Americans are getting more nervous about what they say in public
economist.com
economist.com
Speaking your opinion and being called a racist on Twitter by white people is beyond infuriating when you're a black man who has actually experienced it. Twitter is a cancer to society, and I really hope this "cancel culture" dies out soon.
Most times when things like this happen, someone could have easily sent the person in question a DM, explained why they thought the tweet might have been badly timed, and that would have been all - No scandal.
But you don't get "credit" for that. You have to pretend to be angry, make a tweet with some ALL CAPS thrown in, and get someone fired. I hope people find another way to feel good about themselves soon, because throwing people under the bus is destroying any hope of free speech in the near future. Sorry about the long rant.
Hopefully I don't catch any heat for this on HN shrug
This is for two reasons: one, I doubt anyone cares to hear yet another voice in the cacophony; and two, there is plenty of prior precedent for someone saying something online and a digital mob descending on them and making their lives hell. That doesn't even consider government surveillance, which adds a whole 'nother angle.
So, there's no incentive for me to share, and a strong disincentive.
What am I missing?
Better?
What worries me is how the three-letter agencies vacuum it all up and have now started disappearing people, literally, under the guise of "stopping riots".
Being arrested and released within hours is not "disappeared", at least not more than has always been happening.
The historiography of this period, if humans remain extant, will discover the causal link between the rise of New Atheism and the rise of intellectual cowardice that by necessity emerged shortly after the implicit social norms of Christianity were intentionally jettisoned.
Being willing to sacrifice, not to inflict violence but to actively suffer, for the truth that one witnesses is a fundamental predicate of Western civilization. Even the Christian heretics of the middle ages, willfully executed for their idiosyncratic beliefs, viewed this as a sacrosanct duty as a human being.
If a polity actively consents to the silencing of the individual's ability to testify to their truth for the sake of Mammon, state persecution, the possibility of being stoned by a crowd of True Believers, or any other exercise of temporal power, civilization, that is the ability of a group of diverse individuals to exist for a future commonweal, is impossible to maintain.
The honest and earnest among this and past generations have voluntarily silenced and removed themselves from the possibility of being spiritual and intellectual leaders. The only result that can come of this abdication of responsibility is not their own safety but the endangerment of everyone within that society.
If you will not lead, you will be led by those that aren't so fearful, so future-minded, or scrupulous. If you would pretend to be blind, you will be led by the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
The current cultural revolution we are living through is simply mowing people down, decent or not. Take a look at this letter from the MIT chaplain, who was fired for posting it. Although I am not religious, it is a simple statement of hard truths by an apparently decent man. There is simply nothing in here for a reasonable person to object to.
https://newbostonpost.com/2020/06/19/heres-what-the-m-i-t-ca...
It is a sort of suffering, but I no longer post on the Internet, even in places like HN. It's just too dangerous. There are a lot of smart people out there, and if they want to find you, they will. And as we're seeing, violence is not off the table.
The martyrs of early Christianity are recognized as saints because they were decent people who were killed for no reason but their witnessing of truths others refused to publicly acknowledge--truths that rejected the false authority of both tribal religion and the state.
You and your loved ones are going to suffer, regardless. If you will not take a stand for truth now, it will fall to your children or to the children of your loved ones.
But I also take the counsel of Ecclesiastes, which says in essence, nothing that you do will matter. The earth will turn, the rivers will run to the sea, and it will be that way forever and ever. Victory does not come to the righteous, but rather horrors come to us all without discrimination.
Take what God has given for the moment, a few specks of relative happiness, and be happy with that.
Jackboots of whatever flavor may be coming, but there is little we can do. Prepare as you can. I hear hoofbeats.
Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart do you good in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and by the sight of your eyes, and know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Put away anger from your heart, and put away evil from your body, for youth and lack of understanding are vanity.
Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years arrive in which you will say, “I have no wish for them.” Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain; in the day when the guards of the house shake and the strong men are twisted, and the women who grind ceased working, because they are few, and those who look through the windows will be dimmed, and they will lock the doors in the market, because of the weakness of the sound of the woman who grinds, and one will rise up at the sound of the sparrow, and all the daughters of song will be brought low.
Indeed, they will see from heights, and terrors will be in the road; when the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper becomes fat, and the caper-berry is scattered, because mortals went to their eternal home, and the mourners circled in the market; before the cord of money is ruined and the blossom of gold is crushed and the pitcher is broken at the fountain and the wheel at the cistern races together and the dust returns to the earth as it was and the spirit returns to the God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, said the Ecclesiast; all is vanity.
Beyond the fact that the Ecclesiast was wise, he also taught the people knowledge, and an ear will track out an arrangement of parables.
The Ecclesiast sought many ways to find the words he wanted, even something written of straight forwardness, words of truth.
The words of the wise are like ox-goads and like nails firmly planted; those from the collections were given from one shepherd and a surplus of them. My son, beware of making many books; there is no end, and much study is a wearying of the flesh.
The end of the message; all is heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is every person. For God will bring every work in judgment, in everything overlooked, whether good or whether evil.
Do not mistake my subtlety for apathy.
The cause is the same force that drove McCarthyism and other forms of tribalistic insanity. Blame humans, not individual human groups or ideologies. I have no problem with religion, but I strongly disagree with the notion that society is, as you suggest, necessarily held together by the social norms of a particular instantiation of organized religion. It's perpetration of the same ostensibly righteous style of judgment that this article seeks to criticize.
I believe in social norms for the inherent sake of the norms, rather than due to doctrine. I jettison no norms - only doctrine. Philosophical systems are orthogonal to theological ones. If there exist implicit beneficial norms associated with Christianity, as you say, then I posit their implicitness implies they can be disentangled from theistic ideology and the case can (and perhaps should) be made for them outside of such systems.
If you think another attempt would be successful, that you, or another cadre of well-intentioned reformers, can successfully inoculate a society with an abstracted ethical code that mandates returning evil with good, embracing the martyring of oneself for truth, total pacifism, etc. on a purely logical basis, by all means go ahead and give it your best shot. Until then, I'm going to loudly proclaim that Chesterton's fence should be returned to its field.
The intense fervor that fuels those mobs can't last forever. I've seen this play out many times on the internet, and it seems a common thread is that the targeted person in these situations is often unable to keep it together while under the intense stress, and ends up making the situation way worse for themselves.
Learning how to stay level headed and when not to engage will take you a long way.
Eventually, you're vindicated but the damage has been done.
Personally, I think everyone needs to take a step back and have a conversation first. I mean people do learn from their past mistakes, people grow, people change. The idea that my life can be flipped upside down because of something I posted on a BBS when I was in high school (yes, I'm old) is insane.
Locked down, with very little to do, people are desperate to feel like they're doing something useful. Joining in an online mob feels useful. It makes a person feel like they're doing good in the world. It gives them the rush of accomplishing something. It's an illusion, but there's a lot of feedback (upvotes, faves, retweets, etc.) that makes it feel real to people.
I don't have any great ideas for how to improve it. I've been asking myself "will this actually do any material good?" before engaging, and I significantly cut back on social media. But good luck convincing everyone else to do that, too.
Any of the nonsense going on lately is pretty much a consequence of the lockdowns.
People without jobs and tons of time on their hands, and social networks that amplify anything that crosses the minds of people confined to their house.
It's a recipe for disaster.
And precisely a reason you wouldn't want to embark on a lockdown strategy, ignoring the questionable efficacy.
Tweeting your opinion in 2020 is analogous to going on national television and airing your opinion in 1990.
Would you feel comfortable airing a controversial opinion on national television? Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job and your reputation after going in front of the nation and saying "I think interracial marriages should be illegal"? No? Then don't tweet it because that's basically the same thing.
Don't you think that's a bit disingenuous? People aren't being canceled for having overt racist beliefs. They're being canceled for having polite (but political) disagreements.
The issue at play here is large-scale mob action. In the online space, it takes the form of bullying and cancel culture.
Terry Crews, for example, is in trouble for using the word "coon". But Terry Crews didn't call anyone a coon. He was called coon and made up an acronym that he felt could empower himself and others. Whether Terry's career is destroyed or not, the attempt to bully him out of the public eye is there and it sends a message.
> "Take what we give you."
> "You won't be given a charitable reading of anything you say."
> "Your beliefs will be stretched and twisted to the extreme."
> "And if they can't be then we'll attack you for what you didn't say."
I picked a controversial opinion. Your beef seems to be that mundane political opinions shouldn't be controversial. I agree with you, but that's not really relevant to the point I'm trying to make.
The point im trying to make is that some people treated Facebook or Twitter like a group of friends, when any digital post or recording can instantly become more like a nationally televised segment.
And I have to have some sympathy for people who live their entire internet lives is absolute obscurity only to have their worst moment (or maybe just their most misunderstood) be promoted to a "nationally televised" level post-hoc.
I do too. It should be known that the internet is not an obscure place. It is equivalent to a broadcast on national television. If nobody read your posts online it's because you were lucky, that's all.
Personally I took effort to go back and delete posts that I made in my youth. I hope others do the same.
You phrase this as if there was some secretive cabal actively trying to destroy Terry Crews when really there's just a small number of random people pissed off about a racial slur.
China solved this problem. After a civil war that led to creation of Taiwan.
Now everyone only has one opinion.
As a bonus they have a lot of free re-education camps. - 1984
Unfortunately the mob is much more capricious. Read the article for an example.
My point is that when you post online, you're not publically speaking to your neighbors from the sidewalk. You're broadcasting nationally. Including to an angry mob.
So no, I wouldn't agree with "As long as you don’t tweet obviously racist things, you’ll be fine."
I would rather say, if you don't post online, don't have any recordings of yourself posted online, and otherwise manage to prevent yourself from having any significant online presence, you'll be fine.
Problem with that is that one mob is given unhindered support for venting their spleen, whereas whereas the opposing mob is deplatformed, doxxed, etc. etc.
I don't even need to say which side is which, do I? We all know.
I'm sure someone's gonna chew me out for this opinion, but even though i disagree with "mob justice" on principle at the same time i DO feel good when I see mob justice taken on someone who, in my gut, I feel really deserves it.
I acknowledge that feeling is the problem. I'm aware of that.
For a probably not-too-controversial example, I hate Scientology. And way back when, Anonymous/4chan took on Scientology, and maybe didn't completely take it down but certainly made a good effort. And I cheered the whole way, because I hate Scientology.
But I don't agree with mob justice.
I don't know, it's a contradiction logically but that's definitely a thing.
Nothing about internet broadcasting is new. We’ve been doing that for decades. People were already talking on forums and Usenet in the 90s, which could be easily shared with a link or televised. In 2010 Facebook had been open to the public for 4 years and Twitter had millions of tweets each day. We didn’t see this same type of mass mob behavior back then. Diversity of opinion was far more tolerated, and the majority of internet users today developed an online presence of some kind in this environment.
Now in 2020, even those past posts can incite the mob, regardless of whether they were controversial or not at the time.
You can be frustrated with internet mobs all you want. I am as well. I've had people I care about cancelled over nothing.
But let's not deny reality. The world and the internet is VASTLY more connected, in the mainstream sense, than it was 10 or 30 years ago. My grandma is on Facebook and my employer pays top dollar to curate their businesses' online presence.
The internet has never been a more dangerous place to share your real opinions with your real name attached, and people need to recognize this. There's no reason to believe it's going to get better from here, and there's all the reason to believe it's going to get worse.
I did no such thing, please re-read my original post
Ah yeah that's exactly right. My bad on the wording
The odds of being noticed by a mob are like getting hit by lightning, the odds of some lowest bidder contractor building a tool to detect inappropriate twitter hearts are almost certain.
The government isn’t cracking down on people for what they say. But if you broadcast something that goes against your employer’s values (whatever they may be) you can probably expect some blowback—for example.
And you nailed it when you said tweeting is akin to broadcasting, because it is. It is not akin to having a discussion with a group of people. It just doesn’t feel like broadcasting maybe—so people have a false sense about it.
Hiding behind the word "consequence" doesn't fool anybody, you know. It's well understood that it refers to doxxing, intimidation, and attempts to injure the subject's livelihood by inducing their employer to terminate them without cause, none of which is legal.
But the GP is actually right - people misunderstand that "freedom of speech" means "freedom [from government interference in my] speech [except under very specific circumstances]." Any other interpretation has no basis in law or reality. Like the scene from Liar, Liar, my employer can compel me to say that the blue pen is actually red, and fire me if I don't. Me taking the pen to court and showing it to the judge won't prove anything, won't get my job back, etc.
Picking obviously abhorrent things like anti-miscegenation makes the argument easier. If a coworker was vocally against interracial marriage I would expect and demand that my employer terminate them, but I would be against the government making it a crime to speak out against interracial marriage.
Err, if you say something, the government also protects you from other citizens attacking you physically, not just the government. They often fail, but there's no hint of "if you say something and somebody is upset, they're free to punch you".
If you say you're going to kill me (not protected speech), and a reasonable person would believe you, I can hit you in self defense (affirmative defense for criminal battery).
Not if your speech is protected, that's the point. And that's also what cancel culture, doxxing etc is about. They're not going after people announcing plans to kill the President or shoot up a school.
Free speech without the government enforcing the physical integrity of the speaker is meaningless.
Actually, the point is that your speech is protected from the government (and with certain specific exceptions). Your speech is specifically, emphatically not protected from non-government actors.
> "If a coworker was vocally advocating that abortion is legal I would expect and demand that my employer terminate them, but I would be against the government making it a crime to speak out in favor of allowing abortion to be legal."
See the problem now? Anything that one side makes permissible can be used by others political movements for their own ends in ways you might not like.
Moreover, it's not really clear that coordinated efforts to induce an employer to terminate someone are legal, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference You use an example for a co-worker but most often these terminations are caused by external pressure.
No, because I am a free speech advocate.
The thing about free speech is the content is irrelevant. You changed the message and political leaning of the statement, which is fine, but if that changes your opinion about the speech you're not a free speech advocate. Whether it's a pro-choice or anti-choice argument is irrelevant. You're free to say it, and your employer is free to take whatever action they see fit from it - from nothing, to promoting you, to terminating you.
All of them are legal, except some forms of “intimidation”. And, actually, it's “inducing their employer to terminate them with a cause ThrowawayR2 doesn't like” not “without cause”.
However, when you tweet that you support a presidential candidate and lose your job or when you expose some shady dealings as a journalist and your house is attacked by a mob or you state your opinion about anything and get death threats - these are not consequences of your speech. These are examples of revenge or retaliation. We do mean that freedom to speak is freedom from retaliation. We actually have laws against retaliation in specific cases and, yes, even against retaliation by private parties.
You're not free from all retaliation, especially if those laws are only in specific cases.
For example, there are laws for retaliation, even. You can say whatever you want, but if that speech happens to be untrue and directed at some party you could be subject to a defamation suit. That is not the government punishing you for your speech, but it is a legal retaliation for what was said.
And in your example it's not a retaliation - you can only successfully sue if you have actual damages so if the speech caused damages then the lawsuit is a consequence (just like in the similar example in my previous post about fraud).
That's not what people are getting fired for, though. People always do this- argue for speech limitations by using examples like "we should kill all the X", while the people they then ban have said things like "I think diversity decreases social trust and that there are biological differences between men and women".
And who decides this? All the big tech companies appear to lean globalist/left. No?
And "globalist" as opposed to what, exactly?
You honestly think there aren't powerful opinion shaping efforts underway? If so I wish I lived in your world - I cannot get away from the incessant politics on any media platform whatsoever.
> And "globalist" as opposed to what, exactly?
Are you seriously suggesting there's no alternative? And seriously questioning the legtimacy of the term globalist by putting it in double quotes? If so that's the end of the conversation from my side.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
> noun a person who advocates the interpretation or planning of economic and foreign policy in relation to events and developments throughout the world.
I don't know many people who think we shouldn't take world events and developments into account with regard to our economic and foreign policy. So any time someone uses globalist as an insult or pejorative term, I have to wonder what they really mean. Because it's always code for something else.
For examples, see the international spread of excessive copyright, anti-circumvention laws, "free trade" agreements that include criminal enforcement of trade secrets, and require governments to submit to investor-state dispute settlement, effectively subjugating their laws to unelected international arbiters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlem...
Then there's the chilling effect on lawmaking. It cost Australia $39 million to defend their tobacco plain packaging law [1], the USA was forbidden from enforcing country-of-origin labeling on beef [2] (despite politicians at the time lying the free-trade agreement wouldn't impact sovereignty), and Canadian and Mexican governments are known to severely restrict their environmental law-making to avoid getting sued under NAFTA [3]. Other impacts of free trade as dictated by globalist organizations such as the WTO are also far from clearly positive [4].
In fact, anti-globalism used to be extremely well represented by the political left [5,6]. But somehow, all that opposition faded away. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Now is there any other extremely well documented and reported-upon term you'd like to pretend to be ignorant of?
Edit: I committed the same sin as my sibling comment. Defining globalist as "a person who advocates the interpretation or planning of economic and foreign policy in relation to events and developments throughout the world" is a much too broad definition (since it describes almost everyone, including die-hard nationalists). Similarly, the definition that I gave is much too narrow. To qualify as globalism, sovereignty in economic matters wouldn't have to be 'banned', as I wrote. 'Significantly reduced' would be enough.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/02/revealed-39...
[2] https://www.ecowatch.com/country-of-origin-labeling-meat-257...
[3] https://ejsclinic.info.yorku.ca/2018/03/naftas-effect-on-can...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization#Criti... Some prominent skeptics cite the example of El Salvador. In the early 1990s, they removed all quantitative barriers to imports and also cut tariffs. However, the country's economic growth remained weak. On the other hand, Vietnam which only began reforming its economy in the late 1980s, saw a great deal of success by deciding to follow the China's economic model and liberalizing slowly along with implementing safeguards for domestic commerce. Vietnam has largely succeeded in accelerating economic growth and reducing poverty without immediately removing substantial trade barriers. [..] Economist Ha-Joon Chang himself argues that there is a "paradox" in neo-liberal beliefs regarding free trade, because the economic growth of developing countries was higher in the 1960-1980 period compared to the 1980-2000 period even though its trade policies are now far more liberal than before.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization_movement
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/anti-g8-protes...
Did it? Maybe some particular group of people deemphasized anti-globalism when it was picked up by the right wing more. Maybe the others are still around.
Or, maybe some particular group of people is "reality based" as they say, and updated their opinions due to evidence, as one does.
Or, maybe some people feel that relative priorities have changed due to what the opposition is doing.
And I gave plenty of examples - feel free to point out which someone that's "reality based" would consider no longer relevant, or debunked by evidence. Maybe the environmental crisis is over? Have consumer rights triumphed over DRM? Has corporate transparency become so well-established that we can afford to criminalize revealing trade secrets without fear of stifling whistleblowers? Did the food industry become so conscientious that we can loosen labeling requirements?
The purpose of my examples was to show I can imagine the opposition not fading away, but people selectively ignoring it. So, if you feel confident in making the characterization that anti-globalization has been de-emphasized in a coordinated way, please explain how you know it's gone.
For instance, Germans have a vastly different cultural and legal stance on when it's acceptable to film strangers. The same can be said about nudity, free speech, borders, and perception of historical events.
Globalist is a misnomer. It's US-centric. The call on what is acceptable shouldn't be left to a somewhat homogenous group of Californian middle-class employees.
Society is not monolithic and it’s a subset of society that cancelling “controversial” opinions. Actually, a pretty small subset.
- Anonymously over the Internet.
A private text, a public tweet, a personal blog post or video, anything caught by a camera without your consent or awareness. All are susceptible of being used to ruin your life if a large enough group of people are willing to.
The examples of people "accidentally" ruining their own lives with a racist or sexist tweet is a pretty short list.
An innocuous and innocent opinion today could be, in 10 years, considered extremely offensive. Anyone can drag that "now offensive" comment out of the past to nail you.
I can think of jokes I made 20 years ago that were not even slightly offensive at the time, that would get me instantly fired today. Good thing I didn't post them on a medium like the Internet that is infinitely achievable and searchable.
Not once. For all the power the mob has to ruin lives, you'd think there would be lives ruined -- not mildly inconvenienced or temporarily embarrassed.
That doesn't ruin lives, it's a relatively common occurrence, particularly in the modern day. People are only equating it to Orwellian dystopia and Stasi oppression because politics has become involved. But it's not cancel culture's fault that at-will employment exists entirely at the whim and mercy of the employer, or that political activism (which cancel culture is) is clearly free speech. It's always been the case that if someone can convince your boss to fire you, you can be fired.
Rich people being temporarily embarrassed? I don't give a shit, and neither should anyone else.
- The circulation was limited but everyone in the blast radius was aware of the affront. Just like today's echo chambers.
- It would generate a huge response from readership. Because people were aware and knew they could involve themselves.
- That could get someone fired. The opinion writer included.
- It could make the newspaper stop accepting any more submissions from the person, often because the paper felt social and economic pressure. Deplatforming!
- It could also focus attention on a problem and get a community involved. Just like social media today.
Communication in ye olde 20th century had roughly the same dynamics. Probably because it was among people.
> Would you feel comfortable that you still have your job and your reputation after going in front of the nation and saying "I think interracial marriages should be illegal"?
Funny choice there, since that used to be conventional wisdom well into the 1960s and later, at least in some places. You'd get in trouble for saying the opposite!
That TV is loosing its audience is no accident and tangentially related.
I take hydroxychloroquine to keep my autoimmune disease under control.
It’s not a perfect drug, but it works great.
It’s insane watching people being attacked over a 65 year old drug.
There is the doctor video going around talking it, and people are being banned or given warnings for sharing it.
Science is being tossed out the window in favor of hysteria. This is something that is cheap and could save hundreds of thousands of lives.
But because of hatred towards an early supporter, we can’t even have a discussion on its effectiveness anymore.
Related survey on people afraid to speak. https://www.cato.org/publications/survey-reports/poll-62-ame...
Said touting was causing shortages at pharmacies where people like you who require the drug were not able to get access to it suddenly because of hordes of “supporters” buying up entire stocks.
Not because of who pushes it. It’s the consequences of uninformed broadcasting like calling it a final cure that have people shook.
A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives.
This drug already saves millions of lives. My life is much better on it then before. It’s already reached miracle cure status. Question is, will it do it again.
Cases and deaths averted. It is estimated that a cumulative 1.2 billion fewer malaria cases and 6.2 million fewer malaria deaths occurred globally between 2001 and 2015It is dangerous. Proper dosage and monitoring are necessary to guard against risk of QT prolongation and retinopathy. It's possible for it to be true both that it saves millions of lives and that it's dangerous to take unsupervised.
> A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives.
There is zero evidence that it has anywhere near that level of effectiveness, even when combined with zinc and azithromycin for the most favorable population and conditions. It might have some effect, but touting it as a miracle cure when other treatments are already known with greater effect and lower risk is irresponsible.
www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
>The study that sparked the latest controversy was anything but randomized. Not only was it not randomized, outside experts noted, but patients who received hydroxychloroquine were also more likely to get steroids, which appear to help very sick patients with Covid-19. That is likely to have influenced the central finding of the Henry Ford study: that death rates were 50% lower among patients in hospitals treated with hydroxychloroquine.
>One study, the RECOVERY study conducted in the U.K., compared 1,542 patients on a particularly high dose of the drug to 3,132 control patients and found no difference in how long patients lived. A second, conducted by the National Institutes of Health, also found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine at higher doses.
https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/25726/controversial...
We prescribe drugs everyday with a proper dosage on the bottle, and people handle it just fine. This is no different.
Either way, HCQ is widely available and inexpensive, zinc is widely available and inexpensive, and I believe that is the crux of the real issue. Even if it worked for a small percentage of people, it’s still a significant tool in the fight.
The problem is, there is a coordinated push towards expensive patented drugs and vaccines on the population, we are watching marketing, propaganda, and censorship at this point.
Can’t have a $10 solution to a $10,000,000,000,000 problem.
Easy. It's a highly politicized thread, and in those sort of thread, driveby downvoting isnt uncommon, even on HN.
I have no idea about the amount that gets flagged, but I notice it quite a bit just by going to the front page and seeing something and if I happened to go back to it a minute later, poof, it's gone.
The conspiracy theory about the drug industry has been common forever, but it fits a more general pattern, like the Miracle Carburetor.
Obviously nobody can answer why something is downvoted, and discussing voting is discouraged, but personally, I'd like to see a controversial opinion that is original and interesting, not cliched.
Me, I wouldn't downvote something for only being wrong (IMO) or weird.
For calling HCQ a "$10 solution to a $10,000,000,000,000 problem". It's not.
That's not what anyone is suggesting, and it seems disingenuous for you to suggest that it is. The drug is well-known, and it's reasonable to attempt its use when there's the potential for a large success rate. The people "hoarding" it are doctors who can get prescriptions for it - and who I imagine know more about the drug than you or I do.
Based on the Ford study [1], the 10-50% success rate might be a confusion with the hazard ratio reduction, which was 66%. The actual in-hospital mortality rates in that study were 20% with hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin vs. 26% with neither. I'd say a 6 percentage point difference in lives saved is enough to warrant further investigation.
[1] https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/ful...
WHO SOLIDARITY trial (aborted due to lack of efficiency for hospital patients, still running for prophylaxis) https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...
HCQ as prophylaxis trial: https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2242?ijkey=2811796ab15e...
> Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy.
None of your sources deal with outpatients or the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.
I was explaining to a new doctor how my weird symptoms would go away on azithromycin or doxycycline for several weeks. He looked at me and said, oh you have an autoimmune disorder then. He even guessed the correct one. One I had never heard of.
He hadn’t read any studies on it. Was just something he noticed in decades of treating people.
...and yet that's what people are doing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/07/teen-w...
> The drug is well-known
So are its risks.
> there's the potential for a large success rate
Every treatment has some potential. Funny how there's been a chorus of "eVerY drUg hAS rIsks" to make HCQ seem unexceptional in that regard (even though most drugs don't carry disk of heart problems and blindness) while clinging to the idea that its potential is exceptional. In the case of HCQ for COVID-19 we don't need to guess about potential, because there have been many studies by now and we have empirical evidence of weak effect. It shouldn't be ignored, but it should be far from the top of anyone's list either. It's only getting attention at all because of who keeps touting it.
You talk about being disingenuous, but I think the disingenuous behavior in this thread is the extreme cherry-picking of favorable results while ignoring less favorable results and risks.
> ...and yet that's what people are doing.
> Her mother, a nurse, and a man identified in the report as her father, a physician assistant, gave the girl azithromycin...The report does not state if the girl had a prescription for either drug.
You need a better source. There was supervision in that case. Sadly, the girl was apparently part of the ~75-80% that don't survive COVID-19, even with azithromycin & hydroxychloroquine.
> So are its risks.
And that means its risks can be addressed and quantified.
> extreme cherry-picking
Two points. 1. A great example of cherry picking is the single instance of mortality associated with using azithromycin that you gave in your source. 2. The issue of degree of efficacy is secondary to the fact that it's potential for efficacy is being hidden and labeled disinformation, when the drug should be investigated for its potential to save lives.
You're being disingenuous again. Read the article. She was given the drugs by her parents, who were not authorized to prescribe them or supervise their use on their own. The outcome is not the point. The point is the lack of proper supervision. The outcome could have been different, and it would still be wrong for people to be using HCQ other than in a controlled trial ... but that's exactly what hype like yours leads to.
Also. The girl had an autoimmune disorder, for which the same drugs are commonly used. Did the article happen to say whether or not she was already on the drugs?
The article also says nothing about whether the drugs had anything to do with her demise. It sure does imply that, though.
This is a cherry picked article.
Personal experience 200mg and my rashes stop. My joint pain goes away. Lymph nodes stop swelling. My energy increases. Organ damage slows down.
400mg my hair gets really dry, and my blood pressure gets too high. Unless I skip caffeine.
Yearly eye tests are a thing. Some people go decades on it. Have to stop. And immediately all the old symptoms come back. “a flare”
This is a risk vs reward decision.
One issue is that its not a take a pill, cured tomorrow. It builds up in the system over time. It’s changing immune system behavior... slowly...
I was 30 days in before I noticed anything. 3 months until I was sure it was working. Doctor was shocked by my turn around after six months.
Lots of people say a year for full effectiveness.
Equating that to using it “off label” for covid, either as a preventative (Like the president did)or treatment post infection, where there is little, if any, evidence of its effectiveness/benefits (but still with the same risks, and possibly more depending on the patient and their history) are two entirely different things.
They are in no way equal
The virus is a trigger. It also attacks exact same receptor that hydroxychloroquine targets. I think it’s complete nonsense that has no effect.
Maybe the effect is trivial. Maybe it’s too little too late. But it is way too early to shutdown talk on it down.
I desperately wanna see studies on Covid death rates for people that have been taking it long term.
The virus triggers an acute immune response. This is not the same as an autoimmune disease, it may be the opposite. Also, people with certain blood types that have better clotting ability seem to be at a disadvantage.
While I would not trust someone posting here on HN about medical advice, I would trust doctors from around the world who have stated that, for example, hydroxychloroquine is not recommended for use against SARS-CoV-2, and I would absolutely trust them over any poster here and any politician.
More to your point: there may be potential solutions that are not a vaccine but I'll trust researchers and doctors to find those solutions, rather than doing the investigation myself, as they are much more highly trained than I ever will be on the subject.
SARS-COV-2 is a virus. It is not an autoimmune disease. Your immune system is not reacting to your own tissues. It is reacting to the virus, just like an immune system is supposed to. Immunology is very clear about this, though I admit that the details can be confusing at first. The lines get 'blurry' at the molecular level, Ship of Theseus, all that jazz.
Look, we all want hydroxychloroquine to work with covid-19. It would save a lot of lives, potentially. That's a great thing. If it works.
But we cannot administer it without good proof. Currently, the evidence seems to say that it does not work. It may change over time and with more research, but we can only go off of what we know today.
For example, in the 1918 flu pandemic, research has indicated the the immune response that it provoked was one of the reasons it was so deadly[0].
With SARS-COV-2 one of the treatments that has studies that show reduction in mortality is dexamethasone which is a steroid that reduces the inflammatory response (which is an immune response)[1].
So it is not unreasonable to think that an immune system modulating drug may help with SARS-COV-2. Whether or not hydroxychloroquinine specifically does is a different story, but it would not be surprising for something in this class to have a beneficial effect.
0. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060927201707.h...
A) knows how to deal with the pathogen specifically
B) doesn’t go wild and kill the host in its own right whilst trying to figure out how to properly deal with the pathogen
My understanding is that without exposure you body kinda throws a lot of different types of t-cells at the issue. Once it kinda knows how to handle it, it just throws the specific variant of t-cells needed.
Cases and deaths averted. It is estimated that a cumulative 1.2 billion fewer malaria cases and 6.2 million fewer malaria deaths occurred globally between 2001 and 2015 than would have been the case had incidence and mortality rates remained unchanged since 2000. In sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that malaria control interventions accounted for 70% of the 943 million fewer malaria cases occurring between 2001 and 2015, averting 663 million malaria cases (range: 542–753 million). Of the 663 million cases averted due to malaria control interventions, it is estimated that 69% were averted due to use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) (UI: 63–73%), 21% due to artemisininbased combination therapy (ACT) (UI: 17–29%) and 10% due to indoor residual spraying (IRS) (UI: 6–14%).
My impression is that HCQ is not involved in any of the mentioned interventions, but is considered an alternative to ACT for some specific species.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/donald-trump-jr-...
Note also that most indications of its benefit are in conjunction with azithromycin and possibly zinc (that's not a no true scotsman, it's the consistent data), which the Ars source disregards.
It is dangerous, it has significant side effects. It is worth it for things where it has therapeutic utility, but clinical trials for it in COVID-19 keep coming back showing no benefit.
> A drug with a 10-50% success rate will still save a lot of lives.
It would. But one with no measurable benefit won't.
> This drug already saves millions of lives.
Perhaps; it is certainly useful for treating certain conditions that aren't COVID-19, and it should continue to go to people who need it for things it is effective in treating. No one is saying it's a bad drug, just that the evidence is that it's not a useful drug for treating COVID-19.
Then I guess you're not talking about hydroxychloroquine, because there is evidence of a reduction in mortality rate.
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/ful...
The actual clinical trials keep finding no benefit.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2019014?query=fe...
I'm pretty sure there are more.
Wrong. See, e.g., https://medcitynews.com/2020/07/hydroxychloroquine-flunks-ph...
“Results of the randomized, controlled, open-label Phase III trial, which took place at more than two dozen sites in Brazil, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday. The study randomized 667 patients to receive hydroxychloroquine or the drug plus the antibiotic azithromycin on top of standard of care or standard of care alone. When patients were measured on the seven-point ordinal scale of improvement in disease, those in the two hydroxychloroquine groups showed no improvement compared with patients who received standard of care alone. Moreover, those receiving hydroxychloroquine more frequently experienced Qt prolongation and elevation of liver enzymes.”
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093....
> Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exis...
I mean aspirin relives headaches, is part of the gold standard treatment for Kawasaki disease and prevents heart attacks and probably has fewer studies showing that it's not effective in the treatment of COVID-19, but that's no reason to speculate as to whether it'll prove to be another miracle cure.
Because empirical results trump theory. I think you vastly overestimate how much we actually understand about the human body.
Certainly context is important here.
Taking regular antibiotics is also touted as dangerous and widely criticized because of the potential fallout effects of doing so, and yet I just finished a prescription of Moxifloxacin to resolve pneumonia and pleural effusion. It doesn't mean that the criticism is wrong.
And, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the video that was removed by a doctor who is known for citing some vaccines as coming from alien DNA and criticizing mask-wearing as a useless endeavour? If so, then I'm not terribly surprised. And regardless, I don't believe that falls under the definition of free speech anyhow—Twitter is a private company (this is the platform coming under fire for that, yeah?).
No, it's that in the various clinical trials, it keeps showing no improvement over existing treatments. It's not just not a miracle cure, the evidence is that it's not a useful treatment for COVID-19.
Going by memory, the most notorious kind words on the subject of hydroxychloroquine were: "It may be a game-changer. Or, maybe not."
For some reason—I can't say what, exactly—that got spun by the media into something else entirely.
The study that indicates first that it was dangerous was retracted, that one was bad science and probably outright fraud. But several other studies later have shown that it does not work.
This has nothing to do with Trump, though him pushing the drug without evidence is just fundamentally wrong. This is about the science, and that simply does not support using Hydroxychloroquine for COVID19.
Here's one of the larger trials for hospital use of Hydroxychloroquine that didn't find any benefit: https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2263?ijkey=355d5085a0ae...
The insidiousness about his strategy is that one in a hundred times he guesses right, and then he gets all smug and his supporters feel like they have ammunition to use against those "elites" with their "being right all the time." (Not to mention all the times he just lies about what he was wrong about to frame it as if he was right all along.)
That's not what the data says, and it's people who claim to be championing science but are actually regurgitating headlines that are causing this problem.
"doesn't work for COVID-19" covers a lot of ground, and only some of it has actually been studied. I believe it's now been shown that it doesn't provide significant benefit for those already suffering from severe cases.
However, I don't believe there's any real data on prophylactic use at all thus far, just some anecdotal stuff.
Science is complicated, and doing it right requires a kind of finesse that just can't be captured in headlines - or apparently at all by our current media establishment.
A Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine as Postexposure Prophylaxis for Covid-19
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638?query=fe...
Covid-19: Hydroxychloroquine was ineffective as postexposure prophylaxis, study finds
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2242?ijkey=2811796ab15e...
There have been far more studies on Hydroxychloroquine than on any other existing drug that had any indication of potentially being effective. And many experts have argued that given what we know about HCQ, we have spent far too much effort on a drug that is unlikely to be effective.
But I'm going to stand behind my broader point that the media is doing a lousy job of communicating science with any finesse, and that this is leading a lot of people to mistakenly believe that "being scientific".
Last week a post on a local town Facebook page said something like
My family is into science so we understand that wearing masks is beneficial to the whole community. Also, covid-19 may cause male infertility so that may drive your decision as well.
Two things caught my eye here. First is the implication that there's some "being into science" that's binary, and if you follow the news headlines then you'll always be in possession of absolutely true facts. (I won't belabor all the various ways in which this is false.) And second is that while they like to think that they're even doing that much, they're still picking up on anecdata, presumably being it sounds vaguely science-y.
https://aapsonline.org/preliminary-injunction-sought-to-rele...
showing that countries using HCQ have much lower case fatality rates than countries such as the USA where use of HCQ is either banned or discouraged. [There's another graph similar but with many more countries. I can't find it at the moment. It is even more dramatic.]
Concerning your post:
HCQ+Zinc+Zithromax was initially proposed as an early treatment for Covid-19. The two studies you name test for something completely different: whether HCQ can prevent Covid-19 in someone who has been recently exposed to Covid-19.
But no one ever claimed that HCQ could prevent someone from getting Covid-19.
The claim was instead that, if given early in the course of the disease, HCQ+ZINC+ZITHROMAX would alleviate Covid-19. That is, HCQ+ZINC+ZITHROMAX, when given to people who have a recent diagnosis of Covid-19, usually proves beneficial. In particular it lowers the hospitalization rate and death rate significantly.
There are
- a. drugs that prevent illnesses(e.g., vaccines) from becoming established in the human body,
- b. drugs that alleviate illnesses(HCQ for Covid-19) once they are already established in the human body,
-c. drugs that do both (HCQ in the case of malaria, which HCQ can both prevent and treat (indeed, cure the disease)).
Testing protocols for these differ accordingly.
Isn't "politics heading in the wrong direction" the fact that some obscure drug was picked up randomly by a know nothing politician, baselessly sold as a miracle cure and had elaborate conspiracies formed around it, all so that said politician could pummel his political opponents and win reelection?
I would rather we fight the people who are preventing medical discussions from taking place. If you want to call the use of hydroxychloroquine "quackery" and "disinformation", then you should be able to definitively prove that it's completely ineffective. Because right now, there's indications that it can save lives, and the actual problem we're facing is that potentially life-saving information is being shut down.
> It’s not a perfect drug, but it works great.
I'm genuinely glad it helps with your autoimmune disorder, but that really has nothing to do with Covid-19.
That's a strawman if I ever heard one.
What would you do if suddenly all the available drug is used for people who have or want to protect against COVID-19?
Initially I assumed that prolific canceling would lead to a general societal understanding of the unsustainability of the cultural. The idea that in Presidential elections in 2059, every candidate would have so much ‘dirt’ against them that it might level the field a bit.
But as this article suggests, another alternative might just be a deadly-to-democracy silence.
If you need to tell somebody how you really feel, write a letter to yourself and then burn it. Otherwise, just smile, repeat the party line, and carry on.
There are those who make cancel culture out to be an all-powerful entity. But the evidence suggests it's just a right wing boogie man in all but the most extreme cases. And sometimes not even then!
It's not necessarily that you could say more back in the day, but the fact that fewer people would hear it.
I once had an employer come after me when I posted a Medium article because of this. Medium appends your bio at the bottom which said, "Working at X, top 25 largest bandwidth consumer."
Employer argued that I was representing the company's opinion and had breached a clause in my employer contract.
Easy example would have been Linkedin if it was shared there, his title probably would have said he worked there but not had a disclaimer description on his Linkedin profile.
That bodes badly for them long-term. Speaking practically, that seems like a nasty defect in their ability to communicate an honest vision.
Hopefully the things they can't saying are only on unimportant issues. I suspect that is not the case though.
I used to be big into IRC, or in smaller channels. Eventually I noticed a certain persona was overrepresented on IRC: a sort of cynical, sarcastic type that could probably use a bit less time on IRC, but couldn't muster up the will to change.
I see the same thing with social media, and, worse, we've normalized the addictive behavior, and made it easier to stay connected away from computers.
I don't want to be that person.
I've tuned it all out minus some pertinent local news.
A homeless person living on the street already has just about the freest speech you could want in the freest market for ideas possible--his economic situation can't really be altered further by anything he says politically. Does anyone want to live like that?
Principles are going to take a back seat while housing costs and a bunch of other things are the way they are.
A homeless person living on the street can rant about whatever government conspiracy he/she chooses without being imprisoned because of free speech.
These rights do matter, even to those with practically nothing.
"You can have free housing, but you can't rant about government conspiracies. If you do, you get imprisoned."
I'd say most homeless people would take the deal. It would be interesting to actually conduct a study and find this out, though.
I have my own views on the subject, but am willing to change my mind. The arguments however don't seem to be compelling. It'd be nice if we could stop starting from scratch as if this was the first time the subject was discussed.
I'm pretty sure the first amendment has nothing to say about feelings.
Alternatively, you might consider that it could be real but a bipartisan thing, despite the term being used (and I assume coined) as though it's just the left wing.
Someone put together a long list of people Trump has tried to get cancelled, that seem to fit squarely within the usual connotations.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/politics/fact-check-trump-can...
But even then I'd challenge your first couple of statements. There are whole lot of consequences for defying the political leadership these days, especially when you bring evidence that they might have committed crimes. It's a nightmare right now.
Personally, after the lasing started, I totally lost any desire to publicly convey any kind of even positive sentiment for conservative or even moderate ideas. That’s how toxic it has become: moderates are now villainized by at least a large chunk of the left.
Your point was some set of facts. My rebuttal is: so what?
If someone needs to be punished, or even killed, it needs to be done under the legitimate auspices of the legal system.
Or perhaps you are defining "speech" and "consequences" differently?
Cancel culture is just one aspect of it. Riots, mass shootings (hey, anyone remember Stephen Paddock shooting 500 people in Vegas? kinda reminds me of the mass murder[1] of the Montoneros at the Peron rally[2] except worse, and with a media blackout), tent cities, complete distrust of the mass media, political polarization over .... covid treatment and mitigation, clownish conspiracy theories touted on the mass media, actual conspiracies (dude totally didn't kill himself) in plain sight, people baying for blood on social media, and threatening to murder their political enemies. The classical liberal ideal of a marketplace of ideas and of coexistance with political rivals is dead and gone, and the virtues needed to sustain it basically don't exist in the population under the age of 40; aka the people who fight in violent civil wars.
At some point, someone's going to go apeshit and go after the leader of the mob that canceled him. I'd say the main thing preventing it now is companies actually pay out decent settlements for firing people for political statements -leftovers from when labor unions had juice; remember labor protections, alleged lefties?
The whole thing is idiotic and sad, and America will end up the totalitarian shit hole it seems to want to be. Junta Argentina without the nice climate and good looking people.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n#Third_term_(19...
I believe it's a testament for how anti-violence everyone in our societies are. People being publicly hunted down in witch trials rather kill themselves than turn on those who seek to destroy them.
I'm similarly surprised that all those pyramid scheme people live peacefully after their schemes blow up and thousands or millions are left holding the bag, while they made off with millions and might possibly face a year or three in a luxurious prison.
When you consider how many people wish them death online and nothing happens, death threats to random Twitter users can probably be ignored in general: if people aren't going after those that defrauded them and took their life savings, they're not going to come after you because you disagree on politics.