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Coronavirus and Credibility

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#561

Post by jacquesm »

_wwz4 wrote: post #548

Do people appreciate that denial of the severity of this virus came from all political quarters? Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne c…

Being wrong and being in charge are different than just being wrong. Responsibility should come at a price.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#562

Post by javagram »

_wwz4 wrote: post #548

Do people appreciate that denial of the severity of this virus came from all political quarters? Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne c…

It did come from all political quarters, however one political quarter stayed in denial much longer. Notice how many of the clips from your video are from January or early February.

The POTUS was still publicly pushing the coronavirus = flu comparison in early March even after we saw what happened in Iran and Italy. Remember, he said on February 28 that being worried about the coronavirus was “their new hoax” from the media and his political opponents, so he himself recognized his political opponents were pointing out the severity by late February.

Edit: i don’t want to get too deep in the politics with this, I do agree with your ultimate point that most won’t learn from this and will simply return to their team’s side regardless of who got this one more right.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#563

Post by abstractbarista »

adjkant wrote: post #424
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 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…

Those % you are citing are highly misleading. Because they are % of tested positive cases. There's likely an order of magnitude more actual positive cases which have not been captured.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#564

Post by sgt101 »

nradov wrote: post #332
sgt101 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a really nasty that is looming in my nightmares. Hurricane season is coming earlier now, due to warming, and the Hurricanes are bigger. And The South is going to be in the thick of the epidemic in mid to late may.

Yes that's a real risk. The current consensus forecast is for a slightly above average hurricane season. In a few months we may have thousands of people evacuated into shelters.

Obviously the US Administration is urgently planning and preparing for this?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#565

Post by shakermakr »

mempko wrote: post #413
jshevek wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reply, while valid in isolation, isn't a meaningful response to the parent post. There is no single "global warming prediction", there have been thousands. The parent was speaking to those, not whichever one ends up being closest to the truth. >> consider how it applies to all the people who have made confident predictions over the years regarding global warming.

There have been thousands of predictions, but only a subset of them have consensus. The IPCC is that consensus across varying stakeholders. It's looking like the consensus has been too conservative with it's predictions and that's the scary part.

Science and proof is not based on consensus. It’s not a vote. A best bet. Until then we should of course act towards the most probable act and cause but remain healthy in our skepticism of the effect of global warming and our faith in computer modeling of inherently chaotic systems.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#566

Post by smsm42 »

alexilliamson wrote: post #385
AndrewBissell wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found a well-curated Twitter feed of smart sources from various ideological and media camps helps to find interesting and informative info which would otherwise take a great deal of time to find. You do get misinfo and bad takes sometimes, but if you set it up right it's no worse than mainstream sources. Lists are useful as well to avoid Twitter's feed curation algos. Just specifically for COVID-19, this led me…

It sometimes feels like there is the perception that twitter is worthless and devoid of meaningful information, but like you I've been increasingly relying on it for news. I'm not sure where else you can collect so many different perspectives on any given piece of news. Overtime, you learn how many grains of salt to take with each person in your timeline, and you get a sense of their personal biases. And if you can b…

> It sometimes feels like there is the perception that twitter is worthless and devoid of meaningful information

My feeling has been there are nuggets of really good and really up-to-date information there, and there are some threads that are extremely informative, but signal-to-noise ratio is in general extremely close to zero and the hostility of the surrounding environment is unbelievably terrible.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#567

Post by abstractbarista »

djaychela wrote: post #5

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

The flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 per year worldwide according to WHO. Today we're still <80k for Corona, and new cases are slowing.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#568

Post by thelean12 »

alacombe wrote: post #532
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…

Do you realize that if the media write "could die", readers will interpret it as "will die" ?

If you actually read the NYT article, it's really hard to come out of it thinking "1.7 million people will die". This is because of a few reasons:

1. They have a good, responsible title.

2. They bury the 1.7 million number a bit so you're forced to at least understand some of it.

3. They talk about how and why the estimates will change over time:

>“When people change their behavior," said Lauren Gardner, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering who models epidemics, “those model parameters are no longer applicable,” so short-term forecasts are likely to be more accurate. “There is a lot of room for improvement if we act appropriately.”

I see no reason why this article shouldn't have been posted in its current form.

Of course, as you get further away from good sources of news, you're going to get less responsible reporting. NYT is an example of very high quality reporting.

CNN at the time probably had a breaking news line item on TV of "1.7 million could die". This would be irresponsible.

Fox News at the time probably had a breaking news line item on TV of "It's just the flu". This would be irresponsible.

And that's certainly a problem.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#569

Post by throwaway294 »

alexilliamson wrote: post #385
AndrewBissell wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found a well-curated Twitter feed of smart sources from various ideological and media camps helps to find interesting and informative info which would otherwise take a great deal of time to find. You do get misinfo and bad takes sometimes, but if you set it up right it's no worse than mainstream sources. Lists are useful as well to avoid Twitter's feed curation algos. Just specifically for COVID-19, this led me…

It sometimes feels like there is the perception that twitter is worthless and devoid of meaningful information, but like you I've been increasingly relying on it for news. I'm not sure where else you can collect so many different perspectives on any given piece of news. Overtime, you learn how many grains of salt to take with each person in your timeline, and you get a sense of their personal biases. And if you can b…

A BIG advantage of Twitter is that get to hear from the persons themselves totally without filtering by the media. Maybe you do or don't like what some public figure who posts on Twitter says, but at least DO get just what THEY said.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#570

Post by umvi »

adjkant wrote: post #424
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 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…

I simply do not believe those figures at all.

How can you even claim an "average death rate" when you don't even know how many people were infected, had mild symptoms, and recovered without reporting it to anyone?

Of course the numbers will look scary when you only count hospitalized people as infected.

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