9 ms·

Doctors are tweeting about coronavirus to make facts go viral

74 points by ericzawo 6y ago

Alupis 6y ago
How sad... I just realized my initial gut reaction to seeing any news headline with the word "Fact" in it has become to assume it has a political angle. More often than not, "Fact" is just a synonym for some political opinion. How far have we fallen? Our news outlets are more often than not just Panic Porn and Political Hit Jobs... anything except actual unvarnished, unspun, unpoliticized raw news.
- macintux 6y ago
  In fairness to the news media, it’s effectively mandatory to process the data, the facts, for presentation, so everything is “spun” to some degree.
  - Retric 6y ago
    A lot of news is just factual information such as weather events, earthquakes, sports scores, or who won an election. Spin is more about filling time and attracting eyeballs. Consider, if you’re summarizing what news events where actually relevant to you over the last month, how long would it take?
  - Alupis 6y ago
    Process and make more easily consumable? Sure, I don't have all day to catch up on happenings and events. But to selectively edit videos, leave out details deliberately, loaded word choices ("blasts", "destroys", "slaps back"), deliberate misuse of words to instill a sense of credibility ("fact", "expert", "scientist"), and so much more? That's more than just processing the data... that's deliberate manipulation. In entertainment news media, Fact now means opinion, Expert now means political shill, and Scientist means random person with an opinion.
    - wtvanhest 6y ago
      I often wonder how much entertainment news impacts politician’s decision making. I have to assume that they consider what the major news entertainment companies will say about bills they author and support or don’t. in some ways, they are not just reporting, but likely influencing.
- knzhou 6y ago
  > my initial gut reaction to seeing any news headline with the word "Fact" in it has become to assume it has a political angle. That's not a problem with the headline, it's a problem with your state of mind. There are actual facts at play here, and real experts with good intentions. If you think the whole world is partisan politics and facts don't matter, good for you, but please don't pollute the information pool for the rest of us.
  - justforyou 6y ago
    You're being unfair to OP. It's perfectly reasonable to respect facts, and question the motives of profit driven information outlets when they claim to broadcast them. There's a lot of misinformation being spread.
    - knzhou 6y ago
      Sure, but that’s not what he did. He literally saw the word “fact” and decided he didn’t like what was going to come next. That’s downright medieval.
      - dwaltrip 6y ago
        I'm reading between the lines just a tad, but I think a more generous interpretation is that they noticed they have an unfortunately strong mental association between the following 2 things: 1. Online headline containing prominent usage of the word "fact" while also hinting at some sort of controversy 2. Misleading article, deceptive spin, bullshit, etc. I don't think I have quite as strong an association, but I can definitely sympathize with this.
- holler 6y ago
  fact check, correct your thinking!
- guardiangod 6y ago
  You can apply evolution and meme models to it. Every piece of info on Twitter is an idea fighting for survival. You'd think having 'fact' as a property of a tweet would be beneficial. But it's the opposite- the truth is often unpleasant and people don't want to hear it. This gives 'factual' tweets a survival disadvantage on Twitter. If a fake tweet makes people 'happy' (by way of confirming their innate belief), by evolution they'd out-compete other tweets.
  - brenden2 6y ago
    It's not just Twitter, it also includes HN and any other system that encourages crowd-sourced curation.
DevKoala 6y ago
Doctors try to make facts publicly available. The Wall Street Journal puts them behind a paywall.
- nickff 6y ago
  > Doctors try to make facts publicly available. The Wall Street Journal puts them behind a paywall. Doctors try to get paid for their work. The Wall Street Journal (and its contributors) try/tries to get paid for their work.
  - bachmeier 6y ago
    That's good and all, but this site is for people to discuss articles after reading them. You don't need to link to the article if the discussion is about the title.
- atestu 6y ago
  Coronavirus coverage is free on WSJ.com like on most news sites https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/coronavirus-2020-05-15 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/coronavirus-2020-05-15
- cglace 6y ago
  And yet they still exist on twitter for free.
user_50123890 6y ago
How about tweeting these, 1. The virus mostly spreads through BREATHING/TALKING/COUGHING. 2. 80% of infections come from FRIENDS/FAMILY. Stop going to meet them unnecessarily and spending hours together indoors. 3. Masks mostly don't help you, they help the people AROUND you. I'd say the average person would be much better prepared against the virus with these three facts.
- ericzawo 6y ago
  Citation needed. :)
- cozzyd 6y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately point #3 makes people think they shouldn't wear masks. I was joking to a friend that the correct "American" response to COVID-19 is legal liability for getting others sick, but alas, that requires effective contact tracing.
  - kenhwang 6y ago
    Even more American would be to fine/arrest people caught without a mask.
    - justforyou 6y ago
      Even more American would be to fine/arrest poor people caught without a mask. FTFY.
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      That's the East Asian response. A law like that would probably get dragged through the courts in America with the rest of the media circus before being struck down as government overreach. As the original poster said, legal liability between private individuals with lots of court fees is very American.
      - kenhwang 6y ago
        Definitely see it being dragged through the courts. But it'd be the most tolerable enforcement mechanism to the wealthy elite who wouldn't mind just eating a fine. The East Asian solution takes it one step further with mass surveillance.
dogmatism 6y ago
Med twitter is a big thing. It's mostly doctors talking to doctors. It's almost replacing conferences and journals, and the primary way info about sars-cov-2 has been spread, and excellent for critical review of all the preprints that have also gained "virality." Would be nice if it weren't on twitter though. An old style forum would be much better, or even something like reddit, though I suspect one day these people posting "tweetorials" will regret putting all this info onto someone else's platform rather than blog posts etc.
- walterbell 6y ago
  Doctors created this platform for emergency medicine knowledge sharing, https://rebelem.com/about-us/ https://rebelem.com/about-us/
michaelborromeo 6y ago
Facts by themselves aren’t political or have an agenda. The decision to present certain facts, the other facts you compare those to, and the manner in which they are presented, however, invokes agendas and politics. No matter how much people claim otherwise, doctors presenting facts have agendas. This includes Dr Fauci.
- WalterGR 6y ago
  Is trying to protect as many people as possible an agenda? How about wanting to do one’s best in researching medicine? Or are agendas always sinister? What’s your area of expertise? If someone asked you to give a talk about your area of expertise, what are some agendas you would choose from? Or are you making the point that no human is 100% emotionally detached from their work?
  - michaelborromeo 6y ago
    If you ask Dr Fauci he’ll say let’s save as many lives as we can. Taken alone no one can argue with that. His agenda is to save lives. Obvious. So he will make as strong a case as he can to support the measures to save lives. If you pay attention to him and only him it makes sense to lockdown until there is a cure or vaccine. Now tell me, does that make sense for every single person? From age 10 to 100, rich, poor, healthy, sick, for several months or even a year+? There are costs to Fauci’s agenda which he ignores because that’s not his job but also it doesn’t make sense for him to talk about the costs. You think of an agenda as a bad thing but it’s not it’s just the thing someone wants to get done.
jdashg 6y ago
It can't be done, because that's not how viral memes work. Facts are boring and require nuance. Things go viral because they're outrageous, surprising, or (my favorite) wrong enough that people make responses, which in turn are wrong enough...et voila: Viral.
- y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
  Then maybe we start them off with "now listen here you fucking idiots!"? The response rate seems to go up when there's anger involved. Unfortunately that's a lot of characters for twitter.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/AUyku https://archive.md/AUyku

74 points by ericzawo 6y ago

How sad... I just realized my initial gut reaction to seeing any news headline with the word "Fact" in it has become to assume it has a political angle. More often than not, "Fact" is just a synonym for some political opinion. How far have we fallen? Our news outlets are more often than not just Panic Porn and Political Hit Jobs... anything except actual unvarnished, unspun, unpoliticized raw news.

macintux 6y ago
In fairness to the news media, it’s effectively mandatory to process the data, the facts, for presentation, so everything is “spun” to some degree.
- Retric 6y ago
  A lot of news is just factual information such as weather events, earthquakes, sports scores, or who won an election. Spin is more about filling time and attracting eyeballs. Consider, if you’re summarizing what news events where actually relevant to you over the last month, how long would it take?
- Alupis 6y ago
  Process and make more easily consumable? Sure, I don't have all day to catch up on happenings and events. But to selectively edit videos, leave out details deliberately, loaded word choices ("blasts", "destroys", "slaps back"), deliberate misuse of words to instill a sense of credibility ("fact", "expert", "scientist"), and so much more? That's more than just processing the data... that's deliberate manipulation. In entertainment news media, Fact now means opinion, Expert now means political shill, and Scientist means random person with an opinion.
  - wtvanhest 6y ago
    I often wonder how much entertainment news impacts politician’s decision making. I have to assume that they consider what the major news entertainment companies will say about bills they author and support or don’t. in some ways, they are not just reporting, but likely influencing.
knzhou 6y ago
> my initial gut reaction to seeing any news headline with the word "Fact" in it has become to assume it has a political angle. That's not a problem with the headline, it's a problem with your state of mind. There are actual facts at play here, and real experts with good intentions. If you think the whole world is partisan politics and facts don't matter, good for you, but please don't pollute the information pool for the rest of us.
- justforyou 6y ago
  You're being unfair to OP. It's perfectly reasonable to respect facts, and question the motives of profit driven information outlets when they claim to broadcast them. There's a lot of misinformation being spread.
  - knzhou 6y ago
    Sure, but that’s not what he did. He literally saw the word “fact” and decided he didn’t like what was going to come next. That’s downright medieval.
    - dwaltrip 6y ago
      I'm reading between the lines just a tad, but I think a more generous interpretation is that they noticed they have an unfortunately strong mental association between the following 2 things: 1. Online headline containing prominent usage of the word "fact" while also hinting at some sort of controversy 2. Misleading article, deceptive spin, bullshit, etc. I don't think I have quite as strong an association, but I can definitely sympathize with this.
holler 6y ago
fact check, correct your thinking!
guardiangod 6y ago
You can apply evolution and meme models to it. Every piece of info on Twitter is an idea fighting for survival. You'd think having 'fact' as a property of a tweet would be beneficial. But it's the opposite- the truth is often unpleasant and people don't want to hear it. This gives 'factual' tweets a survival disadvantage on Twitter. If a fake tweet makes people 'happy' (by way of confirming their innate belief), by evolution they'd out-compete other tweets.
- brenden2 6y ago
  It's not just Twitter, it also includes HN and any other system that encourages crowd-sourced curation.

DevKoala 6y ago

Doctors try to make facts publicly available. The Wall Street Journal puts them behind a paywall.

nickff 6y ago
> Doctors try to make facts publicly available. The Wall Street Journal puts them behind a paywall. Doctors try to get paid for their work. The Wall Street Journal (and its contributors) try/tries to get paid for their work.
- bachmeier 6y ago
  That's good and all, but this site is for people to discuss articles after reading them. You don't need to link to the article if the discussion is about the title.
atestu 6y ago
Coronavirus coverage is free on WSJ.com like on most news sites https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/coronavirus-2020-05-15 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/coronavirus-2020-05-15
cglace 6y ago
And yet they still exist on twitter for free.

user_50123890 6y ago

How about tweeting these, 1. The virus mostly spreads through BREATHING/TALKING/COUGHING. 2. 80% of infections come from FRIENDS/FAMILY. Stop going to meet them unnecessarily and spending hours together indoors. 3. Masks mostly don't help you, they help the people AROUND you. I'd say the average person would be much better prepared against the virus with these three facts.

ericzawo 6y ago
Citation needed. :)
cozzyd 6y ago
Yeah, unfortunately point #3 makes people think they shouldn't wear masks. I was joking to a friend that the correct "American" response to COVID-19 is legal liability for getting others sick, but alas, that requires effective contact tracing.
- kenhwang 6y ago
  Even more American would be to fine/arrest people caught without a mask.
  - justforyou 6y ago
    Even more American would be to fine/arrest poor people caught without a mask. FTFY.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    That's the East Asian response. A law like that would probably get dragged through the courts in America with the rest of the media circus before being struck down as government overreach. As the original poster said, legal liability between private individuals with lots of court fees is very American.
    - kenhwang 6y ago
      Definitely see it being dragged through the courts. But it'd be the most tolerable enforcement mechanism to the wealthy elite who wouldn't mind just eating a fine. The East Asian solution takes it one step further with mass surveillance.

dogmatism 6y ago

Med twitter is a big thing. It's mostly doctors talking to doctors. It's almost replacing conferences and journals, and the primary way info about sars-cov-2 has been spread, and excellent for critical review of all the preprints that have also gained "virality." Would be nice if it weren't on twitter though. An old style forum would be much better, or even something like reddit, though I suspect one day these people posting "tweetorials" will regret putting all this info onto someone else's platform rather than blog posts etc.

walterbell 6y ago
Doctors created this platform for emergency medicine knowledge sharing, https://rebelem.com/about-us/ https://rebelem.com/about-us/

michaelborromeo 6y ago

Facts by themselves aren’t political or have an agenda. The decision to present certain facts, the other facts you compare those to, and the manner in which they are presented, however, invokes agendas and politics. No matter how much people claim otherwise, doctors presenting facts have agendas. This includes Dr Fauci.

WalterGR 6y ago
Is trying to protect as many people as possible an agenda? How about wanting to do one’s best in researching medicine? Or are agendas always sinister? What’s your area of expertise? If someone asked you to give a talk about your area of expertise, what are some agendas you would choose from? Or are you making the point that no human is 100% emotionally detached from their work?
- michaelborromeo 6y ago
  If you ask Dr Fauci he’ll say let’s save as many lives as we can. Taken alone no one can argue with that. His agenda is to save lives. Obvious. So he will make as strong a case as he can to support the measures to save lives. If you pay attention to him and only him it makes sense to lockdown until there is a cure or vaccine. Now tell me, does that make sense for every single person? From age 10 to 100, rich, poor, healthy, sick, for several months or even a year+? There are costs to Fauci’s agenda which he ignores because that’s not his job but also it doesn’t make sense for him to talk about the costs. You think of an agenda as a bad thing but it’s not it’s just the thing someone wants to get done.

jdashg 6y ago

It can't be done, because that's not how viral memes work. Facts are boring and require nuance. Things go viral because they're outrageous, surprising, or (my favorite) wrong enough that people make responses, which in turn are wrong enough...et voila: Viral.

y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
Then maybe we start them off with "now listen here you fucking idiots!"? The response rate seems to go up when there's anger involved. Unfortunately that's a lot of characters for twitter.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.md/AUyku https://archive.md/AUyku