4 ms·

Its easy to focus on foxnews and pull all sorts of terrible content like that, but a more serious task is to look at a lot of the statements and confidence from

by ugh123 7y ago

Its easy to focus on foxnews and pull all sorts of terrible content like that, but a more serious task is to look at a lot of the statements and confidence from the medical and scientific community early on - things around wearing masks in public and its inability to prevent spread, or UV light from the Sun and its ability to kill the virus (a popular statement projected by several doctors within the media), and several others. There has been confidence all around from seemingly credible sources - acting on too early and thin data about what measures were effective or non-effective, many of which have been reversed in the last couple of weeks. A lot of this can be attributed to all sorts of news organizations (across the spectrum) and their push to get both positive and negative coverage out as fast as possible at the right time.

jmull 7y ago
This "everyone is bad" is really off-the-mark. If, in a fast moving situation, someone tells you something based on the best information available at the time coming from leading experts, which later turns out to be wrong, that's unfortunate. If someone ignores the leadings experts and the best information available at the time and instead tells you what they want you to believe for their own political advantage, that's despicable. Drawing those as equivalent just doesn't make sense. No one is perfect anywhere on the spectrum, and you can find people who are wrong, stupid, or disingenuous everywhere. But on one side we have most organizations generally trying to get it right for the most part, and on the other, we have organizations trying their best to con people, regardless of the consequences.
- seppin 7y ago
  > This "everyone is bad" is really off-the-mark. It's the worst take because it defeats the ability to find a solution in the future, if nothing can be trusted nothing can be implemented.
  - a_tractor 7y ago
    Your argument against this valid criticism that the current consensus is wrong about what sources can be trusted to be authoritative is an appeal to consequences which relies entirely on reductio ad absurdum. The alternative to "something we thought we could trust and rely on but wow they really got it wrong and won't admit it" isn't "now we have nothing", its "now we need to hold these people accountable or find something else." It means that blind, unthinking trust in authority is what got us here. It means reevaluating your assumptions, not the end of the world. Doubling down simply because you can't imagine what the world would be like without CNN or the NYT is ridiculous.
gamblor956 7y ago
If experts in the field are getting it wrong, how do you expect journalists to get it right? You're holding them up to unreasonably high standards. It's simply unfair to compare news organizations like CNN which are at least trying to present accurate information (to the best of their knowledge) vs channels like Fox News that are active and avowed political propaganda engines that have admitted to deliberately deceiving their audience for views and political gain.
crusso 7y ago
The early talk about wearing masks struck me as particularly egregious. We were told: they don't help, you won't put it on properly, you'll just get yourself sick using it, you'll have a false sense of confidence. That's what I kept seeing from the experts.
- javagram 7y ago
  The advice (CDC/WHO) usually did include a statement that someone who was sick should wear a mask. Of course it doesn’t make sense to tell people not to buy a box of masks if they aren’t sick because then how do you get a mask when you wake up coughing without going into the pharmacy and spreading it? And all the while through February and March evidence was growing that people might be infectious for a week or more before they got a cough.
Daishiman 7y ago
This complete and utter BS. There's a difference between getting into 2nd degree minutiae like the effectiveness of masks, seasonality, and other factors, and then there's plain and outright denial of established facts about the class of virus this was as the news of the situation in Wuhan began to circulate. The most effective measures we have taken - social distancing, washing hands, closing schools, WFH - are the ones that were know to be effective over two decades ago, to the surprise of no one who kept tabs on the topic. Mask wearing is, as of now, still a hotly disputed topic.
- pbourke 7y ago
  > Mask wearing is, as of now, still a hotly disputed topic. It isn't disputed in many countries in Asia.
pbourke 7y ago
> There has been confidence all around from seemingly credible sources - acting on too early and thin data about what measures were effective or non-effective, many of which have been reversed in the last couple of weeks. This is true. In late February/early March there was a medical doctor who appeared in several local news segments here in Seattle. This doctor quoted a very misleading statistic about your chance of catching it ("you have a 0.5% chance of catching the virus"). I was intrigued by this obvious falsehood, and saw that it was also featured in a memo from one of our local hospital systems. Where did they get it from? A CDC study. That CDC study looked at the first handful of patients to have confirmed COVID-19 in the US (all travel related) and traced their confirmed contacts. Sure enough - 0.5% of the contacts traced within this group acquired the virus. Extrapolating this study to suggest that one's chance of catching the virus in the community, 6 weeks after the study was 0.5% was just a monstrous abdication of responsible communication.

by ugh123 7y ago

jmull 7y ago

This "everyone is bad" is really off-the-mark. If, in a fast moving situation, someone tells you something based on the best information available at the time coming from leading experts, which later turns out to be wrong, that's unfortunate. If someone ignores the leadings experts and the best information available at the time and instead tells you what they want you to believe for their own political advantage, that's despicable. Drawing those as equivalent just doesn't make sense. No one is perfect anywhere on the spectrum, and you can find people who are wrong, stupid, or disingenuous everywhere. But on one side we have most organizations generally trying to get it right for the most part, and on the other, we have organizations trying their best to con people, regardless of the consequences.

seppin 7y ago
> This "everyone is bad" is really off-the-mark. It's the worst take because it defeats the ability to find a solution in the future, if nothing can be trusted nothing can be implemented.
- a_tractor 7y ago
  Your argument against this valid criticism that the current consensus is wrong about what sources can be trusted to be authoritative is an appeal to consequences which relies entirely on reductio ad absurdum. The alternative to "something we thought we could trust and rely on but wow they really got it wrong and won't admit it" isn't "now we have nothing", its "now we need to hold these people accountable or find something else." It means that blind, unthinking trust in authority is what got us here. It means reevaluating your assumptions, not the end of the world. Doubling down simply because you can't imagine what the world would be like without CNN or the NYT is ridiculous.

gamblor956 7y ago

If experts in the field are getting it wrong, how do you expect journalists to get it right? You're holding them up to unreasonably high standards. It's simply unfair to compare news organizations like CNN which are at least trying to present accurate information (to the best of their knowledge) vs channels like Fox News that are active and avowed political propaganda engines that have admitted to deliberately deceiving their audience for views and political gain.

crusso 7y ago

The early talk about wearing masks struck me as particularly egregious. We were told: they don't help, you won't put it on properly, you'll just get yourself sick using it, you'll have a false sense of confidence. That's what I kept seeing from the experts.

javagram 7y ago
The advice (CDC/WHO) usually did include a statement that someone who was sick should wear a mask. Of course it doesn’t make sense to tell people not to buy a box of masks if they aren’t sick because then how do you get a mask when you wake up coughing without going into the pharmacy and spreading it? And all the while through February and March evidence was growing that people might be infectious for a week or more before they got a cough.

Daishiman 7y ago

This complete and utter BS. There's a difference between getting into 2nd degree minutiae like the effectiveness of masks, seasonality, and other factors, and then there's plain and outright denial of established facts about the class of virus this was as the news of the situation in Wuhan began to circulate. The most effective measures we have taken - social distancing, washing hands, closing schools, WFH - are the ones that were know to be effective over two decades ago, to the surprise of no one who kept tabs on the topic. Mask wearing is, as of now, still a hotly disputed topic.

pbourke 7y ago
> Mask wearing is, as of now, still a hotly disputed topic. It isn't disputed in many countries in Asia.

pbourke 7y ago

> There has been confidence all around from seemingly credible sources - acting on too early and thin data about what measures were effective or non-effective, many of which have been reversed in the last couple of weeks. This is true. In late February/early March there was a medical doctor who appeared in several local news segments here in Seattle. This doctor quoted a very misleading statistic about your chance of catching it ("you have a 0.5% chance of catching the virus"). I was intrigued by this obvious falsehood, and saw that it was also featured in a memo from one of our local hospital systems. Where did they get it from? A CDC study. That CDC study looked at the first handful of patients to have confirmed COVID-19 in the US (all travel related) and traced their confirmed contacts. Sure enough - 0.5% of the contacts traced within this group acquired the virus. Extrapolating this study to suggest that one's chance of catching the virus in the community, 6 weeks after the study was 0.5% was just a monstrous abdication of responsible communication.