Coronavirus Update 4

The New York Times reports on how the delay in large scale testing blinded the US to what was going on. From what I can tell, the US is still unable to test, leaving the US significantly blinded to what it is dealing with. The incompetence is staggering. The NYT writes:

“WASHINGTON — Early on, the dozen federal officials charged with defending America against the coronavirus gathered day after day in the White House Situation Room, consumed by crises. They grappled with how to evacuate the United States consulate in Wuhan, China, ban Chinese travelers and extract Americans from the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships. 

The members of the coronavirus task force typically devoted only five or 10 minutes, often at the end of contentious meetings, to talk about testing, several participants recalled. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its leaders assured the others, had developed a diagnostic model that would be rolled out quickly as a first step. 

But as the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels, according to interviews with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives. 

The result was a lost month, when the world’s richest country — armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists — squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe.”

The president’s claim that anyone who wanted a test could get it was yet another of the president’s thousands false public statements. His incompetence will probably lead to thousands of deaths that could possibly have been avoided if he was competent at the beginning. It is too late for that now.


The NYT also reports on far right crackpots who are attacking the government scientist Antony Fauci for contradicting the president. This is true dark free speech-driven authoritarianism-fascism raising its ugly head. The NYT writes:

“At a White House briefing on the coronavirus on March 20, President Trump called the State Department the “Deep State Department.” Behind him, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dropped his head and rubbed his forehead.  

Some thought Dr. Fauci was slighting the president, leading to a vitriolic online reaction. On Twitter and Facebook, a post that falsely claimed he was part of a secret cabal who opposed Mr. Trump was soon shared thousands of times, reaching roughly 1.5 million people. 

A week later, Dr. Fauci — the administration’s most outspoken advocate of emergency measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak — has become the target of an online conspiracy theory that he is mobilizing to undermine the president. 

That fanciful claim has spread across social media, fanned by a right-wing chorus of Mr. Trump’s supporters, even as Dr. Fauci has won a public following for his willingness to contradict the president and correct falsehoods and overly rosy pronouncements about containing the virus.”

The NYT also comments that their analysis found more than 70 Twitter accounts promoting the hashtag #FauciFraud. Some tweet up to 795 times a day. This crackpot sentiment is coming from posts by Tom Fitton, the president of radical right Judicial Watch group and outspoken Trump supporters including Shiva Ayyadurai, who falsely claimed to have invented email. Crackpots and purveyors of dark free speech are coming out of the woodwork with a vengeance.

In another article, the NYT describes the overwhelming of the health care system in New York city. Emergency workers there are starting to have to make life-or-death decisions in deciding who goes to a hospital, and who isn't because they appear to be well enough to be left at home. The hospitals can take only the most sick. The NYT wrote: “‘It’s all a war zone,’ one of the paramedics said. .... ‘I honestly don’t know if I’m going to survive. I’m terrified of what I’ve already possibly brought home.’”

Finally, an article in The Intercept reveals the incredible self-centered narcissism our president and by extension, the rest of us have to suffer with. TI’s article, In Exchange for Aid, Trump Wants Praise From Governors He Can Use in Campaign Ads, comments: “AS HE INCREASINGLY tries to shovel blame for the shortage of medical supplies onto the governors of states with densely populated areas that are suffering the most from the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump was asked on Friday what more he wants them to do. It was, he said, ‘very simple: I want them to be appreciative.’”

This 4-minute video on C-Span shows the president telling governors to be nice to him, even while he attacks them. The president’s pathological self-centeredness could not be much clearer.

It is fair to say that things are not going well on the coronavirus front. America still cannot do large-scale testing. Our president remains clueless about what is happening or how to respond to it. He cannot even deal responsibly with legitimate criticism from state leaders that his incompetence has more or less abandoned to their fates.

Book Review: Invitation to Sociology

Politics is a complex and important aspect of humanity. Even after decades of study through various branches of science, however, our understanding of the human elements of politics is still incomplete. Over time, however, a picture is slowly coming into a degree of focus. Research from Research from a variety of fields including history, evolutionary biology, cognitive biology, neuroscience, economics, political science, psychology and philosophy are all being brought to bear and, increasingly, all inform one another to some extent.

Another discipline that affords a different and important viewpoint through which one can analyze politics is sociology. That discipline attempts to understand the nature and origins of social institutions such as marriage, religion, law, and politics – or more broadly, society. In his 1963 book, Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (Anchor Books, 176 pages), sociologist Peter Berger describes some basic sociological concepts and their social importance to literally invite students to consider sociology as a career. His book is thus not intended to be a textbook or to advocate new theory. As Berger puts it, “this book is to be read, not studied.” For people not familiar with sociology, this book can convey nothing short of a major epiphany about human society and the individual’s place in it.

The influence of Berger's work should not be overlooked. Writing in 1990 on the impact of Berger's book, sociologist Kevin Christiano writing in 1990 commented that “as a publishing feat, Invitation has proved monumental; as an intellectual statement, its impact has been felt around the world.” It may be the case that another introductory sociology book has come along, but after reading it from this non-sociologist’s point of view, it is hard to see how much more powerful and influential it could be. Invitation can fairly be called an outstanding work of nonfiction. It is still used as an introductory textbook in at least some universities.

Despite being published fifty-five years ago, Invitation presents a view of a discipline that was, from this reviewer’s point of view, surprisingly advanced and sophisticated. The fundamental concepts that Berger discusses remain valid, although they are more refined and may be viewed differently by professionals.

Berger offers one vision of society as a prison that imposes more constraints on perceived choice and even consciousness than most people realize. Berger describes mechanisms of social control and the role of social institutions in exerting control. For example, he cites a situation where an unmarried couple conceive a baby. In Western society, the marriage social structure dictates marriage as the accepted social norm with all the trappings including florist, church wedding, engagement and wedding rings and so forth. Berger points out that none of those are mandatory, but many people cannot see that or are trapped by social norms they do not want to violate. Society, as a general rule, discourages socially unacceptable options such as running from the ceremony, arranging to have the child brought up by friends, or entering into a common law marriage. Of course, these days non-traditional marriages have become more acceptable than was the case in 1963.

Here, Berger asserts that “society not only controls our movements, but shapes our identity, our thought, and our emotions.” Social institutions are therefore, to a significant extent, “structures of our own consciousness.” From a personal freedom point of view, that seems a rather harsh vision of society and social institutions. In this scenario, humans are puppets being moved by invisible social strings, and we have little control.

In another, more accurate vision of society, Berger describes society as a stage on which individuals play their roles and have choices within the constraints of social norms. People can game the system or can play as society intends the rule to work. There is more personal freedom. One can attempt to escape society's tyranny using tactics such as “manipulation”, which is the deliberate use of social institutions in unforeseen ways. Using work equipment and time for personal purposes is one such example. Another path to freedom is a “detachment” from society, which is a mental withdrawal from the social stage, wherein an individual retreats into a religious, intellectual, or another fulfilling, self-interested pursuit. By doing this, “it is possible, though frequently at considerable psychological cost, to build for oneself a castle of the mind in which the day-to-day expectations of society can be almost completely ignored.”

Although the limits that society and social norms impose are daunting, maybe even depressing, Berger asserts that achieving sociological self-awareness offers at least a partial way out. “Unlike puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step toward freedom.”

Sociology and politics: Looking at politics from a sociological point of view affords a useful way to understand politics. Sociology can shed light on the role of society including various groups or tribes, who invariably construct their own social norms, perceptions and ways of thinking.

The power of roles that people play to are shaped by social institutions. For example, military draftees have to assume a new role, which Berger describes as an identity change process: “The same process occurs whenever a whole group of individuals is to be ‘broken’ and made to accept a new definition of themselves. . . . . This view tells us that man plays dramatic parts in the grand play of society, and that, speaking sociologically, he is the masks he must wear to do so.” Berger asserts that identity-breaking is prevalent in totalitarian groups or organizations. That affords a glimpse of the power that manipulating or “breaking” society can have in service to the tyrant-kleptocrat.

Establishing a political and religious ideology can also shape politics to a significant extent. Berger comments: “Sociologists speak of ‘ideology’ in discussing views that serve to rationalize the vested interests of some group. Very frequently, such views systematically distort social reality in much the same way that an individual may neurotically deny, deform or reinterpret aspects of his life that are inconvenient to him. . . . . the ideas by which men explain their actions are unmasked as self-deception, sales talk, the kind of ‘sincerity’ that David Riesman has aptly described as the state of mind of a man who habitually believes his own propaganda.”

Social science research since Berger wrote in 1963 has continued to document and reinforce knowledge that adhering to political and religious ideologies is a powerful distorter of both reality and facts, influencing the logic we apply to what we think we see. The situation of people dealing with politics was recently described as “infantile”, not because people are stupid. Instead, politics is generally too complex and opaque for our minds to process reality as it is even if we were not so biased and socially constrained. Seeing politics through a lens of one or more ideologies frames reality and reason. In turn, that is a basis that allows simplifying matters to make them coherent and consonant with ideological belief. The process of simplifying and generating coherence and ideological consonance happens unconsciously for the most part. That is an aspect of innate human cognitive biology, not a criticism of the human condition.

When sociological effects and pressures are brought to bear by political leaders, that biology can be powerfully manipulated by social pressures to shape and reinforce false realities often based on flawed conscious reason. Berger argues that politicians know how to manipulate social conditions to achieve their ends. He argues that “sociological understanding is inimical to revolutionary ideologies, not because it has some sort of conservative bias, but because it not only sees through the illusions of the present status quo but also through the illusionary expectations concerning possible futures, such expectations being the customary spiritual nourishment of the revolutionary.”

The anti-revolutionary aspect of sociology is not lost on tyrants: “Total respectability of thought, however, will invariably mean the death of sociology. This is one of the reasons why genuine sociology disappears promptly from the scene in totalitarian countries, as well illustrated in the instance of Nazi Germany. By implication, sociological understanding is always potentially dangerous in the hands of policemen and other guardians of public order, since it will always tend to relativize the claim to absolute rightness upon which such minds like to rest.”

The power of ideology to distort and bias reality and reason, and to help pave a path to power for the tyrant-kleptocrat is not in dispute among cognitive and social scientists. Perfect anti-biasing is not possible, because the human mind cannot operate that way. Nonetheless, partial debiasing has been associated with what has been interpreted to be more rational and pragmatic, less ideological mindsets.

Berger speaks to the possibility of a ‘non-ideological’ mindset for politics: “One cannot fully grasp the political world unless one understands it as a confidence game, or the stratification system unless one sees it as a costume party. . . . . Finally, there is a peculiar human value in the sociologist’s responsibility for evaluating his findings, as far as he is psychologically able, without regard to his own prejudices likes or dislikes, hopes or fears. . . . . To be motivated by human needs rather than by grandiose political programs, to commit oneself selectively and economically rather than to consecrate oneself to a totalitarian faith, to be skeptical and compassionate at the same time, to seek to understand without bias, all these are existential possibilities of the sociological enterprise that can hardly be overrated in many situations in the contemporary world. In this way, sociology can attain to the dignity of political relevance, not because it has a particular political ideology to offer, but just because it has not.”[1] (emphasis added)

In other words, Berger could see in 1963 through the lens of sociology, what a psychologist like Philip Tetlock described in 2015 about the mindset among people best able to deal with reality. Apparently, others can envision that an anti-bias mindset could be helpful for politics.

Culture Shock is Hard: If the aforementioned makes it sound like sociology is an unsettling and maybe dangerous point of view, it is. Berger was concerned about the ethics of even teaching it to college undergraduates: “What right does any man have to shake the taken-for-granted beliefs of others? Why educate young people to see the precariousness of things they had assumed to be absolutely solid? Why introduce them to the subtle erosion of critical thought?”

He answers his own questions in part by arguing that “the taken-for-granted are far too solidly entrenched in consciousness to be that easily shaken by, say, a couple of sophomore courses. ‘Culture shock’ is not induced that readily.” In other words, mindsets do not easily change. Teaching a couple of sociology courses to undergraduates will not faze them in their rock solid beliefs.

And therein lies a potential problem for the evidence-driven, anti-bias mindset advocated here. In essence, asking that people adopt an anti-bias mindset in an effort to partially rationalize politics could constitute a culture shock, at least for many or most political and/or religious ideologues. Maybe it is the case that few minds could ever accede to that mindset because it is so hard to override biology and social milieu. That leaves non-ideologues, moderates and pragmatists as minds most possibly open to at least hearing about a different way of seeing and thinking about politics.


Footnote:
1. Berger's observation of there being value in not having an ideology to bias or distort reality and reason and to defend led to my conception of pragmatic rationalism as an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology.


B&B orig: 10/24/18; DP 8/7/19, 3/29/20

Assessing Fact Accuracy of Information Sources: MBFC

Saddlebill stork

I routinely use Media Bias/Fact Check primarily to look for the fact reliability of a site. It is also useful to get a feel for how biased a site is. I've checked probably about 40 different sites over the years using MBFC. Their fact accuracy ratings seem to reasonably correspond with the content a source puts out. For that reason, I tend to accept their ratings a reasonably good indicator of a source's quality. For example, the New York Times gets a high accuracy rating with a center-left bias.

Some very biased sources get high or very high fact accuracy ratings, but the extreme sites tend to get mixed or lower fact ratings. Propaganda sites such as RT News tend to get mixed or lower fact accuracy ratings. MBFC comments: “Overall, we rate RT Questionable based on promoting pro-Russian propaganda, promotion of conspiracy theories, numerous failed fact checks and a lack of author transparency.”  RT was given a very low fact accuracy rating.

 

Given all of the sites out there and all of the misinformation, I tend to distrust and ignore sites with a mixed, low or very low fact accuracy rating. Occasionally one of those sites get the facts of a story right, but the info needs to be verified by other sources. That takes time.

Often when a source a person relies on has a low or very low fact accuracy rating, I that point out and link to the MBFC assessment. The most common response to that is a direct attack on MBFC as a biased, lying, amateur and/or bullshit operation funded by George Soros, the Koch Brothers, Hitler, Stalin, etc. This discussion is here to provide me with a link I can use when someone’s sacred ox gets gored and complaining instantly erupts over how awful MBFC is.

Criticisms addressed

Criticism 1: David Van Zandt has been criticized as a democratic, republican or whatever else propagandist because he is the head of the New School, whatever that is. Van Zandt says this about that: “Dave is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence based reporting. For the record, he also is not the President of the New School, that is a different Dave Van Zandt.” MBFC was founded in 2015 by van Zandt.

Criticism 2: Donors control the fact and bias ratings thus the entire MBFC site is nothing but a steaming pile of lies and biased propaganda that either must be ignored or civilization will collapse. I wrote to van Zandt yesterday asking about who his main donors are. He responded with this: “Long story short is we do not have large donors to list. We primarily (95%) generate revenue through 3rd party advertising (ie. Google Adsense, we don't pick the ads). We will not be found on Charity Navigator because we are not a charity. We are a for profit or at least break even enterprise.”

Here's that part of the email string.

Van Zandt also emailed me that he put up a page on funding after I raised the issue of funding and it's use as an excuse to dismiss MBFC as reliable: “You're welcome! I seriously thank you. Your mail was the one that got me motivated enough to put up a funding page. Here it is"

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/funding/

Dave”

Criticism 3: A post on the Columbia Journalism Review bitterly criticized van Zandt as an amateur armchair analyst who doesn't know diddly about squat and he should be shot dead and his estate billed for the bullet and the assassin’s expenses and service charges. Well, OK, the article didn't say anything about being shot dead, but the tone of it was consistent with that. It was a vicious attack by an arrogant academic, Tamara Wilmer, that takes herself far too seriously.

It turns out, that the CJR hit piece criticized van Zandt’s bias ratings, not his fact accuracy ratings. The CJR article, We can probably measure media bias. But do we want to?, includes this: “The armchair academics: Amateur attempts at such tools already exist, and have found plenty of fans. Google “media bias,” and you’ll find Media Bias/Fact Check, run by armchair media analyst Dave Van Zandt. The site’s methodology is simple: Van Zandt and his team rate each outlet from 0 to 10 on the categories of biased wording and headlines, factuality and sourcing, story choices (“does the source report news from both sides”), and political affiliation.

A similar effort is “The Media Bias Chart,” or simply, “The Chart.” Created by Colorado patent attorney Vanessa Otero, the chart has gone through several methodological iterations, but currently is based on her evaluation of outlets’ stories on dimensions of veracity, fairness, and expression.

Both efforts suffer from the very problem they’re trying to address: Their subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production.”

I wrote to the CJR editors and complained about the crappiness of Wilmer’s hit piece. They never responded back. I take that as evidence that my criticisms of Wilmer are valid.

MBFC says this about its bias ratings: “When determining bias, there isn’t any true scientific formula that is 100% objective. There are objective measures that can be calculated, but ultimately there will be some degree of subjective judgement to determine these. On each page we have put up a scale with a yellow dot that shows the degree of bias for each source. Each page also has a “detailed report” section that gives some details about the source and an explanation of their bias. When calculating bias we are not just looking at political bias, but also how factual the information is and if they provide links to credible, verifiable sources. Therefore, the yellow dot may indicate political bias or how factual a source is, or in many cases, both.”

When I compare MBFC’s bias ratings with how I would rate a site, the two are about the same most of the time. In my opinion, Ms. Wilner’s criticism doesn't amount to a hill of beans. She demands high level precision in something that has inherent subjectivity in it. Van Zandt admits this and that’s about the best that can be done.

Also, bias is much less important than fact accuracy. For most people, it is often easier to spot and deal with bias, e.g., loaded words and phrases, than it is to spot flawed reasoning, lies and partisan, misleading statements about facts, which are often subtle.

Conclusion

In my opinion, MBFC is a reliable source to get a good feel for both the fact accuracy and bias for many news and information sites. For people who don't want to believe MBFC, that is their choice. I will continue to rely on MBFC.

IRREVERENCE

AS per the OPs I put on my own Forum today, I am in an irreverent mood:

adjective: irreverent
showing a lack of respect for people or things that are generally taken seriously.

Put it down to being over-saturated by Covid 19 news, as IF there is NOTHING else happening in the world. OR put it down to having partied too hardily (is that a word?) last night.

In the age of Covid 19, Trump, Rightwing conspiracies, major angst and paranoia, sometimes we need something to chill on.

Alas, we shouldn't be chilling on Corona beer:




As for the TP problem, if Americans weren't SO full of 


we wouldn't have to worry about TP hoarding.

So with Germaine's permission (after all, he is a very serious sort, that is, I THINK Germaine is a "he"), I would invite peeps to post something

Just to help us get over our angst and paranoia!


CHEERS

Parallel Coronavirus Universes: Fox and Non-Fox

Cactus in bloom

Over the last week or so, I've spent some time each day watching Fox News and comparing that to what other cable and non-cable sources are reporting about the pandemic. There is almost no overlap in coronavirus coverage. Each day, Fox downplays the coronavirus infection and heavily criticizes democrats for all sorts of things, especially exaggerating the seriousness of the disease. There was no criticism of Trump by Fox for anything, just endless hyperbolic praise. Any problems are 100% the fault of democrats, the fake news media and whoever or whatever else can be blamed, even if the blame is a lie, a non-sequitur or otherwise makes no sense.

In several interviews on non-Fox outlets, Ezra Klein of Vox mentioned poll data showing that during times when the president downplayed the pandemic, democrats were hoarding toilet paper and sanitizing hand, body and surface wipes but republicans were not. But after the president finally started saying that the pandemic was real and serious, both democrats and some republicans were hoarding. For people siloed in the Fox News and other partisan pro-Trump source universe, they hear essentially nothing about the infection that the non-Fox universe is hearing. They constantly hear that Trump has done the best job any human ever could.

Words, including lies and deceit, have real world consequences.

According to fact checkers, statements by Trump about the pandemic and his handling of it are heavily larded with false statements, misleading statements and vastly exaggerated praise for himself for his brilliant handling of the situation.

Thus, some people who are ignoring public health calls for social distancing and staying at home are not taking this seriously. Some of them may see this as an opportunity to do some shopping while the stores aren't crowded. The information sources they trust, especially the president himself and Fox, are telling them to not worry about this. They have a license from authoritative sources to do business mostly or completely as usual.

All in all, it now seems reasonable to call this the Trump virus or Trumpvirus since he has made things worse. His incompetence, lies and deceit are going to come home to roost. More Americans than would have been the case if the president had acted with competence and honesty are going to die or suffer serious economic damage.

It is now too late for the president to stop the death and economic damage that could have been avoided had he been competent and honest. Because of that, it is fair and balanced to call it the Trumpvirus.


Question: Is it unfair or hyperbolic to shift this much blame to the president?

A “moral imperative” or just the “American way of life?”

Well, I have another personal story to share. :(

I tell you, while I don’t dare say anything to them, in order to keep peace in the family, I’m so disappointed in my so-called “highly educated” step-sons/daughters-in-law (all four have bachelor’s degrees, one has a master’s degree).  All four are devout Christians and Republicans (read still Trump) supporters.  Three of them have an outside-the-home job and one is a home school teacher—granted, she does have credentials for that.  Their ages are 47, 54, 54, & 56.  I.e., they are not unthinking, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants “kids” anymore.

Yesterday, I was again included in on a text msg between the two families.  Here’s a screen-shot with some redactions.  And btw, one of the families has an 80-ish year old mother living in their residence:

A few questions:

-While I can completely understand necessary trips outside the home (doctor, pharmacy, hopefully curb-side pickup at the grocery store), when a person is literally being paid to stay home and out of the public domain, is there not an ethical duty, a moral imperative, to follow that statewide order? 

-And as practicing Christians, isn’t that moral responsibility even more pronounced?

-As offspring of an aging parent/step-parent (their dad and me), what does that say about lack of deference to (especially seniors’) health concerns?

-Are such non-compliant people part of the larger coronavirus problem, rather than any part of the solution?

-As I so often wonder, is it just me who’s all effed up?? :(

Please explain my stepkids’ mindsets to me, as I don’t get it.