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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#551

Post by eisa01 »

abstractbarista wrote: post #531

Honestly, it actually hasn't been materially worse than the flu yet. So this article's premise is basically worthless. We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. The flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 worldwide yearly, according to the WHO. The actual "damage" this virus has "caused", which the flu doesn't, is the economic shock of everyone being forced at once to not go out and spend. We have right…

It's not common for the flu to overload the healthcare system as you've seen in several places across the world. The reason it hasn't been worse is that people have acted and started to stay at home before the government issued orders

Not sure when it last happened, 1918?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#552

Post by jacquesm »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #542
jacquesm wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. So, in your opinion, how many people would you be willing to give up for the economy? What ages? Prior conditions? What about yourself? Your family? We've been conditioned over the last 100+ years that life - especially life of white people, but never mind that bit - is precious. So now, when white people's lives are in danger you suddenly want to go all super rational and equate lives with paying out unemploy…

GDP correlates with life expectancy, so you can't separate deaths and economy as if they were behaving in isolation from each other like you seem to assume in your tantrum.

Yes, they are correlated. But they are not correlated in such a way that you're going to be looking the people that you've just condemned in the eye. Nor do they have voting family members that will remember that when ballot time rolls around.

So this utilitarian argument you are making is going to be a very difficult one to put across and if you feel otherwise about it then it is up to you to stick your neck out, I want no part of it, and neither do most people. The argument that the handicapped, aging and ill should be disposed of has been made before, it didn't end well.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#553

Post by JeremyNT »

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…

There are still plenty of real news outlets, they just aren't on TV. You can pull up the Reuters web site, spend a few minutes reading the front page, and come out with more actual information than somebody who spent all day watching CNN.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#554

Post by clouddrover »

collyw wrote: post #7

Wasn't Elon Musk going to make a website that rated the credibility of journalism somehow? What happened to that?

Musk himself has no credibility when it comes to coronavirus. He's spent three months demonstrating that he knows nothing about it:

https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-has-played-an-extremely-dange...

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#555

Post by bvinc »

abstractbarista wrote: post #531

Honestly, it actually hasn't been materially worse than the flu yet. So this article's premise is basically worthless. We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. The flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 worldwide yearly, according to the WHO. The actual "damage" this virus has "caused", which the flu doesn't, is the economic shock of everyone being forced at once to not go out and spend. We have right…

In what metric is it slowing?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#556

Post by nojvek »

abstractbarista wrote: post #531

Honestly, it actually hasn't been materially worse than the flu yet. So this article's premise is basically worthless. We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. The flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 worldwide yearly, according to the WHO. The actual "damage" this virus has "caused", which the flu doesn't, is the economic shock of everyone being forced at once to not go out and spend. We have right…

We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. One would definitely have to take 70k number with a grain of salt. There are many deaths that have gone unreported because there weren't enough testing kits. Many countries aren't reporting deaths because their government wants to save face. Iran comes to mind.

What's different about this virus is in just a span of a few months it has claimed 70k deaths. At the rate people are dying, if we just let it run its course without any social distancing (like flu runs its course), we could have millions of deaths.

COVID-19 is ~10X deadlier than flu looking at the current numbers.

If we just let the economy go as is, with our healthcare overwhelmed and >1% of our population dying, that would be terrible. I don't know if I want to live in such a heartless world. Remember even young people are dying albeit at a lower rate.

One of my friends who did get COVID-19 explained that its not like a regular flu. The feeling of having a brick on your chest and not being able to breath is real. It really tires you and brings your worst fears to life. The worst 2 weeks of his life.

That is not a description of regular flu ^

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#557

Post by umvi »

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…

Heck, tobacco is a greater threat to human life than covid-19. How many millions die every year, year after year, because of tobacco?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#558

Post by jacquesm »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #549
jacquesm wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the relevant passage: "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. 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 remembe…

Daringfireball holds people accountable all the time, in particular for wrong prognostications. It's semi hilarious, in that it's relieving.

And what consquences does that have? As in, did anybody lose their job, go to jail or faced some other stiff penalty? If not then it doesn't count.

In NL a minister resigned because he got caught in a lie. Imagine that. It wasn't even a big one, it is just that that is unacceptable here. I'm sure they lie all the time, it is just that getting caught is enough to do you in. So not a perfect system by a long shot but it does the job.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#559

Post by maps7 »

jacquesm wrote: post #517
maps7 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the author is off at all. Sounds spot on to me.

Here is the relevant passage: "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. 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 remembe…

The article doesn't disagree with that. Here's the relevant parts:

"An event like this is thus a uniquely powerful way of taking people's measure."

and

"Now that we've seen the results, let's remember what we saw, because this is the most accurate test of credibility we're ever likely to have. I hope."

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#560

Post by defen »

2bitencryption wrote: post #396

One thing I've had trouble reconciling is the fact that the CDC estimates 24k-63k deaths from the flu this flu season[0] We just passed 10k from covid-19. Only last week a "low" estimation of covid deaths this year was 200k. So it seems the expectation is there will be many, many more, and we're just at the start of all this. On the other hand, it also seems this week like the infamous curve is beginning to flatten,…

The "official" 200k estimate (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.27.20043752v...) assumes that China isn't lying about their numbers, that Italy's official numbers are correct (Even though the death rate in some places there is 5-10x higher than normal), that the US will be able to implement "lockdowns" as effectively as China did, and that the rate of decline of new cases of COVID-19 will match the rate of increase before the peak.

I'm not sure any of those assumptions are warranted.

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