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The usefulness instantly clicked when I saw this - awesome work, and I wish it were government promoted. I'm no good at writing copy, but I'd work on the homep

The usefulness instantly clicked when I saw this - awesome work, and I wish it were government promoted. I'm no good at writing copy, but I'd work on the homepage's phrasing. Link to https://healthweather.us/ https://healthweather.us/ as well as the NYT article on them, rather than making a reference to Maddow elsewhere (it'd be dumb for someone to be turned away by that, but someone will be.) Explain that CDC data lags three weeks behind historically, and point out all the counties without data. Say all this on the front page, and run A/B tests once you have enough visitors. Again, great work!

Jamesbeam 6y ago
"The usefulness instantly clicked when I saw this - awesome work, and I wish it were government promoted." What? Mind = Blown You can't be this stupid.
- dang 6y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - Jamesbeam 6y ago
    It's not a personal attack if it's a factual truth. Nobody will ban me for that. Someone who suggests that the government promotes a website that is wanting to make unverified healthcare related data available to healthcare professionals during a global pandemic is stupid. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stupid https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stupid Showing poor judgment or little intelligence. In this case stupid = very poor judgement as a decision made on this data by healthcare officials could cost actual lifes.
    - ExtremePopcorn 6y ago
      I'm the last to disagree with your assessment of myself, but I'll defend the idea. Aggregating data during a global pandemic isn't a stupid thing to do. Rather - and stay with me here - it's a smart thing. Edit: Oh you were calling me stupid because you thought researchers wouldn't understand the concept of self-reported medical data. Give them some credit.
      - Jamesbeam 6y ago
        I am sorry if you took this as a personal attack and will apologize if i hurt your feelings, i forget that words sometimes mean something different for people than what they were intended for. I should have made clear that I think you have poor judgement if you think this is a good idea to use unverified healthcare data to base any decisions on that could cause people severe harm or the restriction of their rights. If you look at how the US handled the Covid-19 crisis until now, especially at the CDC and the Expert level that the president assigned to guide him, that is really troubling evidence that not every researcher or healthcare official understood the concept of self-reported data or properly verified data at all. There is a good reason why no other country in the world during this crisis suggested citizens to self test or go on a website to enter data there and based on that get tested. That's what we have doctors and lab work for. You call the doctor tell him you might have an infectious disease, he looks at you and your symptoms. He makes the decision that you need to get tested. This is also good advise for the regular flu. And especially with Covid-19 it's important that people get tested early and hospitalized with risk factors before they turn into severe ICU cases. Many people end up in the ICU right now because they go to the hospital while already dying. A lot of the reports you read from Hospitals in the US and in other countries where people don't have universal healthcare is they already arrive with blue lips and fingers in the emergency room and do not any longer have a fighting chance to beat the virus. I have also seen this before, I have been one of the PMCs training a lot of the military repsonse teams to the Ebola Outbreak in 2014 in west africa and it was very frightening to see on who's advise and what data the governments were basing decisions on. So excuse me when I get a bit temperamental about this topic. Stupid people or let's say people with poor judgement are at all levels of society, sometimes in positions that they shouldn't be in a crisis. And I understand that the guy who made the website probably has good intentions. But if you do something, do it right or not at all.
    - dang 6y ago
      Personal attacks and "factual truth" are orthogonal, and we certainly will ban you for the former (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22we%27ve%20banned%22%20personal%20attaack&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) so please don't do it again. In practice, people underestimate how much of the former they're doing and overestimate how much of the latter they possess, so the distinction isn't generally useful. It's easy to make your substantive points without declaring others to be stupid, so please do that instead.
      - Jamesbeam 6y ago
        If you say you ban people for telling the truth I'll consider to not post on this platform and contribute in the future. Because we are getting close to censorship if you despite someone explaining himself threatening with banning them for a personal attack which it wasn't in this case and even the OP agrees to that if you follow the course of this discussion. >It's easy to make your substantive points without declaring others to be stupid, so please do that instead. I agree with you on that point, instead of calling someone else stupid for poor judgement I'll instead call their argument stupid or to not cause any friction "poor judgement" instead and explain why I think that to keep room for a discussion on the argument and not the author. Thank you for your input.
        dang 6y ago
        We don't ban people for telling the truth, we ban them for breaking the site guidelines. Fortunately, it's possible to tell the truth without breaking the site guidelines, so there need be no conflict. Calling arguments stupid still breaks the site guidelines though. Would you mind reviewing them? I think it might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Jamesbeam 6y ago

"The usefulness instantly clicked when I saw this - awesome work, and I wish it were government promoted." What? Mind = Blown You can't be this stupid.

dang 6y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful.
- Jamesbeam 6y ago
  It's not a personal attack if it's a factual truth. Nobody will ban me for that. Someone who suggests that the government promotes a website that is wanting to make unverified healthcare related data available to healthcare professionals during a global pandemic is stupid. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stupid https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stupid Showing poor judgment or little intelligence. In this case stupid = very poor judgement as a decision made on this data by healthcare officials could cost actual lifes.
  - ExtremePopcorn 6y ago
    I'm the last to disagree with your assessment of myself, but I'll defend the idea. Aggregating data during a global pandemic isn't a stupid thing to do. Rather - and stay with me here - it's a smart thing. Edit: Oh you were calling me stupid because you thought researchers wouldn't understand the concept of self-reported medical data. Give them some credit.
    - Jamesbeam 6y ago
      I am sorry if you took this as a personal attack and will apologize if i hurt your feelings, i forget that words sometimes mean something different for people than what they were intended for. I should have made clear that I think you have poor judgement if you think this is a good idea to use unverified healthcare data to base any decisions on that could cause people severe harm or the restriction of their rights. If you look at how the US handled the Covid-19 crisis until now, especially at the CDC and the Expert level that the president assigned to guide him, that is really troubling evidence that not every researcher or healthcare official understood the concept of self-reported data or properly verified data at all. There is a good reason why no other country in the world during this crisis suggested citizens to self test or go on a website to enter data there and based on that get tested. That's what we have doctors and lab work for. You call the doctor tell him you might have an infectious disease, he looks at you and your symptoms. He makes the decision that you need to get tested. This is also good advise for the regular flu. And especially with Covid-19 it's important that people get tested early and hospitalized with risk factors before they turn into severe ICU cases. Many people end up in the ICU right now because they go to the hospital while already dying. A lot of the reports you read from Hospitals in the US and in other countries where people don't have universal healthcare is they already arrive with blue lips and fingers in the emergency room and do not any longer have a fighting chance to beat the virus. I have also seen this before, I have been one of the PMCs training a lot of the military repsonse teams to the Ebola Outbreak in 2014 in west africa and it was very frightening to see on who's advise and what data the governments were basing decisions on. So excuse me when I get a bit temperamental about this topic. Stupid people or let's say people with poor judgement are at all levels of society, sometimes in positions that they shouldn't be in a crisis. And I understand that the guy who made the website probably has good intentions. But if you do something, do it right or not at all.
  - dang 6y ago
    Personal attacks and "factual truth" are orthogonal, and we certainly will ban you for the former (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22we%27ve%20banned%22%20personal%20attaack&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) so please don't do it again. In practice, people underestimate how much of the former they're doing and overestimate how much of the latter they possess, so the distinction isn't generally useful. It's easy to make your substantive points without declaring others to be stupid, so please do that instead.
    - Jamesbeam 6y ago
      If you say you ban people for telling the truth I'll consider to not post on this platform and contribute in the future. Because we are getting close to censorship if you despite someone explaining himself threatening with banning them for a personal attack which it wasn't in this case and even the OP agrees to that if you follow the course of this discussion. >It's easy to make your substantive points without declaring others to be stupid, so please do that instead. I agree with you on that point, instead of calling someone else stupid for poor judgement I'll instead call their argument stupid or to not cause any friction "poor judgement" instead and explain why I think that to keep room for a discussion on the argument and not the author. Thank you for your input.
      - dang 6y ago
        We don't ban people for telling the truth, we ban them for breaking the site guidelines. Fortunately, it's possible to tell the truth without breaking the site guidelines, so there need be no conflict. Calling arguments stupid still breaks the site guidelines though. Would you mind reviewing them? I think it might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.