
Surge of virus misinformation stumps Facebook and Twitter - adrian_mrd
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/technology/coronavirus-misinformation-social-media.html
======
mech1234
The most interesting bit of misinformation that I've seen develop is the claim
that N95 masks do not help when you are in public, despite the fact that they
factually do help. The chain of events:

1\. Concerns arise that respirator inventories will be depleted, leaving few
or none available for medical personel. Media outlets spread this news.

2a. Thorough and factual news outlets spread the news that respirators have
some effectiveness but are not a silver bullet. They may be used among other
preventative measures. They talk about the differences between levels of
effectiveness of dust masks and respirators.

2b. Sloppy outlets, and the ones more interested in helping the greater good
(preventing hording), start lying, claiming that the dust masks do not work
and respirators do not work. They often conflate the two. They go to the
effort to shame hoarders and praise other people who practice washing and
sanitizing hands, not touching your face, etc.

It's been fun and terrifying to watch. News outlets do not have an interest in
giving a nuanced message. They are willing to lie if they think it helps. It's
a good case study of when you should explicitly not trust a claim made by the
media.

Meanwhile, I have a stack of 20 N95 respirators I bought for woodworking a
year ago that I've been offering to friends and family. I've had no takers
yet.

~~~
jbob2000
Here's why masks are useless: You are going to take your mask off with your
dirty hands. You're going to wear your mask dutifully while outside, then
you're going to walk inside your house and the first thing you will do is take
your mask off - with your dirty hands.

There are so many gotchas with wearing masks that it's best to just leave them
for the people who are closest to the crisis. They're the ones with the
greatest need and they have the training to make them effective.

And besides... the coronavirus is not airborne, you need to be hit with a
droplet from an infected person's cough or sneeze. There's such a small chance
of that happening while you're out-and-about that it's not worth it to wear
these things. The real solution is to wash your hands because _that 's the
main vector of infection_.

~~~
mech1234
You are claiming that the masks are useless. They are not. They have some
effectiveness, and that effectiveness is limited. This is well-understood.
Aerosol-based transmission is well-understood. Claiming that there are
"gotchas" does not change the fact that wearing a mask reduces your risk.

You are doing the very thing that I pointed out as incorrect: removing nuance.

A more honest expression of your position would be "the limited effectiveness
of the masks and their limited supply means that it is reasonable for the
masks to be reserved for those who need them most." The honest debate around
this position regards how much supply there is, how much individual liberty
should dictate demand, and other such factors. The latter half of your post
comes around to this, even though the first half is incorrect.

~~~
jbob2000
I don't disagree with you, but the risk reduction they provide is so little
that you may as well call them "useless".

You should go buy a lotto ticket! There's a chance you could win!

~~~
achenatx
the risk reduction is actually very high. But the probability of being in the
presence of the virus is very low. Health care workers treating infected
patients have a 100% chance of being exposed so epidemiological risk reduction
is large.

I think the "useless" part actually refers to the the fact that the public at
large wont be wearing masks so a few people wearing masks might protect
themselves, but does nothing to alleviate the overall spread of the virus.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I understand that wearing a mask doesn't prevent the wearer (for most common
masks) but instead protects other people. Should you be a carrier. It slows
the spread, which is a good thing?

~~~
kps
It's a matter of terminology; ‘mask’ has a narrower meaning than in colloquial
use.
[https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInf...](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInfographic-508.pdf)

(Compounding the confusion is that a reusable rubber _respirator_ is also
called a ‘half mask’.)

------
clumsysmurf
It certainly is not helping Vice President Mike Pence is requiring government
health officials and scientists at CDC to coordinate all public health
information through him for vetting and possibly censoring.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-
coronaviru...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronavirus-
pence.html)

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
Seriously what is wrong with you, Americans? Your bipartisan political
fundamentalism is stronger than religion, people just have to draw snark
comments about either party or president. Can't you be reasonable for even
once when there are crisis going on? It's just pure insanity.

------
decebalus1
The biggest problem is that this information compounds with the reality on the
ground (for example the stringent test requirements in King county -
symptomatic patients being turned away from testing) which further breeds
mistrust in the government, panic and susceptibility to any explanation which
makes sense.

~~~
makomk
This is kind of the problem. Tbe symptoms are basically the same as flu and
many other things at least in mild cases, pretty much nowhere is testing all
patients who have them, and the reaction of medical professionals to the idea
that they should tends to involve words like "dangerous" and "irresponsible".
But the mainstream media, including publications like the Times, fed the idea
that not aggressively testing was basically asking for an epidemic, tied it to
powerful partisan narratives, and now there's no going back.

~~~
decebalus1
> Tbe symptoms are basically the same as flu

there are some nuances to that and the symptoms are not basically the same.
One of the MSFT employees who ended up testing positive was initially turned
away from testing at the hospital as there was no travel abroad involved.
She/he self-quarantined and ended up being tested by the 'Seattle Flu Study'
which came up positive. A lot of reactions to that were along the lines of
'well, if the result is the same (you need to self-isolate, same treatment as
the flu) why is it useful to know if you have the novel virus?'.

This is bad, IMO. It sends the message that there's some entity who wants the
numbers to stay low via denying testing, while at the same time sending people
on their way thinking 'it's not serious' who would then get back to their
daily routine which would infect others.

As a King county resident looking at what's happening in Italy, I have this
constant anxiety that this is only going to get worse. Coupled with the amount
of bullcrap thrown around on Facebook, I'm worried that some people who were
on the edge prior to this outbreak would snap. There's a Facebook group full
of preppers (because of the Seattle big earthquake thing) which completely
blew up with this outbreak. I'm talking people stocking up on ammo to ensure
nobody steals their stash.

~~~
hef19898
Or maybe reserving limited testing capacity for severe cases in which proper
diagnosis makes all the difference? Would sound legit to me. Not saying that
limited testing isn't a problem, the very least of which is biasing the
numbers.

------
partiallypro
This isn't just a Facebook/Twitter thing. A person on MSNBC just said that 20%
of the US will die from this virus. Why would you say that? No stat backs that
up.

~~~
dredmorbius
Italy's current stats show 463 deaths, 724 recoveries.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20200309190730/https://en.m.wikip...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200309190730/https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak_by_country_and_territory)
(archive.org to show status as of my comment)

(WHO's SITREP 49 shows 366 deaths, doesn't list recoveries:
[https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/situati...](https://www.who.int/docs/default-
source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200309-sitrep-49-covid-19.pdf))

The raw CFR represented is quite high. Whether that represents a virulent
strain or insufficient monitoring (I suspect the latter) isn't clear.

~~~
partiallypro
On the contrary the death rate in Germany is almost 0%. The median age for
those that have passed in Italy is ~81. Most of the US deaths currently were
from an end-of-life care center. A massive percentage of the deaths in China
are from the original province. I'm not saying this isn't an issue, and we
should especially look out for our elderly, but the stats simply aren't there
to claim a 20% death rate.

[https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

~~~
dredmorbius
Germany's rate is suspiciously low, though 2 deaths are reported today.

~~~
hef19898
Could we just stop real-time counting of _each and every single case_? Germany
has more than 81 _million_ people, just to add some perspective. People die,
it sucks, and that virus is not your common cold, but this case counting, in
media and the internet, is really getting ridiculous.

And please refrain from using words like "suspiciously" which tend to
transport negative messages. There is nothing suspicious about these numbers
what so ever.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sorry, no conspiracy intended. Only the observation that, relative to
experiences elsewhere, Italy's mortality is high, Germany's is low. Far more
than expected, which suggests other dynamics (again: unlikely some conspiracy)
at play.

When you're used to dealing with numbers, numbers that don't match up to
expectations are "suspicious", in that they suggest some underlying issue,
though whether in data or ground truth can be hard to say.

~~~
partiallypro
The theory I've heard and find most probable is that Germany has more ICU beds
per capita than Italy. A lot of people think hospital beds in general are most
important, but a lot of experts disagree. You could setup a hospital bed
anywhere, ICUs are much more involved. Both Germany and the US have very high
ICU per capita rates relative to others. Were it not for the nursing home and
some cruise ship patients not getting the ideal care early on, the US rate
would probably be about as low as Germany's.

According to this article, Germany has 4x as many ICU beds per capita as the
UK (the most in Europe,) and the US has upward of 10x as many.
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu-
do...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu-doctor-nhs-
coronavirus-pandemic-hospitals)

~~~
dredmorbius
Interesting and possible.

I suspect that Italy may have had undetected community transmission longer
than Germany, that German testing is more comprehensive, and that we're seeing
more case, detected earlier, and less advanced than Italy's, typically. In
another week or two the gaps in experience may narrow.

Germany's recovereds are only 18 (of 1,224 cases), so the vast majority of
cases are still ongoing. At a rate comparable to Italy's, we'd be looking at
88 recoveries.

For much of this epidemic, different countries aren't so much doing better or
worse so much as being earlier or later in the process. Italy seems 1-2 weeks
ahead of Germany.

Corollary: look for nationwide quarantine in Germany in 7-14 days.

------
anigbrowl
This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/)

I've spent a lot of time in recent years warning about disinformation and the
value of flagging or deplatforming bad actors who exploit the valuable
principle of free speech to deliberately make others worse off. Free speech is
good, but the economics of information distribution often end up giving free
_reach_ to purveyors of information with negative truth value.

~~~
whatshisface
I'm not on board with the idea of distinguishing between speech and "reach."
Forcing everybody to exercise their free speech in isolated 3'x3' cells would
be functionally identical to silencing them, but you could use this same
distinction to argue that you were only ensuring that they didn't have a
platform.

One of the purposes of free speech is to make it possible to say things about
authorities that holds them accountable and makes them uncomfortable. If the
authorities had the ability to limit your "reach," they would use it to
silence you in exactly the same way and to the exact same end as if they could
silence your "free speech."

~~~
giancarlostoro
Any kind of censorship can, and will be abused. Today it's the "bad actors"
tomorrow it's the enemy of the state (you).

------
forkLding
Theres a huge influx of virus misinformation in China itself, not just Taiwan,
worth noting. See: [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/wang-xiuying/the-
wor...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/wang-xiuying/the-word-from-
wuhan)

------
tmaly
I am getting a ton of messages from friends that seem to be in a panic.

I am no expert, and I don’t have answers.

I did read about a simulation called Operation Dark Winter that was done years
back. One of the conclusions was that it was incredibly difficult to get
correct information out to the public.

This was before mobile phones and social media were common. There is
definitely a higher noise ratio out there. I don’t know how to solve this
problem.

My governor tweets out that they have these meetings, but he provides no
detail. I think giving more detail would help comfort people. Perhaps it they
would not flock to unreliable sources online if they had more details.

------
davidw
I'm about ready to throttle the next "it's just a flu" person I read. It's
real; it's serious and we should be taking rational actions to mitigate and
contain it. Don't go to events, avoid restaurants, bars, gyms. Work from home
if you can. Have a supply of food for home.

In some of the worst hit areas of Italy, it looks like they're already
triaging people or considering it.

~~~
teshier-A
How about "Follow official recommendations" instead ? In France Macron made a
show of going to the theatre urging people to live normally (within the new
regulations, e.g. no mass gathering above a certain size).

Advising people to stockpile food this early is sure to make the situation
even worse.

~~~
egeozcan
These kinds of stunts are happening everywhere, with governments left and
right oriented. My parents remember how everyone was panicked because of the
Chernobyl disaster in Turkey, how Cahit Aral (then Turkey's industry and trade
minister) drank tea in front of the cameras to prove the Black Sea region,
which produces most of Turkey's tea, wasn't contaminated, and how Turgut Özal
(then Turkey's PM) commented that radioactive tea tasted better (huge sigh).

Funny, it occurs that the little increase of radiation in that region really
had no significant effect on cancer rates, but those people didn't know that.
I still can't explain why government officials keep doing such stunts. Maybe
there should be a Wikipedia list for these.

~~~
whatshisface
> _These kinds of stunts are happening everywhere, with governments left and
> right oriented._

It reveals how leaders think of their constituents - they are not approaching
this from the perspective of informing the public on how to best deal with
this real but not world-ending danger, instead they are thinking of it in
terms of "stopping the cattle from stampeding."

~~~
bilbo0s
If the danger is real but not world ending, then stopping the cattle from
stampeding is the appropriate priority.

Because the cattle stampeding can actually be world ending. Particularly for
the trampled cattle who were likely in little danger from the start.

~~~
lliamander
Waiting until things actually get bad before giving people permission to take
reasonable precautions is only going to make stampede worse.

------
buboard
I don't even know why facebook could possibly be considered useful for news,
considering the high density of plain idiots who post. Twitter is quite better
, because you can unfollow idiots; they aren't forced upon you by social
convention by being real life friends. But i d like to extoll the virtues of
Reddit. Communities like r/china_flu or r/covid19 are moderated, contain a
reasonable amount of rumors and early information that a moderately smart
person can benefit from, and the density of information is quite high.

Makes one wonder why those facebooks and instagrams get all the advertising
money ...

~~~
troyvit
Seriously. At this point I'm ready to accept that the world is what we made
it. If that means we kill ourselves because we're too daft to read social
media critically then as a species we get what we deserve.

There's a cute, loose correlation between internet access:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage#/media/F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage#/media/File:InternetPenetrationWorldMap.svg)

and covid spread:

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-
confirme...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-
cases.html)

------
zamalek
It could be exactly the same thing as "forward this email to at least 20
people and Bill Gates will give you a million dollars," or "Facebook is
checking for account activity, share this."

It's not necessarily malicious intent, but regardless of whether it is, it is
truly idiotic; just like the above examples.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/3GPHv](https://archive.md/3GPHv)

------
christkv
If everyone wore even cheap surgical masks coughs would be coughs by the mask
reducing spread even by nonsymptomatic people. Think of it like reducing the
effective range of infection to a couple of cm instead of maybe a meter. They
don't have to be n95 or better to help reduce r0

~~~
lliamander
Just wear a simple surgical mask regardless of whether you are sick.

People avoid you like the plague (reducing the chance that they will spread
anything to you).

------
tu7001
I think its okay,if I want gossips, or cats, I'm going to social media, for
information, Reuters, WSJ, etc.

------
Havoc
Well at least they are trying for a change so that's refreshing

------
twright
This feels like the ultimate outcome of both companies' lax moderation
policies. Ironic that about a year ago there were several articles about how
Facebook will suppress misleading anit-vax content but will not remove it [1].
I imagine a lot of managers saying "let's just treat this virus misinfo. the
same way."

[1]: [https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-anti-vaccine-crack-
down...](https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-anti-vaccine-crack-down/)

------
haunter
otoh you have people saying 150 million people will die? Is that better?

------
notacoward
It's worth noting that finding that delicate balance between suppressing false
information and preserving freedom of speech (plus privacy) still requires a
lot of human attention. At the same time, many thousands of workers at
Facebook, Twitter, and just about every other major service are adjusting to
working from home (in Facebook's case having to overcome what's often a
_severe_ addiction to in-person interaction). Plus a good many know somebody
who's affected and might not be at 100% effectiveness due to anxiety. So
response might be a bit attenuated, and even before that it was always easy
for NYT reporters to cherry-pick examples from the company they consider a
threat to their own livelihoods. Should these companies do better? Of course.
Is it realistic to expect that they'll do a lot better than more traditional
sources, including NYT itself? Of course _not_.

