Being a lifeguard in LA would be a dream job for millions of people especially if they could make $400k a year doing it!
This is low skilled labor! The only requirement is to be a strong swimmer and have basic leadership skills.
I don't think supply of willing lifeguards is a constraint here.
I'd imagine if LA county put out an ad to replace their top lifeguard and offered even $200k a year they'd receive thousands of applications from perfectly qualified people.
Not trying to be a jerk, but basic supply and demand.
There are literally millions of Americans who are able to perform the duties of a lifeguard. Millions more that could "manage" lifeguards.
Having your job be spending most of your day on a beautiful beach in southern California? That's a dream to many people!
I hearing on NPR (maybe This American Life?) about a lawyer who works full-time at his own firm during most of the year, but during the summer months goes on sabbatical to work as a lifeguard in the NY area. He's been doing this since he was a kid. Working as a lifeguard is his vacation!
You can't say the same about a Google or Facebook engineer. There's only so many people that could do the job, and very few would consider it their "dream" to code all day for a giant corporation. No one would consider it a vacation!
FWIW we should pay lifeguards a living wage! But $400k for an low-skill job that doesn't even require a high school education? Wow.
I get where you're coming from but the fact remains that experts had strong suspicions and beliefs that masks, and in particular N95 masks would give protection against the virus. And they did not communicate this with the public because they were afraid of shortages for essential workers.
Experts were deliberately "shading facts" or leaving out important context to influence the public to act a certain way.
That's really not much different than lying! I would argue it is lying but others might disagree.
The end result was that for at least a few weeks Americans went around believing masks don't work. I vividly remember reading these reports and telling friends "well y'know they aren't recommending masks I guess they don't work to protect you". I wasn't alone all the people in my friend group came to the same conclusion.
And yes the experts are smart! They can hide behind "well we never explicitly said they didn't work!", or "we didn't have all the data and didn't feel confident recommending them"
But they were not transparent about what they knew! And the reason they weren't being transparent was to protect mask supplies for medical personnel.
People can hide behind the legalese and lawyerly defense of "well it wasn't technically a lie!" but to many normal people like myself that's just laughable! The intent was to mislead the public! Most people just consider that lying...
This is low skilled labor! The only requirement is to be a strong swimmer and have basic leadership skills.
I don't think supply of willing lifeguards is a constraint here.
I'd imagine if LA county put out an ad to replace their top lifeguard and offered even $200k a year they'd receive thousands of applications from perfectly qualified people.