Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
We agree mistakes were made.
What follows? And then what?
One option is that people just straight-up stop trusting experts. You don't like that option, for what seems to me to be a number of fairly solid reasons. What's your proposed alternative, and where do you see it being implemented?
Doctors go through lengthy training, but while you can't just walk into a hospital and ask to become an intern, the textbooks are free, and so is most of the research and literature (if you know how to use libgen).
If you can't parse the literature and weigh up the risks and benefits with confidence, then I'm afraid the only solution is to look at people you think are trustworthy and do as they suggest.
There's a reason that doctors tend to be highly paid professionals in almost every country, and it isn't all regulatory capture. (British doctors make above median wages, but nowhere near a free-ish market would settle as we're victims of regulatory capture).
This is because medicine is difficult. It's also the easiest it's ever been, now that so much knowledge and resources are available to anyone with an internet connection. If you've taken high school biology and have an LLM, there's practically nothing you can't theoretically learn given the time and will. This is often impractical, hence why you want to pay someone who doesn't need to do this.
I think a sensible reaction to covid pandemic measures would be to demand governments provide far more evidence to justify a lockdown longer than a month. If it's not abundantly clear that you're dealing with a disease that kills upwards of several % of the population, by the time that period is over, then demand the lockdowns end or violate them in public protest.
You should trust doctors very slightly less, trust governments and government medical bodies quite a bit less, but IMO, if you're at the point where vaccines seem net-negative to you, you've over-shot the mark.
If you really want to, there's always the option of litigation against government officials if you can prove they willfully lied. If they encouraged lockdowns when it became clear it wouldn't help, or overstated the benefits of vaccination (without the benefit of hindsight), then they should be accountable for the harm.
the sensible reaction is Governments don't get to lockdown anymore.
You had the power, you abused it, you don't get the power anymore.
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My concern at this point is not justifying a lockdown more than a month. I believe there is now sufficient backlash on that particular subject.
My concern at this point is what other thing that might be demanded next time.
If I have a pilot who forgot to put the landing gear down, went through remedial training on the subject, and was reinstated, my concern is not so much the pilot forgetting to put the landing gear down a second time. That particular item has been well-established. My concern is moreso "what other things might the pilot have forgotten that weren't covered in the remedial training?" Same idea.
(This is why remedial training often covers far more than just the specific incident.)
Government officials often have immunity.
The burden of proof lies the wrong way for this to help in practice, as all of these are nigh-unfalsifiable.
Of course, if your intent is for this to be a bureaucratic tarpit then your job is done here. I sincerely hope that is not your goal.
Do you have better alternatives? At the end of the day, if you're unhappy with the government, then you need to elect a better government. I presume that it wouldn't be impossible to strip bureaucrats of their immunity if the laws was changed to reflect that. What else could I really advise, that someone shoot Fauci?
In a way, the new Republican government reflects the deep unrest with previous medical policy. RFK isn't a fan of vaccines.
The reason I advocate for governments having the ability to impose lockdowns and quarantines is because pandemics can be highly dangerous. Covid was initially believed to have a ~1-10%% CFR for the first few weeks, and on the higher end, the serious possibility of several hundred million people dying justifies some action be taken. I think a month is enough to narrow the CFR down, leaving aside the primary benefit of reducing spread.
Sure. So can lockdowns.
(How many routine medical procedures & tests were cancelled due to COVID lockdowns & overreactions? How many of those were the same ones that the Medical Consensus(TM) said were hugely important for health? Oh, the Medical Consensus(TM) has since suddenly shifted to saying no, those weren't helpful actually? Oh, the Medical Consensus(TM) has decided to classify all deaths with detectable levels of COVID as solely due to COVID, and now there is no evidence for increased death rates due to diseases that could have been caught via said procedures? How... convenient.)
(Hopefully not overly snippy. I had to go back and tone it down; hopefully I toned it down enough. Still sarcastic; hopefully not snippy.)
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Sidenote: if you've given me a 3sat problem and purported solution, expecting me to solve said 3sat problem just in order to point out that your purported solution does not actually satisfy all of the equations is inane.
Agreed.
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