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suby

Let's be more specific. It's republicans.

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Please don't take HN threads into brain-dead partisan flamewar. It's always the same, and it's not why we're here.

(No, this is not because I'm supporting Republicans. I'm supporting HN.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23231556.

It really is startling how reviled this sort of comment tends to be, despite the overarching trend of Republican leadership to systemically misrepresent and falsify data to support their views.

The next time Democrats pull these shenanigans, name and shame them. Both-sides-ism only obscures the bad actors that should be directly pressured to do better.

A comment from a non-American on the sidelines, who is generally appalled at Trump's sheer incompetence/myopia but otherwise not hugely invested in this:

Reading the New York Times recently, I've been struck not only by the amount of sheer bile directed at Trump and Republicans (which I can understand), but a consistent thread of seemingly wanting to make the COVID crisis seem as bad as possible, casting even positive developments in the US in a negative light ("Cases are going down in city X... but how many are not being measured in city Y!?!"). In particular, the necessity of locking down everything forever (and, by extension, loosening lockdown being an unforgivable sin) is starting to take on religious tones, instead of being an extreme but temporary measure grounded in science. Which sounds uncomfortably like a mirror image of what Republicans and the right-wing press are doing ("freedom good, lockdown bad!").

I don't support the War part(ies).

It really isn't surprising at all actually. There are a huge number of HN commenters who enthusiastically support Trump and his lies because they're right-wing, Ayn Rand-reading libertarians who think they are "winning." They'll downvote or flag any criticism of the Republican party as controversial or overly political. It's been this way for years.

Deleting due to HN hivemind.

> zero metrics behind them

Um, what? You just linked to a random non-(data) dashboard page and decided that metrics aren’t published?

When I visit https://www.doh.wa.gov/, I see a banner that links to https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus, which in turn prominently links to the actual dashboard https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/NovelCoronavirusOutbreak2... The aforementioned page also has simple data summary tables https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus#CovidDataTabl... I can’t even find that random page you linked to without digging.

To be clear I’m very tired of partisan bullshit and has no dog in the fight, and there may be other valid criticisms, not to mention it’s not at all clear the published data is accurate (given earlier scandals around care homes), but this particular criticism is very misleading.

Deleting due to HN hivemind.

Because risk assessment is often way more complex than a couple of flat metrics? Of course, flat and easily understandable (by laypeople) metrics are good for scoring points and making people believe they’re in the know, but it’s not at all clear to me that 7/7 over a bunch of flat metrics with arbitrary thresholds indicates “safe for reopening”.

Again, to be clear, I’m personally on the caution side, not the reopening side.

Deleting due to HN hivemind.

I understand the frustration of advocating a minority/contrarian view on HN, but please don't do rage-deletes. You're depriving readers who want to know what you had to say. Some of those would have been genuinely interested, despite the downvotes from others.

Anyone who wants to read a downvoted comment, btw, can do so more easily by clicking on its timestamp. That should take you to a page where it's more readable—assuming of course that there is content left to read.

How you can compare a dashboard that was so blatantly false it warranted a public-apology to a dashboard that DOES show sources And presents the info straightforward is beyond me.

If your point is about phases, maybe re-word your initial comment to make that clear.

This doesn't seem like it is remotely in the same league as ordering data to be censored and firing someone who refuses, which is what you stated ("That's nearly as bad as what DeSantis is doing.")

Is this supposed to be sarcasm?

A whistleblower sounding the alarm on data falsification is in no way comparable to a high-level rollup of data which, by the way, is (at most) a few clicks away on that same site.

>> high-level rollup of data which, by the way, is (at most) a few clicks away on that same site.

It isn't. References to "data" are provided, no models or tabular data / metric-driven formulas are. I have a state information freedom request processing. Compare NY to WA and tell me if you really think the data is comparable.

As for the data falsification claim, I have no idea why Inslee makes his decisions or when the phases will start based on metrics/numbers. It's entirely up to him and his mandate. That's not falsification, but it sure ain't transparent government or any sort of support for small businesses suffering from extended shutdown orders with no insight on the process.

This might help?

https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/NovelCoronavirusOutbreak2...

This does not look remotely like NY state's or have metrics/thresholds/categories. (I am familiar with it.)

From this data, what algorithms/models does Inslee plug it into? What are acceptable levels of infection/community spread/ICU beds? Cuomo is very transparent about the 2nd question, which is enough for me given a two month window of time to work on it.

I think that's extremely unfair and misleading. Jay Inslee and Washington state is being extremely clear on showing information on their covid-19 dashboards. They are excellent. He's said that the threshold change is a complicated choice and it's not a simple are we decreasing at a certain rate. That's not an honest appraisal of the situation.

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Here's what several news organizations have to say about Ron DeSantis (R-FL):

"Stop hiding true COVID-19 stats, Gov. DeSantis. Our lives are still at risk" — https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article242557...

"Florida avoided COVID-19 catastrophe by ignoring DeSantis, Trump" — https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-sc...

"[Florida] blocked medical examiners from making public their own fatality counts and released a list of those deaths last week only after redacting key information" — https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/does-florida-gov-ro...

Edit: the Cuomo section is an edit made after I posted this, as is the [0] addendum

It’s not only happening in the US. The true numbers will be very hard to see, everywhere.

While that may be true and could only really be resolved by testing 100% of the population please do show me another democratic, developed and wealthy country where systematic massaging of facts and numbers is so widespread.

You may have a number of conservative talking heads in the UK yelling for reopening, but in no other place I know of the virus is actually a partisan issue.

One of the reasons, in my book, why the US response is so terrible compared to just about every other rich country.

Spain and its social-communist government.

We can only look at increase of total deaths from mean and decrease of deaths per category (ie traffic etc) from mean.

And even more specific. The establishment. They're too scared of losing power and control.

Oh no, it’s despotism.

But why Florida, though? I can understand more rural states, but has the GOP made a spreadsheet that determined the number of elderly GOP voters who will die by reopening early will be cancelled-out by younger swing-voters who would vote for Trump's second-term because they reopened Florida early? Or do the models suggest that they'll die _after_ the election? Or will they do early re-openings only in Dem-leaning population centers?

Show me the data that indicates states that have opened in the last two weeks are experiencing spiking positives for the virus.

Sure, I'll wait.

Wait no longer! Here you go: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/15/te...

Yes, there was a spike of 56 new deaths reported on the 15th.

Due to reopening? More likely due to noisy data. There was a similar spike of 50 new deaths reported on April 30th, before Texas reopened.

And after the 15th, the numbers reverted to the mean: 33 on the 16th, 31 on the 17th.

https://covidtracking.com/data/state/texas

The US media don't care about details like this, because they're not interested in actually informing people. They've been doing things like cherry-picking clusters related to meat processing plants that weren't covered by the lockdown anyway, blaming them on the lockdown being lifted, and wording their headlines to make it sound like there was a state-wide spike - and there's a very noticeable partisan bias in which states they're doing this to as well.

Looking at the data for Texas holistically, it's unclear that there is a change in the trend in the last few weeks.

In general I think this whole idealogical battle over reopening is really dumb. There isn't going to be either a significant economic recovery or a spike in cases, because only a tiny minority of people are going to actually behave the way they did before the shutdowns. Most people are still not going to engage in activities that really spread the virus significantly (densely pack restaurants, large indoor gatherings) and many, many people will wear masks.

While they're currently in the spotlight, I'd go so far as to say it's any politician trying to get (re)elected.

That's their job, after all. \s

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