
Doctors are tweeting about coronavirus to make facts go viral - ericzawo
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doctors-are-tweeting-about-coronavirus-to-make-facts-go-viral-11589558880
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user_50123890
How about tweeting these,

1\. The virus mostly spreads through BREATHING/TALKING/COUGHING.

2\. 80% of infections come from FRIENDS/FAMILY. Stop going to meet them
unnecessarily and spending hours together indoors.

3\. Masks mostly don't help you, they help the people AROUND you.

I'd say the average person would be much better prepared against the virus
with these three facts.

~~~
cozzyd
Yeah, unfortunately point #3 makes people think they shouldn't wear masks.

I was joking to a friend that the correct "American" response to COVID-19 is
legal liability for getting others sick, but alas, that requires effective
contact tracing.

~~~
kenhwang
Even more American would be to fine/arrest people caught without a mask.

~~~
magicsmoke
That's the East Asian response. A law like that would probably get dragged
through the courts in America with the rest of the media circus before being
struck down as government overreach. As the original poster said, legal
liability between private individuals with lots of court fees is very
American.

~~~
maxerickson
There's lots of news about people getting manhandled by police because they
don't have a mask on.

Of course, in wealthier areas, there are stories about the police handing out
masks to people that aren't wearing them.

So I think we are handling it in a very US way.

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Alupis
How sad... I just realized my initial gut reaction to seeing any news headline
with the word "Fact" in it has become to assume it has a political angle.

More often than not, "Fact" is just a synonym for some political opinion.

How far have we fallen? Our news outlets are more often than not just Panic
Porn and Political Hit Jobs... anything except actual unvarnished, unspun,
unpoliticized raw news.

~~~
macintux
In fairness to the news media, it’s effectively mandatory to process the data,
the facts, for presentation, so everything is “spun” to some degree.

~~~
Alupis
Process and make more easily consumable? Sure, I don't have all day to catch
up on happenings and events.

But to selectively edit videos, leave out details deliberately, loaded word
choices ("blasts", "destroys", "slaps back"), deliberate misuse of words to
instill a sense of credibility ("fact", "expert", "scientist"), and so much
more?

That's more than just processing the data... that's deliberate manipulation.

In entertainment news media, Fact now means opinion, Expert now means
political shill, and Scientist means random person with an opinion.

~~~
wtvanhest
I often wonder how much entertainment news impacts politician’s decision
making. I have to assume that they consider what the major news entertainment
companies will say about bills they author and support or don’t. in some ways,
they are not just reporting, but likely influencing.

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dogmatism
Med twitter is a big thing. It's mostly doctors talking to doctors. It's
almost replacing conferences and journals, and the primary way info about
sars-cov-2 has been spread, and excellent for critical review of all the
preprints that have also gained "virality." Would be nice if it weren't on
twitter though. An old style forum would be much better, or even something
like reddit, though I suspect one day these people posting "tweetorials" will
regret putting all this info onto someone else's platform rather than blog
posts etc.

~~~
walterbell
Doctors created this platform for emergency medicine knowledge sharing,
[https://rebelem.com/about-us/](https://rebelem.com/about-us/)

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jdashg
It can't be done, because that's not how viral memes work.

Facts are boring and require nuance. Things go viral because they're
outrageous, surprising, or (my favorite) wrong enough that people make
responses, which in turn are wrong enough...et voila: Viral.

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
Then maybe we start them off with "now listen here you fucking idiots!"? The
response rate seems to go up when there's anger involved.

Unfortunately that's a lot of characters for twitter.

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neonate
[https://archive.md/AUyku](https://archive.md/AUyku)

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DevKoala
Doctors try to make facts publicly available. The Wall Street Journal puts
them behind a paywall.

~~~
nickff
> _Doctors try to make facts publicly available. The Wall Street Journal puts
> them behind a paywall._

Doctors try to get paid for their work. The Wall Street Journal (and its
contributors) try/tries to get paid for their work.

~~~
bachmeier
That's good and all, but this site is for people to discuss articles after
reading them. You don't need to link to the article if the discussion is about
the title.

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michaelborromeo
Facts by themselves aren’t political or have an agenda.

The decision to present certain facts, the other facts you compare those to,
and the manner in which they are presented, however, invokes agendas and
politics.

No matter how much people claim otherwise, doctors presenting facts have
agendas. This includes Dr Fauci.

~~~
WalterGR
Is trying to protect as many people as possible an agenda? How about wanting
to do one’s best in researching medicine? Or are agendas always sinister?

What’s your area of expertise? If someone asked you to give a talk about your
area of expertise, what are some agendas you would choose from?

Or are you making the point that no human is 100% emotionally detached from
their work?

~~~
michaelborromeo
If you ask Dr Fauci he’ll say let’s save as many lives as we can. Taken alone
no one can argue with that.

His agenda is to save lives. Obvious.

So he will make as strong a case as he can to support the measures to save
lives.

If you pay attention to him and only him it makes sense to lockdown until
there is a cure or vaccine.

Now tell me, does that make sense for every single person? From age 10 to 100,
rich, poor, healthy, sick, for several months or even a year+?

There are costs to Fauci’s agenda which he ignores because that’s not his job
but also it doesn’t make sense for him to talk about the costs.

You think of an agenda as a bad thing but it’s not it’s just the thing someone
wants to get done.

