I think you are making some rather extreme, blanket statements.
I think there is an unwritten rule that in any situation no matter what, the authorities will try and put the best spin possible on it. Even if that means giving people really bad advice that gets a bunch of people killed that did not otherwise need to die.
This is clearly not always true. It does happen sometimes, but often not. Remember the big hurricane that was expected to hit the east coast, with predictions of major flooding? After the fact, a lot of people were complaining that the authorities were over-reacting. Many people thought the authorities put the worst spin possible on it.
There is also an unwritten rule that the authorities virtually always mislead , misrepresent, or outright lie to the public about what is going on in emergencies. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.
Again, while this does happen sometimes, saying "virtually always...." is simply not true. I think mistakes happen frequently, but deliberate misrepresentation is not so common.
Taken in its totality, it means you just cannot trust anything you are told by officialdom in emergencies. There is no way to know if they are giving you good advice or really awful advice, or whether the information they are putting out is true, false, or some combination thereof. This seems far less true in some areas than others.
No, I disagree. What it means is that you need to stay as well informed as possible. Try to learn about and understand potential threats, be it hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, or whatever. Recongnize that officialdom doesn't always have complete information. To be useful and timely, warning decisions often need to be made based on very incomplete data.
I think you need to onsider the information you are recieving from official sources, but evaluate it relative to what you can see around you, and any other knowledge you have of the situation. I find it useful to think first about worst case scenarios, then work backwards from that.
And always try to have a "Plan B", in case
YOUR initial assessment is wrong.
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