Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[theJ]

1 minute ago, JonStark said:

People are outraged about wearing the masks in general (with a more contagious virus as you said). Do you really think they would've been fine wearing them had it come out that it's not as contagious? There's literally no winning for the officials unless they get lucky and nail it on the head the first time (which is damn near impossible with things like this). 

I won't argue with that.

This is hindsight talking.

[acowboys62]

4 minutes ago, Shanedorf said:

The supply chain would have been decimated as panic buying would have precluded healthcare workers from having sufficient masks. There's plenty of ineptitude all around, but in this case I think they were just buying time. IF masks had become as scarce as toilet paper, the hospital workers would have been in a horrible situation and without them, we'd all be effed.

Then wouldn't the correct course of action to be release something along the lines of "we are researching the effectiveness, blah blah blah" vs a definitive comment at the time?  I guess it is easy to Monday morning QB it but I would think saying nothing would have been better than making a claim. 

Even ignoring what the WHO/CDC guidance was at the time, you had political figures saying the same things and NO politician should be speaking on disease/virus. They should all stay in their lane and let their experts speak, but here we are. 

 

[acowboys62]

2 minutes ago, JonStark said:

People are outraged about wearing the masks in general (with a more contagious virus as you said). Do you really think they would've been fine wearing them had it come out that it's not as contagious? There's literally no winning for the officials unless they get lucky and nail it on the head the first time (which is damn near impossible with things like this). 

It is 100% an impossible task, if they say wear masks and it turns out they were unnecessary, like you said, people would complain...same in reverse.  You also run the risk of losing "credibility" even if unfairly for the next potential pandemic or other threat.  I guess the only counter would be would you rather listen to people complain about something they did and didn't need to do or refuse to do something they need to be doing?  Group A at least will get over it without death.  

[diehardlionfan]

3 minutes ago, Shanedorf said:

The supply chain would have been decimated as panic buying would have precluded healthcare workers from having sufficient masks. There's plenty of ineptitude all around, but in this case I think they were just buying time. IF masks had become as scarce as toilet paper, the hospital workers would have been in a horrible situation and without them, we'd all be effed.

I'm not sure on that one either. Science is based on forming a hypothesis and testing it rigorously. There's a lot of "wrong" along the way, its part of the process in dealing with a novel pathogen. Many people will bellow " Fauci was wrong !" , but that's meaningless to people trained in the scientific method, but its considered a smoking gun by the "gotcha" crowd.

We've been wrong a lot, that's how we learn and get better. There's nothing wrong with being wrong and I'll take it a step further and say that anybody who claims to always be right or never be wrong is somebody you should shun. Its a telltale sign of a small and petty person and that's true all the way from message boards to the highest offices.

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s a fact of life. In aviation we developed and concentrated on risk identification and mitigation strategies the past 20 years. In any scenario, like a new disease you start from a position of not knowing, what you don’t know. Rather than writing a book I will simply say they didn’t know how the virus spread. Therefore you identify each possible transmission method and use mitigation. Then as your science discovers transmission methods you reduce or eliminate the mitigation used on methods where it isn’t transmitted. 
 

The shortage of masks was an issue. Rather than feeding the public misinformation (You never do that) they should’ve used mitigation. It’s easy to arrange a conference call with global health experts (government) and develop an honest message. I didn’t have masks and couldn’t purchase them. I could purchase scarves, bandanas, material etc. and did. Not perfect but far better than nothing. 
 

Scientific hypothesis is great in a laboratory. You don’t use hypothesis when people can die. 

 

[JonStark]

5 minutes ago, acowboys62 said:

Even ignoring what the WHO/CDC guidance was at the time, you had political figures saying the same things and NO politician should be speaking on disease/virus. They should all stay in their lane and let their experts speak, but here we are. 

 

I can't emphasize or quote this enough right here. 100% accurate. 

[acowboys62]

11 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Then explain why this is a uniquely American problem.

I don't know enough about government structure in foreign countries, but are there any comparable to the US and how it is made up of 50 self governing bodies?  From the beginning of this pandemic I remember talk being NY/NJ peaked today, but other areas of the country are doing to peak later on.  

[acowboys62]

3 minutes ago, diehardlionfan said:

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s a fact of life. In aviation we developed and concentrated on risk identification and mitigation strategies the past 20 years. In any scenario, like a new disease you start from a position of not knowing, what you don’t know. Rather than writing a book I will simply say they didn’t know how the virus spread. Therefore you identify each possible transmission method and use mitigation. Then as your science discovers transmission methods you reduce or eliminate the mitigation used on methods where it isn’t transmitted. 
 

The shortage of masks was an issue. Rather than feeding the public misinformation (You never do that) they should’ve used mitigation. It’s easy to arrange a conference call with global health experts (government) and develop an honest message. I didn’t have masks and couldn’t purchase them. I could purchase scarves, bandanas, material etc. and did. Not perfect but far better than nothing. 
 

Scientific hypothesis is great in a laboratory. You don’t use hypothesis when people can die. 

 

Could be a difference in being public vs private entities? I agree with all of this and just can't think any reason why initial guidance would be given without any facts, makes no sense whatsoever. 

[diehardlionfan]

15 minutes ago, JonStark said:

And then if it was proven that masks weren't needed, people would complain about that. There's no winning with people who live to complain about everything.

Just take the evidence and recommendations we have at the current time and move forward with them. At the time, their evidence didn't show a relation to masks helping. That changed, like science usually does (especially in the case of a highly mutative virus). Believe it or not, the health officials aren't trying to prolong this.

No, you don’t take evidence you have at the time. You resolve the unknowns by putting in place a mitigation strategy. You don’t say golly gee, we don’t know for certain when lives are at stake.

In any occupation where danger and loss of life is a possibility you look at a problem and identify each possible hazard. You mitigate by using evidence or where none exists strategies to protect from the unknown. It’s how we protect from the inevitable mistakes and discoveries we make along the way.

[ramssuperbowl99]

2 minutes ago, acowboys62 said:

I don't know enough about government structure in foreign countries, but are there any comparable to the US and how it is made up of 50 self governing bodies? 

The European Union is a fairly straightforward comparison. 

But even slight differences in governing authority don't come close to breaching the huge gap in compliance that is uniquely American. 

[JonStark]

2 minutes ago, diehardlionfan said:

No, you don’t take evidence you have at the time. You resolve the unknowns by putting in place a mitigation strategy. You don’t say golly gee, we don’t know for certain when lives are at stake.

In any occupation where danger and loss of life is a possibility you look at a problem and identify each possible hazard. You mitigate by using evidence or where none exists strategies to protect from the unknown. It’s how we protect from the inevitable mistakes and discoveries we make along the way.

I'm talking about the general population taking the evidence we have. The general population is not capable of formulating an opinion on the course of action that we should take, as the majority probably don't even understand how an average virus works. 

[diehardlionfan]

Just now, acowboys62 said:

Could be a difference in being public vs private entities? I agree with all of this and just can't think any reason why initial guidance would be given without any facts, makes no sense whatsoever. 

I agree 100%. 

Public versus private is interesting. I worked for a corporation that is the only one of its kind in the world. It was a private entity with a requirement to take safety seriously. In fact it’s functional goal one which I would assume is also the same for the WHO.

Everything we did from training, equipment development, installation, equipment sales were accompanied by an in depth safety management plan. You identify every possible hazard and mitigate.

With this disease like other new disease the experts don’t know, what they don’t know, so they have to mitigate. 

[diehardlionfan]

1 minute ago, JonStark said:

I'm talking about the general population taking the evidence we have. The general population is not capable of formulating an opinion on the course of action that we should take, as the majority probably don't even understand how an average virus works. 

Gotcha. I’m talking about the WHO and health authorities. 

[JonStark]

Just now, diehardlionfan said:

Gotcha. I’m talking about the WHO and health authorities. 

Yeah, I can get on board with that. I still think too many people are discounting them now because of their initial stance though. It absolutely should've been handled better, but a lot of people don't understand that science (especially viruses that mutate like this one) changes rapidly. 

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

People have been absurd in their criticism of Fauci.  Did he give bad info?  Yes.  Was it intention or malicious?  I don’t believe so.

People were panicked and wanted info immediately and he provided the best information he had at the time based on the information that was available.  It’s not like there was a ton of info that he simply didn’t know and was incompetent, he was trying to make educated guesses at scientifically unknown things based on his collective knowledge of similar things.  
 

If people want “100% facts”, wait 6 months or a year.  

[vikesfan89]

32 minutes ago, acowboys62 said:

 

Oh, thanks. 

I think it has more to do with the area,  unless you think that 99% of certain areas areas vote the same way?