Omicron Variant: Early Analysis

Wow that's amazing coverage and will be a great resource someday for seeing how the news and the policy happened over the course of today. Thus far. Excellent work.

From the article:

> I was almost finished with this post when the WHO decided to go with Omicron instead of Nu (or even Xi) and then I had to go through and replace Nu with Omicron about 25 times. We could have just said ‘the Nu variant’ a lot but the WHO hates both efficiency and fun even more than it hates freedom, it seems. Sad.

Funny how they skipped "Xi" Wimps.

Hey, only 8 variants left until we are done with this shit!

Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega

Right?!?!

I'm sure this person means well, and is very intelligent, but I stopped reading at the byline. I went and found what this person's expertise actually is.

    Zvi Mowshowitz is a former professional Magic: The Gathering 
    player who also held a developer intern position at Wizards
    of the Coast Magic R&D. He is known for having created 
    innovative and sometimes game-breaking decks TurboZvi and 
    My Fires.

Now, there is a balance between credentialism and amateurism. Amateurs can get a lot of things right. They can also get a lot of things wrong, and I at least don't have the meta-expertise to know which is which, especially when there's breaking news.

Do we need informed amateurs? Yes. But the crucial test is still whether they are accepted or promoted by the professionals. Zeynep Tufekci was vocalizing concerns that many professionals had, which is why her criticisms of health policy worked out.

In contrast, I have an extremely nerdy friend who has thinks it's her job to explain things to people, and thus writes deeply researched, well-footnoted blog posts about COVID, which are quite often wrong.

I for one can't tell what sort of person this is. But I also know that I'm not good at tagging facts with epistemic certainty. If I read a thing in a blog post it will probably stick, but I'll forget where I got that. So the simple solution it to not read it.

I think when it comes to writing explainers, it's 2021 and we have a wealth of resources and can wait for the professionals, including scientists who blog part time. I suggest that more people should be like me, and ignore the laypeople, indeed even most of the journalism, at least during the initial stages.