I don't think most people realize how much the suppression of "misinformation" on Covid causes distrust of the system by the same people it is meant to protect, and results in much greater vaccination hesitancy. Source: A lot of conversations with people who are more frightened of the cure than the disease. People are still hearing the horror stories, but due to the clampdown, they are not hearing the rebuttals.

This is absolutely correct. In my personal case, the vicious censoring in which major internet companies and news sources have indulged recently, made me distrust all COVID information in general. I got vaccinated, but didn't get a booster, and did not wear a mask on a bus during my foreign travels (in that country noone wore masks basically), and as a result, got a fairly bad case of covid in November. I believe that in my specific case if there was no censoring, I would have read up more and have been more vigilant.

That the fact-checking and vicious labeling of “misinformation” would lead to distrust seems so obvious to me that the cynical conspiracy-minded part of me thinks it’s possible that the people doing it have been aware of it since the beginning, and that this is actually their intention. Increases division in society and makes the people loyal to your side easier to control. “Never let a good crisis go to waste” type of situation.

Regardless the misinformation, basic stats have been available from the very beginning, for any number of nations, for everyone to see and consider for themselves.

I’m so tired of people who can’t look at simple numbers and conclude correctly that vaccination is a funking order of magnitude less risky than the virus itself and, yes, even shitty masks help reduce transmission and infection and, yes, keeping filthy strangers further away is healthier than hanging around in heterogeneous crowded groups.

I’ve always been misanthropic but this past two years have proven that humans are a lot more stupid, selfish, and self-destructive than my sour cynicism ever conceived.

>I don't think most people realize how much the suppression of "misinformation" on Covid causes distrust of the system

Every effort to suppress information, whether justifiable or not, leads inexorably to more interest in that information.

I haven’t read the article because of the paywall.

Like most people I’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours getting good at something that employers pay me for. Outside of that, I’m no smarter at anything than any other person. And there is no way for me to spend thousands of hours learning what the best medical treatments are, how to make the best financial decision, the best way to raise kids, hire to work and manage teams remotely, etc.

The only way I can figure out how to deal with all the communications is to listen to experts. Why would I listen to anyone else who hasn’t the spent thousands of hours learning to be an expert? Obviously this doesn’t work perfectly all the time.

The problem seems to me we listen to our tribe/group/friends knowledge, even though the world has gotten too specialized for most of their ad hoc knowledge to be useful.

As soon as you stop being critical of the experts they get swapped out for empty suits. There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of experts on anything novel. Experts are also tremendously cautious in the advice given where given your day to day risk tolerance it is a tremendous distraction to focus on one particular source of risk. Probably it makes sense for some people to just follow the given guidance but for some others it induces too much cognitive dissonance. I would hate to live in a world full of mandates based on hot off the presses science.

Healthy skepticism is fine, but if I’m skeptical of experts on anything novel, whose information am I supposed to trust? What is a better decision making process?

Don’t we have conflicting needs here? We don’t want scientists waiting for perfect information before providing guidance on a constantly evolving situation but then we are unhappy with the guidance they provide?

I guess the alternative is basing you choices only marginally on "novel expert" advice moderated by the apparent urgency.