By "fear porn" do you mean "updating the population as to the latest state of the worldwide pandemic in which half a million Americans have died in 11 months even while social precautions were in place"?
That's a massive oversimplification. Not only does this ignore the incentive structure of the media to make a story out of things that are not necessarily a story, but it doesn't factor in the general ignorance of the public and how these things like "mutants" and "variants" affect their psyche. An average IQ American, anyway, doesn't have a good grasp of how many people regularly die of things besides old age, so when you tell them every single day that X number of people are dying and that there are these scary sounding "variants", what you are effectively doing is brainwashing them.
Go out and ask random people what they think about the pandemic, and it's common that they think that they are at risk of death even if the data from the CDC demonstrates that they aren't. Heck, there are smart people on HN who can't assess risk particularly well.
When the media is constantly drumming COVID into everyone's heads while glossing over the fact that far fewer people are dying now, at the expense of other news items and at the ignorance of other epidemics killing people, yes, that's fear porn.
Tbf human beings do not assess risk well with or without the presence of media. Our psychology is not well equipped to handle it. That's not to say media doesn't make it worse.
Yes it’s true the media has an incentive to play up threats, but does that mean there are no threats, or that all the threats they report can be discounted?
Mutated virus strains that are dramatically more virulent and possibly more deadly are scary. This is the virus evolving to better target its host. There’s nothing irrational about being concerned by that.
It’s true fewer people are dying right now, but it’s still thousands of people per day in the US and still hundreds a day here in the UK. Those are not good numbers. I’d love to know how the relatives of those thousands of people who died today would react to you saying they were not at significant risk.
If some of the current vaccines offer reduced protection against some of the new strains that’s a big deal that people need to be informed about.
The death tracker that was glued to the shot of some cable news programs 24/7 in the US is an example of fear porn.
The model used by modern media is indefensible. It's the same with social media. Unprincipled and willing to do anything to attract viewership/engagement.
I agree and don't like anon accounts. That being said, I will un-anonymously say I agree with that particular comment. "indefensible" and "Unprincipled" are very accurate adjectives for describing most of the media's coverage of COVID.
If what you have to say isn't worth your reputation, then maybe you should think twice before spreading that same thought to real [and often vulnerable] people on the still-nascent internet.
Genuinely: Do you have any knowledge of the culture from the beginning of the world wide web?
Anonymity, and even pseudo anonymity, ensures free discourse.
Good ideas, no matter how unpopular, scary, or threatening to a power structure that could crush the commenter, rise to the top of most conversation formats with reliable regularity.
>If what you have to say isn't worth your reputation
Because I believe the current trajectory of society will place more than just my reputation at risk for expressing my thoughts. Make of that what you will.
>Don't worry, people already know who you are, and you'll get what you deserve no matter how much you try to hide it.
That's going to be yikes from me, dog.
Thank you for driving home my point, though. I don't think you're aware of how dangerous your mentality is and where it leads. I'd suggest to you that I am not your enemy and we likely have a lot of common ground. I don't think the US handled COVID well and I don't like to see others suffer so needlessly. I also think that there are many things we can do to prevent further diseases such as reduce our dependency on factory farming and to invest more in improving the general health of our country. I don't suspect you'd disagree with those thoughts.
I'm saying that the people who, most likely, matter the the most to you, have already made their judgment of you, and that's based on what can't be hidden by an anonymous username.
> If what you have to say isn't worth your reputation, then maybe you should think twice before spreading that same thought to real [and often vulnerable] people on the still-nascent internet.
And if you can't clearly explain your exception (ex. escaping local persecution), then the point stands.
That’s implying you’re conversing with rational person, but fear of cancel-culture is being canceled even for rational thinking, thus people false preferences and/or are dishonest.
The US did far too little to control the spread of the virus, which is why half a million Americans have died. The problem wasn't that people were too scared. It was that there wasn't coordinated, decisive action - specifically, a strict lockdown for several weeks in early 2020 to bring incidence to near zero, followed by rigorous contact-tracing and snuffing out of outbreaks as they occurred. China did this, and as a consequence, fewer than 5000 people have died there, and people have been able to go about their lives more normally for the last year.
Yes, you're right - in order to take more effective action we need to plaster a running death count to the TV screen 24/7 for every American media consumer to view. Time Warner/Comcast/Viacom/Fox know what's best for us and it has absolutely nothing to do with them manipulating emotions for profit.
It's just not been my impression at all that people are too worried in the US about the number of deaths. Quite the opposite, actually. The most stunning aspect of the pandemic, to me, has been how American society has accepted half a million deaths. I would have considered that unthinkable just a year ago.
But COVID is not unique: people have been dying unnecessary deaths in this country for a long time, and have accelerated in recent years. Go read up on deaths of despair. Look at the rise in healthcare costs, or how unhealthy our food is. It's no wonder that a society of unhealthy, isolated, and stressed people are succumbing to a disease that kills those with suppressed immune systems.
The reason for the large number of deaths in the US is not that Americans have suppressed immune systems, are stressed, or are otherwise unhealthy. It's that the virus has been allowed to spread. The infection fatality rate in the US is not 500x higher than in China. The number of infections per capita is, however. The difference is that one country had a strict lockdown, followed by rigorous contact tracing, and the other did not.
I think other Western nations are better comparisons for a number of reasons. I don't think discussing China's approach is a productive conversation.
>The reason for the large number of deaths in the US is not that Americans have suppressed immune systems, are stressed, or are otherwise unhealthy.
I disagree. And even if we were to stop COVID from killing so many, it's reckless to consider this as not a significant contributor to any unnecessary deaths. New variants of existing diseases are inevitable.
If you don't want to discuss China, then you can look at Australia and New Zealand, both of which brought incidence down to near zero.
But there's no reason not to discuss China. It's the elephant in the room. A country of 1.4 billion people essentially ended community transmission and then opened up society again.
> I disagree.
There's nothing to disagree or agree about. The virus is not 500x more deadly in the US than in China. That's a fact, whether or not you agree. The overwhelming factor is simply the number of people who get infected in the first place.
While there may be some strong arguments for the China approach to COVID management, I’m not sure I find your enumerated list of ad-hominem strawmans and head shaking very convincing.
I believe previous generations' media had higher journalistic ideals than today's clickbait. They were by no means flawless back in the day (plenty of cases where they covered up things, like FDR's physical health). But they didn't see themselves as infotainment the way so much of cable news appears to, or nakedly pander to one side.
But I also don't imagine they had quite the same type of ruthless competition as today. So maybe we're all just products of our times.
The real number is debatable because of defective tallying practices where coronavirus is given as cause of death even if there was no specific reason for doing so; hospitals are incentivized to do so because it results in funding.
But aside from that, let's not be so naive, eh? The media runs on sensationalism. The pandemic has been grossly mismanaged and there is absolutely no reason for the draconian lock down we're under. There hasn't been for 10 months. It was justifiable in the beginning because we didn't know what we were dealing with, but we have a much better grasp now and we know who is at risk to permit a much more fine-grained approach. Furthermore, much of the media fear mongering is driven by an ignorance of immunology and epidemiology. We have to remind ourselves that what we often "know" about the world beyond our own local lives is what we glean from the media filter. We should always approach that kind of knowledge with a bit of humility and caution. Journalists are not, shall we say, the creme-de-la-creme.
There's also the political angle. As Rahm Emanuel once said, you shouldn't let a crisis go to waste. There is a great deal to be made during a pandemic like this, monetarily, socially, politically, and otherwise, the so-called Great Reset[0] functioning as perhaps the paradigmatic example, whatever you happen to know or think of it.
Put yourself in the shoes of an ambitious but morally unscrupulous politician or billionaire. Would you so easily end the pandemic given the opportunities it presents, given how rare of an opportunity it poses for doing things you could not do under the usual circumstances? Even if you weren't quite sure what to do with it, you would at least have the instinct to know that the rarity of the situation merits careful consideration, though in this case, you would have had plenty of time to consider them (and frankly, think tanks are in the business of anticipating things; there are no doubt papers that describe how, if a certain set of circumstances were to emerge, certain political goals could be realized).
So yeah, announcing variants of COVID is fine per se, as long as such things are contextualized. The media is often an instrument of decontextualization which leads to confusion and poor judgement (just think about how they report scientific articles, not as one exchange in the cacophony of scientific publications, but as some Definitive Judgement of The Science!). At this point, I have no problem acknowledging the merit in the OP's quip, namely, not that we be cynical, but that it's high time we started employing some common sense instead of just drinking the media Koolaid.
It is fear porn. There have been THOUSANDS of known mutations throughout this pandemic. The “UK strain” has been known since September 2020. Did anyone talk about it? Do you think it’s a coincidence that this suddenly became a huge topic in the media literally the week the vaccine was rolled out?
I think we need to prepare ourselves for a longer fight with the coronavirus. RNA-vaccines can be quickly adapted and interesting vaccines are currently in studies (e.g. the CureVac one, which does not need to get refrigerated in very low temperatures like the Pfizer).
We should invest again in expanding production to guard against new mutants, so that if a shot to update our immunity is needed again, sufficiently large quantities can be produced very quickly. This may be tricky for companies, maybe another governmental aid would be necessary?
I think people are getting very weary of the pandemic, I certainly notice it. In germany it would be very hard to survive a summer or next winter in lockdown without people going craz in my opinion. I hope politicians are planning ahead.
Curb your enthusiasm. German politicians are currently busy reopening schools and hairdressers as the third wave is starting to hit. The vaccine rollout is going frustratingly slow as well, with vaccination rates at 3-4% first dose and 2% second dose, because our politicians were more concerned with saving a few euros on the price per dose than on ramping up production capacity quickly.
This is the second time today I'm seeing something about a new wave in Germany, but I'm just not seeing this born out in the overall data for the country [0]. Looking at the data I see a continued decline since mid to late December, albeit slightly flattening a bit in recent weeks.
Are these more localized waves that wouldn't be apparent to an American not looking at more granular dashboards? What am I missing.
the mutants spreading fast, they are hard to spot since they are not yet dominating and we didn't do much PCR-sequencing in the past (so we have to extrapolate from the few areas that have reliable data). We appear to already have an R-value over one and the probable cause are the mutants. A simple model predicts a significant rise in cases around march the 7th.
The slow vaccination is not really the fault of our german politicians and the situation is improving (since the negotiation was EU-wide). Also, some of the setbacks were hard to forecast, it's always easy in hindsight. The actual vaccination infrastructure is running quite smoothly, we just lack the vaccines so far.
I absolutely blame our government for being too risk-averse. We absolutely could have given the mRNA vaccine makers funding to build up production capacity before the efficacy results are in. There would have been a risk of spending a billion euros on nothing if the vaccines turn out to be ineffective, but that should be a risk worth taking if the success case has you save many times that money (and that's before we talk about the psychological impact of a prolonged crisis).
Epidemics are a relatively new phenomenon as far as human evolution is concerned. Within a purely human set of hosts, germs don't feel evolutionary pressure to become more deadly. If anything, it's advantageous for a germ to be less deadly. The most successful viruses are the common cold viruses, not SARS or Ebola.
Epidemics only really became a thing once we started domesticating animals and therefore being around live animals for prolonged periods of time. This allowed germs originally adapted to these animals the opportunity to jump over to human hosts, for which they may be more dangerous than for the original host animal.
For more details on this point, I can recommend this video on why the native Americans were killed by diseases imported by the European conquerors, but the conquerors didn't bring any deadly diseases back to Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
Studies on the ability of the new vaccines to confer resistance to mutated covid strains are desperately needed. It will be difficult to hold the line on current covid policy through the end of 2021, most of the people I know are focused on just making it another 2-3 months to when they can get a vaccine.
The issue with vaccines is that the human immune system has limited capacity to learn viruses. Once it learns a virus it has hard time learning a similar one.
Immune system forgets about flu after some time. But when you want to get flu shot before season it is a little bit of a game whether you get the right shot for what is going to be prevalent strain this year.
is it really a limited capacity or just a large bias that results in slow learning?
If so maybe again two shots of vaccines are needed to "update" the immune system.
The well-being whole world is at stake, i hope we figure something out.
Your immune system is lazy and when it "thinks" it already knows the virus it kinda ignores it. But what it knows is the previously learned virus so the actual response to the new one might be less effective.
Maybe vaccines can be produced that are only used to update your immune-system and try to avoid triggering the previous response, so they are only useful in combination with a previous shot?
The cat is already out of the bag and IMHO the only correct solution now is for all countries to do what they should have done in December already when the vaccinations started ramping up: complete lockdown with mandatory quarantine for all people travelling, with significant fines if people break it. Until a majority of the population in all countries are vaccinated.
I see only two viable outcomes. Either we do what I said above and accept a boring life for 3-9 months. Or Covid will continue to mutate and this will affect the world for years or longer, as vaccines need to be updated and populations need to be boosted with updated vaccines, whack-a-mole-style.
Totally agree. I see no reason why people think they have to take international flights at this point. Of course, if we had done what you're saying a year ago we wouldn't be in this mess.
You really can't think of any reason someone would have to take an international flight, ever?
What about their visa expiring, them not being in their home country, them not having infinite unlimited free money to support themselves indefinitely in a country they have no right to work in?
What about having a severely ill relative? Funerals? Weddings?
There are over 40,000 Australians stranded around the world alone, and our population isn't that large. I was one of them until today.
Alot of people say what you said, when they really mean "I don't PERSONALLY" need to take any international flights.
I agree with Covid-zero as a policy. I do not agree with leaving a person stranded and stateless, or unable to travel for legitimate and important reasons.
And I assume you mean all countries. Globally. Even those where the government is, ahh, less effective.
And the vaccination is for all residents, including everyone in slums, shanty-towns, or some other form of less-well recognized housing. And irrespective of immigration status or availability of government-sanctioned ID documents,...
Not sure how we plan on quarantining the slums, though... It is hard enough for the US homeless population.
I have a strong background in public health, and am in general sympathetic to your position. I'd like to see good healthcare universally available, we (the human race) certainly can afford it, and it is hard for me to understand how we think we cannot afford it when you consider the potential costs of say avian influenza crossing to humans in some Cairo slum.
My point is only, and as you said, to remind us that this is a global problem. If we don't solve it for society's dispossessed, we haven't solved it.
