There are few "breathless headlines" about Lambda. Though notably it is the overwhelming dominant strain in Peru and other South American countries, having completely crowded out Delta and other variants.
I'm not a medical expert. I'm not a statistical expert. I don't purport any expertise or useful knowledge in those areas. But after millions of deaths and a complete worldwide changing of how we work, play and so on, it is remarkable how often HN discussions still fall to media blaming, incant accusations of fear mongering, etc.
If one were to believe the dominant HN commentary through virtually all of this pandemic, it has always been an overblown nothingburger, etc.
The media has done has a much better job at accurately informing than the comments that usually rise to the top in any HN-related discussion.
(to the point that I think any COVID related discussions should be flagged off HN at first sighting. There are a lot of spectacularly misinformed people on here who just muddy the waters with noise, and the net effect is always just misinformation)
The media has done a shit job of informing people without being wrong per se. The coverage usually goes like this:
Things are getting bad in [location]! Hospitals are overcrowding (no information on how many beds and how long until disaster). Here's some disconnected but scary stats. [x] people were admitted to the hospital this weekend in a sudden surge (no information on how many were admitted before, thus impossible to judge the magnitude of the "surge"). [y]% people tested positive this week (no information on how many tests were given, who was able to get tests, or anything about the methodology that would make this data useful). Now for an interview with some stupid person who wishes they listened to us earlier. If you ignore the restrictions, this will happen to you! Stay tuned.
All of it was factual but none of it was informative. The news is the noise!
It really got to a point where if you wanted to actually know anything about the severity of the situation, how long it would last, how much risk you are facing per trip outside etc then you had to download the data from the NIH/CDC and plot it yourself. The media should have been doing that for me. They were derelict in their duty.
For some media organizations the fear mongering accusation is true, others much less. I agree it's tiresome to tar them all with the same brush. Of course everyone needs to treat sources of information with a bit of healthy scepticism.
On the COVID theme, it does remind me of an all hands call at my company with a quite senior person during the early days of the pandemic. At one point, we were confidently told that the 20,000 deaths Sky News were reporting as possible was "fake news" and the media was scaring everyone. Well, we know how that turned out (hint, the Sky News figure was around x6 too little).
I thought at the time it was a bold statement given no one really had any idea how the pandemic would progress.
I'm not a medical expert. I'm not a statistical expert. I don't purport any expertise or useful knowledge in those areas. But after millions of deaths and a complete worldwide changing of how we work, play and so on, it is remarkable how often HN discussions still fall to media blaming, incant accusations of fear mongering, etc.
If one were to believe the dominant HN commentary through virtually all of this pandemic, it has always been an overblown nothingburger, etc.
The media has done has a much better job at accurately informing than the comments that usually rise to the top in any HN-related discussion.
(to the point that I think any COVID related discussions should be flagged off HN at first sighting. There are a lot of spectacularly misinformed people on here who just muddy the waters with noise, and the net effect is always just misinformation)