The experts can tell me the numbers and the odds. They can tell me that washing my hands and avoiding sick people is the cheap and easy way to prevent spreading diseases.
What they can't do is parlay sound medical advice into ethical government practice.
depends on where you draw lines on what is ethical for the populace vs what is ethical for the individual. to me, the response has been ethical, its the backlash and disrespect for experts doing their jobs to the best of their ability that's unethical.
I don't draw a line. Maximize ethical treatment of the individual and you maximize ethical treatment of the populace.
And government is inherently about collectivizing and categorizing people. It doesn't handle individuals as such.
Hence my assertion that best a government can aspire to is that of a convenient sort of evil.
its the backlash and disrespect for experts doing their jobs to the best of their ability that's unethical.
But they weren't. The best of their ability would have been to say 'Wear a mask, social distance, don't gather in groups'. Instead we were told 'Wear a mask, social distance, don't gather in groups... or else'. That isn't well-intentioned advice. That is malice.
I don't see a doctor giving advice. I see a German doctor giving 'advice' while an SS officer stands behind him threatening me with a billy club.
its the backlash and disrespect for experts doing their jobs to the best of their ability that's unethical.
There is a significant fraction of the population that disagrees with you on this. So at some point we have to ask ourselves, do we want to be right, or do we want positive results? Pick one. It's a hugely humbling question to ask and requires us to be self critical and have empathy for how others see the world. It means we have to be respectful of others, even if they decide differently than us. It means we have to be 100% honest--especially when it is inconvenient--and not use coercive moves or psychological hacks to try to "correct" people. People like Faucci and the leaders are drunk on power and are more interested in being right rather than getting positive results. They just don't see the world like this. It is failed leadership, and the path that this leads to is very dark and has ample examples in history. So none of the excuses about how this is a pandemic and we need to cut them some slack or give them extra authority hold any water. This is especially when we need to be critical of them because we are at our most vulnerable and most likely to be abused.
This is the exact same kind of problem you see on Reddit, /r/politics in particular; the people would much rather mock and belittle those they disagree with rather than actually reach any compromise that makes everyone better off. It's so much easier to get a rise out of people who think like you do rather than have to put in hard work to actually solve a real difficult problem. I guess it goes to the human nature of us vs them that is so easy for leaders to abuse for power.
look out everybody, jidlaph knows better than people who have spent their lives researching viruses, vaccines and public health policy