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Old Posted Jan 19, 2022, 5:17 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123 View Post
What's interesting to me is there was a lot of opposition to rapid testing earlier on in the pandemic when it would have been more useful. Regulators were slow to allow them and a lot of people were convinced they would be harmful, often due to dubious reasoning about sensitivity relative to PCR and total ignorance of costs and other trade-offs, as usual ("we can't allow a 95% accurate test when we could do a 99% test, and let's not worry if people can or will actually do the 99% test that costs 50x more and has 200x the turnaround time"). Doctors and regulators have a not-so-great history in this area, fighting against people being allowed to do their own pregnancy or rapid HIV tests.
A big issue the modern western democracies face is they conflate expertise to leadership.

Virologists might have a good idea on how to quash a virus, but they are singularly focused on quashing a virus at the exclusion of ALL OTHER CONCERNS. And we see that same dynamic play out across most issues. Congress/parliament has no interest in coming down with decisions because actually voting on a law has political consequences. Executives are then tasked with the duty act dictatorially but still face all of the opposition to act in such a way so they are blocked by courts and their do-nothing congresses/parliaments and public oppinon into permeant gridlock, only able to make executive approvals and minor proclamations.

So now we are stuck with the auto-pilot beaurocracy rolling from crisis to crisis slapping their highly specific and highly specialized "solution" on a problem with absolutely no consideration for adverse affects, unintended consequences or at odds interests/actions.

what results is a political system at war with iself unable to actually do anything about serious problems and so in most cases the machinery of government grinds on in the background while the politics that are supposed to be the people who take all these factors into account and .... ya know legislate about it.... focus on cultural and social issues and sound bite grandstanding for the next election while nothing gets done and the machine rampages with no oversight.

Its the worst of all worlds; legislatures incentivized not to legislate, authoritarian while simultaneously ineffectual executives, and a massive unaccountable bureaucracy that does whatever it wants and commonly works at cross purposes or in highly damaging ways with no oversight or direction.

With the incentives of the modern world I dont know how this can be fixed.
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