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Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic
judgecorp writes "Twitter is being criticized for spreading panic about swine flu. This is not just knee-jerk Luddism 2.0: it's argued that Twitter's structure encourages ill-informed repetition, with little room for context, while older Web media use their power for good — for instance Google's Flu Trends page (which we discussed last winter), and the introduction of a Google swine flu map." On a related note, reader NewtonsLaw suggests that it might be a good idea, epidemiologically speaking, to catch the flu now vs. later.
http://xkcd.com/574/
I'm not sure if that's funny, ironic, satiristic, scary or just reality, but, you've GOT to wonder...
http://www.bistolas.net
Just lick a kid with autism and you will be safe!
Reminds me of my local Fox News station that carried an official statement from the government about how people shouldn't panic. Then immediately followed it with a report of the number of cases around the country, then an interview with one of the victims saying how awful it was to vomit for hours on end. And then all the places and all the ways you can catch the flu, and what you should do if you do.
Fair and balanced once again.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
This isn't all that rare on Twitter. #amazonfail is a good example of the Twitter jumping to conclusions and blowing something way out of proportion.
one of the victims saying how awful it was to vomit for hours on end.
Maybe just a strange coincidence, but Twitter itself seems to me like a place where people are vomiting continuously.
Bull. I work at the second-largest newspaper in Alaska and pick wire stories based on what people are interested in and what folks need to stay informed. Regardless of what you might think, I'm not a part of a conspiracy or the Illuminati.
The reason the idea is dumb is that as time passes, diseases tend to evolve to become more infectious, but less pathogenic. It's an obvious bit of natural selection: you will avoid people you know to be sick, and hence you are more likely to be infected by a less ill person.
The classic example is from Samoa in the 1918 influenza pandemic. Then, 25% of the population of Western Samoa died of flu. The American Navy maintained quarantine around American Samoa, and the flu didn't get there for about a year. Only a small fraction of the (nearly identical) population died.
So if there's a nasty flu about, get it late.
[we]pick wire stories based on what people are interested in and what folks need to stay informed.
The first part of that sentence is certainly true, whilst I can't speak for your newspaper the second part doesn't necessarily follow. People tend to be interested in the latest celebrity gossip, so papers print celebrity gossip because it sells newspapers. I don't call that keeping people informed (note: I'm from the UK that's how it works here if the USA is different then I apologise).
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Well, it's not a hard prediction. I mean, whole threads of uninformed and stupid people spewing stupidities... on the internet? Who would have guessed? ;) In related news, bears do poop in the woods, the pope is indeed a catholic, and the ocean is indeed wet.
On the other hand, to be fair, the internet only made it easy to run into such conversations which otherwise would have happened at the pub or at a street corner, with equally uninformed people nodding through and offering their own stupid advice. Just think of all the cabbies who can't manage their own finances, but are ready to discourse at length about how the government should fix the economy. Or of all the people who can't be diplomatic enough to their neighbour, but apparently know exactly what the president should tell France or Russia. Etc.
And occasionally whole "theories" have been formed out of such stupid-preaching-to-the-stupid situations.
E.g., historically "animal magnetism" was born out of weaker correlations than the "lick an autistic kid" in the comic. And some people still buy magnets and crystals as cures... although they were known to be scams at least as early as 1841 when Charles Mackay published his "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
E.g., homeopathy was born out of the observation that, basically, small doses of quinine cure malaria, but high doses of quinine cause the same kind of shivers as malaria. In the meantime we know why both happen, and it has nothing to do with "like cures like". But some people _still_ insist on believing in a cure that's intellectually on par with "lick an autistic kid" and born out of a correlation that was every bit as stupid and superficial. (In fact, just watch, I'm going to rub my crystal ball and predict that someone will promptly post a reply as to how wrong I am, and how homeopathy works and is proven and cures everything from hypochondria to cancer;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
However, you can get revenge that way.
- there is evidence of person to person spread (unlike bird flu, which seemed to be just animal-person)
- the people dying are over-represented in the 20-40 age group (unlike most flu)
- mortality so far has been around 7-8% (probably lower as a lot of cases probably never present for medical care and so are not included in the survival statistics
- the viral genetics are a mix of 4: human flu, swine flu, avian flu, and human/swine flu (apparently a separate one)
This might be bad news
Information source for anyone interested: I am an emergency doctor, we had a presentation this morning from a public health specialist and an infectious diseases specialist detailing the regional response plan for swine flu, so it's about as up to date as is available.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
How about the Randi 1 million dollar challenge?
Most preliminary tests are filmed (and everyone so far flunked the preliminaries badly) and looking at some of them, the requests weren't unreasonable, the test setup wasn't stacked against the claimant in any way, etc. I haven't seen any where it would even matter whether he's set to disprove those claims or not. Either you see auras through walls, or you don't. Either you can tell the history of an object by touch, or you don't. Either you can dowse or you don't. Those people just plain old didn't have the powers they claimed to have.
I mean, seriously, when you see a group of Australia's best dowsers manage to average 1 in 10 guesses right for 10 pipes out of which only 1 has water, it's hard to take it as anything else than dumb guesswork. I don't see how Randi's agenda can affect the fact than when asked to guess the right 1 in 10, those people averaged 1 right guess in 10.
Some are really just smart people. You don't have to be a psychic to do _some_ predictions. E.g., since we're in a sub-thread about an XKCD comic, as I was saying, you don't have to be a psychic to predict that in any scare there'll be surrealistically dumb posts on twitter. (Or generally on the Internet.)
Some are just lucky guesses. Due to the nature of random numbers and events, if you have enough people rolling a die, someone out there _will_ get 10 sixes in a row.
Some are just vague enough that they can be interpreted to apply to a few billion different people, and to a thousand fundamentally different events. See, horoscopes, for example. Take some horoscopes and randomly change the star signs, e.g., take the personality description or daily prediction for a pisces and give it to a libra, and see if they notice. Invariably it's just as good.
Actually, both the USA and the Russians _tried_ using all sorts of paranormal stuff. None of them actually delivered any useful results.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.