Or is this just the classic engineers thinking they know better in all fields, rather than just the one they're educated in?
My first "real" job was tech support for a small regional ISP (these were the dial up days). Despite being in a fairly rural area and the frustration that could cause, without a doubt the worst customers I had to deal with were always doctors and lawyers.
Source?
On March 11, Twitter ordered all employees to work from home, in what I believe was the first complete office closure. (Other companies had closed specific Seattle offices earlier in the month, but I don't know if that counts.)
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/douggollan/2020/03/09/fauci-say...
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/keeping-o...
I feel that's a gross misrepresentation of the statement. Essentially his point was that high-risk population (read older people with “serious underlying conditions.”) should go to extreme steps to avoid contracting the disease, but those who are not then could go on with their lives.
If that wasn't clear by itself, the very same article you posted includes this quote from Fauci stated in the prior day:
> Yesterday, Fauci told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, “Elderly with underlying conditions, heart disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes (should) not wait, but right now, to sort of take look at things that are at high risk, crowded places, getting on airplanes, and absolutely don’t get on a cruise ship.”
The point stands. Tech companies decided that their (overwhelmingly young and healthy) workforce should not, in fact, go on with their lives. They were sacrificing work when Fauci thought sacrificing even leisure was premature.
Regardless, your point of "in hindsight, a certain expert was wrong in one specific instance" == "no experts can ever be trusted" is a much too sweeping generalization. Same as the assertion that "tech" got things right consistently. Didn't Tesla drag its heels for a very long time?
unvalidated
It's disappointing that NPR doesn't report any of this nuance.
You can see that the submitter tried to spin this article by adding "0 deaths so far", apparently trying to suggest that "the coronavirus" is not as deadly as we think. But for this determination it's very relevant which coronavirus we are talking about.
I don't doubt that 73% of the inmates carry a coronavirus that causes the common cold. But that information doesn't tell us anything about the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Since different coronaviruses have different rates of infectiousness, your conclusion of 100% in a few days is also only just a guess. If you test, you must test properly.
what's to say that downvoters aren't also misinformed in their decision to downvote?
Do you know how students learn when they get graduate degrees? They read papers as primary and almost exclusive sources. Even coming from other backgrounds. And the nature of literature is such that after a time a capable person is able to gain mastery in this manner.
Literature for COVID19 has been around since january. Some of us have been following it obsessively. And this isn't some esoteric theory that requires a deep understanding like mathematics or physics. You don't need breadth in such a field to drill down on a specific problem - you don't need to understand anything about c++ or Scala to write an algorithm in python, to put it in programmer terms.
It's perfectly plausible that many of the autodidacts that tend to be attracted to HN can actually contribute meaningfully through comment.
Edit: doctors and medical scientists also come here.