Coronavirus and Credibility • Hacker News Board

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#801

Post by pvg » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

jsnk wrote: post #728

crusso wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:/…

I think you're misreading this - it's an opinion piece and it includes some speculation about how the virus ended up infecting people. It does not say the virus 'originated' in a lab and it's not 'WaPo admitting' anything.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#802

Post by Gibbon1 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #781

Gibbon1 wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd probably like this. Compare. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Mar 2nd. https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1247210000155643904/... San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Mar 2nd. https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1247210000155643904/...

Wow I'm based in New York so I've been on the Bill de Blasio beat and totally missed London Breed. She nailed it. Holy moly. Big ups to London Breed! (Were those supposed to be two different links?)

I tried to make them two different links, one to Blasio and the Other to Breed. Didn't work.

I feel some of the difference might be due to California's experience with fires and earthquakes. The politicians have a habit of listening and acting on what public safety officials tell them. And the public tends understand. For instance last year they started shutting off the power during high wind events. They aren't happy with PGE but no ones been calling for the politicians heads over it.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#803

Post by takeda » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #306

jordanpg wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonable people can certainly disagree about whether the cure is worse than the disease. That said, the world's governments have made a decision to react in a certain way, and I maintain that my intuition tells me that most people don't understand the real reason for the lockdowns. They think it is to prevent them personally from getting sick. That's not really true. The point is to prevent the medical infrastructu…

> The point is to prevent the medical infrastructure from becoming overwhelmed I think this is clear for most people. I'm not American but I've watched Trump recent talk and they explained this clearly in a way everybody could understand. What they didn't explain though is the post-lockdown strategy. Most likely, in a few weeks, only a small fraction of the US population will be immune, and the problem won't be solve…

The people who are currently sick will either recover or die. Lock down can make the effective R0 below 1. When it is below 1 the disease will die on its own. Of course we would have to be locked for a very long time, but even if we won't wait that long the active infection curve will go down and buy us some time.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#804

Post by AmericanChopper » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

augustt wrote: post #793

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downvotes on your post demonstrate the left-leaning nature of this site. It's discouraging frankly. The thousands of conversations that occur daily on this site, without emotion or incident; but insult "the other side"'s politicians or news outlets as being biased? Downvote hell Yes, CNN and the like are just as bad as Fox news. The sooner you folks recognize that, the sooner we can have decent conversations abou…

The "both sides bad" mantra is really just lazy. The false equivalence between the validity of whatever DJT says and what critics say have let even basic decency be thrown out the window, let alone facts.

You must have a reasonably short memory, because people said exactly the same sort of sensational things about Obama, and Bush Jr, and Clinton, and Bush Sr, and Reagan... There’s not really any truth or insight in what you just said. It’s simply an impassioned judgement about a politician you don’t like/disagree with/don’t trust/whatever...

The truth is that most politicians are corrupt on some level, most politicians are unduly influenced by lobbyists, few politicians truly care about their constituents, mass media doesn’t care about the truth, even though some of their employees might, they just care about revenue, for any political perspective you can think of, you’ll find a media outlet willing to pander to it.

I don’t think any of that is particularly controversial (or even insightful for that matter). I’d wager that most people would agree with that sentiment on some level. But they’ll tend to lose sight of reason when you suggest that “yes, that includes the politicians you like, and the media outlets that share your opinions”.

Any public figure of any significance is going to attract a tribe of impassioned haters. They tend to have no greater connection with the truth than that same persons tribe of fervent fans will.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#805

Post by chillacy » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #446

chillacy wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the crux of your argument relies on looking at what has happened so far without looking at projections into what could happen, then I have some stock to sell you. You'll buy at the top since the last quarter's earnings were good, right?

Can you keep the discussion fact-based?

The facts presented do not support the conclusion because COVID-19 is not the flu. This is the logic I see in the post:

1. COVID-19 has not killed more people than the flu in the US so far

2. Therefore COVID-19 is comparable to the flu

3. We have not responded so seriously to the flu in the past as we are to this new virus

4. Therefore... people are messed up, I'm shocked

I'm pointing out that [1] does not imply [2] for the very basic reason that the situation is still unfolding. I think you even recognize this ("This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the potential to become worse"), so I'm wondering why you would pin your conclusion on COVID-19 being comparable to the flu.

A pretty good video summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVIGhz3uwuQ

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#806

Post by javagram » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:02 AM UTC

jsnk wrote: post #728

crusso wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:/…

There’s a mix there, AFAIK there’s no reason to believe the virus is a bioweapon.

On the other hand the fact that they were researching bat coronaviruses in the lab in the city where the outbreak began certainly is suggestive of a possible lab accident. I doubt we’ll ever find certainty of this though just like the 1977 outbreak of H1N1. Not impossible it’s just a coincidence either (after all SARS and MERS jumped to humans without any help).

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#807

Post by lutorm » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #582

runeks wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players. No, global warming has a very different dynamic. With a virus, if you do the right thing and protect yourself, you’re more likely to survive. With global warming, if you get a lot of people to emit less CO2, you might just end up making CO2 emissions cheaper for everyone else.

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…

It's entirely not obvious how to best solve the coronavirus situation either, though.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#808

Post by eric-hu » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

xenyal wrote: post #771

garraeth wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Unfortunately now it's more like picking a sport team ("Team CNN" or "Team Fox"), or Apple vs/ Google vs/ Microsoft than actually finding, or learning about, facts. Tribalism at it's finest. The only alternative I've found (I'm open to helpful suggestions) is to ignore that noise and read actual briefings and original sources. But, that defeats the point of news being an honest and straight forward source of…

Out of curiosity, and because I'm a Canadian out of the loop with respect to American news networks, how can there be news being at ends with each other? That's something I have difficulty putting into perspective (referring to the Team CNN vs Team Fox comparison)

This is just my hypothesis: news networks discovered that they can cater to 30% of the population with an extreme message and get more viewership than they would have catering to 50% or 100%. A side effect is that the permissible extremity increases over time as radical becomes the new norm. Both sides can play off each other's increasingly radical messages.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#809

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

xenyal wrote: post #795

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're leaving out a lot of details and what a spin that was. The Chinese government was informed and chose to cover it up. https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coro... https://nypost.com/2020/02/29/china-officials-knew-of-corona... https://www.vox.com/2020/2/10/21124881/coronavirus-outbreak-... https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/08/8037667...

Thanks for the links. It seems that the response went along the following timeline according to my understanding: 1. Dec. 30 - Doctors from the first few cases have analyzed the samples and discover how similar the new virus is to SARS. Officials tell them not to spread information to the public about the virus. 2. Dec. 31 - China tells WHO about new virus (not that they know much at this point) 3. Jan. 1 - Provincia…

The parts that matter are Jan 11th to the 30th.

> Jan. 11–17: Important prescheduled CCP meeting held in Wuhan. During that time, the Wuhan Health Commission insists there are no new cases.

> Jan. 14: WHO announces Chinese authorities have seen "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus."

> Jan. 20: The first case announced in South Korea. Zhong Nanshan, a top Chinese doctor who is helping to coordinate the coronavirus response, announces the virus can be passed between people.

> Jan. 23: Wuhan and three other cities are put on lockdown. Right around this time, approximately 5 million people leave the city without being screened for the illness.

> Jan. 24–30: China celebrates the Lunar New Year holiday. Hundreds of millions of people are in transit around the country as they visit relatives.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#810

Post by malandrew » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

jfrankamp wrote: post #574

cortesoft wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what should we do?

The United States military could best be used to fight this by destroying (with warning) global fossil fuel infrastructure that wasn't voluntarily closed, bit by bit with a decade long schedule. The announcement alone would prompt a massive shift in energy production, use, investment etc. Our own legacy infrastructure would also have to be on the list. Call it a Paris accord with teeth. It will never happen, because…

Can militaries around the world even operate without fossil fuels? Some of the larger ships and submarines are nuclear, but pretty much everything else is fossil fuel dependent AFAIK.