|
It is saddening to see the experts also succumb to straight lying to the public. I'm sure they think this is 'for the best', because there aren't enough masks to go round and what there is needs to go to first line healthcare workers. But trust is hard to gain and easily lost. A real compounding factor in this crisis is also that our leaders have lost all credibility. In many, if not most, countries, the citizens just know that actions that were and are being taking are neither competent nor in their best interest. The specific implementations of democracy we implemented never selected for reason, precaution nor long term benefits or well-being for all. So most of us have a political 'leadership' (and I do not mean a specific country or party, it's mostly across the board, with few exceptions) that has lost all credibility, trust and moral authority long before this happened, leaving the population already at best confused, but mostly mistrusting and (justifiably) cynical. For scientists to go 'on message', telling obvious non-truths, just further undermines the already shaky ground they were on after decades of anti-science propaganda. I really, really hoped they would refrain from this, but, judging by what is happening in my own country and what the science community is publicly communicating (privately it is a completely opposite discourse), I sadly must say that the opposite is true. |