Hacker News Reader

Comment by victorlin | Hacker News Reader

If the root cause of the problem is not resolved, even we overcome this virus, then now what? What's next? If the next virus hit us again, would Chinese government still try to cover up the problem and stop people from speaking up? Would WHO stop down playing the problem and advice not taking actions? It's a wake up call, while it's nice to have some heartwarming help from internet, I am more concern about COVID-19 is not the worst case, it's just a test, next thing could be way worse if we only try to look away from the root problem, like all the time we did.

View on HN

The root cause of this Outbreak in North America is we have a president call it a HOAX, a flu. The incompetency of the government resulted this disaster in here. Even now when we have thousands in isolation. They are still trying to down play it. They have no idea how many people are infected, they have no idea how many possible contact s are out there spreading the virus. No matter how much they blame others, the root cause is right here in North America!

> The root cause of this Outbreak in North America is we have a president call it a HOAX,

Wrong. You are just repeating misinformation. He labeled some of the criticism a hoax, not the outbreak.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/no-trump-didnt-ca...

I mean he did say it was not serious that it was just the flu and that it will soon be gone, just disappear. He also said he would have a press conference yesterday to announce major financial moves to help the economy which did not happen. He is also still insisting via his new budget that funding for the cdc be cut by 15%. He also fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.

You are right though, he did not directly call it a hoax.

But he did call it a hoax.

Only later when he was called out on how stupid the comment was he back-pedalled and said their criticism was a hoax. That doesn’t make sense.

They weren’t really criticising him? Or they were trying to make him think they were criticising him?

The sentence doesn’t make any sense, so it’s clearly not what he meant.

Don't try to give meaning to his words or understand them. That way lies madness.

It's not even clear that his definition of hoax is. It applies to anything he doesn't like. He's basically ruining the word.

It is very clear. He uses it to refer to the unfounded conspiracy theories and accusations directed at him. What is so difficult to understand about that usage?

No, nothing that he says is very clear. The things he labels hoaxes do not correspond to what other people would call a hoax in subtle but significant ways. It doesn't seem that he understands what the word actually means.

> But he did call it a hoax.

No he didn't. He characterized the criticism as a hoax. That is an entirely different thing. By perpetuating the lie that he considered the outbreak as a hoax you are adding to the problem. If you disagree, please link to some sort of news account that backs up your statement.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...

It isn't really hard to understand what he meant either. The President's critics say all sorts of things that aren't true. He is constantly calling them out on it. He has used the term 'hoax' for a long time to refer to the misleading stories his critics tell.

Doesn't mean that there aren't valid criticisms. Just means that much of the back and forth is just hot air. There is no reason to add to the madness though by spreading more misleading information.

The quote is:

“Now, the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus," and, "One of my people came up to me and said, 'Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.' That didn't work out too well. They couldn't do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. And this is their new hoax.”

It's hard to parse that, but a reasonable interpretation is to say "this" refers to coronavirus. Notably he didn't say "criticism" at all, and referring to "politicizing" as a hoax doesn't make grammatical or logical sense (which of course doesn't mean it isn't what he meant. He said "the impeachment hoax", and he was impeached so clearly his interpretation of "hoax" is different to the normal interpretation).

Either way, I wouldn't say it's misinformation.

Not american here, so didn't read/listen to this, but in all honesty, I would read the last part not as 'calling' the corona virus a hoax, but that democrats were using the corona virus as an attack, as they did with russia or the impeachment (not passing judgement about russia/impeachment, just I would read that as an attack on democrats and not as they calling COVID a hoax)

(Not American either)

My initial reading was that he meant the severity of the virus is a hoax (which goes along with his "the flu kills more people" narrative).

Your reading sort of makes sense if "hoax" was a synonym for "attack". It's not, but Trump seems to use it as one, so yes I could see that could be what he meant.

It's interesting, because we end up in situations like this where you can try to read into it what he meant but that really requires guessing!

Trump has been using "hoax" to refer to the false attacks on him for long before COVID-19 was a thing.

The Verge has got good, non-political coverage of the issue. Needless to say it isn't clear cut:

Trump surrogates said after the rally that he wasn’t calling coronavirus a hoax. “He was referring to the way he had been treated by the opposite party … in terms of taking every opportunity to bring him down,” said Surgeon General Jerome Adams on SiriusXM’s The Black Eagle with Joe Madison. And you can argue that Trump is limiting his claim to Democrats arguing he’s not prepared for the coronavirus. But the speech simply compares coronavirus to the “impeachment hoax” (which Trump describes as a “perfect conversation” that Democrats twisted into something negative), so it’s also easy to argue that Trump is saying the coronavirus itself is similarly overblown.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/3/21163388/facebook-fact-che...

It isn't hard to parse at all. He has been using the word "hoax" to refer to false narratives and accusations for months if not years. He is clearly pushing back on the criticisms as being false, as being a "hoax".

There is also the fact that his actions don't make any sense at all if it were true that the President thinks the outbreak is a hoax.

Trumps's actions at the time (28 Feb) were things that indicated exactly that he thought coronavirus wasn't a threat and would go away soon:

Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low.... Hopefully, we’re not going to have to spend so much because we really think we’ve done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum. And again, we’ve had tremendous success — tremendous success — beyond what people would have thought.

and

So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

I really think he is using "hoax" as a synonym for "bad" and is referring to coronavirus, criticisms of his response and the Democrats all at the same time.

Approximately 0% of this discussion should be occurring right now. Presidents should not be throwing around words like this in a middle of a crisis. Period. Recognize this for what it is. This is shit leadership. This is a shit show. I don't give a crap which finely parsed definition to the word "hoax" you give. Don't defend this.

What nonsense. It isn't hard to understand what the President is saying. And the idea that there are particular words that shouldn't be used because we are in a crisis is just weird.

Yes we should strive for clear communication but that doesn't happen by declaring particular words as off limits.

And what exactly am I defending other than accurate reporting?

> It isn't hard to understand what the President is saying

The problem is that the public at large will internalise the first interpretation they are presented with, whether this be their own understanding or their favourite news outlet's. Past presidents were smart enough to realise this and therefore appointed professionals (whom they listened to!) to help them craft their messaging to be as precise as possible. Trump, for some reason, has failed to learn this lesson in his first three years on the job. It is because he continues to use inprecise language that his messaging gets corrupted like this.

> It isn't hard to understand what the President is saying.

The most generous interpretation of his words is that he meant it's a political attack from his political opponents.

The fact that his first instinct is his own political fortunes and has to preemptly whine like a baby about it is evidence of shit leadership.

The President and all leadership should be focused on the right response that minimizes loss of life, political fortunes be damned. I mean, seriously. If a sheriff's first instincts in every crisis were his reelection chances, he'd be out on his ass. But sadly, yes, here we are, arguing stupid shit, in the middle of a completely unnecessary distraction because he felt threatened and needed to lash out. So he pitted us against each other at the least opportune time. It is the one of the worst possible things to do in a crisis. Find a way to divide us!

Let's overcome this virus first? We normally don't do root cause analysis during an outage in IT do we?

If the root cause of an IT outage in one place can be used to help prevent the outage from occurring elsewhere, yes.

Your personal relationship to this is entirely understandable, but not a sufficient reason to not focus on root causes where they first occurred.

I mean we can do 2 things at once. Its like when there is a mass shooting and when someone suggests gun control as a solution the other side yells that people just died and their families are grieving and this is no time to be discussing taking guns away.

Then it happens again...

Are you a doctor writing from ICU? Or a researcher working on the vaccine?

I'm failing to see how the "root cause", as you suggested, China, of the problem can somewhat solve the problem. It always us against the virus. Last I recall, they don't take orders from any one. Not even Trump.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com