[Genuine Realist]

I think there may be a sort of 'Gresham's Law' at play in media, in which agenda reporting drives out more conventional factually based accounts. Fox News deliberate agenda seems to infected everyone. The descent of the New York Times into this abyss is particularly deplorable. (There is a joke headline about the Times that applies - 'World to End Tomorrow! Women, Minorities Particularly Affected').

You have to apply principles of critical thinking to everything these days. Getting to the topic, the notion of 'Cpvid 19' parties is counterintuitive in the extreme. There is no immediate gratification from catching the disease, like other party games, and you really couldn't even figure out who won. I could believe more easily parties in which the rules of social distancing are deliberately flouted, particularly if there might be sexual opportunities involved. But urban legend seldom stops at rationality.

The report of a 30 year old male - of course unidentified - who died as a result of exposure at such a party? Well, even if you accept the credibility of such events in the first place (dubious), they'd have to be comparatively rare. So you have to multiply the probability that someone would become infected at such an event - already very low - with the extremely low morbidity rate in that demographic  - also very low. You add to that the absence of identification, and you have an overall story that does not pass the smell test. It should have been killed at the editor's desk, absent corroboration.

But it wasn't. It fit the NYT agenda, so into print it went. Sign of the times, and another reason why the newspaper that was once regarded as the national paper of record has lost so much credibility.

[Genuine Realist]

I think there may be a sort of 'Gresham's Law' at play in media, in which agenda reporting drives out more conventional factually based accounts. Fox News deliberate agenda seems to infected everyone. The descent of the New York Times into this abyss is particularly deplorable. (There is a joke headline about the Times that applies - 'World to End Tomorrow! Women, Minorities Particularly Affected').

You have to apply principles of critical thinking to everything these days. Getting to the topic, the notion of 'Cpvid 19' parties is counterintuitive in the extreme. There is no immediate gratification from catching the disease, like other party games, and you really couldn't even figure out who won. I could believe more easily parties in which the rules of social distancing are deliberately flouted, particularly if there might be sexual opportunities involved. But urban legend seldom stops at rationality.

The report of a 30 year old male - of course unidentified - who died as a result of exposure at such a party? Well, even if you accept the credibility of such events in the first place (dubious), they'd have to be comparatively rare. So you have to multiply the probability that someone would become infected at such an event - already very low - with the extremely low morbidity rate in that demographic  - also very low. You add to that the absence of identification, and you have an overall story that does not pass the smell test. It should have been killed at the editor's desk, absent corroboration.

But it wasn't. It fit the NYT agenda, so into print it went. Sign of the times, and another reason why the newspaper that was once regarded as the national paper of record has lost so much credibility.