Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic 383
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.
Difficult (Score:3, Interesting)
Sensationalism (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Mob Mentality (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:5, Interesting)
The xkcd forum users actually registered and recreated those tweets on the comic: listing [echochamber.me].
And the "professional" media? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is theatre at its best. It makes "alarmist" twitter look boring.
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:This just in (Score:4, Interesting)
I am certain you do your best to be a good, honest journalist. However, I'm also quite sure that, if it hasn't happened already, you will find it difficult to run a story on things like, say, Palin or Exxon unabridged, if at all, depending on your newspaper's political leanings and those of its owner(s). You can't possibly tell me your stories haven't ever been edited, and/or you haven't been told to "soften up" on this or that by your editor, right?
As for supposed illuminati, free mason or jewish stranglehold on world affairs, I don't believe in any of that crap, but that doesn't mean one can't be realistic about the partiality of the media.
Re:A better idea (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd have thought catching ANY disease early would be a good thing for all of the following reasons :-
1 - You are likely to receive more (medical) attention early on before the finance departments start making "risk assessments" and other evaluations to decide IF a certain person should even receive vaccines / treatment.
2 - You get a chance to build up an early resistance to it, so even if it mutates, you won't be hit as hard, if at all, the 2nd time around.
3 - You also get a chance for the antibiotics etc to work, before the virus itself attains drug resistant strains.
Funnily enough I just had a flu jag last week, including an H1N1 variant.
But there is a difference... (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is that we get a new sort of belief chain.
In the pub your degrees of freedom is 1 maybe 2, but on the Internet it truly becomes 6...
So while in a pub you will have people spewing theories, it will stay in the pub. Whereas on the Internet, a friend copies a friend, copies a friend and at the end we have the entire world believing things will come to an end.
In this stock market the reason why it was such a harsh drop was not because times were crap. But there was one thing new...
BLOGS... We have this huge echo chamber of how bad things are FROM third hand people.
If you were to say, "ok so how bad are times for you?" Most would say, "oh not so bad, but its really bad for some other folks."
Well do that enough you start wondering who these "other" folks are...
BTW I did buy heavily in this stock market drop! And I am actually positive for my ENTIRE portfolio for the year!
Re:This just in (Score:5, Interesting)
You, too, are under the impression that "free press" equals "telling the truth". This is, by its very definition, not the case.
Free press means only that the state or government does not dictate what you have to write. In our country, there is something called "press aid", a grant that for some odd reason only newspapers that don't criticise the government too much are entitled to (there are "official" qualification criteria like "being important for the general information"... go figure), but you may still write whatever you please (and do without the grant).
Free press does NOT mean that the press is forced to print only the unbiased, undiluted truth, without a speck of commentary or opinion. Most people are under the impression that this must be the case. Because, so their train of thought, if nobody dictates that they have to write something, they can do their "job" and deliver true blue information.
The difference between a dictatorship and a democracy? In both, both government and the press lies to you. The difference is that in a democracy, they tell different lies.
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Interesting -- I had the same fact in my head (diseases tend to become less debilitating/fatal as time goes on) but with a different bit of (equally "obvious"?) natural selection as the explanation: a disease which keeps its host alive and even healthy will be more successful at spreading than one which incapacitates and/or kills its host during the period when the host is infectious. While it is true that dead bodies can be a vector for the spread of disease, a living host can potentially spread the disease for much longer.
In fact, to anthropomorphize the disease a little, the goal it should strive for is not to cause any negative reactions in the host (which implicitly means it can't be triggering the immune system to attack it), and so to benignly infect every human on the planet from now until doomsday. For real overachieving diseases, they should strive to form a symbiotic relationship with the host so that there is selective pressure against being "immune" to the disease, as well as against lifestyle choices that are detrimental to the disease's population in the host. (Of course, when it no longer causes any negative effects in the host, we usually don't call it a disease anymore.)
Re:Not a hard prediction (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm not a believer in many things, so call me a sceptic that has an open mind. I'm still convinced though that there is *something* paranormal at work with some people's minds. The average tea-room women, probably not. But every now and then you get someone who's predictions are too good, too spot-on time after time, that there is most likely something at work there. Then you've got the remote-viewers; some of them had success rates so good both the Russians and the Americans employed them in the Cold War (and probably still do) to telepathically spy on the enemies missile bases.
You've then got empaths; people that can sense the mood of a group or a crowd, sometimes even affect it.
Sure, these paranormal abilities are damned rare, and most claiming them are fakers. But I think there are at least a handful of genuine freaks out there. Probably something like 1 in 5 million or the like.
Homeopathy? Yeah, it's a scam. But as I said, I think everyone has a latent ability that only that 1 in however million can actually consciously use. So maybe in the few documented cases where homeopathy has worked, it's just someone tapping into their paranormal talent and not knowing it.
Either way, some proper research from a reputable scientist that isn't setting out to disprove psychic abilities, just wants to see if anything is happenin, would be really nice.
Re:Is this going to lead to racial profiling? (Score:3, Interesting)
The lack of deaths in the US is promising. The flu is being reported as much milder outside Mexico. Not to jump the gun too much, but it's possible the deadliest strain of the flu killed itself off by being too severe. Leaving a much weaker (but higher fitness from an evolutionary perspective) version to make its way around the world.
Re:A better idea (Score:2, Interesting)
to anthropomorphize the disease a little, the goal it should strive for is not to cause any negative reactions in the host
Not necessarily. If the disease spreads through droplets, then it will spread faster if the host sneezes or coughs (colds, flu). If the disease spreads through saliva, then it will spread faster if the host bites another host (rabies). If a parasite has to pass from an insect to an herbivore, then the parasite is more likely to propagate if the insect goes to sit on the herbivore's favourite food.