Thread by @neontaster

You're being dishonest, James. Health officials specifically talking about BLM protests was a big story and involved hundreds of professionals in the field.

https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1483442260389867521

Here's epidemiologists from Harvard and Yale in The Atlantic:

New York Times:

Here's Leana Wen making excuses for why BLM rallies are OK but Trump rallies are not in the Washington Post:

Hopkins epidemiologist:

Former director of the CDC:

I can keep this thread going all day @JamesSurowiecki, and you citing Fauci saying "yeah, both are risky" but not even telling people not to attend them is just extremely weaksauce. I don't know why you've become this kind of knee-jerk contrarian.

@JamesSurowiecki And yes, someone saying they lost ANY trust in health experts and didn't trust that a movie was more dangerous than a protest because of these officials saying protest A was more dangerous than protest B is understandable and the sole fault of said officials.

@JamesSurowiecki The Twitter covid beat really needs to understand that loss of trust is something that has to be won back with active labor. It doesn't just fade over time to be replaced by trust and oh that was last year but now you should listen to what they say. They keep fucking up now too!

@JamesSurowiecki And I know you think you're accomplishing something, but I have some bad news: You and Zeynep Tufecki can tweet about this until next century and it won't move any trust needles towards the public health profession, especially since neither of you are members of it.

@JamesSurowiecki If you don't want to respond, I can keep talking. I have plenty to say about this: Any honest broker sees that clip and says "look how bad the trust was ruined." Not "ackshually, your loss of trust was disproportional and you should have still trusted most of what they said."

In contrast, what you did here is team player behavior. You oppose their views about covid in general and so your operating assumption is that they're being dishonest, even though they aren't. If you don't want to publicly agree with the other team, you can always sit it out.

And yeah it's especially grating when it comes from one of these self-styled covid authorities that aren't from this field but think who the fuck they are because of how many followers they gained or whatever New York Times op-eds they're suddenly commissioned to write.

You bet your ass it is, considering that they haven't gone three days without saying something dumb this entire fucking pandemic.

https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1483458497249521668

https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1483467452881293316

Here comes another prominent Twitter knee-jerk contrarian to muddy the waters on the extremely valid complaint that it is messaging contradictions on covid from officials and health experts that create the problem, not Eric Weinstein or Joe Rogan.

https://twitter.com/NGrossman81/status/1483437116180910085

I've honestly fucking had it with the smug "mistakes were made" crowd. Mistakes are being made every goddamn day. It's not some historical event.

This is everyone quote-tweeting @jessesingal's thread:

https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1475959632380276742