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Comment by danfo | Hacker News Reader

> Herd immunity has been well-documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in the Lancet reported the prevalence of prior Covid-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection.

What, the linked study proves the opposite. A massive amount of death in Manaus in 2021, despite 'herd immunity' measured in October 2020. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> Some medical experts privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little Covid-19 by April but suggested that I not to talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine. But scientists shouldn’t try to manipulate the public by hiding the truth.

Does he hear himself? You can't really liken wild guesses that lead to complacency/death as hiding the truth. It sounds like this guy should really stick to surgery.

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It should be noted that WSJ’s opinion section is extremely politicized. Their regular news desk is separately edited and maintains decently high journalistic standards.

It's pretty weird actually. The news desk for the WSJ is among the best out there. Their news stories tend to be really dry in a good way - full of facts and figures, with very little in the way of click bait hyperbole. Their subscriber model is all about business people who want the details and not opinion...

Which then makes the opinion desk at the WSJ a real oddball. It's consistently right-leaning, sometimes to the point of absurdity. I would think that a more varied field of opinion would resonate better with their target reader... but what do I know.

Isn't that the point of Op-Ed sections, at the end of the day? It's always been a way for newspapers to host what's effectively a glorified collection of Medium posts. Even the New York Times' Opinion page is consistently partisan.

I'm not sure the New York Times is a good example here. It's definitely not just their opinion page that is partisan these days, and whilst this does seem to have gotten worse I'm not sure there was exactly a golden era - they seem to have always been particularly keen on pushing narratives.

Yeah, I don't disagree. My question was targeted more at folks that specifically find the WSJ Op-Ed to be objectionable; in my experience those same people tend to consider the NYT's Op-Ed to be less objectionable (caveat: I'm operating on an N of like 4).

The most internally consistent position, IMO, is that Op-Eds are all partisan and should all be abolished, in every paper. They once served a useful purpose, but are arguably no longer necessary in a world where everyone can post an opinionated blog post on Medium/Substack/etc and broadcast it out to the world via Twitter/Mastodon/etc more or less for free.

This article we're commenting on is just an interesting (if potentially dubious) blog post by a surgeon, and nothing more than that.

"Op-Ed" literally means "Opposite the editorial page." It's a place in the newspaper specifically reserved for opinion, not news.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed

Huh. I'd always assumed it meant "opinions/editorials". But numerous reliable sources confirm what the Wikipedia page says. Nifty. Thanks.

Every time I accidentally stumble on the opinion section, I think to myself "today is the day I cancel my subscription."

I'm hoping they Do Something about it. Just make it a separate $10/month add-on and see what the uptake is.

The weirdest part is this leads to frequent items where the Op-Ed page makes factual claims that are directly contradicted by the news section in the same issue.

The recent opinion section, no less by the Editorial Board, at WSJ claimed that focusing on renewable energy sources led to the Texas power cuts [1].

While the paper, on the same day itself, reported the opposite [2].

Links: 1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deep-green-freeze-11613411002... 2) https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-freeze-power-grid-failure...

This isn't particularly unusual. The opinion section is a fine place for dissenting views. Consider a news article covering the abuse of elderly in a nursing home, with an opinion piece defending (or explaining, or whatever) the nursing home - this could be good.

There's a difference between explaining and defending the abuse the news-side reported, and saying that the abuse never happened and the news side is wrong/lying/etc.

IMO, the Financial Times is a good alternative to WSJ.

Global perspective but still does deep dives into American issues; not owned by Murdoch; opinion desk not insane; soothing peach background color in both paper and online editions.

I’m tempted to subscribe, if only it weren’t so comically expensive.

Not to mention the superb gardening column

It makes sense in a “game theory” kind of way. Writers/influencers will want a pulpit and a huge chunk of the population wants to read political rhetoric rather than dry news. I think I prefer this approach to something like NYT or (esp) WaPo where the news is so intermixed with the agenda that they are almost indistinguishable.

BBC with more extensive coverage (more than just the breaking news) would be my ideal model.

This has generated tension within the WSJ itself: https://www.wsj.com/articles/wsj-journalists-ask-publisher-f...

isn't OP-ed synonym for what they generally disagree with (e.g. to allow them to claim they're "listening to both sides") ?

relevant example from this week is Australia, where editor in chief for the Murdoch conglomerate has no answer to why they banish all articles about climate change science to the Opinions sections.

https://twitter.com/ChaplainheArt/status/1363168269599973382

"op-ed" derived from "opposite the editorial page", i.e. recto to the editorial page's verso. In general, the op-eds do not vary that much from editorials. The NY Times always has conservative columnists that it runs, but they are not necessarily that far right.

I always thought it was Opinion/Editorial.

> It should be noted that WSJ’s opinion section is extremely politicized.

All opinion sections of every major news outlet is extremely politicized. In almost all cases, the non-opinion sections are edging towards being extremely politicized as well.

> What, the linked study proves the opposite. A massive amount of death in Manaus in 2021, despite 'herd immunity' measured in October 2020.

That is not a study. It is an editorial. It "proves" nothing, and instead advances a few alternative theories that might explain the discrepancy. However, it is not a complex situation. The following quote from the editorial is consistent with my personal belief after reading the original paper [1] that made the herd immunity claim:

"The 76% estimate of past infection might have been biased upwards due to adjustments to the observed 52·5% (95% CI 47·6–57·5) seroprevalence in June, 2020, to account for antibody waning."

This is true, but it understates the extent of the authors "adjustments". If you look at the original paper (Figure 2; linked below), they adjusted the raw data upward by a factor of about 3x. It is an...aggressive...modification to the raw data.

The parsimonious explanation for what is being observed in Manaus is that the Science paper claiming herd immunity was wrong. The authors of this Lancet editorial go to great lengths to advance alternative explanations involving "variants", but these are all unfounded, convoluted alternatives. The simplest explanation is that the original paper was wrong.

[1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/288

The latest episode of TWiV massacres the paper. It’s a good listen.

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-722/

I definitely found an epidemiologist on Twitter giving out about that study. The Science study used a convenience sample, which makes me believe that it's a very biased estimate of sero-prevalance.

Yeah, there are possible issues with the way the Science paper collected their sample, as well. The authors of the Lancet editorial allude to this in the next sentence:

"furthermore, comparisons of blood donors with census data showed no major difference in a range of demographic variables, and the mandatory exclusion of donors with symptoms of COVID-19 is expected to underestimate the true population exposure to the virus."

Here, the Lancet writers are trying to argue that the sample wasn't that biased, and therefore the Science paper was right, and therefore the current infections are due to "variants".

It's a very weird and convoluted argument. Comparison to demographic variables is irrelevant, and the second sentence doesn't address the actual concern with the Science paper (i.e. testing in Brazil was rare at the time of the study, so people with Covid sought out the study). Regardless, I think it's a red herring. It doesn't matter if the sample was biased or not -- you can look at the data as collected, and see that the upward adjustments were so aggressive that the conclusion of the Science paper is likely to be wrong.

The only thing we can learn from Manaus is that waiting for herd immunity is a very bad idea.

> Does he hear himself? You can't really liken wild guesses that lead to complacency/death as hiding the truth. It sounds like this guy should really stick to surgery.

It’s not a “wild guess.” There is data to support it. So what you’re really saying is that scientists should avoid discussing possible interpretations of the data for fear of what conclusions the public might draw. That’s not how science works and it isn’t a good way to build public trust in the process.

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