Comment by cryoshon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cryoshon | Hacker News Reader

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>if you're spending your day on Twitter right now, it's shredding your psychological health

>Twitter seems to have evolved more into just really stressed out people yelling at public officials

these are both good points, but i think that there should be a bit of context: by and large in the US, public officials are performing unexpectedly, astoundingly, and utterly unforgivably poorly in their responses to the coronavirus.

it's the correct response to be anxious about the wholesale failure of public and private institutions, and it's the correct response to be livid about it and to channel anger towards those who are letting the country down in its greatest time of need.

it's fashionable to say that disconnecting is important for your mental health. it isn't that the idea of disconnecting for the sake of mental health is in any way incorrect. but democracies function via the will of the public being reflected in the actions of individuals and institutions. if public officials don't have people giving them an earful, they will in all likelihood continue to act in a way which harms the public.

in other words: without the endless hammering of the anxious and unstable twitterati and those like them, the public health response to the coronavirus in the US would likely be even worse than the near worst-case response that we're seeing. it's bad for the people doing it, but it's part of the democratic process at this point.

I’m satisfied with the response - not sure what you’re so upset about.

As someone who has been through more than one natural disaster the fear and panic is absolutely destructive and often worse than the event itself. Remains to be seen in this case.

Look at all the wackos posting to youtube saying this is god’s sign he is coming back, etc. Those people absolutely don’t need a platform.

To summarize some important bullet points of the USG's failure:

- FDA blocked hospitals from using their existing equipment to test for the virus with an old regulation that has been sitting on the books for a while.

- FDA blocked Seattle Flu study from testing their flu samples for Coronavirus, which would have A. provided an invaluable measure of the early spread in the Washington crisis, and B. provided us with crucial data about the deadliness of the virus untainted by the "asymptomatic cases aren't tested" issue that still hasn't been perfectly resolved. This would have significantly reduced panic.

- CDC indicated masks didn't help, and the establishment media took that and ran with it. Stigma against mask-wearers, instead of being reduced, was fueled. Fortunately now the error has been realized and people are being advised to cobble together masks from whatever they can find.

There are many other examples of the agencies not doing enough, but those are debatable because you can always argue that the action was impossible for one reason or another. However in these examples it would have been better for the government to do nothing, and you can't claim they lack the ability to do that. The most expensive and capable research/medical apparatus in the world can do little to help when it is being actively hindered.

The mask thing is still a recommendation, and for very good reason - they can make things worse for healthy people.

I'm not going to wear one because:

* I'm cluastrophobic and am uncomfortable (re)breathing hot, humid air.

* I know I'll touch my face often to adjust it.

* It will give me a false sense of security, especially considering it doesn't protect the eyes.

I don't see how you can logically that say something will give you a false sense of security. If you know it isn't truly secure, and are saying that it gives people a false sense of security, then you know enough to not have that sense yourself. I won't debate your first point though, if you would rather stay home than breathe hot air then that's your choice. However, it may not be socially integrative to go out not wearing a mask for that reason.

"False sense of security" is literally the reason stated by Dr. Birx for why the CDC made it a recommendation and not a guideline.

> you know enough to not have that sense yourself.

That's the thing about a false sense of security - you do things subconsciously when you feel protected. You may or may not realize it, but only after you've done it.

I understand how someone who was misinformed could have a false sense of security, but is there any evidence that a person who is informed can have a false sense of security? It sounds like something that you would need to show, as opposed to being an obviously correct assumption.

> not sure what you’re so upset about

In mid-January or so, the R0 and early CFR values for this thing were publicly available. Authorities such as the WHO and the CDC, and their lackey journalists in the media (both left and right, Vice and Fox) were beating the It's Just The Flu, Bro drum for a full month and a half since then.

Meanwhile, anonymous tweeps with anime avatars were digging into the numbers and disseminating the real news. It's one of those situations where you don't even need expert opinion, just a cursory understanding of what the numbers mean and the ability to write a 30 line monte carlo simulation in python.

So yes, being angry that the experts and journalists were actively trying to get people killed while an army of people with 73 followers and Yu-Gi-Oh avatars were the real heroes is fully justified.

It's so cartoonishly comical that Hanlon's Razor doesn't really apply. Malice is quite evident in this case, and it would be nice to see every JTFB type held to account when this is all over.

I think you can name any public issue where criticism is more warranted than it is for the current health crisis. The response of every country was pretty random. I don't see any failure to be honest. Some governments took different bets, but I don't see any specific problem.

There are many disadvantages to using anger and anxiety as a method of solving problems. I think it is misleading and indicative of unclear thinking to say that being anxious and livid and "channeling anger" are "correct responses" to any situation at all.

The correctness of emotions is separate from the effectiveness of the strategy. It is perfectly reasonable to be upset if mugged by a seven foot slab of muscle - even if frontal unarmed attack back would be a bad idea.

Too much info (most of it incomplete and useless) is getting pumped into peoples heads.

Untrained minds will break. And trained minds will break beyond some threshold.

There will be a lot of casualties from this first generation on the social media front lines being mass bombarded with "info".

That's an interesting hypothesis concluding with, if we can't allow untrained minds unlimited access to internet media without them breaking, we'll have to either limit access to internet mass media or limit what that media broadcasts.

Obviously, this is an unprecedented break with current internet and media freedom policies.

There's an assumption hidden in that: how do we know that "hammering" on the social media teams of elected officials will have any influence on their behavior?

Or, for that matter, a positive influence assuming it has one?

The masks thing is a great example - simple enough to tell the public to leave professionally made masks for the professionals and post good advice on how to make a functional one at home. When the public looks like a screaming mob of idiots, why wouldn't you mistrust their ability to act selflessly and carefully.

Nobody said it will have influence, it just makes you feel a little better instead of constantly taking it in the ass and never speaking up about it. Not to mention the mass amounts of misinformation and disinformation that need to be combated.

The CDC is warning about mental health impact as a result of extended isolation. They are trying to encourage public messaging that supports social connecting using technology.

Can you use your knowledge to provide ways to do that outside of Twitter?

And do you disagree that there is a void in our social construct by this distancing that is not somewhat emulated by services like Twitter, even if imperfectly?

I think this is the first time people in the US with a neutral to positive experience with its systems are seeing how bad things were all along. A growing number of the respectability politics crowd is starting to understand why people who don't know these systems as harmless or helpful were screaming and angry all along.

I've looked at a little too much news in the last few weeks, it has not been good at all for my mental health. So starting today I've stopped looking at the news, it will only matter if there is mass civil unrest/riots.

They are probably going through their days in just as much of an irrational, social media induced panic as everyone else.

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