[donkey687]

The main thing my post was responding to was the implication of inappropriate motives or personality traits for her decision making, and the second thing was to emphasize her humility in her judgments. My point was that it's fine to criticize her decisions but not her motives.

Because SCC is an outlier in some respects, you believe she must feel she "knows better." I would say, she feels she "thinks differently." I do not think she "knows" with any certainty what is best, for her county or any other. She is just making her best judgments for her own county based on the data and experience and structure of her own county. I also do not think she "knows," or thinks she knows, better than any other county what's best for them. One thing I absolutely do not want her to do is to do what everyone else is doing simply because they are doing it, even though she thinks it is wrong for SCC. If you're an outlier it's certainly worth understanding why, and I'm sure she is in frequent communication with the other local public health officers and knows why they are making the decisions they are. But she is doing what she thinks is best for SCC. If that is the same as "knowing better than everyone else," then I suppose we are in agreement except for terminology. Maybe we could agree on, she feels she knows better than everyone else what is best for SCC.

I would point out, though, that an outlier is not necessarily "wrong" simply because they're an outlier, but (1) it is possible that her county is different in important ways from the ones you think are comparable, including the input she gets from her Board of Supervisors about how to weigh tradeoffs; and (2) there mostly is no right or wrong, there is simply a complex set of tradeoffs that different people can come to different conclusions about.

Fair enough.  I am not questioning her motives and she may be right, but I am just pointing out that by going down a different path than everyone else, she is defying conventional wisdom of the thousand of other county decision makers in favor of her own path which she believes is better.  That is pretty bold and exhibits a lot of confidence in ones beliefs to be comfortable with having the most extreme policy in the country.

[donkey687]

The main thing my post was responding to was the implication of inappropriate motives or personality traits for her decision making, and the second thing was to emphasize her humility in her judgments. My point was that it's fine to criticize her decisions but not her motives.

Because SCC is an outlier in some respects, you believe she must feel she "knows better." I would say, she feels she "thinks differently." I do not think she "knows" with any certainty what is best, for her county or any other. She is just making her best judgments for her own county based on the data and experience and structure of her own county. I also do not think she "knows," or thinks she knows, better than any other county what's best for them. One thing I absolutely do not want her to do is to do what everyone else is doing simply because they are doing it, even though she thinks it is wrong for SCC. If you're an outlier it's certainly worth understanding why, and I'm sure she is in frequent communication with the other local public health officers and knows why they are making the decisions they are. But she is doing what she thinks is best for SCC. If that is the same as "knowing better than everyone else," then I suppose we are in agreement except for terminology. Maybe we could agree on, she feels she knows better than everyone else what is best for SCC.

I would point out, though, that an outlier is not necessarily "wrong" simply because they're an outlier, but (1) it is possible that her county is different in important ways from the ones you think are comparable, including the input she gets from her Board of Supervisors about how to weigh tradeoffs; and (2) there mostly is no right or wrong, there is simply a complex set of tradeoffs that different people can come to different conclusions about.

Fair enough.  I am not questioning her motives and she may be right, but I am just pointing out that by going down a different path than everyone else, she is defying conventional wisdom of the thousand of other county decision makers in favor of her own path which she believes is better.  That is pretty bold and exhibits a lot of confidence in ones beliefs to be comfortable with having the most extreme policy in the country.