Coronavirus and Credibility • Hacker News Board

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#601

Post by crusso » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #561

_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.

I'd be all for holding politicians in charge accountable, but that's where everyone gets squishy depending upon who they support?

One guy's being wrong becomes another guy's "not that big of a deal".

By what metric will you measure "being wrong" for this COVID-19 pandemic? A super cut of video clips showing a reluctance to believe uncertain information coming out of China? Death rate compared to other OECD countries? Whether or not the great Hydroxychloroquine efficacy debate goes one way or another? Whether or not the ban of flights to/from China were effective?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#602

Post by lliamander » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #525

lliamander wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He happens to believe (or accepts) the IPCC findings, he just disagrees about the economic implications, which is his prerogative.

That's not at odds with what I wrote. What mattered was the original description of him as "an economist at ..." which effectively neuters his very public positions on things like coordinated action w.r.t. climate change. He's absolutely entitled to his beliefs, but shouldn't be cited as if "oh wow, an ECONOMIST at SANTA CLARA says this, so ..."

The fact that he's an economist at a respectable institution means that he's eminently qualified to comment the economic impacts of climate policy.

But of course, this has nothing to do with the subject of the blog post, which is whether Cook paper asserting that "97% agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming" is at best a misleading application of statistics.

There is no need to have a particular background in climatology to understand whether the Cook paper was methodological sound, just a background in statistics. The argument Friedman advances is quite straight-forward, and you are welcome address the argument rather than try to disqualify him as a source.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#603

Post by usaar333 » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #573

usaar333 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are likely not considering that even the younger are taking as much as a 1% risk of their life, which is incredibly high. Depending on factors like the load on the medical community at the time and others, it can get as high as 5% or more quite easily as we have seen around the world. Currently using only napkin math from the numbers here[1], the death rate is currently at just under 4% over all age groups in…

> Lockdowns are still justified under those numbers. And what if the effects of an extended lockdown is a tanked ecomony with a 3x increase in suicides for the next decade? Is it still justified? Lockdowns are only justified if the only variable you are optimizing for is "number of covid-19 deaths". Yet there are hundreds of other variables that we are ignoring in our quest to minimize that one variable. Impossible t…

Fair point. In some sense, I share your feelings a bit (in a lighter sense). The park closings some Bay Area counties are doing (e.g. San Mateo) feel not justified; I'm also not sure why the SIP was extended all the way into May given the existing downward trajectory. [Looking at both Seattle and Iceland, you don't need full-on SIP to keep R at 1]

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#604

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #590

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…

COVID-19 just isn't that important on the global scale. Car accidents last year almost certainly cost way more QALYs* than COVID-19 will this year (particularly if Imperial College in their 13th report is right about how badly undercounted the case numbers are). * Car accidents affect most ages and health levels relatively equally, while COVID-19 mostly kills the old and infirm who are unhealthy, with poor quality of…

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#605

Post by rsanek » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

tfehring wrote: post #571

lliamander wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go pal[0] [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9 edit: added missing word.

Here's the passage from that paper that explains the 0.3% figure from the abstract: From publication and citation data, Anderegg et al. (2010) selected 908 of 1,372 climate researchers, defined as scientists who had published at least twenty climate papers and had either signed petitions opposing or supporting the IPCC’s positions or had co-authored IPCC reports. Of these, 97–98 % endorsed the standard definition tha…

Thank you for the well-written reply & inclusion of the table. I think my question from here would be, what does a paper taking 'no position' really mean? I perceive there to be a significant difference between, we have considered both sides but at this time will not endorse nor reject vs. we didn't even consider taking a position because it was irrelevant to what we are studying.

I think the implication in your reply is that it's more of the latter, but if it turns out to be more of the former, I think there needs to be a huge asterisk attached to the 97% number.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#606

Post by lliamander » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #489

lliamander wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go pal[0] [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9 edit: added missing word.

Well don't hold back now. If you read the article, I can't because it's paywalled, then present the evidence here, in this forum.

That's exactly what the Friedman blog post was for. If you weren't willing to read it there I see no reason to think you would read it here.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#607

Post by seppin » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

AzzieElbab wrote: post #415

nabla9 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false equivalency. When you have to seek to find bad examples from other side, and it's the every day modus operandi the other side there is no comparison.

the two outlets are absolutely equal when it comes to making half of the americans view the other half as raging lunatics. it is basically this https://youtu.be/aFQFB5YpDZE

Trump is a lunatic, literally. Obama was a smart, measured person people didn't like.

There's a difference.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#608

Post by godelski » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

_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 probably depends who you are taking your information from. For example, here is an expert saying that it is just like the flu[0] (Linkedin [1]).

The other part, is that we shouldn't expect consensus in something like this. Why? Because data is evolving and changing. This is in contrast to something like Climate Change where we have a large amount of post hoc data/analysis. Here the analysis is being done in situ and that is much more difficult. It should be unsurprising that opinions change as information changes.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/knutmwittkowski

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#609

Post by seppin » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

AndrewBissell wrote: post #273

INGELRII wrote: post #82

> They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions. Is there any danger for them? PG seems to have very idealistic view of politics. As far as I know, any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views. Will Fox News lose any viewers over this? Politicians may lose jobs because bad economy, but will they lose votes because they were wrong and ignorant? H. L. Mencken wrote: > No o…

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.

Fox News is the only organization that continue to let their opinion anchors downplay and politicize the virus well after it was clear it was deadly and inevitable.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#610

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #252

When mainstream media has been pushing pernicious narratives and outright lies for many years, I see why people would be skeptic about their claims. Unfortunately, most people don't have the means (technical knowledge, time) to appropriately asses the real danger of this situation, so they have two options: - Believe the liars. - Don't believe the liars. It turns out, the liars weren't lying this time.

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