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Comment by phonypc | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

>With roughly a third of South Africans vaccinated, officials there blame a number of factors, including vaccine hesitancy caused by rampant online misinformation. Some critics have blamed a bungled government response. For now, South Africa has far more vaccine doses than it can distribute in time, forcing senior health officials to defer some planned deliveries.

Also Africa is not southern Africa which is not South Africa.

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The very subtitle of the NYT article, which can be read without a subscription, apparently has changed and now reads: "With countries trying to close their doors to the new coronavirus variant, southern African officials note that the West’s hoarding of vaccines helped create their struggle in the first place." South Africa is the largest southern African country by a large margin (60M of 68M south Africans live in South Africa) [1]. Furthermore, that vaccine demand is so low that South Africa stopped asking for the vaccine is relevant to an article that is quick to prominently blame "the West" for their vaccine troubles.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/southern-africa...

Uhhh... yup. Which is why I posted the section of the article that mentions low vaccine demand. In response to the implication that it doesn't.

The fact under contention is very specific, not just general vaccine hesitancy. The article appears to fail to mention it, unless there is some other quote that can be shared beyond the paywall. More interestingly, here's an approximate heatchart of the probability that a given paragraph in an article will be read by the average reader, by the position in the article the paragraph appears:

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There is a huge difference in attention between (free) headline & subtitle, and a (paywalled) paragraph squirreled somewhere near the end, which I am willing to bet is the case for the nyt article.

What fact is under contention? That SA has deferred vaccine deliveries? That fact is in the excerpt I posted.

I see. Perhaps you consider "forcing senior health officials to defer some planned deliveries" and "South Africa Asks J&J, Pfizer to Stop Sending Vaccines" are both accurately describing the same fact.

I suppose we should also excuse the prominent biased subtitle, because technically they are just quoting political figures from SA, not making the charge themselves.

The former is more accurate, which is to be expected seeing as it's a detail from the main body of the article rather than a headline. Thankfully, the latter article also goes into accurate detail.

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