Live data from Hacker News

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

theblaze.com

281–290 of 714 posts

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you watch the video or are you just basing this on out of context quotes? What you're quoting was a brief anecdote about what those doctors were seeing on the ground. Their extrapolations are based on state-level aggregates in New York and California. Sample sizes of 300-650K patients.

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…

> I did not get the chance to see the video before it was taken down

I suppose that’s the real problem, in so many words...

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

#282
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone is denying or minimizing a VERY REAL and VERY SERIOUS global pandemic Look, most people on HNews agree with you, myself included. That stupid speech and stupid acts are costing very real lives. But the whole point of this thread is that protected speech does cost lives as well. That we should be debating, identifying and responding to bad/poor speech. It should not be simply removed. > YouTube had a soci…

> Put a banner up. Identify it with Mr Yuck sticker. I would consider this a form of censorship as well, and I would absolutely support it. > That we should be debating, identifying and responding to bad/poor speech. It should not be simply removed. I suppose I could agree in this particular circumstance that YouTube having some sort of banner over this content would suffice, I think it's the same thing as just remov…

Here's a noted first amendment expert explaining why "fire in a crowded theater" is a very bad example to cite:

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That article makes inaccurate statements like, "basically hyped a bunch of data and weren’t transparent about their methods" which is not true. There were 100% transparent about where there information was from and how they were presenting it. I can vouch for their transparency. The speed with which I was able to see that their statistical methods were totally wrong was almost entirely due to their transparency. Th…

Did you watch the video or are you just basing this on out of context quotes? What you're quoting was a brief anecdote about what those doctors were seeing on the ground. Their extrapolations are based on state-level aggregates in New York and California. Sample sizes of 300-650K patients.

I did watch the video and I can safely say that these doctors make massive and very convenient statistic mistakes throughout.

Sample size doesn't help if the sampling method is biased. Even if tests were available to everyone regardless of symptoms, you would still have a selection bias that would skew the numbers. The only way to accurately estimate overall infection rates in the general population is to test a random sampling.

Then there is the "comparison" of Sweden (no lock down) and Norway/California. They mention the death counts and population of these countries in another attempt to show that the "number of cases is high and the number of deaths is small regardless of lockdown" but completely gloss over the fact that Sweden has more that 5x the covid deaths per capita that Norway and California have.

Regardless of if this video should be censored, these guys are awful scientists.

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

#284

Blaze media is an overtly ideological outlet. In my experience when any such outlet (regardless of the particular persuasion) makes a headline out of a 'viral' video or social media post, it's as part of a structured social media campaign: put the media up, drive some traffic to it, run a story about how it's 'going viral' leveraging people's preference for social proof, and so on. With anything where there's signifi…

Here is a link to the news site which originally uploaded the press conference to YouTube, along with a statement from YouTube, and re-hosted version of the video:

https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...

Hopefully this solves your problem with the “overtly ideological outlet.”

(Edit: originally had copy pasted wrong link)

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont get this mindset. They aren't stopping them voicing their opinions or views... they're just stopping them posting it on THEIR service. Newspapers do that all the time, TV and Radio does it all the time. Why is this different?

> Newspapers do that all the time, TV and Radio does it all the time. And that's why newspapers are classified as publishers and therefore are able to be sued. "Platforms" like YouTube are can't be sued because they are supposed to act like platforms - which they are not. Right now YouTube is acting like publishers while using the advantage of being called a platform. This is the Communications Decency Act section 23…

Pretty sure you can't successfully sue a newspaper for printing an interview where misleading facts are promulgated either. They may dispute those facts or choose not to publish the interview, but if the newspaper prints the interview as is, you can't win a lawsuit over the interviewee having the data wrong. Likewise, a newspaper's editorial page is free to post incorrect opinions, or not, according to their editorial discretion. Are there any instances you're aware of where newspapers were successfully sued for incorrect reporting, except in the case of slander?

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

#286

What do you expect out of a woke monopoly? If there were an alternative that valued free-speech I’d ditch YouTube.

I’ve seen people in conservative forums using BitChute. I’m not super familiar with it, but it’s somehow peer to peer. Streamable also seems to be popular.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Thanks

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

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can make a pretty good estimate of COVID deaths by comparing against past years. There's a clear, large spike - NYC's death rate is six times the average for this time of year. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/27/upshot/corona... Giving that we're still low on tests, if someone dies before a test of COVID-like symptoms, it makes sense to co…

This is interesting. I'm a little confused though. Life expectancy has been on a consistent decline for the last few years, particularly in the US. On top of the declining life expectancy, there should presumably be more people dying as a result of a growing population. In the graphs, they show multiple years. Why do weekly deaths from the last several years, broken out by year, basically look the same?

It's gone from 78.8 to 78.5 for males over the last few years, most people think due primarily to the opioid epidemic. And the population of NYC is barely growing, maybe a percent or two a year. These factors you mention aren't even in the same neighborhood as being large enough to explain the data you're reacting to.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNLE00INUSA

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

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just not do the censorship in the first place and give people the freedom to make their own personal judgments whenever they’re presented with conflicting perspectives. You’re assuming that some global institution has to be The Arbiter Of Truth because common people are too stupid to think for themselves and I find that assumption disgusting.

> Or you could just not do the censorship in the first place and give people the freedom to make their own personal judgments whenever they’re presented with conflicting perspectives. > You’re assuming that some global institution has to be The Arbiter Of Truth because common people are too stupid to think for themselves and I find that assumption disgusting. The market is the sharpest vote the people may give for co…

If Google is liable, then HN will be liable for comments, and any website with user submitted content will die except Google, which has the money to fight lawsuits.

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

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand what's wrong with the data they presented. They took stats from a massively self-selecting population - people seeking out COVID-19 testing at their facilities - and extrapolated to the general public. That's inexcusably dumb. As the bit I quoted states, that's like "estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court".

Did you watch the video? That is not what they did. What you're describing is a brief anecdote they shared about what they were seeing on the ground. Their statistics are based on state level aggregates for New York and California.

It isn't exactly what they did but it is fairly close. They consistently incorrectly extrapolate the covid positive test rate from a biased sample (biased by both the testing guidelines and self-selection) to the general population, not just for their county, but also for California, New York, the United States, Italy, Sweden and Norway.

They then use this to massively misrepresent the lethality of Covid 19.

Post reply on HN