Coronavirus and Credibility

I already baked that in by starting with a low infection rate (2x per week instead of 2x every 3 days).

Sorry, this isn't fair at all and it suffers from the issue that is common in politics and political coverage, regardless of network: Taking everything out of context.

The video linked in that article is a tour-de-force of out of context snippets. Anyone could splice together a video just like that one with material from any TV news network or politician, from the tip of South America to the extremes of Siberia and everything in between.

In many ways, and sadly, PG reveals (perhaps proudly) his own bias on this front. This is very much a hit job on Fox News and the right. One can't claim intellectual superiority and do this at the same time. Sorry.

This isn't to say that Fox News isn't without fault. They are. Everyone is. NOBODY understood this well enough to say anything intelligent about it. NOBODY, from politicians to doctors and, yes, newscasters and celebrities.

What we can say is that nearly everything that was said or predicted during the early phases of this thing by almost everyone has now been proven wrong by this cruel virus and its behavior. That isn't an indication of nefarious intent. Ignorance? Yes. Malicious intent? I doubt it. Political battle? Yes, likely, sadly...because nobody really understood this thing was going to get ugly.

Faulting anyone, from Trump to local officials is, from my perspective, intellectually dishonest and counterproductive. This is where I have a problem with the media. I am sure the founders did not pen the first amendment with the intent of providing protection for extreme political alignment in the media. We have, somehow, allowed this to happen, and, what is worse, we have not come up with a way to curtail it.

Watching US coverage and press conferences is a display of just how politically aligned the media has become. Their focus is, 24/7, to attack the political party they are not aligned with. In order to accomplish this they are more than willing to take things out of context, distort reality, fabricate narratives and disseminate lies. As someone who works hard to remain as neutral as possible, a registered independent who has equal disdain for both major parties, this is truly revolting to watch. Sometimes I feel like a visitor from another planet watching from an orbiting spacecraft while the people below play stupid games to destroy each other rather than unite for the benefit of all. Unbelievable.

While I agree with most of the observations in this article I wish PG had taken the time to find real examples of ignorance without resorting to a left-wing hit piece on the right wing by using an array of out of context pieces cut together.

While I can't be on a spacecraft orbiting above the US, I can take a look at what our approach to COVID-19 looked from other parts of the world. For example, SkyNews Australia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdKLx5MhTpk

Dr. Oxiris Barbot, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health herself, was, for some incomprehensible reason, telling New Yorkers to just go out, gather, use subways and change nothing other than wash their hands and stay home if they were sick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2DetEolgOg

And, before someone says "you took that out of context" (I did not edit the video so...), here's a full press briefing where she goes into clear detail about "no need to do any special anything...":

https://youtu.be/NEhLOp7UGNM?t=1659

I mean, this is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health!!!!

I cued-up the video to her statement so you can see and hear it from the horses mouth and confirm what I present above. If interested, I urge you to rewind to the start and watch the entire press briefing. If you do, you'll hear a bunch of good things and a bunch of incomprehensibly bad things, among which are:

    - Just like the normal flu
    - We should relax
    - We don't think it's going to be as bad as it is in other places

We have been ahead of this from day one • Go about your lives • Go about your business • There has to be prolonged exposure • Just wash your hands • There is no need to do anything special anything in the community, we want New Yorkers to go about their daily lives, ride the subway, ride the bus, go see your neighbors • We have the equipment • It's not like we are dealing with something we haven't dealt with before • We have the ability to address this • We have the capacity to keep this contained • Like the normal flu

It's an s shaped curve, but we don't know the upper magnitude of that curve. A large percentage of the population would have to get infected in order to run the COVID out of new recruits. If it tops out at 50% of the population, that's a disaster.

Forcing the doubling rate to decrease short of hitting that point requires something else to happen. South Korea clearly did something other than running itself out of cannon fodder.

"Group captain, I'm afraid I can't follow your banter, sir"

"Bally Jerry...pranged his kite right in the how's yer father...hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie."

So far most data I've seen shows that people who were infected have some immunity. However, it's not clear yet what the annual effect of immunity will be - for example, we haven't sampled enough people/viruses to know in detail whether that immunity persists when the virus mutates.

Epidemiologists are likely to know the answers to these sorts of questions in a few years.