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Comment by epicureanideal | Hacker News Reader

I agree. This seemed obvious even a year ago, and it seemed like the media and certain public officials were doing everything they could to avoid acknowledging it. And yet now they are starting to acknowledge it.

What changed? Mostly the party in power. At the time it was politically expedient to say that Trump was being racist or xenophobic against China, so it was deemed necessary to paint comments by him or his supporters as xenophobic conspiracy theories. Then when he states something reasonable like the lab leak hypothesis they can portray him and his supporters as conspiracy nuts. And if it could influence the election even 0.1%, that would be bonus points for some people, although I would call that a dishonest influence.

Now that he isn’t in power, they’ve decided it’s no longer necessary to avoid telling the truth.

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It was extremely worrying to me that the same happened with Hydroxychloroquine. Now I know that the scientific community proved that it doesn’t work. Fine, good.

But the media dismissed it before that was proved. Because trump said it.

Now imagine a hypothetical scenario where it actually worked. Just because trump was using it, the media would have potentially killed people just because they can’t agree with a single thing trump says.

This is not journalism. It’s not objective reporting in the slightest. And it was by media outlets who claim to be doing real journalism and claim they are objective. At least fox doesn’t claim to be objective. It’s shameful propaganda.

> Now I know that the scientific community proved that it doesn’t work.

Even that I'm not so sure about. This is a collection of all the HCQ studies: https://c19hcq.com/

Early treatment at lower dosages (lower compared to the "negative results" studies) seems to show positive results pretty consistently.

The same thing happened with Ivermectin as a prophylaxis. All of a sudden anything that was years old with a history of safe use in humans was off the table. They all also happen to be old enough that patent protection is gone. It's almost like people wanted this to be more dangerous and less treatable for some reason.

Fox very much claims to be objective.

“Fair and balanced” I believe the slogan is.

Nonetheless, you are correct.

Fox/Sky are shameless hard right propagandists.

Sadly, CNN/Nbc are hard left propagandists. I don’t know enough of the history to say that was always the case as it is for Fox/Sky, but it certainly is today.

It’s disheartening to think that even once respected papers like the Guardian have become so departed from objective journalism. I can’t help but think that journalistic freedom of speech is ultimately on borrowed time if the situation becomes much worse.

I’ve taken to following Reuters for news now, but even then I don’t know if what I’m watching is well sourced or it just happens to agree with my own biases more often than not.

Media reporting that dismisses the use of a potentially harmful drug to treat an illness without a full peer-reviewed study should be standard operating procedure.

Consider thalidomide:

https://helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tragedy-l...

I recall several early articles in mainstream media reporting early research showing positive effects from Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID. Then when flaws were found in the early research, and newer research showed that it didn't help, they reported that. It had nothing to do with Trump.

> Now imagine a hypothetical scenario where it actually worked.

That would have been a coincidente. Are you willing to gamble your wellbeing on a lucky hunch?

I still don't understand this logic process. Asserting something with no evidence is arguably worse, than pointing out the absurdity of it.

No, wait for the scientific evidence. But both trump and the media took a stance without any evidence, pro and against.

Both are just as bad as each other.

> Both are just as bad as each other.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

An assertion without evidente is a lie. Pointing out that someone is making assertions without evidente is not a lie.

If Trump were to say that the sky is actually orange, and provided no evidence, would you take on the media for reporting that what he said had no foundation on reality?

That's nuts.

Look, taking advice from Trump on medical issues is dumb. Injecting bleach (or drinking it or whatever) is a bad idea, and it was hopefully a joke, but you can't tell what is a joke and what isn't.

But that means you have to ignore his advice, not take it as an indicator of something bad. From what I can tell, there was plenty of activity trying out anything that seemed plausible, including Hydroxychloroquine. And it went through the usual medical science news cycle of study showing it totally works, study showing it might work, study showing it actually doesn't do a whole lot, with a pretty quick progression.

About the only thing the negative media coverage may have done is discourage people from actively soliciting for a mostly untested experimental treatment. But then again, probably not by much; or maybe they asked for other malaria drugs instead.

Taking medical advice without evidence from “anti trump” is just as bad.

If you are making decisions not based on evidence but on personalities, you are going to make huge mistakes.

Oh, come on. Trump said all sorts of things that the media didn't oppose. And some of the battles that he fought actually made some sense. He also spouted some ridiculous BS pretty frequently.

The reason why the Hydroxychloroquine suggestions were dismissed is simple: science involves an empirical epistemology and that means undemonstrated hypotheses are not treated as true.

I don't know anyone who associated the lab escape theory with racism or xenophobia. Closing down flights from China (and only China) after it spread throughout Europe, that I do understand being associated with racism.

I do know that, unless you want to advocate nuking China (the official US government response to biowarfare) or you think they have a secret cure, it's meaningless.

And, yes, I'm glad that it got ignored while Trump was in power. I think the odds that he would decided to launch nukes in response was unacceptably high (as in, not zero.)

The closing of flights from China took place on January 31st. There was no notion of a spread through Europa whatsoever at that time.

You might be interested to know, that Trump was already informed about the seriousness of the outbreak in Wuhan in early January. However at that time he chose not to act on it because it might harm the ongoing negotiations over a trade deal with China. So if you want to blame Trump for something, it would actually make more sense to blame him for closing the flights from China too late.

There are other solutions, like handing them a bill for damages, and nationalizing all their property we can get our hands on if they don't pay it.

That's not something that has happened in over a century between countries, because last time it was attempted some Austrian guy convinced Germany that the best way to get back the financial losses was to start a second world war.

We gain so much more by fomenting international resentment toward China. The whole situation exemplifies how authoritarianism and lackadaisical safety practices can reduce costs and improve efficiency while increasing the incidence of disasters that wipe out all those benefits.

Trying to quantify harms and seize assets makes the pandemic seem like a unary problem rather than the result of profound ideological weaknesses.

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