[mxcrossb]

Half a year into the pandemic the president of the United States was filling stadiums was maskless supporters. The WHO seems completely willing to fall on their sword over COVID, and indeed they failed in many ways. But in the long run, we’re seeing a disaster of anti intellectualism around the world, and the next pandemic may be just as bad as this one.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I mean, I don't think that anti-intellectual trend can be divorced from the general messaging problems here. If you roll back to mid-March 2020, things like

* Masks don't help, there's no point in wearing them

* Lots of people are gonna get infected, all we can do is tamp down this current spike

* We'll go back to our normal lives in a month or two

were all well within what was reported to be the expert consensus at the time.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> the next pandemic may be just as bad as this one.

or worse. Keep the aerosol vector, but make it even more effective. Increase the effectiveness of surface transmission. Throw in greater resistant to surfactants (soap) and hand sanitizers.

boom!

[raisedbyninjas]

Your scenario only increases infectiousness. Many viruses are more deadly than covid 19. H5N1 is about 60% fatal, more deadly than ebola. It's quite difficult to contract at least until researchers genetically modified it to be airborne. They didn't need permission for this research and didn't even perform it in the highest safety level labs.

[mxcrossb]

I always try to use HIV as my point of reference for COVID-19. We got off lucky by that measure. So maybe my pessimism is unfounded, but I really wish we had learned more lessons from HIV.

[refurb]

And politicians were claims BLM protests across the entire country weren’t a big threat.

Suffice to say both sides love to “follow the science” when it supports their political views.