Study: Healthcare experts and academics on Twitter wildly overstated the risk of Monkeypox to children, drowned out more reasonable and less sensational assessments
Study: Healthcare experts and academics on Twitter wildly overstated the risk of Monkeypox to children, drowned out more reasonable and less sensational assessments
It's true of every facet of the chattering classes that they promote panic and hysteria before anything else. I work outside so I'm very conscious of weather forecast and I find the whole thing so maddening because, every day, if there's going to be anything besides blue skies it's always severe! dangerous! and then the reality 99.9% of the time is a drizzle or nothing. The seriously happens almost every day it's unbelievable it's just infuriating
Scaring people is so much more FUN than rational advice. Even more FUN is scaring parents about hysterical threats to their children.
I know many, many people who now avoid doctors in favor of a sensible diet, reasonable exercise, lots of vitamins (particularly Vitamin D), and the rest is a crap shoot.
Oh, and stay the hell away from NYC and California.
“Experts, far from being impartial oracles, are in fact self-interested careerists,...”. Yep, this phenomenon is not new, but merely an adaptation to social media technology. Decades ago we began to see such in “scientific” journal publications, albeit tempered through the process of peer review. What I believe it illustrates is not so much self interested careerists—which is true—but the mediocrity of the “experts”. Just because you have some academic credentials behind your name does not mean you know/understand your field. This I find true especially of “MD’s”, who are less scientists and more technicians these days. By technicians, I mean folks who rigorously follow a “standard of care” in patient treatment handed down from above by Boards established in their sub fields—mindlessly and without question. We saw this with Covid where hive mind mediocrity caused the deaths of 100’s of thousands.
In addition, when wildly inflating the risks for something that isn't risky, it creates a set of perverse incentives. People cannot easily call out the poor forecaster for being alarmist - one can retreat to the idea of "It was a credible threat, it just didn't materialize, but it was still important to be cautious" or the other which is "It was due to the vigorous alarm that was raised that this emergency was avoided." I genuinely would like to see a system of sort of "registering forecasts" and that when you go to opine on what the future holds, you have to register your forecast in a place that can't be deleted, and then you will be held accountable by others based on whether your forecast was accurate or not. I know this seems like it's cumbersome, but the way that people breathlessly forecast the future, when they know nothing about it, then promptly turn around and say "I was just speculating like everyone else" is horrific. Since we won't change human behavior to exploit this mechanism, I would love to see a collaborative effort to change this dynamic. When people forecast the future, tell them to stop. When people make predictions, tell them you aren't interested, but you will hold them accountable if they are wrong. If we want to have an opt in system of "people that are betting on what will happen", fine. Those folks can engage in vigorous debate with each other as to their visions of the future. But having healthcare professionals come in and spend months / years scaremongering about Zika or Monkeypox, that should have consequences for their academic and professional credibility.
In the same way that we don't listen to weather forecasters that cannot forecast the weather, why would we listen to future forecasters that can't forecast the future?
this is why I do not go on twitter. How can you possibly check who is who? When Geert VanDenBosch started writing, you can look him up. He is on the site of the university where he is teaching.
I’ve been conned by these dumbass experts, and retweeted doomsday crap that never came to pass. I felt foolish and stupid afterwards, and it lead me to become hypercritical to everyone and is the reason I didn’t get caught up in Covid like so many. But that was me--how many of these other retweets and likes are leading to the account holders to re-evaluate how they consume and trust information? These people are giving themselves a totalitarian mind, described by Orwell and Ray Bradbury as “we’re at war with Oceania, we’ve always been at war with Oceania” mind talk.
May 18, 2023·edited May 18, 2023Liked by eugyppius
I had to take my eldest daughter to an N-H-S accident and emergency unit recently. All went well, until I noticed a warning dated June 2022 about the WHO Minki-pox event. A tad out of date, or as the N-H-S calls it, the future.
This is a serious disease in some parts of the world, but by no means all.
Yet another dose of incredible incompetence from those who seek to lead us all.
Who's going to tell WHO Director General of General Direction, Tedros-Tedros Adhanom Tedros Ghebreyesus Tedros?
Anthony Fauci was reported to have stepped down from directorship of NIAID in December 2022, and reports had Hotez in contention as his replacement. But the NIAID website still lists Fauci as Director.
Experts are regime court eunuchs. Unfortunately many doctors abandoned the Hippocratic oath for expert hysteria. Here is a demoralized email exchange I had with doctors in my family: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-do-no-harm-part-3?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Mpox is an STD. End of story.
Get well soon Eugyppius
It's true of every facet of the chattering classes that they promote panic and hysteria before anything else. I work outside so I'm very conscious of weather forecast and I find the whole thing so maddening because, every day, if there's going to be anything besides blue skies it's always severe! dangerous! and then the reality 99.9% of the time is a drizzle or nothing. The seriously happens almost every day it's unbelievable it's just infuriating
And did you know that more than 12 BILLION Americans have pnemenultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconeosis, and DON'T EVEN KNOW IT?
Scaring people is so much more FUN than rational advice. Even more FUN is scaring parents about hysterical threats to their children.
I know many, many people who now avoid doctors in favor of a sensible diet, reasonable exercise, lots of vitamins (particularly Vitamin D), and the rest is a crap shoot.
Oh, and stay the hell away from NYC and California.
“Experts, far from being impartial oracles, are in fact self-interested careerists,...”. Yep, this phenomenon is not new, but merely an adaptation to social media technology. Decades ago we began to see such in “scientific” journal publications, albeit tempered through the process of peer review. What I believe it illustrates is not so much self interested careerists—which is true—but the mediocrity of the “experts”. Just because you have some academic credentials behind your name does not mean you know/understand your field. This I find true especially of “MD’s”, who are less scientists and more technicians these days. By technicians, I mean folks who rigorously follow a “standard of care” in patient treatment handed down from above by Boards established in their sub fields—mindlessly and without question. We saw this with Covid where hive mind mediocrity caused the deaths of 100’s of thousands.
In addition, when wildly inflating the risks for something that isn't risky, it creates a set of perverse incentives. People cannot easily call out the poor forecaster for being alarmist - one can retreat to the idea of "It was a credible threat, it just didn't materialize, but it was still important to be cautious" or the other which is "It was due to the vigorous alarm that was raised that this emergency was avoided." I genuinely would like to see a system of sort of "registering forecasts" and that when you go to opine on what the future holds, you have to register your forecast in a place that can't be deleted, and then you will be held accountable by others based on whether your forecast was accurate or not. I know this seems like it's cumbersome, but the way that people breathlessly forecast the future, when they know nothing about it, then promptly turn around and say "I was just speculating like everyone else" is horrific. Since we won't change human behavior to exploit this mechanism, I would love to see a collaborative effort to change this dynamic. When people forecast the future, tell them to stop. When people make predictions, tell them you aren't interested, but you will hold them accountable if they are wrong. If we want to have an opt in system of "people that are betting on what will happen", fine. Those folks can engage in vigorous debate with each other as to their visions of the future. But having healthcare professionals come in and spend months / years scaremongering about Zika or Monkeypox, that should have consequences for their academic and professional credibility.
In the same way that we don't listen to weather forecasters that cannot forecast the weather, why would we listen to future forecasters that can't forecast the future?
this is why I do not go on twitter. How can you possibly check who is who? When Geert VanDenBosch started writing, you can look him up. He is on the site of the university where he is teaching.
Speedy recovery, E!
Can’t believe monkey pox is still getting any attention. Given the at-risk demographic & how it is transmitted, it wasn’t just children @ “0” risk.
I’ve been conned by these dumbass experts, and retweeted doomsday crap that never came to pass. I felt foolish and stupid afterwards, and it lead me to become hypercritical to everyone and is the reason I didn’t get caught up in Covid like so many. But that was me--how many of these other retweets and likes are leading to the account holders to re-evaluate how they consume and trust information? These people are giving themselves a totalitarian mind, described by Orwell and Ray Bradbury as “we’re at war with Oceania, we’ve always been at war with Oceania” mind talk.
Homemade chicken soup, some Calabrese bread on the side, and then 2 shots of Jägermeister (56 different herbs), and then a nap.
Repeat as necessary.
Get well...
DingDing and his loathsome ilk remind of the 1 year olds screaming for attention and throwing food all over.
I had to take my eldest daughter to an N-H-S accident and emergency unit recently. All went well, until I noticed a warning dated June 2022 about the WHO Minki-pox event. A tad out of date, or as the N-H-S calls it, the future.
This is a serious disease in some parts of the world, but by no means all.
Yet another dose of incredible incompetence from those who seek to lead us all.
Who's going to tell WHO Director General of General Direction, Tedros-Tedros Adhanom Tedros Ghebreyesus Tedros?
'Experts…are in fact self-interested careerists'
Case in point: Peter Hotez, in a 2018 paper about self-promotion for scientists, 'Crafting your scientist brand' https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000024
Anthony Fauci was reported to have stepped down from directorship of NIAID in December 2022, and reports had Hotez in contention as his replacement. But the NIAID website still lists Fauci as Director.
sound like COVID cough to me. Did you get tested? Have you had COVID before?