A few Facebook saves from this past week. About conspiracy theories, Fox News’ misinformation, trust in government (rather than science), why people don’t *want* to protect themselves, and an endpiece.
Michael J. Walsh (a dealer of SF books I’ve met many times over the years at conventions), passes along a couple memes, with comments:
I especially like
My gut is that most conspiracy theorists have never been project managers. Their optimism is adorable.
And the second comment to the post:
I like the idea of every government on the planet agreeing to the conspiracy. The very thought amuses me.
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The Daily Beast, 7 Feb 2022: Dan Bongino Faceplants in Attempt to Own ‘Unhealthy’ Libs With Fake Graphic
A Fox News host claiming that the “top ten most unhealthy US cities” are those governed by Democratic policies. Trouble was, the graphic he used says exactly the opposite (see link). (Also, he confused Irvine, CA, with Irving, TX.)
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On a more serious note:
MSNBC, 2 Feb 2022: Study shows trust in government helps fight the pandemic, subtitled, “New data shows that trust in government and in others is better at predicting cooperative behavior than trust in science.”
“We found no links between Covid outcomes and democracy, populism, government effectiveness, universal health care, pandemic preparedness metrics, economic inequality or trust in science,” Thomas Bollyky, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the study’s authors, told The Washington Post.
Whereas,
According to the Post’s report on the Lancet study, trust in the government and in others is “strongly associated” with a decline in mobility — i.e., social distancing — and vaccination rates. Having a public that reliably takes cues from public health officials on how to reduce the spread of the virus through guidance on issues like masking up, limiting exposure and getting jabbed has proven central to fighting the dangers posed by the virus in countries around the world.
This all strikes me as an example of the larger issue of how global or existential threats cannot be solved without global cooperation. Each small town, or each state, doing their own thing will just lead to chaos, as we’ve seen in the US with covid, and something similar is likely to happen in tackling climate change.
The article addresses how to solve this problem only passingly at the end.
Laying out how to solve our trust crisis — which has huge implications for everything from our political life to levels of violence in our society — is beyond the scope of this column. But here are a couple starters: The Lancet study calls for “greater investment in risk communication and community engagement strategies.” The researchers writing in the Times call for universal programs of the kind we saw during the Great Society to help recultivate the public’s faith in government and the notion that “individual flourishing is bound up in collective well-being.” In other words, build out more robust and universal social services that combat inequality, and communicate effectively with the public. These are not quick fixes, but they’re necessary ones.
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I’ve had another thought that I’ve meant to address; I just haven’t found a convenient link to hang my discussion on. It’s this: all the resistance to masks, especially, are examples of people trying to find every possible *excuse* for not complying with health-saving measures. They are like children, who reflexively say “No! I don’ wanna!,” when told to do something by their parents.
Why aren’t there more people who, understanding that there is a real threat out there (it’s not a conspiracy among every nation in the world! Just look at the Olympics to see how every nation on Earth takes it more seriously than, apparently, the US does), want to take *every possible precaution* against catching a deadly disease?? And especially protect their children?
Why do people need the government to advise them to wear masks? Shouldn’t they be doing so anyway, for the indefinite future, no matter how the policies of their city or state change as the virus outbreaks change? (I certainly am.)
There’s probably a study here worth doing, comparing pandemic response (not just in the US, of course) to precautions people routinely take in other matters of life.
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Endpiece
I’d planned another book review today, of the Fareed Zakaria book — having done Harari’s 21 Lessons, Zakari’s would be next with his 10 Lessons, and then Timothy Snyder’s 20 Lessons about tyranny.
But I spent much of the day working some new function in my MS Access database, to synch it with the SF bibliography database here on this site (http://www.markrkelly.com/Blog/bibliographies-and-reviews/sf/sf-bibliography/). Frankly I haven’t done any database work — setting up queries, writing code, dealing with inputs and outputs and exports — in some while, a couple years. So it didn’t work as quickly as I’d hope. The issue, where I’ve left it for today, is that when I close a database in Access, the run-time .ldb file doesn’t always close, as it should. This means some portion of the database is left open, so while working in another database, the MS Jet engine can’t find objects, being confused about which databases are open.
This is a prime example of whether doing something manually, as I’ve done for that bibliography page so far, or setting up a computer program to do something semi-automatically, is more efficient. It’s always a trade-off. But it’s also fun working my database again. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. The beauty of computer programming, as I’m sure I’ve said somewhere before, is that you can *always* figure out and solve any problem. It’s deterministic.
Ls&Qs&Cs: Project Managers; Graphics; Trust; Precautions; Programming Problems
A few Facebook saves from this past week. About conspiracy theories, Fox News’ misinformation, trust in government (rather than science), why people don’t *want* to protect themselves, and an endpiece.
Michael J. Walsh (a dealer of SF books I’ve met many times over the years at conventions), passes along a couple memes, with comments:
I especially like
And the second comment to the post:
\\
The Daily Beast, 7 Feb 2022: Dan Bongino Faceplants in Attempt to Own ‘Unhealthy’ Libs With Fake Graphic
A Fox News host claiming that the “top ten most unhealthy US cities” are those governed by Democratic policies. Trouble was, the graphic he used says exactly the opposite (see link). (Also, he confused Irvine, CA, with Irving, TX.)
\\
On a more serious note:
MSNBC, 2 Feb 2022: Study shows trust in government helps fight the pandemic, subtitled, “New data shows that trust in government and in others is better at predicting cooperative behavior than trust in science.”
Whereas,
This all strikes me as an example of the larger issue of how global or existential threats cannot be solved without global cooperation. Each small town, or each state, doing their own thing will just lead to chaos, as we’ve seen in the US with covid, and something similar is likely to happen in tackling climate change.
The article addresses how to solve this problem only passingly at the end.
\\
I’ve had another thought that I’ve meant to address; I just haven’t found a convenient link to hang my discussion on. It’s this: all the resistance to masks, especially, are examples of people trying to find every possible *excuse* for not complying with health-saving measures. They are like children, who reflexively say “No! I don’ wanna!,” when told to do something by their parents.
Why aren’t there more people who, understanding that there is a real threat out there (it’s not a conspiracy among every nation in the world! Just look at the Olympics to see how every nation on Earth takes it more seriously than, apparently, the US does), want to take *every possible precaution* against catching a deadly disease?? And especially protect their children?
Why do people need the government to advise them to wear masks? Shouldn’t they be doing so anyway, for the indefinite future, no matter how the policies of their city or state change as the virus outbreaks change? (I certainly am.)
There’s probably a study here worth doing, comparing pandemic response (not just in the US, of course) to precautions people routinely take in other matters of life.
\\
Endpiece
I’d planned another book review today, of the Fareed Zakaria book — having done Harari’s 21 Lessons, Zakari’s would be next with his 10 Lessons, and then Timothy Snyder’s 20 Lessons about tyranny.
But I spent much of the day working some new function in my MS Access database, to synch it with the SF bibliography database here on this site (http://www.markrkelly.com/Blog/bibliographies-and-reviews/sf/sf-bibliography/). Frankly I haven’t done any database work — setting up queries, writing code, dealing with inputs and outputs and exports — in some while, a couple years. So it didn’t work as quickly as I’d hope. The issue, where I’ve left it for today, is that when I close a database in Access, the run-time .ldb file doesn’t always close, as it should. This means some portion of the database is left open, so while working in another database, the MS Jet engine can’t find objects, being confused about which databases are open.
This is a prime example of whether doing something manually, as I’ve done for that bibliography page so far, or setting up a computer program to do something semi-automatically, is more efficient. It’s always a trade-off. But it’s also fun working my database again. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. The beauty of computer programming, as I’m sure I’ve said somewhere before, is that you can *always* figure out and solve any problem. It’s deterministic.