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Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this s

Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this seems like fear mongering.

oefrha 7y ago
http://www.brynntannehill.com/about/ http://www.brynntannehill.com/about/ I fail to see any health background.
- wolfram74 7y ago
  Yeah, but she does have operations research experience with the air force and campaign analysis experience with the navy, and she's not making any biology claims that aren't reasonably supported by the literature, she's drawing conclusions about secondary effects which seems more in her wheel house. Also, she has a BS in computer science, which often seems to qualify anybody in the HN comment sections to be an authority on anything.</sarcasm>
  - oefrha 7y ago
    I’m apparently not saying she’s not entitled to have an opinion and voice it. However, whether she should be taken seriously is a different matter. I certainly don’t take most HN comments on health (or anything) seriously.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    I love the web era where everything is about asserting expertise
1121redblackgo 7y ago
Which points do you have issues with? I think they all seemed on 'on-base'.
- lvh 7y ago
  By their own admission, they fail to quantify their findings. So, my issue is that they’re sound bites that a lot of people were predisposed to agree with (eg “American healthcare is bad and expensive”) and therefore unlikely to evaluate critically. People have also argued the opposite: the US is special because we have large natural borders (mostly). Or maybe the US is special because the US has a large Chinese-American population, many of whom travel regularly. Epidemiology is a science. Why listen to Twitter randos when you have specialists?
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Why listen to HN randos for that matter? (Counterpoint: HN has a huge selection bias for educated, technical types and a higher overall pool of talent. Doesn't mean disinformation campaigns and marketing won't work on this crowd, though)
    - lvh 7y ago
      Sure! If the thread had been posted on HN I'd raise similar skepticism :)
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Public Health is an actual line of business based on science. Access to health care is a factor in that unhealthy populations are more at risk of complications. The thing that makes covid scary is how it spreads, and the focus of the health authorities is intervening to slow that down. I am not an expert in the field, but I consulted for a few of them in the past. Ignore twitter bullshit with political overtones and seek out what is being said by CDC, state health departments and related researchers.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  Well just about none of them are substantiated with any data. You can say things like “people in the US will avoid going to the hospital because of the bill” and it sounds right because of our perception of the US health system, but is it really? Do we have actual numbers showing this is actually the case, and if so, how extensive it will be? And do we have reason to believe those numbers will hold in this exceptional circumstance? Yes, when people believe they might have the flu, they could potentially try and wait out going to the doctor. But do we believe that in an environment where we have people so acutely aware of the coronavirus outbreak that they are buying out supplies of masks, posting long twitter screeds on potential doomsday scenarios, and side-eyeing every Asian-American with a cough, that when they start to show symptoms they still are going to get hung up on the cost of a clinic visit? The same goes for many of the other assertions, such as parents forcing their children to go school sick. Or the extremely thin premise of elderly people dying because of a huge number of parents sticking them with their sick children while they work. In fact, what data we do have seems to suggest that children barely get sick from this thing at all, or their sickness is so mild it doesn’t get diagnosed. A recent paper in JAMA found that of the first 44,672 cases confirmed in China, only 416 were in children younger than 10. In fact, only 10% were in people younger than 30.[0] It seems ridiculous to entertain scenarios where elderly people all die off because overworked parents foist their parental duties onto them. It’s also worth stating that a lot of these concerns are not unique to the US. Many of them also apply to other countries like China and Japan, which are already in the midst of their outbreak. Yes, author is only comparing the US and Europe, but that seems like a useless comparison given that the number of infections in both regions is so small and contained right now. And finally, the author fails to account for reasons why the US might be better off than Europe. As is often pointed out on this site, usually in a negative context, the US is far less dense than Europe. Fewer people are living in tightly packed urban communities, and more live in suburban and rural areas. Far fewer rely on public transportation. That means far fewer opportunities to come across someone contagious. And the US has some measure of protection in its borders. Except for Canada and Mexico, we can only be accessed via plane or boat. Most of the EU has open borders, meaning that it will only be that much more difficult to coordinate quarantines and control measures. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130?guestAccessKey=bdcca6fa-a48c-4028-8406-7f3d04a3e932&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=022420 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130?gu...
wil421 7y ago
It sounds more like someone took the typical America sucks topics from a weeks worth of front page submissions from Reddit. Complete with a jab at the current administration. They could’ve added some stats at the end to convince people to go to the doc but instead it just ends.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
Literally no part seems like fear mongering. It even goes out of its way to say this is a risk assessment and the author is not asserting these things _will_ happen. Seems like perfectly fair lay person analysis to me. It would be somewhat of an argument from authority fallacy to dismiss based only on no health background.
- lvh 7y ago
  “I’m not saying this will happen but it could” is a pretty standard fear-mongering hedge. (I don’t want to call what they’re doing fear mongering either because that suggests bad intent. I don’t think their intentions are bad. I just think we’re paying a lot of attention to a Twitter thread because it’s on top of Hacker News, not because of its own merits as a well-reasoned argument.)
Spooky23 7y ago
Facebook gets the extra evil points because they make money, but Twitter is much more effective in getting bullshit propagated to the world.
- ailideex 7y ago
  Twitter is basically like a digital swewer outlet right into your computer and phone, getting that raw digital sewage from the source. Brilliant invention.
kelchm 7y ago
It is fear mongering. The CDC attributed 61,000 deaths in the US to the flu in the 2017/2018 season alone.
- panarky 7y ago
  Please stop comparing COVID-19 to the flu. The flu infects 50 million people in the US every year and kills 0.1% of them. COVID-19 appears to have higher mortality by at least 20x. It also appears to be more contagious. But if it can't be contained before a vaccine is ready, and assuming it only infects the same number of people as the flu, a million could die.
gwilkes 7y ago
Maybe it is fear mongering, but the points raised are valid issues mainly caused by the American health care system. In Japan where I live, drugs that Americans are used to getting over the counter like Tylenol are prescription and no one thinks twice about going to the doctor for the most minor ailment. Obviously the US is the complete opposite of this. The American health care system does have systemic issues that MAY make the coronovirus worse there. I don't think the author is doing anyone a disservice by pointing that out.
nabla9 7y ago
Epidemiologists would point out things differently, but the bottom line is that US is not prepared. Eric Feigl-Ding, Epidemiologist at Harvard pointed out: - US has no free testing or treatment for population. - US government does not cover any preventive measures for healthcare workers like China does.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  Feigl-Ding has been fearmongering since the virus hit the mainstream, including tweeting out non peer reviewed preprinted papers claiming the R0 of the disease was far higher than it is, with commentary that was sensational (“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD”) and simply wrong (claiming the R0 was 8x higher than SARS, when current estimates are that it’s similar). He’s had to walk back lots of claims and has been so irresponsible that he has been called out by fellow epidemiologists and has had an entire article written about him as an example of how misinformation spreads[0]. Take anything coming from his mouth with a huge grain of salt, even with the “Harvard” label trailing his name. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/china-coronavirus-twitter/605644/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/china...
  - mercer 7y ago
    While I feel you downplay the issue too much, I do agree with this. There are better sources than Eric Feigl-Ding with less ridiculous names.

Who is this person? As far as I can tell it’s just some random person speculating. Is there a reason we should be taking them seriously? Because a lot of this seems like fear mongering.

oefrha 7y ago

http://www.brynntannehill.com/about/ http://www.brynntannehill.com/about/ I fail to see any health background.

wolfram74 7y ago
Yeah, but she does have operations research experience with the air force and campaign analysis experience with the navy, and she's not making any biology claims that aren't reasonably supported by the literature, she's drawing conclusions about secondary effects which seems more in her wheel house. Also, she has a BS in computer science, which often seems to qualify anybody in the HN comment sections to be an authority on anything.</sarcasm>
- oefrha 7y ago
  I’m apparently not saying she’s not entitled to have an opinion and voice it. However, whether she should be taken seriously is a different matter. I certainly don’t take most HN comments on health (or anything) seriously.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I love the web era where everything is about asserting expertise

1121redblackgo 7y ago

Which points do you have issues with? I think they all seemed on 'on-base'.

lvh 7y ago
By their own admission, they fail to quantify their findings. So, my issue is that they’re sound bites that a lot of people were predisposed to agree with (eg “American healthcare is bad and expensive”) and therefore unlikely to evaluate critically. People have also argued the opposite: the US is special because we have large natural borders (mostly). Or maybe the US is special because the US has a large Chinese-American population, many of whom travel regularly. Epidemiology is a science. Why listen to Twitter randos when you have specialists?
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Why listen to HN randos for that matter? (Counterpoint: HN has a huge selection bias for educated, technical types and a higher overall pool of talent. Doesn't mean disinformation campaigns and marketing won't work on this crowd, though)
  - lvh 7y ago
    Sure! If the thread had been posted on HN I'd raise similar skepticism :)
Spooky23 7y ago
Public Health is an actual line of business based on science. Access to health care is a factor in that unhealthy populations are more at risk of complications. The thing that makes covid scary is how it spreads, and the focus of the health authorities is intervening to slow that down. I am not an expert in the field, but I consulted for a few of them in the past. Ignore twitter bullshit with political overtones and seek out what is being said by CDC, state health departments and related researchers.
bart_spoon 7y ago
Well just about none of them are substantiated with any data. You can say things like “people in the US will avoid going to the hospital because of the bill” and it sounds right because of our perception of the US health system, but is it really? Do we have actual numbers showing this is actually the case, and if so, how extensive it will be? And do we have reason to believe those numbers will hold in this exceptional circumstance? Yes, when people believe they might have the flu, they could potentially try and wait out going to the doctor. But do we believe that in an environment where we have people so acutely aware of the coronavirus outbreak that they are buying out supplies of masks, posting long twitter screeds on potential doomsday scenarios, and side-eyeing every Asian-American with a cough, that when they start to show symptoms they still are going to get hung up on the cost of a clinic visit? The same goes for many of the other assertions, such as parents forcing their children to go school sick. Or the extremely thin premise of elderly people dying because of a huge number of parents sticking them with their sick children while they work. In fact, what data we do have seems to suggest that children barely get sick from this thing at all, or their sickness is so mild it doesn’t get diagnosed. A recent paper in JAMA found that of the first 44,672 cases confirmed in China, only 416 were in children younger than 10. In fact, only 10% were in people younger than 30.[0] It seems ridiculous to entertain scenarios where elderly people all die off because overworked parents foist their parental duties onto them. It’s also worth stating that a lot of these concerns are not unique to the US. Many of them also apply to other countries like China and Japan, which are already in the midst of their outbreak. Yes, author is only comparing the US and Europe, but that seems like a useless comparison given that the number of infections in both regions is so small and contained right now. And finally, the author fails to account for reasons why the US might be better off than Europe. As is often pointed out on this site, usually in a negative context, the US is far less dense than Europe. Fewer people are living in tightly packed urban communities, and more live in suburban and rural areas. Far fewer rely on public transportation. That means far fewer opportunities to come across someone contagious. And the US has some measure of protection in its borders. Except for Canada and Mexico, we can only be accessed via plane or boat. Most of the EU has open borders, meaning that it will only be that much more difficult to coordinate quarantines and control measures. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130?guestAccessKey=bdcca6fa-a48c-4028-8406-7f3d04a3e932&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=022420 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130?gu...

wil421 7y ago

It sounds more like someone took the typical America sucks topics from a weeks worth of front page submissions from Reddit. Complete with a jab at the current administration. They could’ve added some stats at the end to convince people to go to the doc but instead it just ends.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

Literally no part seems like fear mongering. It even goes out of its way to say this is a risk assessment and the author is not asserting these things _will_ happen. Seems like perfectly fair lay person analysis to me. It would be somewhat of an argument from authority fallacy to dismiss based only on no health background.

lvh 7y ago
“I’m not saying this will happen but it could” is a pretty standard fear-mongering hedge. (I don’t want to call what they’re doing fear mongering either because that suggests bad intent. I don’t think their intentions are bad. I just think we’re paying a lot of attention to a Twitter thread because it’s on top of Hacker News, not because of its own merits as a well-reasoned argument.)

Spooky23 7y ago

Facebook gets the extra evil points because they make money, but Twitter is much more effective in getting bullshit propagated to the world.

ailideex 7y ago
Twitter is basically like a digital swewer outlet right into your computer and phone, getting that raw digital sewage from the source. Brilliant invention.

kelchm 7y ago

It is fear mongering. The CDC attributed 61,000 deaths in the US to the flu in the 2017/2018 season alone.

panarky 7y ago
Please stop comparing COVID-19 to the flu. The flu infects 50 million people in the US every year and kills 0.1% of them. COVID-19 appears to have higher mortality by at least 20x. It also appears to be more contagious. But if it can't be contained before a vaccine is ready, and assuming it only infects the same number of people as the flu, a million could die.

gwilkes 7y ago

Maybe it is fear mongering, but the points raised are valid issues mainly caused by the American health care system. In Japan where I live, drugs that Americans are used to getting over the counter like Tylenol are prescription and no one thinks twice about going to the doctor for the most minor ailment. Obviously the US is the complete opposite of this. The American health care system does have systemic issues that MAY make the coronovirus worse there. I don't think the author is doing anyone a disservice by pointing that out.

nabla9 7y ago

Epidemiologists would point out things differently, but the bottom line is that US is not prepared. Eric Feigl-Ding, Epidemiologist at Harvard pointed out: - US has no free testing or treatment for population. - US government does not cover any preventive measures for healthcare workers like China does.

bart_spoon 7y ago
Feigl-Ding has been fearmongering since the virus hit the mainstream, including tweeting out non peer reviewed preprinted papers claiming the R0 of the disease was far higher than it is, with commentary that was sensational (“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD”) and simply wrong (claiming the R0 was 8x higher than SARS, when current estimates are that it’s similar). He’s had to walk back lots of claims and has been so irresponsible that he has been called out by fellow epidemiologists and has had an entire article written about him as an example of how misinformation spreads[0]. Take anything coming from his mouth with a huge grain of salt, even with the “Harvard” label trailing his name. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/china-coronavirus-twitter/605644/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/china...
- mercer 7y ago
  While I feel you downplay the issue too much, I do agree with this. There are better sources than Eric Feigl-Ding with less ridiculous names.