Media and Economic argument

People have a difficult time differentiating between NPR News and the other programming (editorial, entertainment) you will hear on a public radio station. That content is produced by many different entities, including NPR.

I don’t watch PBS news so I have no opinion on it.

When the U.S. economy was in the midst of breaking nearly all historical records for growth, joblessness, employment, and growth for all races and genders over a multiyear period, should that not be a repeating top story?

Except none of this was true. There were numerous times in our history the economy grew at a faster rate. In fact, almost every single year under President Obama.

Fox is so biased it borders on ridiculous. To call Fox a "neutral" news source defies credibility. 

Straw man's argument.  
I do not ignore true experts' opinions. But I never base my actions around what one "expert" says. And I never base my actions around what experts in one field say without stepping back and evaluating how it fits into the larger framework.

I hire experts all the time, including infectious disease experts, and I depose experts all of the time, including infectious disease experts.  A lot of "experts" are anything but.  And usually an opinion costs a lot of money and is ultimately biased based upon who is paying for such opinion.  Because, if the payor does not like an opinion, the payor will simply find a new expert to issue a second opinion, which will be the one that is published.

By way of an example, I got into a discussion about global warming's impact upon climate change.  I tend to believe in man-made global warming based upon experts and data; however, a lot of the corollary opinions related to climate change are nonsensical scare tactics advanced by "experts," masquerading as "science."  I challenged a relative's assertion once that forest fires were related to climate change and the retort was here are what two "experts" have to say.  I read the article and the data.  First, the "experts" had no background in environmental science or forestry or anything of the sort.  They were just statisticians.  Second, in order for the statisticians to get a positive correlation between global warming and forest fires, they had to completely disregard the first half of the data.  They gave no reason for doing so.  Ignoring half of the data, they were able to show that global warming caused more acres of forest to be burned.  The p value that they arrived at was around .25.  Despite this, they were able to publish the paper tying global warming to forest fires.  Then, I had to explain to my relative why the paper that they had from "experts" was not actually from "experts" and the data actually supported the alternative proposition, namely that there is no correlation between climate change and forest fires.

Someone on this board recently posted an article about coronavirus written by a pediatrician (not about how coronavirus affects children, where she might have some expertise but just about coronavirus in general).  How in the world that woman was an expert on anything coronavirus-related is still beyond me.

In law, an expert's opinion can be helpful in coming to a conclusion, but an expert's opinion is never determinative as to what that conclusion is or should be.  Experts often lack the background necessary to form the opinion that they are asserting.  Moreover, Even if an expert has a background that would help form an opinion, an expert is human.  He or she can be wrong.  What I see all to often on here (and in the media) is someone citing to one expert without figuring out whether an expert knows what the heck he or she is talking about.  They then compound that by basically asserting, "See, here is what an expert says."  Further, that expert is usually only well-versed in one field and it ignores all of the other fields and the experts in those fields that should simultaneously be opining to give people the proper framework to evaluate the first expert's opinion.  However, that rarely happens.

Finally, no one is an expert on coronavirus.  Experts may have knowledge superior to us about say SARS-1 and be able to form opinions based on such knowledge, but, outside of Dr. Fauci, I do not hear from any of them.  They can base opinions based on their knowledge of how SARS-1 is like SARS-2 (coronavirus), but those two diseases' are very different with how each is spread.  However, instead, I hear from pediatricians or statisticians or people with the title doctor that have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

Obviously, due diligence is important. Too many people out there simply want to go against whatever the experts have told them.

As an example, my son has been working for a radiation oncology unit, and in his time there he has seen patients come in who simply want to defy what the doctors have told them. “God told me that it will be OK if I stop.” “Oh, I read on the internet that the essential oils (or whatever) will cure my cancer.” 

People are idiots. You have one case: yourself. But your doctor has seen hundreds or thousands just like you. And he/she has read case after case of others just like you. The doctor has seen all sorts of things and from that he or she has chosen this path. But you think you know better. LOL

Most people out there are just like this. I don’t need to wear a mask because X, Y, or Z. I’ve read on Facebook idiots who say that your CO2 gets caught in the mask and you’ll end up destroying your own immune system. LOL! And I just shake my head because people can’t remember basic chemistry—there’s not much smaller than CO2 and the virus is pretty damn big. This is why the Snopes site is alive and well. And essential oils. And any other snake oil remedy.

But the problem with COVID is that people think we should think for ourselves about it. No. WE SHOULD NOT. There should be no choice about it; it shouldn’t be a political issue. Your life, my life, the economy, and my sports all hang in the balance. If we act and think as one, then we can defeat the virus and get things going again as quickly as possible. Like New Zealand. On the other hand, the radicals and the independent ones will jeopardize everything. 

It’s bizarre that it’s the conservatives who choose not to wear masks, since they are the ones who want the economy back as quickly as possible. No doubt the liberals do, too, but they tend to be less noisy about it.

Just my thoughts....