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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#241

Post by AzzieElbab »

ryandrake wrote: post #201
basch wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

to an outsider, americas left vs right hostility and mutual disrespect are becoming painful to watch. lets make a counter example to they one you provided, does the nyt "create reality" for their readers? they did publish their fare share of dangerously incorrect material about the virus, pandemic, the countermeasures,you name it.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#242

Post by unreal37 »

mellosouls wrote: post #229

The article seems to be taking a shot at a reasonably easy target. Almost all the talking heads are late Feb/early March. While it was clear something was happening "over there", and the fear was growing, it wasn't unreasonable at that point to not expect the unprecedented situation we are now in - and these people are not paid to offer nuance. I'm not sure this easy soapbox judgement is much more constructive than t…

There are two valid points in there, despite how easy a target "the media" is.

- People saying things with confidence that they didn't know to be true

- This happens all the time but with Coronavirus, the facts came to light within days of them saying this

I get what Paul Graham is saying here.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#243

Post by jshevek »

maest wrote: post #69
lazyjones wrote: post #31

Does pg never watch the news? Or did he just forget that "no worse than the flu" was the general tone until late February in pretty much all 'western' media and even MDs? E.g. https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronav... https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/the-fear-of-the-corona-vi... (kudos for correcting/updating later...) Seems a bit one-sided to get so excited about wrong predictions by the Fox/…

Not "western", but "American". Both your sources are US based (and cite the CDC). The WHO has been warning about the coronavirus for ages.

The WHO emphasized the lack of evidence for human-human transmission on Jan 14.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#244

Post by drummer »

Roussel et al., “SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data.”, Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2020 Mar 19:105947,

    “Under these conditions, there does not seem to be a significant difference between the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries and that of common coronaviruses (χ2 test, P=0.11). Of course, the major flaw in this study is that the percentage of deaths attributable to the virus is not determined, but this is the case for all studies reporting respiratory virus infections, including SARS-CoV-2.”

    “Under these conditions, and all other things being equal, SARS-CoV-2 infection cannot be described as being statistically more severe than infection with other coronaviruses in common circulation.”

    “Finally, in OECD countries, SARS-CoV-2 does not seem to be deadlier than other circulating viruses.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32201354

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#245

Post by dominotw »

hangphyr wrote: post #225
celdon25 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.co…

Many news media companies have been engaging in just that, trying to point out (hypocritically) where their competitors attempted to downplay the threat of the virus. It's not so much a problem with news media being wrong, it's a problem with most of them skewing towards pundit commentary and OP/ED's on the news, rather than just reporting the news. If the news media blankly reports what is happening, and avoided add…

> OP/ED's on the news

What the stance of opinion pieces. ppl seem to say opinion articles cannot be judged because they are opinions by definition. I find that infuriating but i have to bite by lip and agree.

eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22697313

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#246

Post by pdonis »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #208

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 f…

> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life

Before making such a confident statement, I would recommend re-reading this particular statement in pg's essay...

"These people constantly make false predictions, and get away with it, because the things they make predictions about either have mushy enough outcomes that they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in the future that few remember what they said."

...and consider how it applies to all the people who have made confident predictions over the years regarding global warming.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#247

Post by jshevek »

drummer wrote: post #244

Roussel et al., “SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data.”, Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2020 Mar 19:105947, “Under these conditions, there does not seem to be a significant difference between the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries and that of common coronaviruses (χ2 test, P=0.11). Of course, the major flaw in this study is that the percentage of deaths attributable to the virus is not determined, but this is the case…

That style of quotation renders terribly on mobile. Preserving line width isn't helpful for non-code quotes. You can use ">" and wrap the quoted text with italicizing asterisks.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#248

Post by dboreham »

ryandrake wrote: post #202
nullc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, if you click "log scale" on any of the many graph sites for almost any region, you see a line that's better straight than I could draw freehand.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#249

Post by graeme »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #208

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 f…

This happened over a longer timescale with the Iraq War too. Pretty much everyone who was right remained marginal. Those who were prominently wrong became more prominent.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#250

Post by jshevek »

jpxw wrote: post #22

Even “reputable” sources like the Financial Times have been putting out utter rubbish: https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea0557... My current theory is that we are seeing denial on a mass scale as a coping mechanism.

This appears paywalled, what did they say? (Is it the "half of UK" which is rubbish?)
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