Amazon begins temperature checks and will provide surgical masks at warehouses

I asked the same thing over 3 weeks ago, and the general response on HN was interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22543327

This is quite interesting phenomenon, how did mainstream media manage to spread the same mis-information for weeks?

Did they have a meeting together and agreed to carry out the same lie for the greater good???

Are you under the impression that nine million people from 60,000 organizations got together to keep the same conspiracy?

>how did mainstream media manage to spread the same mis-information for weeks?

By quoting our leaders.

They're not in a conspiracy or even in communication, they're applying the same world-view that responds similarly when presented with the same incentives.

This is why it doesn't help as much as you'd expect to provide better information, to expose a prominent member of the 'conspiracy' in a lie, or even to outright replace the public policy - the same culture and the same systems are still out there, resulting in a large fraction of the population reaching the same conclusions. Only education and cultural change (which are slow, operating on timescales of decades) can overcome this problem.

well, this comes from WHO. i honestly don't understand why they're lying. maybe to stop people for buying al masks? but this is incredibly stupid, there are textile masks too that don't help a lot, but still do a little, as it limits the distance that the virus is expelled to (and if everyone wears them, everybody gets protected because the people with the virus will have a smaller air spreading area around them).

I want to print and frame this comment.

I think everyone is aware that America has a couple of structural issues that have existed and slowly gotten worse over the last decades. For example, the cost of healthcare and education keeps rising, while real incomes stay stagnant.

It feels like this is how we solve problems in America:

1. Organize a private think tank 2. Think tank recommends some targeted market or incentive-based intervention 3. Intervention is watered down through the political process 4. Problem finds a new equilibrium

We're culturally resistant to solutions that require:

1. Mass social compliance (e.g, stay at home) 2. Trust in higher authorities 3. Capping potential best outcomes (we are all temporarily embarrassed millionaires)