Apart from anything else, this is pretty much what most health authorities did on most theories about COVID. Lots of people chose to listen to other high profile figures who claimed certainty instead...
> this is pretty much what most health authorities did on most theories about COVID
I guess we're living in alternate realities.
The world I'm living in, the biggest celebrity doctor in the USA has repeatedly lied about natural immunity (which is robust, durable, and superior to vaccine immunity in every study published to date), for just one example, and continues to push unnecessary vaccines on people who don't need them and indeed may be harmed by taking them, the opposite of what doctors should do.
Strange you think they're just all above board and doing their best.
Dude also has yet to tell parents to stop worrying about children. I only assume that none of these “experts” talk about who is actually at risk and who isn’t because they are trying to manipulate people into “taking this serious”. Lord help us all if the truth got out that more kids get screwed in house fires each year than they do by covid. Then we might not bother to vaccinate them or something.
I'm living in the reality where health authorities saying "we are trialling this, although until more is known we recommend not..." is generally taken as evidence that the politicians promoting the "cure" must be right, authorities saying "at present there is no evidence" or changing their recommendations is seen as evidence of their untrustworthiness and a reality where the people who have been consistently, loudly wrong have big fanbases in some cases precisely because they stick to their guns even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Haven't paid particular attention to your favourite celebrity doctor in your country so I'm not sure whether he's said anything particularly outrageous or whether you are simply denying the present scientific consensus that natural immunity to COVID appears to wane, but then again, you appear to have experienced extreme difficulty in parsing the word "most" in my post...
No. It was exactly what the prisoner's dilemma dictates an intelligent actor would do when they don't have the ability to coordinate.
If you suspect there is going to be a run on toilet paper, the obvious choice is to stockpile toilet paper before it is all gone. If you buy just enough for the next couple weeks, and you risk running out because of shortages.
The optimal solution to this IMO is to embrace raising prices during crisis, because then the market ensures that those with the most need get access to goods, and it eliminates the whole point of hoarding 3 months worth of TP naturally.
That was an interesting series of events. The initial run was not warranted in hind sight. But at the time no one knew how bad it was going to get and how long everything was going to be shut down for. After that though if you did not join in then you were potentially out of toilet paper for a couple months.
People are not stupid when their immediate interest is threatened. Now, we could argue that people as a whole have problems with estimating risk ( they do ) and predicting long term consequences ( they do ), but they can usually notice when a politician is telling them its raining, when said politician is directly pissing at them.
Then again, I am from the old country, where parents ingrain in you distrust for the government. By comparison, US population really does trust its decision-makers. Or maybe trusted, if the article is to be believed.
