public_health.md 5.0 KB
have a stream of words outputting from your mind speak the truth and speak what you can think clearly don't try to force anything, just let it come through and allow yourself to think through the issues that are on your mind the difficult ideas that you are dealing with can be eludicated the essence of them can be distilled and turned into more concise ideas and communications this makes it easier to deal with the system in which they operate and understand the behaviour found therein
In talking about public health officials, we come upon the problem of having those in a position of public relations and public advisory which implicitly suggests that they are arbiters of truth and supplying a moral good. That, even in performing the task, regardless of the outcome, they are providing a service which exists to improve the wellbeing of a society and its citizens. These individuals, again, are not the most technically proficient in their field, and have either been drawn to more socially-oriented roles, have happened upon them and have traveled down a career path involving social responsibilities. If all of your produced offerings come in the form of statements or suggestions which themselves are intended to be navigational aides to the direction of public behaviour, then there isn't a particular standard by which the contribution can be objectively evaluated. The "spirit" of the work is benevolent - it could even be suggested that to have a society whereupon such a role can be occupied is a sign of a healthy and well-developed society. There are a lot of pitfalls here, as it's easy to fall into a habit of believing one does good work, that one is of a virtuous persuasion, and that one's suggestions are only made in hopes of improving the world. Similarly, it can be said that those who are not in favour of following the advice of a public health official are wreckless, careless, malevolent and a danger to society. How does one go about asserting themselves if they believe that the official advice of the state, as articulated by its public health officer, is harmful? To even challenge this, particular in our day and age, automatically places one in a role which is antagonistic to the public health officer. It can automatically be suggested and perceived that this "naysayer" is directed by their self interest, to a greater degree than the public health official, as it's evident from the outset that the critique is occupying a role, even a performative one, which is not that of someone who is tasked with promoting the public good. This is a conundrum which we can't easily rectify, particularly when so much of the publicly perceivable dialogue is sanitized and made congruent to the policies being espoused by the officers. Unfortunately, much damage can be done through a policy that has been vocalized by the public health officer before it can ever be obvious that the damage is done. Sometimes it takes years, and even if it doesn't, it would be self-destructive to admit that one's advice was poor, and even self-destructive for the state to admit that it was cuplable in having placed someone in a role which could cause poor advice to be disseminated to the public. Couple this with the difficulty of identifying a standard by which public policy can be evaluated, particularly on matter so complex and variant as public health, and we have a pattern of behaviour which is not so easily scrutinized, while also yielding decrees which affect the movement, behaviour and legality of every participant society. It is for this reason that we must adopt improved models for dealing with public health, and that these models should include provisions for debate by technically proficient experts who are relevant enough to engage in the discussion, while also not being so specialized that they are unable to develop a shared representation of the problem in a system which encompasses more than one framework of specialization. For a hyperspecialized society with such a high percentage of citizens who endeavour to achieve a large volume of academic accreditation, it would be quite easy to pit experts against one another who have a lot of development within their favourite domain, are extremely confident in their position, and are able to content with one another while mostly appealing to the bias in the room, which will generally favour a system of thought over another, rather than the degree to which one participant has mastered their particular system of thought. This could be because the system of thought which is favoured is more direclty relevant to the discussion, but it can also be because a system of thought enjoys a general perception that it is more valuable, regardless of the skill of its proponent. As we work through this problem we see that we need individuals who possess more than an extremely developed theoretical understanding of one particular fthat this problem is made worse as organizations become more bureaucratized and find themselves having to fill advisory roles with ever younger professionals. exit