People who punch people who throw their trash on the ground?
Not on the page of SCMP which was linked above, nor the link (to another SCMP piece) given in it. They also quote a press release which they do not link.
(@BakaNeko removed it - thanks, a CAVEAT EMPTOR disclaimer probably would have sufficed, but I appreciate the removal as I really think this is bad journalism.)
āIām warning you. I received COVID-19 from the last guy I punched for not policing his medical waste.ā
The Fundi-Fascism Complex has a plan, which is to make everything so horrible that prayer seems like an equally serious option.
I wouldnāt call it bad journalism if an article like the one he linked doesnāt include a bibliography; you canāt apply the standards of academic publishing to science popularization. The fact that there is an actual published article in a reputable journal behind the article makes it a better article than many. It wasnāt all that hard to find the original article, though as the journal I edit is Scopus indexed I might have more experience with the site than some.
Iāve been asked to post the reddit link:
Why is his face whited out? People in his community should be able to recognize him as a potential threat if they come across him.
Iām afraid that the pandemic has moved too fast for the peer-review process.
This is where I personally rely on knowing the researchers in question when I read a pre-print. Itās often fairly clear how seriously to take something based on the person and how good they are. Peer review can often be, um, less rigorous than we would like to believe.
This, of course, leaves me in the wind w.r.t. COVID-19 because the only virologist in my circle of acquaintances died last year.
Today brings another fresh WTF moment:
Also- China gets reinfected as more outbreak clusters found:
This is the internet. Journalists can and should, in regard to the pandemic they absolutely must include their source material. Else, everyone should not believe a fucking word they write.
I DO apply the standards of popsci writing to that piece. While I didnāt follow that ācareerā path, I trained to be a science writer once upon a time.
I have so much to read in my field that I try to avoid preprints in others. I agree on peer-review, but it is better than any alternative, and in this case the journal seems to be respected.
Fortunately, in this case there was credible source, so whether we are happy with the reporting we can take the existence of the early case seriously, even if it does not conform to our previous beliefs about the virus.
Trumpian blame-casting. It doesnāt fit with their Wuhan lab conspiracy theory.
60 Minutes documents the worst example of science politicization we can recall May 11, 2020, Scott Pilutik, Underground Bunker
Monday, May 11, 2020
Chloroquine
Mr. President, is Katie Miller taking chloroquine as you recommended?
Hereās something new for Trump to get annoyed about
For the record: I just read the paper. It comes down to a positive rPCR after the CharitƩ protocol and radiology.
The other mentioned report, also not linked, and a press release (not even a pre-print?) is radiology-only.
We lack info on sero-conversion, and the short communication in the IJAA does mention (without expanding) that no pathogen was found in sputum samples. We also lack cell culture results, but thatās quite probably due to the time-lag in diagnosis - is suspect it isnāt even possible do do it, without knowing for sure, that is. There seems to be very little virus material in the sample, if I interpret the ct value correctly. (This might also be interesting to have someone with experience for this kind of realtime-PCR on Corona viruses explain what this means for test result accuracy.)
We also lack info of the test was repeated. Duplicate testing might have been impossible due to the amount of sample, but given the importance of the findings, I would very much have appreciated if they pointed that out.
My argument has nothing to do with my belief about this research. The journalism is incredibly sloppy, and the ShortComm itself leaves some important points open to future clarification.
I stand by my stance, and double down: donāt share that SCMP piece, and do not stop to be sceptical about those cases now reported which predate the previously first known cases in Europe by at least a month.
We have a positive which just might be a false positive. If this turns out not to be the case, we still need to know where the virus was from. I suspect a full genomic analysis is not possible, but I havenāt seen this answered anywhere in any news sources.
If this turns out to be a true positive, and my questions above were answered, we should see some interesting discussions develop in science during the next days. Not weeks. Days.
[ETA: hopefully not in politics first!]
Again, my scepticism has nothing to do with my belief about the virus. But I am not willing to let shitty news reports spread FUD without pointing out it is FUD. I hate it when people do sloppy reporting on important issues.
