
Coronavirus and Credibility - Rerarom
http://paulgraham.com/cred.html
======
crusso
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](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 contagious.

Bad judgement is a human failing that cuts across party lines. To think that
this is a long-term credibility problem for only some people shows a lack of a
healthy diversity of news sources. At the end of this, everyone will go back
to their teams' dugouts and prepare for the next political battle. Nothing
will have been learned about credibility.

~~~
javagram
It did come from all political quarters, however one political quarter stayed
in denial much longer. Notice how many of the clips from your video are from
January or early February.

The POTUS was still publicly pushing the coronavirus = flu comparison in early
March even after we saw what happened in Iran and Italy. Remember, he said on
February 28 that being worried about the coronavirus was “their new hoax” from
the media and his political opponents, so he himself recognized his political
opponents were pointing out the severity by late February.

Edit: i don’t want to get too deep in the politics with this, I do agree with
your ultimate point that most won’t learn from this and will simply return to
their team’s side regardless of who got this one more right.

~~~
crusso
_however one political quarter stayed in denial much longer_

Now you're splitting hairs. You know who the first politician in the USA who
was banging the drums in alarm about Wuhan and the coronavirus? Tom Cotton.
Republican Senator. Do you support him now? Does his early conviction of the
severity of this event put you behind him and everyone who echoed his
concerns? Are you likewise now opposed to the people who were ridiculing him
as a conspiracy theorist and fear-monger?

~~~
jsnk
I'm glad you brought Tom Cotton up here. He was one of the few individuals who
was able to ask the right questions at the right time. And yet, when he did
that, all kinds of mainstream media including WaPo came out saying he was
repeating a "coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked".
[https://archive.vn/TG8zN#selection-999.29-999.84](https://archive.vn/TG8zN#selection-999.29-999.84)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-
tom-cotton-china.html) [https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-conspiracy-
theories/](https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories/)
[https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/483354-sen-cotton-
repeat...](https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/483354-sen-cotton-repeats-
coronavirus-origins-conspiracy-theory) [https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2020/02/republican-senat...](https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2020/02/republican-senator-tom-cotton-regurgitating-coronavirus-
conspiracy-theories.html) [https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/18/politics/tom-cotton-
coronavir...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/18/politics/tom-cotton-
coronavirus/index.html) [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tom-cotton-
coronavirus-china_...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tom-cotton-coronavirus-
china_n_5e34a3b7c5b6f26233294378) [https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/baseless-
conspiracy-theori...](https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/baseless-conspiracy-
theories-claim-new-coronavirus-was-bioengineered/)

Now WaPo seems to be admitting that we should at least consider the
possibility that the virus may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of
Virology.
[https://archive.vn/UP6dx#selection-1801.148-1801.176](https://archive.vn/UP6dx#selection-1801.148-1801.176)

~~~
csense
Some HN readers who seem to be knowledgeable about genetics were discussing
the spread 73 days ago [1]. If you don't want to read the whole thread, I'll
also link to a couple specific sub-threads [2] [3].

However, I will note that a colleague of mine saw the virology institute's
location change on Google Maps around this time. Free software legend Eric S
Raymond mentioned this on his blog as well [4].

I'm pretty sure the Google Maps thing is a sign that the Chinese leadership
heard these bioweapon rumors, and figured the best way to combat them was to
require Google to lie about the institute's reported location.

There are plenty of ridiculous rumors on the Internet, why would the Chinese
government react so strongly to this particular one?

It could be because the Chinese leadership has something they're trying to
hide. But in China things are often censored all over the place with little
rhyme or reason as well. "We know this rumor's false and ridiculous, any
serious scientist knows it came from some country bumpkin eating an improperly
cooked bat, but this rumor could potentially be destabilizing, so let's force
Google to tell this lie for us" is certainly a way the Chinese government
might think.

Is it created in a lab?

The Google maps thing is pretty weak evidence. It could be explained by the
"oh crap people are catching on, we'd better make Google help with the
coverup" hypothesis, but it's equally well explained by the "we know it's
false, but we'll censor things willy-nilly because we're China and that's what
we do" hypothesis.

I don't know enough about mol bio to really understand the genetic sequences.

To summarize: The evidence seems to be inconclusive, but certainly consistent
with the possibility the virus is a Chinese bio-weapon. "Coronavirus is a
Chinese bio-weapon that somehow accidentally escaped" is a possibly true
hypothesis. There's not nearly enough evidence to say for sure. But it's a
reasonable possibility, not tin-foil hat territory.

Suggesting it was let out _on purpose_ probably _does_ get pretty close to
tin-foil hat territory; it seems hard to figure out a sane and reasonable
motive for unleashing this on the world, without also requiring some much
bigger, more complex conspiracy (which greatly weakens the prior probability
of the hypothesis).

If it _is_ lab-created, it probably escaped by a mistake, or someone not
following the rules (e.g. the janitor who's supposed to burn the dead infected
research bats sold them to a market instead to make an extra buck).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22146446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22146446)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22147320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22147320)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22147369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22147369)

[4] [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8587](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8587)

~~~
op03
> Why would the Chinese govt react so strongly

They react to all kinds of irrelevant bullshit strongly all the time. It's a
gigantic unimaginative bureaucracy. It could very well be some peon 18 levels
down doing something done 200 times prior, in response to some news article
some other peon has classified as western propaganda.

Are they going to come out and admit that?

------
INGELRII
> They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions.

Is there any danger for them? PG seems to have very idealistic view of
politics.

As far as I know, any amount of fact checking in politics don't change
political views.

Will Fox News lose any viewers over this? Politicians may lose jobs because
bad economy, but will they lose votes because they were wrong and ignorant?

H. L. Mencken wrote:

> No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for
> years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating
> the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone
> ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the
> other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and
> even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas
> in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

I think there is great Mencken experiment going on. Always underestimate
public and see how far you can go.

~~~
basch
>any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views.

That is what I was thinking.

Paul is writing as if credibility stems from reality. When in reality, the
reverse its true. Fox news is credible, its viewers believe that, and whatever
those credible people say, is reality. As long as people keep tuned in only to
Fox News, that reality wont shatter. Their credibility exists because of their
reach, its strength in numbers, its entertainment factor. Calling Fox News
news and not entertainment is quite a leap. Most of what they have to say
exists to keep people hooked, not to educate them into being more capable of
performing civic duties. Fox News wants people to vote in a way that benefits
Fox News, not the voter, and the same principal applies to all their coverage
of everything. Coronavirus skeptic was a contrarian position to take, it
divided their people from other people. Now that they are divided, they can
switch sides and still maintain the artificial divide, and keep their viewers
isolated from "alternate" realities.

This was a really good article by Kara Swisher of ReCode, who at the end
finally convinces her mom to heed medical warnings about being out and about,
cant convince her to turn off Fox.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/opinion/coronavirus-
fox-n...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/opinion/coronavirus-fox-
news.html)

They can flip a 180 overnight, and the viewers will see it as people with
"updated information" and continue to cheer them on.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-stars-sean-hannity-
an...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-stars-sean-hannity-and-jesse-
watters-now-pretend-they-never-said-what-they-said-about-the-coronavirus)

There is the sad irony too, that the demographic who watches Fox news is
already the most likely to be at risk (age, faith over evidence, distrusting
of established medicine and government) denial not withstanding. Add denial to
the mix, and youve got a real bad stew.

~~~
ryandrake
This is a deliberately built political philosophy, one of the results of Karl
Rove's "reality-based community" [1] idea, from over 15 years ago. Whether or
not the label was actually coined by Rove is debated, but essentially this
idea is that some people lived in a world that was "reality-based" and that
others were not limited by reality and thus were better/stronger politicians.
In practice, what this means is the Bush administration did not have to
believe in and be bound by this thing called reality, they _created reality_
when they acted.

President Trump is just continuing this idea through today. Unlike GWB and
cronies, Trump and team don't even have to act to "create reality", they
merely talk and reality instantly changes for their followers. It's a powerful
tool and like him or hate him, his administration is using it skillfully.

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-
certainty-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-
and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html)

~~~
AzzieElbab
to an outsider, americas left vs right hostility and mutual disrespect are
becoming painful to watch. lets make a counter example to they one you
provided, does the nyt "create reality" for their readers? they did publish
their fare share of dangerously incorrect material about the virus, pandemic,
the countermeasures,you name it.

~~~
nabla9
This is false equivalency.

When you have to seek to find bad examples from other side, and it's the every
day modus operandi the other side there is no comparison.

~~~
AmericanChopper
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-media tend to lie/mislead to promote
whatever their agenda is. Now, those same views seem to lead to the conclusion
that “the politicians and mass-media of the other side tend to lie/mislead to
promote their agenda, but the politicians and mass-media of my side are
generally pretty good”. I think that’s pretty sad. But perhaps I’m wrong,
perhaps things have always been this way, and my perspective has simply
changed. That said, I don’t remember any counter-culture icons coming out to
endorse career politicians who’d accepted millions of dollars from big
business interests when I was a kid.

~~~
RonanTheGrey
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 about emotional
issues. _Both sides are bad_. Neither is better. No, they aren't. Stop it.
Blame them BOTH for getting us to this point so that we can leave them in the
dark past, and we all over here can talk like adults while they sit over there
and bicker, mutually accusing each other of racism and Nazism or whatever
today's 5 minute hate happens to be.

WE DO NOT NEED THEM! Either of them! There is a whole universe of conversation
that is not occurring because BOTH SIDES are refusing to engage in it, because
if you did, you would realize -- tada -- you don't need them. And they can't
have that. Viewership and income would drop.

Neither is incentivized with your best interest. And the sooner we
collectively start to see it the better.

~~~
augustt
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.

~~~
AmericanChopper
You must have a reasonably short memory, because people said exactly the same
sort of sensational things about Obama, and Bush Jr, and Clinton, and Bush Sr,
and Reagan... There’s not really any truth or insight in what you just said.
It’s simply an impassioned judgement about a politician you don’t
like/disagree with/don’t trust/whatever...

The truth is that most politicians are corrupt on some level, most politicians
are unduly influenced by lobbyists, few politicians truly care about their
constituents, mass media doesn’t care about the truth, even though some of
their employees might, they just care about revenue, for any political
perspective you can think of, you’ll find a media outlet willing to pander to
it.

I don’t think any of that is particularly controversial (or even insightful
for that matter). I’d wager that most people would agree with that sentiment
on some level. But they’ll tend to lose sight of reason when you suggest that
“yes, that includes the politicians you like, and the media outlets that share
your opinions”.

Any public figure of any significance is going to attract a tribe of
impassioned haters. They tend to have no greater connection with the truth
than that same persons tribe of fervent fans will.

~~~
MaysonL
But DJT lies a lot more than any of his predecessors, and hires a lot more
incompetents, and fires a lot more competents, than any of his predecessors.

~~~
AmericanChopper
You must have a reasonably short memory, because people said exactly the same
sort of sensational things about Obama, and Bush Jr, and Clinton, and Bush Sr,
and Reagan...

~~~
MaysonL
But when (if) they said those things about Obama, the Bushes, Clinton, and
Reagan, those were lies like Trump's.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Perhaps what you’re saying right now is a lie.

In general, I’m quite fond of being incredibly sceptical of the government and
all of its agents. They should be scrutinized thoroughly. But this isn’t
honest or productive scrutiny. The truth is all of those politicians lied, and
all of them exaggerated details, and misrepresented facts (though trying to
measure how much would be reasonably subjective). They also all did good work
(again open to some subjective interpretation). But your commentary boils down
to an incredibly black and white view, which ignores the sins of one group,
and exaggerates the sins of another. It almost exclusively reflects your own
biases over the actual conduct of any president.

------
btilly
There is nothing about what has happened that should surprise anyone who has
read the book _Superforecasting_.

It explains that we naturally trust people who sound smart, well-informed, and
CONFIDENT. We don't want to hear uncertainty, probabilities, or the other
signs of someone who thinks in a careful quantitative way. We want to accept a
cognitively simple answer, then move on. This is what we find comfortable.

However this is a good way to select people who are terrible at making actual
predictions. They appear to predict, but often with sufficient weasel words
that it is hard afterwards to say whether it was violated. (The book gives
real examples.) But if you put them in a setting where they can be tested,
they perform worse than uninformed monkeys. And the part of the future that
they are worst at predicting is _exactly_ what they were supposed to be
experts at!

The book _Superforecasting_ walks through how this was demonstrated, and the
discovery that there are people you will never see on CNN or Fox news who are
really good at forecasting. A fact that is extremely interesting to various
TLA agencies (one of whom paid for the research in question).

The long and short of it? Bayes' Theorem actually works in the real world. The
revolution that started with quants on wall street, analytics in baseball and
Nate Silver in politics is still ongoing.

When you are done with the book and have processed it, hopefully you will
understand why the author said in response to an audience question after a
talk, _Here’s my long-term prediction for Long Now. When the Long Now audience
of 2515 looks back on the audience of 2015, their level of contempt for how we
go about judging political debate will be roughly comparable to the level of
contempt we have for the 1692 Salem witch trials._

Hopefully the contempt that some of us have for how talking heads in January
and February of 2020 dismissed Coronavirus is a step on the path to that
future.

~~~
bo1024
There is some really interesting interplay here between forecasting and
decisionmaking. (Taleb would have a lot to say here, along the lines of
"forecasters are poor.") Maybe it makes sense that forecasts should be
measured, but decisions should be, well, decisive.

A good Bayesian should be able to make confident decisions based on
information available at the moment, while acknowledging that lack of
information is leading to suboptimal decisions.

For example, a leader can be absolutely confident that shelter-in-place is the
best decision based on the available information, while acknowledging that
there is missing information that would drastically change this assessment.

~~~
btilly
_A good Bayesian should be able to make confident decisions based on
information available at the moment..._

No.

A good Bayesian should be able to come to decisions like, "I am 70% confident
that Osama bin Laden is in that compound." While the Bayesian next says, "I am
only 50% confident that Osama bin Laden is in that compound." With both
knowing that there is a difference of opinion, but no disagreement on basic
facts or reasoning method.

It is very rare for a good Bayesian to be absolutely confident of any
prediction. And if you are often so confident, you're probably not thinking
very well. I mean that quite literally - the process of analyzing
probabilities well requires being able to make the case both for what you
think will happen, and what you think won't. Because only then can you start
putting probabilities on the key assumptions.

 _For example, a leader can be absolutely confident that shelter-in-place is
the best decision based on the available information, while acknowledging that
there is missing information that would drastically change this assessment._

Really?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22750790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22750790)
is a discussion that I was in recently about whether on a cost benefit
analysis it is better to crash the economy by shutting things down, or to keep
things open and let lots of people die.

The decision wasn't nearly as clear in the end as I would have expected it to
be. (That all options are horrible was clear. But we knew that.)

~~~
bo1024
> No. A good Bayesian should be able to come to decisions like, "I am 70%
> confident that Osama bin Laden is in that compound."

That's not a decision though. That's an assessment, what I would put in the
same category as predictions. A decision would be whether or not to bomb the
compound.

Your post seems to miss my point, that predictions and decisions are very
different and one can be uncertain about predictions while being certain about
decisions. For example, I completely agree with this:

> It is very rare for a good Bayesian to be absolutely confident of any
> prediction.

Here's a simple example to think through the difference. You have a
sophisticated weather model that predicts 40% chance of rain today. You hate
getting wet, so you take your umbrella. In fact, you would take your umbrella
even if the chance were only 10%.

So you are really uncertain about whether it's going to rain (your forecast),
but absolutely certain that taking your umbrella is the optimal decision given
the information at hand.

~~~
btilly
You are right that I had not paid close attention to decisions.

I see no particular reason why Bayesians should be better at being decisive.
They should make better judgments given the available information. But they
are not necessarily any better at making decisions and moving on.

~~~
btilly
Expanding on this, the skill of figuring out the odds of bin Laden being in
the compound is unrelated to the skill of figuring out how to handle both
outcomes, and whether that is a worthwhile risk to take.

So a good Bayesian can inform a good decision maker, but the Bayesian is not
necessarily a good decision maker.

Similarly in the book, one of the superforecasters made the point that
listening to well-informed experts who might be bad at making decisions was
very useful. Because the expert really did have a good grasp of the current
situation and could explain it clearly, which was a great starting place for
the Bayesian who lacked background. Preparing background and making
predictions are both required, but the combination of skills need not start in
the same brain.

------
drocer88
If you're getting your "news" from CNN/Fox/MSNBC, or "gathering evidence" to
promote one the two permitted narratives, that's your problem. This is stuff
is low effort "Presidential Level Politics" 24x7. Real news died when
reporters stopped having to craft a story so that the Associated Press or
United Press International picked it up and made it available to the varied
local newspapers of America, both liberal and conservative. The old CNN that
actually did news, not talk show shenanigans reminiscent of old school Howard
Stern, is missed.

~~~
garraeth
Agreed. Unfortunately now it's more like picking a sport team ("Team CNN" or
"Team Fox"), or Apple vs/ Google vs/ Microsoft than actually finding, or
learning about, facts. Tribalism at it's finest.

The only alternative I've found (I'm open to helpful suggestions) is to ignore
that noise and read actual briefings and original sources.

But, that defeats the point of news being an honest and straight forward
source of a summary. And it takes a lot of time. And doesn't always end in
rewarding information (lies/bias in original sources exist too - eg: watching
hours upon hours of live impeachment hearings was full of lies/half-
truths/obfuscation coming from all sides).

~~~
AndrewBissell
I've found a well-curated Twitter feed of smart sources from various
ideological and media camps helps to find interesting and informative info
which would otherwise take a great deal of time to find. You do get misinfo
and bad takes sometimes, but if you set it up right it's no worse than
mainstream sources. Lists are useful as well to avoid Twitter's feed curation
algos.

Just specifically for COVID-19, this led me to:

\- Pay closer attention to the pandemic in China and request testing for my
daughter when she had flu symptoms in late January while traveling (the CDC
had no tests, of course)

\- Begin using masks and gloves while going to groceries and other stores long
before it was in common use and the value of masks had been acknowledged

\- Mentally and materially prepare my family for an extended quarantine period
long ahead of when the necessity was broadly acknowledged

~~~
alexilliamson
It sometimes feels like there is the perception that twitter is worthless and
devoid of meaningful information, but like you I've been increasingly relying
on it for news. I'm not sure where else you can collect so many different
perspectives on any given piece of news. Overtime, you learn how many grains
of salt to take with each person in your timeline, and you get a sense of
their personal biases. And if you can brush off the trolls, it's instructive
to read the arguments that happen in the replies.

The way I use twitter, it serves the same purpose as hacker news, but with a
much broader scope.

~~~
throwaway294
A BIG advantage of Twitter is that get to hear from the persons themselves
totally without filtering by the media. Maybe you do or don't like what some
public figure who posts on Twitter says, but at least DO get just what THEY
said.

~~~
Fjolsvith
This. The slanted editorializing and purposefully misconstrued out-of-context
quoting by the media long ago turned me off.

~~~
throwaway294
My response some years ago was just to turn the mainstream media (MSM) off. On
paper they can't compete with Charmin, and on the Internet they are useless
for wrapping dead fish heads. Some of their material is worse than just
misleading and down to manipulative, deceptive, dangerous, and even
destructive. I don't want even to hear the MSM and, then, have to debunk them
or risk being influenced. I hope the Internet enables some replacements, many
more outlets but focused on smaller audiences.

------
nxp
_Yes Minister_ , on how to respond to a crisis:

    
    
      Sir Richard Wharton: “In stage one, we say nothing is going to happen.”
    
      Sir Humphrey Appleby: “Stage two, we say something may be about to happen,
                             but we should do nothing about it.”
    
      Sir Richard Wharton: “In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it,
                            but there’s nothing we can do.”
    
      Sir Humphrey Appleby: “Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done,
                             but it’s too late now.”
    
    

Remember that _Yes Minister_ is a manual for politicians, not a comedy.

~~~
rahidz
Stage four requires admitting guilt, it should be "We've always known we
should've done something about it, but (opposing political party) didn't let
us!"

~~~
nickff
That back-and-forth is between two bureaucrats, who are talking about how to
obstruct politicians. One of the core premises of "Yes Minister" is that the
bureaucracy holds the real power in government, somewhat similar to the idea
of a 'deep state', though the show existed long before that phrase was coined.

~~~
AlexandrB
This seems to undermine the point at the end of the GP comment:

> Remember that Yes Minister is a manual for politicians, not a comedy.

It seems like the deep state was (more) right on this one and the politicians
are/were the ones trying to downplay the danger and generally mislead.

~~~
jacquesm
The proper name for the deep state is civil service employees and they
generally tend to be right on a lot of stuff _because they 've been at it for
decades_ rather than a couple of weeks to months. The whole idea that some
politician lands in a chair and starts making policy by their lonesome is
laughable.

~~~
dmix
> The proper name for the deep state is civil service employees

It's funny how that has become the new explanation/softer excuse. I remember
when "Deep State" was used to describe groups like the Koch Brothers and
similar power brokers well before it was adopted by the right-leaning popular
media to describe the puppet masters of the 'establishment' on the other side.
Now it's spun as an attack on simple 'civil servants'...

I guess it means whatever people want it to mean, depending on the context of
your ideology or position on the matter.

------
djaychela
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-based journalist who was saying
that 'they' were destroying the economy to serve their own foul needs
(everyone under house arrest, total control of society, etc). For me, it's
just not worth doing this - it's hard enough being separated from the people I
care about, without filling the void with attempts to have a rational
discussion with people who seem to be divorced from everyday fact.

You would think this would be the reality check that was needed, but it's not
the case for everyone. I guess that is human pyschology writ large, but I'm
finding that I just have to watch videos and not even look in the comments as
it's just a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and people being just plain
wrong in a lot of places.

~~~
bsaul
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 it makes it a very peculiar epidemic. And i think this is
the reason why even amongst the medical professional i've talked to, they
first seemed not too worried at all.

As for the number of death, let's not forget the flu kills hundreds of
thousands of people each year, and that is with people getting vaccinated. It
made me realize how getting vaccinated for the flu as soon as you reach 50 may
actually be a pretty good idea..

Another thing that i haven't read a lot, is that the WHO have been alarming
people in the past with previous epidemic (srars, mers, ebola, etc), and
nothing "special" happened (i suppose partly because people correctly dealt
with it, but also because of the nature of the virus). It actually made me
realize how the whole world has been completely desensitized to catastrophic
predictions.

~~~
nullc
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 substantial year to year variation:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827586/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827586/)

Even if you steadfastly refuse to accept the obvious exponential dynamics of
contagion in a naive population, perhaps the fact that the figures you are
reasoning from are off by a constant factor of 3 to >10 might cause you to
reconsider your level of confidence?

~~~
redis_mlc
> people will continue to ignore an exponential trend

Every cold and flu grow exponentially.

Not sure what the fixation of HN readers is on the work exponential. Although
true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically.

I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators, and the futility and
destruction to our economy by lockdown.

~~~
mannykannot
> Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus
> specifically.

The issue of exponential growth is of relevance in response to those saying
that the number of deaths (insert the inplicit 'so far' here) is much less
than from infuenza (annually.) It is not a 'fixation' to expose the
irrelevance of that line of thinking.

More generally, the issue is a combination of the facts that this virus is
significantly more dangerous, for all age groups, than at least post- Spanish
Flu infuenza; it is very readily transmitted; and there is no (or much less)
herd immunity. When you combine these fact with the math of exponential
growth, and have establshed the doubling rate, you can do some scientific
prediction that goes beyond "so far it has not been as bad as the flu", which
is true just so long as it is, and no longer. To do that, however, you have to
hold more than one idea at a time in your head.

~~~
thu2111
The idea that viruses always grow exponentially until they reach total
saturation of the population comes from mathematical models that have never
successfully modelled any real epidemic, ever. It doesn't come from experience
of real diseases in nature, many of which were predicted by epidemiologists to
grow to enormous proportions and yet - even in the absence of control measures
- that isn't what happens.

It seems there are a _ton_ of people right now who are enjoying thinking of
themselves as intellectually and even morally superior to people who are just
pointing out facts about the statistics gathered so far (which point to flu-
like levels of danger and properties). I think the HN community is especially
prone to this because it's full of computer programmers who are used to
thinking in powers of two; some seem tempted to ascribe near-magical wisdom to
this familiarity. But nature isn't a computer and just saying "exponential
growth" over and over will eventually make fools of a lot of people, because
_it isn 't there_.

If this virus was really spreading exponentially, you'd expect to see the
proportion of positive tests going up exponentially as well. But that isn't
what is seen. In places that report the total number of tests administered
(some places don't), the proportion of positive tests increases sub-
exponentially or even hardly at all, coming to rest at about 15%, which is
roughly the background level of coronavirus infections in the population
during normal times.

It's especially disappointing to see PG fall into the trap of blaming
politicians. Politicians have in the blink of an eye ceded power to a tiny
cabal of (primarily) epidemiologists. So far they by and large _aren 't_
asking questions, instead simply doing whatever they're told even if it makes
little sense.

But we really need people to start asking those scientists difficult
questions. Citizens can do it but ultimately it only matters when politicians
do it. Epidemiologists have a track record of absolute failure. They failed
with Zika, they failed with foot and mouth disease, they're failing with CV.
Go look at the models they produce and weep; some are invalidated the day
they're published!

This guy is doing a good job of pointing out the many errors of modellers:

[https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson](https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson)

There's also some background here:

[https://blog.plan99.net/is-epidemiology-
useful-a4ec54e59569](https://blog.plan99.net/is-epidemiology-
useful-a4ec54e59569)

~~~
michaelmrose
Nobody is able to test all or even most of their population with tests
overwhelmingly concentrated among those either likely to be infected or at
least exposed one would expect the proportion of positive tests to be a
function of the testing methodology rather than a fiction of its prevalence in
the population. If for example a group is only testing those already
experiencing severe symptoms and had a 93% positive rate what would it even
mean for the proportion of positive tests to increase exponentially?

What we are supposing is instead that the number of people who are presently
infected will increase exponentially IF we don't adopt measures to decrease
the spread. This is actually what you saw in the initial period and what you
would be seeing now if we did nothing extraordinary to decrease the spread. If
you look at the 1918 flu epidemic it ultimately infected 1/3 of the
population. It is utterly unclear to me why you imagine your understanding is
better than that of the experts. It would seem you yourself are guilty of the
same sin you ascribe to programmers? From your animus towards the profession
are you perhaps a manager of same? If so you seem to have contracted at least
one of their faults.

> politicians have in the blink of an eye ceded power to a tiny cabal of
> (primarily) epidemiologists.

This literally isn't real.

The politicians are indeed at fault for the poor response. We cede to them
substantial funds and powers to both prepare for and response to situations
just like this. In fact the pentagon prepared a report on literally just this
exact crisis in 2017 that called out among other things a lack of supplies. We
opted to do nothing of import between now and today. In the crucial early days
of this crisis instead of instituting effective measures we were busy first
ignoring reports of it and then publicly claiming it is a hoax. If we aren't
brave and clear sighted enough to even ascribe blame how are we to do better
next time?

~~~
thu2111
_with tests overwhelmingly concentrated among those either likely to be
infected_

Even the highest positive rates I've seen (in the UK where the testing
situation is dire) are only 30%. In other countries with more tests it's
around 15% and stable over long periods.

If the number of infected were truly growing that fast, then you'd see the
proportion of positive tests go up and up until negative tests were hardly
happening, but that isn't close to what's seen on the ground.

 _What we are supposing is instead that the number of people who are presently
infected will increase exponentially IF we don 't adopt measures to decrease
the spread_

That's not what policymakers are supposing. If that were true there wouldn't
be a global run on ventilators, which assumes enormous growth over case load
today.

 _This literally isn 't real._

That's not much of a response. Where are there politicians _not_ saying their
decisions are just guided by the science? The only places where politicians
even pushed back slightly on epidemiologists are Brazil and - briefly - the
USA.

At this time what epidemiologists say should be done, is done, no questions
asked. In Denmark they are even restricting speech to stop people criticising
the adopted measures, or so it's said. Look at what happened to my post above
- even _investigating or criticising_ those currently making the decisions is
suddenly penalised.

A tiny number of academics with no track record of accuracy have obtained
enormous power now. If they say lock down, countries lock down. If they say
close the borders, the borders are closed. If they say open up, countries open
up.

It's right and proper that such people be subject to the same scrutiny as
normal politicians are.

As for politicians having done nothing, I don't think that's fair. Does the
USA not have large stockpiles of ventilators and masks? Perhaps unusable in
the end, but that level of detail is not for politicians, only civil servants.
As for beds, well, even assuming the modellers are right no healthcare system
in the world can have tens of thousands of ICU beds empty, sitting for a once
in a century pandemic. Politicians who tried to have such levels of slack
would soon be replaced by others who cared more about utilisation. I don't
think there's much to say about them at this time; for better or worse they've
taken a back seat.

------
smsm42
I agree that we have huge amount of talking heads around with zero skin in the
game and zero consequences when they are wrong, but I disagree covid-19
pandemics changed anything. There are literally dozens of politicians who have
been disastrously wrong and gave advice in public which is diametrically
opposite to what should have been, and suffered absolutely no consequences.
And everybody's reaction to this is as tribal as it has ever been - if it's my
tribe, "he may be wrong this once but it's an understandable mistake", if it's
the opposing tribe, "yet another proof these vile creatures is literally the
worst scum of humanity". Nothing changed. All tribes of American politics, at
least, that I can see, are happily turning the epidemics into the fodder for
their tribal causes, as they did with everything else before that.

~~~
rayuela
Totally agree with this. This is something you can clearly see in Trump's
approval rating, which just reached the highest levels of his entire tenure
[1]. Things are only getting more polarizing, but the really scary thing is
that this admin's approval rating climbs the worse things get and it is
worrying to see this incentive structure :(

~~~
standardUser
There has been a lot written on this in the last week. The consensus is that
Trump has received a historically tiny increase in approval rating when
compared to other presidents in moments of crisis, and that this bump has all
but disappeared already. Trump's post inauguration "bump" was similarly brief
and mild.

~~~
chickenpotpie
Comparing this to 9/11, which in the end will most likely taken far less
American lives, it really is a tiny increase. George Bush's approval rating
went up about 30%. Trump's moved a single digit amount.

------
jacquesm
Paul is off by a mile and a half on this one. They weren't worried about
getting caught. At all. The thing they would be worried about is whether or
not getting caught would have consequences. And if there is anything that you
could have learned from the last three years then it is that lying to the
public carries no consequences at all.

~~~
banads
>if there is anything that you could have learned from the last three years
then it is that lying to the public carries no consequences at al

If you study history, you realize thats been a thing for much more than just 3
years...

[https://youtu.be/VGdWIwiVMF4](https://youtu.be/VGdWIwiVMF4)

~~~
andruby
At least Regan was able to admit that he was wrong (even if he didn’t admit he
was lying). I wonder if Trump has ever admitted to being wrong.

------
lazyjones
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.health.com/condition/infectious-
diseases/coronavirus-worse-than-flu)

[https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/the-fear-of-the-corona-
vi...](https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/the-fear-of-the-corona-virus-and-
the-reality-of-the-flu) (kudos for correcting/updating later...)

Seems a bit one-sided to get so excited about wrong predictions by the
Fox/alt-right/MAGA bubble on account of one viral video.

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

The WHO has been warning about the coronavirus for ages.

~~~
lazyjones
I live in Europe and can confirm that it was similar here. E.g. German state
media quoting a head physician:
[https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/schwabinger-chefarzt-
co...](https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/schwabinger-chefarzt-corona-nicht-
gefaehrlicher-als-influenza,RphX42Z)

(literally saying in the title it's not more dangerous than the flu)

Also, the WHO posted this on Twitter in January, draw your own conclusions:
[https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152](https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152)

~~~
thombat
When WHO relayed the Chinese belief/hope of "no clear evidence of human-to-
human transmission" (Jan 14) there were only 40 identified cases, mostly with
plausible links to the presumed origin at the market. It should be read as
"widespread action not yet justified" rather than "no need to worry at all,
ever"

------
flr03
If it was not Paul Graham this would never has made it to HN front page, but
ok... One of his point is that people should not talk about things they don't
know about. So maybe he should start applying that to himself first (and maybe
this to myself right now). The question is, how do you define the threshold of
expertise require before you start talking about a subject?

The concepts of truth, credibility, ethics, deontology that he vaguely puts
the finger onto. Those are complex topics, still being studied and will be
forever.

Blaming journalist and politics, why not, I guess some of them deserve it, but
my neighbour could have done the same analysis after couple of pints at the
pub.

~~~
ag56
No, his point was people shouldn't talk with _absolute confidence_ about
things they don't know about.

Usually in everyday life we hint at our confidence level with the language we
use: 'might', 'probably', etc. These people have trained themselves not to do
that, which they previously have gotten away with.

~~~
tertius
As an immigrant, and I'm sure many foreigners would agree, this is extremely
American.

People, gentile people, who use "might" and "probably" are weak intellectuals
by American standards. They are cast aside, especially in media, because they
cannot give definite answers. This is science and science doesn't sell.

Politicians and media types are sales-people.

This really depends on the family and milieu you grew up around and are
engaged with generally in life.

~~~
swiley
This is actually career advice I was given as a kid by an engineer at a
nuclear power plant: “don’t give the impression that you’re uncertain during
discussions even if you are.” I remember thinking “isn’t it literally your job
to be uncertain?” That _really_ bothered me and I’m reasonably sure I wasn’t
wrong to be bothered.

~~~
rsynnott
Three Mile Island?

------
ugh123
Its easy to focus on foxnews and pull all sorts of terrible content like that,
but a more serious task is to look at a lot of the statements and confidence
from the medical and scientific community early on - things around wearing
masks in public and its inability to prevent spread, or UV light from the Sun
and its ability to kill the virus (a popular statement projected by several
doctors within the media), and several others.

There has been confidence all around from seemingly credible sources - acting
on too early and thin data about what measures were effective or non-
effective, many of which have been reversed in the last couple of weeks. A lot
of this can be attributed to all sorts of news organizations (across the
spectrum) and their push to get both positive and negative coverage out as
fast as possible at the right time.

~~~
jmull
This "everyone is bad" is really off-the-mark.

If, in a fast moving situation, someone tells you something based on the best
information available at the time coming from leading experts, which later
turns out to be wrong, that's unfortunate.

If someone ignores the leadings experts and the best information available at
the time and instead tells you what they want you to believe for their own
political advantage, that's despicable.

Drawing those as equivalent just doesn't make sense. No one is perfect
anywhere on the spectrum, and you can find people who are wrong, stupid, or
disingenuous everywhere. But on one side we have most organizations generally
trying to get it right for the most part, and on the other, we have
organizations trying their best to con people, regardless of the consequences.

~~~
seppin
> This "everyone is bad" is really off-the-mark.

It's the worst take because it defeats the ability to find a solution in the
future, if nothing can be trusted nothing can be implemented.

------
anthony_r
It's very simple - skin in the game. Good that PG discovered this older-than-
humanity principle of evolution.

Heads should be rolling after a large failure like this (not necessarily
literal heads).

Don't tell me what you think, show me your portfolio.

~~~
FartyMcFarter
Boris Johnson has quite a lot of skin in the game now; he boasted about
shaking hands with coronavirus patients a few weeks ago and is now in the
hospital.

~~~
jpxw
He acquired the infection weeks after the handshake comment. It seems unlikely
the two events are linked.

~~~
polack
How do you come to that conclusion? He literally said he would _continue_ to
shake hands, so why is it unlikely that he contained it from shaking hands?

The point is also that if you continue to shake hands it doesn't make sense to
be careful regarding other ways of getting it either. His attitude towards the
whole thing would make him a prime candidate to the Darwin award if he ends up
dying.

------
jpxw
Even “reputable” sources like the Financial Times have been putting out utter
rubbish:
[https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea0557...](https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b)

My current theory is that we are seeing denial on a mass scale as a coping
mechanism.

~~~
xiphias2
The problem is that the WHO was lying multiple times, and other organizations
parroted those lies as they were afraid of confronting the WHO.

Now we are in a stage where there's no good information source (except HN
comments, though even there we must be selective).

~~~
the_af
The WHO was lying? How so?

~~~
e2021
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.

~~~
the_af
That could be a mistake or maybe they considered the prior evidence
unreliable. "Lying" implies means conscious intent to deceive. Why would the
WHO intentionally lie?

------
2bitencryption
One thing I've had trouble reconciling is the fact that the CDC estimates
24k-63k deaths from the flu this flu season[0]

We just passed 10k from covid-19. Only last week a "low" estimation of covid
deaths this year was 200k. So it seems the expectation is there will be many,
many more, and we're just at the start of all this.

On the other hand, it also seems this week like the infamous curve is
beginning to flatten, and the epidemic is slowing down. Does this contradict
the "low" 200k number? Or does the 200k number factor this in, and indicates
that the "long tail" of the disease will be very long and damaging indeed?

Some of the clips show in the video referenced in the article actually seem
pretty "sane" to me - the one guy saying "I'm not worried about getting this
illness", another saying for most people it will seem just like the flu. Those
two statements, as far as we know, are not that outlandish, right? I'm
certainly not worried about myself, and for many people it does seem to be
mild or asymptomatic?

I don't want to have an "opinion" on this matter, I want to interpret the data
and understand the truth, Fauci-style.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-
season-e...](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-
estimates.htm)

~~~
adjkant
The thing missing here is that you're looking at deaths without looking at
number of cases of each. The flu causes the number of deaths it does because
it infects tens of millions of people a year[0]. The death rate is an order of
magnitude lower than with COVID-19 across every single age bracket. [2]

So when people say things like:

> "I'm not worried about getting this illness"

They are likely not considering that even the younger are taking as much as a
1% risk of their life, which is incredibly high. Depending on factors like the
load on the medical community at the time and others, it can get as high as 5%
or more quite easily as we have seen around the world. Currently using only
napkin math from the numbers here[1], the death rate is currently at just
under 4% over all age groups in the US.

Additionally, it is not considering the danger they are putting others in by
getting it. With the flu at a death rate of 0.2% or lower, causing deaths by
infecting people is a very small risk. Passing it to one person here
significantly ups the chances of you causing someone else to die.

Finally, flu deaths almost exclusively happen in the immunocompromised and
elderly, while COVID-19 affects younger people a LOT more.[2]

[0]
[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/keyfacts.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/keyfacts.htm)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-
us-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-
cases.html)

[2]
[https://i.insider.com/5e81f6460c2a6261b1771b05?width=600&for...](https://i.insider.com/5e81f6460c2a6261b1771b05?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp)

~~~
usaar333
> They are likely not considering that even the younger are taking as much as
> a 1% risk of their life, which is incredibly high. Depending on factors like
> the load on the medical community at the time and others, it can get as high
> as 5% or more quite easily as we have seen around the world. Currently using
> only napkin math from the numbers here[1], the death rate is currently at
> just under 4% over all age groups in the US.

Those are pretty high numbers. Using a Lancet study
([https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099\(20\)30243-7/fulltext)),
IFR is just under 0.1% for a 30 something year old. Hospitalization rates are
at 3.5% (2-7% confidence), so a death rate (for 30 year olds) even under a
collapsing medical systems for younger people is highly unlikely to get close
to 5%.

All said, a 0.1% death rate is still pretty dangerous and catching the disease
is something like raising your risk of death by 50% in a given year. Lockdowns
are still justified under those numbers.

> Finally, flu deaths almost exclusively happen in the immunocompromised and
> elderly, while COVID-19 affects younger people a LOT more.

Well, and old people even more. Are the relative risk ratios actually
different for covid vs. flu - or are we just seeing the effect of a disease
that is 7xish a really bad flu season?

(For young children actually, I believe covid outcomes are better than flu.)

~~~
umvi
> Lockdowns are still justified under those numbers.

And what if the effects of an extended lockdown is a tanked ecomony with a 3x
increase in suicides for the next decade? Is it still justified? Lockdowns are
only justified if the _only_ variable you are optimizing for is "number of
covid-19 deaths". Yet there are hundreds of other variables that we are
ignoring in our quest to minimize that one variable. Impossible to tell now,
but tanking the economy to flatten the curve may end up indirectly killing
even more people in the long run.

~~~
usaar333
Fair point. In some sense, I share your feelings a bit (in a lighter sense).
The park closings some Bay Area counties are doing (e.g. San Mateo) feel not
justified; I'm also not sure why the SIP was extended all the way into May
given the existing downward trajectory. [Looking at both Seattle and Iceland,
you don't need full-on SIP to keep R at 1]

------
GregarianChild
G. Orwell, _In Front Of Your Nose_ [1]:

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. One thing
that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of
record of one's opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some
particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that
one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one
makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating.
In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with
reality."

[1] [https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
foundation/orwel...](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/in-front-of-your-nose/)

------
throwaway5752
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 further back with the enormous amount
of information we're all bombarded with, but you can just go back to 2005 and
see Larry Kudlow (Dir. NEC) just as wrong about economic policy and the depth
of the financial crisis
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kudlow#Economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kudlow#Economy))
but here he is again. Consider Navarro vis a vis trade. I don't think anyone
will learn anything, and for smart enough people, that needs to be the lesson.

~~~
pdonis
_> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life_

Before making such a confident statement, I would recommend re-reading this
particular statement in pg's essay...

"These people constantly make false predictions, and get away with it, because
the things they make predictions about either have mushy enough outcomes that
they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in the future that
few remember what they said."

...and consider how it applies to all the people who have made confident
predictions over the years regarding global warming.

~~~
throwaway5752
Central America ([https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-
storm/fifth-...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/fifth-
straight-year-of-central-american-drought-helping-drive-migration/)), Syria
([https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262981...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629816301822)),
Australia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bushfire_season)),
and Alaska [https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/sockeye-salmon-and-
cli...](https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/sockeye-salmon-and-climate-
change) might beg to differ, among others.

It is happening now. It's happening in line with predictions by IPCC. It gets
pretty bad. I can't help what people have said that has been wrong, but the
world is measurably and visibly warming and that itself was denied for a long
time. Very nearly 100% of experts in this field agree it's happening, have
agreed for quite a while, and think the impact will be dire and potentially
irreversible in the timeframe of human lifetimes. It feels like the zoonotic
coronavirus situation played out over 50 years, rather than the 15 or so since
SARS. Epidemiologists told everyone for a decade and a half this would happen,
but here we are. A large group of experts in another field is telling us a
similar thing with similar urgency. That's my only point.

~~~
pdonis
_> Very nearly 100% of experts in this field agree it's happening_

None of these "experts" have a track record of correct predictions that
justifies taking their current predictions seriously. Remember we are not
talking about the fact that the climate changes: yes, it does, it always has,
and it always will (unless at some point in the distant future we learn how to
control it accurately). We are talking about the dire predictions of
catastrophe that have been made to try to justify spending many trillions of
dollars on CO2 mitigation. Those predictions have never come true.

 _> Epidemiologists told everyone for a decade and a half this would happen,
but here we are._

To know whether these were useful predictions, we would need to know more
details. Did they predict _when_ it would happen? Did they predict how it
would spread? A prediction that "this will happen, some time in the future" is
not very useful. AFAIK no epidemiologists were making predictions much more
precise than that.

Looking at the actual frequency of epidemics of various sizes in the past, we
might very roughly estimate that we will have one serious enough to involve a
significant portion of health care resources once every decade or so. But you
don't have to be an epidemiologist to do that; you just have to do the
simplest possible extrapolation of the data. We had H1N1 about 10 years ago,
and SARS about 18 years ago. That's still not a very strong prediction, but it
would seem to be as good a basis for public policy discussion (which is to
say, a fairly weak one but not negligible) as anything more complicated that
has come from epidemiologists.

~~~
torpfactory
Just a friendly reminder that the consensus estimates about climate change
have been reasonably accurate. Not perfect but decent enough as decision
making tools. See for example the IPCC report from 1990:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_First_Assessment_Report](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_First_Assessment_Report)

There have certainly been very dramatic (all overly well reported) warnings
representing a minority of researchers which have not been accurate. These
should not invalidate the whole lot of predictions.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Sure. And while opinion polls are lagging, almost everyone in decision-making
positions is on board with the minimal predictions in this report. (Even a lot
of people normally considered climate change deniers are on board - according
to Wikipedia, the report doesn't rule out that climate change is largely
driven by natural variability!)

~~~
pdonis
_> the minimal predictions in this report_

Those minimal predictions don't justify spending trillions of dollars on CO2
mitigation. They basically say "the climate is going to change, so be ready to
deal with it".

~~~
chimprich
This is a false economy. Several studies have demonstrated that it is cheaper
to avert climate change than to deal with the effects.

Switching to low- and zero-carbon fuels, achieving greater efficiencies and so
on, is expensive, but still a lot cheaper than e.g. moving coastal cities or
engineering mega-projects to combat flooding, dealing with huge numbers of
migrants, dealing with massive changes in agriculture, worse natural
disasters, and so on.

Plus even if you deal with the effects for decades, your problem has not gone
away. The situation is worse, and the planet is still heating.

~~~
pdonis
_> Several studies have demonstrated that it is cheaper to avert climate
change than to deal with the effects._

Studies based on climate models that are overpredicting warming, plus economic
and sociological models that have even less predictive power.

 _> moving coastal cities or engineering mega-projects to combat flooding_

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. How is that all of a sudden a climate emergency?

 _> your problem has not gone away_

I've already said climate change is something we're always going to have to
deal with, just as humans have had to deal with it during all of human
history. The idea that we can magically stop the climate from changing ever
again is ridiculous.

~~~
chimprich
> 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
that because something is changing over the course of several decades it's not
as much as a problem. Surely that can't be it though, because that makes no
logical sense. From an economic sense it's just as expensive.

> The idea that we can magically stop the climate from changing ever again is
> ridiculous.

A strawman argument. That is not what I wrote.

The climate is changing faster by far than it has in all human history, and
probably in the history of our planet.

Dealing with the effects is also much more difficult now compared to most of
human history. When you have 7 or 8 billion people living on the planet,
largely in huge cities, it's far more challenging.

It's just a lot easier and cheaper to avoid breaking something in the first
place than it is to try to fix it afterwards.

~~~
pdonis
_> 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 cities and countries to try to get the rest of us to pay for
fixing it by trying to claim that it's a cimate problem.

 _> The climate is changing faster by far than it has in all human history,
and probably in the history of our planet._

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

 _> When you have 7 or 8 billion people living on the planet, largely in huge
cities, it's far more challenging._

When the "problem" you're talking about is a degree of so of temperature rise
and a foot or two of sea level rise _over the course of a century_ , to call
dealing with it "challenging" is an egregious misuse of language. This is
simply not that big a deal compared to all the other things we humans have to
deal with. And the things we will need to do anyway to deal with those far
more challenging problems--like how to bring billions of people out of poverty
and how to make our infrastructure more robust--will end up adapting us to the
change anyway. If we're going to spend trillions of dollars on something,
let's at least spend it on something that benefits everybody regardless of
what happens with the climate, instead of on a huge CO2 mitigation boondoggle
that will transfer a lot of money from your and my pockets to the pockets of
politicians and "green" business executives, but won't actually help much of
anything.

~~~
chimprich
> 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.

~~~
pdonis
_> The data on this are so clear_

No, they're not. The data are a mess. Temperature records have been "adjusted"
and the original raw data thrown away all over the place. I understand you
don't believe this; I'm simply stating what I believe for the record. As I
said, we're clearly not going to agree.

 _> I feel your opposition on this issue is ideological, and there's no data
that will change your mind._

I have spent two decades now closely following the global warming/climate
change alarmism issue. What I'm basing my statements on here is not
ideological opposition to anything: it's the result of two decades of watching
a long con in operation. And note carefully that this does _not_ mean that I
don't think the climate is changing or that I don't think we will need to do
things to deal with climate change. It simply means that I do not trust the
people or the institutions that are clamoring about catastrophe if we don't
spend trillions of dollars to stop CO2 emissions now. Those people and
institutions have no credibility with me after what I've seen them do for the
past two decades, and what I've gone back and found out about what they did
further back than that.

 _> Switching from fossil fuels brings huge benefits._

Agreed. But we don't have to spend trillions of dollars on CO2 mitigation to
do that. We just have to, you know, _switch_. Spending money on CO2 mitigation
(unless by "CO2 mitigation" you just mean "build more non-CO2 emitting power
plants") hinders that, it doesn't help it.

I mostly agree with your points on energy security, decentralization, removing
government distortions of the market (I think this is a good idea in every
sphere, not just energy), and air pollution. Kudos to you for including small
nuclear plants, btw; most people don't. The only caveats I would make are:

Decentralized power from solar or wind won't provide reliable base load power
in many places, at least not without a solution to the energy storage problem
that currently doesn't exist except for very small loads. You need small
nuclear plants. Hydro by itself can't really be decentralized, since there are
only a limited number of good locations for it and basically all of them are
already developed. (Hydro in the form of pumped storage powered by solar or
wind is a different matter; for many small scale needs that might be a viable
solution to the energy storage problem.)

Electric transport is great, except for one mode: airplanes. I just don't see
a viable alternative to liquid chemical fuels for airplanes any time soon. But
that can be dealt with by using other energy sources to make liquid fuels,
either by directly powering chemical reactions or by using living organisms
like algae.

------
mooneater
We as a society are in need of a long-term, detailed collective memory of
evidence of credibility.

But that is only useful if credibility is highly valued.

Neither are true of our society today. People both forget what someone said
yesterday, or if they remember then they decide it didn't matter that much
they were wrong.

------
drummer
Roussel et al., “SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data.”, Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2020
Mar 19:105947,

    
    
        “Under these conditions, there does not seem to be a significant difference between the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries and that of common coronaviruses (χ2 test, P=0.11). Of course, the major flaw in this study is that the percentage of deaths attributable to the virus is not determined, but this is the case for all studies reporting respiratory virus infections, including SARS-CoV-2.”
    
        “Under these conditions, and all other things being equal, SARS-CoV-2 infection cannot be described as being statistically more severe than infection with other coronaviruses in common circulation.”
    
        “Finally, in OECD countries, SARS-CoV-2 does not seem to be deadlier than other circulating viruses.”
    

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32201354](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32201354)

~~~
jshevek
That style of quotation renders terribly on mobile. Preserving line width
isn't helpful for non-code quotes. You can use ">" and wrap the quoted text
with italicizing asterisks.

~~~
Theodores
Victim blaming!

We need to tell our HN moderator what CSS rules need to be changed to get this
to work on all devices. Plus when adding a comment the syntax for the markdown
should be given.

~~~
jshevek
My intention is to inform, not to blame. :)

Otherwise, I agree with your suggestion [of providing more guidance on the
reply screen] Until a better solution is implemented, would you help spread
the word when you see code quotes used this way?

Edit: I'm not sure that modifying the presentation of code quotes fully solves
the problem, as we still benefit from having two types of quotes, wrap and
nowrap.

------
lone_haxx0r
When mainstream media has been pushing pernicious narratives and outright lies
for many years, I see why people would be skeptic about their claims.

Unfortunately, most people don't have the means (technical knowledge, time) to
appropriately asses the real danger of this situation, so they have two
options:

\- Believe the liars.

\- Don't believe the liars.

It turns out, the liars weren't lying this time.

~~~
Cookingboy
>most people don't have the means (technical knowledge, time) to appropriately
asses the real danger of this situation,

That's only part of the problem. The real problem is that they don't _want_ to
do due diligence. It feels much better to believe/disbelieve things based on
whether they want them too be true or not, rather than actually finding out
they are true or not.

------
argonaut
While this does seem like an attack on those who claim Covid-19 is not going
to be as bad as the prevailing sentiment and the prevailing media view, let's
not forget that the prevailing sentiment 1-2 months ago was that Covid-19
would not be a big deal (in the West). I'm seeing many of the same people who
pronounced Covid-19 would not be a big deal, doing a full 180 and attacking
those who are pronouncing Covid-19 to be less dangerous than expected.

~~~
michaelt
Shouldn't 'prevailing media sentiment' be an _output_ of the journalism
process, rather than an _input_?

------
chvid
"No worse than the flu." How could they feel safe saying such things?

Because in most health scares historically this has been correct. That the
danger had been wildly overestimated.

And even now, it is not clear that "we" have a correct estimation of the
danger.

Recently I read an estimate that 50% of the infected have no symptons. I even
read another estimate that 90% have no symptons. Should the latter be correct
then we are overestimating the danger and wildly overreacting.

~~~
Retric
Anyone saying 90% have no symptoms is simply lying.

China’s case fatality rate is over 4% which is likely inflated. Dimond
Princess tested everyone and has a 12/712 or 1.7% case fatality rate with many
still in critical condition and the majority of positive results showing
symptoms and a high percentage needing hospitalization.

A wildly optimistic estimate of 1 death per 200 cases x 70% infections is over
1 million dead Americans. And that’s assuming we could provide care for
millions of people in critical condition.

------
underdeserver
Remembering predictions and revisiting them is a superpower in risk management
and decision making.

Superforecasting by Tetlock and Gardner is a good starting point if you want
to learn this power.

------
watwut
Yep. But I think the same happen with all kind of crisises. The past history
shows, that lying or being incredibly wrong does not have any negative impact
on a pundit or or politician or whole classes of commentary journalist.

It seem to be more of systematic issue then just individual.

------
mellosouls
The article seems to be taking a shot at a reasonably easy target.

Almost all the talking heads are late Feb/early March. While it was clear
something was happening "over there", and the fear was growing, it wasn't
unreasonable _at that point_ to not expect the unprecedented situation we are
now in - and these people are not paid to offer nuance.

I'm not sure this easy soapbox judgement is much more constructive than the
hacks it pillories.

~~~
Robotbeat
It was unreasonable at that point. I'm no epidemiologist, but I understood
exponential growth at that point to know that, because it wasn't being
contained (no measures with a reasonable chance of containment were being
taken at exactly the time when they really had to be taken), there was no
stopping the exponential growth in the near term in the US. And especially
once it was spreading in Italy, there was just not a credible reason to say
"it cannot happen here." You should mistrust people's judgement in the future
on similar such topics if they were dismissive of the possibility of this
happening.

You should update your Bayesian priors about the credibility and judgement of
those people on topics such as this. And that IS constructive.

Doesn't mean that those people are useless, but unless you've seen a mea culpa
from them, you should look warily on future such predictions. You should note
to yourself "this person may be prone to downplaying some risks and
interpreting things over-optimistically, with some amount of wishful
thinking."

~~~
mellosouls
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.

~~~
Robotbeat
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 hindsight.

~~~
mellosouls
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.

------
collyw
Wasn't Elon Musk going to make a website that rated the credibility of
journalism somehow? What happened to that?

~~~
Lewton
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

~~~
collyw
Considering the amount of testing that is actually being done, no one has much
ideas of the real number of cases. With any luck he will be right but no one
really knows.

~~~
danans
> With any luck he will be right but no one really knows.

Even he doesn't know if he's right, but apparently that doesn't stop him from
using his influence to push his hot take.

At this point, the only thing that can be claimed with confidence is our
global ignorance of this pandemic, and how much more we have to learn about
it.

------
m0zg
Well, if that's the standard now, then the entirety of the US press is not
credible: [https://i.imgur.com/HGcoZco.png](https://i.imgur.com/HGcoZco.png)

~~~
zzzcpan
Mass media doesn't emphasize credentials of journalists or any credibility for
that matter, in other words it is never credible. It's better understood in
terms of propaganda, like your link is an example of manufactured consent.

------
Jugurtha
Not enough to remember. The shit we have seen must end careers and throw to
jail.

We could be more tolerant if said "predictions" were in late December or early
January. Persisting mid March? That's a threat to national security,
endangering the health and economy of a _nation_. This should be up there
considering the scale of the misinformation encouraging people to be a danger.

Terrorism is the use of violence to instore a climate of fear, sap morale, and
win especially when inferior in number and means.

This is symmetrical: the use of words to instore a climate of confidence,
boost morale and conduct to imprudence by using vastly superior media means to
shape the behavior of people.

Someone should count all the damage this has done in terms of lives, of
livelihoods, of GDP, of wasted resources, and make them pay. People get to
pull this shit because there are no consequences for a catch phrase on Fox
news, and all the braggadocio and tough guy talk must be accounted for.

One of the cases where being or feigning to be an idiot shouldn't save
someone.

------
yibg
I think one of the issues here is incentive. Politicians' incentives don't
always align with those of the population. In this case they can put out a
strong warning and start acting with lockdowns etc or say everything is fine.

If they say everything is fine, then either 1) things are, in which case they
look good after the fact for remaining calm or 2) things go south and they can
deflect and point to other countries that are in the same boat.

If on the other hand they warn of incoming disaster and lock things down,
still one of two things happen. 1) everything is indeed fine and they get
destroyed for crashing the economy. or 2) the economy gets locked down and the
pandemic isn't so severe. But the damage to the economy is still there and
there will be no higher death count that could've happened to compare against.
In this case they probably won't get much credit either.

So it seems to them then start acting early brings no benefits and only
downsides.

------
devy
Fox News deserves class-action lawsuit for their lies and the damages it
caused for making people who watched their news disregarding the social
distancing rules.

[https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-reportedly-fears-
early-11453...](https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-reportedly-fears-
early-114530961.html)

~~~
hi41
Honest question here. I am not an American but watching the scene.

Fox News also pointed out several things that the left media wrong.

1\. Washingtonpost telling in early Feb that public should be wary of
government asking for a shutdown. The video showed that Bill Maher wanted the
pandemic so that Trump gets ousted.

2\. Fox News also pointed inaccuracies in npr’s article.

Looks like each side is blaming the other.

How do you tell which side aid correct. The left too wants to destroy Trump’s
reputation. Left is a hateful group which wants to bury the right.

------
standardUser
I've been amazed at how eager people have been to stake out and defend firm
positions regarding this pandemic. We know this is an unprecedented global
crisis with no good analogies, and we know that new information comes to light
literally every single day. But instead of acknowledging this and taking a
patient and flexible approach, we have everyone from the president on down
taking hard positions about how this will play out, when it will end, how many
people will die, what will happen after it ends and so on.

Even under the best possible conditions, humans are famously bad at predicting
the future. Why then, when faced with a situation that is riddled with known
unknowns, are so many people so eager to declare they know the future? And how
do these fabricated declarations help us in any way? They only serve to
obscure how truly in the dark we are about our current predicament.

------
formalsystem
Taleb elaborates on this idea quite a bit. Opinions are irrelevant, what
matters is your position. Opinions are useless without a downside.

For example, don't tell me that you think Microsoft is a good or bad company.
Tell me how many shares of Microsoft you own or how you're shorting Microsoft.

------
jonnypotty
People are being entertained not informed.

~~~
nurettin
People don't care about the distinction.

------
burtonator
My father-in-law doesn't believe in evolution. He also believes in a ton of
other crazy conspiracy theories.

Now, every time he talks about something political, I make it clear his
opinions are not welcome in this family and that until he can stop spreading
disinformation he's sitting at the intellectual kids table.

The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. If he can't get this basic
scientific fact correct then he's almost certainly wrong about everything
else. At best everything he argues should be held with a massive red flag.

If you're scientifically illiterate you don't get to participate in society.

------
codeproject
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.

------
spamizbad
Honestly if the Iraq war didn't result in media accountability I doubt the
Coronavirus will either.

------
sjg007
I mean we knew before the pandemic that Fox News has zero credibility. We knew
that the President has zero credibility. We will soon see that austerity
promoting economists never had credibility either. We will see UBI enabling a
massive amount of entrepreneurship. We know all of these things and we knew
them before too. Some people refuse to understand these things because their
job And perhaps identity depends on not understanding it.

------
lazybreather
I see much of the discussion is directed towards left-right narrative. There
is an issue of false pretense in the media which everyone agrees to. Then why
make it a left-right conversation instead of staying right on the matter at
hand? It doesn't get anywhere if the argument is about who started it first or
who did it more. That's besides the whole point. And then people from each
group point out individual comments someone from the opposite group made. If
we have a pyramid of "importance", the discussion just spirals into the bottom
and just brings in more and more nonsense. Let's stop it here. I remember PG
talking about 'labels' in one of his posts. It is very relevant here. The
issue quickly gets into a trivial fight between groups who labelled
themselves. And for whatever reasons want to stay labelled the rest of their
lives. Which is demeaning to the very life one has.

------
thereyougo
If everyone talks only based on facts on TV, the world will be a better place,
but they're also won't be that many different news channels.

You see... This shows care about the rating, and keep us informed. In times
like this, when people are watching the news 24/7 they must find people who
can talk and give their opinion. In many cases, the information appear to be
wrong.

------
matthewaveryusa
This implies that the general population cares to know who is swimming naked.
The post truth era is the very idea that the general public no longer cares
about truth. PG is not embracing reality if he frames this around Warren
Buffet's quote. Basically PG is like "hey look at all those naked folks
there!!" not knowing that he's at a nudist beach.

------
gregwebs
And also those that called it early should be seen as more credible. Chris
Martenson was putting out youtube videos in January warning about the coming
pandemic. He has been continually calling for masks as well:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaE...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRgTUN1zz_oeQpnJxpeaEkFimDeepqyWf)

People don't have the time to deeply engage in subjects themselves to
understand what is true. So we take a shortcut of uncritically adopting ideas
from elsewhere. I see this usually play out as the most repeated ideas coming
from any direction are the ones taken as correct. There is some amount of
ranking of sources: the New York Times or in some cases a professional network
is given a higher ranking. But normally none of the sources are experts.

------
tannhaeuser
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?

~~~
brain5ide
How is that different from what happens now with links being added?

Also, journalists (or let's call them news media agencies) often abuse this by
reporting of "claims by this" on the topic rather than the topic and in that
way refusing any iota of responsibility for what they put on the spotlight.

~~~
tannhaeuser
I guess technically it's not different, but if used in a visually consistent
way and followed widely, it could help critical thinking and add awareness to
the fact that there are interested parties and spinsters behind most published
material, rather than invite a habit of passive consumption/believing text
just because it appears on shiny digital or printed media.

------
sixstringtheory
Tangential regarding Dr. Drew. I remember watching Loveline on MTV and hearing
it a bit on radio when I was younger, and remember thinking how progressive
him and Adam Corolla sounded. When I discovered much later that they're still
going on podcasts, I've tuned in a couple times over the last decade but
usually wind up cringing or disagreeing. I used to think Adam Corolla was
mostly funny and made some good points, now I find him pretty distasteful.
What happened, did they shift in their outlooks/politics/behaviors/etc, or did
I and I'm just realizing how they've always been? It just seems like as I get
older, many people in the generations ahead of me are getting crazier, and it
makes me worried that at some point I'm going to lose my grip on reality. How
does this happen?

~~~
koheripbal
I think that may have more to do with how you evolved than how they did.

------
dmitryminkovsky
I've got a sort of morbid fascination with the COVID denial scene on Twitter.
Every few days I check out this guy Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii, 500k+
followers), and it's been interesting to see how he's adapted. This tweet
captures it well:

[https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/124681200696072601...](https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1246812006960726018?s=21)

Not sure if Paul is looking at this kind of thing, but from this essay I'm not
sure he really grasps how fractured the media consumption landscape is at the
moment. The tide hasn't come out from under many, if any, of these people.
Their position is as strong as ever. They have their own moons, their own
oceans and their own tides.

~~~
Gibbon1
You'd probably like this. Compare.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Mar 2nd.

[https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1247210000155643904/...](https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1247210000155643904/photo/1)

San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Mar 2nd.

[https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1247210000155643904/...](https://twitter.com/germanrlopez/status/1247210000155643904/photo/2)

~~~
dmitryminkovsky
Wow I'm based in New York so I've been on the Bill de Blasio beat and totally
missed London Breed. She nailed it. Holy moly. Big ups to London Breed!

(Were those supposed to be two different links?)

~~~
Gibbon1
I tried to make them two different links, one to Blasio and the Other to
Breed. Didn't work.

I feel some of the difference might be due to California's experience with
fires and earthquakes. The politicians have a habit of listening and acting on
what public safety officials tell them. And the public tends understand. For
instance last year they started shutting off the power during high wind
events. They aren't happy with PGE but no ones been calling for the
politicians heads over it.

------
jerkstate
I think that the video linked is unnecessarily partisan. Lots of politicians
and media of all mainstream ideologies got this wrong. At the same time,
plenty of woke progressives were telling us that the US/China travel ban was
racist and unnecessary on Jan 31, and are now saying that it wasnt done soon
enough. Plenty of conservative-leaning news outlets and politicians were
sounding the alarm bells since January as well. Lets be honest, lots of public
figures screwed this up, and it does your credibility no good to engage in
partisan blame games instead of either just shutting up or working towards
realistic solutions that keep us safe and prosperous at the same time as
respecting our constitutional freedoms (in the USA). The world deserves
better.

~~~
theschwa
This is likely the case, but can you site some sources?

~~~
jerkstate
Here are a few examples: [https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-
pandemic-...](https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-
conservative-and-liberal-pundits-underestimated-threat/)

I should be clear, I have no love for windbags like Hannity and Limbaugh but
when you want to talk about credibility, you should have at least a modicum of
self-awareness of your tribal alignment.

------
unexaminedlife
That's not even enough. We need their own words, coming from their own mouths,
to be available online forever (compiled and meticulously categorized). If I
tell someone that a news anchor has a terrible history of stating falsehoods,
why should they believe me? I need to have a URL where I can go to obtain ALL
of an individual's public statements about things, and rigorous details as to
why the things they said were false.

Ideally it would be available via a decentralized source.

AND ideally a crowd-sourced platform so anyone can contribute.

Also we need the government to define different TYPES of news. Opinion-based
and fact-based. Fact-based obviously will be held to extremely high standards,
but the hope would be they would be rewarded for it in the market.

------
silexia
Excellent point Paul! How can we actually do a better job of keeping track of
credibility? There are so many talking heads that it is hard to remember who
said what and who is or is not credible. You almost would need a Black Mirror
style AR credibility score floating in view?

~~~
clairity
you have to hone your bs meter by making lots of mistakes. incidentally,
that's life in a nutshell.

------
qznc
There is plenty of sites to track predictions:
[https://www.metaculus.com](https://www.metaculus.com)
[http://longbets.org](http://longbets.org)
[http://www.knewthenews.com](http://www.knewthenews.com)
[https://predictionbook.com](https://predictionbook.com)

I try to record predictions I find in the news. Most statements by politicians
and journalists are too vague though. You need to get from "more people will
die from COVID-19" to "more than 1.000.000 people will die from COVID-19
before May according to worldometers.info".

~~~
smsm42
Predictions on random internet sites are cheap, worth thing you risk is losing
a little money or some imaginary Internet points. Politicians are in a
situation where their predictions can cost lives, they are forced to make them
- and in most cases, they have no information and no ability to make any
proper analysis of the situation. So they just do what they've done most of
their professional lives - they bullshit away.

------
jgrahamc
Most humans have a really hard time with exponential processes. They are hard
for them to spot and truly understand. So when something goes 1, 2, 4, 8 they
see it as linear and when it's doubling with larger numbers they suddenly get
it. And then it's too late.

~~~
Someone
1, 2, 4, 8 isn’t that different from 1, 3, 5, 7.

You need more sample points, larger multipliers, or prior expectation of
seeing an exponential curve to see that as exponential growth.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> 1, 2, 4, 8 isn’t that different from 1, 3, 5, 7.

What? The former is exponential and the latter is linear. They are the
definition of different.

The 30th number in the first series is 536870912.

The 30th number in the second series is 59.

~~~
ash
> [1, 2, 4, 8] is exponential and [1, 3, 5, 7] is linear.

You can't say just from 4 data points. Real data is noisy. Imagine each number
is ±1.

~~~
nullc
To be fair, people-- even experts (checkout the first 538 survey of experts)
and authorities-- have happily pretended covid19's behavior was linear even
when the linear fit was _many_ sigma away from the measurements...

I agree that it's worthwhile intuition in many cases, but really not here and
even people equipt with both the data and the mathematical expertise to use it
there have also made many bad calls on this.

------
5cott0
There is still a concerted, coordinated effort to signal boost reckless
armchair epidemiologists arguing that COVID-19 is "just the flu" and the
response is destroying the economy for nothing and/or a prelude to
totalitarian police state.

------
esel2k
But without protecting these politicians here - over here in Europe we were
more strict and did not play it down as much. What I have missed from the
medical and country leaders is 1-a median age of deaths 2-death statistic that
showed symptoms according to corona. Just stating infection number doesn’t
mean anything.

For me the homework is not only on the political side but also to the medical
side to present the right statistics - even if it might be ethically
borderline. Because only when the threat is defined to economy, healthcare
system and danger for specific groups then you can do a clear data-driven
decision.

------
WalterBright
"this is the most accurate test of credibility we're ever likely to have"

I doubt it. Getting one random prediction right doesn't confer credibility.
Getting several right becomes more interesting.

------
mapgrep
Here are the "journalists" (mostly commentators, actually) in the video Paul
Graham links:

Sean Hannity (Fox News)

Rush Limbaugh (independent, right wing)

Pete Hegdeth (Fox News)

Lou Dobbs (Fox Business)

Tomi Lahren (Fox News)

Jeanine Pirro (Fox News)

Dr. Marc Siegel (Fox News)

Geraldo Rivera (Fox News)

Laura Ingraham (Fox News)

Jesse Waters (Fox News)

Matt Schlapp (shown on Fox News)

Dr Drew Pinsky (shown on Fox News)

Ed Henry (Fox News)

Ainsley Earhardt (Fox News)

I think it's misleading to call this "a video of TV journalists and
politicians." It's a video of Fox News journalists and Rush Limbaugh and right
wing politicians.

------
cityzen
I'll be downvote for this but couldn't you say the same thing about this
epidemic of unprofitable, over-valued "unicorns" propped up by VC money?

"The answer, I realized, is that they didn't think they could get caught. They
didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions. These people
constantly make false predictions, and get away with it, because the things
they make predictions about either have mushy enough outcomes that they can
bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in the future that few
remember what they said."

------
nostrademons
I think this is assuming malice where incompetence may be a more likely
explanation.

I was in the "it's just a flu" camp through early February, and then changed
my mind pretty dramatically a few weeks before the U.S. (or Hacker News, for
that matter) consensus shifted. It wasn't that I held an insincere belief
beforehand; it's that the data initially supports two possible
interpretations, and that as more data becomes available, "it's just a flu"
becomes less likely and "this is a serious pandemic that will result in lots
of life" becomes more likely.

For me, the critical pieces of information were details about what the Chinese
definitions of "mild", "severe", and "critical" cases meant. I'd seen the
death rates by age, which had a death rate of under 0.2% for people under 50
and it going up to 6-11% for > 70\. I'd also seen case breakdowns where
illnesses were described as 80% "mild", 15% "severe", 5% "critical", and 2%
"death".

A logical conclusion to draw from that is that for 80% of cases, it really
will be just a flu, an additional 15% would be a really sucky flu (pneumonia
not requiring hospitalization), and 5% of mostly elderly patients require
hospitalization.

The information that changed my mind was the clarification that 80% mild was
broken down into 40% mild (cold symptoms) and 40% moderate (walking
pneumonia), the 15% of severe cases all required hospitalization, and that
hospitalization rates were not that different (factor of 2x, rather than
factor of 30x) between young and old people. That and some math about how many
hospitalizations that is vs. hospital beds available in the U.S, and the
reports coming out of Italy that made it clear that the high death rate was
not because of China's air pollution or smoking rates (both of which were
reasonable hypotheses with the data available, particularly the increased male
mortality and preponderance of smoking among Chinese men).

On a systemic level, it's entirely possible that the decision makers simply
have not updated their mental models with this new information. There are a
bunch of cognitive biases why they wouldn't: normalcy bias, unwillingness to
look at unpleasant facts, and commitment bias (once they've publicly stated
that it's just a flu it's hard to walk that back without looking like a fool).
There's no need to assume that they're willfully spouting bullshit because
they know they won't get caught. It's entirely possible that they're spouting
bullshit because they believe it.

------
s9w
But both sides are irrationally being confident. The doomsdayers at least as
much as the "flu-bros". I think it's fair to challenge the massive
interventions being taken and the economic damage.

~~~
Lewton
> But both sides are irrationally being confident.

Being "doomsdayer" does not necessarily mean confidence in the situation. It's
more about accepting that overreacting is much more desirable than
underreacting when facing something exponential where you're constantly 2
weeks behind knowing what the reality is

~~~
BaronSamedi
> accepting that overreacting is much more desirable

I wish that were true but it is not. It is entirely possible to take actions
that make a bad situation worse. The consequences of an economic shutdown, for
example, are unknown. The worst case of global depression and supply chain
disruption is just as bad as the virus itself, if not more so. I do not know
how one makes good decisions in a situation of highly uncertain knowledge and
severe consequences.

I think we are in "less bad" territory, i.e. how do we balance multiple
considerations such that while not leading to any outcome that could be
considered "good", is at least not catastrophic. I don't envy those who have
to make such decisions.

~~~
Lewton
When you're in a situation where the severity of the outcome doubles every 4
days and you do not have clear information about where the curve will break,
underreacting will result in extremely bad outcomes much much much more often
than overreacting

For a simplified example just compare the cost of taking actions that make you
break the curve 4 days too early with the situation where you break the curve
4 days too late

~~~
generalpass
> When you're in a situation where the severity of the outcome doubles every 4
> days and you do not have clear information about where the curve will break,
> underreacting will result in extremely bad outcomes much much much more
> often than overreacting

> For a simplified example just compare the cost of taking actions that make
> you break the curve 4 days too early with the situation where you break the
> curve 4 days too late

But does it seem that implausible that cooler heads might find a solution that
doesn't cost at least $20 trillion?

~~~
Lewton
It seems obvious that the US could have handled it so much better and cheaper
if they had not kept ignoring the situation in China and then Italy (which
made Europe wake up)

But even in the situation the US is now, doing something, anything, now. Might
still be a lot better than the alternative

------
linuxhansl
+1000

> Now that we've seen the results, let's remember what we saw, because this is
> the most accurate test of credibility we're ever likely to have.

I have very little hope here. Collective memory does not seem to last more
than a year. The cynic in me believes that once toilet paper is available in
pre-corona quantities again, we'll forget about the harmful mis-predictions.

And if recent history is an accurate indicator, then I'm afraid folks are
_still_ going to get away with lies and false predictions (not to even speak
of harmful actions.)

------
hanoz
_> Now that we've seen the results, let's remember what we saw, because this
is the most accurate test of credibility we're ever likely to have. I hope._

PG obviously has better things to do than watch as much current affairs
punditry as me, because people verifiably fail such credibility tests _all the
time_ , there just aren't enough of us keeping a tally, and the interviewers
don't go out out their way to pick the pundits up on it because they're all
part of the same circus.

~~~
mirimir
... or part of the kayfabe.[0]

0)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22796845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22796845)

------
MarkMc
Lots of people here are pointing to Philip Tetlock's book _Superforecasting_
which describes these forecasting problems, and also a more rigorous,
scientific approach to forecasting.

Interestingly, Tetlock's 'superforecasters' predict a 30% chance of more than
350,000 coronavirus deaths in the US:
[https://goodjudgment.io/covid/dashboard/](https://goodjudgment.io/covid/dashboard/)

This is up from 17% on March 21

------
techbio
“As of today there are x,y00,000 cases and n,000 deaths reported due to
coronavirus—here to discuss the new numbers is political correspondent Not A.
Statistician.”

------
DrNuke
More worringly, this epidemic is also destroying the layer of benevolent
hypocrisy that kept globalisation together among young people worldwide: the
Chinese virus, the Italian siesta, the Northern stinginess, the British take
it on the chin, the American insurance or die, and so on are the latent
prejudices now rubbing salt into wounds and adding insults to injuries. It
will be extremely difficult to have that utopian, dreamy benevolence back
soon.

------
seemslegit
If the politicians and media outlets editors who downplayed coronavirus in
February predicted they could say it, get a lead time on the market and prep
time for themselves and those with access to better data and estimates and not
generally end up in worse shape politically and economically than if they
admitted the full severity at the beginning and be right about all those
things, are their predictions still bad ?

------
danans
> The answer, I realized, is that they didn't think they could get caught.
> They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions.

There was no danger to _them_ , and a lot of the same old hay to be made from
the faithful in the meantime. The problem is that the "meantime" didn't last
long enough, and now many of their faithful are instead fearful.

------
skrebbel
Not to take anything away from the greater point, but I like that this is
basically Paul Graham's way of making a YouTube comment.

------
99_00
If mitigation works it will look like the virus was over-hyped and was never a
real threat because death tolls will be low.

------
miguelmota
Seems like in today's age most of the content display on TV news is purely for
entertainment purposes, or "infotainment" so to speak. More eyeballs means
more ad revenue. Anger is a stronger emotion than love so news outlets like
Fox News love to stir up drama to keep attracting their base viewers.

------
david_w
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, Sweden puts into practice what they only
speculate about:

[https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/covid-19-and-
swedis...](https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/covid-19-and-swedish-
exception-bruce-bawer/)

~~~
cma
> Now, if I were the suspicious type, I might suggest that Sweden’s
> coronavirus policy was, from the very beginning, formulated with this
> endgame in mind: the weeding out of aged and infirm Swedes in order to free
> up residences, welfare benefits, and Lebensraum generally (pardon my French)
> for Muslim immigrants

Read a real source instead of this nazi garbage

------
ChuckMcM
The less you know, the more confident you are in believing what you are saying
is accurate.

It has been my experience that as I learned more, my statements became more
and more equivocal until these days I tend to think more about various
probabilities of what might be correct. I miss the surety of youthful opinion.

------
randallsquared
> _Now that we 've seen the results, let's remember what we saw, because this
> is the most accurate test of credibility we're ever likely to have._

No, this is a terrible test of credibility. Journalists and politicians often
go the other way, amplifying the danger, or outrage, or worry. Taking the
outside view, it's overwhelmingly likely that any forecasted pandemic or
disaster doesn't happen; we almost always get sky-is-falling predictions and
then nothing really seems to happen from the perspective of most viewers or
readers. Swine flu, bird flu, ebola, zika, on and on: these have previously in
media-market memory been hyped as global catastrophes in the making, and then
they turn into localized awfulness. This time, there were many more people
than previously who seemed willing to espouse the outside view that this would
probably blow over, and it seems incredibly ironic that _this time_ , it
didn't go away, and now those same categories of people who have been
previously criticized for fear mongering are being lambasted for not fear
mongering enough...

~~~
DanBC
> we almost always get sky-is-falling predictions and then nothing really
> seems to happen from the perspective of most viewers or readers. Swine flu,
> bird flu, ebola, zika, on and on: these have previously in media-market
> memory been hyped as global catastrophes in the making, and then they turn
> into localized awfulness

...because WHO and those local regions spend considerable time and effort
preventing catastrophe.

~~~
randallsquared
Yes, they did (along with, in many cases, considerable external aid from other
NGOs, etc). However, from a height, it looks somewhat similar to how China's
response to Wuhan prevented catastrophe... It _didn 't_ fully prevent it, but
that was hard to know two months ago for most of the talking heads PG was
calling out.

------
corpMaverick
In case you didn't click. The video is unsurprisingly Fox News. A
disinformation machine. It just got very real. They aren't protecting anyone's
interests at this point and they can get many people killed, including the
same oligarchs that benefit by it.

------
nickthemagicman
I would love to see a project that does fear sentiment analysis of news media
sources.

I go to NY Times or Fox news and it's seems like so much fear based reporting.

I go to NPR or BBC and it seems much more level headed.

Would love to have an objective measurement of fear based sentiment analysis
of news sources.

------
0x8BADF00D
Making a correct prediction is difficult. Especially if you see something the
vast majority of people don’t see. It takes quite a bit of risk to make a
contrarian prediction, which is why the payouts are higher if the contrarian
prediction comes true.

------
sharker8
I agree that there was a certain amount of "nobody's going to watch this tape"
going on in the heads of the incorrect prognosticators. But I also think that
there's a strong 'in group out group' effect. It goes something like this:
Whether I'm wrong or not, this is the 'approved solution' of the network I am
on. And whether I'm wrong or right, we can rewrite this later with a little
help from our friends. In their world, while its not OK to state inaccuracies,
it is OK to state inaccuracies in support of some dogma like "the economy must
go on". That is why we now see messaging coming from the right saying "this
will be over, and the question when it ends will be who killed the economy to
save a few people". And that version of the story is enough to vindicate any
previous inaccurate statements for the audience these speakers care about.

------
nostromo
This image I saw on Twitter really sums up his point well:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUvf_SmUUAEMRiR?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUvf_SmUUAEMRiR?format=jpg&name=large)

------
yters
I totally agree, and we need to hold all sides accountable, not just the
favorite bugbear.

Thing is, there are credible voices taking a counter perspective, and they
should be heard and given blame (and praise) for their accuracy in prediction.

------
maitredusoi
This is because nobody is an epidemiologist over-night. So now you will be
able to discard any proposition from those kind of people, those one who are
trying so hard to be smart, but that obviously can't become over-night ;)

------
Animats
_" These people constantly make false predictions, and get away with it,
because the things they make predictions about either have mushy enough
outcomes that they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in
the future that few remember what they said."_

Neither of which applies this time.

Here's a project for someone who works in the video space. Start with a Trump
speech. As soon as he says something demonstrably false, the image freezes and
a loud buzzer sounds. The picture of Trump shrinks and moves to a corner of
the screen. Then the correct information appears, possibly including a
contradictory clip from Trump. After that, the main video resumes.

Advanced version: do this in real time with machine learning.

Now that would get you hits on Youtube.

------
buboard
Pg should write about what seems to be the real epidemic in america: politics.
When people politicize a chemical compound , you know things are dangerously
wrong

------
Mc_Big_G
Fox _" News"_: [https://streamable.com/l8agkx](https://streamable.com/l8agkx)

------
guscost
This cuts both ways.

------
redthrow
Avoiding news [1] and people who don't bet on their prediction [2] go a long
way.

[1]
[https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/i_changed_my_mi.htm...](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/i_changed_my_mi.html)

------
known
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried
everything else" \--Churchill

------
andy_ppp
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.

------
fulafel
Aren't these just cult leaders? They'll just explain away the outcome as a new
surprise conspiracy.

------
simion314
Disappointingly politicians and their supporters pushed the narrative into
blaming X or Y.

I would politely ask HNers who were in the is just the flu camp to reflect
(please don't comment, just reflect) why I was wrong, what bias or whatever
flaw my thinking had and avoid blaming X or Y for your mistake. Btw I am not
accusing people here, I also was not anticipating things to go like this.

------
threepio
783 comments and no one noticed Warren Buffett's name was misspelled?

~~~
kgwgk
Probably most of us didn't bother to read the thing we're commenting on...

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

Oh, the irony!

------
deepaksurti
>> Instead they just continued to use their ordinary m.o.,

m.o. = modus operandi

------
Dowwie
Paul is referring to Fox News:
[https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1246146713523453957?...](https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1246146713523453957?s=19)

~~~
nimblebill
What about the NYC Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot tweeting in February
([https://twitter.com/NYCHealthCommr/status/122404315585253786...](https://twitter.com/NYCHealthCommr/status/1224043155852537863)):

 _As we gear up to celebrate the #LunarNewYear in NYC, I want to assure New
Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans,
avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus._

And then again in March
([https://twitter.com/NYCHealthCommr/status/123429834432909312...](https://twitter.com/NYCHealthCommr/status/1234298344329093121)):

 _Despite this development, New Yorkers remain at low risk for contracting
#COVID19. As we confront this emerging outbreak, we need to separate facts
from fear, and guard against stigma and panic._

Or the NYC Chair of New York City Council Health Committee tweeting
([https://twitter.com/MarkLevineNYC/status/1226566648729133056](https://twitter.com/MarkLevineNYC/status/1226566648729133056)):

 _In powerful show of defiance of #coronavirus scare, huge crowds gathering in
NYC 's Chinatown for ceremony ahead of annual #LunarNewYear parade. Chants of
"be strong Wuhan!"

If you are staying away, you are missing out_

Or Bill de Blasio tweeting
([https://twitter.com/BilldeBlasio/status/1234648718714036229](https://twitter.com/BilldeBlasio/status/1234648718714036229)):

 _Since I’m encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives + get out on the
town despite Coronavirus, I thought I would offer some suggestions. Here’s the
first: thru Thurs 3 /5 go see “The Traitor” @FilmLinc . If “The Wire” was a
true story + set in Italy, it would be this film._

Or does it only count when its Fox News?

~~~
beepboopbeep
Yes, those are mistakes as well. We don't have to delve into whataboutism in
order to point out the wrongness of something.

------
jeffdavis
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 Schwarzenegger[2];
and their best-laid plans crumbled under later Democratic administrations.

Credibility is a funny thing. For some things, people are very credible but
still drop the ball in big ways. Honestly it's just hard to know how someone
is going to act in a major disaster. I would have guessed that if anyone were
to _overreact_ on a Chinese virus pandemic, it would be Trump. And people that
are highly competent during normal situations might start behaving strangely
and lose credibility quickly during more interesting times (like lying about
masks not helping ordinary people).

There isn't a magic team of scientists that has all the answers. There is a
science to pandemics, but there's a fair amount of guesswork, as well,
especially when China was hiding so much information. Politicians need to make
decisions based on incomplete information. So do doctors, for that matter.

So let's have some humility and realize that a lot of formerly-credible people
are _also_ in the process of screwing this up. It's not just the shoot-from-
the-hip politicians.

[1] [https://georgewbush-
whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemi...](https://georgewbush-
whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza.html) [2]
[https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/31/...](https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/31/schwarzenegger-
shortsighted-for-california-to-defund-pandemic-stockpile-he-built-1269954)

~~~
est
> 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.

------
zzzeek
Might PG have included the critical point of this video is that they are all
_conservative_ voices? Right, that would be too "divisive".

~~~
pjscott
The voices on this particular video are all conservative because it's a clip
from the Daily Show, not an unbiased sample, and _of course_ they're going to
mainly pick on the other side. People on the right are making similar lists of
grievances against left-wing media, and if you looked exclusively at those,
you'd get the impression that downplaying the coronavirus is a _liberal_
thing.

(My own pet interpretation is that political news reporting is a circus,
reality-adjacent at best, and most journalists leave you worse-informed for
having listened to them regardless of their party affiliation.)

------
grappler
Frankly, those of us on the blue side have a pretty good track record. Not
perfect, but pretty good. Then, there is Red America. Let's not kid ourselves
with some kind of equivalence: “oh, both sides have this issue”. It's not
remotely close.

Sure, Trump is bad and his sycophants in the media are bad. But they are
symptoms. The disease is the people who put them there and have been keeping
them there, by not holding them to account: Red America.

------
sagichmal
pg saying something like this without a touch of irony is just (chef's kiss)

------
strangattractor
VC's do it all the time.

------
jswizzy
If you think politicians and journalists are bad wait until you see what the
experts are saying.

------
InfiniteBeing
There are numerous examples of people on both sides of the political spectrum
comparing this virus to the flu and downplaying the severity, but then the
switch was flipped.

At times I've believed that this virus was an absolutely terrible virus, and
at other times I've believed that things were overblown.

I've read and seen interviews of more calm and rational experts and think that
perhaps the original claims were more correct, or at least the response by
governments are more damaging than the virus itself.

In the end this virus' run may end up not being worse or not much worse than a
flu season of a certain level of severity as initially thought, but the future
consequences on our rights and liberties by media induced panic and state
authoritarian measures might be long lasting.

I really don't want to see certain people calling others fascists, nazis and
communists in the future after seeing what they've supported during our
current times.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pcQFTzck_c&feature=emb_logo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pcQFTzck_c&feature=emb_logo)

------
stevetodd
Liberalism and conservatism are essentially religions—there are core
fundamental beliefs to them and a community surrounding it. Rejecting the
political party is not just rejecting beliefs but also rejecting family,
friends, and social structure. The battle has become so much more about red vs
blue, left vs right, that principles and facts are no longer relevant. The
vitriol and lack civility in the current political environment all but
guaranteed this outcome.

Fox News is deeply wrong, but we should all look inward to our own behavior
and if we’ve been unkind or unrespectful, we should take responsibility for
creating this situation. Do you really think that yelling at, shaming, or
embarrassing people will get them to change? I don’t think research supports
that position.

~~~
choward
> Liberalism and conservatism are essentially religions

I somewhat agree but I would argue that it's the Democratic and Republican
parties that are religions, not the philosophies themselves. They both are
fine on their own just like religious philosophies.

It's the people who basically form a cult, give it a name, and interpret the
philosophies that are the problem. It becomes all about growing your cult to
be bigger than the other cults so you have more power. To get people
interested you attack the other side instead of having intelligent debates.
They operate within there own echo chambers.

Most media companies pick a side and then attack the other side. People like
watching other people get very emotional so that leads to more viewers. It's
why there are so many "reality" shows.

------
deepender99
economic crises is also coming...

------
jamsb
HTTPS isn't supported :(

------
robomartin
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](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](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](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

~~~
gbpz
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.

~~~
jshevek
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.

------
robomartin
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](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](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](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
    

These are not statements made by talking heads in news shows. These are the
leaders of the US state with the most cases and most deaths. They are not
taken out of context. And they are clearly telling people to, effectively, go
out there and get infected.

This is the real reason for which places like New York and Louisiana are in
such trouble. Their leadership failed the people. They failed miserably. They
were ignorant, political and just plain wrong. And they got everyone infected.
It's one thing to start with a handful of cases. It's quite another to tell
people to pile into subways, festivals, restaurants and other high-traffic
public environments and effectively help the virus replicate. You then start
your odyssey with thousands of cases, not a handful, which can't end well.

Either we dismiss this as collective ignorance and excuse it as such, or we
don't. Yet, other states took it very seriously. People took it seriously. The
trigger for most was when Trump shut down travel from China. That was on
January 31st. Love him or hate him, an neutral observer would instantly
understand this was a seriously out of band move and one that could not have
been taken lightly or unilaterally. That was a very strong signal that
something was seriously wrong.

For me, that event, added to the R0 data that was coming in, told me this was
serious and it high likelihood of going way beyond China. During the first
week of February I bought three months of supplies for our family. Various
states around the nation started to take measures as well. Places like NY and
Louisiana, instead, decided closing the doors to China was racist and, as if
the virus cared about political defiance, actually promoted mass gatherings
and helped the virus spread and infect large numbers of people.

Yes, I agree with the general message issued by PG. However, I strongly
suggest the article needs to be edited in order to remove the intellectually
dishonest and politically one-sided focus. It simply isn't true and it is
wrong. There's a very direct and well documented link in the video and Twitter
record of who in the US is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of
people getting infected and likely tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands
of people dying.

This isn't a joke. People are losing partners, mothers, fathers, siblings,
sons and daughters. Let's not lie or distort the truth due to political
alignment and effectively join the very group we are accusing of being
dishonest.

------
known
Next version of #CoronaVirus should infect only Politicians; Earth will become
a better place for Humans;

------
edw519
_Instead they just continued to use their ordinary m.o., which, as the
epidemic has made clear, is to talk confidently about things they don 't
understand._

Those of us with I.T. managers have been putting up with this forever:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

------
atomashpolskiy
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?

~~~
tigershark
It’s an insult. Covid-19 is in the best case 30 times as deadly as the flu
while being twice as contagious. Calling it just a flu and downplaying it is
actively causing thousands of deaths.

------
aaron695
I'd like a website recording people telling others to not wear masks.

Hold them into account.

------
throwawaylolx
Why focus only on the low-hanging fruits at one end of the spectrum? How about
all the scientists who made doomsday predictions that failed to materialize?

~~~
jacquesm
Err on the side of caution works quite well when modelling things that are
rare but that can have devastating effects.

~~~
throwawaylolx
This is a nonsensical approach unless you consider the damage caused by
overprotective measures such as the rapidly increasing number of people who
are filling for unemployment every day.

~~~
jacquesm
Right. So, in your opinion, how many people would you be willing to give up
for the economy? What ages? Prior conditions? What about yourself? Your
family?

We've been conditioned over the last 100+ years that life - especially life of
white people, but never mind that bit - is precious. So now, when white
people's lives are in danger you suddenly want to go all super rational and
equate lives with paying out unemployment? Good luck with that.

~~~
throwawaylolx
GDP correlates with life expectancy, so you can't separate deaths and economy
as if they were behaving in isolation from each other like you seem to assume
in your tantrum.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, they are correlated. But they are not correlated in such a way that
you're going to be looking the people that you've just condemned in the eye.
Nor do they have voting family members that will remember that when ballot
time rolls around.

So this utilitarian argument you are making is going to be a very difficult
one to put across and if you feel otherwise about it then it is up to you to
stick your neck out, I want no part of it, and neither do most people. The
argument that the handicapped, aging and ill should be disposed of has been
made before, it didn't end well.

------
eanzenberg
At the time, if you believed Chinese data, and the WHO, then you should have
concluded this was no worse than the flu.

~~~
xster
Media: China's gone mad full dystopia, welding people shut inside their
apartments, stopping trains, removing people of all their freedoms.

Media: tis but a cough.

------
andrewtbham
The flip side is all the people that got it right on twitter.

And continue to make insightful predictions:

[https://medium.com/@andrewt3000/covid-19-and-
hypoxemia-697bc...](https://medium.com/@andrewt3000/covid-19-and-
hypoxemia-697bc8a19bae)

------
madads
Disappointing to see that MSM and more disappointing that even here there are
not more people questioning the data and situation.

Also, where did the free thinking go? Not ostracising everyone that has a
different view than the current world narrative.

There are dozens of sme in virus-related fields that are voicing the opposite
of what govs and msm are saying. This is a great lesson for us all.

Let’s see it dismantle our current “ways of living”. Time for something new!

------
markvdb
Paul, you're absolutely right about the corona virus being the clearest
credibility test fail for these people yet.

But you also write: "These people constantly make false predictions, and get
away with it, because the things they make predictions about either have mushy
enough outcomes that they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so
far in the future that few remember what they said."

I'm not so sure about that. These politicians and journalists have consciously
a/b tested their audiences into tribes of absolute uncritical loyalty. They
feed on anti-intellectualism and cheap gut reactions.

At a certain level of responsibility, incompetence becomes malice. These
people are far beyond that threshold. They will soon have the blood of
thousands on their hands.

I'm not sure the people of the US will be able to keep them to account, but I
certainly hope so.

------
dntbnmpls
> What struck me about it was not just how mistaken they seemed, but how
> daring.

Really paul? You are struck by how wrong journalists and politicians are? They
exist to lie and push an agenda. You've written in the past about the shady
aspects of the news industry. And I seriously doubt you harbored any positive
views of politicians.

> These people constantly make false predictions, and get away with it,
> because the things they make predictions about either have mushy enough
> outcomes that they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in
> the future that few remember what they said.

They make false predictions and get away with it because their agenda and the
agenda of their fans/supporters line up. This is true of the fox side and the
cnn/msnbc side. Have you forgotten about the predictions of yellowcake? The
predictions of a short war in iraq? Remember mission accomplished? What about
the predictions of a Hillary victory? What about all the predictions about
trump/russia collusion? What about all the predictions that trump would be
tossed from office/resign/jailed/etc?

> And the tide has just gone out like never before.

No paul. They've all been shamelessly naked sun bathing on the beach for
everyone to see. It's not like they are hiding their bias.

> Now that we've seen the results, let's remember what we saw,

I doubt it. Just like people seem to have forgotten what a hack trevor noah
is. In just the last few years, if people cared about being lied to,
everything from Rolling Stones, NYTimes, WaPo, Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS,
etc would be out of business.

Brian Williams lied at NBC and then got a job at MSNBC. Isn't that nice?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Williams#Controversies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Williams#Controversies)

I hate to say it but your post seemed more like an attempt to win political
points rather than expressing disappointment in the news industry since you
were already fairly skeptical of the news industry to begin with.

[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
abstractbarista
Honestly, it actually hasn't been materially worse than the flu yet. So this
article's premise is basically worthless.

We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. The flu kills
between 290,000 and 650,000 worldwide yearly, according to the WHO.

The actual "damage" this virus has "caused", which the flu doesn't, is the
economic shock of everyone being forced at once to not go out and spend. We
have rightly done this to save the weaker among us, at the great expense of
the masses' financial future.

~~~
nojvek
We have 70k dead as of 3/6/2020 and it's already slowing. One would definitely
have to take 70k number with a grain of salt. There are many deaths that have
gone unreported because there weren't enough testing kits. Many countries
aren't reporting deaths because their government wants to save face. Iran
comes to mind.

What's different about this virus is in just a span of a few months it has
claimed 70k deaths. At the rate people are dying, if we just let it run its
course without any social distancing (like flu runs its course), we could have
millions of deaths.

COVID-19 is ~10X deadlier than flu looking at the current numbers.

If we just let the economy go as is, with our healthcare overwhelmed and >1%
of our population dying, that would be terrible. I don't know if I want to
live in such a heartless world. Remember even young people are dying albeit at
a lower rate.

One of my friends who did get COVID-19 explained that its not like a regular
flu. The feeling of having a brick on your chest and not being able to breath
is real. It really tires you and brings your worst fears to life. The worst 2
weeks of his life.

That is not a description of regular flu ^

------
dekhn
I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of
yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of
flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not
potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on
economy), COVID-19 _has_ been less than a bad year of flu.

This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the potential to become
worse. Instead it's saying that i'm shocked we don't take a preventable
disease like annual flu more seriously, and that we've internalized the cost
of all those deaths.

(I know people get really riled up when I say the above. If it makes you
angry, please take the time to write a cogent, reasoned response based on
data, not anecdotes or emotions. We know that people's anecdotal experience
has a strong effect on their personal feelings, and that this is an
emotionally charged time.)

~~~
daveguy
You may be a biologist, but you are definitely not an epidemiologist.

It is at least 10x more lethal and much more contagious. We will bear the
brunt of it in the US because we didn't take it seriously for so long. The
only reason we aren't at 2,000+ deaths per day in the US is because now we are
taking it seriously. That death rate sustained for a typical flu season (4
months) would be 240,000 deaths. This is serious. If we never took it
seriously the death toll would be well over a million. And that is just in the
US. Downplaying the severity of it will get people killed.

Yes we should take flu more seriously. But that doesn't make this not so bad.

~~~
nickthemagicman
You're missing context. It's 10x more lethal in CERTAIN DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS.

The data so far shows that it's the same lethality or less in people under 60
y.o. with no pre-existing conditions which is a huge proportion of the world
and it may even be LESS because 80% of those tested have NO OR MINOR SYMPTOMS
so who knows how many have it and haven't been tested!

It's not even remotely serious at all in that population.

Context matters in epidemiology am I incorrect?

~~~
daveguy
No, it's more like 5-10% lethal in certain demographic groups. It is 10x as
lethal (1% as opposed to 0.1%) in the general population. And there has been
enough testing in some regions to know pretty well. The pandemic is stressing
hospitals wherever there is a large enough concentration of people. The flu
just does not do that. Mainly because we have vaccines to keep R0 1.2 to 1.3.
When we get vaccines it may be even less contagious than the flu. But right
now it is significantly more contagious and significantly more deadly.

------
atomashpolskiy
I commented on this earlier, and my karma is sinking due to all the crazy
people downvoting each one of my comments in that thread.

To all of these people and anyone sincerely interested in the topic I'd like
to post an interview with Dr John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and
professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by
courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine,
professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of
Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation
Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University, that hopefully sheds the
light on the true amount of fear-mongering and plain stupidity in the media
right now:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw)

Here are some of his thoughts in written form:

[https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-
making-a...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-
the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-
data/)

As you may see, he is much more reserved about the subject than many of the
people in the comments to this submission.

What does this have to do with PG's blog post? Well, PG's post is blatant and
dogmatic witch-blaming, while the people, that he is blaming, may actually be
right. And they definitely have the right to express their opinion on the
subject.

~~~
jMyles
The ironic part is that Ioannidis has been a hero on HN for a long time now -
I imagine that's where you discovered him, as I did.

And it's not just him - his colleagues Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, who
are presently conducting the first large-scale antibody test have also had a
more sober tone. And David Katz. And Frank Ulrich Montgomery. And Albert Ko.

I mean, I understand that somebody disagree with the matter of how to
interpret a situation in which available data is thin, but throughout this
thread, I'm seeing a lot of people denigrate anybody who is taking a more
cautious approach instead of fanning the flames of panic.

Let's try to stay science-based here, if we can do that.

~~~
atomashpolskiy
+1

And thanks for /r/PrepareInsteadOfPanic, good stuff!

~~~
jMyles
No problem; it's been keeping me sane as well. :-)

Where'd you find out about it? Did I tell you?

~~~
atomashpolskiy
No, I just checked your profile. Pity that there are so few followers, you got
some interesting links there. It's crazy how everything is in the open, but
almost everyone acts like it does not exist (not only with corona, but also in
general). Keep it up, brother!

------
rsgalloway
Here's an article from Mar 26 in the NEJM where Fauci writes that C19 may be
no worse than a severe flu season:

"If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases
is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality
rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical
consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe
seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)"

[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387)

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., H. Clifford Lane, M.D., and Robert R. Redfield, M.D.

~~~
heimidal
Your choice of clipping that sentence is _incredibly_ disingenuous.

The actual quote is “This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of
Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza
(which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza
(similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or
MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

They are not saying COVID-19 is the same as a flu, they are saying its
mortality rate is closer to a bad flu year than to SARS or MERS. And that’s
only half of the story — they go on to say that the rate it is spreading is
what is truly worrying even if the mortality rate is low.

Please stop spreading disinformation.

~~~
jshevek
Your quote is better than theirs, but your criticism ('incredibly
disingenuous', 'spreading disinformation') is hyperbolic and assumes bad
faith.

Edit: This would be true even if they didn't provide a link to the source,
which they did.

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bitminer
Paul Graham has the insight granted by hindsight of 3 weeks to 6 weeks of
facts and evidence. The video cited shows clips from January, February, March,
only one as late as March 15.

And he uses the undefined and unusual phrase "false predictions". What,
please, is a true prediction?

The purpose of these commentators is not news, it is entertainment. The fact
they are talking through their ass is part of their attraction. It is all
bullshit and viewers know it. As does Paul Graham:

> Instead they just continued to use their ordinary m.o., which, as the
> epidemic has made clear, is to talk confidently about things they don't
> understand.

Paul Grahams' analysis is also subject to the same critique:

> let's remember what we saw, because this is the most accurate test of
> credibility we're ever likely to have.

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hkai
Flu in the US: 0.13-0.28% mortality [1]

Covid-19 in China: 0.50-0.66% mortality [2, 3]

I mean from numbers it is indeed not much worse than flu, but we don't know
the potential extra deaths caused by running out of ICU beds.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-
seasons.html](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html)

[2]
[https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327](https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327)

[3]
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v2)

~~~
leereeves
And that's with a century of research and experience treating serious cases of
influenza, and none for Covid-19.

Covid-19 is serious, but the major crisis right now is that it's new, and the
medical system is struggling to adapt.

~~~
fiftyfifty
Exactly, we have both vaccines and ani-virals to use against the flu and the
death rate is still that high? We've got neither of those things for Covid-19
to date...

