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> The head of a local hospital network has tweeted wondering where all the heart attack and stroke patients went - both in my lightly impacted region and in dis

> The head of a local hospital network has tweeted wondering where all the heart attack and stroke patients went - both in my lightly impacted region and in disaster NYC. Did the rate go down? Or did people just die at home afraid to go to the hospital? It's at this point that the news media needs to look inwards and wonder if they made such a big hysteria over covid that they failed to point out that people should still go to the ER. I bet many of those who died at home had symptoms of heart attacks/strokes, etc, but didn't want to go out of a mistaken sense of magnanimity (I don't want to take the bed of a COVID patient) as well as a false sense that the hospitals were in any danger of being overloaded (they were not, given the steps we took).

vkou 6y ago
What about option #3 - going to hospital puts you in danger of catching COVID? If you have pre-existing conditions, catching COVID is a lot more dangerous than if you don't. Who typically goes to the hospital for medical treatment? People with pre-existing conditions. "I don't want to go to the ER, because I might catch COVID from another patient, or doctor" is a very justifiable fear. This is just the consequence of the virus spreading to the community - not the consequence of mitigating the spread of the virus through the community.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  > "I don't want to go to the ER, because I might catch COVID from another patient, or doctor" is a very justifiable fear. The mortality risk of undetected/unaddressed heart problems, etc, far supercedes the risk from COVID-19. You could find some limited examples where that's not true but it is overwhelmingly the case. It is becoming increasingly clear that the level of panic associated with COVID-19 is absolutely divorced from the ground truths. But it doesn't just affect non-COVID-19 mortality. It may be that our response is even making COVID-19 mortality worse in some cases: From https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009787?query=recirc_mostViewed_railB_article https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009787?query=rec...): "Social distancing, isolation, and reluctance to present to the hospital may contribute to poor outcomes. Two patients in our series delayed calling an ambulance because they were concerned about going to a hospital during the pandemic." (My note: So the irony here is incredible, these weren't just non-COVID-19 patients afraid to come in but _people who actually had life-threatening COVID-19_.) And from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30090-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...: "Third, the COVID-19 epidemic has caused a parallel epidemic of fear, anxiety, and depression. People with mental health conditions could be more substantially influenced by the emotional responses brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic, resulting in relapses or worsening of an already existing mental health condition because of high susceptibility to stress compared with the general population." and "Finally, many people with mental health disorders attend regular outpatient visits for evaluations and prescriptions. However, nationwide regulations on travel and quarantine have resulted in these regular visits becoming more difficult and impractical to attend."
  - vkou 6y ago
    > It is becoming increasingly clear that the level of panic associated with COVID-19 is absolutely divorced from the ground truths. No, it's becoming increasingly clear that people are incapable of telling the difference between their personal health[1], and the health of society as a whole. The risk of COVID to me is low. The risk to society of me going about my daily business as if nothing has happened is high. There are social adjustments that do little to reduce my risk, but decrease overall risk, and unsurprisingly, people who don't understand, or don't care about the difference between the two, push back on them. And now we get to look forward to a torrent of people who will be complaining that the horse didn't bolt because we closed the barndoor. [1] You are pointing out a few anecdotes of people not going to the ER when they should. I don't deny that a few people are making that mistake. But if we're going by anecdotes, I can point out a million and one anecdotes of people not taking basic health precautions - that I don't even need to go to a newspaper for - since I can see them out of my window.
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      > The risk of COVID to me is low. The risk to society of me going about my daily business as if nothing has happened is high. There are social adjustments that do little to reduce my risk, but decrease overall risk, and unsurprisingly, people who don't understand, or don't care about the difference between the two, push back on them. This is not a fair characterization. Rather, it could be said that the externalities of suspension of elective surgeries, widespread business closures, widespread social isolation and unprecedented fear (which is certainly disproportionate to the risk, _even in those with comorbidities_), are all factors that those who are parroting the "Stay home!" party line are neglecting. I don't think it's fair to say that those who argue against the path we've taken are doing so because of their purely personal risk factors. When highly interconnected systems - like the global supply chain - unravel, it's very hard to predict the full ramifications there. It might be good to start with the impact of these lockdowns on the global food supply and the estimates of 100+ million extra cases of starvation. (I generally try to focus on other factors because quite frankly, to flip your rhetorical technique around, I think that many in favor of these lockdowns don't really care too much about how lockdowns impact conditions in third-world countries and thus I largely try to talk about the direct first-world impact). I don't think those in favor of lockdown are trying to do harm, their intentions are good. But the poor understanding of key concepts such as _what an economy actually is_ is leading to a number of irrational statements being made: for example, the argument that re-opening business is "trading human lives for money". The actual reality is much more nuanced. While on the contrary, perhaps it's just been in my online interactions, but arguing against lockdown/indefinite containment is consistently characterized as either motivated by self-interest or due to the perceived personal risk being low. In essence, the "you clearly don't care about old peoples' lives" argument. -- I've been doing a pseudo-experiment where I've been asking acquaintances of mine what they think the overall infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is, and also what they think their personal risk is. Everyone I've talked to has overestimated the mortality risk both to others and to themselves by an order of magnitude. For example, many have told me that they think the infection fatality rate is 2.2% overall, or 4-5%, etc. In one case a largely healthy young 20-something estimated their personal risk of death at 2%. That's multiple orders of magnitude off. This pseudo-experiment of mine proves nothing, but it's an interesting insight into what people think. (Many of my social groups are very transparently "liberal"-leaning and disproportionate panic in the US is split on party lines so that's not very surprising).
- tathougies 6y ago
  This is an unreasonable response with full information though. Had the media done their job in most parts of the country and reported that hospitals were not actually seeing many covid patients, people would have been more willing to go to the hospital. Instead, every news outlet, including local ones, reported on one or two slightly overloaded hospitals in New York City, which is a thousand or so miles away for most Americans, and completely unimportant when you have a heart attack, stroke, whatever. Instead, people had to make do with partial information and many people -- believing incorrectly that their local hospitals were overwhelmed and needed them to stay home -- chose to do so.
dboreham 6y ago
Where did you see media hysteria? Somehow that didn't enter my bubble.
- pensatoio 6y ago
  I hate to say it, but almost all major news outlets have been hysterical about this for the past several months.
  - inpdx 6y ago
    By that definition of hysterical I'm pretty sure the media were hysterical during WWII as well.
    - mjburgess 6y ago
      risk of death from c19 is, in all age groups, the same-or-lower than the general risk of death, ie., trivial. The mean age of death from c19 is 80, and even in this group they die at a rate of 1%/wk anyway, for which c19 is about as deadly. This isnt WWII
      - lastres0rt 6y ago
        Stop pretending this is just "the flu" either. When we talk about flu stats: most people have some immunity to the flu thanks to flu shots (even if they haven't gotten one for this past year) and general herd immunity, which we DO NOT HAVE for this virus, and won't gain without either a vaccine or a few million dead from this thing running rampant. The stats you're quoting are WITH the level of serious intervention we've had so far, which is why as certain states are reopening, we're starting to see the numbers ticking back up again and looking just as bad if not worse.
        SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
        I don't think he did compare it to the flu. But look, as unpopular as that comparison is, we just don't have numbers that support the original estimates that caused lock downs of 2 million dead in the US. The media pushed worst case over and over, and still is. I think an uncomfortable stat this coming year will be just how few people will have been reported to died in 2020 of regular flu. It's not saying Covid19 isn't bad in any way to realize that number, will be almost nothing, and that will be suspicious to people going forward for NextTime.
makomk 6y ago
I think you've explained why this isn't getting covered well. The news media does not do introspection. They're all rah-rah about their power to change the world and how important it makes them, but they almost never consider the possibility that they could've made it worse.
- ethbro 6y ago
  The news media isn't funded to do that sort of journalism anymore. It was always a loss-making enterprise, even with centralized distribution. 24 hour news cycles and internet competition isn't a good recipe for in-depth, long-pursuit journalism.
  - chii 6y ago
    > isn't funded conveniently leaving out that those doing the funding aren't the viewers but advertisers (for most media companies). If the funding came from viewers - who pay for quality, informative and unbiased journalism, there would be more of it. But people don't want to pay.
    - ethbro 6y ago
      > viewers - who pay for quality, informative and unbiased journalism I feel like this was never a majority of the viewer or readership. Instead, in an era of scarcity, BDFLs were able to choose this for them.
RaceWon 6y ago
>>the news media needs to look inwards and wonder What news media? Here in America? There's no news--there is just Democratic Propaganda... which only cares about two things (1) Stop Bernie because, well really, do I need to explain how he would have destroyed the economy? (2) Stop Trump.
redis_mlc 6y ago
The news media? Try HN. I've had massive downvotes for saying exactly what you suggested. My favorite reply comment was, "He was joking." No, actually I wasn't. But I expected that in advance.
- chasd00 6y ago
  if it helps, I remember your posts. I also remember the take downs of the various antibody studies all pointing to infection being much more widespread than originally thought. As if it was bad news the IFR was going down. I lack the intelligence to connect the dots but I sincerely feel there's a large bias, if not outright agenda, here to advise prolonging and deepening the economic destruction.
- morsch 6y ago
  Considering you said "We need herd immunity sooner than later. Let's get to 80% ASAP!" just yesterday, I'm not surprised there are other posts people weren't taking at face value.
newacct583 6y ago
> false sense that the hospitals were in any danger of being overloaded They were overloaded in Wuhan, Milan, Madrid and Brussels, and came within a hair of capacity in Paris and New York. What "false sense" are you talking about, exactly? There was real risk. Are you saying that the media reported overloads that didn't exist? Your argument seems a bit vague to me. You could just as easily argue, with perfectly symmetric evidence, that it's good that "the media" "gave a false sense" of hospital capacity, because it prevented an actual overload of the system. Why is your version better, except that in yours you get to have a more personally pleasing enemy? Pretty much all criticism of "the media" is like this.
- xienze 6y ago
  > What "false sense" are you talking about, exactly? The fact that we were being told to expect Italy/New York levels of hospital overruns ALL OVER the country (hint: field hospitals that hardly got used weren't just deployed in NYC)? And that we're still being told that hospitals ALL OVER the country are in danger of being brought to their knees by re-opening state economies right now? Meanwhile, the nurses that aren't furloughed are making nightly dance videos during their shifts.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    I don't remember that at all. I remember being warned (correctly) that this was a possibility, and that lockdowns were needed to "flatten the curve" and prevent it. That kind of framing was pervasive. But I remember it being very explicitly presented as a caution and not an inevitability. And as it happened, people took heed. And it worked. We beat it. Can you cite the specific coverage you're thinking of? Basically: this seems like a bit much to me. The media warned us of something. We listened. The warning worked. And now you want to attack "the media" because the thing they warned us might happen didn't... because they warned us.
- tathougies 6y ago
  > What "false sense" are you talking about, exactly? There was real risk. Are you saying that the media reported overloads that didn't exist? Um... Cuomo said he needed 40k new ventilators to make sure hospitals had all they needed after he instituted a shelter in place order. He needed nowhere near that amount. That is hysteria. I don't understand why this is controversial.

vkou 6y ago

What about option #3 - going to hospital puts you in danger of catching COVID? If you have pre-existing conditions, catching COVID is a lot more dangerous than if you don't. Who typically goes to the hospital for medical treatment? People with pre-existing conditions. "I don't want to go to the ER, because I might catch COVID from another patient, or doctor" is a very justifiable fear. This is just the consequence of the virus spreading to the community - not the consequence of mitigating the spread of the virus through the community.

ryankemper 6y ago
> "I don't want to go to the ER, because I might catch COVID from another patient, or doctor" is a very justifiable fear. The mortality risk of undetected/unaddressed heart problems, etc, far supercedes the risk from COVID-19. You could find some limited examples where that's not true but it is overwhelmingly the case. It is becoming increasingly clear that the level of panic associated with COVID-19 is absolutely divorced from the ground truths. But it doesn't just affect non-COVID-19 mortality. It may be that our response is even making COVID-19 mortality worse in some cases: From https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009787?query=recirc_mostViewed_railB_article https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009787?query=rec...): "Social distancing, isolation, and reluctance to present to the hospital may contribute to poor outcomes. Two patients in our series delayed calling an ambulance because they were concerned about going to a hospital during the pandemic." (My note: So the irony here is incredible, these weren't just non-COVID-19 patients afraid to come in but _people who actually had life-threatening COVID-19_.) And from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30090-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...: "Third, the COVID-19 epidemic has caused a parallel epidemic of fear, anxiety, and depression. People with mental health conditions could be more substantially influenced by the emotional responses brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic, resulting in relapses or worsening of an already existing mental health condition because of high susceptibility to stress compared with the general population." and "Finally, many people with mental health disorders attend regular outpatient visits for evaluations and prescriptions. However, nationwide regulations on travel and quarantine have resulted in these regular visits becoming more difficult and impractical to attend."
- vkou 6y ago
  > It is becoming increasingly clear that the level of panic associated with COVID-19 is absolutely divorced from the ground truths. No, it's becoming increasingly clear that people are incapable of telling the difference between their personal health[1], and the health of society as a whole. The risk of COVID to me is low. The risk to society of me going about my daily business as if nothing has happened is high. There are social adjustments that do little to reduce my risk, but decrease overall risk, and unsurprisingly, people who don't understand, or don't care about the difference between the two, push back on them. And now we get to look forward to a torrent of people who will be complaining that the horse didn't bolt because we closed the barndoor. [1] You are pointing out a few anecdotes of people not going to the ER when they should. I don't deny that a few people are making that mistake. But if we're going by anecdotes, I can point out a million and one anecdotes of people not taking basic health precautions - that I don't even need to go to a newspaper for - since I can see them out of my window.
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    > The risk of COVID to me is low. The risk to society of me going about my daily business as if nothing has happened is high. There are social adjustments that do little to reduce my risk, but decrease overall risk, and unsurprisingly, people who don't understand, or don't care about the difference between the two, push back on them. This is not a fair characterization. Rather, it could be said that the externalities of suspension of elective surgeries, widespread business closures, widespread social isolation and unprecedented fear (which is certainly disproportionate to the risk, _even in those with comorbidities_), are all factors that those who are parroting the "Stay home!" party line are neglecting. I don't think it's fair to say that those who argue against the path we've taken are doing so because of their purely personal risk factors. When highly interconnected systems - like the global supply chain - unravel, it's very hard to predict the full ramifications there. It might be good to start with the impact of these lockdowns on the global food supply and the estimates of 100+ million extra cases of starvation. (I generally try to focus on other factors because quite frankly, to flip your rhetorical technique around, I think that many in favor of these lockdowns don't really care too much about how lockdowns impact conditions in third-world countries and thus I largely try to talk about the direct first-world impact). I don't think those in favor of lockdown are trying to do harm, their intentions are good. But the poor understanding of key concepts such as _what an economy actually is_ is leading to a number of irrational statements being made: for example, the argument that re-opening business is "trading human lives for money". The actual reality is much more nuanced. While on the contrary, perhaps it's just been in my online interactions, but arguing against lockdown/indefinite containment is consistently characterized as either motivated by self-interest or due to the perceived personal risk being low. In essence, the "you clearly don't care about old peoples' lives" argument. -- I've been doing a pseudo-experiment where I've been asking acquaintances of mine what they think the overall infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is, and also what they think their personal risk is. Everyone I've talked to has overestimated the mortality risk both to others and to themselves by an order of magnitude. For example, many have told me that they think the infection fatality rate is 2.2% overall, or 4-5%, etc. In one case a largely healthy young 20-something estimated their personal risk of death at 2%. That's multiple orders of magnitude off. This pseudo-experiment of mine proves nothing, but it's an interesting insight into what people think. (Many of my social groups are very transparently "liberal"-leaning and disproportionate panic in the US is split on party lines so that's not very surprising).
tathougies 6y ago
This is an unreasonable response with full information though. Had the media done their job in most parts of the country and reported that hospitals were not actually seeing many covid patients, people would have been more willing to go to the hospital. Instead, every news outlet, including local ones, reported on one or two slightly overloaded hospitals in New York City, which is a thousand or so miles away for most Americans, and completely unimportant when you have a heart attack, stroke, whatever. Instead, people had to make do with partial information and many people -- believing incorrectly that their local hospitals were overwhelmed and needed them to stay home -- chose to do so.

dboreham 6y ago

Where did you see media hysteria? Somehow that didn't enter my bubble.

pensatoio 6y ago
I hate to say it, but almost all major news outlets have been hysterical about this for the past several months.
- inpdx 6y ago
  By that definition of hysterical I'm pretty sure the media were hysterical during WWII as well.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    risk of death from c19 is, in all age groups, the same-or-lower than the general risk of death, ie., trivial. The mean age of death from c19 is 80, and even in this group they die at a rate of 1%/wk anyway, for which c19 is about as deadly. This isnt WWII
    - lastres0rt 6y ago
      Stop pretending this is just "the flu" either. When we talk about flu stats: most people have some immunity to the flu thanks to flu shots (even if they haven't gotten one for this past year) and general herd immunity, which we DO NOT HAVE for this virus, and won't gain without either a vaccine or a few million dead from this thing running rampant. The stats you're quoting are WITH the level of serious intervention we've had so far, which is why as certain states are reopening, we're starting to see the numbers ticking back up again and looking just as bad if not worse.
      - SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
        I don't think he did compare it to the flu. But look, as unpopular as that comparison is, we just don't have numbers that support the original estimates that caused lock downs of 2 million dead in the US. The media pushed worst case over and over, and still is. I think an uncomfortable stat this coming year will be just how few people will have been reported to died in 2020 of regular flu. It's not saying Covid19 isn't bad in any way to realize that number, will be almost nothing, and that will be suspicious to people going forward for NextTime.

makomk 6y ago

I think you've explained why this isn't getting covered well. The news media does not do introspection. They're all rah-rah about their power to change the world and how important it makes them, but they almost never consider the possibility that they could've made it worse.

ethbro 6y ago
The news media isn't funded to do that sort of journalism anymore. It was always a loss-making enterprise, even with centralized distribution. 24 hour news cycles and internet competition isn't a good recipe for in-depth, long-pursuit journalism.
- chii 6y ago
  > isn't funded conveniently leaving out that those doing the funding aren't the viewers but advertisers (for most media companies). If the funding came from viewers - who pay for quality, informative and unbiased journalism, there would be more of it. But people don't want to pay.
  - ethbro 6y ago
    > viewers - who pay for quality, informative and unbiased journalism I feel like this was never a majority of the viewer or readership. Instead, in an era of scarcity, BDFLs were able to choose this for them.

RaceWon 6y ago

>>the news media needs to look inwards and wonder What news media? Here in America? There's no news--there is just Democratic Propaganda... which only cares about two things (1) Stop Bernie because, well really, do I need to explain how he would have destroyed the economy? (2) Stop Trump.

redis_mlc 6y ago

The news media? Try HN. I've had massive downvotes for saying exactly what you suggested. My favorite reply comment was, "He was joking." No, actually I wasn't. But I expected that in advance.

chasd00 6y ago
if it helps, I remember your posts. I also remember the take downs of the various antibody studies all pointing to infection being much more widespread than originally thought. As if it was bad news the IFR was going down. I lack the intelligence to connect the dots but I sincerely feel there's a large bias, if not outright agenda, here to advise prolonging and deepening the economic destruction.
morsch 6y ago
Considering you said "We need herd immunity sooner than later. Let's get to 80% ASAP!" just yesterday, I'm not surprised there are other posts people weren't taking at face value.

newacct583 6y ago

> false sense that the hospitals were in any danger of being overloaded They were overloaded in Wuhan, Milan, Madrid and Brussels, and came within a hair of capacity in Paris and New York. What "false sense" are you talking about, exactly? There was real risk. Are you saying that the media reported overloads that didn't exist? Your argument seems a bit vague to me. You could just as easily argue, with perfectly symmetric evidence, that it's good that "the media" "gave a false sense" of hospital capacity, because it prevented an actual overload of the system. Why is your version better, except that in yours you get to have a more personally pleasing enemy? Pretty much all criticism of "the media" is like this.

xienze 6y ago
> What "false sense" are you talking about, exactly? The fact that we were being told to expect Italy/New York levels of hospital overruns ALL OVER the country (hint: field hospitals that hardly got used weren't just deployed in NYC)? And that we're still being told that hospitals ALL OVER the country are in danger of being brought to their knees by re-opening state economies right now? Meanwhile, the nurses that aren't furloughed are making nightly dance videos during their shifts.
- newacct583 6y ago
  I don't remember that at all. I remember being warned (correctly) that this was a possibility, and that lockdowns were needed to "flatten the curve" and prevent it. That kind of framing was pervasive. But I remember it being very explicitly presented as a caution and not an inevitability. And as it happened, people took heed. And it worked. We beat it. Can you cite the specific coverage you're thinking of? Basically: this seems like a bit much to me. The media warned us of something. We listened. The warning worked. And now you want to attack "the media" because the thing they warned us might happen didn't... because they warned us.
tathougies 6y ago
> What "false sense" are you talking about, exactly? There was real risk. Are you saying that the media reported overloads that didn't exist? Um... Cuomo said he needed 40k new ventilators to make sure hospitals had all they needed after he instituted a shelter in place order. He needed nowhere near that amount. That is hysteria. I don't understand why this is controversial.