If they are lying about this, what else are they lying about?

It is striking to see two incidents of blatant public health deceit and hypocrisy.  

Authorities lament the lack of trust in public health experts and blame that lack of trust on the public.  The "experts" have occasional discussions about how to rebuild trust but never acknowledge how it was lost.  In addition, most the discussions about rebuilding trust which I have heard are not about rebuilding trust.  Their very words are about how to convince the public that the untrusted "experts" are right.

On NPR the other day I heard such a discussion and it was all about using positive words and shorter words and creating analogies to ordinary life, etc.  

The simpler approach is too hard for them.

Don't lie or deceive.

Acknowledge when new evidence has caused you to change your mind.

The public can tolerate even consequential mistakes when honestly made.  They do not countenance lies.

Fauci's decline as an admired "expert" has many causes but I think two of the more consequential are:

Deliberately telling the public that masks don't matter in order to preserve supplies for hospitals.  Followed later by telling the public that masks are critical to stop the spread of Covid-19.  Masks don't matter, per the best studies, but people remember when they have been lied to.

Constantly moving the goal posts for herd immunity.  First it was 70%, then 80% then 90%.  If you don't know, say so.  

Much of communication about Covid-19 has all the appearances of propaganda.  Lacking nuance or sophistication, divisive, authoritarian, emotional, dependent on redefining words, avoidance of clear numbers and metrics, etc.  

I have seen texts and clips of incidents showing that the people behind the curtain don't believe what they are saying.  However, this morning, I see two instances almost back-to-back.  Both capture moments of professional honesty between colleagues.  Both capture individuals relatively low down on the the Covid-19 hysteria manufacturing hierarchy.  This seems to indicate that it is now pervasive to choose to lie to the public.

First is from Hospital Staff Caught Plotting to 'Scare' the Public on COVID-19 by Megan Fox.  The context is someone leaked an internal staff Zoom call between professionals at Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in North Carolina.  

In the video, after having a staff person reporting the Covid-19 numbers for the hospital system, Dr. Mary Rudyk, the former chief of medical staff, says

I guess my feeling at this point and time is maybe we need to be completely a little bit more scary [sic] to the public.  There are many people still hospitalized that we are considering post-covid but we’re not counting in those numbers, so how do we include those post-covid people in the numbers of the patients we have in the hospital?

Further discussion, then:

I think we have to be more blunt, we have to be more forceful.  If you don’t get vaccinated you know you’re gonna die. Let’s just be really blunt to these people,

In this instance you have a senior healthcare professional with the goal of increasing vaccination rates by using fear and seeking to manipulate the measurement mechanisms to create a false impression of crisis by including those recovered from Covid-19 among those reported with Covid.  

There is the additional matter that "If you don’t get vaccinated you know you’re gonna die" is a complete falsehood.  The true statement is "If you get Covid-19, you have a 98.5% chance of surviving.  Virtually 100% if you are below 65 and have no co-morbidities."

This discussion is galling at many levels but reinforces the issue which I have commented on from the beginning, definitions and measurements.  We have constantly stumbled over dying from and dying with.  Our data collection policies and procedures are abysmal and prevent us from having the information to manage an infectious outbreak.  And here we have a senior official at a major hospital strategizing how to undermine the data integrity further by playing with the definitions in order to serve her goal of misleading and frightening the public.

It is shameful.  

The second example is from Health minister on hot mic: Some COVID restrictions are to incentivize vaccines by Times of Israel staff.  The subheading is Intelligence Minister Elazar Stern laments that the unvaccinated are taking up beds in coronavirus wards: ‘It’s irritating’

And that is pretty much the story.

Several ministers were overheard prior to a cabinet meeting on Sunday saying that some coronavirus-related restrictions are only aimed at incentivizing vaccination, rather than driving down morbidity, while lamenting that the unvaccinated are taking up hospital beds.

“I also think you can remove the Green Pass for outdoor restaurants,” Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked told Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, in footage broadcast by Channel 12 news on Sunday evening.

The “Green Pass” is a document held by those who are vaccinated or have recovered from COVID, and is required to access most indoor public places, as well as crowded outdoor attractions.

“In pools, too, not just in restaurants. Epidemiologically it’s correct,” Horowitz responded to Shaked, noting that the Green Pass is not particularly needed at outdoor gatherings.

“The thing is, I’m telling you this, our problem is people who don’t get vaccinated. We need that they… otherwise… we will not get out of this,” the health minister added.

Again, here are "experts" deliberately trying to make the lives of citizens harder by inflaming panic and restricting their freedoms, not for better health outcomes but in order to force them into vaccination.

In neither situation am I disputing the efficacy of vaccines.  The two best ways of protecting yourself from Covid-19 is to contract it naturally when you are younger than 60 and healthy or to get vaccinated.  The fact that the vaccinations seem to have rapidly declining efficacy is alarming only in the sense that it demonstrates that we don't know what we don't know. 

What I am calling out is that all societies function on trust.  The higher the trust, the more prosperous the society.  Constantly lying or misleading citizens, even when you think it is for their own good, is a remarkably effective way to lose trust.  

And it seems to be happening a lot.  And the corollary is obvious.  If they are lying about this, what else are they lying about?

UPDATE:  From Our Most Reliable Pandemic Number Is Losing Meaning by David Zweig.  Discussing Covid-19 measurement failures particularly with regard to what it means to be hospitalized with Covid.

I have seen a number of comments to the effect that hospitals are compensated at higher rates for anything to do with Covid and that it is that incentive issue which is driving both hospitalization numbers and the hysteria.