Show HN: HN reader that filters out COV**-19 and Coronavir** articles | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: HN reader that filters out COV-19 and Coronavir articles

gabrielsroka.github.io

52 pointsgabrielsroka63 comments

I actually got the impression that HN has already been under-weighting those posts. I noticed that often virus submissions are sorted below other submissions with lower scores submitted longer ago.

There does seem to be a disparity between the number of posts found via search vs those that reach the front page. I've been quite relieved that HN has, so far, been a relatively calm oasis in an ocean of Covid-19 dominated media. I'm not seeking to put my head in the sand, but I find the constant coverage elsewhere numbing.

one of my submissions about the restaurants and service industry yesterday[1] got flagged several times and it puzzled me tbh.

Covid19 is being aggressively framed by the political parties and media (across the world not just US) to divide the public into camps of "believers" and "non-believers". How sensitive people get about the topic (of COVID19) is almost frightening because this isn't any more about a pandemic but whether what somebody who has an opinion signals about it. People who believe in the danger are quickly labeled liberals/democrat, or conservative if they don't believe in the danger. This. Is. Nuts!

There is a real problem at our door. And it's not chickenshit such as a few people "believing in chemtrails" or that "evolution is a hoax", but whether this virus and the news around it are actually real.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22519125

This is only temporary. When the coronavirus starts knocking on your door, everybody is a believer.

As they say

"ignorance is bliss"

it seems we're witnessing a strange situation, where a large part of society is going through the "5 stages of grief" collectively, not all at once but with individuals distributed across the stages.

> Covid19 is being aggressively framed by the political parties and media (across the world not just US) to divide the public into camps of "believers" and "non-believers"

This is absolutely untrue anywhere that I visit. There's literally one entity trying to downplay the risks, and it's the Trump Administration -- and it's not even all of it! Members of the administration are "believers" as you put it.

No serious person thinks this is a hoax.

There’s a wide gulf between “this is a hoax” and “you know, this isn’t totally unprecedented and I think some of these measures are ill-considered over-reactions”.

Specifically, I think the idea that this can be “contained” by political boundaries drawn on maps is utterly ridiculous. (I’m in favor of social distancing and trying to make the inevitable pandemic take longer, but somehow that gets spun into fantasies of containment.)

100% agree. But voicing the idea that some of the actions being taken might be overreactions gets very strong reactions about "burying your head in the sand" or "being in denial".

The worst part is that after it's blown over, the same people will be saying how we dodged a bullet and it would have been a lot worse if the extreme measures hadn't been taken, with no self-reflection over which measures worked and which made no difference (and were actively harmful in other ways, like economic damage - which can have a direct and significant impact on people's lives).

It's not just the Trump administration. Plenty of the people in my social networks who lean left believe it's "just a flu" or "not that bad" and "overblown"

I have the impression the downplaying is the major trend in Europe as well, so no, it’s not something limited to the Trump administration.

It is telling that Taiwan, which is super close geographically and culturally to China has now less cases than Italia, France and Germany. I’ve been there at the end of January when the thing started to be on TV and the difference in gov and public reaction with my country is huge.

Taiwan: 99% people outside wearing masks starting from the first days, government putting money to open a new mask factory, mask rationing so that they are available with healthcare card, some people limiting their move, people putting themselves in quarantine when coming back from China.

France: every media and the government saying there is no problem for more than a month, even when a close European country closed some schools. People going their live as usual even in regions with lot of cases. No quarantine, no border control. My family reaction: the virus is overrated, complaining about events cancelled (the trend just started this week), goes to public events even now.

Japan: government and people actions in-between West and East. Japan handled the ship semi-seriously, yet started taking other measures really lately. People bought every masks and toilet paper rolls out there, government did nothing so that we can each have some. Gel available at most shop or public place. Some information here or there about the importance of washing hands.

As someone in Taiwan, I have appreciated the 'over reaction.' Masks are still on 80% of the people riding public transport even though cases have hardly budged in weeks. What people don't get is even if you're young and just get sick, it's possible this will cause long lasting respiratory issues like SARs did. Why risks that just you can enjoy a one off public event?

Haha, in Germany it is the other way round. Lets simply say, people who liked Obama and dislike Trump are rather _not_ afraid of the virus.

Why would we simply say that? I’m in Germany and I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.

Not disagreeing with you, but there is a real difference between say the way Bangkok and Munich are treating it (I have recently been in Bangkok, now in Munich). In Bangkok 90%+ of people are walking around with masks (a combination of P2/N95 and surgical masks), hand sanitizer at the door of every shopping center. Security guards using temperature guns on everyone that enters a building.

I went for a massage and the receptionist used a temperature gun on me.

Here in Munich, it's invisible, except for a whole bunch of people that are working from home. Both are fairly close to hotspots, and yet there are very different behaviors.

Exactly, the German mainstream/government mainly is "no fear", and the opposition naturally criticizes that the wrong decisions have been made, and that the state is not ready.

At the same time, the German mainstream/government criticizes the Trump presidency.

All the same seems to happen in the USA, however the other way round: again, the opposition bolsters fear and criticizes the government for not being ready. However the opposition=democrats, hence the fearful criticize Trump at the same time.

Conclusion:

* the Trump critics in the USA overstate the risk of SARS-CoV2

* the Trump critics in Germany downstate the risk SARS-CoV2

For me, it is much more complex and nuanced. The reason why I flagged the occasional COVID-19 related staroy was two-fold: there was the story itself, usually they tend to be weak on facts, numbers and science and heavy on assumptions, unfounded opinion. And then were the comments, even on HN they had an uncomfortable tendency to rely on Youtube videos and the like. The underlying message tended to be "Chinese authorties are lying, it is much worse and it will spread everywhere because there is no protection and the WHO / CDC tc. don't know what they are talking about". Exactly the one thing we don't need, panic and fear mongering.

On the other hand you had the "it will just be a flu". Both sides are wrong. But it is impossible to get through with facts. Also, the comments and posts referencing the WHO and so on were clearly the minority.

SO, if you ask me the online marketing of the WHO sucks. I just had the illusion that a site like HN could, you know, help to do something against the "we are all gonna die" panic.

Turned not to be the case. Hence the flagging. And as a final note, I simply read one too much comments from programmers who thought to have built a model of the epidemic over the weekend, that was so much better than anything the true experts came up with, because he knew how to code. But nobody, neither Google or Facebook nor individuals came forward with a plan or an idea how to get stuff from the CDC / WHO / Johns Hopkins and the like on the very top of Googl results and Youtube. And I have the suspicion that there a some people on HN who have a rather good idea how that could be done.

Not sure how you can say both sides are wrong. It is now spreading widely outside of China and most of the west is very much not ready.

Yeah, it has spread to most countries by now. Thing is, Italy had the virus in the wild since January from what I understood. What ever that tells us about it.

Regarding readiness, I have the impression that we are pretty prepared by now., Europe at least, o idea how things are in the US or Canada. Measures are in place to slow the spreading of the virus, known cases are quaratined one way or the other. And besides some nut jobs starting to hord pasta and toilette paper the supply situation in Germany seems to be rather good so far.

Until the WHO or CDC or other eqivalent bodies aren't crying out that these measures aren't enough I consider them to be enough. I'm raher sure, so, that I absolutely don't listen to any politicians or other pulic functionaries talking pubicly about it.

Can you reference any epidemiologist that states that we're ready for the effects of the pandemic? I haven't seen any proof of that.

I didn't hear any alarmist outcries coming form, say, the WHO. Just that precautions and countermeasures need to be taken. For me that's good enough.

Argably, you will always find one to go on TV an tell the opposite story. Fear sells, and even experts are doing fnny things to get their 15 minutes of fame. Maybe my biggest critique I have, that scientists seem to be less aliged regarding messaging than they are for climate change.

If you want an expert opinion, it's better not to watch WHO or the television.

University lectures seem less opinionated, especially EPFL in Switzerland. The main message he has, that the oppportunity window for containing the virus closed in the last few weeks, and now it's all about mitigation, so that it doesn't overwhelm the health system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RQBtA4dK9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0cjSnAynGs

Sadly I saw some bias even in the Harvard talk when speaking about masks: saying that medical workers need them and that they don't work well against the virus anyways, so people shouldn't buy them is a contradictory statement.

The truth is that it's a locally wise decision to buy N95 / N100 masks for partial protection, at the same time it's globally a bad decision for mitigating the virus, as health workers need them more.

Personally, I like the WHO stuff. Especially since it's more or less the primary source. They suck so hard on messaging so. They don't explain the way how there numbers are calculated, they don't educate on the assumptions and the methodology. They aren't using online channels to get their information out. I would have thought they learned these lessons during SARS, MERS, bird and swine flu, Ebola. Apparently not.

And in that absence of hard facts all kind of theories strive. Usually entertained by amateurs in the particular field. The WHO should be out there, every day, every hour. With all experts on cable news, I think the slots would be there.

And thanks for sharing these links!

The WHO predicted that 150 million people would be killed by avian flu [1]. Nothing happened. They predicted 750,000 people would die in the UK, it was more like 200. For swine flu it was minimum possible deaths of 11k but up to 70k. It was more like 400. They got upset when people wouldn't use their case fatality rates which turned out very wrong.

Over half a million people died of flu related deaths last year. Don't recall reading a single news article about it

1, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/emergency...

2, https://jech.bmj.com/content/62/6/555.abstract

I don't think it's so hard to understand why users would flag that. The title is baity, and the top subthread is a generic discussion about the virtues of Canada.

Curiously, I saw the Sam Altman post on the front page a couple days ago, but then it quickly disappeared and I couldn't re-find it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22513316

Users flagged it.

Thanks for sharing. I wanted to know more about the HN moderators and was pleased to read your profile in the New Yorker from 2018[0]. Keep up the good work.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

I see about 2-7 posts on it a day, all saying the same thing. They're great for raising awareness - I learned that I shouldn't touch my face from HN. But anyone who downloads a filter for it would know that anyway.

edit: to be more precise, it looks like 5 on Ask HN today and one on the main page (this thread)

When there's a major ongoing story, HN gets flooded with submissions about it, the majority of which just hammer on the same nail and add little that is new or interesting. During such waves, moderators downweight follow-up submissions unless they contain significant new information [1]. If we didn't, the front page would consist of stories about this one theme. Worse, that would accelerate the problem, since once they saw this, people would start submitting even more stories about that one theme. (There's a CS term for this situation—I want to say thundering herd, but is that accurate?)

We hit on this strategy after the Great Snowden Storm of 2013 [2], when many users justly complained that HN was overrun with stories that, though not strictly dupes, were filling the front page with dupiness. It has since proven itself through many epidemics, no pun intended.

You can also derive it from first principles. The thing we're optimizing for is intellectual curiosity [3]. Curiosity withers under repetition [4], so the most important thing for HN to avoid is being predictable. To a first approximation, you can say that HN is ok to the degree that it's unpredictable. But since a page of random numbers would do that even better, it's more precise to say that it needs the right balance of familiarity and unpredictability.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I don't think I have heard "Curiosity withers under repetition" before. Is that something observed on HN over time or is it something that has been studied?

Either way I can see it working successfully on HN in comparison to other sites I visit that are just the same thing over and over.

I made that up a while ago. It seems obvious, which doesn't mean a study would be uninteresting! Unless they repeated it too often.

Tsk, tsk. Replications, Replications, Replications! ;)

Thanks for the explanation! I think it makes a lot of sense and I don't mind it at all. I was just surprised when I noticed the pattern at first, and was curious if HN was trying to reduce misinformation or what was going on.

This, and how cov19 was represented among HN top posts, shows that the original HN user base composition is now a minority.

Awesome! I love reading the covid news (I live in Seattle), and this is a cool way to make both parties happy.

  news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(td.title):has(a:has-text(/(\bcovid\b|covid-2019|corona.virus|coronavirus|sars-cov|\bncov\b)/i))
  news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(td.title):has(a:has-text(/(\bcovid\b|covid-2019|corona.virus|coronavirus|sars-cov|\bncov\b)/i)) + tr
  news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing:has(td.title):has(a:has-text(/(\bcovid\b|covid-2019|corona.virus|coronavirus|sars-cov|\bncov\b)/i)) + tr + tr.spacer

In ublock origin is how i have been doing it myself, naturally it isn't perfect.

I did the same thing (hiding outbreak related content) on reddit with a few uBlock Origin filters:

    www.reddit.com##div[data-type="link"]:if(a:has-text(Covid-19))
    www.reddit.com##article:if(span:has-text(Covid-19))
    www.reddit.com##div[data-type="link"]:if(a:has-text(corona))
    www.reddit.com##article:if(span:has-text(corona))
    www.reddit.com##div[data-type="link"]:if(a:has-text(virus))
    www.reddit.com##article:if(span:has-text(virus))
    www.reddit.com##div[data-type="link"]:if(a:has-text(Corona))
    www.reddit.com##article:if(span:has-text(Corona))
    www.reddit.com##div[data-type="link"]:if(a:has-text(Corvid-19))
    www.reddit.com##article:if(span:has-text(Corvid-19))
    www.reddit.com##div[data-type="link"]:if(a:has-text(COVID-19))
    www.reddit.com##article:if(span:has-text(COVID-19))

It's not very elegant but it was very fast to create and it's quite effective.

It works on mobile and old reddit; I didn't test it on new reddit yet.

It's great, there is no case around it so you can see the gears inside, but now I will be able to add several filters easily for different sites.

Thanks. A useful snippet and idea.

I got tired of all the bad news, so I added a filter.

It's about 100 lines of JavaScript (a SPA?) that uses the official HN API. It's designed mostly for mobile use.

Since I read HN a lot, it keeps track (using localStorage) of which articles I've already seen, so I won't see them again.

Source is on GitHub. Feel free to fork, open a PR, etc.

Bad news serves a purpose. Ignore it at your peril.

I agree, and I read major news sources online to get my recommended daily supply of bad news.

I'd prefer to keep HN for fun tech news.

Unfortunately the "discussions" /comments on major news outlets are total garbage.

"I'm feeling bad, so should feel bad too"

Actually, it's really important that people get the latest advice, and feeling bad is a good thing when action is required to prevent worsening outbreaks.

It's not just about YOU catching it and surviving it -- as we've seen, at peak outbreak, healthcare systems are going to be stretched thin. Routine healthcare suddenly becomes unavailable. As an example, someone who has a heart attack, or a serious car accident, who would usually survive given the appropriate level of treatment, will end up dying because that treatment simply isn't available.

And it might not be YOU who contributes to taking up healthcare resources, but it could be anyone YOU pass it on to.

So yeah, it is important to know what's going on, and have the seriousness of the situation rammed home. It's not like coronavirus is going to be affecting you for years to come, just this one. Sticking your head in the sand before the main wave of the crisis has even arrived is like avoiding news about an incoming hurricane.

I cannot emphasise enough caution - keep your eyes and ears open - and take affirmative steps - for everyone's sake.

> it's really important that people get the latest advice

While that's true on an abstract level there really are some important qualifiers for "latest advice".

I'm reading Wikipedia articles on the topic (they are updated very frequently) and try to consume content from authorities like the WHO and the Robert Koch Institute (I'm German). There are probably a lot more high quality sources but I feel reasonably informed.

I don't think there's any value in consuming a hundred reddit posts curated by engagement and stuffed with half-knowledge and karma-optimized fear comments.

If you are German, check out the "NDR Coronavirus-Update" podcast series. They take half an hour every day to talk with Christian Dorsten from the Berliner Charite, who actually developed the Coronavirus tests and seriously knows what he is talking about.

This has been the best resource I had found in any language on the topic.

I think he was on NPR Science Friday with Ira Flatow too

Most bad news can be ignored. COVID-19 is a rare exception.

News organizations are optimized at bringing you the worst things that happened all over the world every day.

Are you sure it's an exception?

>Bad news serves a purpose.

Yeah - generating pageviews.

Also worked on something similar for HN on a weekend. It's called Snapnews, https://www.snapnews.win/.

Basically it expires news items after some preset time (when the pie goes to 0 or when you hit the clear all button) and keeps adding new items in the queue. Catch is once the news item expires it's never shown again (tracked using local storage).

Only worked on it for a few hours then got bored. Still the site is up because it's running on serverless architecture so it aint costing me anything.

Both the "Prev" and "Next" buttons seem to show the next page

Yes, you're right. It's an artifact from an old version (it used to work).

I left the "Prev" button in because it helps to line up the "Next" button with my thumb (on mobile). Lazy, but ergonomic.

Given SARS-CoV-2 is changing the entire world and directly affecting our lives now and in the future, and we can directly make simple -> complex changes to improve our personal lives with the correct information I think it's ironic HN can't coherently work towards the truth.

But it does beg the question, since it can't with SARS-CoV-2, can HN work towards the truth with anything?

regardless of what you hear, china takes outbreaks very seriously and responds aggressively. the general population in china also takes it very seriously. normal behavior response in china looks like over reaction in the us. please watch this video by 3blue1brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg china is past its inflection point and we have yet to determine where our inflection point will be. everyone should be changing your behavior now. the fact that sars-cov didn’t get as far in 2002 as sars-cov-2 virus is currently going should be concerning. the us could ignore prior outbreaks because china is aggressive to stop it.

The reactions to SARS-CoV-2 are changing the entire world, for sure. So far the virus itself has had little impact.

There was one epideiologist back during the SARS crisis who compared the spread of panic with the spread of the virus itself. But most people don't get the fine difference between critizicing the reactions, especially the public and media ones, and critizicing the measures taken. The panic itself can do a lot of harm in itself already.

As I suck in managing sources, I don't have link to that interview, unfortunately...

Alternatively, you can bury your head in the sand

I wonder what ever happened with "The Man Who Knew Too Little" (2018)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/style/the-man-who-knew-to...

Alas, people in the US will soon learn that denial isn't a good vaccine.

It takes about 20 seconds a day to learn all you need to know about the not-yet-a-pandemic. Do you suggest the entire planet spends much of their day reading pointless or speculative articles?

Just how awesome would it be if one could hide all the news about the COV-2019 on ALL the web sites. And the most popular news at any given time. I don't want to be shown any news about what everybody is talking about already.

That's such a pity Atom/RSS feeds are not everywhere any more. It would only take a humble regex to filter a feed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com