Read on Twitter
This is a good article, highlighting the failures of public information promulgated around COVID, though little that folks on here haven't widely discussed. I want to add a point though. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airborne-transmission.html#click=https://t.co/ttWRAbOp0o
This wasn't really a "science" failure - all the criticisms come from studies done by scientists, often representing the majority view among them. Science found it was airborne, science dismissed fomites, science generated the ventilation case studies we all had last summer.
To the extent folks on twitter have been ahead of the CDC/WHO curve it's not because of insight or experiment but because scientists are on here too - you can find out what they think, read the abstracts, etc.
The thing is there are supposed to be mediating institutions to get scientific information to the public so you aren't getting hot takes from twitter anon accounts (hi!). They failed, and were chronically months or even a full year behind the science. Why?
It seems to me like the FDA/CDC just aren't comfortable moving in uncertainty and will leave up advice which is less likely to be right because they aren't sure of the change. That's bad, if you go from 80-20 to 40-60 you should change your advice! Not wait for 10-90.
But something weird happened in press coverage (with exceptions). Rather than vigorously holding other mediating institutions to account using the science, the press leaned into following the Science (as reported by those institutions) as a signal of virtue.
Suddenly following CDC advice had culture war salience and was "Science" regardless of what the actual science said. This was an incredibly damaging phenomenon.
Unfortunately we dont seem on track to learn a lesson. As long as we conflate experts (who as a collective group are the essential tool at least to gauge facts) with mediating institutions (many of which proved net harmful) we wont have a debate here that makes sense.
Science flubbed it is a bad take. It's virtuous to follow CDC rules is a bad take. The challenge is getting the public better access to scientific information.
I could not be more thrilled with the scientists. Scientists decoded the virus fast, turned out remarkable vaccines, turned out tests including rapid antigen ones we still have barely chosen to deploy. Scientists gave us info on transmission that affected my choices every step.
And, to all effects and purposes, mediating institutions betrayed that effort, spreading massively outdated advice about fomites and absent airborne transmission at every step. Public policy utterly unmoored from science to pick fights over summer beaches.
I'm furious. You should be too.
