That article makes inaccurate statements like, "basically hyped a bunch of data and weren’t transparent about their methods" which is not true. There were 100% transparent about where there information was from and how they were presenting it.
I can vouch for their transparency. The speed with which I was able to see that their statistical methods were totally wrong was almost entirely due to their transparency. The only fact I had to find outside of what they said was the criteria for testing in the county for which they cited statistics, which I found at https://kernpublichealth.com/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-...
"Testing is NOT indicated for asymptomatic persons."
The doctors' statistics in the quote below don't work because of sampling bias.
“In Kern County, we’ve tested 5,213 people and we have 340 positive COVID cases. Well, that’s 6.5 percent of the population. Which would indicate a widespread viral infection similar to the flu,”
They use the same logic for Kern County, California, and New York. Their logic is, that if you test N people and find M positive cases, that in the population at large you'll have an infection rate of M/N. This would be true if the N tests were performed on random members of the population. But because the tests are only performed when there's reason to suspect infection, M/N is a higher infection rate than in the population at large. Their inflated number for total infected persons makes the death rate appear smaller.
https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...
I suppose that’s the real problem, in so many words...
Because you have a basic understanding of statistics.
> Why can't we watch and make our own judgements?
You can. The video is available in many places.
I'm not saying that you are misrepresenting or disinforming people. But, how would you know unless someone told you?
https://www.aaem.org/resources/statements/joint-endorsed/phy...
And then, comparing that to the flu and saying this isn't much worse, we're now well into the "this video is a potentially a public health hazard" territory.
No, lockdowns are the public health hazard. The data is quite clear at this point that what's going on here is no worse than the flu. Here's a simple graphic from the UK to make that point clear:
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
And if you look at when lockdowns could have possibly started working given incubation and death lags, you'll see that most countries seem to have peaked before the lockdowns could have started working. Implication: they weren't responsible for the peak and decline.
But the more important point is that it's critical such things can be debated. Simply assuming you're right and anyone who disagrees is a "public health hazard" is totalitarianism. You won't have any ability to defend yourself, or even any right to, next time someone erases you because e.g. Trump declared your views to be dangerous.
Also i've said it here before, but young, healthy people who did not had to have invasive respiration (so no ICU) still got out of their sickness with lingering asthma, possibly caused by a pulmonary fibrosis. I found this [0] in English if you don't know what it is. In five to seven years (assuming we find a vaccine for sras-cov2 in two year) we will really start counting our dead, unless we find a non-chirurgical fibrosis cure.
[0] https://lungdiseasenews.com/2017/06/16/12-facts-pulmonary-fi...
Sample size doesn't help if the sampling method is biased. Even if tests were available to everyone regardless of symptoms, you would still have a selection bias that would skew the numbers. The only way to accurately estimate overall infection rates in the general population is to test a random sampling.
Then there is the "comparison" of Sweden (no lock down) and Norway/California. They mention the death counts and population of these countries in another attempt to show that the "number of cases is high and the number of deaths is small regardless of lockdown" but completely gloss over the fact that Sweden has more that 5x the covid deaths per capita that Norway and California have.
Regardless of if this video should be censored, these guys are awful scientists.
This is the exact reason why it shouldn't be censored. Because if their science is bad then it needs to be available for people who know better to tear it to shreds.
If you take it down then the story can't be "this is why they're wrong" because what they said isn't available anymore, so a rebuttal isn't believable because you can't tell if it's an accurate representation of the original presentation.
So then the story becomes about censorship and you're making it all too easy for motivated people to spin a conspiracy theory about how these scientists are speaking truth to power and getting oppressed, even if they are in actual fact totally wrong.
This isn't something I have been able to confidently form an opinion on; it's a hard topic. I think we will be strugging with how to balance bias, deliberate misinformation and freedom of speech for a long time.
But I think at the very least, YouTube needed to put up prominent disclaimers and links to limit the harm that this content can cause.
I count several detailed criticisms of it just in this thread. Do none of them have a YouTube account?
Why don't the people proposing to censor it post their own rebuttal?
> I think at the very least, YouTube needed to put up prominent disclaimers and links to limit the harm that this content can cause.
Which is totally different. Leaving the video up while posting a prominent link to a rebuttal isn't censorship, it's more speech.
I did post a rebutal in some of the duplicates I found on YouTube. YouTube comments are not really a great platform for debate and the way their algorithm works tends pull videos like this into an echo chamber that avoids the exact types of critical discussion you are calling for.
So, given the (artificial) choice between leaving the video up as is and taking it down, I suspect that in this particular case, the practically beneficial choice for society (in the short term at least) is to take it down precisely because of how YouTube works as a platform and community.
> Which is totally different. Leaving the video up while posting a prominent link to a rebuttal isn't censorship, it's more speech.
Yes, I am a big fan of free speech. However it has become increasingly clear that simply making speech as free as possible in as many places as possible is not enough (by itself) to solve the problems of misinformation, partisanship and radicalization that we are facing as a society. We can't just dismiss those problems, so as advocates for free speech, we need to find non-censorship ways to help solve those problems.
This seems like a YouTube-specific problem that should have solutions not involving censorship.
They took stats from a massively self-selecting population - people seeking out COVID-19 testing at their facilities - and extrapolated to the general public.
That's inexcusably dumb.
As the bit I quoted states, that's like "estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court".
Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with banning the video and preventing the public from making their own decision?
Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain. By picking and choosing like they’re doing, it leads one to distrust the company which will ultimately hurt them.
This video was more like yelling fire in a theater. I’m willing believe the doctors were sincere, but they were gravely wrong, and their misinformation was endangering the public.
YouTube was correct to turn off the alarm they erroneously turned on.
Granted, YouTube’s method of throwing up a standard “violation of community guidelines” message is crude, and leads to suspicion. Then again, so was ABC’s editorial judgment. It’s a hard problem.
The point is that even if they’re wrong, youtube and others are playing a dangerous Orwellian game and it’s going to harm their reputability in the end.
Research done on fake news illustrates why ordinary consumers of news cannot be trusted to make informed judgements.
"Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain."
Exactly this. This is why it is irresponsible for a global platform to promote this tripe.
There are a few population studies for very specific areas, but no widespread statewide sampling anywhere.
PS: The US has ~50,000 Coronavirus deaths. Assuming a very optimistic mortality rate of 0.5% suggests at most 10 million infections out of 330 million people or 3.3%. A higher mortality rate of say 5% would mean total infections are possibility as low as 0.3% of the US population.
This could mean that substantially more Americans have it. (Though on current projections, less than a factor of 2.)
The biggest question IMO is how much we are undercounting fatalities. NYC lists Confirmed deaths at 11,820 plus Probable deaths at 5,395. They also add: Due to delays in reporting, recent data are incomplete. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
Making any assumptions about the mortality rate with the abysmal state of testing in the US and around the world is guesswork.
Making assumptions based on the horrific codebase that's spawned our most cited models should also give anyone in software at least a twinge of anxiety.
The US has an older and sicker population than SK, and in NYC an overworked healthcare system. So, a 1% US mortality rate discounted to 0.5% due to recent infections not having time to die is extremely optimistic. It would also mean testing was only discovering 10% of cases.
PS: Many more people are exposed without having sufficient infections to trigger long term immunity. But, it’s herd immunity or deaths/long term issues we care about making such cases irrelevant as their still at risk.
So, no I don’t see how it’s misinformation.
They then use this to massively misrepresent the lethality of Covid 19.
I don’t understand why YouTube couldn’t leave the video up, and put some kind of warning or interstitial advising of problems with the content. I would have problems with that approach too, but certainly less so than I do with the wholesale deletion of the video.
Anyway, you can find it hosted here: https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...
By pulling videos, YouTube/Google is saying they don't trust people to be able to discern anything or do research among several dissenting opinions. And yes, it's their platform and yada yada .. they still allow a lot of content to be uploaded and they have become the most typical/standard centralized source of videos.
I will admit, they might be right to not trust people ... at which point why do we even care about humanity anymore? Are those with more power and influence always going to think the rest of the world are sheep who can't think for themselves and need to be led around?
This time sets all kinds of dangerous prescients. I wish Orwell was still alive.
Most people are not qualified to "examine the evidence" and make public health policy decisions. This is why we rely upon the experts. Otherwise you have measles outbreaks in Beverly Hills.
Perfect example, no expert said there was no human to human nor is there any chance of it. The only language close to that was "there isn't any proof of it now" which might have been informed by CCP misinformation.
Even though they were misinformed, any true expert should have known not to make any definitive statement either way. If you have such a quote, it was not made by an expert.
Do you think epidemiologists are? The people who have apparently never predicted a disease outbreak successfully, ever? Why are they experts but not these doctors?
And what makes YouTube employees believe they're qualified to decide who's right? They're experts in HTML5 video serving, not health.
Even doctors generally recognize that public health (of which epidemiology is only a part) is a separate domain of expertise. There are doctors who specialize in infectious disease who need some public-health training, but there's no reason to expect that e.g. a oncologist or trauma surgeon would know more than the average scientifically-literate person about a different profession.
> 33,865 COVID cases out of a total of 280,900 total tested--that's 12% of Californians were positive for COVID.
This would only be true if those tested were randomly selected. Even in the most optimistic Santa Clara County study prevalence was estimated at under 5%. 1
1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v...
Does Youtube also censor videos where plumbers present an incorrect way to install a toilet that can lead to backflow and flooding.
The point to make here is that Youtube is NOT the New England Journal of Science and should not act like one for just one topic - Coronavirus.
If anybody feels that their data or interpreation of the data is incorrect, they should post their own video on Youtube, refuting their claims.
Instead what Youtube is doing is just silencing them.
1) They probably would censor the plumber, if they received enough complaints about it, and 2) an incorrectly installed toilet doesn't have the potential to kill tens of thousands of people, whereas erroneous information about the danger of COVID-19 very well could. So they're not waiting for the complaints.
Nor is cnn, fox news, msnbc, etc. They all exercise editorial control over what goes on their channel however.
The rules by which youtube exercises its editor control is its guidelines and policies from my understanding.
Which may be the result of its execs being dragged before congress about "fake news" -- hence the allegations of censorship.
It would suck if a firmware upgrade goes out to all LG TVs disabling certain content. It’s within LG’s right, but what a betrayal of the customer who was sold a non universal television.
Exactly! So why are the doctors using it as a platform when they should be going through reputable peer-reviewed channels?
Youtube owns the platform, we allowed it to become the largest and most powerful platform but there are others out there. Youtube (and google, and bing) have no reason to have to host misleading, wrong, or hurtful opinions/websites.
This is more akin to YouTube removing a “I’m a plumber, trust me, clean your bathroom by mixing bleach and ammonia in your toilet” video.
The point here is that youtube is not a harbinger of
scientific truth.
The point to make here is that Youtube is NOT the New
England Journal of Science and should not act like one
for just one topic - Coronavirus.
If anybody feels that their data or interpreation of the
data is incorrect, they should post their own video on
Youtube, refuting their claims.
A scientific journal has a panel, which are qualified experts in the field or related fields, that read and pick up on statistical errors, and other errors, and decide whether or not to publish the paper. Youtube does not.
Peer review as a whole, means that your work gets assessed by experts, and they decide before publication if your paper is of the right quality to enter the journal.
'Peer Review' =/= 'Allowing everyone to post and the truth will be found out or agreed upon in the end'
'Peer Review' == 'Having your work assessed by equally or more skilled people, who then decide if your work is good enough to publish'
Youtube operates in a fundamentally different way to peer review, it allows anyone to post, then retroactively decides if that work meets guidelines. This means that not only is it not possible to immediately filter work that is submitted, it also does not go through proper assessment of it's validity by a panel of specialists and experts. Youtube could not operate with it's current business model using that method, and so is forced to choose another. Just because it's retroactive enforcement, doesn't mean that the terms of the service and guidelines are not in force, or should be considered censorship. Nobody is actually censoring these people, they are free to post their video literally anywhere else, but they broke the terms of the Youtube service.
As many other people have pointed out, the work produced and hosted on Youtube does contain errors, these are statistical errors that would have been caught had they submitted this to an academic journal, however the video's makers explicitly decidedin to publish it on Youtube. There is very little reason to do that, other than to market this information to others.
As this information is dubious at best, it is fundamentally and ethically irresponsible of them, as scientists, as medical workers who have taken an oath to do no harm, to publish this work on Youtube and to the public without going through the basic step that is peer review. The comments section does exist, but has no value, because you cannot count on the general public to be as informed in the subject matter as a peer review panel would be.
If we were talking an order of double, I think people would be a bit less ruffled. We're not though. We're talking 50-85 times in places like Santa Clara.
But you're now asking people to trust experts, which in 2020 is apparently crazy-talk
They are experts in an entirely different field.
You don't need any training in statistics, epidemiology, public health, etc. to be an urgent care doc. They're experts in diagnosing and fixing ailments (at an individual level) that don't require a full-blown ER visit or hospitalization.
Because this is how it worked for literally hundreds of years and it seemed to work just fine, and only NOW does it seem we have a problem
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1191141
Or let's go back even further to the bubonic plague:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/04/bubonic-p...
In all these cases, the medical experts were right and trustworthy, and the politicians and public were WRONG AND MISLEADING, and that resulted in more deaths.
There are no experts in this disease, only people trying to control other people through false proclamations of authority.
The answer of course is ideology. These are two experts giving two different opinions based on different sets of similarly poor evidence. The fact that a doctor goes against consensus does not necessarily mean he's wrong and it certainly does not warrant censorship, all else considered.
Youtube is making a dangerous mistake.
It’s not one side thinks this, the other side thinks that, it’s that their video is factually wrong, and in being wrong encourages dangerous behavior.
An expert made a statement. YouTube went out of its way to find a doctor who supported YouTube's ideological slant and used that as justification for taking action.
This obliviousness. This is why we must restrict power. This is why we can't have nice things.
YouTube has no authority to suppress credible doctors from going against the consensus. The fact that this particular decision agrees with what the majority of us think is right doesn't mean that YouTube is right to choose.
Exactly, so he should not be speaking on epidemiology. And it's even more dangerous because people, like you, believe he could be an expert.
> YouTube has no authority to suppress credible doctors from going against the consensus.
But the WHO does.
Ignoring ramifications of politicization, How many developments will be missed if we embark on a campaign to suppress all dissenting opinions?
You don't think a doctor on the front line is qualified to make inferences about the disease that he is literally treating en masse? You don't think direct observation and experimentation with hundreds of patients could provide valuable insight into the properties of this disease or potential working treatments and/or best practices? How far backwards are you going to bend to defend this position?
Again, the fact that this particular decision agrees with your preconceived notions does not mean that YouTube's emerging practice of choosing truth is good for society. The WHO is also not the only qualified body, nor is it a final authority, yet here YouTube is suddenly treating it as one and, conveniently, YouTube's political slant is aligned with this particular decision. If we allow this behavior, it won't be the last time that YouTube picks a winner and shapes the reality perceived by millions of people. This is a possibly unprecedented amount of soft power and it is being used without oversight or control by the society that is being influenced by it.
I'm not suggesting we make it illegal but educated citizens should be at least resistant to the idea, not welcoming of it because it happens to agree with their politics now. The same goes for Google and FB and any other platform that acts as a window to information - these corporations are not authorities and should not be gatekeeping information. Long term that's a far greater danger to society than COVID19.
Let's not. It's relevant to real world actions.
> You don't think a doctor on the front line is qualified to make inferences about the disease that he is literally treating en masse?
About symptoms or specific treatment plans, perhaps. About government response? No. It's the difference between macro and micro scale approaches. The front line doctors are experts at mirco-scale treatment. Epidemiologists are best at macro-scale treatments. The two skillsets are not the same. An expert at one is not an expert at the other, and no amount of repeating that belief will change that.
> Again, the fact that this particular decision agrees with your preconceived notions does not mean that YouTube's emerging practice of choosing truth is good for society.
Correct. I just happen to believe that suppressing lies that can kill people if they believe them is also a good thing. Or do you think that "take Hydroxychloroquine, it's a miracle drug" should be posted on the youtube homepage?
> The WHO is also not the only qualified body, nor is it a final authority, yet here YouTube is suddenly treating it as one and, conveniently, YouTube's political slant is aligned with this particular decision
What is the political slant you're describing? The WHO, CDC, and pretty much every expert body on epidemiology in the world, in every nation, from Iran to Argentina to Germany to China are doing approximately the same thing. The political spectrums in those nations cross the gamut. Yet they're all following the same treatment plan for the pandemic response. What is the political slant?
> If we allow this behavior, it won't be the last time that YouTube picks a winner and shapes the reality perceived by millions of people.
They already do that. They're just doing so with a bit of morality instead of hoping that unmonitored algorithms will lead to the best outcomes for society.
> these corporations are not authorities and should not be gatekeeping information.
Information is relative. Google's mission statement is "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". So which is more in line with that mission: providing a platform for lies, or curating correct information?
Is "up is down" information? Or is it something else? I don't think lies (or perhaps less aggressively, falsehoods) are "information", they're something else. If the doctors are correct (they aren't, but assuming they were), they'd have evidence they could share and that actual experts would agree with. Then the expert consensus would change.
Either that or you think there's a worldwide conspiracy to keep us in our homes, hurting the economy and millions, or even billions, so that...as far as I can tell, the best guess is so that governments can replace the batteries in the birds. There's nothing for the WHO or CDC to gain by suppressing these guys. There's nothing for Google to gain by suppressing these guys. And yet, they do because it's morally right to keep people safe from disinformation.
This is literally why we have the first amendment. Because, as you say, information is relative; that also means it is relative in time. And we can only come to a correct consensus if we allow all voices to be heard.
This is an excellent example of a time not to suppress dissidents. The doctors on the front line are just as likely, if not moreso, to come up with potential treatments or policies, because this is happening in real time and the information arbitrage lends extra credibility to the doctor's words. Do you see how subjective this decision of censorship is? And any subjective decision is subject to bias, political or otherwise.
>There's nothing for Google to gain by suppressing these guys.
It's no secret Google leans left. It's no secret that protestors of the lockdown lean right. You don't see a conflict of interest here?
What if the WHO and CDC are in conflict? Who decides then? YouTube? What about platforms that are partly owned by China? Conflict of interest?
What about elections? You think it's OK for a platform like Google or YouTube to pull ads that fail "fact checks"? What about viral posts? You don't think it'll be a partisan shitshow?
If not then we have no reason to continue this discussion because we will not agree.
No. I'd see a conflict of interest if this were a political issue. But it's not. Making something political by spouting a bunch of lies until people believe them doesn't change the science.
>What if the WHO and CDC are in conflict?
But they're not. So we're well into the realm of irrelevant hypotheticals.
> treatments or policies
Treatments, yes. Policies, no. Because as I keep saying, they're different things. You're comparing, in essence, the skills of a software engineer and a CEO. Drop either into the others' chair and they'll flounder.
> What about elections? You think it's OK for a platform like Google or YouTube to pull ads that fail "fact checks"?
They already have policies that disallow lying in political ads: https://www.blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-...
> It’s against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died.
> You don't think it'll be a partisan shitshow?
I mean, I expect that no matter what people will complain that it'll be a partisan shitshow. Given that like I said these policies already exist and I didn't notice any obvious political shitshow, only the usual suspects complaining, no.
> What about platforms that are partly owned by China?
They can make their own policies, and I'm free to use them, or not.
> This is literally why we have the first amendment.
And I fully support both the doctor's right to exercise it by spouting bullshit, and Youtube's right to exercise it by removing said bullshit from their platform.
This uncertainty is an avenue for bias. I don't think you understand the dangers of giving a handful of people the power to censor and curate the material that reaches a majority of the eyes in the US. You'll change your mind when they bend against your own leanings though, I guarantee that. It's the spirit of the first amendment, because this is an enormous power that affects all of us, without our consent.
The CDC and the WHO were in conflict at one point regarding mask usage. As it happens, they are arguably in conflict today, as the WHO has praised Sweden's model which, in case you're not aware, is not a lockdown. So what now? Will you be expecting YouTube to remove any videos from the WHO suggesting people adopt the policy of Sweden?
How can you even put faith in authority right now after so many nations, organizations, hospitals, the world over, totally failed in responding to or preparing for this pandemic? And you think YouTube is in a position to choose? It's bad for society.
But that's mostly beside the point. No one is preventing these two doctors from determining the truth. If they think they have a breakthrough, they can present it in a paper, to other experts, who are capable of analyzing it.
> I don't think you understand that in a reality with limited information, it is impossible for humans to know objective truth. And further you underestimate the degree of uncertainty regarding lockdown measures.
Conventional news is far worse than Google both in terms of the things and, at least currently, in terms of reach. I'd much prefer if Fox news presented actual experts on subjects, instead of political pundits or "Dr. Phil" when discussing COVID-19. I am not and have not taken any political side anywhere in this conversation. I've been on the side of scientific consensus. I don't expect that will change.
> As it happens, they are arguably in conflict today, as the WHO has praised Sweden's model which, in case you're not aware, is not a lockdown.
Let's talk when the WHO releases official guidance to end lockdowns. Until then you're just trying to create conflict where there isn't any.
> How can you even put faith in authority right now after so many nations, organizations, hospitals, the world over, totally failed in responding to or preparing for this pandemic?
Because I trust the institutions of government (and their access to experts) more than I trust hucksters on the internet. While I don't expert the average person to be able to discern an expert from a huckster on the internet, especially due to the actions of certain politicians.
It's not the unpopularity of the views of the doctors in the video that makes them wrong, it is their complete misapplication of statistics. The analogy of “estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.” is very apt.
It may not mean that they should be censored, but at a minimum they deserve to be called out and ridiculed.
Yes, they are.
https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with...
> But public health experts were quick to debunk the doctors’ findings as misguided and riddled with statistical errors — and an example of the kind of misleading information they are forced to waste precious time disputing.
> The doctors should never have assumed that the patients they tested — who came for walk-in COVID-19 tests or who sought urgent care for symptoms they experienced in the middle of a pandemic — are representative of the general population, said Dr. Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biologist who specializes in infectious disease modeling. He likened their extrapolations to “estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.” And most credible studies of COVID-19 death rates in reality are far higher than the ones the doctors presented.
> In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”