Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephorjoe | Hacker News Reader

I guess we'll find out how susceptible viruses are to propaganda, political spin, and troll farms...

Will it matter ? There will just be a barrage of BS about how the numbers are fake news, and how the media is being dramatic.

We've seen this all before and it's become so predictable.

I predict the virus will persist in being unmoved by public opinion no matter how fake the news is.

With less confidence, I predict people who get sick, have friends and family get sick, and/or watch their 401k value drop 25% in a month will develop antibodies to certain types of fake news.

>With less confidence, I predict people who get sick, have friends and family get sick, and/or watch their 401k value drop 25% in a month will develop antibodies to certain types of fake news.

With 100% confidence, I predict those people will use all of the things you mention there to further increase the political divide and entrench their already solidified world and political views.

Probably, but eventually something is going to break because reality doesn't care about peoples' political views or worldviews.

I honestly think you're underestimating just how stubborn and short-sighted people are/can be.

No, I don't think so. People can be extremely stubborn, yes, but sooner or later, reality is going to force them to make a change. No amount of stubbornness can change the laws of physics. Note that I am not claiming that things will get better for these stubborn people, in fact I'm claiming that things will get much, much worse for them when reality gives them a wake-up call, and there will be nothing they can do about it at that point because it'll be too late to fix things.

The right-wing media is already telling people that it's a bioweapon from China that is being used to attack the United States. Anyone saying differently will be attacked as a deep-state conspirator.

It's practically written in stone at this point.

It will matter, because with a ~2% fatality rate, everyone will know someone who has died of the corona virus.

That's a bit more influential than a liked facebook post with false numbers.

But the media has been dramatic about many topics, the media has cried wolf many times. This isn't entirely everyone else's fault.

Absolutely. Some 3,500 american citizens died during last PR hurricane devastation and that was barely covered in media. WH said its fake numbers and its not even 100 people that died. Trump is a genius at spinning things, so I would imagine if someone dies from Corona, it will be "fake news".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com