The meme of handwashing being the most important thing is yet another example of privileging a particular hypothesis via bias and groupthink, it seems to have spread via the mainstream media starting in late January.
#COVID__19
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Even smart rationalists got sucked into this groupthink; I remember Jeff Kaufman thinking about whether to organise a large dancing meetup in ~late Feb and using tubs of hand sanitizer to make it OK. He wisely decided against it, but narrowly.
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In reality, the hand sanitizer does essentially nothing, and the whole washing hands meme simply distracted us from the real solutions such as: - automatic contact tracing - masks for everyone - do stuff outside & with less density - do stuff online
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Replying to @RokoMijic @RokoMijicUK
Automatic contact tracing is impossible for western governments because of crimethink and everyone knows it so the desire for *anything* that could distract from that was massive. Everyone sensed that you can't suggest what's impossible due to the diversity tax.
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Replying to @CovfefeAnon
what's the connection between diversity and contact tracing?
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Replying to @RokoMijic @RokoMijicUK
1) It would require enforcing quarantine on the diverse which they would not accept so it would escalate (lockdowns don't apply to them now) 2) Can't be done by diverse state governments who use employment as patronage jobs for vote banks; hence the demographics of the DMV
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Replying to @CovfefeAnon
Personally I think government being against tracing & travel bans was to do with a much simpler process: in a democratic system, the incentive to avoid blame is much stronger than the incentive to actually solve problems.
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Replying to @RokoMijic @CovfefeAnon
This applied to several right-wing institutions like Boris's in the UK & Trump's in the US. In the key time period from late Jan to March, they were desperately sticking their heads into the sound and saying "la, la, la, can't hear you" about covid.
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Replying to @RokoMijic @RokoMijicUK
Trump being right wing doesn't mean anyone who would actually tell him his options is right wing; CDC doesn't want to look into the abyss so CDC doesn't mention the contact tracing it's incapable of. Politicians wanting to evade blame from voters is insignificant in comparison.
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Replying to @CovfefeAnon
yeah, there is the issue with the left-wing permanent government; but looking at what politicians were saying early on definitely suggests that their response was about the politics of blame avoidance.
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The permanent government would be the ones who would actually have to do the contact tracing and quarantining so their unwillingness to even consider those measures and almost certain intentional sabotage of them is far more important than anything anyone in elected office said.
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Replying to @CovfefeAnon
Yes, there's certainly a problem that politicians have few options. But let's not ignore the fact that a lot of people on the right - the right wing base - were much more concerned about "freedom" than about stopping the virus. Freedom is usually good, but there are exceptions.
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Replying to @RokoMijic @RokoMijicUK
The brains of the right wing were concerned about taking effective action against the virus; that's been shown to be beyond the ability of the state in western countries so the base intuits that nothing is going to be done anyway so the "lockdowns" are pointless (and harmful)
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