Respect Muh Authoritah!
The CDC and other "public health" agencies have gone full Cartman. Never go full Cartman.
Sliding into Covid +3 years, it is more clear than ever that what the "experts" demanded of Americans (and in some areas, continue to demand) were diametrically opposed to what should have been done.
It seems that Americans have broken into four definable classes:
Critical thinkers who never bought into the fear and hyperbole.
The intellectually weak who bought it hook, line and sinker.
The bureaucratic minded who were simply following orders.
The “experts” who knew they were wrong but found that impossible to admit.
The Critical thinkers looked at the situation objectively, compared the data from past pandemics to what we were being told and had the temerity to use data and common sense to chart a path. These people were the targets of the CDC, the NIH and other agencies of the federal government for the crime of heresy and not simply falling in line. They were called conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, covid deniers, anti-science and in some extremist quarters were accused of being assassins or murderers. They lost jobs, had their businesses closed and in many cases were arrested and/or heavily fined for resisting the power grab politicians found through so-called “public health laws.”
They are the ones who knew early on that there were identifiable “at risk” groups that should be protected, but the majority of adults under 60 and children could go about their lives without fear of hospitalization or death and as it turns out, the data supports the conclusion that these people were none of the above, they were right about almost everything.
While I'll give the intellectually weak a pass because following is what they do, and they did it without pause, they are just too easily scared into compliance.
This class is particularly susceptible to a negative aspect of a preference cascade called preference falsification. Preference falsification is when a vocal minority within this society takes to shaming the supporters of a certain position. Simply to protect their personal reputations, people privately or secretly favoring that position might start pretending to be satisfied with the status quo by falsifying their preferences,. When this happens, they would make the perceived share of the opponents of that position seem larger than it is and will discourage other supporters of that position from publicizing their own desires.
Sometimes people are so intent on doing something, their brains are so occupied with fear and compliance, they never stop to consider if they should be doing those things.
I think a lot of the Covid Karens fall into this category.
There are another couple of classes that do not get a pass.
The first of those is those of a bureaucratic mind, one designed to be dedicated to an "official" plan put forward by the last class, the "experts".
These people are especially susceptible to the positive side of preference cascade. Where the preference falsification is a negative form of the preference cascade (a fear of missing out or being ostracized), a preference cascade can flow in positive direction. When those who believe they are alone in holding a positive opinion about the plan discover the plan’s fan base is much larger than they initially believed, approval quickly snowballs. Anyone who has watched a social media phenomenon go mainstream understands what this looks like.
Those with a bureaucratic mindset are not incompetent because they are completely dedicated to "the plan" because it is all they know to do, so what appears to be incompetence are merely things done in service to the plan. These people are different from the intellectually weak in that the weak simply autonomically react to stimuli, they do not think at all. The bureaucratic mind thinks, but only in terms of things that will support and help execute the plan.
The final class are the "experts". They know what they know and don't know what they don't know, but they want you to believe that they know it all. That is their driver. Often cold and calculating, they discard and attempt to destroy any data, information or opinion that challenges the idea that they know everything. Three years on, the CDC and other agencies are producing policies and directives that indicate they were wrong, but these are being released without remarks or clarifications, as if nothing happened and we learned nothing over the past three years. Zero admissions of fallibility, zero acceptance of responsibility from the “experts”.
You are just supposed to flush what you learned down the memory hole while respecting their authority.
These are the truly evil ones, because even when they know they are wrong, they refuse to acknowledge their failures because that would require a change in plan, which would cascade down to the other two classes which they depend upon for support.
These are the people who should be severely punished for setting this nation back decades in education and socioeconomic terms.
In the best case, there exists a tension between bureaucrats and experts, demanding proof and evidence to support the plan - as well as careful analysis to ensure there won't be disastrous unforeseen consequences. This is how Washington used to operate, because career bureaucrats could not afford to be wrong - it would kill their career. This was the "red tape" that bound up the works so much and led to slow policy execution. That tension is what enabled better policy, or at least not tragically bad policy, at the expense of being slow.
The political ideological alignment of bureaucrats with experts is what has brought us to this present, dangerous situation. Both "experts" and bureaucrats are now inoculated against the consequence of failure, as it is no longer results that matter, but intent. The role of the sheep and sheepdogs are unchanged, except the sheepdogs are being beaten off with a stick by the aligned twins, cheered on by the sheep.
These are very dangerous times we live in.
I can’t describe the depth of my angry regarding this. The unnecessary death and emotional damage perpetrated by these evil SOBs that we see today is only the tip of the iceberg.