Coronavirus and Credibility • Hacker News Board

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#791

Post by takeda » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:13 AM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #113

jordanpg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that at least US governments have done a poor job explaining the motivation behind the drastic precautionary orders. For a brief period, there was much talk of "flattening the curve" but I doubt that many people understand how that gets us to "deliberately wreck the economy." This is what people who say it's just flu++ are missing, and I am trying to be sympathetic to their lack of knowledge of exponential ma…

> We are doing this because there are O(10^6) preventable deaths That doesn't appear to be true. Almost everybody who goes on a ventilator dies. Corona virus will infect as many people as any other flu or cold. So it's a valid question - why do we still have a lockdown?

Flu doesn't spread as well, because large number of people take a vaccine.

The reason for lockdown is to slow things down, so we don't get to the point where doctors have to decide who to help or who not. Also a lot of people can't connect in their mind that when hospitals are full, it also affects people who didn't even get the virus.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#792

Post by est » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:15 AM UTC

e2021 wrote: post #374

the_af wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO was lying? How so?

WHO was saying almost until the point that China locked down that there was no evidence of human to human transmission, even though Taiwan has warned them that had strong evidence of this on December 31st 2019.

hypothetically WHO announced H2H transmission back in Dec, China enters lockdown in Dec, would this change any outcome?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#793

Post by augustt » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #741

AmericanChopper wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could show this comment to anybody from either of the general left/right tribes, and they’d think it was true. Whether you’d use this reasoning to deride Fox News, or CNN (or pretty much any other ‘news’ organisation), would boil down entirely to your tribal affiliation. When I was younger, having “critical thinker” or “anti-establishment” views would generally lead to the conclusion that politicians and mass-med…

The downvotes on your post demonstrate the left-leaning nature of this site. It's discouraging frankly. The thousands of conversations that occur daily on this site, without emotion or incident; but insult "the other side"'s politicians or news outlets as being biased? Downvote hell Yes, CNN and the like are just as bad as Fox news. The sooner you folks recognize that, the sooner we can have decent conversations abou…

The "both sides bad" mantra is really just lazy. The false equivalence between the validity of whatever DJT says and what critics say have let even basic decency be thrown out the window, let alone facts.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#794

Post by est » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #709

I feel like, rather than coming together, people are just backing into their partisan corners again. This is really not a partisan thing. It looks like California and Texas are making better choices than NY or Florida. Trump was too slow to act on testing, but was criticized for acting too quickly with the travel bans. The most credible and forward-thinking leaders on pandemics include George W Bush[1] and Arnold Sch…

> especially when China was hiding so much information

Or the media rarely report any information because it's Chinese? Search for covid-19 papers published in Jan, Feb most of them were from China. Some of the data directly contradicts with Chinese CDC numbers.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#795

Post by xenyal » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #774

xenyal wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, China was thought to have covered it up because the whistleblower originally sent a message[1] to a WeChat group of his, telling group members that 7 people from the wet markets had been diagnosed with SARS. The government had no idea what it was and I'm sure nobody in the world knew what it was at the time, hence how it's a novel virus. [1]: https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_jpg/jvumSxUR3OrjfcgXFibaich6y6Z6...

You're leaving out a lot of details and what a spin that was. The Chinese government was informed and chose to cover it up. https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coro... https://nypost.com/2020/02/29/china-officials-knew-of-corona... https://www.vox.com/2020/2/10/21124881/coronavirus-outbreak-... https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/08/8037667...

Thanks for the links. It seems that the response went along the following timeline according to my understanding:

  1. Dec. 30 - Doctors from the first few cases have analyzed the samples and discover how similar the new virus is to SARS. Officials tell them not to spread information to the public about the virus.

  2. Dec. 31 - China tells WHO about new virus (not that they know much at this point)

  3. Jan. 1 - Provincial health committee orders provincial labs to destroy samples, samples are transported to larger state facility to do testing there. The reason for this is due to the samples being considered "highly pathogenic microorganisms", and that only approved facilities should test it. (I'm guessing due to the risk of acting on the sample and contracting it?)

  4. Jan. 2nd - State approved facilities map the genetic sequence but an official national statement doesn't get made until a week later, Jan. 9th.

So from lab work, until international statement, that's two weeks. During that time, wouldn't it make sense for the doctors and researchers to keep their results hidden until it can be verified lest they risk causing unwarranted panic? Considering how carriers of COVID19 can be asymptomatic [1], it does take time for verification to be done on whatever discovery a nation makes on the world stage. In hindsight, it's easy to say that they should have jumped the gun and done exactly that on whatever communications platform were available to them. However, had COVID-19 turn out to be a minor disease, that'd mark the end of all their careers.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/health/coronavirus-asymptomat...

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#796

Post by nl » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #774

xenyal wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, China was thought to have covered it up because the whistleblower originally sent a message[1] to a WeChat group of his, telling group members that 7 people from the wet markets had been diagnosed with SARS. The government had no idea what it was and I'm sure nobody in the world knew what it was at the time, hence how it's a novel virus. [1]: https://mmbiz.qpic.cn/mmbiz_jpg/jvumSxUR3OrjfcgXFibaich6y6Z6...

You're leaving out a lot of details and what a spin that was. The Chinese government was informed and chose to cover it up. https://www.axios.com/timeline-the-early-days-of-chinas-coro... https://nypost.com/2020/02/29/china-officials-knew-of-corona... https://www.vox.com/2020/2/10/21124881/coronavirus-outbreak-... https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/08/8037667...

I think that shows exactly that China didn't realize how bad this was. For example, from the NPR link:

Jan 18: Wuhan hosts a holiday banquet for 40,000 attendees, despite reports of a contagious viral pneumonia.

We've seen similar things in so many countries - people don't understand how bad it is until lots of people start dying. China put 21 million people on lock-down when there were only 619 confirmed cases - compare that to elsewhere.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#797

Post by smichel17 » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

runeks wrote: post #402

throwaway5752 wrote: post #208

In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players . There is also zero introspection - the people who were wrong about covid-19 are simply denying they said what they said. The truly scary part is they are getting away with it in real time, and changing a large populations' memory of contemporary events. I realize it's hard to remember f…

> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players. No, global warming has a very different dynamic. With a virus, if you do the right thing and protect yourself, you’re more likely to survive. With global warming, if you get a lot of people to emit less CO2, you might just end up making CO2 emissions cheaper for everyone else.

If I do the right thing and protect myself, I reduce strain on hospitals, allowing the careless to receive better care. But enough people being careless will overload the healthcare system all the same, reducing its ability to serve me.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#798

Post by jshevek » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #788

jshevek wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ideologically opposed to political conservativism, but I sympathize with you. Regarding ideological bias, CNN is worse than Fox, but in left leaning communities Fox is demonized while CNN gets a pass. Hivemind mentalities are frustrating regardless of which group engages in it.

> Regarding ideological bias, CNN is worse than Fox, No, it's not, though it's pretty bad. > in left leaning communities Fox is demonized while CNN gets a pass. No, CNN’s (and most of the institutional media that isn't hard right) center-right pro-corporate bias is nearly as frequently pointed to by left-leaning folks as Fox’s hard-right bias. You may be confusing the pro-corporate center-right wing of the Democratic…

CNN'S pro-corporate bias barely scratches the surface of CNN's hostility to journalistic integrity.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#799

Post by jshevek » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #326

AndrewBissell wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalency being drawn by the parent may be wrong, but mainstream sources outside Fox News absolutely downplayed the seriousness of the virus and helped push the "it's not a big deal" perception that we are all now rowing against.

but mainstream sources outside Fox News absolutely downplayed the seriousness of the virus and helped push the "it's not a big deal" perception that we are all now rowing against. Yet many, including right here on HN, were claiming exactly the opposite: That they were fear mongering, inciting panic, etc. It can't be both. Here's the NYT from February 2nd - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/health/coronavirus-pandem.…

Of course it could be both, at different points in time.

Edit: as well as different people within the organization.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#800

Post by alpha_squared » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #749

javagram wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tom Cotton was one of the people who were on this and warning of it early. So was Steve Bannon. There are others. Just because someone has an R by their name doesn’t mean they’re a homogeneous blob. I think that’s great, I don’t agree with all their politics but they didn’t let themselves be blinded by optimism and looked at what was actually going on here. And the theory that the virus may have accidentally escaped…

"The political quarter that was in denial was mainly the POTUS and those who simply follow whatever the POTUS is doing without independent thought" How did you come to that conclusion? What about the Democrats in New York, which is the epicenter of the virus outbreak right now (certainly the US and probably the world)? I remember hearing someone on TV (probably DeBlasio or Cuomo) saying that public schools were not g…

> ...someone on TV (probably DeBlasio or Cuomo) saying that public schools were not going to close.

This was specifically because many of those students would go hungry since they rely on food programs at school. Without those programs, many students have little to eat at home. It's a little disingenuous to represent it in another light. If anything, it highlights yet another weakness in our society.