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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#201

Post by ryandrake »

basch wrote: post #196
INGELRII wrote: post #82

> They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions. Is there any danger for them? PG seems to have very idealistic view of politics. As far as I know, any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views. Will Fox News lose any viewers over this? Politicians may lose jobs because bad economy, but will they lose votes because they were wrong and ignorant? H. L. Mencken wrote: > No o…

>any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views. That is what I was thinking. Paul is writing as if credibility stems from reality. When in reality, the reverse its true. Fox news is credible, its viewers believe that, and whatever those credible people say, is reality. As long as people keep tuned in only to Fox News, that reality wont shatter. Their credibility exists because of their reach, i…

This is a deliberately built political philosophy, one of the results of Karl Rove's "reality-based community" [1] idea, from over 15 years ago. Whether or not the label was actually coined by Rove is debated, but essentially this idea is that some people lived in a world that was "reality-based" and that others were not limited by reality and thus were better/stronger politicians. In practice, what this means is the Bush administration did not have to believe in and be bound by this thing called reality, they created reality when they acted.

President Trump is just continuing this idea through today. Unlike GWB and cronies, Trump and team don't even have to act to "create reality", they merely talk and reality instantly changes for their followers. It's a powerful tool and like him or hate him, his administration is using it skillfully.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-...

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#202

Post by ryandrake »

nullc wrote: post #19
bsaul wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've been saying "not more dangerous than the flu" before it started really going to shxt in europe, because to be honest, the epidemic doesn't look that dangerous if you're in general good health, just by looking at the numbers from a distance. The fact that most people seem to not have anything worse than a few days of fever (some having even nothing at all), while at the same time others simply die very quickly to…

Just goes to show that people will continue to ignore an exponential trend until it eats their lunch personally . FWIW, totally aside from that, CDC numbers for the "flu" are actually a combined "flu and pneumonia", and according to the NHS in the UK-- which doesn't bin the same way-- no more than 1/3rds of those deaths are due to the flu. Other estimates have put the flu well under 10% of flu+pneumonia, though with…

You can tell that, even today, people (especially the media) still don't understand the nature of exponential growth.

Every day, there's an article describing the new cases or deaths as a "surge". Look for that word: Surge. This word implies that the growth is somehow sudden or unexpected, whereas every day's actual day-to-day growth was predicted pretty accurately months ago. But, if you read the news, every day is described as some surprising "surge". I wish the media would stop calling every day's number a "surge" and start reporting "New coronavirus cases grew at (or above or below) the expected rate, doubling every N days."

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#203

Post by jordanpg »

yodsanklai wrote: post #115
jordanpg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that at least US governments have done a poor job explaining the motivation behind the drastic precautionary orders. For a brief period, there was much talk of "flattening the curve" but I doubt that many people understand how that gets us to "deliberately wreck the economy." This is what people who say it's just flu++ are missing, and I am trying to be sympathetic to their lack of knowledge of exponential ma…

> This is what people who say it's just flu++ are missing, and I am trying to be sympathetic to their lack of knowledge This is very condescending. There are still a lot of unknowns, and there are smart people (for instance [1]) out there who think the cure may be worth than the disease. We urgently need more data. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUvWaxuurzQ

Reasonable people can certainly disagree about whether the cure is worse than the disease.

That said, the world's governments have made a decision to react in a certain way, and I maintain that my intuition tells me that most people don't understand the real reason for the lockdowns.

They think it is to prevent them personally from getting sick. That's not really true. The point is to prevent the medical infrastructure from becoming overwhelmed so that if and when people do become sick, they can be given their best shot at recovery.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#204

Post by rsgalloway »

Here's an article from Mar 26 in the NEJM where Fauci writes that C19 may be no worse than a severe flu season:

"If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)"

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., H. Clifford Lane, M.D., and Robert R. Redfield, M.D.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#205

Post by heimidal »

rsgalloway wrote: post #204

Here's an article from Mar 26 in the NEJM where Fauci writes that C19 may be no worse than a severe flu season: "If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe…

Your choice of clipping that sentence is incredibly disingenuous.

The actual quote is “This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

They are not saying COVID-19 is the same as a flu, they are saying its mortality rate is closer to a bad flu year than to SARS or MERS. And that’s only half of the story — they go on to say that the rate it is spreading is what is truly worrying even if the mortality rate is low.

Please stop spreading disinformation.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#208

Post by throwaway5752 »

In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players. There is also zero introspection - the people who were wrong about covid-19 are simply denying they said what they said. The truly scary part is they are getting away with it in real time, and changing a large populations' memory of contemporary events. I realize it's hard to remember further back with the enormous amount of information we're all bombarded with, but you can just go back to 2005 and see Larry Kudlow (Dir. NEC) just as wrong about economic policy and the depth of the financial crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kudlow#Economy) but here he is again. Consider Navarro vis a vis trade. I don't think anyone will learn anything, and for smart enough people, that needs to be the lesson.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#209

Post by celdon25 »

Dowwie wrote: post #207

Paul is referring to Fox News: https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1246146713523453957?...

Are you sure? I saw a different video where media outlets of all types were saying similar things. The infamous deleted "Vox" tweet where they said it would not be a deadly pandemic, for one example.

I don't think linking a partisan outlet singling out a partisan outlet from the opposite side of the isle is a good way to treat this issue. PG apparently doesn't either, and didn't name names.

Source: https://i.imgur.com/Tn0UtWT.png

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#210

Post by endorphone »

INGELRII wrote: post #82

> They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions. Is there any danger for them? PG seems to have very idealistic view of politics. As far as I know, any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views. Will Fox News lose any viewers over this? Politicians may lose jobs because bad economy, but will they lose votes because they were wrong and ignorant? H. L. Mencken wrote: > No o…

"Is there any danger for them?"

Fox news dumped Laura Ingraham and Trish Regan. Both were at the forefront of claiming it was all a hoax. Dr. Drew has gone on a reputation rehabilitation tour apologizing for his prior claims.

But those dismissals are a canary in a coal mine. They demonstrate that even Fox News has limits.

It is outrageous that anyone -- outside of scam prosperity preachers -- advertise on Fox News.

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