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I’ve never seen such a large ratio of downvoted comments on a thread. I guess I’m not surprised by how polarizing the subject is. I guess I just thought this wa

I’ve never seen such a large ratio of downvoted comments on a thread. I guess I’m not surprised by how polarizing the subject is. I guess I just thought this was a safe place to be contrarian and not just downvote ideas that are not on your team.

jpgvm 5y ago
It's all a bit ironic. Something that should be purely a matter of science and health got morphed into this crazy political beast upon hitting Western shores. COVID-19 isn't that drastically different from SARS, MERS, etc. The main difference is transmissibility of asymptomatic carriers that allowed it to leave Asia undetected. So while the rest of these viruses had been handled in a mature and efficient fashion by the countries affected the very idea of a modern viral pandemic was new to the Western world and it showed, boy did it show. Instead of just focussing on the issue at hand it was immediately the "Chinese virus" and the American political machine was in full swing to capitalise on the situation. Most of the Western world followed suit with political lines being drawn around responses (or lack there of) and assignment of "blame". In the UK and USA this resulted in probably hundreds of thousands of needless deaths off the back of delayed and then ham-fisted action by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump's administrations. Meanwhile in Asia it remained apolitical for the most part (I say most part because aspects of pandemic control did become quite political of late). I was in Thailand for the entire duration of the pandemic and despite having access to less resources, late access to the vaccine and being one of the first nations to be exposed outside of China Thailand actually performed very well. Lots of insinuations were made this was due to climate and other factors, anything that shifted the blame away from politicisation of the pandemic as the root cause of performance differences. However as time has wore on and countries with more facts based approaches have continued to out-perform it's obvious - politics is the only real difference among the developed nations, hell it's so strong that it overcomes better access to vaccines and higher ICU bed/capita which should both dominate.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  This all happened because Trump dubbed it the China virus at the beginning and brought up specific treatments like Hydroxychloroquine. The political climate in America was such that just those two stances coming from Trump established the dividing line. We had no chance from the beginning to discuss this without the political shadow. The accessory to all of this was the vaccine/lab origin censorship by big tech, who are kind of seen as over-woke liberal bastions. To lockdown or not lockdown, to mask or not mask, to vaxx or not vaxx, to Ivermectin or not Ivermectin, lab leak or no lab leak … why so binary? Ah, because we went political with this a long time ago. If there was one person we needed to literally not say anything about this, it was Trump. But alas, he was the fucking president and we also needed him to say something. The Pandemic histrionics are an age old Shakespearean play. A tragedy. History is something else when you have the primary sources right before you. I would never need to read a book on all the nuances of everything that happened. Makes you wonder how easily historians can spin history in all those books, when in reality those events could have been as simple and silly as this one.
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    Trump is less the cause as he is the symptom. America has allowed politics to dominate the concept of identity to the point that no one can argue for anything without effectively attacking someone's idea of self. This is incredibly dangerous and at this point I don't know what it takes to diffuse it. I thought Biden winning the US election would help and admittedly it has but by much less than I envisioned. Unfortunately US politics spill over into the rest of the world through media syndication, doesn't help Murdoch owning almost all conservative media in US/UK/Australia... This means this extreme politicisation while birthed in America is spreading around the world. I strongly believe this is the real threat. The pandemic just showed us how dangerous it can be.
    - crate_barre 5y ago
      I’ve had thoughts on what’s been causing this, and turns out there’s a hot-take that’s well articulated by a professor under the concept of ‘Mass formation’. Decent summary, you can find him discussing it on YouTube: https://medium.com/@dina.osman/what-is-mass-formation-d2ac63020a34 https://medium.com/@dina.osman/what-is-mass-formation-d2ac63... The gist of it is what I’ve mostly concluded over the last few years. There’s a pathological level of frustration/anxiety/apathy that is leading to all of this at a mass scale (which makes sense considering we are virtualizing lives at scale, and I use the word virtual in it’s most abstract sense, not necessarily digital). We all have a very abstract identity that is unfulfilling because at the levels of abstraction we are at virtually is not relatable or realistic. I know, it’s a serious hot-take, but this is roughly where my line of thinking is at now days. The outcome of all of this is, well, people now bask in the cacophony of whatever life even is at this point (especially because there’s not a chance in hell any of us will be able de-scale the world (tech/vanity/capitalism/etc)). Quoting the most important part: … if ANY narrative is distributed through the mass media identifying an Object of the anxiety and providing a strategy to deal with that Object, mass formation can thrive. Since it provides the masses a sudden connection to a heroic struggle allowing them to meet their needs and provides them with a release — giving them a new social bond and meaning that has been lacking. There you have it, people are literally bonding via this constant hysterical back and forth.
- robomartin 5y ago
  > In the UK and USA this resulted in probably hundreds of thousands of needless deaths off the back of delayed and then ham-fisted action by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump's administrations. I can't comment on the UK's history, but I can tell you that you are 100% wrong with respect to what you think the response was in the US. This isn't a matter of opinion on my part. This is a matter of documented fact. The timeline lives on the internet if one bothers to do the research. The basic timeline goes something like this (again, google is your friend as far as stringing this together): On January 31st. 2020, Trump announces travel restrictions from China. On February 2nd (and for about a month after that) various officials from New York as well as Nancy Pelosi are on video telling the public that there is nothing to this virus, that they should continue life as normal, get on the subway, buses, trains, go to work, restaurants, festivals and entertainment venues. You can find the governor, mayor and director of health of New York making these statements as well as saying and implying that Trump was something between crazy, racist and hateful for sounding the alarm. If you look at how the infection spread in the US, you'll quickly discover that it absolutely exploded in New York and quickly launched everywhere. I am sure the data exists to trace with more detail. People were leaving the New York area like rats on a sinking ship. The infection quickly spread to adjoining states. And, from there, to the rest of the nation. In effect, what happened, is that, in particular, New York officials, due to a combination of ignorance and absolute politically motivated hatred for Trump, caused the direct infection of tens of thousands of people and a chain reaction that likely infected beyond hundreds of thousands as secondary and tertiary layers of the chain reaction. I find it very interesting to see how the media narrative has the world believing Trump did not act, when, in reality, he acted early and it was New York officials who caused the massive early spread of the virus because of their political bullshit. When I heard that Trump imposed travel restrictions on January 31st. I immediately checked our supplies, placed orders for six months worth of food and critical items and warned friends and family members. By the time the pandemic was in full force I, and those who listened to me, were ready to lock down and navigate the storm. And all of it was because of a simple observation: Regardless of what I thought of Trump, imposing a travel restriction on China was a serious enough move that there had to be far more under the surface than what the vast majority of the media narrative contained (he is a racist, etc.). It is quite possible that, by ignoring politics and taking action based on the meaning of the moment, I saved lives within our family and circle of friends. One name stands in my mind, I remember because it is unusual: Dr. Oxiris Barbot, New York Health Commissioner. Look up what she said to the public on February 2nd., 2020, just a couple of days after the travel restrictions were announced, and tell me that had no consequences. Then trace every NY official through video on a daily basis in February and March. No, that was criminal. Trump was trying to lock things down, these people fought him every day, the media fought him every day and effectively told everyone to go get infected during February and March, if not longer. Facts matter.
- makomk 5y ago
  There's a whole bunch of problems with that argument, but probably the biggest is that the US did seem to pretty successfully stop Covid from sucessfully spreading there from anywhere in Asia - pretty much all the outbreaks trace back to Europe via New York, even in parts of the country very far from New York. Also, SARS and MERS did spread to the Western world and most countries did have plans in place to deal with them that informed their early Covid response, especially the UK and US. There's even a really obvious reason why New York and London were hit first that has nothing to do with Trump or Boris - look at when Milan Fashion Week happened and what else was going in that region of Italy, then at the other major fashion centers of the world that'd have lots of travel to Milan that week. It's right slap bang next to the epicenter of Italy's big outbreak which had somehow gone basically undetected, with Italy consistently reporting zero cases a day or two beforehand. Like, the reason populist politicans seem to have played such a disproportionate role in making Covid so bad is because the media ignores any screw-ups that happen in countries run by the kind of boring techocrat they like - I personally have no doubt Italy would've been blamed for dooming the world if Berlusconi or someone like him was in charge.
indigodaddy 5y ago
Yep, any comment that even mildly supports lab leak is downvoted. Amazing lack of intellectual vigor here.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  Because the lab leak hypothesis is off topic, for one, and because nobody has anything new or interesting to say about the lab leak hypothesis - it's just repeating the same specious assertions that don't lead anywhere. Until there is new data, it's just a lot of noise and no signal.
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    > Because the lab leak hypothesis is off topic Indeed, seeing the lab leak hypothesis mentioned in every comment was very confusing. There is some decent discussion of the paper, but it certainly took some scrolling. edit: I take it back, there is incredibly little decent relavant discussion here. Should probably just flag the post.
mynameismon 5y ago
A large number of those are not reading the title of the submission correctly, by the looks of it, skipping the "Omicron" bit of it
- ImaCake 5y ago
  Yep. Interesting article with interesting science. I don’t really buy it, but I love the idea and what they have done to explore it here. Anything about the origins of COVID is off-topic and a waste of time especially since this article is about the origins of Omicron!
jonathanstrange 5y ago
I can only speak for myself in this matter, and I've got to say I'm absolutely tired of people who argue ferociously for ideas that are barely supported by evidence, cherry-picking studies and anecdotes, confusing plausible stories with evidence, and so on. Don't get me wrong, being sceptical and having a critical mindset is always good. That's not the problem. The problem is how awfully many people believe with the highest strength of belief in positions with which most experts disagree. If you're sceptical, you should first and foremost be sceptical about your own beliefs. It seems obvious that anyone who is not an expert in a subject matter should have very weak beliefs about it, i.e., very low epistemic entrenchment, be willing to give up those beliefs very easily and readily acknowledge that subject matter experts know better. Unfortunately, in the case of Covid the number of laymen and experts in different fields (= also laymen) posting questionable views with absolute certainty is staggering. That's why I've started aggressively downvoting and sometimes flagging posts making claims against the common expert opinion as long as they are presented with unreasonable certainty. Presenting an unusual position is fine as long as it is accompanied by an adequate amount of self-doubt or clearly expressed as speculation.
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  > The problem is how awfully many people believe with the highest strength of belief in positions with which most experts disagree. If you're sceptical, you should first and foremost be sceptical about your own beliefs. I think the second half of this applies to the first. How can you be confident of your own judgment of "most experts" positions without being something of an expert yourself? I often see people claiming that something is "what most doctors/scientists/people/experts/etc say", and I'm always skeptical of how a non expert confidently comes to that belief. In reality, I tend to assume that these positions are in fact what the most resources were spent on telling people, in other words the ideas that had the largest marketing budgets behind them (or whatever is viral at the moment). When I see a random person on the internet claiming to echo what most experts believe, I assume that its really what their twitter feed believes, which I don't know how to value, so I don't value it very highly. I very much agree on the arguing ferociously part though. I think a lot more humility is called for all around.

jpgvm 5y ago

It's all a bit ironic. Something that should be purely a matter of science and health got morphed into this crazy political beast upon hitting Western shores. COVID-19 isn't that drastically different from SARS, MERS, etc. The main difference is transmissibility of asymptomatic carriers that allowed it to leave Asia undetected. So while the rest of these viruses had been handled in a mature and efficient fashion by the countries affected the very idea of a modern viral pandemic was new to the Western world and it showed, boy did it show. Instead of just focussing on the issue at hand it was immediately the "Chinese virus" and the American political machine was in full swing to capitalise on the situation. Most of the Western world followed suit with political lines being drawn around responses (or lack there of) and assignment of "blame". In the UK and USA this resulted in probably hundreds of thousands of needless deaths off the back of delayed and then ham-fisted action by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump's administrations. Meanwhile in Asia it remained apolitical for the most part (I say most part because aspects of pandemic control did become quite political of late). I was in Thailand for the entire duration of the pandemic and despite having access to less resources, late access to the vaccine and being one of the first nations to be exposed outside of China Thailand actually performed very well. Lots of insinuations were made this was due to climate and other factors, anything that shifted the blame away from politicisation of the pandemic as the root cause of performance differences. However as time has wore on and countries with more facts based approaches have continued to out-perform it's obvious - politics is the only real difference among the developed nations, hell it's so strong that it overcomes better access to vaccines and higher ICU bed/capita which should both dominate.

crate_barre 5y ago
This all happened because Trump dubbed it the China virus at the beginning and brought up specific treatments like Hydroxychloroquine. The political climate in America was such that just those two stances coming from Trump established the dividing line. We had no chance from the beginning to discuss this without the political shadow. The accessory to all of this was the vaccine/lab origin censorship by big tech, who are kind of seen as over-woke liberal bastions. To lockdown or not lockdown, to mask or not mask, to vaxx or not vaxx, to Ivermectin or not Ivermectin, lab leak or no lab leak … why so binary? Ah, because we went political with this a long time ago. If there was one person we needed to literally not say anything about this, it was Trump. But alas, he was the fucking president and we also needed him to say something. The Pandemic histrionics are an age old Shakespearean play. A tragedy. History is something else when you have the primary sources right before you. I would never need to read a book on all the nuances of everything that happened. Makes you wonder how easily historians can spin history in all those books, when in reality those events could have been as simple and silly as this one.
- jpgvm 5y ago
  Trump is less the cause as he is the symptom. America has allowed politics to dominate the concept of identity to the point that no one can argue for anything without effectively attacking someone's idea of self. This is incredibly dangerous and at this point I don't know what it takes to diffuse it. I thought Biden winning the US election would help and admittedly it has but by much less than I envisioned. Unfortunately US politics spill over into the rest of the world through media syndication, doesn't help Murdoch owning almost all conservative media in US/UK/Australia... This means this extreme politicisation while birthed in America is spreading around the world. I strongly believe this is the real threat. The pandemic just showed us how dangerous it can be.
  - crate_barre 5y ago
    I’ve had thoughts on what’s been causing this, and turns out there’s a hot-take that’s well articulated by a professor under the concept of ‘Mass formation’. Decent summary, you can find him discussing it on YouTube: https://medium.com/@dina.osman/what-is-mass-formation-d2ac63020a34 https://medium.com/@dina.osman/what-is-mass-formation-d2ac63... The gist of it is what I’ve mostly concluded over the last few years. There’s a pathological level of frustration/anxiety/apathy that is leading to all of this at a mass scale (which makes sense considering we are virtualizing lives at scale, and I use the word virtual in it’s most abstract sense, not necessarily digital). We all have a very abstract identity that is unfulfilling because at the levels of abstraction we are at virtually is not relatable or realistic. I know, it’s a serious hot-take, but this is roughly where my line of thinking is at now days. The outcome of all of this is, well, people now bask in the cacophony of whatever life even is at this point (especially because there’s not a chance in hell any of us will be able de-scale the world (tech/vanity/capitalism/etc)). Quoting the most important part: … if ANY narrative is distributed through the mass media identifying an Object of the anxiety and providing a strategy to deal with that Object, mass formation can thrive. Since it provides the masses a sudden connection to a heroic struggle allowing them to meet their needs and provides them with a release — giving them a new social bond and meaning that has been lacking. There you have it, people are literally bonding via this constant hysterical back and forth.
robomartin 5y ago
> In the UK and USA this resulted in probably hundreds of thousands of needless deaths off the back of delayed and then ham-fisted action by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump's administrations. I can't comment on the UK's history, but I can tell you that you are 100% wrong with respect to what you think the response was in the US. This isn't a matter of opinion on my part. This is a matter of documented fact. The timeline lives on the internet if one bothers to do the research. The basic timeline goes something like this (again, google is your friend as far as stringing this together): On January 31st. 2020, Trump announces travel restrictions from China. On February 2nd (and for about a month after that) various officials from New York as well as Nancy Pelosi are on video telling the public that there is nothing to this virus, that they should continue life as normal, get on the subway, buses, trains, go to work, restaurants, festivals and entertainment venues. You can find the governor, mayor and director of health of New York making these statements as well as saying and implying that Trump was something between crazy, racist and hateful for sounding the alarm. If you look at how the infection spread in the US, you'll quickly discover that it absolutely exploded in New York and quickly launched everywhere. I am sure the data exists to trace with more detail. People were leaving the New York area like rats on a sinking ship. The infection quickly spread to adjoining states. And, from there, to the rest of the nation. In effect, what happened, is that, in particular, New York officials, due to a combination of ignorance and absolute politically motivated hatred for Trump, caused the direct infection of tens of thousands of people and a chain reaction that likely infected beyond hundreds of thousands as secondary and tertiary layers of the chain reaction. I find it very interesting to see how the media narrative has the world believing Trump did not act, when, in reality, he acted early and it was New York officials who caused the massive early spread of the virus because of their political bullshit. When I heard that Trump imposed travel restrictions on January 31st. I immediately checked our supplies, placed orders for six months worth of food and critical items and warned friends and family members. By the time the pandemic was in full force I, and those who listened to me, were ready to lock down and navigate the storm. And all of it was because of a simple observation: Regardless of what I thought of Trump, imposing a travel restriction on China was a serious enough move that there had to be far more under the surface than what the vast majority of the media narrative contained (he is a racist, etc.). It is quite possible that, by ignoring politics and taking action based on the meaning of the moment, I saved lives within our family and circle of friends. One name stands in my mind, I remember because it is unusual: Dr. Oxiris Barbot, New York Health Commissioner. Look up what she said to the public on February 2nd., 2020, just a couple of days after the travel restrictions were announced, and tell me that had no consequences. Then trace every NY official through video on a daily basis in February and March. No, that was criminal. Trump was trying to lock things down, these people fought him every day, the media fought him every day and effectively told everyone to go get infected during February and March, if not longer. Facts matter.
makomk 5y ago
There's a whole bunch of problems with that argument, but probably the biggest is that the US did seem to pretty successfully stop Covid from sucessfully spreading there from anywhere in Asia - pretty much all the outbreaks trace back to Europe via New York, even in parts of the country very far from New York. Also, SARS and MERS did spread to the Western world and most countries did have plans in place to deal with them that informed their early Covid response, especially the UK and US. There's even a really obvious reason why New York and London were hit first that has nothing to do with Trump or Boris - look at when Milan Fashion Week happened and what else was going in that region of Italy, then at the other major fashion centers of the world that'd have lots of travel to Milan that week. It's right slap bang next to the epicenter of Italy's big outbreak which had somehow gone basically undetected, with Italy consistently reporting zero cases a day or two beforehand. Like, the reason populist politicans seem to have played such a disproportionate role in making Covid so bad is because the media ignores any screw-ups that happen in countries run by the kind of boring techocrat they like - I personally have no doubt Italy would've been blamed for dooming the world if Berlusconi or someone like him was in charge.

indigodaddy 5y ago

Yep, any comment that even mildly supports lab leak is downvoted. Amazing lack of intellectual vigor here.

kennywinker 5y ago
Because the lab leak hypothesis is off topic, for one, and because nobody has anything new or interesting to say about the lab leak hypothesis - it's just repeating the same specious assertions that don't lead anywhere. Until there is new data, it's just a lot of noise and no signal.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  > Because the lab leak hypothesis is off topic Indeed, seeing the lab leak hypothesis mentioned in every comment was very confusing. There is some decent discussion of the paper, but it certainly took some scrolling. edit: I take it back, there is incredibly little decent relavant discussion here. Should probably just flag the post.

mynameismon 5y ago

A large number of those are not reading the title of the submission correctly, by the looks of it, skipping the "Omicron" bit of it

ImaCake 5y ago
Yep. Interesting article with interesting science. I don’t really buy it, but I love the idea and what they have done to explore it here. Anything about the origins of COVID is off-topic and a waste of time especially since this article is about the origins of Omicron!

jonathanstrange 5y ago

I can only speak for myself in this matter, and I've got to say I'm absolutely tired of people who argue ferociously for ideas that are barely supported by evidence, cherry-picking studies and anecdotes, confusing plausible stories with evidence, and so on. Don't get me wrong, being sceptical and having a critical mindset is always good. That's not the problem. The problem is how awfully many people believe with the highest strength of belief in positions with which most experts disagree. If you're sceptical, you should first and foremost be sceptical about your own beliefs. It seems obvious that anyone who is not an expert in a subject matter should have very weak beliefs about it, i.e., very low epistemic entrenchment, be willing to give up those beliefs very easily and readily acknowledge that subject matter experts know better. Unfortunately, in the case of Covid the number of laymen and experts in different fields (= also laymen) posting questionable views with absolute certainty is staggering. That's why I've started aggressively downvoting and sometimes flagging posts making claims against the common expert opinion as long as they are presented with unreasonable certainty. Presenting an unusual position is fine as long as it is accompanied by an adequate amount of self-doubt or clearly expressed as speculation.

ifyoubuildit 5y ago
> The problem is how awfully many people believe with the highest strength of belief in positions with which most experts disagree. If you're sceptical, you should first and foremost be sceptical about your own beliefs. I think the second half of this applies to the first. How can you be confident of your own judgment of "most experts" positions without being something of an expert yourself? I often see people claiming that something is "what most doctors/scientists/people/experts/etc say", and I'm always skeptical of how a non expert confidently comes to that belief. In reality, I tend to assume that these positions are in fact what the most resources were spent on telling people, in other words the ideas that had the largest marketing budgets behind them (or whatever is viral at the moment). When I see a random person on the internet claiming to echo what most experts believe, I assume that its really what their twitter feed believes, which I don't know how to value, so I don't value it very highly. I very much agree on the arguing ferociously part though. I think a lot more humility is called for all around.