Government is less mistrusted now than it was three months ago. I wouldn’t celebrate too hard just yet but public trust in institutions is shifting as we speak. In many countries, it appears that governments’ response to the pandemic has changed attitudes about its competence, and favorably so. Read more...
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Most credible public health experts agree that COVID-19 is surging in most states, but there’s still a way to get a handle on the way that it’s being handled and presented to us. This would save lives. Read more...
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We’ve talked a lot here about risk assessment – the science of measuring the bad things that happen and the magnitude of harm – vs. risk communication, the art of helping people understand and act (or not) on the science and the math of risks. Some risks are high probability ...
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Propaganda, misinformation, deception and lies may be some of the most defining issues of our time. Political spin certainly isn’t new, but how it’s been weaponized and the media that is now available to spread and grow it is beyond anything we’ve seen before. Someone recently said that 2020 will ...
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Given the still rising number of new COVID-19 cases in most of the U.S., it’s pretty obvious that we’re going to be in quarantine mode for the foreseeable future, which means that most face-to-face public events will still be held virtually for a while. We’ve used various checklists for real ...
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We have a lot of thorny issues to work to resolve in the coming months and years, not the least of which is the movement that suggests police departments should be defunded. Which leads to the question of whether or not people actually want to seriously diminish or truly eliminate ...
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I’m quite sure that you’ll agree that 2020 is one for the books. 20-20 hindsight may be forever ruined as a positive reference. But on top of everything else going on, this may end up being known as the year of apology. There are a lot of obvious and not ...
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Goldman Sachs – not exactly a bastion of liberal fervor – says, “We estimate that statewide mask mandates gradually raise the percentage of people who ‘always’ or ‘frequently’ wear masks by around 25%.” This, they say, would save the country 5% of its gross domestic product. In other words, Goldman ...
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The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington says wearing face masks reduces transmission of the COVID virus by as much as 50%. There’s really no debate about that by anyone credible. So, as infections are now doubling in some recently reopened states, one might ...
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Lord Acton is known to have said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” David Brin later said, “… it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible.” The genesis of public engagement is based on people’s right to some influence on the decisions that have an effect on ...
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