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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#721

Post by pishpash »

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…

That's the so-called free media's fault. You can very easily discredit these people by deep-diving into their performance during nightly news or some program after, but the media actively avoids that in favor of infotainment and propaganda. You can even argue that the contemporary age is devoid of substance and there is no true mass news organization in existence. It is characterized by a high degree of anti-intellectualism and thought control.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#722

Post by mellow2020 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #521
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-ki…

If you would have actually read those articles, you would see that the WaPo opinion piece does not actually downplay the coronavirus threat at all; it discusses the psychology of social panic. The NYT piece discusses how fear of coronavirus spread faster than the virus itself without any comment on the seriousness of the disease. The CNBC article does compare the flu to the coronavirus and does note the flu has alrea…

> The CNBC article does compare the flu to the coronavirus and does note the flu has already killed more across the US on an absolute basis, but also notes that the coronavirus is significantly deadlier than the flu on a relative basis.

The flu has already killed 10,000 across US as world frets over coronavirus

The flu remains a higher threat to U.S. public health than the new coronavirus.

This very clearly downplaying. One example was asked for, at least one was provided. Now we have examples of the downplaying being downplayed, because the "right guys" did it.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#723

Post by nl »

leereeves wrote: post #682
bad_user wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is the scientists that have predicted the disaster, with an overwhelming consensus, hence the downvotes.

No, journalists and politicians are misrepresenting what the IPCC says. The IPCC are not alarmists, and they aren't predicting "The world is going to end in 12 years." The actual report is far more balanced. Yes, they are predicting some negative consequences, alongside potential benefits and measures for adapation and mitigation. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar5_wgII_spm...

Why would you link to the fifth edition of the report instead of the (complete) sixth edition or the in progress work now?[1]

Of course the IPCC doesn't predict the world is going to end in 12 years. That's a strawman - I'm sure you can find someone who has predicted the world will end in 12 years, but that isn't the disaster people are concerned about.

Instead, they collect five key "reasons for concern" by "using the following specific criteria: large magnitude, high probability, or irreversibility of impacts; timing of impacts; persistent vulnerability or exposure contributing to risks; or limited potential to reduce risks through adaptation or mitigation." [2]

Some of the risks associated with these include:

Risk of death, injury, ill-health, or disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones and small island developing states and other smallislands, due to storm surges, coastal flooding, and sea level rise.

...

Risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes,particularly for poorer populations in urban and rural settings.

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ (click "Assessment Reports")

[2] Pg 12, https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar5_wgII_spm...

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#724

Post by lliamander »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #708
lliamander wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bac…

I don't want to discredit him as a source. I want him acknowledged as a source with a pre-determined axe to grind. He's smart, he's clever, he's sometimes right. But he's not J. Random "Economist from Somewhere University".

OK. I acknowledge that he has a bias that stems from his anarcho-capitalism.

My point is stating that he was an economist at a respectable university was not to disguise his bias, but to emphasize that he wasn't just some random blogger, which was apparently a barrier for some people when it came to assessing his argument.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#725

Post by grappler »

Frankly, those of us on the blue side have a pretty good track record. Not perfect, but pretty good. Then, there is Red America. Let's not kid ourselves with some kind of equivalence: “oh, both sides have this issue”. It's not remotely close.

Sure, Trump is bad and his sycophants in the media are bad. But they are symptoms. The disease is the people who put them there and have been keeping them there, by not holding them to account: Red America.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#726

Post by Yhippa »

cortesoft wrote: post #465
basch wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views. That is what I was thinking. Paul is writing as if credibility stems from reality. When in reality, the reverse its true. Fox news is credible, its viewers believe that, and whatever those credible people say, is reality. As long as people keep tuned in only to Fox News, that reality wont shatter. Their credibility exists because of their reach, i…

Right, but this might change as people they know start dying. It is easy to lie about things happening that don’t directly affect the people being lied to, but if you personally know multiple people killed by the virus, it will be hard to lie about it.

This is the only thing I can think of that could change their minds. And even then.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#727

Post by Daishiman »

ugh123 wrote: post #329

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 seve…

This complete and utter BS.

There's a difference between getting into 2nd degree minutiae like the effectiveness of masks, seasonality, and other factors, and then there's plain and outright denial of established facts about the class of virus this was as the news of the situation in Wuhan began to circulate.

The most effective measures we have taken - social distancing, washing hands, closing schools, WFH - are the ones that were know to be effective over two decades ago, to the surprise of no one who kept tabs on the topic.

Mask wearing is, as of now, still a hotly disputed topic.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#728

Post by jsnk »

crusso wrote: post #615
javagram wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

however one political quarter stayed in denial much longer Now you're splitting hairs. You know who the first politician in the USA who was banging the drums in alarm about Wuhan and the coronavirus? Tom Cotton. Republican Senator. Do you support him now? Does his early conviction of the severity of this event put you behind him and everyone who echoed his concerns? Are you likewise now opposed to the people who were…

I'm glad you brought Tom Cotton up here. He was one of the few individuals who was able to ask the right questions at the right time. And yet, when he did that, all kinds of mainstream media including WaPo came out saying he was repeating a "coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked". https://archive.vn/TG8zN#selection-999.29-999.84 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru... https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories/ https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/483354-sen-cotton-repeat... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/republican-senat... https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/18/politics/tom-cotton-coronavir... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tom-cotton-coronavirus-china_... https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/baseless-conspiracy-theori...

Now WaPo seems to be admitting that we should at least consider the possibility that the virus may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. https://archive.vn/UP6dx#selection-1801.148-1801.176

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#729

Post by randallsquared »

DanBC wrote: post #174
randallsquared wrote: post #111

> 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. No, this is a terrible test of credibility. Journalists and politicians often go the other way, amplifying the danger, or outrage, or worry. Taking the outside view, it's overwhelmingly likely that any forecasted pandemic or disaster doesn't happen; we almost always get sky-i…

> we almost always get sky-is-falling predictions and then nothing really seems to happen from the perspective of most viewers or readers. Swine flu, bird flu, ebola, zika, on and on: these have previously in media-market memory been hyped as global catastrophes in the making, and then they turn into localized awfulness ...because WHO and those local regions spend considerable time and effort preventing catastrophe.

Yes, they did (along with, in many cases, considerable external aid from other NGOs, etc). However, from a height, it looks somewhat similar to how China's response to Wuhan prevented catastrophe... It didn't fully prevent it, but that was hard to know two months ago for most of the talking heads PG was calling out.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#730

Post by dagurp »

sjg007 wrote: post #658
marcosdumay wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum... The GP seems to be talking about Global Warming denialists, and the dynamics of how they communicate with people. This one is the same. But yes, Global Warming has the bad quality that it is completely not obvious how to solve it. There is an entirely different dynamic at the side that accepts it for settling on a solution... and what is more disturbing, R&D and science are mostly neglected there too, even by…

Umm it is pretty obvious how you “solve” global warming and that is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It's not obvious how to do that
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