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It may actually be that a lot of people had COVID-19 at Bitcoin 2021 (June 4-5 in Miami), but even if they did, the first story on the subject was still misguided.
This article is taken from The Node, CoinDesk’s daily recap of the most crucial stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can sign up to receive the full newsletter here.
Do they have? There is not much in the story to support this title.
The story reflected almost no real reporting of what the participants said or did not say. The entire thesis was supported by the following information:
I guess the norm here is: Bitcoin is weird and our readers don’t really like it, so it doesn’t really matter if we’re trying to get the story right. From Bloomberg account:
“Bitcoin… has become a popular and controversial investment, but unlike many normal investments, it has developed a unique [sic] culture in itself marked by a kind of macho, anti[-]ethos of authority.
Another line from the Bloomberg post almost acknowledges that not much could be known about infections in Miami so soon:
“His [sic] was not clear whether attendees contracted the disease during the conference itself or during gatherings. “
Of course, the post did not honestly establish that many people had received COVID-19 there. In fact, towards the end, the author admits, “It remains difficult to identify outbreaks on specific events and the Bitcoin event is unlikely to be an exception.”
The problem with stories like these is that in a competitive environment, they put pressure on other media to keep investigating and pushing a narrative that can create the look of a story while there really isn’t. Gizmodo followed up with essentially the same set of slim facts. CNBC then found a few more tweets.
As the story spread like small town gossip, that pressure reached CoinDesk. The editors believed that the site could not ignore the conversation and owed it a duty to readers to recognize it and approach it with the appropriate epistemic humility. With extensive contacts within the crypto space, CoinDesk was able to discover several other testimonials of COVID-19 cases outside of Miami, but also many testimonials from people who were vaccinated and came back with negative tests.
Since the filing of this report on Friday, more personal testimonies have arrived, mainly negative tests but also positive ones. Yes, we have real reports to our credit beyond Twitter, but can we really count them towards a generalizable conclusion? I still don’t think so.
But Bloomberg’s post, coming from mainstream mainstream media, encouraged the general public to come to a conclusion that was poorly supported by “facts” that were not yet available.
The anecdote plural isn’t a given, but Bloomberg could have at least taken the trouble to put together a few more anecdotes before posting.
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