This year we kill it: Corona Virus Thread Mark II

[Peelee]

I am going to stop you right here. The fact that you are bringing up "fact checker" as part of this indicates you are relying on this for credibility.

It is an opinion piece from a man that writes about motorcycles. "Fact checker" is not any kind of formal educational position or authority, and is in fact, nothing more than opinion.

Snopes has been noted for being reputable for some time now. Every article uses third-party sources for all of its claims, with a reference to all sources at the bottom of the article. They have also received awards James Randi Educational Foundation, another reputable organization devoted to educating the public and the media on the dangers of accepting unproven claims.

[Rater202]

Snopes has been noted for being reputable for some time now. Every article uses third-party sources for all of its claims, with a reference to all sources at the bottom of the article. They have also received awards James Randi Educational Foundation, another reputable organization devoted to educating the public and the media on the dangers of accepting unproven claims.

Yeah.

They're not foolproof but Snopes is...

IT's like Wikipedia, it's not the end all be all but it's a great place to start.

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah.

They're not foolproof but Snopes is...

IT's like Wikipedia, it's not the end all be all but it's a great place to start.

Snopes tends to serve as strong, sourced, evidence. To counter it, you need equally strong, sourced, evidence. If your source is less reputable, you've got to be able to bring more to the table.

[ziproot]

Forbes also fact checked this, by the way.

[Rater202]

What do you think the Venn diagram of people who started hoarding toilet paper in early 2020 vs people refusing to get the vaccine now woud look like?

[Liquor Box]

What do you think the Venn diagram of people who started hoarding toilet paper in early 2020 vs people refusing to get the vaccine now woud look like?

I don't think there'd be much relationship to be honest. Vaccination and hoarding are both forms of pre-preparing to avoid a risk, but overall I'm not sure that you'd find much of a correlation.

I also think Snopes is a pretty reliable fact checking resource. Not in the 'never wrong' category, but pretty good.

[ziproot]

Wait, you can use venn diagrams to find correlation?

[Bartmanhomer]

What do you think the Venn diagram of people who started hoarding toilet paper in early 2020 vs people refusing to get the vaccine now would look like?

I never understand why in the world people would hoard so much toilet paper. Seriously I just can't comprehend people's mentality most of the time since the beginning of the pandemic.

[Liquor Box]

I never understand why in the world people would hoard so much toilet paper. Seriously I just can't comprehend people's mentality most of the time since the beginning of the pandemic.

I can understand people thinking that there will be supply shortages, and wanting to hoard supplies to guard against it. I cannot understand why toilet paper is top priority.

[Tyndmyr]

Snopes has been noted for being reputable for some time now. Every article uses third-party sources for all of its claims, with a reference to all sources at the bottom of the article. They have also received awards James Randi Educational Foundation, another reputable organization devoted to educating the public and the media on the dangers of accepting unproven claims.

Half the people in this thread have copy and pasted a link to a third party source, that's hardly a high bar.

What award? James Randi gave out his "Pigasus" awards to lampoon various unscientific things, certainly, but to the best of my knowledge, Snopes has never been referenced either positively or negatively in this fashion. JREF itself doesn't appear to have a working website at present, and a bit of googling turns up nothing linking the two.

They have had significant ethical lapses in quite recent times. That's...not reputable.

What is it about 'fact checkers' that makes them different from anyone else?

Forbes also fact checked this, by the way.

So, point #1 is criticizing some Fox news point that's not in the actual study, just...Fox bashing other news points. This is fair, I guess, but Fox's hyperbole is largely unrelated to the study itself.

#2 is nitpicking over the way the study is referred to. The study itself is actually named "A Literature Review and Meta-analysis
of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality." It is indeed perfectly correct to refer to it as such if you wish, but it's not exactly catchy. People are going to abbreviate, and "John Hopkins study" is a useful search term that will take you to the correct paper. I will note that you yourself refer to this as "Forbes" rather than "Bruce Lee's blog hosted on Forbes."

#3 is the observation that it is an economic study. It certainly is. He frames this as a criticism of Maher, another news personality. That's fine. It's not a criticism of the study's validity.

#4 is the rehash of the "working paper" criticism, saying that anyone can make a working paper by just "throwing it on the internet" This ignores that the study was published in a reputable journal of economics. Not anyone can get published in a journal, at least not without going through quite a lot of work to master a topic.

And so on. The data is not challenged, the methodology is not challenged, and the reputations of the publishing journal and authors remain assailed. These are not substantive challenges.

He *does* criticize the inclusion of face-mask mandates as a lockdown measure, but that's a labeling distinction. He also *does* talk about specific studies being included or not, and claims the author doesn't talk about their inclusion criteria, but...they do. One only has to read as far as the abstract to read that.

I can only conclude that he has not read the study at all, and is simply echoing complaints from elsewhere, such as the twitter threads he cited.

It is not a "fact check by Forbes". It's an opinion piece chatting about Uggs and social media that happens to include discussion of the study. The guy deals in computer simulations and perhaps could provide at least expert opinion on that topic, but he doesn't seem to have done so. Opinion pieces are not scientific papers, and neither prove nor disprove research.

[Squire Doodad]

*snip*

This is a wholly incorrect take that basically just argues around what was said without actually taking the points made into account.
I am not trying to be impolite, but please re-read the Forbes article and a few posts up in the thread.

And so on. The data is not challenged, the methodology is not challenged, and the reputations of the publishing journal and authors remain assailed. These are not substantive challenges.

I can only conclude that he has not read the study at all, and is simply echoing complaints from elsewhere, such as the twitter threads he cited.

It is not a "fact check by Forbes". It's an opinion piece chatting about Uggs and social media that happens to include discussion of the study. The guy deals in computer simulations and perhaps could provide at least expert opinion on that topic, but he doesn't seem to have done so. Opinion pieces are not scientific papers, and neither prove nor disprove research.

Granted, it is handled incredibly informally, but aside from that you are way off track.
The methodology is very much challenged - they point out that it is weighted bizarrely, and also appears to be cherry picking.
Not to mention this quote

And when you do a review of the literature and select a paper to be included in your so-called “meta-analysis,” it’s not a good sign when the authors of that paper disagree with your interpretation of their paper:

I don't think there'd be much relationship to be honest. Vaccination and hoarding are both forms of pre-preparing to avoid a risk, but overall I'm not sure that you'd find much of a correlation.

I'd say that hoarding at the beginning of the pandemic was a bipartisan thing. No one knew what was coming and everyone went into panic mode.

[Sermil]

I can understand people thinking that there will be supply shortages, and wanting to hoard supplies to guard against it. I cannot understand why toilet paper is top priority.

My understanding is that the initial shock was caused by there being two different kinds of TP: TP used in houses and TP used in offices/schools. They're not really interchangable -- the rolls are different sizes and the office/school-TP makers don't have distribution channels to consumer stores. When everyone left their schools & offices and stayed at home all day, the demand for house-TP shot up, but manufactures couldn't adjust to the demand change (normally, demand for TP is very steady, so they don't have much spare capacity). Thus you got some empty shelves.

Of course, that then snowballed -- once people start hearing about empty shelves, everyone runs out and starts buying what's left, which means more empty shelves, which means more news stories about empty shelves, which means more people buying even more...

[The Random NPC]

I believe another contributing factor was a toilet paper shortage in Hong Kong. From what I understand, Hong Kong has a rather unique structure that prevented toilet paper shipments (and probably other stuff) when quarantine was implemented. So not only did you have an increased usage of tp, you also had reports of shortages from a place that had started quarantining earlier which fueled people's fears of a shortage.

[Liquor Box]

My understanding is that the initial shock was caused by there being two different kinds of TP: TP used in houses and TP used in offices/schools. They're not really interchangable -- the rolls are different sizes and the office/school-TP makers don't have distribution channels to consumer stores. When everyone left their schools & offices and stayed at home all day, the demand for house-TP shot up, but manufactures couldn't adjust to the demand change (normally, demand for TP is very steady, so they don't have much spare capacity). Thus you got some empty shelves.

Of course, that then snowballed -- once people start hearing about empty shelves, everyone runs out and starts buying what's left, which means more empty shelves, which means more news stories about empty shelves, which means more people buying even more...

That makes some sense. And it is the first sensible explanation I've seen for toilet paper being the highest priority for stockpiling. Thanks for that.

[warty goblin]

Also early in the pandemic, there was definitely a perception going around that one should be ready for basically a two-week siege at the drop of a hat. Since toilet paper is bulky and generally cheap, I'm willing to bet a lot of people didn't maintain a two-week stockpile for ready use.

[cucchulainnn]

there's one thing about the TP thing I never got. I'm assuming most people have a place to bathe in their place. A shower maybe. Normally right next the toilet. Worse case scenario you rinse off afterward. Kinda like an awkward bidet. Who are you looking to impress the no one in the apartment with you? Maybe the one or two roommates that have been living in the same bathrobe and sweatpants for a month. I was never really worried about running out. There are options.

[DeadMech]

there's one thing about the TP thing I never got. I'm assuming most people have a place to bathe in their place. A shower maybe. Normally right next the toilet. Worse case scenario you rinse off afterward. Kinda like an awkward bidet. Who are you looking to impress the no one in the apartment with you? Maybe the one or two roommates that have been living in the same bathrobe and sweatpants for a month. I was never really worried about running out. There are options.

Depending on living arrangements it might be a bit embarrassing taking a shower in the middle of the night when everyone in the household or apartment building is trying to sleep.

[Glorthindel]

My understanding is that the initial shock was caused by there being two different kinds of TP: TP used in houses and TP used in offices/schools. They're not really interchangable -- the rolls are different sizes and the office/school-TP makers don't have distribution channels to consumer stores. When everyone left their schools & offices and stayed at home all day, the demand for house-TP shot up, but manufactures couldn't adjust to the demand change (normally, demand for TP is very steady, so they don't have much spare capacity). Thus you got some empty shelves.

That makes sense; when the shops were all out around me, I just ordered a couple of "office-rolls" from our office suppliers, who while were also out of domestic-style, had plenty of the larger office-rolls and dispenser refill-types still available. Sure, not going to fit on the toilet roll holder in the bathroom, but that's hardly a world-ender.

[Bartmanhomer]

I can understand people thinking that there will be supply shortages, and wanting to hoard supplies to guard against it. I cannot understand why toilet paper is a top priority.

I know right? It doesn't make any sense why toilet paper is a top priority. I mean it is not even a fecal disease. Sometimes I don't understand humans.

[sktarq]

I know right? It doesn't make any sense why toilet paper is a top priority. I mean it is not even a fecal disease. Sometimes I don't understand humans.

I think some people were putting in their lists of things to "stock up" on in public and that could have shortages. And lots of people went "Holy carp* Batman I didn't think of TP!" and so lots of people went to buy it, plus TP doesn't have any easy substitute (eg it they are out of beef you can eat chicken, no pasta? make mashed potatoes) so it was TP or bust. Also as TP it generally bulky and highly visible in shopping carts it makes for good TV. And once the TV got a hold of "there is a run on the TP stocks of the nations" it became a self fulfilling mania.

[Bartmanhomer]

I think some people were putting in their lists of things to "stock up" on in public and that could have shortages. And lots of people went "Holy carp* Batman I didn't think of TP!" and so lots of people went to buy it, plus TP doesn't have any easy substitute (eg it they are out of beef you can eat chicken, no pasta? make mashed potatoes) so it was TP or bust. Also as TP it generally bulky and highly visible in shopping carts it makes for good TV. And once the TV got a hold of "there is a run on the TP stocks of the nations" it became a self fulfilling mania.

Well, that makes sense but still, people don't need to buy 50+ toilet paper.

[farothel]

Well, that makes sense but still, people don't need to buy 50+ toilet paper.

True, but when has that stopped some people. You don't need 24 beers in as many hours, but that doesn't stop some either.

And TP doesn't go bad, so if you buy a lot and you don't need it immediately, it will last until you do. that's the same reason why canned food and pasta and stuff like that was also hoarded in the beginning of the pandemic. People thought 'we might need it, so let's get enough of it and if we don't, we can use it in the coming year(s) without problem'.

[Aedilred]

Yeah, panic-buying becomes self-reinforcing. If people are stripping the shelves of something you need, then buying it yourself to make sure you can get it before it all gets bought up by the panic-buyers becomes a motivation in itself. By that point it doesn't matter what the underlying motivation for the panic-buying was, just that it's happening.

[halfeye]

True, but when has that stopped some people. You don't need 24 beers in as many hours, but that doesn't stop some either.

And TP doesn't go bad, so if you buy a lot and you don't need it immediately, it will last until you do. that's the same reason why canned food and pasta and stuff like that was also hoarded in the beginning of the pandemic. People thought 'we might need it, so let's get enough of it and if we don't, we can use it in the coming year(s) without problem'.

Shops and distributors wouldn't love it so much if some people didn't throw away the extra without using it.

[Tyndmyr]

This is a wholly incorrect take that basically just argues around what was said without actually taking the points made into account.
I am not trying to be impolite, but please re-read the Forbes article and a few posts up in the thread.


Granted, it is handled incredibly informally, but aside from that you are way off track.
The methodology is very much challenged - they point out that it is weighted bizarrely, and also appears to be cherry picking.
Not to mention this quote "And when you do a review of the literature and select a paper to be included in your so-called “meta-analysis,” it’s not a good sign when the authors of that paper disagree with your interpretation of their paper:"

Sorry for the quote strangeness, the forum doesn't much like nested quotes.

Scientists disagreeing over interpretations happens all the time. It's not a bad sign at all. A sign of controversy, certainly, but it's not a methodological problem or a data problem. The Forbes article does not use the term "weight", so I do not know how it could be challenging its weighting.

I recently saw that the Swedish government had put out a similar article saying that it's lack of a lockdown was the best policy, but I've not yet had time to read it. I suppose a certain amount of skepticism is due, as any agency will tend to defend its own policies, but perhaps it will be of interest to someone.

In any case, it seems as if this has largely become irrelevant. The CDC's latest change in how severity is measured turned the country from being almost entirely high risk to almost entirely low risk. The Pandemic themed season of humanity is over, we're on to the WW3 themed season. Life is crazy. Stay safe out there, ya'll.

I think some people were putting in their lists of things to "stock up" on in public and that could have shortages. And lots of people went "Holy carp* Batman I didn't think of TP!" and so lots of people went to buy it, plus TP doesn't have any easy substitute (eg it they are out of beef you can eat chicken, no pasta? make mashed potatoes) so it was TP or bust. Also as TP it generally bulky and highly visible in shopping carts it makes for good TV. And once the TV got a hold of "there is a run on the TP stocks of the nations" it became a self fulfilling mania.

I think a big thing with regard to grocery aisles is that the ol' "back room" is a long dead myth at this point. Most stores don't keep extra stock back there, whatever is on the floor is what's there. So, all told, there's not actually much in stock of paper products, because they're really bulky. It only takes a small hiccup to make them suddenly run dry.

If one person in ten grabs a package who otherwise wouldn't, that's probably a hundred packages extra in a day. And once the aisle starts looking bare, well, anyone else who might be running a bit low is motivated to grab it now, before it is all gone.

It doesn't take a whole lot of disruption to run it dry compared to other things.

Ideally, one stocks up a bit on things when everything is fine, so that one can avoid going out when shortages happen, or when there is danger, but people are people, and we mostly have limited storage room to pile up things like toilet paper as well, so I would guess that most of don't usually keep a large stock of it.

[Peelee]

Half the people in this thread have copy and pasted a link to a third party source, that's hardly a high bar.

What award? James Randi gave out his "Pigasus" awards to lampoon various unscientific things, certainly, but to the best of my knowledge, Snopes has never been referenced either positively or negatively in this fashion. JREF itself doesn't appear to have a working website at present, and a bit of googling turns up nothing linking the two.

They have had significant ethical lapses in quite recent times. That's...not reputable.
.

Documented sourcing is literally the basis for academic work. If you disagree with this for some reason, we'll, I can't really help you.

The award was "In 2016, Snopes.com received a one-time award of $75,000 from the James Randi Educational Foundation as part of an annual award given by that foundation to “a person or organization who best represents the spirit of the foundation in providing unbiased, fact-based answers to confusing questions.” This information is listed on Snopes' disclosing and I got there in two clicks. It is not hidden and should not hang been difficult for you to find.

That scandal was regarding plagiarism, not about the veracity of any of the claims made by their fact checking. Still bad, obviously, but that's like saying "I dont think that marksman can really shoot, he was caught stealing a gun!" The crime, while bad, is irrelevant.

You've said nothing whatsoever that did anything to sir that fact checkers are not reliable, and ironically only made it known that this is your opinion. You'll forgive me if I don't give your opinion any particular weight.

[Tyndmyr]

Documented sourcing is literally the basis for academic work. If you disagree with this for some reason, we'll, I can't really help you.

"Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.” ― Max Planck

Experimentation and reproducibility is the basis for all science, and hence academic work. If you disagree for this, then why did you object on the basis of peer review?

Citing sources is a convention to easily look up knowledge. It is useful for that, but it is not where knowledge originates. Everyone is capable of citing sources, citing a source doesn't make a work scientific, and it is certainly no great hurdle. Every person reading this has surely had to write papers for which they have had to cite sources. That doesn't make any of us superior to one another, because it is a skill we have all used.

The award was "In 2016, Snopes.com received a one-time award of $75,000 from the James Randi Educational Foundation as part of an annual award given by that foundation to “a person or organization who best represents the spirit of the foundation in providing unbiased, fact-based answers to confusing questions.” This information is listed on Snopes' disclosing and I got there in two clicks. It is not hidden and should not hang been difficult for you to find.

You must understand that you are attempting to prove the veracity of Snopes by...citing Snopes. I am unable to find any non-Snopes source for this or a similar award. It may well exist, but surely the awarding agency would be the authority for an award.

That scandal was regarding plagiarism, not about the veracity of any of the claims made by their fact checking. Still bad, obviously, but that's like saying "I dont think that marksman can really shoot, he was caught stealing a gun!" The crime, while bad, is irrelevant.

How can you give credit to someone for writing a well sourced article when they stole it instead of writing it? Even if that article is of quality, any credit should be attributed to the author, not the thief.

An agency stealing scores of articles and passing them off as their own absolutely should impact their credibility. This is particularly so when the crime is committed by the organization's founder, and happened over a long period of time. This isn't some one-off error by a single contributor, but a long standing organizational practice that reaches all the way to the top.

If one prefers to defend the practice of fact checking in general, I might note that Facebook has argued in court that their fact checking is in fact only opinion. If the fact checkers themselves are saying it is no more than opinion, what basis is there for treating them as if they were anything more?

[Peelee]

"Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.” ― Max Planck

Experimentation and reproducibility is the basis for all science, and hence academic work.

Unless you want all experiments to start from the ground up every time, then having external sources as the foundation for the experiment is pretty necessary.

Experiment all you like about physical object motion and you'll come to the conclusion that Aristotle was correct and an object's natural state is at rest. Because, no offense intended here, you're not as smart as Isaac Newton. If you, Tyndmyr, perform any number of experiments on motion, as many as you like and are able (so I assume no experiments in LEO. If you do have access to LEO, then accept my sincere apologies), you'll develop Aristotlean physics, not Newtonian physics. All objects want to stay at rest. "Gravity"? Sorry, you'll need to prove that. Mathematically, that is, not just saying "things fall down". Do you know how to do that from scratch? No googling now, we wouldn't want to color your experiments with other people's opinions.

Max Planck can say whatever he wants. But Einstein, whose name is literally synonymous with "genius" (sorry, Planck), almost certainly did no experiments himself and was able to predict gravitational waves long before we could do any experiments to prove their existence. And yet somehow, in opposition to Planck's claim, we were able to gain knowledge without experiment.

If you want to dismiss fact checking as opinion, I am powerless to stop you. Feel free, despite that fact checking is literally how you yourself claim is the only way science is done (I am loathe to try to comprehend what you imagine experimental reproduceability is if not fact checking, for example). But I will not respect any such arguments whatsoever. And, i feel I have to mention, it would be remiss of me if I did not note that your opening claim that was supposed to rebut me was an opinion.

[NichG]

You can use whatever basis you want to decide what experiments should be done, but at the end of the day its the actual reproducible results that count as evidence for or against something. So yes, you can use the credibility of a source to decide whether to prioritize testing a given claim. But your assessment of a source's credibility isn't evidence for or against that claim prior to actually doing a reproduction or validation.

[ziproot]

Wouldn't the "meta-analysis" not be experimentation?