5 ms·

no, not only is that an irrational appeal to authority, but ars spent the last two years fearmongering over covid for clicks just like all the other news sites.

no, not only is that an irrational appeal to authority, but ars spent the last two years fearmongering over covid for clicks just like all the other news sites. this story is also fishing for clicks, just from a contrarian perspective (relative to their audience) to keep things fresh.

mempko 4y ago
Ok, but over a million people in the US died from covid and even more with permanent damage.
- clairity 4y ago
  3.5M people died last year in the US. as usual, heart disease and cancer were the overwhelming leaders. covid claimed ~460K, but that's "deaths involving covid", not "from covid". there is no evidence of "permanent damage" from covid. a novel contagion of any kind will exhibit its highest mortality rates at the beginning of its epidemic incursion, and eventually reach steady state. from all indications, the steady state of covid will follow its coronavirus predecessors and settle at negligible death rates. heart disease and cancer will continue to kill millions into the foreseeable future. that's not to dismiss the threat of covid, but to merely put it in perspective. people at risk (elderly, or with co-morbidities) should get vaccinated and perhaps take other precautions. but none of that fearmongering did any good, and in fact, did a lot of bad, by sowing division rather than fostering unity.
  - Johnny555 4y ago
    there is no evidence of "permanent damage" from covid. There is some evidence. But as you said, it's a novel disease and still being studied. https://www.bcm.edu/news/what-eegs-tell-us-about-covid-19-and-the-brain https://www.bcm.edu/news/what-eegs-tell-us-about-covid-19-an... Some of the EEG alterations found in COVID-19 patients may indicate damage to the brain that might not be able to be repaired after recovering from the disease.
    - clairity 4y ago
      note that EEGs are a very crude instrument relative the fantastic complexity of the brain. it's like putting a rock on the ground to try to understand geotectonics. it's not nothing, but it's not much at all. i wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years, it's viewed much like we now view leeching or lobotomies.
    - junofan 4y ago
      “altered mental status” in EEG context means, like, coma. These aren’t very healthy people.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    In 2020 602,350 people died of cancer[1]. Seems odd to use it as an example of a bigger threat when it's entirely comparable, especially when we can argue the "with not of" distinction there - they may have died of systemic failure while also having cancer. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-deaths/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-de...
  - robbiep 4y ago
    It would be reasonable to say, today, that the dominant varieties of SARS-CoV-2 are basically similar to an average to not great flu season, particularly for the vaccinated, where there is still a mortality benefit. In fact, I was at a talk 2 weeks ago where Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said exactly this. However. This is a long way from where things started. *> that's not to dismiss the threat of covid’ Actually, I think what you’re doing is worse. As a doctor I’m happy to treat current covid as something we need to live with and get on with, but you’re actually dismissing the prior threat of COVID as well. Dismissing all the people who did die. Dismissing the 140,000 children who were orphaned in the US alone. Dismissing the real contribution of COVID to actual deaths - your distinction of ‘deaths from covid to deaths with covid’ is meaningless when excess mortality clearly shows that without the impact of covid the US population would be 1m higher than it is today. The fact that you choose to see the COVID information as having sowed division speaks more to the bizarre information landscape you have in the US. Many other countries found the last couple of years intensely frustrating but managed to forge a sense of national spirit in fighting it, and as a result have significantly lower excess deaths, significantly less orphaned children, and significantly lower societal scars to bounce back from.
    - clairity 4y ago
      so where are the heartwrenching anecdotes about heart disease or cancer deaths? otherwise you're just projecting a recency and availability bias. but none of that matters for how we, and especially the press, should have handled the topic. no country has "significantly lower"-ed anything. at most, we have slightly different diffusion curves, but mortality and morbidity rates are going to be pretty similar regardless of how we were "fighting it". every single person on earth will get covid at some point. at best, we've delayed that point a little bit for some people, not to mention some shifting of mortality. note that liver disease and chirrosis deaths rose last year - why aren't we making video montages and pouring one out for them, or their orphaned children, again?
      - robbiep 4y ago
        Every untimely death is a tragedy. That's why every country has widespread public health campaigns extolling the virtues of stopping smoking, healthy diets, exercise, maintaining a healthy weight. But these are background noise to most people, and most people don't change their behaviour anyway. If your point is the news should be plastered with images of people suffering heart attacks or cancer wards, i'm not sure what the utility of that argument is. The hospital system has capacity for steady state burden of disease. If Heart disease and cancer patients were dying in hospital corridors, or at home unable to get to hospital, can you actually tell me with a straight face there wouldn't be widespread outrage? >no country has "significantly lower"-ed anything. at most, we have slightly different diffusion curves, but mortality and morbidity rates are going to be pretty similar regardless of how we were "fighting it". This is simply not true. Countries that avoided early surges, avoided overrunning hospitals and were able to get their populations vaccinated and dealing with lower virulence covid strains have had lower overall deaths over the 2 and a half years of the pandemic. Australia for example, had largely flat excess deaths in 2020 & 2021 (actually a reduction in 2020, due to no covid, reduced travel, no flu season). Australia started dealing with the actual burden of COVID in late 2021 and 2022, and has seen 10,000 COVID deaths so far. Excess deaths in 2022 is 17.5% above average for the year to end of May. [0, 1]. If the US had of been able to pull together, instead of, as you have, variously dismissing it as 'nothing more than the flu', 'no more important than Cancer and Heart disease deaths', or moving the goal posts and declaring that, essentially, the area under the curve will be the same but the timing will be different (which is at conflict with earlier points) - ie if the US had of been able to pull an Australia (or one of many other countries that didn't just totally shit the bed and hide their heads in the sand) than COVID deaths, scaled for population, could have been in the 150-200k range. Or, to put it another way, if Australia had of shit the bed as badly as the US did, then Aus would have had 60,000 deaths. [0] https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/measuring-australias-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/measuring-australias-excess-... [1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provis...
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > that's "deaths involving covid", not "from covid". Unless they all would have died at that time regardless, in the absence of COVID, isn't this a distinction without relevance?
    - clairity 4y ago
      death is often not as simple as "you died of dysentery". your liver might fail, and your lungs are full of fluid, and your arteries are clogged. you smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish, while eating like a recently unhibernated bear. how do you decide which caused the death, especially without some very detailed monitoring of all of the body's major systems? "with covid" is the same. that's why co-morbidities are almost universally indicated in covid deaths. it's because the people dying of covid are pretty unhealthy already, and covid is not the primary cause of death, but a contributing one, often a minor contributor at that. the distinction is also important because it has multi-faceted follow-on effects. in terms of treatment, a doctor could otherwise have focused more on treating a co-morbidity than covid. a researcher might focus more on other ailments than covid. the public might have been less fearful and tribal. public health guidance might have been different. it has lots of relevance actually.
      - mempko 4y ago
        That's why you look at excess deaths. Covid increased excess deaths significantly. In other words, those unhealthy people would still be alive without covid, enjoying a longer life.
- goatlover 4y ago
  That's less than 1% of the population. If you're not in the high risk category or living with someone at high risk, and you got vaccinated, then there isn't reason to be overly concerned. Take precautions as you feel the need, but otherwise, life goes on. This isn't the bubonic plague or smallpox.
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  Over a million people died with covid, not from covid. If after 2 years you haven't got this distinction, do you think possibly you're just severely confused on the topic and shouldn't be discussing it publicly for fear of spreading misinformation?
  - kelnos 4y ago
    How is the distinction meaningful? Would these people who "died with COVID, not from COVID" certainly still died if COVID hadn't been a thing?
    - namecheapTA 4y ago
      Certainly? No. Probably? Yes. The average age of a covid death in the UK was higher than the actual life expectancy age. Add in how overly sensitive the tests were, especially pcr, testing for the virus and not for actual proof of infection... It's all a joke.
      - mempko 4y ago
        Ok, then explain the excess deaths. Explain how more people dying than normal is a joke.
Sparkle-san 4y ago
It's not really irrational. Journalism is plagued with issues where journalists misconstrue a topic because they don't have the requisite background knowledge to adequately cover a topic. This becomes immediately obvious when you read an article on a topic you're knowledgeable about (see Gell-Mann amnesia effect). Expecting a site with more subject matter experts to have less of these types of errors seems perfectly rational.
- clairity 4y ago
  no, that's literally falling for the appeal to authority fallacy. just because a journalist has some experience in a field tells you nothing a priori about how they evaluate other information in the field. you have to evaluate their ability to evaluate that information to get any insight into how trustworthy they can be.
  - Sparkle-san 4y ago
    You're conveniently ignoring that their writers are often writing within their domains of experience.
    - clairity 4y ago
      no, i'm not. i'm saying that it doesn't matter a single iota. in the few domains where i can plausibly claim more than cursory knowledge, there are plenty of people who i give zero credence to, who otherwise claim "expertise". and a science writer is often writing about science far afield of their narrow education/research. the author of this very article is the "automotive editor" at ars, not a marine biologist, or anything close to it. "expert" is a normative (aka political) nominative, not a descriptive one.
      - Sparkle-san 4y ago
        > the author of this very article is the "automotive editor" at ars, not a marine biologist, or anything close to it. The author has a PhD in Pharmacology. Biology is an integral part of Pharmacology.
capableweb 4y ago
What exactly counts as fearmongering for you? It seems like +6.37M people have died from COVID so far, most of them being in the US (which has more deaths from COVID than India, which has a larger population than the US). It makes sense for a lot of people in the US to be scared of COVID, it is a dangerous, infectious disease after all.
- clairity 4y ago
  it makes no sense for "a lot of people" to be scared of covid. it makes sense for those at risk (the elderly and those with co-morbidities) to evaluate that risk and take concrete measures (principally vaccination), then move on. we did not need to be stuck in a fear cycle for over two years for what is a novel cold virus, not the black death.
  - overtonwhy 4y ago
    You need to research long covid: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/more-than-1-in-5-covid-survivors-may-develop-long-covid-cdc-study-suggests/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/more-than-1-in-5-cov...
    - clairity 4y ago
      i don't, especially not on arstechnica of all places. there is active research on the topic but no conclusive evidence that it's any more than a form of negative hawthorne effect and/or hypochondriasis.
    - namecheapTA 4y ago
      So do you. Basically made up.
    - MontyCarloHall 4y ago
      This is a sensationalized study that only looked at COVID cases that were serious enough to end up on someone’s electronic medical record: >The authors mined electronic health records identif[ying] 353,164 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 2020 and November 2021. They then matched each COVID-19 patient in a ratio of one to five with 1,640,776 control patients. All of the survivors and controls were monitored for at least a month and up to a year. Overall, 38.2 percent of COVID-19 survivors developed a post-COVID condition, compared with 16 percent of uninfected controls. (Also note that the “post-COVID conditions” include things as minor as a persistent cough.) The real headline should be "More than 1-in-5 COVID cases serious enough to be noted in medical records may result in long-term symptoms, greatly ranging in severity." Upwards of 60% of the US had been infected with COVID as of April 2022 [0]. If serious long-COVID symptoms indeed occurred in upwards of 20% of COVID cases, that would mean >12% of Americans are currently suffering from debilitating long-term illness, which would be obvious on a societal level. We simply do not see this. [0] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220426/almost-60-percent-infected-by-covid https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220426/almost-60-percent-i...
not2b 4y ago
"fishing for clicks" from a "contrarian perspective" usually means "misinform the public for profit". Giving the best available reporting on what's currently known about a disease that has killed millions isn't "fearmongering", even if as we learn more some reporting needs to be revised. Equating the two is just nihilism or solipsism, as if there's no reality, just people saying things.
- clairity 4y ago
  news outlets literally put out millions of stories about covid over the past couple years. do you really believe that that was all factual, objective reporting--that millions of "facts" were being rationally delivered--or were news outlets taking advantage of an opportunity to keep people glued to their screens (and speakers)?
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    You complain about a fallacy and then use this argument? Ars is just one news outlet and didn't put out all those millions of stories, so they don't have to answer for them. If you object to Ars, object to Ars.
    - clairity 4y ago
      ars is part of a $2.5B media empire (advance publications). read any of their covid coverage, and it's pretty baldly fearmongering for clicks. they're not in this business for commonwealth, objective truth-seeking.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        "read any of their covid coverage" - whose - advanced publications as a body, or Ars? Because yet again, what someone else writes isn't Ars's problem. > they're not in this business for commonwealth, objective truth-seeking. This is an attempted attack on motives, and again, not on any real substance.

mempko 4y ago

Ok, but over a million people in the US died from covid and even more with permanent damage.

clairity 4y ago
3.5M people died last year in the US. as usual, heart disease and cancer were the overwhelming leaders. covid claimed ~460K, but that's "deaths involving covid", not "from covid". there is no evidence of "permanent damage" from covid. a novel contagion of any kind will exhibit its highest mortality rates at the beginning of its epidemic incursion, and eventually reach steady state. from all indications, the steady state of covid will follow its coronavirus predecessors and settle at negligible death rates. heart disease and cancer will continue to kill millions into the foreseeable future. that's not to dismiss the threat of covid, but to merely put it in perspective. people at risk (elderly, or with co-morbidities) should get vaccinated and perhaps take other precautions. but none of that fearmongering did any good, and in fact, did a lot of bad, by sowing division rather than fostering unity.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  there is no evidence of "permanent damage" from covid. There is some evidence. But as you said, it's a novel disease and still being studied. https://www.bcm.edu/news/what-eegs-tell-us-about-covid-19-and-the-brain https://www.bcm.edu/news/what-eegs-tell-us-about-covid-19-an... Some of the EEG alterations found in COVID-19 patients may indicate damage to the brain that might not be able to be repaired after recovering from the disease.
  - clairity 4y ago
    note that EEGs are a very crude instrument relative the fantastic complexity of the brain. it's like putting a rock on the ground to try to understand geotectonics. it's not nothing, but it's not much at all. i wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years, it's viewed much like we now view leeching or lobotomies.
  - junofan 4y ago
    “altered mental status” in EEG context means, like, coma. These aren’t very healthy people.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  In 2020 602,350 people died of cancer[1]. Seems odd to use it as an example of a bigger threat when it's entirely comparable, especially when we can argue the "with not of" distinction there - they may have died of systemic failure while also having cancer. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-deaths/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/update-on-cancer-de...
- robbiep 4y ago
  It would be reasonable to say, today, that the dominant varieties of SARS-CoV-2 are basically similar to an average to not great flu season, particularly for the vaccinated, where there is still a mortality benefit. In fact, I was at a talk 2 weeks ago where Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said exactly this. However. This is a long way from where things started. *> that's not to dismiss the threat of covid’ Actually, I think what you’re doing is worse. As a doctor I’m happy to treat current covid as something we need to live with and get on with, but you’re actually dismissing the prior threat of COVID as well. Dismissing all the people who did die. Dismissing the 140,000 children who were orphaned in the US alone. Dismissing the real contribution of COVID to actual deaths - your distinction of ‘deaths from covid to deaths with covid’ is meaningless when excess mortality clearly shows that without the impact of covid the US population would be 1m higher than it is today. The fact that you choose to see the COVID information as having sowed division speaks more to the bizarre information landscape you have in the US. Many other countries found the last couple of years intensely frustrating but managed to forge a sense of national spirit in fighting it, and as a result have significantly lower excess deaths, significantly less orphaned children, and significantly lower societal scars to bounce back from.
  - clairity 4y ago
    so where are the heartwrenching anecdotes about heart disease or cancer deaths? otherwise you're just projecting a recency and availability bias. but none of that matters for how we, and especially the press, should have handled the topic. no country has "significantly lower"-ed anything. at most, we have slightly different diffusion curves, but mortality and morbidity rates are going to be pretty similar regardless of how we were "fighting it". every single person on earth will get covid at some point. at best, we've delayed that point a little bit for some people, not to mention some shifting of mortality. note that liver disease and chirrosis deaths rose last year - why aren't we making video montages and pouring one out for them, or their orphaned children, again?
    - robbiep 4y ago
      Every untimely death is a tragedy. That's why every country has widespread public health campaigns extolling the virtues of stopping smoking, healthy diets, exercise, maintaining a healthy weight. But these are background noise to most people, and most people don't change their behaviour anyway. If your point is the news should be plastered with images of people suffering heart attacks or cancer wards, i'm not sure what the utility of that argument is. The hospital system has capacity for steady state burden of disease. If Heart disease and cancer patients were dying in hospital corridors, or at home unable to get to hospital, can you actually tell me with a straight face there wouldn't be widespread outrage? >no country has "significantly lower"-ed anything. at most, we have slightly different diffusion curves, but mortality and morbidity rates are going to be pretty similar regardless of how we were "fighting it". This is simply not true. Countries that avoided early surges, avoided overrunning hospitals and were able to get their populations vaccinated and dealing with lower virulence covid strains have had lower overall deaths over the 2 and a half years of the pandemic. Australia for example, had largely flat excess deaths in 2020 & 2021 (actually a reduction in 2020, due to no covid, reduced travel, no flu season). Australia started dealing with the actual burden of COVID in late 2021 and 2022, and has seen 10,000 COVID deaths so far. Excess deaths in 2022 is 17.5% above average for the year to end of May. [0, 1]. If the US had of been able to pull together, instead of, as you have, variously dismissing it as 'nothing more than the flu', 'no more important than Cancer and Heart disease deaths', or moving the goal posts and declaring that, essentially, the area under the curve will be the same but the timing will be different (which is at conflict with earlier points) - ie if the US had of been able to pull an Australia (or one of many other countries that didn't just totally shit the bed and hide their heads in the sand) than COVID deaths, scaled for population, could have been in the 150-200k range. Or, to put it another way, if Australia had of shit the bed as badly as the US did, then Aus would have had 60,000 deaths. [0] https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/measuring-australias-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/measuring-australias-excess-... [1] https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provis...
- kelnos 4y ago
  > that's "deaths involving covid", not "from covid". Unless they all would have died at that time regardless, in the absence of COVID, isn't this a distinction without relevance?
  - clairity 4y ago
    death is often not as simple as "you died of dysentery". your liver might fail, and your lungs are full of fluid, and your arteries are clogged. you smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish, while eating like a recently unhibernated bear. how do you decide which caused the death, especially without some very detailed monitoring of all of the body's major systems? "with covid" is the same. that's why co-morbidities are almost universally indicated in covid deaths. it's because the people dying of covid are pretty unhealthy already, and covid is not the primary cause of death, but a contributing one, often a minor contributor at that. the distinction is also important because it has multi-faceted follow-on effects. in terms of treatment, a doctor could otherwise have focused more on treating a co-morbidity than covid. a researcher might focus more on other ailments than covid. the public might have been less fearful and tribal. public health guidance might have been different. it has lots of relevance actually.
    - mempko 4y ago
      That's why you look at excess deaths. Covid increased excess deaths significantly. In other words, those unhealthy people would still be alive without covid, enjoying a longer life.
goatlover 4y ago
That's less than 1% of the population. If you're not in the high risk category or living with someone at high risk, and you got vaccinated, then there isn't reason to be overly concerned. Take precautions as you feel the need, but otherwise, life goes on. This isn't the bubonic plague or smallpox.
namecheapTA 4y ago
Over a million people died with covid, not from covid. If after 2 years you haven't got this distinction, do you think possibly you're just severely confused on the topic and shouldn't be discussing it publicly for fear of spreading misinformation?
- kelnos 4y ago
  How is the distinction meaningful? Would these people who "died with COVID, not from COVID" certainly still died if COVID hadn't been a thing?
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    Certainly? No. Probably? Yes. The average age of a covid death in the UK was higher than the actual life expectancy age. Add in how overly sensitive the tests were, especially pcr, testing for the virus and not for actual proof of infection... It's all a joke.
    - mempko 4y ago
      Ok, then explain the excess deaths. Explain how more people dying than normal is a joke.

Sparkle-san 4y ago

It's not really irrational. Journalism is plagued with issues where journalists misconstrue a topic because they don't have the requisite background knowledge to adequately cover a topic. This becomes immediately obvious when you read an article on a topic you're knowledgeable about (see Gell-Mann amnesia effect). Expecting a site with more subject matter experts to have less of these types of errors seems perfectly rational.

clairity 4y ago
no, that's literally falling for the appeal to authority fallacy. just because a journalist has some experience in a field tells you nothing a priori about how they evaluate other information in the field. you have to evaluate their ability to evaluate that information to get any insight into how trustworthy they can be.
- Sparkle-san 4y ago
  You're conveniently ignoring that their writers are often writing within their domains of experience.
  - clairity 4y ago
    no, i'm not. i'm saying that it doesn't matter a single iota. in the few domains where i can plausibly claim more than cursory knowledge, there are plenty of people who i give zero credence to, who otherwise claim "expertise". and a science writer is often writing about science far afield of their narrow education/research. the author of this very article is the "automotive editor" at ars, not a marine biologist, or anything close to it. "expert" is a normative (aka political) nominative, not a descriptive one.
    - Sparkle-san 4y ago
      > the author of this very article is the "automotive editor" at ars, not a marine biologist, or anything close to it. The author has a PhD in Pharmacology. Biology is an integral part of Pharmacology.

capableweb 4y ago

What exactly counts as fearmongering for you? It seems like +6.37M people have died from COVID so far, most of them being in the US (which has more deaths from COVID than India, which has a larger population than the US). It makes sense for a lot of people in the US to be scared of COVID, it is a dangerous, infectious disease after all.

clairity 4y ago
it makes no sense for "a lot of people" to be scared of covid. it makes sense for those at risk (the elderly and those with co-morbidities) to evaluate that risk and take concrete measures (principally vaccination), then move on. we did not need to be stuck in a fear cycle for over two years for what is a novel cold virus, not the black death.
- overtonwhy 4y ago
  You need to research long covid: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/more-than-1-in-5-covid-survivors-may-develop-long-covid-cdc-study-suggests/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/more-than-1-in-5-cov...
  - clairity 4y ago
    i don't, especially not on arstechnica of all places. there is active research on the topic but no conclusive evidence that it's any more than a form of negative hawthorne effect and/or hypochondriasis.
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    So do you. Basically made up.
  - MontyCarloHall 4y ago
    This is a sensationalized study that only looked at COVID cases that were serious enough to end up on someone’s electronic medical record: >The authors mined electronic health records identif[ying] 353,164 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 2020 and November 2021. They then matched each COVID-19 patient in a ratio of one to five with 1,640,776 control patients. All of the survivors and controls were monitored for at least a month and up to a year. Overall, 38.2 percent of COVID-19 survivors developed a post-COVID condition, compared with 16 percent of uninfected controls. (Also note that the “post-COVID conditions” include things as minor as a persistent cough.) The real headline should be "More than 1-in-5 COVID cases serious enough to be noted in medical records may result in long-term symptoms, greatly ranging in severity." Upwards of 60% of the US had been infected with COVID as of April 2022 [0]. If serious long-COVID symptoms indeed occurred in upwards of 20% of COVID cases, that would mean >12% of Americans are currently suffering from debilitating long-term illness, which would be obvious on a societal level. We simply do not see this. [0] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220426/almost-60-percent-infected-by-covid https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220426/almost-60-percent-i...

not2b 4y ago

"fishing for clicks" from a "contrarian perspective" usually means "misinform the public for profit". Giving the best available reporting on what's currently known about a disease that has killed millions isn't "fearmongering", even if as we learn more some reporting needs to be revised. Equating the two is just nihilism or solipsism, as if there's no reality, just people saying things.

clairity 4y ago
news outlets literally put out millions of stories about covid over the past couple years. do you really believe that that was all factual, objective reporting--that millions of "facts" were being rationally delivered--or were news outlets taking advantage of an opportunity to keep people glued to their screens (and speakers)?
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  You complain about a fallacy and then use this argument? Ars is just one news outlet and didn't put out all those millions of stories, so they don't have to answer for them. If you object to Ars, object to Ars.
  - clairity 4y ago
    ars is part of a $2.5B media empire (advance publications). read any of their covid coverage, and it's pretty baldly fearmongering for clicks. they're not in this business for commonwealth, objective truth-seeking.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      "read any of their covid coverage" - whose - advanced publications as a body, or Ars? Because yet again, what someone else writes isn't Ars's problem. > they're not in this business for commonwealth, objective truth-seeking. This is an attempted attack on motives, and again, not on any real substance.