"One source of harm is how social enforcers of new anti‐COVID‐19 norms respond. Enforcing these norms through pressure to not gather in large crowds, proper hand hygiene, to maintain social distance, and to stop shaking hands is positive.
Those social enforcement mechanisms work best when everybody is basically on the same page about what works but they follow the norms to varying degrees. But if lots of people don’t trust the advice and they disagree about proper methods to limit the transmission of the disease because they’ve been misled by noble lies, social pressure will be contradictory and less effective at altering behavior.
Health experts, epidemiologists, medical researchers, scientists, and other experts have knowledge and experience that is valuable in containing COVID-19 and eventually wiping it out. They will eventually discover a vaccine and treatments that will benefit all of us. But without widespread trust in them, their jobs will be harder.
Noble lies will reduce that trust and make it less likely that people will heed their advice and warnings. ***If some percentage of their guidance is a lie and we all know that they are sometimes lying, people will be less likely to listen or will cherry‐pick which advice to follow. People will be more likely to consume snake oil, listen to grifters, and fall back on prejudices or other biases that will end up hurting themselves and others.*** And this will all happen rapidly in the current media market where information is cheap and available at a cost near zero, as it currently is.""
https://www.cato.org/blog/against-noble-lie-covid-19-edition
Those social enforcement mechanisms work best when everybody is basically on the same page about what works but they follow the norms to varying degrees. But if lots of people don’t trust the advice and they disagree about proper methods to limit the transmission of the disease because they’ve been misled by noble lies, social pressure will be contradictory and less effective at altering behavior.
Health experts, epidemiologists, medical researchers, scientists, and other experts have knowledge and experience that is valuable in containing COVID-19 and eventually wiping it out. They will eventually discover a vaccine and treatments that will benefit all of us. But without widespread trust in them, their jobs will be harder.
Noble lies will reduce that trust and make it less likely that people will heed their advice and warnings. ***If some percentage of their guidance is a lie and we all know that they are sometimes lying, people will be less likely to listen or will cherry‐pick which advice to follow. People will be more likely to consume snake oil, listen to grifters, and fall back on prejudices or other biases that will end up hurting themselves and others.*** And this will all happen rapidly in the current media market where information is cheap and available at a cost near zero, as it currently is.""
https://www.cato.org/blog/against-noble-lie-covid-19-edition