8patio111yOoh good questions.
"Staff" level operators in some state governments: up, in a way which was
surprising to me.
American governors: down markedly, both with regards to specific identifiable
examples but also as an institution.
Public health as a field: they don't make numbers low enough to quantify my
regard for it as a result of the pandemic.
FDA: Down markedly and continued going down with every additional decision.
CDC: Somewhere between FDA and public health as a field.
Pharmacies: down markedly.
Pharmacists: up markedly; I previously regarded this field as a charming
historical anomaly and saw some genuinely heroic behavior (amid a lot of
mediocrity) in service of patient health outcomes.
Doctors: down slightly as a class due to inconsistency on several subjects the
field should have been markedly consistent in execution on.
The people in charge of complex public software projects for a nation other than
the US: up markedly, in a way which was extremely surprising to me, because
while operational hypercompetence for that nation is basically Tuesday I would
not have predicted approximately mid private sector levels of competence in the
field of software from the government under almost any circumstances.
AppAmaGooBookSoft: For reasons I cannot share, down on net with respect to my
confidence in their ability to act correctly given their values, up slightly
with regards to my perception of their realized ability to positively impact the
world. (Note that I am near the extreme right of the curve with regards to my
estimate of how good AppAmaGooBookSoft are for the world and I feel it
depressing that the extreme right of the curve is not where everyone interest
hangs out all the time because this should be extremely uncontroversial.)
Tyler Cowen Question: What parts of the government, or processes/bureaucracy, rise and fall in status for you as a result of seeing it close up?