I've seen a ton of criticism leveled at the government and the media for having poor communication to the people during this entire pandemic. And I'm not excusing that. They have. But I just wanted to add a caveat to come to the defense of the scientists, public health officials, media, and government (if only a tiny bit).
This is a virus that is totally novel, and a rapidly changing situation where things can be entirely different from one month to the next. Best practices can change fast, and what experts think is bad/good/neutral one week may change the next week. This is why conspiracy theorists often look back at initial news reports of huge events being different than later news reports as being 'evidence of a conspiracy' when in reality, the early news is just usually more likely to be misreported or not the complete picture.
Our education system has really failed in terms of teaching people that science is a process and not a rigid belief system. Just because scientists are saying one thing right now that might be very different than one year ago does not mean that they were lying one year ago. The best we can do is work from the best info we have at any given time. We understand more about this virus with every passing day, and there's still so much to learn. I wish people would stop viewing changes in messaging as evidence in every instance that they're being lied to, or that there's a conspiracy, or that scientists and medical experts don't know what they're talking about.
@Rhakim tagging ya re: the conspiracy theorists
I have criticized the government and its response.
The virus is novel and things change. I accept that.
You have to balance public safety vs unnatural confinement vs economic impact. I accept that.
What I cannot accept and forgive, is the G7 governments' acquiescence to Big Pharma in terms of IP and the failure in getting the vaccines to everyone and not just their countries.
It was selfish, a massive misstep and probably the primary reason why we are here today. Not anti-vaxxers.
