Has this been posted yet?(
archive) It's amazing watching journalists twist their neurons into gordian knots trying to put some sort of negative spin on death rates being lower than initially reported. Initial projections reported in the media were if every American got the virus over 3 million would die, now they're down to a million after these antibody studies. Washington Post's response? "Well the flu is still worse." I'm not even arguing that the flu isn't worse, but how far does the IFR have to drop before we decided full scale indefinite lockdowns aren't justified?
What the fuck? Antibody tests have lowered the lethality to extremely low levels. Yeah it's technically higher than the flu, because it's almost impossible to go lower than that (outside of, like, the commonnfucking cold.) But that's an extremely sensationslistic way to put it at best and a horridly falacious narrative at worst. That's abhorrent.
Lol, I really hope they get their hands slapped for that. Here they've declared fast food places with drive thrus essential, so...
Y'know, hearing stories like this constantly makes one consider Kiwi Farms to be an actual, verifiable and reliable journalistic site. I mean, everything here gets cataloged and verified, when was the last time you saw any journalist site do verification (other than perhaps PC tech sites).
Makes a person feel warm and fuzzy when you can see, damn near in real time, the very diverse crowd of individuals here, which makes it very fucking hard to get fake shit slid past. The newspaper effect tends to be strong, and I am glad we have Kiwis that can call out the BS.
I told ya before. Kiwifarms is actually right now strongly at the front of this issue. Here's the thing people don't notice. The scientific method has 2 great strengths. Adherence to evidence, and the peer review system.
Adherence to evidence (in science this is made through falsifiability and control groups) allows the discourse to eliminate sources of bias outside of instrumental stuff. And account for the ones that can't be controlled. In kiwifarms we see this in a way, in how the culture fostered by Null and spread by kiwis is about, as our resident archivist likes to point out "ARCHIVE EVERYTHING", ideas are judged based on contents and source this way, allowing for examination of bias.
The peer review system allows to eliminate even more bias by fostering competition between groups with different backgrouns and interests on a level playing field. If the idea survives the slaughter, it means it can survive the toughest scrutiny we could throw at it. And so, here we have a collection of internet autists from all over the god damned planet. We got med kiwis like niggaplesse, otterly and stoneheart, military kiwis like uncle joe and crazy uncle johny, kiwis from china, america, europe, fucking australia of all places. And who analyzes ideas with more vehemence than a collection of competing speds? That's right. No one.
In this way, the farms are basically a mockup of the scientific method. Sure we don't have formalized statistical analysis, so it's certainly not perfect, and it does still run the risk of turning into an ecochamber, but it's as good as you can get through informal growth really.
During this pandemic the thread has consistently been ahead of everyone. That's just a fact and this point. And this is why.
