> Now we've got a huge swath of US citizens that will never take the vaccine
I suspect it's more than just "the vaccine" (assuming "the" refers to the covid vaccines); it's an overall regression in the trust of health officials that will take decades to rebuild.
We had a pretty well built system of trust for health officials. Everything from a standard set of vaccines being a requirement at schools to CDC guidance being taken fairly seriously. There were folks who distrusted this system, but it was (at least I felt like it was) _fringe_.
The COVID response put all of these systems in the spotlight. It made a lot of people who previously trusted the system ask questions they never bothered to ask before. They may have asked these questions about how COVID was handled, but these are _general questions_ about the trustworthiness of the official health channels. The doubt that was sown isn't isolated to COVID. Regardless of where you personally stand on any of this, the way "official" channels handled the pandemic burned trust for a large portion of the population.
I think what frustrates me is not that we would doubt the trustworthiness of these institutions, I think it's a pretty common ebb and flow of trust, but how so many people seem to try to convince so many other people to distrust these institutions. The "they're lying to you, they're gonna take everything from you" rhetoric which doesn't necessarily create the doubt or fear but seems to amplify it, driving society further apart.
In a way, I agree a lot with the original article in that one of the best ways to flip the switch and rebuild trust is to lead with trust...of people's intentions and abilities.
This year has challenged me and I think so many of us in how to not only trust our institutions but our friends, neighbors, and family. I hope that we recognize it's ok to doubt and that most of us have no idea what we're doing, we're trying our best to get by, including those who frustrated me with their arguments to distrust others.
It may be a long road and yet, super clichély, it starts with some of us taking the first step.
I think it depends on the definition of rhetoric you are using, and how you've framed the argument. Not everyone who said "they're lying to you" also said "they're going to take everything from you"
I think the point of this article is that official health channels _were_ being dishonest - through their use of rhetoric, lying by omission, etc.
Saying official health channels were dishonest during COVID doesn't fit the common definition of "rhetoric."
Official health channels were playing a trolley game and didn't trust the public to be "in on the game." Without knowing the game, you don't know which set of tracks you are standing on. If you know a trolley is coming, and the official channels have demonstrated they are being dishonest, you should not trust them when they tell you "switch to this track, we promise we aren't sending any trolleys down it." At best, you are the lucky group being put on the life boats. At worse, you are the smaller of two statistics.
Some of the trolley games I saw early on, where I personally lost trust in these channels:
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What they said: this isn't a pandemic.
The game: this is a pandemic, but we don't want to cause a rush on supplies.
If you weren't buying supplies in preparation for the imminent lockdown, you were standing on the wrong set of tracks and the official health channels lied to you.
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What they said: the public doesn't need masks for this pandemic
The game: we need to make sure hospitals have masks
Masks worked to reduce the spread of COVID under specific circumstances. You should have been wearing one during the early days of the hockystick. If you didn't go out and buy a few early on, you were standing on the wrong set of tracks and the official health channels lied to you.
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Trust is earned, not given. You don't earn my trust by sending trolleys barreling down the tracks at my friends and family.
> I think it depends on the definition of rhetoric you are using, and how you've framed the argument. Not everyone who said "they're lying to you" also said "they're going to take everything from you"
> I think the point of this article is that official health channels _were_ being dishonest - through their use of rhetoric, lying by omission, etc.
What I meant by "they're lying to you and going to take everything from you" rhetoric was more about the litany of TV commercials and certain TV hosts that seem to pepper their sentences with very emotionally loaded words that imply evil intent or almost a malicious indifference to not just actions by the CDC but by so many institutions in society. I think I just feel so frustrated and overwhelmed by a constant hum I hear of "the world is out to get you."
That being said, I strongly agree with you that many parts of the US Federal Government, including parts of the CDC, communicated in a way that would lead people to distrust them, either through lies of omission, flat out lies, false certainty, or conflicted messaging across the people and organizations. I agree with the article in that, especially about the masks, many people in the government did not openly express the uncertainty of the situation and trust in the citizens to not only to be kind to each other but to have the ability to adapt and maintain solidarity throughout. I much more appreciated the way that, from what I remember, the New Zealand Prime Minister asked citizens for their help, instead of just telling them what to do or not do (I could be wrong on that, can't find the video at the moment).
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I appreciate your point about the trolley games. In looking back, maybe one of the reasons I didn't lose a lot of trust in the CDC was because I had other sources around the world, namely a friend in Hong Kong, who was strongly warning me about it and giving me instructions on how to stay safe, from masking, to disrobing in the garage, to washing the grocery bags, etc. I recognize not everyone was as lucky and some people have suffered grave consequences as a result.
Regarding those examples, I think I remember the CDC communicating those differently. Perhaps I'm misremembering, I don't think I ever got the impression they never called it a pandemic. Maybe in Jan and Feb, but I think once the WHO declared it a pandemic and around the time the NBA and NCAA basketball closed, I'm pretty sure the CDC was also calling it a pandemic.
I just found this article[1] from Feb 26, 2020, entitled "Covid-19: Why won't the WHO officially declare a coronavirus pandemic?", in which it says:
> The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the covid-19 virus already meets two of its three criteria for a pandemic: it spreads between people, and it kills.
> The third is that it has to spread worldwide. The virus is now in 38 countries – and counting – on nearly all continents, and those are just the ones we know about. How much more worldwide does it need to be?
It makes me wonder whether the CDC itself even has the authority to declare a pandemic, since it doesn't operate worldwide.
I also found an article[2] talking about how a meme was going around Facebook saying the CDC removed the word "pandemic" from its site, which I don't remember happening and which the article seems to strongly dispute with many links:
> We rate this claim as FALSE. The meme is wrong. The COVID-19 outbreak, though often described that way, is still a pandemic and has been since March 11.
Regarding the wearing of masks, yes, I mostly agree that even if these orgs didn't outright say "you don't need masks" (as the Surgeon General did in a tweet)[3], they still advised them only for people who were working in hospitals, taking care of people who were sick, or who were experiencing symptoms themselves. At least up until April 3, 2020, when the CDC recommended all people wear masks in public[4] (although Trump said he would not).
> What they said: the public doesn't need masks for this pandemic
> The game: we need to make sure hospitals have masks
So yes, I think from the end of February (maybe earlier) until beginning of April, the CDC didn't recommend wearing masks for the general public and those who were in the hard hit areas at those times could have been really hurt and/or killed as a result and I wish they had communicated more clearly and openly about this. I don't necessarily agree the game was explicitly "we know the masks work for the public and yet we are worried people will hoard them so we will lie to them and tell them only hospital workers need them." I think it was a concern they would run out of PPE for hospital workers and I also think they were unsure how well masks would help the general public, mostly because they didn't seem to know covid-19 transmitted as asymptomatically as it has.
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I guess I just often see trust as a choice. Do I believe that they knew with strong certainty that a mask would help me and chose to lie to me because they didn't trust that I would not hoard them? Do I believe that they were quite scared about hospitals not having PPE, confident that the virus only spread through symptomatic infection, and unsure if masks would actually help people without symptoms?
At the end of the day, I'll almost never certainly know. I guess I just choose to believe the latter because it helps me rebuild trust in them and feel a little safer going forward.
I suspect it's more than just "the vaccine" (assuming "the" refers to the covid vaccines); it's an overall regression in the trust of health officials that will take decades to rebuild.
We had a pretty well built system of trust for health officials. Everything from a standard set of vaccines being a requirement at schools to CDC guidance being taken fairly seriously. There were folks who distrusted this system, but it was (at least I felt like it was) _fringe_.
The COVID response put all of these systems in the spotlight. It made a lot of people who previously trusted the system ask questions they never bothered to ask before. They may have asked these questions about how COVID was handled, but these are _general questions_ about the trustworthiness of the official health channels. The doubt that was sown isn't isolated to COVID. Regardless of where you personally stand on any of this, the way "official" channels handled the pandemic burned trust for a large portion of the population.
Fixing this is going to be a long road.