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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#321

Post by AndrewBissell »

abnry wrote: post #287
AndrewBissell wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind it's not just Fox News which got this pandemic wrong. "It's no worse than the flu," "this won't be a global pandemic," "you don't need to wear a mask unless you are symptomatic or caring for someone who is," and other 100% wrong takes were also pushed by Vox, NYT, WaPo, and even WHO & CDC long past when they should have been.

Which is one of the reasons why I wish we, collectively as a society, would stop blaming the blame game in this crisis. Almost everyone got this wrong.

I look at it a bit differently. If someone's pushing the line "just listen to the experts," then it should be acknowledged that experts do get it wrong and have massively dropped the ball on COVID-19. The signs of how lethal and contagious the virus is were there in China for anyone to read by early January.

Of course, "experts (in particular our experts) don't know what they're doing" is different from "... and therefore you should listen to any yahoo who says it's 5G."

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#322

Post by jshevek »

avip wrote: post #312
lliamander wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confident predictions regarding climate change over the past 100 or so years[0] [0] https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2010/10/goosey-goosey-gander.ht...

I see one prediction from an actual modern climate scientist. It reads: "So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone…

>I see one prediction from an actual modern climate scientist.

The original conversation was regarding all public statements, not scientists. This is more about journalists than scientists.

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

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#323

Post by enraged_camel »

drocer88 wrote: post #275

If you're getting your "news" from CNN/Fox/MSNBC, or "gathering evidence" to promote one the two permitted narratives, that's your problem. This is stuff is low effort "Presidential Level Politics" 24x7. Real news died when reporters stopped having to craft a story so that the Associated Press or United Press International picked it up and made it available to the varied local newspapers of America, both liberal and…

>> CNN/Fox/MSNBC

One of those is not like the other two.

CNN and MSNBC may not be as high quality as WaPo/NYTimes in terms of depth and quality of journalism, but they also don't maliciously and cynically and shamelessly lie to their viewers.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#324

Post by robocat »

lazyjones wrote: post #71
mehrdadn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is about watching the news, it'd be nice if you could share clips from (say) CNN or MSNBC carrying a similar message, confidence, and tone.

Here's the Guardian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aerq4byr7ps ... just older people with underlying conditions dying ... etc.

That is from Jan 23, 2020... when everyone was clueless as to the consequences so she didn’t predict those.

Everything else is spot on, and it is still mostly older people with underlying conditions dying. She says the death rate is 2%: no pretending that it would be like a normal flu season.

I just can’t see how you can cherry-pick a single thing out of that reporting to criticise, even given it was done on January 23rd!

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#325

Post by lliamander »

avip wrote: post #312
lliamander wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confident predictions regarding climate change over the past 100 or so years[0] [0] https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2010/10/goosey-goosey-gander.ht...

I see one prediction from an actual modern climate scientist. It reads: "So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone…

> I see one prediction from an actual modern climate scientist.

That's a nice "No True Scotsman" right there. Unless, of course, you can give me a non-arbitrary reason why Dr. David Barber of the University of Manitoba speaking in 2008 is a "pre-modern" climate scientist, whereas Dr. James Hansen of NASA writing in 2009 is a "modern" climate scientist.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#326

Post by endorphone »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #292
endorphone wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the sort of false equivalency that leads to claims that they all lie, so it's okay if Fox egregiously lies. We see this on HN all the time where someone stomps their feet and cries about a news headline that they think doesn't convey just the right slant that they want, ergo it's the same as the guy inventing bullshit conspiracy theories on his blog. No, they weren't "chastising" Trump over the China travel b…

The equivalency being drawn by the parent may be wrong, but mainstream sources outside Fox News absolutely downplayed the seriousness of the virus and helped push the "it's not a big deal" perception that we are all now rowing against.

but mainstream sources outside Fox News absolutely downplayed the seriousness of the virus and helped push the "it's not a big deal" perception that we are all now rowing against.

Yet many, including right here on HN, were claiming exactly the opposite: That they were fear mongering, inciting panic, etc. It can't be both.

Here's the NYT from February 2nd - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/health/coronavirus-pandem...

Feb 9th - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/09/world/asia/china-coronavi...

Zero "downplaying". I recall being quite concerned, seeing the argument that is was overblown and just a flu, etc, and discounting that as nonsense.

Can you find an article on the NYTimes, MSNBC or something that compares it to the flu or the like? Absolutely. Those mediums have varied voices with different perspectives, quite unlike Fox where the entire organization is given marching orders and a narrative they must push. The overall perspective among the non-Fox mainstream media was very concerned.

When the sea level rises and floods lower Manhattan, I'm sure there'll be people saying "Why didn't the media warn us? They downplayed the risk!"

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#327

Post by leetcrew »

Theodores wrote: post #258
jshevek wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Victim blaming! We need to tell our HN moderator what CSS rules need to be changed to get this to work on all devices. Plus when adding a comment the syntax for the markdown should be given.

it's for code, not block quotes of english. wrapping is off by design.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#328

Post by ben_w »

analyst74 wrote: post #299
TechBro8615 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population.

I used to think conspiracy theories are unrealistic, the image of a group of people sitting in a dark room conspiring against others just seems ridiculous. But the older I get, and the more understanding I have over how large organizations are ran, the more I realize that conspiracies actually do happen, but in much more subtle ways. What actually happens is that over a long periods of time, people collaborate with a…

Isn’t that called “cronyism” (or “old boys club”) rather than “conspiracy”?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#329

Post by ugh123 »

Its easy to focus on foxnews and pull all sorts of terrible content like that, but a more serious task is to look at a lot of the statements and confidence from the medical and scientific community early on - things around wearing masks in public and its inability to prevent spread, or UV light from the Sun and its ability to kill the virus (a popular statement projected by several doctors within the media), and several others.

There has been confidence all around from seemingly credible sources - acting on too early and thin data about what measures were effective or non-effective, many of which have been reversed in the last couple of weeks. A lot of this can be attributed to all sorts of news organizations (across the spectrum) and their push to get both positive and negative coverage out as fast as possible at the right time.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#330

Post by isbadawi »

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…

I've always read "a surge" as synonymous with "an increase", which could be expected or unexpected depending on the context.
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