I'm not questioning the flattening the curve part.

I'm saying the 2 weeks part was gaslighting. What they should have said is "one year or greater to flatten the curve." That would have been honest

I think the error here is perceiving errors from medical authorities as having emotional or manipulative motivations.

First masks were unnecessary and hand washing was crucial. Now it’s essentially the reverse. It helps to wash hands of course but we realize it’s less of a vector.

Then various governments said it’ll be over by summer. Then various governments said it’ll be a year.

No one was attempting to gaslight; this was the culmination of millions of professionals doing their best to make sense of the situation, and occasionally, uncertain terms being communicated incorrectly. This is normal. The decision to perceive non-optimal performance in an incredibly complex situation as an attack on a population is yours, and you’re welcome to it. I simply don’t see the point.

> I think the error here is perceiving errors from medical authorities as having emotional or manipulative motivations.

I think you might be forgetting medical authorities approving certain protests as being more important than containing covid. Dont want to start was flamewar here but just pointing out a flaw in your response. That was factually a 'emotional or manipulative motivation', right or wrong.

> This is normal.

Obviously not.

Hum... Define "normal".

If you mean "perfectly fine", then no, it isn't. But it's normal¹ meaning is "what happens most of the time", and it certainly is.

1 - That's intended.

> I think you might be forgetting medical authorities approving certain protests as being more important than containing covid.

Can you provide some examples? I googled around and found this [1] which seems like a reasonable summary of the Covid-related consequences of the George Floyd protests. The "reasons it seems like it was OK" doesn't seem too divergent from what many medical professionals are saying (don't gather indoors, wear masks, wash hands).

I'd also like to point out that institutional racism and police brutality are public health crises with uncountable effects on the health of Black Americans. Further, when you consider that Covid-19 has had far worse effects on communities of color, and that many essential workers are people of color, the protests don't seem that unrelated.

Edit, found some:

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/political-and-health-l...

- https://abcnews.go.com/Health/people-protest-george-floyds-d...

- https://time.com/5848212/doctors-supporting-protests/

- https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-lette...

Here are some quotes:

> “Protesting against systemic injustice that is contributing directly to this pandemic is essential,” Dhillon said. “The right to live, the right to breathe, the right to walk down the street without police coming at you for no reason . . . that’s different than me wanting to go to my place of worship on the weekend, me wanting to take my kid on a roller coaster, me wanting to go to brunch with my friends.”

> "Staying indoors all the time in a pandemic is equivalent to an abstinence-only policy,"

> For her part, Patel says the core tenants of harm reduction fit into public health doctors’ broader obligation to protect human rights while also helping people stay safe. "You’re describing a broader human rights-based approach to policy and medicine," Patel said. "These are the tenants of human rights."

> "There’s broad recognition that racism is one of the top public health issues of our time," Beletsky said.

> "Racism is a public health problem," the health department tweeted Monday. "In New York City, Black and Brown communities face the disproportionate impact, grief and loss from the COVID-19 pandemic on top of the trauma of state-sanctioned violence."

> “If people were to understand that racism, and all of the social and political and economic inequalities that racism creates, ultimately harms people’s health,” Boyd says, they would see that “protest is a profound public health intervention, because it allows us to finally address and end forms of inequality.”

> "We created the letter in response to emerging narratives that seemed to malign demonstrations as risky for the public health because of Covid-19," according to the letter writers, many of whom are part of the University of Washington's Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response. We believe that the way forward is not to suppress protests in the name of public health but to respond to protesters demands in the name of public health, thereby addressing multiple public health crises."

[1]: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/26/21300636/coronavirus-pandemic-...

The point isn't really about institutional racism or police brutality, per se. The virus doesn't know or care about your cause or ideology, it spreads through a crowd regardless.

The point is that there might be reasons why violating social distancing and lockdown mandates might be worth it. Protesting police brutality is one reason. Avoiding unemployment and accompanying mental health issues is another. One of these protests got the public approval of health care professionals and the other didn't. There was an entire movement called White Coats for Black Lives who endorsed the protests. Again, worth it. However, there's an entire class of folks who don't have options for remote pajama jobs. The protests against lockdowns was about avoiding the devastating effects to their lives.

Not sure why the response was surprising: one group was protesting police brutality, and the other was protesting the exact pandemic rules that the CDC (etc.) was pushing. It would be a bit weird for the CDC to say "hey, we need to keep businesses shut down and people should stay inside, but it's cool if you want to go out and protest that requirement, in direct violation of the requirement itself".

And sure, there's a political/optics component. Disapproving of protests against police brutality would have been an incredibly bad look, much worse than disapproving of protests against pandemic safety measures. That shouldn't require any kind of explanation or evoke any surprise.

One group was violating the lockdowns out of a need to be heard concerning police brutality, the other group was violating lockdowns to preserve their livelihood because they can't work remotely. It wasn't just "hey we think this is dumb and we wanna go to Disneyland". This shouldn't evoke surprise either.

Sure and I don't want to minimize the suffering of people affected by COVID-19, either directly or economically. But there really is no comparison with the systemic violence and racism that Americans of color have experienced for 400 years.

Ok, fair but it's not really a comparison. It's more a question of what is a threshold for acceptable violation of lockdown orders. It doesn't really matter if Reason X is N% worse than Reason Y. The scale of each protest fully explains the scale of the problem.

Totally, and I think it's wholly unreasonable to tell someone who's lost their income for months to just chill and stay inside. I think that's the correct advice, but I also think it's not gonna work. I fault our idiotic government for failing to help us when we needed it most. People were right to be infuriated, and I think this shows that when government fails--either to address systemic racism or to provide assistance in a pandemic--everything gets worse.

We shouldn't be faulting protestors or doctors here, we should be faulting our leaders.

examples for what?

From your cnn link

'"Prepare for an increased number of infections in the days following a protest," the letter says. '

> “The right to live, the right to breathe, the right to walk down the street without police coming at you for no reason . . . that’s different than me wanting to go to my place of worship on the weekend, me wanting to take my kid on a roller coaster, me wanting to go to brunch with my friends.”

This is obviously an emotional response. She didn't do A/B testing of various activity outcomes on public health and base her conclusions on that. Can't somone simply say going to church is good for metal health of the population, she didn't obviously measure the outcomes of that activity.

Sure, my point is that the medical professionals responding to the protests were acknowledging that racism is a public health crisis and that the protests are both deeply relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic, and even more important than containing COVID-19. They also compared those protests to other gatherings like religious services, social events, and anti-mask/lockdown protests and said those gatherings were not as important as containing COVID-19.

From where I sit, I think they pretty well explained why they think the BLM marches in the wake of George Floyd's murder were justified. I certainly wouldn't say they had "emotional or manipulative motivations", a characterization which seems completely off base.

anything that's not based on scietific hypothesis is obviously an 'emotional response', how is this even a controversial statement.

Can you point me to the study for public health outcome differences from protests vs going to church. And what what their scietific criteria for where to draw the line was.

I don't think we need a scientific study to know that centuries of systemic violence is worse than Zoom church.

we also know that social isolation causes depression and anxiety.

"As the pandemic ushered in isolation and financial hardship, overdose deaths reached new heights" [1]

Again, What is their basis for what is ok and what is not. Emotions. correct?

Who are they to decide which population is expendable.

1. https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/16/as-pandemic-ushered-in-i...

Overdose deaths definitely spiked in the early months of the pandemic. I haven't been able to find anything after 5/2020, but I think it's a reasonable assumption that no one's in the pink of mental health right now, and that means the vulnerable among of us are much more at risk.

But I don't think doctors are making decisions about advice based on emotions. COVID-19 is the most likely cause of death for people 25-44 [1] (supplanting unintentional opioid overdose deaths). COVID-19 has a hugely disproportionate effect on communities of color [2]. Systemic racism also causes deaths; look at asthma for example [3].

Finally, even the CDC is kind of at a loss as to what to do about overdose deaths [4]. Essentially they're like "get more naloxone and get more treatment."

> Who are they to decide which population is expendable.

I get where you're coming from here but, I don't think it's as simple as "lockdowns kill people" because:

- Not imposing a lockdown also kills people

- Even in the absence of a lockdown order, people are hesitant to get together

- There are lots of ways to socialize and get outside that are very low risk (pods, outdoor activities)

- COVID-19 deaths are far, far outstripping opioid overdose deaths due to lockdowns (the numbers I've found show that COVID-19 deaths exceed all opioid overdose deaths, not just the total YoY increase).

But if I could summarize what I think your points have been, I think your argument is broadly that doctors treated George Floyd's murder and the subsequent protests differently than hardships in other communities, and that at least indicates some level of emotional reaction if not outright bias. But I think they themselves have explained why they reacted differently, and I think the data (gathered by medical researchers and social scientists) back them up.

[1]: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201026/COVID-19-now-like...

[2]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/16/covid-...

[3]: https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=1...

[4]: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-death...

I don't understand how protests had any effect on asthma outcomes among POC.

Are you saying that they calculated

deaths caused by covid protests < deaths prevented from potests effecting health outcomes of POC.

Hence Protests OK.

deaths from depression caused from isolation < deaths from covid

Isolation OK.

If so, can you show me how they calculated,

'deaths prevented from potests effecting health outcomes of POC'

> > I think the data (gathered by medical researchers and social scientists) back them up.

what data is this ? There is no way they gathered any data within 1 week of when the protests started. Thats just too crazy of a timeline. If they are saying that collected some secret data to prove that protests will save more lives than lockdowns in less than week, then that proves how brazen they are in in their lying.

Some ruling parties in Europe were aware early last autumn that restrictions would last all the way to the spring at least (and regardless of case numbers and hospitalization), but they never stated that overtly. They preferred to claim that measures were just a short-term, temporary thing, and then when those measures were set to expire, they were just renewed again on ostensibly a short-term basis. This was done because those ruling parties knew that there was massive opposition to long-term lockdowns, and being open and honest with the public could lead to their defeat in the next elections.

Problem is assuming it was "errors"

What I saw:

1. Lots of outright lies, for example Chinese people saying the truth getting arrested, WHO toeing the CCP line (for example claiming there was no human-human transmission) when it was obviously a lie already, etc...

2. Lots of governments around the world using the lies for their own gains at expense of population, for example in Brazil the media was quick to paint the president as evil, to allow a inconstitutional power grab by governors and mayors (mind you, I am not saying quarantine is bad, I am saying it was done in a extremely illegal manner, and often for corrupt reasons, now a ton of the people involved are going to jail after quickly stuffing all money they could on their own pockets).

3. Lots of politicians lying and trying to pin the blame on scientists, see Cuomo lying about deaths on nursing homes to avoid Trump criticizing him.

4. Tons of corruption in procuring vaccines, masks, remote working tools, catering, etc... some examples are various politicians from multiple countries getting caught getting bribes from chinese manufacturer, politicians forcing lockdowns but maintaining their own business open, that crazy case in hollywood where open air restaurants were shut down but there was even a catering company serving movie production crew in a makeshift open air restaurant right in front of a local restaurant that was forced to shut down...

5. Lockdowns used for supression (see Iran executing the guy that asked why he had to lockdown but religious people didn't...)

the list goes and goes and goes on.

I suppose an important thing I meant to express here, and which is useful to consider in response to you, is that we shouldn't generalize.

Were some authorities gas lighting? Maybe. Were all? Certainly not. We should focus on and isolate the bad actors who are doing this, not generalize.

Maybe health officials were more misleading where you are, but from everything i saw the "2 weeks" messaging wasn't intended to say that everything would be solved in two weeks of lockdown, it was that after two weeks we would begin to see if a lockdown was effective or not. and it never was effective because our lockdowns are more of a polite suggestion to please not lick strangers than an actual lockdown.

It’s not lying if we didn’t understand reality at the time.

Hindsight is powerful, but I don't think in March anyone seriously thought this’d go through the year.

Even if it would be lying, not every lying is gaslighting. Gaslighting is very specific abuse tactic.

What the parent comment is trying to say is that we did accomplish the goal of those two weeks. The curve was flattened. Your perspective is a result of not living in the universe were it was a lot worse. This isn't the best time line, but it is one of the better ones.