It was used as an example of “fake news”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/technology/biden-reality-...
> “ Hoaxes, lies and collective delusions aren’t new, but the extent to which millions of Americans have embraced them may be. Thirty percent of Republicans have a favorable view of QAnon, according to a recent YouGov poll. According to other polls, more than 70 percent of Republicans believe Mr. Trump legitimately won the election, and 40 percent of Americans — including plenty of Democrats — believe the baseless theory that Covid-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab.”
What makes my blood boil about this is the NYT is supposed to be able to tell the difference - this kind of self righteous stupidity explains the rise of trump and distrust of media orgs more than anything else, it’s what lays the groundwork for baseless conspiracy.
Yes there were dumb conspiracies about a manufactured and intentionally released bio weapon, but the accidental release from the lab that actually exists and studies these exact viruses in Wuhan and the additional context of the lies from the CCP about the Pangolin (and just general suspicious blocking of access) made it a reasonable hypothesis.
What irony that in a piece pushing support for a “reality czar” (presumably to censor certain stories?) is the position of the NYT so divorced from reality itself.
Pair this with the WHO rep being afraid to say the word Taiwan and it looks bad there too: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-ta...
In a lot of ways it feels like the west is under constant attack from disinformation and self-inflicted censorship (movies, Apple, nba, etc. all afraid to be critical of the CCP) and doesn’t even realize what’s going on. I think the CCP understands what they’re doing.
This is an ideological war, we’re already under attack, and the west is losing. The CCP (and Russia to a lesser extent) understand where our vulnerabilities lie and they’re exploiting them.
Edit: Whenever this comment reaches +1 it’s quickly downvoted to -2, dang - if you see this do you have a way to tell if this is legitimate (users behaving as they wish to) or something else? I only consistently see this behavior on comments that mention the CCP.
2020 will be forever the year I lost total trust in mainstream media. It's one thing to just "get it wrong" it's an entirely different thing when the powers that be are actively trying to promote a false narrative.
And then to turn around and label actual journalism and truth seeking as "conspiracy-theorist" and "crack pots" it is just too much to bear.
Filling the news with endless critiques and shaming of the proper way and material of mask to wear but deflect any attempts at uncovering, How the Hell this thing Started in the First Place!
They have become the anti-thesis of news and journalism and a driving force of division in the United States.
A pillar of democracy and free speech has become the thing it was intended to prevent and is now firmly a Fifth Column [1].
However I think the CCP are overplaying their hand now. They are doing too much too fast too aggressively. Hong kong, NBA, now going after Australia. It's going to backfire IMO.
Especially if you start to think about non first world countries. What's india going to do once they're massive covid wave is over? Is it going to improve india-china relations? You are going to have 1bn people with a border with China very very pissed I think at them.
We are only 1 year into this pandemic, and I think many geopolitical issues haven't been worked through yet.
>Ex-C.D.C. Director Favors Debunked Virus Origin Theory
Basically trying to portray the ex-CDC director - a virologist - as an unhinged nutjob for saying such a thing.
After a ton of backlash, they relented and changed it from "debunked" to "unproven" and added an editor's note of "The theory is unproven, not debunked", which took a bit of the wind out of their original angle.
>What irony that in a piece pushing support for a “reality czar” (presumably to censor certain stories?) is the position of the NYT so divorced from reality itself.
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with a Ministry of Truth?
If you just repeat the same thing over and over from different sources, people come to accept it as true. Whether they believe it or not doesn't matter, behavior is still dictated by what we're told, and no one wants to be the nail sticking out.
I also downvoted the comment, by the way, so I can explain at least one of the downvotes. It wasn't because I disagree with you. It was because ideological battle is against the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
When your blood is boiling, that's not a good state in which to post to HN. Better to wait for it to cool and then post in the key of curiosity. That's what HN is supposed to be for. I mean, I know you know this. But it's not so easy in practice, especially when you feel like you're under attack and your side is losing [1].
It's in your interest, though. Boiling-blood comments are like a Maxwell's demon who not only has energy to separate molecules into disjoint compartments, but enough left over to keep them buzzing angrily. You'll get upvotes and praise from people who already agree with you, and downvotes and anger from people who already disagree. But what you should be doing instead, if you want to help your own view, is trying to persuade the persuadable. That requires an entirely different, molecule-enticing strategy. A Maxwell's angel perhaps?
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[1] I don't know how many of us would have guessed it, but one thing has become apparent from trying to keep HN interesting: functioning curiously requires developing one's ability to experience difficult feelings and somehow carry them and not let them drive you into reaction—which is a pretty deep human task. It turns out that simply trying to optimize HN for one thing—curiosity—has counterintuitive consequences, some of which ask a lot of us.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I wrote about some of those consequences here, if anyone is interested in reading further: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.