> Whenever someone mentions "flatten the curve" in that way, the implication always seems to be the CDC et. al should have had this novel disease figured out from day one, but that's an unreasonable expectation.
Then they shouldn't act like they have all the answers if they have no idea what is going on. This is exactly what all the "conspiracy theorists" expected, and it's exactly how it played out.
The CDC has seriously destroyed public faith in the government generally by pushing "two weeks to flatten the curve" and "100% effective vaccines" when, in reality, they did not have a handle on the situation.
Health authorities pretty much everywhere have been quite clear about data and conclusions constantly evolving, but people just don't read or process that far. Or only read the "CDC recommends XYZ" headline and then complain that nobody told them that this isn't 100% valid-forever fundamental laws. It's been staggering to see how many people will claim "but they never said this might change" while you can just go back and look at what actually was written at the time and see that it was of course said that things can and will be adjusted as the situation changes.
We all know the conclusions are constantly evolving. That's why all "health authorities" are useless. Being an authority in general doesn't help in a novel situation that they're unable to understand correctly.
> We all know the conclusions are constantly evolving. That's why all "health authorities" are useless.
That doesn't follow. Evolving conclusions are what you get and almost want (even better would be someone who guesses everything correctly beforehand, but ... that's not how it works) in a changing situation. That doesn't mean people drawing the conclusions are useless, nor do their conclusions have to be perfect to be useful - as long as they are better than the ones the people who'd have to draw them instead would. And at least around here, given the choice between politicians deciding with or without the health authorities involved, yeah, it's pretty obvious which one I want.
And besides, that wasn't even the point of the comment chain, but rather people claiming that conclusions are constantly evolving was somehow hidden.
Then they shouldn't act like they have all the answers if they have no idea what is going on. This is exactly what all the "conspiracy theorists" expected, and it's exactly how it played out.
The CDC has seriously destroyed public faith in the government generally by pushing "two weeks to flatten the curve" and "100% effective vaccines" when, in reality, they did not have a handle on the situation.