6 ms·

Ask HN: What's the Best Way for a Layperson to Be Informed about Covid-19?

• nradov 5y ago
  This panel discussion by several leading physicians provides an excellent and balanced overview of the current situation. It's long but very understandable, and they clearly distinguish between scientific information versus their own opinions. https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8 https://youtu.be/GklHGYY8vN8
  • benreesman 5y ago
    This looks like maybe exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I will give it a watch and see if it sheds some light. Thank you!
• kstenerud 5y ago
  As a layperson, your best bet is to listen to the experts who aren't politically motivated or just plain batshit crazy (there are always some, regardless of topic; you can often suss them out by their black-and-white ideology and us-vs-them style speech). As for the day-to-day: - Masks don't protect you from others. They protect others from you. So if nobody around you is wearing a mask, your mask will make no difference. If everyone is wearing one, your mask DOES make a difference. This becomes a "when in Rome" kind of thing when you're traveling (i.e. do what others do, and don't be a dick about it). - Get vaccinated and boosted. This is proven, and you'll feel pretty dumb sitting in an ICU unit when a simple injection could have prevented it. Even with the latest Omicron variant, you can still get extremely sick and possibly even die (90% of ICU patients and almost all deaths are unvaccinated). - Airline travel is one of the most common ways people get infected. Even switching to non-recycled air in the airplane is not enough, apparently. You takes your chances... - Dining is generally safe as long as there's a decent distance between tables. Although Omicron is a LOT more virulent, so who knows how safe it actually is now... Bottom line: Vaccination protects you from the worst parts of an infection, and then it comes down to your risk profile.
  • benreesman 5y ago
    I appreciate your input. I think that listening to the experts who aren't politically motivated is one of my main goals, but it is very difficult (for me at least) to figure out who those people are. I understand that government and private industry are not two clearly distinguishable Lego bricks, I understand that regulators need some industry people to know what they're regulating even at the risk of some revolving-door stuff, and I understand that some profit motive is necessary to get smart people to work on something in large numbers. But the waters seem very muddy (and there seem to be a lot of axes to grind all around) as to who is acting in good faith and who is seeking to push some agenda or to guard some rice bowel even among people with excellent credentials. Historically I've kind of leaned on credentials in deciding who to listen to on topics outside my field (which may or may not have been a good idea), but on this one there seem to be people with multiple advanced degrees from prestigious universities ranging from "being in charge of the CDC" to "banned from Twitter for promoting vaccine hesitancy". How do you personally go about figuring out what the closest thing to a dispassionate group of experts is? I somehow doubt that either A) Fauci is a crook putting a microchip in my arm or B) all the signatures on the Barrington Declaration are all from nutjobs: I imagine there is some balanced debate in the middle but I'm not sure how to find it.
    • kstenerud 5y ago
      For me personally, only studying human psychology has proven to be a reliable barometer of peoples motivations. Being an expert doesn't insulate someone from the vagrancies of the human psyche (despite much effort to do so!), so you must study the ways in which the human psyche errs. Very few people are actually intentionally attempting to mislead. More often than not they are deluded themselves. But this is not helped by the other human tendency to demonize wrongdoers and assume the worst of motives. Fauci is an interesting case because he's been in charge of a largely bureaucratic and invisible organization for so long, and was unprepared for being thrust into the spotlight. He wants to do good, but it's getting harder and harder to do that because every mistake he makes is amplified and used against him in the public sphere, and he's not used to reputation management like someone in a more public-facing organization would be (nor do I think he's up to the task - he's too nerdy and will probably be replaced eventually). The waters are muddy because the topic has been politicized. The ebola vaccine was not controversial in the Americans eyes, but it WAS controversial in some African countries, where conspiracy theories ran rampant and hampered the vaccination drive (the biggest one being that it was an American plot to sterilize African women and render them barren). Once counter-campaigns start, it gets progressively harder and harder to push a policy, because everyone will say "there's no smoke without a fire somewhere". At the end of the day, you only have psychology to use as a heuristic, because the people lying and the people telling the truth are almost ALL convinced that they're honest and truthful. The exceptions are the propagandists who actively want to damage another society to influence their politics, gain an objective, or diminish their world reputation - or local propagandists who cynically want to bring in a new policy or enforce an existing one (example: Reefer Madness or the tobacco lobby). And these people work with intention, so they're generally pretty good at covering themselves against blowback. But they usually work via the mainstream media, so you can often (but not always) see the telltale signs of a hard shift in reporting. Iraqi WMDs would be a good example since it was so clumsily done. Last point: The truth is rarely in the middle. The middle is just what lazy people go for because then they don't have to think. We humans like quick and easy rules that yield simple answers, but the world just doesn't work that way.
• awb 5y ago
  > I would like to do so in as scientific and apolitical a way as is possible for a non-expert. I think a lot of the debate comes from the fact that in many countries we have freedom of choice in how we want to live our lives. So, what’s your goal? To not get COVID? To not die from COVID? To not transmit COVID? To follow government / health organization guidance? To enjoy your life as you see fit? To find a balance between these goals? Depending on your goal, different information will be relevant to your decision making process.
  • benreesman 5y ago
    That's a very valid question and probably something I should have specified in my original question statement. Personal ethics and the tradeoffs they imply aren't very fungible :) I would like to become informed by balanced debate as to roughly "this choice is better for X but worse for Y" so that I can decide for myself if I care more about X or Y and in what ratio.
• gregjor 5y ago
  - Viruses are very good at what they do. We can probably expect 100% infection and reduced virulence over time. Most likely COVID will be endemic, we'll have to live with it like we do with cold and flu. - Governments are very bad at what they're supposed to do. Pandemic diseases are close to certain, but no government was adequately prepared. We got mixed messages and panicked response. On the other hand we got a vaccine in about a year, which is a record short time. - People have different sets of values and interpret information differently. That's always the case, we just have to live with that and try to respect each other. - Vaccines are the best protection. Sometimes they have side-effects. They are never 100%. Covering the mouth and nose and avoiding other people can work too -- ancient people figured that out. Almost everyone I know, vaccinated or not, masking and distancing or not, has got infected, myself included. Short of avoiding all human contact we can't reduce the risk of infection to zero. Figure out how much risk you can tolerate and act accordingly.
  • benreesman 5y ago
    I feel pretty well-equipped to decide how much I'm personally afraid of COVID-19 hurting or killing me. I was really sick over the holidays (and I rarely get sick) so I quite likely just had it and have been self-isolating rather than going to the clinic to get tested which is why I don't know. I'm less equipped to understand the following question: to what extent can people more vulnerable than myself protect themselves by their own choices (and should therefore have the burden on them to make those choices as they see fit), and to what extent do my choices deprive others of being able to protect themselves and now I'm morally on the hook for someone else's outcome?
    • gregjor 5y ago
      I think everyone knows about COVID and can decide on their own whether they want to get vaccinated, wear a mask, avoid other people. If you know you are infected you should avoid other people. Beyond that I don't think there's much else you can do. Unless you are knowingly endangering other people I don't see how you're morally responsible for their choices, or for a highly contagious virus doing its thing.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  The consequences of Covid aren't as simple as they are for the flu. You don't always recover, Long Covid can be the most dreaded 2 words you'll ever hear from a doctor a "New Normal". As one struggling with Long Covid, I think it is important to be aware of its existence as a small, but non-zero outcome of catching Covid, no matter the variant. I've been effectively disabled from any physical activity more than going to the grocery store since March 2020. Some people have it far, far worse. Being stuck at home, not being able to focus, or do things has been really hard on my self esteem, and I'm worried about our long term financial future as a family.
  • gregjor 5y ago
    Not to diminish what has happened to you, but flu can cause long-term effects as well. Look up "long flu" or the CDC page on influenza. COVID is worse than influenza in almost every way. We have learned to live with flu and its multiple annual variations. It still infects millions of Americans and kills thousands or tens of thousands every year.
    • mikewarot 5y ago
      I suspect Long Covid will help raise awareness of long flu, and if we address both of them successfully, it could help improve the quality of life for many, and increase life expectancy for society as a whole.
      • gregjor 5y ago
        As an American approaching Medicare age with conditions that have long histories of "raising awareness" I don't have a lot of confidence. A less dysfunctional health care system and some actual treatments will do a lot more than awareness. Many of the symptoms of long flu -- bacterial infections, pneumonia, ear infections -- are things we have treatments for, but don't make easily available to people who can't afford insurance or medical care. I think Americans are mostly aware that our health care system fails a large portion of the population, so focusing on individual conditions seems somewhat futile.
• phgn 5y ago
  IMHO, you don't need to be informed about it. It's tiring how Covid gets mentioned in nearly every conversation, but people just reiterate opinions they heard. What's the value of "discussions" like that? You feel like you understand what's going on, when you really don't. For me it was a revelation to realize that I don't have to care. Just follow the main regulations and get vaccinated, but don't spend brain cycles on something that you have no impact over.
• calf 5y ago
  Watch TWiV. If you have undergrad bio, that's perfect audience. I don't always agree with TWiV on their personal views which they make clear are their own opinions on public policy and own choices about day to day activities (and the hosts don't always agree with each other either), but they are a terrific weekly updated resource coming directly from virologists.
  • benreesman 5y ago
    I will check it out. Thank you!
• mattbrewsbytes 5y ago
  No amount of research will make you conversant with people that use social media for research. You likely won't convince anyone online about any topic, maybe movie/show recommendations are an exception. If you are having conversations with actual biologists and scientists then you may want to find scientific studies, etc. to become conversant with them. I cut my hand a few years back with metal and they said I needed a tetanus shot, I took it. I have no idea what was in that or what potential disease I would get if I didn't take it. Granted that is not something that I could spread to others (I assume, again 0 research). I just trusted medical professionals. Look at your local covid-19 metrics for number of cases, number of ICU beds, number of deaths and if there is a surge happening make decisions based on that. Surges appear to take 2-3 weeks to pass in an area and are commonly linked to holidays. Other than that, ask your physician about boosters. There isn't much more to be informed about that is practical/actionable to everyday life.
• gadders 5y ago
  A couple of people I think are worth reading are David Spielhalter (Chair, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, Cambridge Uni) and Carl Heneghan (Professor of Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford Uni). Example links: https://www.cebm.net/oxford-covid-19-evidence-service/ https://www.cebm.net/oxford-covid-19-evidence-service/ https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/nov/14/on-covid-we-need-to-be-careful-when-we-talk-about-numbers https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/n... Not saying they should be all of your reading, just that they are worth adding to your list.
  • benreesman 5y ago
    I will check that out. Thank you!
• anthony_romeo 5y ago
  I just have some handy advice as another person who doesn't have a Master's degree in the relevant fields. My advice is: - Don't take advice from the comment section, ever. This includes this very sentence. It also includes HN, reddit, discord, gab, tiktok, prodigy, random podcasters, random math blogs... basically don't listen to anyone who doesn't have direct, meaningful accountability from thou. - Any smooth-talking non-practicing dumbass Ph.D. in some tangential field can get a decent-enough steaming setup to spread their uninformed opinions as they please. The best of them with the smoothest voices can probably even get a decent number of patrons and other funders for their chicanery, get on podcasts and programs, whatever. They make content where such a person claims that some undefined, proverbial "They" are lying to "us" and that "we" need to do exactly x to thwart "Them". Anyone using this sort of language without clearly defining the perpetrators and victims are not serious, and can be ignored with prejudice. [1^] - On reading scientific papers and education: You'll likely need a Master's[2^] level of understanding to meaningfully interpret published papers (much less pre-prints). Dr. Dumbass probably doesn't actually know much more about this subject than you, but if they're a few chapters ahead of you they can probably sound pretty convincing to a student. - Conjecture: in any sufficiently large community of people, a Dr. Dumbass can be found. If true, say community X hates community Y. A member of X can like find Dr. Dumbasses in group Y and compile these statements into a shitty meme in an attempt to convince members of X that members of Y are less rational than they actually are. Such a member can make a big wallpaper image of Dr. Dumbass's crankery, but then mix in a few contextless posts from the hypothetical actually legitimate Dr. Goodfaith to pretend that Dr. Dumbass and Dr. Goodfaith are similarly fraudulent. I've casually called this the "adjacency fallacy" but there's probably a better term for it. - Members in community Y can in-turn repost the shitty and fallacious memes created by some rando in community X, and claim without merit that it evidence that all members of community X are delusional. This leads to a tumult of angry comments, upon which some members of X repost in their communities and claim their sense of victimhood. Some members of Y do the same, creating a feedback loop where the two communities cease to discuss the primary topic any more, and instead spend more time complaining about other people complaining as a form of anger-pornography. Similar principles can be derived for political pundits, podcasters, streamers, who spend hours of their day practically screaming into their microphones about the horrors of "something". Stay away from the karma farmers who sow this sort of nonsense far and wide. - For overall reasoning skills, I greatly enjoyed Douglas Walton's "Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach". My big takeaway from the book was that "logical fallacies" are not inherent argumentative traps which must be avoided at all cost. Rather, these sorts of arguments become fallacies when there is an unwarranted dialectic shift in the type of argument. For example, if you were debating a topic and your opponent brandishes a gun to compel you to agree with them, that is clearly not a valid argument. If instead this were a hostage negotiation, their threats of violence can be considered valid. The fallacy wasn't the threat to violence, rather the fallacy was the shift from a "debate" to a "negotiation". Some of the most frustrating arguments I've read online are those where one or both users are more intent on shifting the dialectic to suit their existing arguments rather than to truly learn from others and seek consensus. Identifying dialectic shifts IMO is more valuable than a dump of named fallacies. - Generalized overall reasoning skills can be actively harmful if incorrectly applied to specific domains if they are used to overcome a lack of domain knowledge. This is because as one moves further away from theoretical wankery and toward actual chemistry, the details become essential. Anyone attempting to use raw reasoning-skills and "common-sense" to hand-wave away the important details of a controversy is a charlatan and can be safely ignored. [1^]: Yes, there are obviously plenty of times where the leaders of a group of people lie to people and people need to call them out. The most correct form of this would include both specific accusations of crimes and evidence against specific individuals. My concern is with commentators who rail against the actions of, say, extremes on "The Right" or "The Left", but if you get them to describe such extremes in detail, their descriptions would likely cover a supermajority of the population. [2^]: Not intended as some weird form of gatekeeping, it's more a peg for the amount of study and effort one may need to put forth to really evaluate with what the authors are writing.