[gonehome]

This straight appeal to authority is particularly weak given the last year or so.

- lab leak hypothesis

- “masks don’t work”

- “not transmissible via the air”

- “it’s not a pandemic, don’t panic”

The authority has shown its capacity to be wrong here repeatedly and in obvious ways. This isn’t direct support of what OP said, but appeal to authority does little for me. The specifics matter.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

The appeal to scientific authority is only weak if you are looking for a way to downplay the virus. How many scientific authorities were saying "It's not a pandemic, don't panic"?

[unishark]

I think the "not a pandemic" was a reference to the WHO's month-plus delay in declaring a pandemic.

There was definitely a mindset of potential panic being worse than the disease itself early on. Perhaps not downplaying per se, so much as resisting making any major pronouncements of danger until the evidence was overwhelming.

[gonehome]

I’m not looking to downplay the virus - the initial downplay came from Vox and the NYT (journalists, not scientists - but often pretending they’re delivering scientific consensus): https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha...

They also framed virus fears at the time as racism and complained about border closures.

The “masks don’t work” arguments came from scientific authority though.

Same with “not transmitted via the air” and dismissing the lab leak hypothesis.

I’m not arguing with a partisan position - partisanship is what lead to a lot of dumb positions from scientific authority (and politicians too obviously).

[x86_64Ubuntu]

You are citing points whereby there was confusion about the scientific consensus, but what has been the overarching consensus this whole time? It hasn't been masks don't work, it hasn't been social distancing doesn't work and it hasn't been "not transmitted via the air".

[gonehome]

Respectfully, I think you’re cherry picking the current (more correct) understanding and missing what the consensus was at the time with the benefit of hindsight.

At the time “masks don’t work, “it’s not airborne”, and especially “it wasn’t a lab leak” were the overarching consensus - it was a handful of minority voices that pushed back on this, and they were not the authority.

The authorities largely failed us, my guess is because of political partisanship and motivated reasoning (along with a weaker MSM with bad journalists and some CCP pressure on WHO).

It was largely specific individual voices that were more correct at each step, rather than authority. The trick is you had to be able to tell which ones.