We are almost certainly overreacting to COVID-19

Public policy is only as good as public compliance. I suspect govts have recommended about twice as much as what needs to be done because they expect people will do about half of what they are told to do.

Do I think this is good policy? Absolutely not! It undermines long-term trust for short-term results. I also think it has resulted in a caution-spiral. But it does mean that you can relax a bit when people around you don't follow the rules to the letter.

This bungled policy approach has led us to a strange place where officials are urging the public to get a vaccine that they (the officials) say is ineffective. But the public doesn't dare repeat what officials say about the vaccine. That would be anti-vax conspiracy stuff.

Comments

  1. ArgentGaleApril 20, 2021 at 3:17 PM

    Sorry I missed this post but it's another good one. I'm not sure that they care about long-term trust anymore since everything about Winnie the Flu is being used for the sake of one huge power grab after another that's largely gone unchallenged, or at least unchallenged effectively though this could be more of my pessimism talking. Thankfully there aren't too many people being Karens about it all in my area but knowing they're out there can still be a drain, especially when people you know in fearmongering central report in. And yep, conspiracy theorist is the smear of the day, huh? Funny how I see more lefties screeching about Q in particular than I see righties actually buying into it. Also funny in a different way how appropriating that to mock them with "blue anon" got scrubbed off Urban Dictionary in a hurry...

    The mixed messaging on vaccines definitely isn't helping the trust issue either but I suspect that once enough states and corporations ram through vaccine passports that none of this is going to matter anyway. So far they've been able to get away with a lot more than I ever thought possible using Winnie as an excuse so why not keep pushing if you're in their position? I'm ready for these moral panics to be over and people to get a #$%&ing grip already... At least with 9/11 there was something solid and visceral to where you could see why things were going this way even if the long-term harm was visible. Winnie the Flu getting to this point is hard for me to wrap my head around, especially in light of how poor the media's credibility was at the time it all hit. Geil-Mann Amnesia on a nationwide scale maybe?

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