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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

61–70 of 968 posts

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#61
post #9

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

Of all the conspiracy theories out there, the 'caused by 5G masts' is the one that confuses me the most. I get the possible aversion to 5G, but how does one make the leap from that to it causing COVID?

5G comes from China; coronavirus comes from China.

REALLY JUST A COINCIDENCE!? /s

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#62
post #40
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just goes to show that people will continue to ignore an exponential trend until it eats their lunch personally . FWIW, totally aside from that, CDC numbers for the "flu" are actually a combined "flu and pneumonia", and according to the NHS in the UK-- which doesn't bin the same way-- no more than 1/3rds of those deaths are due to the flu. Other estimates have put the flu well under 10% of flu+pneumonia, though with…

I don't think people feared catching the virus at all. Exponential dynamics doesn't change anything in your response in that situation. I think every winter viruses have exponential dynamics as well, and they're not a big deal. You catch it, and you get over it.. Actually that's why most public communication for staying at home doesn't say "protect yourself", but rather emphasis on protecting "others" (aka : people v…

It's still making a large portion of the people who aren't dying extremely ill.

I think one of the biggest public health communication disasters of covid19 is the reliance on mortality as the communication endpoint.

It's acceptable for other threats-- like automotive accidents-- to speak in terms of mortality because there isn't a huge population which is much less exposed to dying but still exposed to serious illness. Automotive accidents also seriously injure many more people than they kill, but not in a way that lends itself to a false impression of immunity.

"Death" makes a nice clear warning for the risks of driving, and other very bad but not death outcomes are just some factor of the death outcomes... it isn't like the audience is comparing death rates to population numbers then deciding that the death from driving isn't worth worrying about just because we didn't also include maimed-for-life.

For covid19 we've ended up making many 20 and 30 year olds believe that it doesn't threaten them. It does. They may not be dying in especially large numbers-- especially where either hospitals are not overloaded or where they're engaging in the ethically dubious practice of triaging younger people ahead of others based purely on their age rather than, e.g. response to treatment--, but they are still becoming seriously and painfully ill and ending up with severe immune system damage -- which takes a long time will recover and will result in latent mortality --, and for many likely lifelong injury in the form of extensive lung scaring.

Infections like influenza are much less contagious-- with an R0 of 1.3 vs 2 to 3 (an enormous difference)--, less deadly, face a population which is at least somewhat resistant (in part due to heroic vaccination efforts) and which knows how to rapidly create new and effective vaccines against it. It's not really that comparable.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#63
I agree with the sentiment, however I think the apparent problems with Trump and politicians in general around this will not be that they got caught talking bullshit, it's that voters don't care because we've started supporting sides like they are football teams rather than being thoroughly critical of their actions. I'm not even sure a million people dying would lead to disorganised, slow and stupid government being at fault according to the people and in fact the higher the toll I'd guess the less likely accountability is to happen.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#64

Does pg never watch the news? Or did he just forget that "no worse than the flu" was the general tone until late February in pretty much all 'western' media and even MDs? E.g. https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronav... https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/the-fear-of-the-corona-vi... (kudos for correcting/updating later...) Seems a bit one-sided to get so excited about wrong predictions by the Fox/…

There's a difference between health writers writing in nuanced tones about the unknowns back in February (and sure, they got some things wrong, but they were going on the best information at the time), and talking heads on TV going on nothing but their own self-confidence and prior political beliefs telling people they'd be fine.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#65
What a ridiculous zeal.

Hardly anyone at this point is arguing that there actually is an issue. After all, flu is still a dangerous illness, esp. for certain groups of people, so even plainly calling this COVID thing "just a flu" is not equivalent to saying that it's not an issue. It's your framing of the phrase "just a flu", that makes it look like some kind of heresy or insult.

And, most importantly, why do you call out only journalists and politicians, while there are many perferctly credible people, - first of all, medical experts, - who keep saying, that the scale of panic is dumb? How about doing some reading and fact-checking before crying wolf?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#66
I've had this idea for some time already where if you post something news-like, you should attach a link to your sources, like "citation needed" for non-Wikipedia text. I know that sounds bland and like basic journalistic practice - but it is not, nor should be followed by professional/accredited journalists who of course need to be able to protect their sources and publish on their own site; it's intended for social media only. The idea is to get people used to look for a badge or some such at the bottom of a text that, when absent, immediately should ring a bell and put people on alert. Basically, it adds a "who said this" or cui bono dimension to every published text on aggregator sites unless it appears on a dedicated site.

Maybe we could have a competition for graphic artists and award a prize for the best icon or visual idiom for this?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#67
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is still actively downplaying the severity of the situation. Recently he's been signal boosting the idea that many more people are infected than we think and therefore the alarmism is unwarranted

So what exactly are you saying? 1) he is evil, 2) he is wrong? For 1), it's up to you to judge him based on your perceptions (I'd disagree), for 2) you'd need a little more than your gut feeling to call him wrong. Germany is testing extensively and resulting current estimates are around 1% mortality (WHO estimate: 3,4%).

He's wrong.

More people being asymptomatic is not a cause for reacting less strictly, which is the view being promoted. If more people are asymptomatic, that's great news, but it does not impact how severely you should lockdown society as the DDOS'ing of the health sector is still clearly a problem to avoid looking at france, spain and italy. It only means that you'll be able to end the lockdown sooner than expected

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#68
post #33
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've been saying "not more dangerous than the flu" before it started really going to shxt in europe, because to be honest, the epidemic doesn't look that dangerous if you're in general good health, just by looking at the numbers from a distance. The fact that most people seem to not have anything worse than a few days of fever (some having even nothing at all), while at the same time others simply die very quickly to…

The flu, even with vaccines, does not overwhelm medical personel, facilities and logistics as this does. And the total death toll, given the current dynamics, is already going way way worse than the flu.

Yes it does.

2018: Flu stomps the nation, overwhelming ERs and leaving 20 children dead: https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/12/health/flu-surveillance-cdc/i...

2013: Flu Outbreak Overwhelms Hospitals: https://fox8.com/news/flu-outbreak-overwhelms-area-hospitals...

2017: Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

I still have yet to hear from the medical and nursing schools about increasing the number of students for the future.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#69

Does pg never watch the news? Or did he just forget that "no worse than the flu" was the general tone until late February in pretty much all 'western' media and even MDs? E.g. https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronav... https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/the-fear-of-the-corona-vi... (kudos for correcting/updating later...) Seems a bit one-sided to get so excited about wrong predictions by the Fox/…

Not "western", but "American". Both your sources are US based (and cite the CDC).

The WHO has been warning about the coronavirus for ages.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#70

What a ridiculous zeal. Hardly anyone at this point is arguing that there actually is an issue. After all, flu is still a dangerous illness, esp. for certain groups of people, so even plainly calling this COVID thing "just a flu" is not equivalent to saying that it's not an issue. It's your framing of the phrase "just a flu", that makes it look like some kind of heresy or insult. And, most importantly, why do you cal…

"just the flu" to me implies that we can treat it like the flu, i.e. go about life as usual and stay home if we catch it. It seems beyond obvious at this point that that's not the case. (Hopefully soon there will be a vaccine and it will become the case.)
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