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Comment by McKayDavis | Hacker News Reader

Carnival isn't solely to blame for the situation.

Check this story from CNN on Feb 13th titled "Why it's still OK to take a cruise amid the coronavirus outbreak"

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cruise-safety-coronavirus...

Thanks for linking this propagandistic PR puff piece. Long on opinion, short on facts, and likely pushed by a cruise industry association. It's a helpful reminder of how media works today.

I love how they get one "expert" to say something and that's suddenly a news story.

> "I think there's extremely low risk of getting novel coronavirus on a cruise ship," said Dr. John Lynch, who has specialties in infectious disease and travel medicine at University of Washington School of Medicine.

Not only that, even if he was right, it was an irrelevant point. Sure, if you take all the people going on cruise ships at the time, most didn't get coronavirus. but as with all of the precautions being taken, none of this is solely about personal individual health risk, but also about risk to others. So, yeah, individual risk was probably low, but some people would get it, and spread it to others as they traveled, and then spread it some more when they got back home.

The issue that I would have with the advice, whether or not it was obvious that the virus was a huge deal at the time, is that whether you get it isn't going to be an independent probability. If there's an outbreak on the ship, everybody gets it, regardless of what the overall odds are. I'm not sure why, but that seems psychologically more concerning to me. Kind of like the risk of a plane crash vs. a car crash.

The BBC didn't exactly cover themselves in glory on this one either: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51470603

In a video now removed by the WHO, they were still advocating for travel in the middle of February.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KBvReECRrI

Linking to a non-existent video is meaningless. Is there an actual archive copy?

Per contemporaneous linkers, it was a video titled "How to protect yourself while travelling(22:44)"

https://www.gymnastics.sport/site/pages/medical-covid19.php

It looks like that author primarily stays in the shitty listicle category of journalism. To me CNN and other publishers should be more careful of what they publish if they want to be 'known' for their journalism standards and reputation.

https://www.cnn.com/profiles/marnie-hunter

CNN has switched to the BuzzFeed business model. They aren't a trustworthy news source any more.

It's unclear to me why you think this article is exculpatory.

The article is being published by a "reputable" online news source. Regardless of whether or not it is truthful, if you saw a CNN article saying it was still safe to cruise, wouldn't you think about it?

I could absolutely see people being persuaded that taking a cruise was safe if they saw it on CNN. Personally, I wouldn't be caught dead on a cruise ship, even before the pandemic, but that's just me.

I did, however, fall for the "masks aren't necessary for the general public" line that the CDC was pushing for a while. I was doubly stupid, because I had a small stock of N95's from the recent California wildfires that I didn't even use. I'm now wearing one every time I go out other than to walk my dog. Fortunately, I have not (yet) had symptoms of the virus, and I hope I can avoid it for as long as possible, because I have mild asthma and a heart murmur, and don't really need any more cardiorespiratory issues.

That was because there wasn't enough supply for medical personnel because everyone was buying them up like toilet paper. And while it "worked", it wasn't enough. Also, we didn't know enough about asymptomatic carriers which is why they switched directions and were recommending you make them out of t-shirts and elastic, etc.

Nonetheless, I had already purchased the masks last year, and was persuaded not to wear them by the CDC, because I was asymptomatic. I haven't bought any additional N95 masks in months, so I wasn't a part of the lack of supply problem. Luckily, I haven't developed symptoms yet, but I would say the CDC's "guidance" was rather misguided.

Sure, CDC/WHO misinformation. Why do you think Asian tourists are regulary wearing face masks while on vacation? Because of the SARS, MERS and H1N1 outbreaks.

Why would I pay attention to anything Asian tourists do?

I am having a little cognitive dissonance from a few things I seem to be reading frequently:

1) The WHO is/was too cozy with China

2) The WHO is/was against facemasks

but

3) China and other Asian countries set an example of using facemasks which Westerners should do too.

These aren't exactly necessarily precisely contradictory things, but put them together and they make the anti-WHO narrative feel wrong and forced.

3. Mainly Korea, Japan and HK. Not sure about Taiwan or mainland China.

Anti-WHO narrative? The WHO failed to do its job warning earlier about the severity of this crisis and issuing guidelines that would have helped contries and people prepare. Their current leadership should at least resign at this point.

You forgot 4) China makes half the world's masks and was keeping them for themselves: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coro...

This is 2 months old now though -- a lot has changed and the impact to the US was effectively non-existent then.

I don't really see why this article matters that much. Don't get me wrong, with hindsight we can see that it was bad advice, but I think people overplay the effect the media can have.

The only way that cruise ship travel was going to be meaningfully reduced in mid-February was if Carnival cancelled cruises and gave refunds. Maybe the government should have forced their hand, I don't know. But people spent thousands on those cruises and even if CNN had posted an article on Feb 13th entitled "Don't get on a cruise ship right now" I don't think it would have made a huge difference given people's financial investment and the advice from the government that everything was absolutely fine.

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