Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tribalism comes for pandemic science

thenewatlantis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 211 posts

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#31

Post by ryandvm »

Kiro wrote: post #21
salmon30salmon wrote: post #2

This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…

In Sweden it's the opposite: the right wants lockdown and the left opposes it.

Just goes to show you how insidious partisanship is. It's clearly not about liberty or policy principals, but rather whatever solution one party puts forward, the other has no choice but to oppose it.

One of my favorite pet daydreams is trying to figure out a way of abolishing political parties altogether...

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#32

Post by jerf »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #20
ColanR wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the root problem that needs to be addressed is that to a lot of people, scientists and the media appear to put politics before truth. The recent hydroxychloroquine is an obvious example [1]; The Lancet should never have published something with data so obviously questionable, and the media should not have picked it up so immediately as political ammunition. But the result is that the media appears to be…

> I think that the root problem that needs to be addressed is that to a lot of people, scientists and the media appear to put politics before truth. Fully agree here. I'm aware of Heterodox Academy trying to tackle this problem in the academic world--is there an analog solving for media bias?

At this point, the only thing I'm hoping for is basically total media collapse.

It's actually proceeding apace. By its very nature, being slick TV shows and edited textual content, it'll superficially look like everything's fine until the very end, but the layoffs continue to roll through, marginal outlets are closing, the viewership drops, the respect keeps finding new lows... it's still looking good and may even come sooner than you think.

This does not, on its own, solve the problem, but it makes the problem possible to solve.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#33

Post by marcell »

JPKab wrote: post #24

Question: Has anyone here changed their mind about COVID19 in a major way as the data has become more complete? Just wondering. I have sensed in myself tribalistic tendencies of not changing my mind when the data changes. I'm trying hard to look at myself and recognize it and experiment with different thoughts. I find myself bouncing between thinking we have overreacted to then thinking that my perception of an overr…

I was very worried about Covid-19 when the initial data and charts were coming out of China and Italy. It seemed like it was going to quickly overwhelm all the hospitals in America. Since then, I've become much less scared about the impact on me personally, and more skeptical about the need for most (not all) lockdown measures. This was based on my reading of antibody prevalence data, and data on death rates separated out by age and risk factors.

At this point, I think Sweden strategy makes the most sense. It is sustainable for many months, unlike more extreme lockdowns. Additionally, I think more strict lockdowns on older population makes sense. For 90%+ of the population, I think we can lift most/all lockdown measures today.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#35

Post by beervirus »

JPKab wrote: post #24

Question: Has anyone here changed their mind about COVID19 in a major way as the data has become more complete? Just wondering. I have sensed in myself tribalistic tendencies of not changing my mind when the data changes. I'm trying hard to look at myself and recognize it and experiment with different thoughts. I find myself bouncing between thinking we have overreacted to then thinking that my perception of an overr…

We flattened the curve for a little while. It's about to get unflattened.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#36

Post by jerf »

JPKab wrote: post #24

Question: Has anyone here changed their mind about COVID19 in a major way as the data has become more complete? Just wondering. I have sensed in myself tribalistic tendencies of not changing my mind when the data changes. I'm trying hard to look at myself and recognize it and experiment with different thoughts. I find myself bouncing between thinking we have overreacted to then thinking that my perception of an overr…

My opinion of its severity has dropped and continues to drop quite significantly. I bought a lot of supplies in late January because I saw videos coming out of China of people dropping in the streets and them welding entire buildings shut with people in them, stuff I'd never seen before.

I still don't fully know how to reconcile that with what happened. That is, more than just saying "oh, those videos were fake"... well, why? Who made them? Why were they made? I dunno. Even ignoring those it still looks an awful lot like China covered an awful lot of stuff up.

Regardless, whatever made it overseas didn't seem to do that. Evidence at this point seems to suggest a lot more people got it than we realized, without them even realizing it [1]. Any number of possible reasons. Unfortunately, between the tribalism, the outright coverups by the Chinese, and the "errors" if you are generous and "lies" if you are not in our own media, I don't expect to ever have a good grasp of what actually happened.

(Even so, purchasing supplies was the right move. Our local stores never really quite "ran out" of stuff for extended periods of time, but I was reasonably well prepared for what was certainly some supply chain disruption, and had a good practice run for some other real disaster in the future. Got a better idea of how to stock the food up in more effective ratios now.)

[1]: Possibly concerning, and I hope some follow-up study is done on this. Estimates of modern spread rates of disease based on COVID-19 could end up being really wrong if we underestimate how far it spread.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#37

Post by Johnjonjoan »

throwawaysea wrote: post #26

Not to sound alarmist, but recent events have felt like the early warning of a pending collapse of our country. When I saw healthcare workers and officials abandon logic, reason, and evidence to put their weight behind justifying recent mass protests, I really lost a lot of faith. These protests obviously will result in thousands more deaths (much larger in number than unjust police-involved deaths). This is no longe…

I agree the times are worrying. What's keeping me reassured is that the radical protest elements are very small with regard to our countries population's. There are far more people not expressing their opinion and it gives me hope that cool heads are silently prevailing.

Edit: typo

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#38

Post by im3w1l »

Kiro wrote: post #21
salmon30salmon wrote: post #2

This is so very disheartening. I will speak only for the United States, as I am not familiar enough with other countries to comment. Not only is this impacting nearly every single person in the country, it is ruining the financial situation of over 40m people, primarily concentrated within the most financially vulnerable. This is because leaders on the left and right have refused to respond to new data, and are worki…

In Sweden it's the opposite: the right wants lockdown and the left opposes it.

I don't think so. Everyone is in agreement over broad strokes of no-lockdown. Different parties just disagree on the details of how to execute that strategy. Some leftwing party: "Why did we have so many precariously employed temp-workers in retirement homes? Of course they will spread the disease the disease, and they don't care complain about health code violations". Some rightwing party: "Why was there insufficient national coordination? Of course districts can't do this on their own" Some other rightwing party "Person X handled this incompetently and should be fired".

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#39

Post by rayiner »

JPKab wrote: post #24

Question: Has anyone here changed their mind about COVID19 in a major way as the data has become more complete? Just wondering. I have sensed in myself tribalistic tendencies of not changing my mind when the data changes. I'm trying hard to look at myself and recognize it and experiment with different thoughts. I find myself bouncing between thinking we have overreacted to then thinking that my perception of an overr…

I was pro lockdown at the beginning. Now, I’m convinced that we could have gotten most of the benefits with a substantially less invasive approach, especially outside the mega cities.

Re: Tribalism comes for pandemic science

#40

Post by dekhn »

There are times I'm glad I left health science/biology/medicine as a field and it's interesting to watch people slowly realize just how badly structured the entire human health field is organized (from academic research to research hospitals to profit hospitals to world health organizations) and how all the incentives are messed up.

The closer you get in biology to human health, the more ego, tribalism, and assholery you have to deal with. Something about "saving lives" really brings out the intelligent jerks and the sharks.

As a contrast, I enjoy working in computing so much more. The experiments people run are replicable, the code compiles, and people (in general) are far less egotistical and arrogant (still plenty of sharks, though).

I've watched enough major paradigm shifts in my own fields to know that embracing humility, admitting your own ignorance, and being open to new ideas is key to the furtherment of science.

Post reply on HN