sections I did not blockquote herein, was pretty much the kind of messaging that would appeal to lefties but turn off the right. I’m guessing that, possibly in addition to the fact that the doctors probably wouldn’t have given their imprimatur for, say, some pro-Second Amendment marches, is what cheeses off DemonTree-or-those-about-whom-she-is-referring. Which would, I supposed be a lack of impartiality.
But, saying that:
I assume “the danger” in the above means the danger of the pandemic.
The pandemic creates risk. And, speaking generically, we need to gauge what we do in relation to the risks involved, keeping in mind that some of the risk we incur will mean greater risks for those around us and the population at large. Some risks we take because the benefits involved, and the ways we can reduce the amount of risk, make it worthwhile.
Loosely, the health professionals letter is saying that the risk involved by the pandemic can be managed in a way that makes being able to protest a net benefit. That’s a value judgement, and others may have different opinions on where that should go. But to simply say that they gave their OK for protesters to protest however they wanted because they agreed with the message shows a lack of understanding of the nuances of the letter.
Out of curiousity, DemonTree, did this letter give you the impression you express that I’ve cited above, or has anyone you’ve talked to given you the impression you convey here?
I’ve seen multiple people on Twitter flag up this event as something that made them distrust public health authorities/something they think made Republicans generally distrust them.
That’s kind of the point though. They made a value judgement on whether the benefits outweighed the risks, based on their own values, while condemning people who would make different judgements, based on their own values. Although they are qualified to talk about the risk of one protest vs another, or vs other outdoor gatherings, they are no more qualified than anyone else to decide the benefit side of the equation, yet they took it upon themselves to do so:
Staying at home, social distancing, and public masking are effective at minimizing the spread of COVID-19. To the extent possible, we support the application of these public health best practices during demonstrations that call attention to the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy. However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators’ ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives. Protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported.
They do not justify supporting protests on the grounds that there is little risk if precautions are followed, they explicitly say 'it’s okay to break the rules for something we think is important, but not for something you think is important".
And yes, I’m sure this evidence that many/most public health experts hold radically different beliefs from the right contributed to increasing the mistrust.
Decades of warmongering and dirty tricks:
And on the other side of the political aisle:
Obama running on change and ending the revolving door between corporations and government, then passing the ACA which was a conservative giveaway to private industry.
Obama campaigning on protecting whistleblowers, then his administration prosecuting them.
Validation from Edward Snowden that the government engages in massive spying on the public.
People waking up to the fact that the war on drugs was always just a war on minorities and hippies.
Seeing how climate change is such a serious threat, and the government either makes fun of it or passes tepid quarter measures.
Just the despondency of knowing the oligarchs are in charge and we can’t do anything about it.
White supremacists trying to violently overthrow the government so they can rape/kill politicians and establish a white ethnostate dictatorship, then watching as the government refuses to prosecute the leaders of the coup attempt and hands out 6 month sentences to the lowly foot soldiers. Sentences longer than other people get for possessing small amounts of drugs or other minor crimes.
Watching as the government refused to prosecute the big banks who collapsed the economy in 2008.
Watching as nobody was held accountable for torture programs.
A lot if is it just seeing the rich and powerful commit crimes and the government refusing to stop them or hold them accountable, while the same government sends violent cops to push protestors out of parks or hands out long sentences for drugs.