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YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

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Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#271

Post by walterbell »

We need to ask about the unprecedented censorship at this time: what is At Stake? Is Google planning a new healthcare division that is invested in specific viewpoints?

For decades, the US has provided the average citizen with limited/no healthcare but freedom of speech and thought. In sudden weeks, this has been inverted.

What is the prize hidden in the party cracker which justifies censorship of speech and thought with the (implausible six months ago) claim by social media companies to care about the health and wellness of the average person?

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#272

Post by Natsu »

threatofrain wrote: post #155
philwelch wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delegating “responsible judgment” to a formal institution or organization sounds fundamentally dubious in this context.

How is it fundamentally dubious? If you don't trust Google to make a category of social or moral judgments, you're either trusting the market or you have another institution do the job.

> How is it fundamentally dubious?

It's fine to have a trusted organization to make decisions. It's not fine to place that organization above all criticism.

I think their statistical methods are suspect and likely wrong. I don't think they should be censored and the act of censoring them is actively harmful if you don't want people taken in by misinformation, then we need to actively produce good information. There is not and cannot be some way to absolve a free society of that burden. Censorship only helps to convince people that you know you're wrong and you're hiding from criticism. This is especially bad when you're right.

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#273

Post by kaitai »

joshuaheard wrote: post #95
jaggederest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, actually. Here's an example, probably the best natural experiment we're going to see in this context. Five times more, depending on your idea of "order of magnitude". https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/europe/sweden-coronavirus-loc...

An order of magnitude usually means 10x, ie 140 vs 14. According to your article, Sweden has had a lower death rate than the UK, Spain, or Italy.

One can compare it to its immediate neighbors (Finland, Denmark, Norway) and get your order of magnitude right there. Norway: 206 deaths, population a bit over 5.8 million. Finland: 199 deaths, population a bit over 5 million. Sweden: 2,355 deaths, population a bit over 10 million. I'll let you carry out the division yourself.

Comparing to its geographical and cultural neighbors helps deal with differences in city structure, public health system, trust in government, population density, etc.

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#274

Post by vannevar »

ab_testing wrote: post #262
ceejayoz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are the doctors in the video saying untruths or misrepresenting data? Yes, they are. https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with... > But public health experts were quick to debunk the doctors’ findings as misguided and riddled with statistical errors — and an example of the kind of misleading information they are forced to waste precious time disputing. > The doctors should never have assumed that…

The point here is that youtube is not a harbinger of scientific truth. These doctors present their findings with their collected data to come to this conclusion that the according to them, this virus is not dangerous and the quarantine should end. Does Youtube also censor videos where plumbers present an incorrect way to install a toilet that can lead to backflow and flooding. The point to make here is that Youtube i…

Does Youtube also censor videos where plumbers present an incorrect way to install a toilet that can lead to backflow and flooding.

1) They probably would censor the plumber, if they received enough complaints about it, and 2) an incorrectly installed toilet doesn't have the potential to kill tens of thousands of people, whereas erroneous information about the danger of COVID-19 very well could. So they're not waiting for the complaints.

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#275

Post by willis936 »

walterbell wrote: post #271

We need to ask about the unprecedented censorship at this time: what is At Stake? Is Google planning a new healthcare division that is invested in specific viewpoints? For decades, the US has provided the average citizen with limited/no healthcare but freedom of speech and thought. In sudden weeks, this has been inverted. What is the prize hidden in the party cracker which justifies censorship of speech and thought w…

The prize of reducing the scenario where a tiny minority of people can legally cause the deaths of thousands of people if their fantasies are fed by the media they seek.

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#276

Post by brlewis »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #263
brlewis wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not get the chance to see the video before it was taken down, but I got the content of their arguments here: http://www.tathasta.com/2020/04/watch-er-doctors-urge-reopen... They use the same logic for Kern County, California, and New York. Their logic is, that if you test N people and find M positive cases, that in the population at large you'll have an infection rate of M/N. This would be true if the N tests w…

FYI the full video is available at the website of the news station that uploaded it to YouTube (where it was removed): https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...

Thanks. 51 minutes is too long for me to watch. Anybody who knows of anything in there that addresses the sampling bias issue, please point me to how far in it is.

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#277

Post by alexfromapex »

victorbstan wrote: post #266

The problem with with freedom to just post whatever by whoever, even if with credentials (perhaps more so) is that it can influence people in the wrong way, before it is criticized or debunked. Even so, there is ample evidence that plenty of people take any info that supports their point or worldview and stick with it and repeat it, even after it has been critiqued or shown to be wrong, etc. So I don’t think complete…

The Internet needs a novel way of establishing legitimacy since it’s much harder to verify things seen online. I don’t know the solution but it seems salient in today’s world where there’s so many fake news articles, etc. used to influence the public for the sake of private interests.

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#278

Post by TechBro8615 »

briefcomment wrote: post #167
gmfawcett wrote: post #47

This is lazy reporting. It's not wrong, but there's no insight here. No critical assessment of the claims made in the video nor the Youtube T&C, just a few clickbaity excerpts and some reaction comments. Compare with this excellent piece by the CBC on a somewhat similar viral video in Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/u-of-r-biology-p...

Can someone address the claim that death certificates coerce doctors to list COVID as the cause of death even if it hasn't been shown definitively to be the case? Is this a thing?

Given that the federal government is paying hospitals between $13,000 (covid patient) and $39,000 (patient on ventilator) for every Coronavirus patient [0], you can see how the incentives might cause hospitals to coerce doctors into listing COVID as cause of death.

[0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/21/facebook-p...

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#279

Post by nikolay »

balls187 wrote: post #234
nikolay wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these are "doctors", I don't want them to treat me! ER is a different kind of health care! ER doctors are not virologists or epidemiologists. So, to use their own example, you don't want a plumber to do your roof!

Apparently, they own a private Urgent Care center.

Yeah, and the clinic is in the remote Bakersfield, California, not yet affected by the epidemic [0] - many fail to notice that important fact!

[0]: https://kernpublichealth.com/covid-19_dashboard/

Re: YouTube removed a viral video of two doctors calling for an end to quarantine

#280

Post by walterbell »

willis936 wrote: post #275
walterbell wrote: post #271

We need to ask about the unprecedented censorship at this time: what is At Stake? Is Google planning a new healthcare division that is invested in specific viewpoints? For decades, the US has provided the average citizen with limited/no healthcare but freedom of speech and thought. In sudden weeks, this has been inverted. What is the prize hidden in the party cracker which justifies censorship of speech and thought w…

The prize of reducing the scenario where a tiny minority of people can legally cause the deaths of thousands of people if their fantasies are fed by the media they seek.

We have laws for murder. And for constitutional protection of speech.

It's even more ludicrous that the alleged crime is statistics. Meanwhile, Imperial College statistical models were proven wrong almost immediately by Oxford University, but they are still allowed to speak after triggering hasty decisions that affected millions of lives.

We are leaving unaccountable the people who literally yelled "Fire!!" to billions of people, but it's suddenly imperative to suppress speech that informs collective decisions that are complex, regional and contextual? What does Google have against learning?

It would take little effort to prepend a correction to the original video and/or publish a revised version. This is Hacker News: surprise, someone is wrong on the internet! They get corrected. It's better than being wrong offline and never being corrected.

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