Some of my Facebook friends seem perplexed that the American public just won't take the word of the government or government experts on some things. Specifically, they bring up this hydroxychloroquine issue. The government says the drug has no value in treating the coronavirus. Some doctors and recovered COVID19 victims disagree. My FB friends just can't seem to understand why people won't discard conflicting information and simply believe the government!
Well, I'll tell you why: It's because we've come to distrust the government. We don't believe what they tell us, and don't believe that "the government" has our best interests at heart.
Take the esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci. As recently as a couple of months ago, Fauci publicly stated that Americans didn't need to be wearing masks. Now he says that we all should be wearing masks. Why the switch? Well it turns out that his previous stance was because he wanted to preserve PPE (personal protection equipment) for health care workers, the people who needed it the most. Ohhhhh, I see. He lied. But we are asked to understand and excuse that lie, because it was, you know, justified. A "good" lie.
And the American people go, "Well, that's bullshit!"
We are told during this pandemic that we cannot go to church...cannot have funerals. And yet people ranging from George Floyd to Congressman John Lewis get to have...not just one funeral, but MULTIPLE services in different states! It's a double-standard that doesn't make much sense no matter how you look at it or try to justify it.
And the American people go, "Well, that's bullshit!"
I could go on. Remember the THREE YEARS that the government spent trying to prove that President Trump was a Russian spy, and that his campaign actively solicited and accepted help from the Russian government to win the 2016 election? And remember that even the Mueller Investigation couldn't come up with anything substantial to prove those claims?
And the American people go, "Well, that's bullshit!"
So, my naive Facebook friends, do not wonder why the American people have become so skeptical and cynical about what we're being told. We see the duplicity. We see the inconsistencies. We see the double-standards. We know bullshit when we see and hear it.
And we see and hear it a lot.
2 comments:
I guess it's my centrist views that sees things in a different light. I have never heard Fauci say that the public "didn't need to wear masks" as you stated. I heard him many times saying not to wear N-95 masks to preserve them for healthcare workers which is a totally different thing. Later as research showed cloth masks were able to cut transmission rates and they were more widely available, that is when he started saying we should all be wearing them. I still haven't heard him in recent weeks saying we should wear N-95 masks. I guess I don't see any contradiction. I see lots of confusion on how people interpret what he said.
As for the funerals, at least in our state, we've always been allowed to have funerals all through this pandemic but they are limited in the number who can attend and must obey social distancing guidelines. John Lewis's funeral followed both those things too from what I've seen. I didn't follow Floyd's funeral but since it wasn't government sanctioned, it is immaterial to this argument.
Even if I'm wrong on both accounts, when something unknown like this comes about, I would expect for our response to it to change as our knowledge increases. Sailors stayed pretty close to land when the world was thought to be flat. As knowledge changed, so did the sailors actions. I don't know why this should be different. I know when this first started, we were wiping down counters, washing clothes that had been worn in public in a separate load, etc. We don't do any of those things now because research has come along showing that the virus doesn't likely transmit in those ways.
I don't trust our government in a lot of things. But I do trust the independent scientific research that shows hydroxycloroquine to be not effective and potentially harmful.
Meh. People believe what they want to believe. I can't find the particular clip at the moment, but I *SAW* Fauci on some program saying that we really didn't need to be wearing masks. Granted, it was in the early spring. In this clip, he kind of weasels around the issue of why they weren't stressing masks so much in the past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XHC5Kxxv_w
Here in Florida, we can't have funerals with more than 10 people in the church (including priests, altar boys and pallbearers...oh, and family). In New York City, Mayor Di Blasio threatened to arrest people who went to funerals. The number of people who attended either John Lewis' or George Floyd's funerals were certainly *not* limited.
As for "...independent scientific research that shows hydroxychloroquine to be not effective and potentially harmful," ...yeah well, there is that. But there are *also* a bunch of front-line doctors, recovered COVID19 patients, and various researchers who say the opposite. Do we simply and utterly disregard such conflicting information? You might. Like I said, believe whatever makes you feel good. All I know is that if I come down with COVID19, I'm gonna want hydroxychloroquine, early and often.
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