Coronavirus and Credibility • Hacker News Board

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#941

Post by dmode » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 5:37 AM UTC

fourmyle wrote: post #896

dmode wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What travel ban ? 400k people traveled from China after the ban. Trump said as of 2 weeks back that everything will be open by Easter. Everyday he downplays the virus and peddle misinformation. How anyone can define a completely unhinged and unethical person, whose direct actions is resulting in thousands of deaths is beyond me

Obama didn’t replenish the stockpile of medical supplies used after H1N1 do you blame him too? How far are we going to be under projected death counts for Covid? A factor of 1000? Either what this administration did worked or it was a hoax you pick. You might want to look into mental help early in anticipation for Trump carrying 48 states in November. Maybe actually move to Canada this time?

We have already seen 13k deaths in 2 weeks, with unprecedented lockdowns. According to president genius we should have been at zero cases and shouldn't be shutting down the economy. If we treated this like a regular flu, I won't be surprised if we saw numbers at the high end of the projection. And lol, 48 states ? He won barely by 70k votes and lost by what 3mn in 2016 against the most hated candidate, with Russian help, and with FBI meddling 7 days before the election. Look how we lost what 400 seats in 2018. If indeed America elects this incompetent and malicious imbecile, who trades American lives based on which states have sucked up to him, thinks his ratings are more important than 1000s of people dying, then we truly are lost. But I will not be moving to Canada, but fighting everyday to keep our democracy which is threatened everyday by this man in office

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#942

Post by chimprich » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 8:59 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #936

chimprich wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Studies based on climate models that are overpredicting warming Models in general haven't overpredicted warming, as several people in this discussion have tried to educate you. > If your coastal city has a problem with sea level rising a couple of feet, your coastal city has already had a problem for a century or more, and you ignored it. I'm not at all clear what your point is here. It looks like you're arguing th…

> Models in general haven't overpredicted warming Yes, they have. We're obviously not going to agree on this point. > It looks like you're arguing that because something is changing over the course of several decades it's not as much as a problem. No, I'm arguing that the problem is not new, and it's not a climate problem. It's a problem of misgovernment and has been around for quite a while. But that doesn't stop ci…

> This is ludicrous. Nobody has the data to back this up, and there is plenty of data contradicting it.

The data on this are so clear I don't really know where to start if you don't believe it. I feel your opposition on this issue is ideological, and there's no data that will change your mind.

> If we're going to spend trillions of dollars on something, let's at least spend it on something that benefits everybody

Given I think there's no arguing data with you, I'll try some arguments that might be more in line with what I guess your beliefs are.

Switching from fossil fuels brings huge benefits. Solar, wind, hydro, small nuclear plants etc. are much better for society.

Energy security increases if energy is produced locally. Democracies have less pressure to prop up dictatorships. Smaller countries are less at risk of getting bullied by larger countries.

Decentralisation of energy production makes the world more stable, less fragile. Energy policy can be set locally rather than centrally. Regions, communities, even individuals, can decide for themselves how to source their power. You can do that with e.g. solar power, but you can't do that with huge gas- or oil-powered plants.

Renewables are actually getting more cost-effective to use than fossil fuels. Government subsidies, direct and indirect, are distorting the market. End government support for fossil fuels and let the market free. There are huge opportunities for private enterprise in switching society to use the better technologies.

Air pollution is a huge killer. A study I saw yesterday showed dramatic increases in death from COVID-19 where air pollution was worse. Even in normal times, life expectancy and health quality is adversely affected by air pollution.

A switch to electric transport improves air pollution massively. There are also technical advantages to electric vehicles, such as improved reliability.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#943

Post by neop1x » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

_wwz4 wrote: post #548

Do people appreciate that denial of the severity of this virus came from all political quarters? Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne c…

Here is a video of horrendous New York situation with "overrun" Queens hospital https://video.fprg2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/l/t42.9040-2/92262469_...

Here a similar one from Begamo, Italy https://youtu.be/lcK2mzuO6MU

And now, where is the truth? I would like not to be infected. I try to avoid being infected by flu as well. But maybe we really are overreacting. We don't have immune system trained for this - that is problematic. Elderly people and people with health conditions should be isolated. But that's probably it. Once the population has enough people with trained immune system, it will be "like a flu" or won't it? Who to trust?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#944

Post by classified » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

> ...to talk confidently about things they don't understand.

Oh, the irony!

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#945

Post by acqq » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #935

acqq wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but based on prior coronaviruses not something that would significantly impact the West. If we talk about a lot of media, they simply had the priority of making Chinese look bad in any possible way, including blaming them for "misinterpreting numbers" and ridiculing them for implementing lockdowns or wearing masks. Which just shows how stupid some global agendas are. Media don't do that in vaccuum, but they are the…

If we talk about a lot of media, they simply had the priority of making Chinese look bad in any possible way, including blaming them for "misinterpreting numbers" and ridiculing them for implementing lockdowns or wearing masks. Amazing how apparently all of the media around the world was united in a conspiracy to make China look bad, especially when much of the reporting was commenting on how much worse the situation…

> all of the media around the world was united in a conspiracy to make China look bad

It's like 'memes': very little journalists today do their own research. I can see that whatever Trump says today then follows the "echo" of "media around world" (those that have U.S. sources) that last weeks.

It's a total disaster of false information, and a lot could be traced directly to Trump or the U.S. in general (there are other "sources" that are establishment but produce falsehoods, it's not that he's alone).

But enough people remain confused believing it is true, including people very close to me.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#946

Post by mellosouls » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #891

mellosouls wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, these people have no credibility with me already - but your confidence in hindsight as to the obviousness of the current predicament in late Feb/early March is not one I share.

It was clear to me around February 20-22nd or so that we had a significant chance of a Wuhan-like situation. I put my money where my mouth was by going to the store and buying (a single but large container of) hand sanitizer and non-perishable food at that time (I didn’t hoard, but did buy ahead of time... before everyone else, thus giving the logistics system time to restock for everyone else). It’s not mere hindsig…

Good for you - but it wasn't to me, and I'm not daft; neither was it clear to the leaders of most countries (going by their actions), and I'm sure many other people - including those criticised in the original blog post.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#947

Post by jshevek » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

gbpz wrote: post #826

robomartin wrote: post #484

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 e…

Thanks for the sanity. This site is slowly devolving into reddit with out of context political videos that, while they certainly carry merit, lack a holistic view of the time period and the media opinion of the time.

One way to push back is flagging, when appropriate. I have started flagging no-content comments (such as the pun threads) which I believe indirectly encourages this culture. The site mods are fairly responsive.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#948

Post by codeproject » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

We, science-oriented people, should be doing something about it. We have the power and resources. Politicians are only part of the problem. The ignorant voters is the major issue here. There was the weapon of mass destruction propaganda which precedes the Iraq war. Now powerful but ignorant people failed to stop the coronavirus even though there were stark examples from china. And we have even a greater challenge ahead, which we can’t afford to fail again. There are 220,000 people working for the video industry which has an annual income of 25 billion dollars. How many people are employed to educate people about the big issue ahead like protection of habitat? Back in the early 2010s, I did a project which is trying to interest people In keeping track of politician statements and assign scores to their credibility. Unfortunately, I can’t find anyone to invest in such a project. I just knew back then if we don’t change the status quo, the media would lose credibility. Unfortunately, I was proven right. The “ fake news “ becomes the big news back at the 2016 election. I am still paying the big daddy to keep the website registered so that I can brag a little.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#949

Post by seppin » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

axguscbklp wrote: post #926

seppin wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is a lunatic, literally. Obama was a smart, measured person people didn't like. There's a difference.

Obama killed civilians overseas and presided over massive NSA surveillance of US citizens. Trump also kills civilians overseas and presides over massive NSA surveillance of US citizens, but that doesn't make it any better that Obama did it.

"Obama carried out the duties of being President" - yes he did, one of those duties is killing people. You'd have to go out of your way, almost to the point of ignoring and not acting on threats, to not kill anyone as POTUS.

Nice straw man, the above has nothing to do with my statement.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#950

Post by gpderetta » Thu, Apr 09, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

krn320 wrote: post #929

gpderetta wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. In Italy it has already killed twice as many people as a normal influenza season.

Looking at this shows completely different story: https://www.euromomo.eu/ January 2017 was much worse overall in Europe, it's not even comparable.

That's interesting, it shows how misleading an average can be (the average 8000 dead for the flu that I quoted).

Still, if you focus on Italy, which is the most ahead in Europe, by March 28th (the time that report was updated), the number of deaths was already matching the 2017 peak (and in about 2/3 of the time). Since then the death count went up 70%.

edit: also note the caution about the uncertainty due to delayed registration.