10 ms·

‘I’m not an epidemiologist but’: The rise of the corona influencers

98 points by hhs 7y ago

davidw 7y ago
This is what happens when there's a leadership vacuum at the top. People start trying to figure it out for themselves. I've been loudly talking about what's happening in Italy, because we had time to get ready in the US if we took it seriously.
- CapmCrackaWaka 7y ago
  Ehh I attribute it to the rise of wannabe data scientists who want to fit a sigmoid to everything, as well as influencer culture. People would be trying to get their LinkedIn likes no matter what leadership came out with.
  - alexandercrohde 7y ago
    Well, if the government was matching a curve to it, on a public website that had updates daily, supported by professionals, then I think there would be less demand for random people to do it.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      The problem is that the curves anyone today draws are guaranteed to be wrong. We have almost no idea about how transmissible the virus is, how many people have it, how many people die from it. Even worse, we have a lot of pieces of data that look like information but aren't. For the most obvious example, a lot of people are tempted to divide the count of known deaths by the count of known cases, and they calculate a number which looks like a mortality rate but is multiple times higher than any actual estimate of the mortality rate. Any curve you see today which claims to outline the progress of COVID-19 (rather than the progress of COVID-19 testing and response) is extremely misleading.
      - NortySpock 7y ago
        Then have a rolling history of curve predictions, day-over-day, maybe with some commentary about what seems to be driving changes in the curve (increased tests, changes in transmissibility estimates, a sudden outbreak, etc)
      - kubanczyk 7y ago
        Part of the problem is people who think mortality rate is the same as case fatality risk (CFR). You are one of them too, so look it up.
        SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        Every article I've read reported the WHO's statement using the words "death rate" or "mortality rate". I understand that in the technical sense, the mortality rate is always relative to the total population whether or not they're infected, but I don't think anyone is getting confused by this, and since I'm not myself an expert I'm going to use colloquial terminology over epidemological jargon. Nobody thought the WHO's 3.4% number was saying that 3.4% of the world population is dead.
  - asdfman123 7y ago
    Can't fit a sigmoid if you haven't found the inflection point yet.
    - CapmCrackaWaka 7y ago
      Yes and I've heard the sigmoid described as "the first half being exponential, the second half being logorithmic" all over the place and it bothers me to no end. The natural log of x goes to infinity... I sure hope that doesn't describe infection rates.
- new2628 7y ago
  Arguably there has been a leadership vacuum for decades, where expert bureaucrats are lecturing and patronizing the population, while themselves are being proven wrong and clueless more often than not, with no negative consequences, see the 2008 crisis, etc.
  - Traster 7y ago
    So to be clear about your argument, we don't trust epidemiologists becasue they crashed the economy in 2008?
    - new2628 7y ago
      Well, you have to say which statements from epidemiologists we should trust, because in my country a month ago they said "nothing to see, carry on", and now they say "the end of the world is near, start digging".
  - sykick 7y ago
    Do you have more than a single instance to point to in which expert bureaucrats are lecturing and patronizing while being wrong? From my perspective it seems clear that the American public has been in the grips of anti-intellectualism for quite a long time. In 1980 Asimov made the following famous statement: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
    - new2628 7y ago
      Here are some examples of dubious advice from experts: the Iraq war, regime changes throughout the middle east, interventionism in general, margarine instead of butter, fat is bad/sugar is good, antidepressants are harmless, medical doctors don't understand Bayes' rule, etc. etc. etc. For the record, I'm not American, and not anti-intellectual. Here's a better example of patronizing by experts from the current crisis: "The average person should not wear a mask. Not only it doesn't protect against the virus, but it actually may harm." What they mean is: it may harm by giving a false sense of certainty. Clearly the average person is too stupid to understand the difference between perfect protection and "not quite perfect, but better than nothing" protection.
- briandear 7y ago
  Didn’t the US get the Wuhan virus first?
tamaharbor 7y ago
Neither am I, but... As I recall from Biology Class, a successful virus does not kill its host.
empath75 7y ago
They give eric ding a hard time, but he was sounding the alarm while other epidemiologists were downplaying it. Because of him, I stocked up on groceries over a month ago, decided not to buy a house, and got prepared to work from home and started selling stocks before the market crashed. If I had listened to the ‘real’ experts, I’d have lost twice as much money in the crash and I’d have been scrambling to find food for my family right now. I took everything with a grain of salt, but I was alarmed enough about worst case scenarios to start preparing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobush 7y ago
  Are you out of food where you are? Where is it this bad, already?
  - sky_rw 7y ago
    My local whole foods is sold out of the cauliflower crust frozen pizza I like. End times my friend.
  - pault 7y ago
    The shelves at my local HEB in Austin, TX were completely cleaned out on Monday. There were entire aisles that were completely empty.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  Which epidemiologists were downplaying this virus 6-8 weeks ago?
lacker 7y ago
When you have things like the New York Times publishing articles about how the CDC is publishing misleading information, or the WHO and the South Korean government publish contradictory guidelines, or the federal government announcing one thing one day and the opposite thing the next day, then you really can't just blindly trust an authoritative source any more. It's impossible, because the authoritative sources don't agree with each other! Everyone is forced to do their own amateur analysis. It is no surprise that given the situation, many people are publishing their own amateur analyses. IMO this is better than the situation in previous similar disasters. Like in the 1918 influenza epidemic, many governments censored information, and there was no social media to circumvent this, so the public understanding of the real situation was quite poor.
- m0zg 7y ago
  I think _everyone's_ understanding of the situation is quite poor, not just the public's. If you read studies of the previous epidemics such as SARS, H1N1 etc, you will see that early in the epidemic cycle everyone tends to exaggerate the impact in all aspects, sometimes by orders of magnitude, in part because it's safer to err on the side of caution rather than not be cautious enough, and in part for selfish reasons ("woo-hoo, I get my 15 minutes of fame after working for peanuts in some godforsaken epidemiology lab for a decade"), but mostly the former. For bird flu, for example, the initial prediction was "up to" 150M deaths worldwide: https://slate.com/technology/2009/05/the-problems-with-the-world-health-organization-s-approach-to-pandemics.html#:~:text=Back%20in%20the%20fall%20of,could%20die%20of%20bird%20flu.&text=The%20WHO's%20Global%20Influenza%20Preparedness,the%20H5N1%20avian%20flu%20scare https://slate.com/technology/2009/05/the-problems-with-the-w.... This estimate, supposedly, came from one of he most "informed" people in the world. People just hate unknowns, and especially "unknown unknowns" and therefore latch onto the most dramatic damage estimates and act accordingly, often further exacerbating the situation.
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    This is why the lack of testing is so galling: more information would help everyone -- predictors and consumers of those predictions -- stay calmer.
themodelplumber 7y ago
> “I have a two-hour podcast every week,” he said. “Very few people are listening because it's long and complicated.” I think this is a good example of an opportunity the population here on HN can exploit, and which many others can't: We can metabolize a deeper-than-average scientific discussion and help convert that into reliable and responsible social discourse. It's just a matter of making the time, of seeking out the expert-level information, and digging in. This is also more respectable IMO than mainly just being critical of information and influencers. A lot of the so-called influencers are good people who are trying to help out where they can. That's why they're getting attention; the social organism is looking for help right now. The critical viewpoint is not nearly as effective under these circumstances, in part because it shoots down solutions more than it creates or identifies them.
- creato 7y ago
  I don't think the commentary I've seen here is that much better than what I see e.g. on reddit. Maybe on average, people here are better at reading primary scientific sources, but that is still a small minority of people that either can or take the time to do so.
  - timr 7y ago
    I am a scientist, with extensive training in biochemistry and cell and molecular biology, and I can tell you that the commentary here has been abysmal. Factual information with citations (often, multiple) is routinely grayed out due to herd downvoting, while wild speculation and opinion are at the top of threads. Folks here know about enough science and math to be persuasive when extrapolating, but not enough to truly understand what they're reading, and that's dangerous.
- antonzabirko 7y ago
  excellent analysis
- raphlinus 7y ago
  I've been trying to do that, and spent a great deal of time Monday trying to engage such conversation, always very carefully checking my own sources and also ones cited at me. I didn't get nearly as much engagement as speculation (possible cures) and dangerous misinformation. And yesterday most of the Covid threads here were terrible, full of racism, conspiracies, and so on. Another programmer-based forum I frequent has banned Covid topics altogether. I don't have good solutions here, other than to try to be very careful in choosing only high quality information sources. Getting the word out will be a key part of the response, and I see serious problems in that.
Alex3917 7y ago
So for context, last night I made a subreddit for discussing over-the-counter drugs, supplements, and other interventions for coronavirus: https://www.reddit.com/r/covid19stack https://www.reddit.com/r/covid19stack I already knew this before I made the subreddit, which I did just because I find this stuff interesting, but honestly right now there is very little appetite from the general public in terms of experimenting with treatments or prophylactic measures that could potentially hurt them. Maybe that will change in a few weeks, but right now there is very little risk of people being harmed by whatever misinformation is currently out there. As of right now most people don't even believe the virus can hurt them in the first place. It's hard enough just to folks to stay inside.
alexandercrohde 7y ago
I feel like this is implying this is a bad thing, which it absolutely is not. Am I the only one who hasn't stumbled onto any conspiracy theories whatsoever? I've found the internet to be an invaluable source of outstanding information on this virus (dashboards of diagnoses, research on variants, journal articles on origin, updates about potential treatments) and have found most people to relatively reasonable (e.g. frustrated about lack of testing, but nothing resembling conspiracy theories). That said I focus on HN/reddit.
- irrational 7y ago
  It probably has to do with whom you talk to and what sites you frequent. I've seen lots of conspiracy theories about how this was engineered by China in order to crash Western economies with China getting back on its feet first so it could take advantage of the West while we are down. Seriously. I've heard many people saying that social isolation is going to be permanent going forward. I've heard that the government is going to use this to enforce martial law. I've heard that Trump is going to use this to cancel the upcoming election and invoke something or other to put himself into power permanently, a la Putin. Etc. That's just the tip of the iceburg. There are tons of conspiracy theories. I know people who are starting to stockpile guns and ammunition (and probably TP) in insane amounts. I know people who are pulling all of their money out of the banks. I know others that are buying gold. A lot of gold. In my view, people are verging into extreme unreasonableness. On the other hand, there is the other side of not being reasonable. Yesterday a friend was at the park with her kids. Another mom was on her phone talking to her doctor about her kid's fever and cough. The same kid that she had brought to the public park! I know people who are planning trips to Hawaii while the kids are on this extended vacation. There are a lot of people who are not taking this at all seriously.
  - pault 7y ago
    The doomer and prepper crowd will twist any news to fit their narrative. You can go back through the last 20 years of blog posts and see these same predictions made about every large news story. If you hear people quoting this stuff remind them that it's the same thing people said about the financial crisis, hurricane katrina, 9/11, and y2k, and none of those things ever happened.
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
This seems like a positive trend. The article quotes a guy saying Twitter is two days ahead of newspapers, but that's severely underselling it; many Twitter sources were saying "watch out, this isn't likely to be localized" in late January and "this will be a problem everywhere, start preparing for a lockdown" in mid-February. If it's possible for people to be a month ahead of the mainstream media, that's not a matter of higher verification standards - there's gotta be some structural obstacle in place that systematically prevents the media from noticing important new things. And if that's true I'm glad to have alternative sources without the obstacle.
- creato 7y ago
  Many Twitter sources were also saying that it's nothing or a hoax or whatever right up until a week or two ago (and probably some still are).
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Certainly, and I get your point, but none of them were sources I would have considered reliable in the first place. There's always a selection problem, just as listening to reliable traditional media requires you to screen out conspiracy outlets who pretend to be legitimate newspapers.
  - pault 7y ago
    Your and GP's comments are a perfect illustration of the social media bubble effect. Some people saw an entire news feed telling them it was nothing to worry about, and another group saw a news feed saying it was going to be a global pandemic. It's easy to point the finger after the fact, but you have to understand that people will believe what they perceive as being "common knowledge", and in this day and age that means whatever their twitter and facebook friends say for the majority of people.
- yibg 7y ago
  Seems like hindsight bias at play. Would be interesting to see the overall sentiment of tweets about this in Jan.
nostromo 7y ago
I've been comparing this with the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009. H1N1 ended up not being as fatal as SARSCoV2, but we didn't know that at the time. People were saying it had a CFR of >1% in Mexico (where the original outbreak was). That number dropped way down as better data came in after the outbreak. But still, up to 575,000 people may have died from it. That's not nothing. And... nobody cared? People were calm. It was on the news, but there was no panic. I think part of it was how social media has changed the way we consume and respond to information. I've seen extreme panic on FB, Reddit, HN, Twitter -- which seems to cause more panic. Everything in the media is turned up to 11 now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic It's interesting to go back further and read this Bird Flu article from 2005, where a UN Health Official warned of 150 million possible deaths, and said things like, "It's like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids 10 times faster than it's running at the moment." So, the media has always turned things up to 11, but something about the current era has exacerbated the issue. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4292426.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4292426.stm
- piyh 7y ago
  We also had China set the tone with the largest quarantine in history. Leaders are looking at the precedent on how to act.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    That is very true. Keep in mind the original SARS had a death rate of 10%, so obviously there was a tremendous amount of fear that this new related virus would be similarly lethal.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Leaders are looking at the precedent on how to act. No, they aren't US policy of suppression was an abrupt policy turn that came with this report: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-rese... The Chinese example didn't change overnight, the information available about predicted outcomes of different policy approaches in the US and UK did, and that's what drove policy change, including the Trump Administration flipping from claiming it was a hoax cooked up by political opponents to treating it as a serious issue.
Animats 7y ago
Fox News probably has more influence. They did a complete change of direction a few days ago. One morning, Trump and Hannity had disappeared from the front page of the Fox News site, and more or less reasonable statements appeared. Within half a day, Trump changed course, and he started appearing on the Fox News site again. Still the most useful graph: [1] The Financial Times updates that daily. No projections, just actuals. It's striking how consistently the infection rates track a straight line on a log-linear graph. The US is on the same track as Italy, 12 days behind. So is most of Europe. Only a few Asian countries show signs of control. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...
irrational 7y ago
'I'm not a physician but': The rise of anti-vaxer influencers This medical influencer issue seems to be a much more common thing: from Goop eggs, to anti-vaxers, to corona-influencers. The solution seems to be the need to increase scientific knowledge.
AbrahamParangi 7y ago
Speaking of misinformation, buzzfeed news originally posted this https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/coronavirus-cases-deaths-flu https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/coronavirus-... with the title "Don't Worry About The Coronavirus. Worry About The Flu." They have since scrubbed or edited much of the content of the article, surely not to hide their completely irresponsible behavior. edit: If anything, the real story here is the absolute, abject failure of both national and international health organizations and traditional media to provide accurate and up-to-date information on this emerging pandemic and how Twitter and Reddit filled that gap.
- gnulinux 7y ago
  I have anxiety disorder and have been seeing a therapist for years. I've been freaking out about this disease since January (saw on reddit) and been prepping. My therapist kept saying me this is just the flu, and made me read articles like this. I read this article back when it's title was "Don't Worry About The Coronavirus. Worry About The Flu." My point is, I don't think this is irresponsible. This is something else. This new pandemic is an unprecedented occurrence. Normally, the rational thing to do for to not be scared of a pandemic like this because all previous instances (avian, swine flues, SARS, MERS etc) ended up being ok. So, it seemed like being scared for this disease was irrational, panicky, anxious etc. I really don't disagree with that. Even many experts back then were arguing this will be like them. Turns out we just overfit to our immediate history of pandemics.
  - AbrahamParangi 7y ago
    I think that you shouldn't lose sleep over any pandemic (this one included) but any pandemic contains low-probability of high-impact. Novel pathogens will almost always turn out to be nothing, except when they are something. This has always been a tail risk situation, something which the media is exceptionally bad at evaluating correctly.
arthurcolle 7y ago
Not trying to spread misinformation, but what do you guys think about it being a bioweapon developed at the Wuhan level 4 biochemical warfare lab? Does anyone think there's any possibility that is, in fact, its true origin?
- hyko 7y ago
  Yes, there’s a possibility. It’s highly implausible though for many reasons, including: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
tomp 7y ago
2 days ago, UK government was still recommending Ibuprofen. A few days before that, I had aready found some info that NSAIDs should be avoided if you have CoronaVirus, and you should be taking Paracetamol instead. I’ll take my “influencers” any day, thank you very much!
- mattkrause 7y ago
  Is there any /solid/ data on that? I've seen the short Lancet piece which speculates about co-morbidities and an ACE-related mechanism, but the text is explicitly very speculative.
  - raphlinus 7y ago
    I've been following this. It was mentioned by Anthony Fauci in his JAMA interview this morning. The WHO is recommending against ibuprofen, but primarily out of caution. There is weak empirical support for the caution, but it doesn't look like a big deal; there are vastly more important things to worry about right now, but this is one of those things that spreads really fast through social media, probably largely because it's easy to understand. Good survey I found: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-reports-that-the-french-health-minister-recommended-use-of-paracetamol-for-fever-from-covid-19-rather-than-ibuprofen-or-cortisone/ https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-report...
  - tomp 7y ago
    French Ministry of Health tweeting that is solid enough for me. But feel free to wait for scientific paper in 18 months!
    - mattkrause 7y ago
      It certainly makes sense as a precaution, but I'm surprised how widely this advice has spread. As near as I can tell, it's based on a) 4 sicker-than-expected youth who were taking NSAIDs b) a difficult-to-disentangle association and c) a plausible but by no means ironclad mechanism.
haunter 7y ago
I don't blame people when you see/hear contradictory things. People look at China, Japan, Taiwan, SK etc. everyone covered in masks and then newspapers like NYT and even the Surgeon General of the US coming out saying don't wear masks. So ordinary people scratching their head that who is right? So this is what happens really. There is none to "look up to" At least the NYT is now backtracking but it's too little too late https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...
cameldrv 7y ago
All of those people on Twitter were way ahead of Buzzfeed.
ggm 7y ago
Mark Handley, UCL is very clear: he doesn't do interviews and he doesn't do analysis 'what does it mean' he just published charts and sticks to his knitting. Wise man. http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ Q: You aren't an epidemiologist. Why should I listen to you? You probably shouldn't. I'm a computer scientist and I've spend decades analysing data, but you should talk to a real epidemiologist if you want to understand the underlying causes. Computer scientists do know a lot about exponential growth though. Q: I'm a journalist. Will you appear on my TV show? No. You should have a real epidemiologist on your TV show. Mark Handley, UCL.
- sgt101 7y ago
  It's pretty easy to descend into numerology this way. The vomiting camel being the most egregious example [1]. It's just not a reliable or informative way to creating information from numbers. [1] https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk037xDQF2Ya-Hu4vjdEs-d3M3xhqrQ:1584571272332&q=vomiting+camel https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk037xDQF2Ya-Hu4vjdEs...
  - ggm 7y ago
    Do you think that applies in this specific instance? Do you wish Mark to stop doing this, rather than in general deprecating data science absent analytics?
    - sgt101 7y ago
      I do. These charts don't seem consistent or useful to me, some of the things that they "show" are artefacts, the numbers have not been refounded as data in the sense that the information required to make them genuinely informative is not available, understood or used here. Handley references data collection having been changed in the UK, but cannot quantify the impact. He does not note that testing is being done differently all over the place, some countries are doing drive throughs as an example. I think that some places are doing one test, others are double testing cases. The list of problems goes on. This is part of the noise that is going to confuse and delay effective responses. Btw. This is analytics absent Data Science....
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nabla9 7y ago
You can also take any deep learning project you have, train it with corona data and milk least little publicity.
grecy 7y ago
This is what happens when you ask celebrities and politicians for their input on critical things for which they have absolutely zero qualifications or expertise. They are not experts, and we should not ask them, or even give one second of airtime to their opinions. Why we give them any time on the stage is beyond me. The video of the football manager biting back is perfect[1], and we need to realize this every time a politician or celebrity is asked something of consequence. [1] https://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2020/03/05/jurgen-klopp-not-an-expert-on-coronavirus-football-liverpool-spt-intl.cnn/video/playlists/intl-sports-football/ https://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2020/03/05/jurgen-klopp-no...
tamaharbor 7y ago
You have to cull the herd once in a while. I’m certain a lot of children with parents living expensive, meaningless lives at the local nursing home are hoping nature takes its proper course here.
DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
one of top Apple podcasts right now is "A White Nationalist Has Rebranded Himself as Coronavirus Expert. And People Are Flocking to Him." https://news.yahoo.com/white-nationalist-rebranded-himself-coronavirus-084738034.html https://news.yahoo.com/white-nationalist-rebranded-himself-c...
icelancer 7y ago
Epidemiologists who ignore economic effects are almost as bad. Plans that involve destroying the economy to contain the virus are unacceptable.
trentnix 7y ago
I think the 'OMG so much disinformation!' storyline is a tempest in a teapot. I won't speak for the rest of the world but the entire United States has effectively shut down thanks to an invisible threat that almost certainly has not affected anyone you know. Yet people are generally calm, considerate, and taking appropriate measures. There are always outliers who will buck that trend, but they are pretty far and few between. Don't get fooled just because the media has highlighted those exceptions as if they are widespread. Where I'm at people are staying home, closing their businesses, keeping their distance from others, and expressing genuine concern. But they aren't panicked. There are a few people I'm connected with on social media that insist the measures being taken are excessive. Some are just natural skeptics. Some of them are desperate for attention. A few others believe there are aliens at Area 51. And they might even be right that we've overreacted - time will tell. But in the meantime, they are staying home and taking the recommended precautions anyway, despite their rhetoric. Focus on the attention whoring cranks at your own psychological peril. But my experience suggests the actions and behavior of my fellow citizens and residents have, so far, been worthy of praise.
sgt101 7y ago
Anti Vaxx, Climate Denial, Flat Earth, Moon Fake, Kennedy, 9-11, Co- co- co- corvid... 19. [1] [1] Feel good hit of the summer, Homme, J. et-al (2000)

98 points by hhs 7y ago

This is what happens when there's a leadership vacuum at the top. People start trying to figure it out for themselves. I've been loudly talking about what's happening in Italy, because we had time to get ready in the US if we took it seriously.

CapmCrackaWaka 7y ago
Ehh I attribute it to the rise of wannabe data scientists who want to fit a sigmoid to everything, as well as influencer culture. People would be trying to get their LinkedIn likes no matter what leadership came out with.
- alexandercrohde 7y ago
  Well, if the government was matching a curve to it, on a public website that had updates daily, supported by professionals, then I think there would be less demand for random people to do it.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    The problem is that the curves anyone today draws are guaranteed to be wrong. We have almost no idea about how transmissible the virus is, how many people have it, how many people die from it. Even worse, we have a lot of pieces of data that look like information but aren't. For the most obvious example, a lot of people are tempted to divide the count of known deaths by the count of known cases, and they calculate a number which looks like a mortality rate but is multiple times higher than any actual estimate of the mortality rate. Any curve you see today which claims to outline the progress of COVID-19 (rather than the progress of COVID-19 testing and response) is extremely misleading.
    - NortySpock 7y ago
      Then have a rolling history of curve predictions, day-over-day, maybe with some commentary about what seems to be driving changes in the curve (increased tests, changes in transmissibility estimates, a sudden outbreak, etc)
    - kubanczyk 7y ago
      Part of the problem is people who think mortality rate is the same as case fatality risk (CFR). You are one of them too, so look it up.
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        Every article I've read reported the WHO's statement using the words "death rate" or "mortality rate". I understand that in the technical sense, the mortality rate is always relative to the total population whether or not they're infected, but I don't think anyone is getting confused by this, and since I'm not myself an expert I'm going to use colloquial terminology over epidemological jargon. Nobody thought the WHO's 3.4% number was saying that 3.4% of the world population is dead.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Can't fit a sigmoid if you haven't found the inflection point yet.
  - CapmCrackaWaka 7y ago
    Yes and I've heard the sigmoid described as "the first half being exponential, the second half being logorithmic" all over the place and it bothers me to no end. The natural log of x goes to infinity... I sure hope that doesn't describe infection rates.
new2628 7y ago
Arguably there has been a leadership vacuum for decades, where expert bureaucrats are lecturing and patronizing the population, while themselves are being proven wrong and clueless more often than not, with no negative consequences, see the 2008 crisis, etc.
- Traster 7y ago
  So to be clear about your argument, we don't trust epidemiologists becasue they crashed the economy in 2008?
  - new2628 7y ago
    Well, you have to say which statements from epidemiologists we should trust, because in my country a month ago they said "nothing to see, carry on", and now they say "the end of the world is near, start digging".
- sykick 7y ago
  Do you have more than a single instance to point to in which expert bureaucrats are lecturing and patronizing while being wrong? From my perspective it seems clear that the American public has been in the grips of anti-intellectualism for quite a long time. In 1980 Asimov made the following famous statement: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
  - new2628 7y ago
    Here are some examples of dubious advice from experts: the Iraq war, regime changes throughout the middle east, interventionism in general, margarine instead of butter, fat is bad/sugar is good, antidepressants are harmless, medical doctors don't understand Bayes' rule, etc. etc. etc. For the record, I'm not American, and not anti-intellectual. Here's a better example of patronizing by experts from the current crisis: "The average person should not wear a mask. Not only it doesn't protect against the virus, but it actually may harm." What they mean is: it may harm by giving a false sense of certainty. Clearly the average person is too stupid to understand the difference between perfect protection and "not quite perfect, but better than nothing" protection.
briandear 7y ago
Didn’t the US get the Wuhan virus first?

tamaharbor 7y ago

Neither am I, but... As I recall from Biology Class, a successful virus does not kill its host.

empath75 7y ago

They give eric ding a hard time, but he was sounding the alarm while other epidemiologists were downplaying it. Because of him, I stocked up on groceries over a month ago, decided not to buy a house, and got prepared to work from home and started selling stocks before the market crashed. If I had listened to the ‘real’ experts, I’d have lost twice as much money in the crash and I’d have been scrambling to find food for my family right now. I took everything with a grain of salt, but I was alarmed enough about worst case scenarios to start preparing.

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jacobush 7y ago
Are you out of food where you are? Where is it this bad, already?
- sky_rw 7y ago
  My local whole foods is sold out of the cauliflower crust frozen pizza I like. End times my friend.
- pault 7y ago
  The shelves at my local HEB in Austin, TX were completely cleaned out on Monday. There were entire aisles that were completely empty.
wool_gather 7y ago
Which epidemiologists were downplaying this virus 6-8 weeks ago?

lacker 7y ago

When you have things like the New York Times publishing articles about how the CDC is publishing misleading information, or the WHO and the South Korean government publish contradictory guidelines, or the federal government announcing one thing one day and the opposite thing the next day, then you really can't just blindly trust an authoritative source any more. It's impossible, because the authoritative sources don't agree with each other! Everyone is forced to do their own amateur analysis. It is no surprise that given the situation, many people are publishing their own amateur analyses. IMO this is better than the situation in previous similar disasters. Like in the 1918 influenza epidemic, many governments censored information, and there was no social media to circumvent this, so the public understanding of the real situation was quite poor.

m0zg 7y ago
I think _everyone's_ understanding of the situation is quite poor, not just the public's. If you read studies of the previous epidemics such as SARS, H1N1 etc, you will see that early in the epidemic cycle everyone tends to exaggerate the impact in all aspects, sometimes by orders of magnitude, in part because it's safer to err on the side of caution rather than not be cautious enough, and in part for selfish reasons ("woo-hoo, I get my 15 minutes of fame after working for peanuts in some godforsaken epidemiology lab for a decade"), but mostly the former. For bird flu, for example, the initial prediction was "up to" 150M deaths worldwide: https://slate.com/technology/2009/05/the-problems-with-the-world-health-organization-s-approach-to-pandemics.html#:~:text=Back%20in%20the%20fall%20of,could%20die%20of%20bird%20flu.&text=The%20WHO's%20Global%20Influenza%20Preparedness,the%20H5N1%20avian%20flu%20scare https://slate.com/technology/2009/05/the-problems-with-the-w.... This estimate, supposedly, came from one of he most "informed" people in the world. People just hate unknowns, and especially "unknown unknowns" and therefore latch onto the most dramatic damage estimates and act accordingly, often further exacerbating the situation.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  This is why the lack of testing is so galling: more information would help everyone -- predictors and consumers of those predictions -- stay calmer.

themodelplumber 7y ago

> “I have a two-hour podcast every week,” he said. “Very few people are listening because it's long and complicated.” I think this is a good example of an opportunity the population here on HN can exploit, and which many others can't: We can metabolize a deeper-than-average scientific discussion and help convert that into reliable and responsible social discourse. It's just a matter of making the time, of seeking out the expert-level information, and digging in. This is also more respectable IMO than mainly just being critical of information and influencers. A lot of the so-called influencers are good people who are trying to help out where they can. That's why they're getting attention; the social organism is looking for help right now. The critical viewpoint is not nearly as effective under these circumstances, in part because it shoots down solutions more than it creates or identifies them.

creato 7y ago
I don't think the commentary I've seen here is that much better than what I see e.g. on reddit. Maybe on average, people here are better at reading primary scientific sources, but that is still a small minority of people that either can or take the time to do so.
- timr 7y ago
  I am a scientist, with extensive training in biochemistry and cell and molecular biology, and I can tell you that the commentary here has been abysmal. Factual information with citations (often, multiple) is routinely grayed out due to herd downvoting, while wild speculation and opinion are at the top of threads. Folks here know about enough science and math to be persuasive when extrapolating, but not enough to truly understand what they're reading, and that's dangerous.
antonzabirko 7y ago
excellent analysis
raphlinus 7y ago
I've been trying to do that, and spent a great deal of time Monday trying to engage such conversation, always very carefully checking my own sources and also ones cited at me. I didn't get nearly as much engagement as speculation (possible cures) and dangerous misinformation. And yesterday most of the Covid threads here were terrible, full of racism, conspiracies, and so on. Another programmer-based forum I frequent has banned Covid topics altogether. I don't have good solutions here, other than to try to be very careful in choosing only high quality information sources. Getting the word out will be a key part of the response, and I see serious problems in that.

Alex3917 7y ago

So for context, last night I made a subreddit for discussing over-the-counter drugs, supplements, and other interventions for coronavirus: https://www.reddit.com/r/covid19stack https://www.reddit.com/r/covid19stack I already knew this before I made the subreddit, which I did just because I find this stuff interesting, but honestly right now there is very little appetite from the general public in terms of experimenting with treatments or prophylactic measures that could potentially hurt them. Maybe that will change in a few weeks, but right now there is very little risk of people being harmed by whatever misinformation is currently out there. As of right now most people don't even believe the virus can hurt them in the first place. It's hard enough just to folks to stay inside.

alexandercrohde 7y ago

I feel like this is implying this is a bad thing, which it absolutely is not. Am I the only one who hasn't stumbled onto any conspiracy theories whatsoever? I've found the internet to be an invaluable source of outstanding information on this virus (dashboards of diagnoses, research on variants, journal articles on origin, updates about potential treatments) and have found most people to relatively reasonable (e.g. frustrated about lack of testing, but nothing resembling conspiracy theories). That said I focus on HN/reddit.

irrational 7y ago
It probably has to do with whom you talk to and what sites you frequent. I've seen lots of conspiracy theories about how this was engineered by China in order to crash Western economies with China getting back on its feet first so it could take advantage of the West while we are down. Seriously. I've heard many people saying that social isolation is going to be permanent going forward. I've heard that the government is going to use this to enforce martial law. I've heard that Trump is going to use this to cancel the upcoming election and invoke something or other to put himself into power permanently, a la Putin. Etc. That's just the tip of the iceburg. There are tons of conspiracy theories. I know people who are starting to stockpile guns and ammunition (and probably TP) in insane amounts. I know people who are pulling all of their money out of the banks. I know others that are buying gold. A lot of gold. In my view, people are verging into extreme unreasonableness. On the other hand, there is the other side of not being reasonable. Yesterday a friend was at the park with her kids. Another mom was on her phone talking to her doctor about her kid's fever and cough. The same kid that she had brought to the public park! I know people who are planning trips to Hawaii while the kids are on this extended vacation. There are a lot of people who are not taking this at all seriously.
- pault 7y ago
  The doomer and prepper crowd will twist any news to fit their narrative. You can go back through the last 20 years of blog posts and see these same predictions made about every large news story. If you hear people quoting this stuff remind them that it's the same thing people said about the financial crisis, hurricane katrina, 9/11, and y2k, and none of those things ever happened.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

This seems like a positive trend. The article quotes a guy saying Twitter is two days ahead of newspapers, but that's severely underselling it; many Twitter sources were saying "watch out, this isn't likely to be localized" in late January and "this will be a problem everywhere, start preparing for a lockdown" in mid-February. If it's possible for people to be a month ahead of the mainstream media, that's not a matter of higher verification standards - there's gotta be some structural obstacle in place that systematically prevents the media from noticing important new things. And if that's true I'm glad to have alternative sources without the obstacle.

creato 7y ago
Many Twitter sources were also saying that it's nothing or a hoax or whatever right up until a week or two ago (and probably some still are).
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Certainly, and I get your point, but none of them were sources I would have considered reliable in the first place. There's always a selection problem, just as listening to reliable traditional media requires you to screen out conspiracy outlets who pretend to be legitimate newspapers.
- pault 7y ago
  Your and GP's comments are a perfect illustration of the social media bubble effect. Some people saw an entire news feed telling them it was nothing to worry about, and another group saw a news feed saying it was going to be a global pandemic. It's easy to point the finger after the fact, but you have to understand that people will believe what they perceive as being "common knowledge", and in this day and age that means whatever their twitter and facebook friends say for the majority of people.
yibg 7y ago
Seems like hindsight bias at play. Would be interesting to see the overall sentiment of tweets about this in Jan.

nostromo 7y ago

I've been comparing this with the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009. H1N1 ended up not being as fatal as SARSCoV2, but we didn't know that at the time. People were saying it had a CFR of >1% in Mexico (where the original outbreak was). That number dropped way down as better data came in after the outbreak. But still, up to 575,000 people may have died from it. That's not nothing. And... nobody cared? People were calm. It was on the news, but there was no panic. I think part of it was how social media has changed the way we consume and respond to information. I've seen extreme panic on FB, Reddit, HN, Twitter -- which seems to cause more panic. Everything in the media is turned up to 11 now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic It's interesting to go back further and read this Bird Flu article from 2005, where a UN Health Official warned of 150 million possible deaths, and said things like, "It's like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids 10 times faster than it's running at the moment." So, the media has always turned things up to 11, but something about the current era has exacerbated the issue. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4292426.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4292426.stm

piyh 7y ago
We also had China set the tone with the largest quarantine in history. Leaders are looking at the precedent on how to act.
- nostromo 7y ago
  That is very true. Keep in mind the original SARS had a death rate of 10%, so obviously there was a tremendous amount of fear that this new related virus would be similarly lethal.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Leaders are looking at the precedent on how to act. No, they aren't US policy of suppression was an abrupt policy turn that came with this report: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid19-imperial-rese... The Chinese example didn't change overnight, the information available about predicted outcomes of different policy approaches in the US and UK did, and that's what drove policy change, including the Trump Administration flipping from claiming it was a hoax cooked up by political opponents to treating it as a serious issue.

Animats 7y ago

Fox News probably has more influence. They did a complete change of direction a few days ago. One morning, Trump and Hannity had disappeared from the front page of the Fox News site, and more or less reasonable statements appeared. Within half a day, Trump changed course, and he started appearing on the Fox News site again. Still the most useful graph: [1] The Financial Times updates that daily. No projections, just actuals. It's striking how consistently the infection rates track a straight line on a log-linear graph. The US is on the same track as Italy, 12 days behind. So is most of Europe. Only a few Asian countries show signs of control. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...

irrational 7y ago

'I'm not a physician but': The rise of anti-vaxer influencers This medical influencer issue seems to be a much more common thing: from Goop eggs, to anti-vaxers, to corona-influencers. The solution seems to be the need to increase scientific knowledge.

AbrahamParangi 7y ago

Speaking of misinformation, buzzfeed news originally posted this https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/coronavirus-cases-deaths-flu https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/coronavirus-... with the title "Don't Worry About The Coronavirus. Worry About The Flu." They have since scrubbed or edited much of the content of the article, surely not to hide their completely irresponsible behavior. edit: If anything, the real story here is the absolute, abject failure of both national and international health organizations and traditional media to provide accurate and up-to-date information on this emerging pandemic and how Twitter and Reddit filled that gap.

gnulinux 7y ago
I have anxiety disorder and have been seeing a therapist for years. I've been freaking out about this disease since January (saw on reddit) and been prepping. My therapist kept saying me this is just the flu, and made me read articles like this. I read this article back when it's title was "Don't Worry About The Coronavirus. Worry About The Flu." My point is, I don't think this is irresponsible. This is something else. This new pandemic is an unprecedented occurrence. Normally, the rational thing to do for to not be scared of a pandemic like this because all previous instances (avian, swine flues, SARS, MERS etc) ended up being ok. So, it seemed like being scared for this disease was irrational, panicky, anxious etc. I really don't disagree with that. Even many experts back then were arguing this will be like them. Turns out we just overfit to our immediate history of pandemics.
- AbrahamParangi 7y ago
  I think that you shouldn't lose sleep over any pandemic (this one included) but any pandemic contains low-probability of high-impact. Novel pathogens will almost always turn out to be nothing, except when they are something. This has always been a tail risk situation, something which the media is exceptionally bad at evaluating correctly.

arthurcolle 7y ago

Not trying to spread misinformation, but what do you guys think about it being a bioweapon developed at the Wuhan level 4 biochemical warfare lab? Does anyone think there's any possibility that is, in fact, its true origin?

hyko 7y ago
Yes, there’s a possibility. It’s highly implausible though for many reasons, including: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

tomp 7y ago

2 days ago, UK government was still recommending Ibuprofen. A few days before that, I had aready found some info that NSAIDs should be avoided if you have CoronaVirus, and you should be taking Paracetamol instead. I’ll take my “influencers” any day, thank you very much!

mattkrause 7y ago
Is there any /solid/ data on that? I've seen the short Lancet piece which speculates about co-morbidities and an ACE-related mechanism, but the text is explicitly very speculative.
- raphlinus 7y ago
  I've been following this. It was mentioned by Anthony Fauci in his JAMA interview this morning. The WHO is recommending against ibuprofen, but primarily out of caution. There is weak empirical support for the caution, but it doesn't look like a big deal; there are vastly more important things to worry about right now, but this is one of those things that spreads really fast through social media, probably largely because it's easy to understand. Good survey I found: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-reports-that-the-french-health-minister-recommended-use-of-paracetamol-for-fever-from-covid-19-rather-than-ibuprofen-or-cortisone/ https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-report...
- tomp 7y ago
  French Ministry of Health tweeting that is solid enough for me. But feel free to wait for scientific paper in 18 months!
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    It certainly makes sense as a precaution, but I'm surprised how widely this advice has spread. As near as I can tell, it's based on a) 4 sicker-than-expected youth who were taking NSAIDs b) a difficult-to-disentangle association and c) a plausible but by no means ironclad mechanism.

haunter 7y ago

I don't blame people when you see/hear contradictory things. People look at China, Japan, Taiwan, SK etc. everyone covered in masks and then newspapers like NYT and even the Surgeon General of the US coming out saying don't wear masks. So ordinary people scratching their head that who is right? So this is what happens really. There is none to "look up to" At least the NYT is now backtracking but it's too little too late https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...

cameldrv 7y ago

All of those people on Twitter were way ahead of Buzzfeed.

ggm 7y ago

Mark Handley, UCL is very clear: he doesn't do interviews and he doesn't do analysis 'what does it mean' he just published charts and sticks to his knitting. Wise man. http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ Q: You aren't an epidemiologist. Why should I listen to you? You probably shouldn't. I'm a computer scientist and I've spend decades analysing data, but you should talk to a real epidemiologist if you want to understand the underlying causes. Computer scientists do know a lot about exponential growth though. Q: I'm a journalist. Will you appear on my TV show? No. You should have a real epidemiologist on your TV show. Mark Handley, UCL.

sgt101 7y ago
It's pretty easy to descend into numerology this way. The vomiting camel being the most egregious example [1]. It's just not a reliable or informative way to creating information from numbers. [1] https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk037xDQF2Ya-Hu4vjdEs-d3M3xhqrQ:1584571272332&q=vomiting+camel https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk037xDQF2Ya-Hu4vjdEs...
- ggm 7y ago
  Do you think that applies in this specific instance? Do you wish Mark to stop doing this, rather than in general deprecating data science absent analytics?
  - sgt101 7y ago
    I do. These charts don't seem consistent or useful to me, some of the things that they "show" are artefacts, the numbers have not been refounded as data in the sense that the information required to make them genuinely informative is not available, understood or used here. Handley references data collection having been changed in the UK, but cannot quantify the impact. He does not note that testing is being done differently all over the place, some countries are doing drive throughs as an example. I think that some places are doing one test, others are double testing cases. The list of problems goes on. This is part of the noise that is going to confuse and delay effective responses. Btw. This is analytics absent Data Science....

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nabla9 7y ago

You can also take any deep learning project you have, train it with corona data and milk least little publicity.

grecy 7y ago

This is what happens when you ask celebrities and politicians for their input on critical things for which they have absolutely zero qualifications or expertise. They are not experts, and we should not ask them, or even give one second of airtime to their opinions. Why we give them any time on the stage is beyond me. The video of the football manager biting back is perfect[1], and we need to realize this every time a politician or celebrity is asked something of consequence. [1] https://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2020/03/05/jurgen-klopp-not-an-expert-on-coronavirus-football-liverpool-spt-intl.cnn/video/playlists/intl-sports-football/ https://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2020/03/05/jurgen-klopp-no...

tamaharbor 7y ago

You have to cull the herd once in a while. I’m certain a lot of children with parents living expensive, meaningless lives at the local nursing home are hoping nature takes its proper course here.

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago

one of top Apple podcasts right now is "A White Nationalist Has Rebranded Himself as Coronavirus Expert. And People Are Flocking to Him." https://news.yahoo.com/white-nationalist-rebranded-himself-coronavirus-084738034.html https://news.yahoo.com/white-nationalist-rebranded-himself-c...

icelancer 7y ago

Epidemiologists who ignore economic effects are almost as bad. Plans that involve destroying the economy to contain the virus are unacceptable.

trentnix 7y ago

I think the 'OMG so much disinformation!' storyline is a tempest in a teapot. I won't speak for the rest of the world but the entire United States has effectively shut down thanks to an invisible threat that almost certainly has not affected anyone you know. Yet people are generally calm, considerate, and taking appropriate measures. There are always outliers who will buck that trend, but they are pretty far and few between. Don't get fooled just because the media has highlighted those exceptions as if they are widespread. Where I'm at people are staying home, closing their businesses, keeping their distance from others, and expressing genuine concern. But they aren't panicked. There are a few people I'm connected with on social media that insist the measures being taken are excessive. Some are just natural skeptics. Some of them are desperate for attention. A few others believe there are aliens at Area 51. And they might even be right that we've overreacted - time will tell. But in the meantime, they are staying home and taking the recommended precautions anyway, despite their rhetoric. Focus on the attention whoring cranks at your own psychological peril. But my experience suggests the actions and behavior of my fellow citizens and residents have, so far, been worthy of praise.

sgt101 7y ago

Anti Vaxx, Climate Denial, Flat Earth, Moon Fake, Kennedy, 9-11, Co- co- co- corvid... 19. [1] [1] Feel good hit of the summer, Homme, J. et-al (2000)