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Is it a 'mistake', if it's designed to obfuscate and mislead?
That the same bad actors then use their obfuscation for
I have difficulty seeing these as 'mistakes'.
Wasn't their a rhyming obfuscation with the vaccinated? You did not count as vaccinated and dead unless you died > 2 weeks after your vaccination?
Sure. The phrase 'it was worse than a crime; it was a mistake' comes to mind.
I am all on board that acts and/or policies can both be morally wrong and mistakes in the sense that they do not achieve the ends they were taken to achieve.
Going by Fauci's public statements for why he changed various positions over the course of the pandemic to 'nudge' people into 'better' options, I am fully prepared to believe he was both a bad actor and that he believed doing so would provide a net good on the pandemic outcome.
I think he was generally incompetent in that regards, as I do most people who believe national policy-level lies to be 'white lies' with no bearing on later credibility. I even say this as someone who has a far greater degree of acceptance of state secrets and such than others- part of public credibility is that you need a public's buy in to recognize that you might not share all information, but that what you do share needs to be fundamentally honest/accurate. Failures to maintain this are what lose the trust of those willing to extend tolerance to withholding 'true' information. Fauci's (and other's) technocratic approach to professional credibility is part of why I find him incompetent- he behaved as if the legitimacy and public trust derived from his position, rather than was bestowed by the public he tried to obfuscate and mislead.
People- individually and collectively- have some tolerance for O&M. But it is narrowed, and subject to revocation if abused.
The execution of the Duc d’Enghien was used to further the proximate goal of deterring royalist opposition and consolidating Napoleon’s power, much like COVID data obfuscation was used to justify policies by amplifying risk-severity. Both achieved short-term goals—suppressing dissent or driving compliance.
Both are 'mistakes' that appear to have met their indended near-term goals? Nearly all current year politics eschews the long term.
While you quote an enduring witicism I have difficulty finding an error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness, a misconception or misunderstanding, in either. Traditional markers of mistakes.
That trust in institutions may now be diminished, is only a result of the 'mistake' if the trust had been warrented or well-placed before. The 'mistake' is that the public trusted them to begin with.
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