Too soon? But yeah, that was the first thing that came to mind.
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You are literally complaining about the scientific method of controlling for as many variables as possible as part of experimental design. That’s science. What you seem to be advocating is woo and has no place in a discussion on COVID-19.
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This needs to be emphasized. Also, complaints about the CDCs and the WHO using “jargon” and being at fault for using nuanced meanings is getting the wrong end of the stick.
When we would have a lot of asymptomatic transmission, arguing that we can reach herd immunity quickly would be probably worthwhile (with big caveats!), and people argued that we were already approaching heard immunity e.g. in Sweden even back in may.
However, it could be proven that this was not the case, and most people would show symptoms after catching Covid-19. It was also shown very early on that the most infectious time started 2.5 days after infection, and many people would not show symptoms at the time. This was reported. By the WHO. By the CDCs. It was one major facts for changing towards lockdowns. As the doc said:
Blaming the WHO, CDCs and experts for miscommunication in this is a miscommunication in its own right. They told us. If one did not get it, one hasn’t been paying attention. I’m worried about the narrative to blame someone else for one’s own misunderstandings.
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The internet has amplified the game of Telephone, especially around any field that has jargon and/or takes some cognition to understand. Click-bait headlines, like the headlines yelled by newsboys, sell more papers. If they’re a simplification or mis-statement of the full story, well, you’re supposed to read the full story… Then take that simplified sentence, and have it passed around by people who don’t understand the story, never mind read it, and it gets stupid.
The WHO, CDC, and the scientific community in general, have been putting out information, not a story. Information needs to be synthesized into understanding. People on the internet are generally treating all new pieces of information as a new story, which seems to contradict what was said before, instead of a new fact about the global pandemic that has to be fitted in with the other facts. Stories can be opinions, but information needs to be facts.
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Thank you.
This. All of this.
This seems to be the major problem. Technical language can be translated into lay terms, by people who understand it (often with some loss of information on the way, compare: the term “breaking it down”).
The trouble is that everyone and their dog try to break it down currently, and journalists often do a shit job on this. Politicians who are claiming to do so are lying, mostly, because they do have an agenda which makes it impossible to parse the information without a strong bias and impossible to convey their uncertainty as well as admitting errors.
And people, also in this thread, are blaming the WHO and the CDC. Yeah, no. Hard no.
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And the journalists and politicians have their statements “broken down” by someone who typed it into a pretty box on Facebook. Then one of their friends with Canva on their phone made it prettier by removing a word or two to fit better with the font they chose. And so on, and so on, across the webs of distribution. It’s csary how easy it is to pass disinformation. All you need is a pretty graphic and a lot of internet friends.
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You mean, it is memes, all the way down?
SCNR.
But seriously: parts of the interwebz, including this BBS, are a bit of an antidote. And we definitely don’t need any interwebz to do the populist thing. We had this before, remember? Mass media was a good thing for populists, but those existed even before printed books were a thing and literally moved whole continents. Media used for spreading knowledge can help to curtail the tendency of media used for spreading falsehoods.
Trouble is when people are still believing falsehoods despite better knowledge, and continue spreading it. It is like a disease. And fuck, it is contagious obviously.
Just start sprinkling in, for example, some bashing of the WHO and see what sticks.
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No, they absolutely were at fault for using jargon in their public communication in confusing manner without adequate explanation. It is bad when journalists take scientific papers or preprints and then publish misleading articles based on a misunderstanding of the jargon. But the CDC and the WHO should not be making public statements with confusing jargon even if part of their audience is medical professionals. Their jargon is objectively bad (means something very different than the common language interpretation of the same phrase), and as near as I can tell not even consistently used within the infectious disease community. So there was even confusion among medical professionals about what the CDC was saying. If you can’t use the words “asymptomatic transmission” to mean the common english understanding (transmission when symptoms aren’t present) because you are worried that conflicts with a jargon use then the CDC should not use those words in official communication. At all. Its that simple, this is basic scientific communication. It is bad enough when physicists do it, but rarely has massive public health ramifications.
Here is a good way for the WHO or CDC to explain this:
“We see strong evidence of transmission from individuals not showing symptoms. However, it appears that most infected people eventually do show some symptoms that may be mild or serious. Mild symptoms can be mistaken for cold, flu or allergies, so it is possible someone with COVID might not realize they are sick even when symptomatic. A few individuals may be completely asymptomatic, but it appears to be relatively rare.”
Here asymptomatic is used in a way that aligns with its common understanding, and asymptomatic transmission is not used at all. The CDC probably said something like this somewhere, but they also used “asymptomatic transmission” frequently and they absolutely should not have done that.
We also needed strong political leadership to present the information from the medical community along with a plan of action and explanation of how it would help. And of course the dumpster fire of an administration couldn’t do that, which severely compounded the problem as it increased the need for people to go back to the confusing statements from the health organizations.
Your point does not get more correct by repeating it.
Your assessment is objectively wrong. Your interpretation of scientific technical terms does not make communication in scientific technical terms “bad”.
Also, you are using the term “jargon” a lot. This does have no clear and unique meaning, but does carry a negative connotation.
If you want to be mad at someone, do you do. But your current target is wrongly chosen. I suggest taking that anger elsewhere, and grill the people deciding on policies which affect you directly. If you do have a point.
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