Instapundit reports both an encouraging outbreak of sanity among voters and an opportunity for Republicans to makes inroads into Democrat strongholds:
Overall, a majority of voters — 55 percent — agree that “despite good intentions, shutting down businesses and locking down society did more harm than good.” Only 38 percent disagree, with the rest unsure.
But the really interesting part is the racial breakdown: White Democrats reject the idea that lockdowns did more harm than good by a 30-plus-point margin. Nonwhite Democrats, on the other hand, are evenly divided.
The divide widens on the question of whether government officials will hold on to too much power in the future: 62 percent of voters say yes. Nearly two-thirds of white Democrats disagree. But note well: By a whopping 64-27 margin, black Democrats fear that officials will abuse their vast new powers.
6 comments:
I really disliked the way he put things. The study showed middling assent for a fairly mild statement of "more harm than good," but Reynolds framed this as deep rejection of government pandering to the triple-masking. No one is triple masking. All states and agencies are trying to find a balance.
As for masking, I am going to adjust my behavior according to whatever seems best at the time. As the facts change, so do my opinions. The current conservative fashion of "Hell no, we won't ever mask again, it's useless!" is deeply irresponsible. If you are getting a cancer treatment that suppresses your immunity, or are in frequent contact with someone who does, you will mask. The Delta variant seems only moderately worse and the vaccines are 80-85% effective against even that, and it remains uncommon so I don't think the small advantage of masking is worth it. But a new variant, a new disease, I might.
I should post on this myself rather than extending here.
The article was more about lockdowns than masks.
I don't have any problem with people wearing masks if they believe masks are even partially effective. I do have a problem with shutting down businesses, in the absence of solid evidence that it's effective, and possibly even then.
Here as elsewhere, the suicide of expertise has made it difficult to judge. I've read meta-studies claiming that masks are in the 90+% range effective, meta-studies that claim the real effect is only on the order of 2%, and meta-studies claiming that masks offer health risks of their own that clearly outweigh the benefits.
Some of the studies that show higher effectiveness use N95 masks, which can be effective with perfect use by medial professionals; they probably are not very protective at all if used by ordinary people who don't know how to seal them correctly, and also fall off in use if you're using unsterilized hands to raise them and lower them to intake food and drink during a meal. It may be that for common people they're closer to the lower range; or it may be that the experiments would not prove reproducible; or that the meta-studies are cherry picking among their original studies according to confirmation bias or for other reasons.
Our authorities like the CDC have shot their credibility in the foot so often this year that it is now impossible to simply rely on their word as meaningful, let alone as a positive guide that ought to shape one's behavior. The White House now has nothing to say except that they shall trust these same experts, and so can offer no principles to guide a response beyond "Follow the winds that blow from Atlanta."
Making it worse, the Federation of State Medical Boards is now threatening the license of any medical doctors who counter whatever the current message is: "FSMB: Spreading COVID-19 Misinformation May Put Medical License At Risk."
So even licensed medical doctors may not offer the public a dissenting theory of how to interpret the evidence?
https://twitter.com/drscott_atlanta/status/1421236280378155010
How can a physician stay in compliance when the CDC/NIH/Surgeon General differ among themselves, and in some cases change their recommendations daily? That sounds like it puts far too much of a burden on someone in the MD's office to monitor the federal .gov at all times to ensure that the office is in compliance. (Should such compliance be attempted.)
LittleRed1
More re: suicide of expertise:
https://twitter.com/omriceren/status/1421584617589690378?s=21
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