Why Don’t They Believe Us? | Hacker News Reader

Why Don’t They Believe Us?

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40 pointsandrenth27 comments

> Meanwhile, Texas and Florida, which largely remained open and avoided draconian lockdowns, seem to have made out OK. Kids have been going to school, businesses have stayed open. You look at COVID death rates by state, and neither Florida nor Texas cracks the top half.

The arguments are passionate, but in at least one case objectively wrong. The current death rate in Florida is 1.15 per 100,000, putting it at #1 in the U.S. Likewise, the current COVID-19 death rate in TX is 0.81 per 100,000 putting that state at #6 in the U.S.[1]

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

That opinion piece is from August 10th, before the current wave impacted TX and FL as much as they have been affected throughout the middle-end of August. In any case, you're looking at the current average, which is obviously skewed toward the states experiencing a current wave.

Texas has an overall COVID-19 death rate of 2,008/1,000,000 people, which is 1/10000th of a percentage point higher than the national average.

Florida has an overall COVID-19 death rate of 2,138/1,000,000 people, which is still much better than New Jersey (3,032), New York (2,823), Massachusetts (2,653), Rhode Island (2,618), and Connecticut (2,354), and is certainly impacted by the high number of elderly and retirees in Florida.

As for current rates, California has not-quite-twice the population of Florida (39.5mm vs 21.5mm) but a 3-day mov avg. death rate three times as high (119 vs. 39).

Obviously, statistics can be interpreted a lot of ways. Lies, damn lies, and statistics, of course. FL's 7-day mov avg (64) is more than half of CA's 7-day mov avg. (94), for example.

But the fact remains that the two states with the least restrictive lockdowns did not end up the two states with the worst COVID-19 death rates over the course of the pandemic so far.

At a minimum, that constitutes a reasonable basis to question whether the expert consensus is sufficiently based in evidence as to support unprecedented restrictions of liberty in the country that ostensibly leads the free world.

Sources: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/FL https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/CA

Florida changed how they report deaths early last month. They went from counting them on the date they were recorded to counting them on the date of death. This is almost never the same day, often it is quite delayed. Florida’s recent daily deaths are significantly understated.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25379689...

Thank you, I didn't know that. That's helpful regarding the discrepancy between 3-day and 7-day moving averages compared to other states.

And don't forget to factor in age group, meaning the national average last week per capita for 18-74 was 5.x and Florida has a lot of old retired people, many moving out of places like NY this year. Then there's Texas with greater than 1M illegal immigrants most of whom were said to be infected, which I'm going to guess these factors skews the numbers for this year.

This article is long on emotions and short on… anything else, really. Data, for starters, or an understanding that individual events don’t determine the truth or falsity of claims like that institutional racism is real and present in America.

It’s not clear to me if the author is taking on these views themselves, or just presenting what someone _might_ think, but I think it’s combining and conflating a lot of disconnected things to justify a viewpoint which can be deadly to hold

It's trying to build empathy for a viewpoint. Understanding and empathizing isn't the same as agreeing.

I've had 100% empathy for the opposite side of the political spectrum for a long time now. I talk to people there, and I try to understand their perspective. I also try to understand the Taliban's perspective, China's, and otherwise. I'm sometimes successful, and sometimes not, but I try.

The reason I am vaccinated is because I have a (modest) background in biology, and I understand the science personally. If I didn't, I might be skeptical too.

We need more articles like this one. You can't convince people without understanding them first, and really empathizing. To quote:

“Know yourself and know your enemy. You will be safe in every battle. You may know yourself but not know the enemy. You will then lose one battle for every one you win. You may not know yourself or the enemy. You will then lose every battle.” Art of War 3:6:1–6

I think there’s a line between empathizing and excusing, though. Understanding why someone feels a certain way doesn’t mean you have to give credit to those reasons, which the above article does.

I think that it’s difficult to consume articles like this, even if the goal is empathy. At best, this is one viewpoint among many, and at worst, it’s a borderline straw man hypothetical. Particularly with the assumptions the article makes (like when it asserts that the reader is white…)

There probably are people whose vaccine hesitancy follow the exact steps laid out in this article, but they are certainly not everyone. The first set of events which the author present as undermining mainstream authority are a lot newer than vaccine hesitancy writ large, which has been steadily increasing through various avenues on the social internet. I try my best to understand, because it’s been clear for a while that yelling doesn’t help, but I don’t think this article does a good job of fostering understanding, it seems more interested in yelling just in the other direction

idk if you even have to exercise a strong degree of empathy per say as opposed to simply engaging differences of culture and action with a degree of anthropological distance rather than allowing yourself to become personally invested in policy outcomes.

I do give credit to those reasons. Those reasons are fine, logical, and rational. My experience is that they more-or-less correspond to why the people I know who don't take vaccines don't take then.

The existence of better reasons to be vaccinated doesn't negate those at all.

The central problem is that the establishment, at some point, began to lie more and more. We've entered a post-truth age. I'm part of the scientific establishment, and I see that a lot.

I personally have enough background in biology that I can evaluate the virtually non-existent risks of vaccines for myself, as well as the significant risks of COVID19. That's why I'm vaccinated.

If I didn't have that scientific background -- and most people don't -- I might be an anti-vaxxer for all the reasons listed in the article.

Until you can acknowledge that the concerns are valid and real, you're not getting anywhere. I convinced one person who was unvaccinated, for precisely those reasons but who trusted me, not by ridiculing their logic, but by explaining how, in this particular case, I'd walked through the evidence and they were safe. She trusts me, and she's now vaccinated.

On a more basic level, if both sides of the political spectrum stopped lying to "win," I don't think we'd have this problem.

And what data would you use? When it's quite clear that the media and the agencies are distorting the data, or at best have erroneous and uncorrected data, then trust is lost.

Ultimately, you do have to trust your source of said data, and that's precisely what's been discounted, several times. Maybe the COVID data is correct right now, but how does one really know? Not many of us go out and try to collect it ourselves.

There are a lot of claims in the article besides COVID policy effectiveness, for starters. They present the racism of the MAGA movement through a single debunked anecdote, rather than hate crime statistics. Policy brutality is presented not as a reality which has numbers and history but as an event that happened one time to one man, etc.

As for COVID data, it would be foolish to claim that the data we have is perfect. After all, we had a seemingly official policy of “if we don’t do tests more, we won’t have more cases” for the first month of the spread in the US. And without a doubt, there are people with stuff to gain by artificially inflating the numbers (incendiary media, etc) and artificially suppressing them (governors, etc). But, I think it’s also difficult to form a coherent claim that the data available is, in aggregate, completely bogus. If you slap an error bar of even 20% on the case numbers, I don’t think my ultimate interpretation of that would not change very much, but YMMV

Yes, the average, everyday person's perspectives on the goings-on are informed primarily by the big news stories that have been rammed down their throats. That's the point of the article.

Well, off subject, but hate crime data isn't exactly the whole picture either, as this article (paywall, sadly) explains: https://reason.com/2021/09/19/do-we-really-need-new-anti-asi... (in general physical violence down, 'uncomfortable' situations or words may be up past year, yet all down over like 20 years)

Back on subject, seems like it's possible though, even if the rest of this article is wrong about COVID, it does mention the fake epidemic at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where the PCR testing was 100% wrong: https://blog.plan99.net/pseudo-epidemics-7603b2da839

It really doesn't help either that dissenting data is auto-flagged as 'disinformation' now either.

And finally 'the data' is just part of the equation. It has justified lockdowns that have a 100% real negative effect on people's lives, whereas for healthy adults COVID has a far less than 1% effect. Plus I'll note that those that most strongly advocate for lockdowns are the least affected by them - media, academics, medical personnel, politicans, tech and other white-collar workers, public school teachers, etc.

It really shows a selfishness, and a careless disregard for fellow citizens who might not be as fortunate. Is it any wonder 'the data' is not to be believed?

I dissent on the claim that medical personnel are least affected. Is there some subset you're envisioning? Do you somehow mean only particular kinds of affect?

I don't know of any hospitals that were closed due to a lockdown, do you?

the pandemic's affected them a lot, yes, I'm just talking about government imposed lockdowns, which have little in the way of data backing them up.

Chomsky covered this problem comprehensively in "Understanding Power", I recommend giving it a read. The highlights are: 1) it's always been that way 2) collating news for conflicting or foreign sources is the best way to suss out the truth 3) business news is less slanted but obfuscated in business speak. I still recommend the book over my summary :)

"Why would people in one of the most welcoming, tolerant countries in the world" Wow, really? What country is he writing about? This statement lowers the price of the entire post ...

The article points out failings of political/cultural elites as a way of casting doubt on the competence of scientific elites. The analogy is false,

The proposition that the vaccines are safe and effective, and predictions around Brexit or Trump, come from completely separate fields. The two "elites" in those two fields hardly ever overlap, use very different methods, have quite different histories and different internal cultures.

But the author did a very good job of it. Well written garbage.

Well, that's a lot of preaching to the choir. Everyone who read through this was already agreeing with it going in. Everyone who generally disagrees bailed out after the first paragraph.

However the collection of such incidents with attendant citations is commendable in its own right.

This article feels like it’s saying “Imagine you’re ignorant of how elections work. Imagine you also don’t now much about history, or about statistics. Imagine you’re too lazy to google the word “gender” and read Wikipedia. Now do you understand why someone like this would be skeptical of a new vaccine!”

I understand perfectly well why massive amounts of people are forgoing vaccination. Right wing media and the social media ecosystem have twisted their brains so bad they’d prefer to go to a farm supply store and take horse dewormer.

WOW... there's a lot of insight and work put into that rant.

I personally have little faith those leading the CDC et al, yet I and my family are all fully vaccinated. At this point I'm trusting the inertia built up in the system, not the people leading it.

I wish things would improve, but I'm too exhausted (by long covid) to waste my energy on hope.

this is GIGO

The red states had several waves to prepare their responses, then a vaccine appeared. One would think these two factors would have guaranteed excellent response vs later COVID waves. Instead, they planted their heads in the sand, blew off the vaccine and are leading n America if not the world in cases. And deaths are rising quickly. They just threw it all away, “reasons”.

Ah, yes, those red state rednecks and their COVID-19 death rates barely better than backwaters like... (checks notes)... Belgium (2,180 deaths/1,000,000 people).

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I don't know how better to express my frustration at this kind of stereotyping. Americans and the world should be in this together, rather than making this another divisive culture war political shibboleth.

Indeed, I submit the hypothesis that this disdain makes it more likely that rural America will distrust you when you try to tell them what's in their best interest.

Sorry, but I have difficulty coming up with descriptive words for people who see what might keep their people alive (watching what’s happening elsewhere) and yet fail to profit from the data.

Edit: google says the rate for Belgium has been flat this year. This is what I’m saying - after watching Italy and nyc and maybe India people should have been prepared.

Justifying stupidity with reference to other stupidity still stupid. Details at 11, after these words.

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