Coronavirus and Credibility • Hacker News Board

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#491

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #476

fourmyle wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look on Youtube yourself and see countless examples o MSNBC and CNN criticizing the travel ban on China because the virus wasn't any more dangerous than the flu.

I actually followed the coverage the first time, and where the ban was criticized it was almost entirely for being too late for that response to be useful, not unwarranted by the severity of the disease. Of course, if there really are “countless” examples supporting your characterization, it will be easy for you to cite some.

The China travel ban was ordered on Jan 28th and active on Feb 3rd.

The WHO didn't confirm human transmission until Jan 25th...

Some of many examples of the media in Jan and Feb:

https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1245478539018805251?s=20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/31/how-our-br...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/world/europe/coronavirus-...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/the-flu-has-already-killed-1...

https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1225937322694381568

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/122367623706063667...

https://i.imgur.com/43n4HWK.png

EDIT: the mental gymnastics below is real, I'll add more examples as I find them, you can choose how wrong they got it and if Fox is worse, or when or how each individual should apologize... P.S. you guys are nuts, everyone was saying "it's less than 2%!!!"

But yeah, us conservatives and the only conservative mainstream news channel and our conservative President are the source of all of your problems. /s

No it's a tacky political attack in the middle of a crisis. Real classy.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#492

Post by saalweachter » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #135

redis_mlc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people will continue to ignore an exponential trend Every cold and flu grow exponentially. Not sure what the fixation of HN readers is on the work exponential. Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators, and the futility and destruction to our economy by lockdown.

> Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. For many layperson, this is their first experience when it really matters. My mom isn't sitting around thinking about exponential spread when she gets a cold. > I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators I agree. Something like 80% of the people who end up on a ventilator die. Of course those other 20% are happy one was…

We also do take notice when more mundane exponential threats crop up -- for instance, the R0 of measles is something like 12-18 (compared to a "measly" 2-2.5 for the novel coronavirus, or 1.28 for the typical seasonal flu), and when it got out of control in a few cities in the US last year, it was a Big Deal even though most people are vaccinated for it.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#493

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

atomashpolskiy wrote: post #87

paulgb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just the flu" to me implies that we can treat it like the flu, i.e. go about life as usual and stay home if we catch it. It seems beyond obvious at this point that that's not the case. (Hopefully soon there will be a vaccine and it will become the case.)

But it literally is a strain of flu. And staying at home, sleeping and drinking a lot of water is exactly what the majority of people who contracted COVID are doing at the moment. Or do you believe that there are 1.3 million people in hospitals or cemeteries right now?

[deleted]

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#494

Post by vkou » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #248

ryandrake wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, the log scale for infections in pretty much every polity has started bending downwards, about a week and a half after the lockdowns were put in place.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#495

Post by throwawaylolx » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #386

throwawaylolx wrote: post #344

Why focus only on the low-hanging fruits at one end of the spectrum? How about all the scientists who made doomsday predictions that failed to materialize?

Err on the side of caution works quite well when modelling things that are rare but that can have devastating effects.

This is a nonsensical approach unless you consider the damage caused by overprotective measures such as the rapidly increasing number of people who are filling for unemployment every day.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#496

Post by bitminer » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

Paul Graham has the insight granted by hindsight of 3 weeks to 6 weeks of facts and evidence. The video cited shows clips from January, February, March, only one as late as March 15.

And he uses the undefined and unusual phrase "false predictions". What, please, is a true prediction?

The purpose of these commentators is not news, it is entertainment. The fact they are talking through their ass is part of their attraction. It is all bullshit and viewers know it. As does Paul Graham:

> Instead they just continued to use their ordinary m.o., which, as the epidemic has made clear, is to talk confidently about things they don't understand.

Paul Grahams' analysis is also subject to the same critique:

> let's remember what we saw, because this is the most accurate test of credibility we're ever likely to have.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#497

Post by thelean12 » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #487

thelean12 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exaggerating, which is just as bad. NYT reported that "200,000 to 1.7 million" people could die on March 13th [1]. Most of those calculations had to do with the fact that the hospital system would get overwhelmed at some point, compounding the deaths. None of that is "scare statistics". It's useful modeling. I think what you consider to be "scare statistics" is more lack of education. Similar to how people saw…

Exactly. Both the media and the anti-media/anti-expert crowd both have a poor understanding of probability and confidence intervals. With the media, I think it's sometimes intentional and not ignorance, as a ploy to get clicks. With the anti-media, anti-expert crowd, I have to believe it's usually simple ignorance.

Mostly agree. Some media is certainly better than others. The NYT article I linked has a very responsible title (IMO) of "Worst-Case Estimates for U.S. Coronavirus Deaths".

It clearly says that the estimates they're about to talk about are worst-case and estimates.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#498

Post by danans » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

> The answer, I realized, is that they didn't think they could get caught. They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions.

There was no danger to them, and a lot of the same old hay to be made from the faithful in the meantime. The problem is that the "meantime" didn't last long enough, and now many of their faithful are instead fearful.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#499

Post by adjkant » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

2bitencryption wrote: post #461

adjkant wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing missing here is that you're looking at deaths without looking at number of cases of each. The flu causes the number of deaths it does because it infects tens of millions of people a year[0]. The death rate is an order of magnitude lower than with COVID-19 across every single age bracket. [2] So when people say things like: > "I'm not worried about getting this illness" They are likely not considering that e…

> They are likely not considering that even the younger are taking as much as a 1% risk of their life I know the numbers are still super fuzzy and it depends on who you ask, but at least according to Wikipedia, the US fatality rate for ages 20-44 is 0.1-0.2%, not near 1% (though certainly at-risk individuals would be higher than the average...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Progn...

That "as much as" was attempting to account for overloaded medical conditions which will raise the rate, though for 20-44 it'd be unclear by how much. If we go by that table using a 2.3% death rate, that'd already be .3% using a naive literal scaling to the death rate for that age group for the US currently. But yeah, fuzzy numbers and napkin math warning is certainly warranted, I'm nowhere near an expert on this.

As mentioned, the flu death rate of 0.1% is overall as well - for younger people it is also significantly lower, so the increased risk still holds for younger folks. Source [2] shows that well.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#500

Post by graeme » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #269

graeme wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Barack Obama wasn't exactly marginal.

The post was specifically talking about media commentators.

I do agree that Obama’s position helped him in 2008 re: clinton. But politicians are judged on deeds as well as written opinion. But in the media sphere, most of the prominently wrong got promoted.