covid politics

[john12ax7]

So is the logic here, "Anthony Fauci is fallible; therefore, ivermectin is a COVID cure being suppressed by a Big Pharma conspiracy"?

Yes, that is exactly the point being made.

(sarcasm in case that was in question).

 

[Script]

Speaking of experimenting on the public, seems a music festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands, just produced something like a four-digit number of new infections... Not so good news, I'm afraid.

 

[JohnRoberts]

It is difficult to understand resistance to getting vaccinated based on simple self interest.

I can imagine multiple factors. Trust of news media is historically low, and the only group held in lower regard than news media are politicians.

I don't understand why local private doctors have not been more involved in reaching out to their patients and convince them to get jabbed. I will ask mine in a couple months at my annual physical.

JR

 

[crazydoc]

It is difficult to understand resistance to getting vaccinated based on simple self interest.

Maybe birds of a feather flock together.

Americans experience widely different levels of social pressure to get the COVID-19 vaccine. And for better or worse, our friends exercise considerable influence over the information we have and the decisions we make.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...hen-it-comes-to-getting-the-covid-19-vaccine/

 

[JohnRoberts]

Maybe birds of a feather flock together.

I believe they do

https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...hen-it-comes-to-getting-the-covid-19-vaccine/

and this is why I want local doctors to use their local influence to encourage getting vaccinated. I'm sure as a doctor you are encouraging all your neighbors.

JR

 

[iturnknobs]

I would avoid making blanket statements about "the right", but data(and online behavior)shows that the our U.S. Surgeon General was not speaking to "the left" yesterday.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...ling-covid-19-misinformation-an-urgent-threat

 

[crazydoc]

I believe they do

and this is why I want local doctors to use their local influence to encourage getting vaccinated. I'm sure as a doctor you are encouraging all your neighbors.

JR

Many folks think they know more about health issues than their doctor. They follow their own diets, treatments, and other health related issues, because, for whatever reason, they know they are right, and that medical science is not. When they are ill, they treat themselves, because they know it all, and then when that doesn't work, show up at the ER. If they recover and miss work, they call the doctor, wanting him to write a work excuse.
So it's pointless and a waste of time to try to encourage these people to get vaccinated - and these are most of my few neighbors (that I don't talk to anymore anyway.) You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can't even lead most of these folks to water.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I have been known to disagree with my previous doctor (the one I liked who retired because of ACA). I would print out pub med extracts and use them to support my arguments.

My current doctor is one of those "whatever you want" types, but I mainly use her for my once a year blood panel, and synthroid script renewal. They only write one years worth of prescriptions.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

I would avoid making blanket statements about "the right", but data(and online behavior)shows that the our U.S. Surgeon General was not speaking to "the left" yesterday.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...ling-covid-19-misinformation-an-urgent-threat

I will likewise try not to make blanket statements about government misinformation, but there are first amendment questions about the current administration directing Facebook to flag posts as misinformation.

As I have shared already the only group that the public trusts less than news media is politicians.

Jen Saki remarkably admitted that the administration was working with facebook (as if we didn't already suspect this.)

JR

PS: On a possibly related note the founder of wikipedia, no longer working there, warned that left leaning activists have scrubbed wiki of any conservative views. So wikipedia can no longer be trusted to present balanced views of contentious (subjective) topics like it used to in the past. Partisan politics is diminishing almost everything of value. I have contributed money to wikipedia before, but not now.

 

[hodad]

there are first amendment questions about the current administration directing Facebook to flag posts as misinformation.



Jen Psaki

JR

I'm not entirely clear what this actually means though. Does it mean that the administration is directing Facebook to take things down that it considers dis/misinformation? Does it mean that they're alerting Facebook to things they consider BS, and then leaving it to FB to decide what to do? Can anyone else "flag" FB posts in a similar manner?

I really don't know, and I'll reserve judgment until there's more info. I understand why this might be troubling, but it's also troubling that FB allows hucksters and paranoiacs to post false information on their site that is a potential public health threat--well, actually, a real, happening-right-now public health threat.

 

[Tubetec]

I took a leaf through stats on vaccine uptake recently , Ireland was very high up , but the figures were all relative to older people , Austrailia's uptake rate was fairly poor, more than anything this signals the level of public mistrust in government , thats not the publics fault .

 

[PermO]

When governments, media and big pharma team up....

You have 3 reasons

 

[JohnRoberts]

I'm not entirely clear what this actually means though. Does it mean that the administration is directing Facebook to take things down that it considers dis/misinformation? Does it mean that they're alerting Facebook to things they consider BS, and then leaving it to FB to decide what to do? Can anyone else "flag" FB posts in a similar manner?

I really don't know, and I'll reserve judgment until there's more info. I understand why this might be troubling, but it's also troubling that FB allows hucksters and paranoiacs to post false information on their site that is a potential public health threat--well, actually, a real, happening-right-now public health threat.

I expect viewing this through a partisan lens will reveal two different movies.

One an innocent for the public good, heads up to social media about dangerous posts. Alternately its seen as an example of social media's double standard where one sides views are routinely squashed in favor of the other. (I am not defending misinformation, just questioning a perhaps too close relationship between the administration and Facebook).... and I did not say that they admitted to directing facebook to take anything down. Only flagging what they felt was potentially dangerous misinformation.

Facebook no doubt wants to keep the administration happy as new talk of anti-trust breaking up big media is in the air. I am uncomfortable pretending to know what Zuckerberg or his big tech cronies think. Its hard enough for me to know what I think.


JR

 

[hodad]

It might or might not be a "2 different movies" moment. As I said, I simply don't know enough (and a quick look around the internet did not help--almost every link that popped up in a search was a shrill partisan attack on Biden.) Of course, Zuckerberg bent over backwards not to flag Trump's disinformation, so he's certainly not above playing politics to serve his own ends.

 

[iturnknobs]

Jen Saki remarkably admitted that the administration was working with facebook (as if we didn't already suspect this.)

I have absolutely no issues with private companies stopping people from yelling fire in a crowded theatre...or stopping demonstrably false anti-vax info from being spread...or stopping information that the election was stolen, especially seeing as 80+court cases also determined the same thing. Real news.

 

[JohnRoberts]

It might or might not be a "2 different movies" moment. As I said, I simply don't know enough (and a quick look around the internet did not help--almost every link that popped up in a search was a shrill partisan attack on Biden.) Of course, Zuckerberg bent over backwards not to flag Trump's disinformation, so he's certainly not above playing politics to serve his own ends.

IIRC ex-president Trump is still cancelled from Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I find search engines part of the big tech cabal.

======
Back in the I950s as a young puke with a SW radio and long wire antenna out in the yard, I got to listen to Radio Moscva, and Radio Habana Cuba... Even in my pre-teens I could tell their version of world news was "funny" (I have the QSL cards, including non-communist countries).

I believe our country and constitution is strong enough to survive this too, but arguably Madame Psaki is the first witness testifying for President Trump's lawsuit against big tech.

President Trump is a blowhard but he might still be correct about this.

Argue among yourselves.

JR

 

[hodad]

IIRC ex-president Trump is still cancelled from Facebook, Twitter, etc.


JR

Yes, after multiple egregious offenses over several years, he was banned--but only after he was voted out of office and was attempting to overturn the results of the election. Is it fair to say political considerations played a role in allowing him to stay on Twitter and Facebook despite numerous and egregious policy violations? I'd say so.

But you weren't trying to make the point that he wasn't thrown off sooner because of politics, were you?

 

[hodad]

Former President Trump is a blowhard.

JR

Amazing how quickly Republicans forget that Trump used the power of the Oval Office in his own battle to get social media platforms to bend to his will. Of course, he was doing so for his own personal and political gain, and his grave concern was that he was being called out for lies and misinformation.

The Biden administration, OTOH, is instead concerned with limiting the flow of misinformation and in the process possibly helping to save the lives of ordinary American citizens.

Further, from what I can tell, this is more about pointing out to Facebook et al that a small number of sources are responsible for most of the COVID disinformation, and trying to get the platforms to do more to control it. The research they cite is from an independent source and did not originate from within the Biden administration (as much as the shrill voices on the right might wish that to be the case.)

Social media platforms are structured in a way that is far more likely to promulgate scary lies than mundane truths. Even in the best of times this is problematic; during a public health crisis it's downright dangerous. Asking social media sites to do their job a little better does not seem like a significant threat to free speech, despite the pearl-clutching right wing freakout.


It's worth noting as well that Biden, as far as we know, has not played the Section 230 blackmail gambit as Trump did on more than one occasion in his battles with social media platforms.

 

[boji]

Hmm. https://twitter.com/holmenkollin/status/1415989536933490688
(% of vaxxed per country tracks with resurgence?)

Some think it's due to vaccinated becoming less risk-averse.
Could it be other things? For example, collective placebo/nocebo.

 

[Script]

I'd think really nothing weird or unexpected here. Need to look at infection-induced death rate among vaccinated to draw conclusion.

With delta, I read, a rate of 90%+ is needed, which is practically impossible, so there also need to be more natural recoveries (governments lifting measures). Luckily there are quite a few willing to 'deliver' for free. Some of them will die needlessly, unfortunate, but it's their choice. Biggest problem and huge unfairness is that they also infect other, including vulnerable, people in the process.

Death rate of fully vaccinated people (due to infection) is positively low in Japan. Hospitals are filled with 50s, 40s and some 30s now. Starting with the old, vaccination progress in Japan is at around 25% of population now.