https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-reddit-social-pl...
Also you might as well rename /r/Coronavirus/ to /r/politics2 aka fucktrump. It's the same thing over and over again
I looked through /r/covid19/ and it mostly seems to be an aggregator of research papers. Don't really see much tinfoily or panicky stuff there.
I also have no idea why posting this chart would be considered "making bold and fearmongering claims": https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/euokq5/oc_...
Besides, I'm not sure why Business Insider thinks linking to the CDC is some sort of be all end all solution to providing coronavirus information. They've actually been incredibly slow to provide up to date information (not to mention testing).
This article comes across as Business Insider taking a petty swipe at reddit to generate clicks and trying to stir up drama where none exists.
Social media in general, and Reddit in particular, are commoditizing news publications, and displacing them as trusted sources of information. That's IMO why there have been so many such articles coming out regularly in the past few years.
The coup in Venezuela, the Yellow Vest protests, and even Charlottesville all had individuals, both partisans and observers contributing to a body of information that allowed interested people to develop a more holistic awareness of the ground-level context as it unfolded in real-time.
Seemingly there are a number of medical professionals providing coolheaded analysis of the COVID outbreak, but if I were to search it up, I would be subject to a tsunami of vapid, hyperbolic observations and speculations breathlessly belted out by talking heads whose two great skills are reading a teleprompter, and running their mouths between segments.
Every time something of cultural interest or controversy occurs, self-interested media outlets run hitpiece after hitpiece against whichever platform hasn't bent the knee to their industry in the recent past, all under the auspices of the public good, and ensuring only the highest quality information is available.
Which, of course, only inflames the skepticism and paranoia of those convinced that the media is plotting to control them, even as they deny knowledge to those capable of keeping themselves informed and acting through their own sources.
Traditional media is being outcompeted as a primary source for both critical audiences that want to stay informed, as well as for credulous audiences who want to be entertained, and hear what they already agree with.
This isn't to denigrate the great work being done around the globe by investigative journalists. News reporting is a thankless, and unprofitable venture. It's unfortunate that their great work is so often buried beneath a sea of punditry with little more insight than a reddit thread.
HN has been a great source for information on COVID 19, and I get links to primary articles that I wouldn't know to find, and which most publications only reference in passing. It helps me stay informed. If I was just passively reading/watching the news, I shudder to imagine what I'd think.
* * *
Seattle is about 2 weeks behind Lombardy. The Bay Area maybe 3 weeks behind. Everywhere in the US is going to be in that situation in 2 months at most, unless something very dramatic changes ASAP.
The kinds of measures being taken in the US are grossly inadequate for this challenge: leaders and some media outlets continue to downplay risks, residents continue to blithely go about their everyday lives, large gatherings like church meetings and sporting events continue as usual, the CDC/FDA is still blocking sufficient testing around the country, hospitals and medical workers are not being sufficiently trained and prepared, and the supply of personal protective gear and ICU beds is not going to suffice.
We have squandered 4–6 weeks of preparation for this crisis, and hundreds of thousands of people in the US may die as a result, with others experiencing permanent lung damage.
China has shown that this virus can be managed if the number of patients stays low enough that infections are discovered early and patients are treated aggressively with antivirals, supplemental oxygen as soon as blood oxygen starts to drop, mechanical ventilators for severe cases, etc. People’s immune systems generally do fight this virus off if we can keep them breathing for long enough. But that depends on having enough hospital capacity.
If everyone stays complacent and continues to mingle until there are hundreds of local deaths in each area it’s going to be a disaster.
Edit 2: To everyone here: If you have what seems like a minor cold, even if you are a young adult, please stay away from people and don’t spread it. What is 2 weeks of minor cough and sore throat for you might become severe pneumonia requiring hospitalization for your parent or neighbor or coworker. If anyone in the family gets a minor cold, please keep your kids out of school. Etc.
They also have already stock piled masks and additional resources. The medical staff in the area are similarly mentally preparing, schools are prepping for the shutdown (at home school).
I wouldn’t say the US is doing nothing, this is rural Illinois. There just isn’t much to do here until it’s a problem. But as soon as we get a few test positives schools are planning shutdown (I’m assuming gyms will be used for patients as necessary).
https://news.ontario.ca/mohltc/en/2020/03/ontario-confirms-n... https://news.ontario.ca/mohltc/en/2020/03/ontario-confirms-n...
All the other cases we've seen were related to travel to Iran, Italy, Egypt, & China IIRC.
EDIT: one was a woman who returned from Colorado on Mar 2, the other a man who returned from Las Vegas on Feb 28.
Unfortunately this is effectively "let them eat cake" for many people.
Keeping kids out of school means not going to work. Not going to work means not having money to pay the bills, and very possibly losing your job.
In China, where the state has basically total control, things like this can be done. In the US, it's going to be a tough sell for an awful lot of people.
If it were up to me the federal government and state and local governments would be closing schools, closing nursing homes to visitors, canceling church services and sporting events, figuring out how to make transportation less risky, closing restaurants and bars to customers and drafting those workers to make deliverable prepared meals instead, recruiting childless people aged 15–40 into temporary (paid) public service jobs, doing everything possible to guarantee sufficient supply of protective equipment, taking every roadblock out from researching antiviral drugs for treating positive cases, etc.
Governments should be figuring out how to guarantee anyone with untested minor colds to stay home from work without losing pay until they can be tested; figuring out how to temporarily relieve rent, loan payments, and taxes for people quarantined or with jobs in temporarily affected industries; preparing to distribute food, medicine, and other items to patients in quarantine or isolated at home, and so on.
With a robust public response it should be possible to dramatically slow this virus without completely collapsing the economy. The fallout (not just illness/death but also economic impact) from all the cases hitting at once within a few weeks is going to be much more worse.
I’m not sure exactly what the best responses would be, I’m just spitballing here. But it seems to me we should have been thinking and talking about possible extreme measures for the past 6 weeks instead of collectively twiddling our thumbs and going on with our ordinary lives.
You seem to be taking a position of "Everyone else is worried. I assert that my non-worry will be proven to be the correct position." Yet, your prediction that the redditors are excessively worried ("panicky") will only be borne out if those who worry are sufficient in number and intensity to keep downward pressure on the exponential multiplier.
There's a worry vector field around the Earth here, I can feel it. I wonder what you get with the line integral?
I even think the 500k death in the US is too much
https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-us-hospitals-pr...
>Lawler's estimates include:
>4.8 million hospitalizations associated with the novel coronavirus
>96 million cases overall in the US
>480,000 deaths
Once again I'm not downplaying it but I think we will be closer to the 1957-59 asian flu which had 70k deaths in the US and 2 million global BUT maybe that's even too much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H2N2
But if anxiety leads more people to self-quarantine and wash their hands over and over again, it will save lives. Potentially a lot of them.
Anxiety doesn't normally have a place in society because it's so overwhelmingly safe most of the time, but we're facing a legitimate threat that people can do something about.
Obviously, there's no place for panic and stockpiling, but most of the people I see don't seem too worried -- they don't seem worried enough. People should be more cautious.
It might (or might not) be accurate, but that's kinda irrelevant.
One of the biggest problems with Reddit is that Americans go on boards like /r/politics or in this case /r/Coronavirus, see extreme hostility towards America and Trump and assume that this hostility is all coming from Americans themselves, when really a substantial number of Reddit users (and users elsewhere on the Internet) are not American.
Not being Americans, their hostility comes more from predisposed bias against Trump and America than a careful analysis of what's best for America.
I think the real issue is that you go to a place like r/politics or r/vancouver or r/bitcoin and think it's some canonical forum with some semblance of fairness but it's really just someone's little world with its own rules and agenda.
But you can't simply start your own subreddit because you're now r/vancouver2, r/TrueVancouver, or whatever and it can never get the same traction just because it's not the official-looking r/vancouver anymore.