- Covid disinformation
- Some nonsense about Hunter Biden
and they're being conflated. What does Hunter Biden's laptop have to do with preventing Covid disinformation? A disease that was estimated to kill up to 30m people worldwide.
In the context of Covid disinformation, "political reasons" is simply not correct. We're only 2 years out but it was clear even at the time that there was a concerted effort to pretend there wasn't an active pandemic and governments were right to crack down on it.
The only thread connecting them is "disinformation" which is tenuous at best. It's not clear to me what Zuckerberg's letter refers to because the article seems to move between the topics as though they're basically the same thing.
One example is Facebook suppressing the lab-leak theory until May 2021 [0]. Another is it deemed posts claiming the vaccine may not prevent transmission misinformation, despite it not being known otherwise [1].
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/26/facebook-ban-covid-...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-scientists-...
If the Federal Government was telling media companies, right now, that they couldn't show video of Trumps' family sexual escapades (that the Trump family took); that would be similar.
Hunter's pedicure was not russian disinformation, and the government knew that when it told media companies it couldn't be spoken of. That is election interference.
I suppose it's human nature to reach out for miracle cures, but the way people behaved in the pandemic still surprised me. Reaching for random drugs like hydroychloroquine or dewormers (why couldn't it have been a fun drug like cocaine?) and eschewing actual covid vaccines makes one wonder how it is possible that one shares a reality with their fellow humans. Obviously they do not.
Nothing you said answered my question.
It's pretty simple, the different realities like you said. People consume and trust different streams of information (for a whole bunch of reasons). Your info stream probably told you that people were gobbling horse goo and aquarium cleaner and dying by the droves, while threatening your grandmother, and you believed it because the sum total of your experience told you that was the most believable of the options.
Other peoples experiences led them to believe sources saying that there was a thing called ivermectin that sees use in agriculture but also in billions of human doses as an antiparasitic that seems to be helping against covid (and that big corporations are not to be trusted).
There are life stories behind each of these perspectives. Many people with either of these perspectives had never heard of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine before their media of choice started praising or condemning them. Then suddenly they were experts.
I never took any of it. Was that the right decision? It seems to have worked out at least. I do try to avoid the trap of thinking any of the stuff blasted out by the media corporations, at no cost to you, has any other purpose than to get you to 1) vote a certain way or 2) buy a certain product, or 3) support some forever war. The news corps aren't just generously informing you - there has to be an ROI.
Agreed.
> Your info stream probably told you that people were gobbling horse goo and aquarium cleaner and dying by the droves, while threatening your grandmother
That's not even close to the truth. There were reliable reports of people admitted to hospital with this but nobody in their right mind thought "droves" of people were taking dangerous quantities of ivermectin or drinking bleach.
ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/politics/fact-check-oklahoma-...
And that could explain why a lot of people believed ivermectin works: they had covid, they took ivermectin, they got better. They don't see the alternate universe where they didn't take it and they also got better, because that's what happens most of the time.
I'm convinced this is why so many other people think the vaccine was a miracle. We were being blasted with the idea that covid was a death sentence, so if you had a plain old mild case (like most cases were), it had to be because of some intervention (ivermectin or the shots or the phase of the moon).
I think this is true for most of the shit the medical industry tries to push on you, but I'm a kook and I know it.
So given that information, what is one to do? I took the vaccine and take the newer versions now too along with a flu shot.
Sorry for your loss.
> the fatality rate was around one percent, wasn't it?
According to one report at least, it was 1% for folks in their 60s. For younger demographics it was quite a bit less than that.
> We report IFR estimates for April 15, 2020, to January 1, 2021, the period before the introduction of vaccines and widespread evolution of variants. We found substantial heterogeneity in the IFR by age, location, and time. Age-specific IFR estimates form a J shape, with the lowest IFR occurring at age 7 years (0·0023%, 95% uncertainty interval [UI] 0·0015–0·0039) and increasing exponentially through ages 30 years (0·0573%, 0·0418–0·0870), 60 years (1·0035%, 0·7002–1·5727), and 90 years (20·3292%, 14·6888–28·9754).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
> So given that information, what is one to do?
You make the best decision you can for yourself, and sounds like you did that. The frustrating part is when other people felt entitled to make that decision for you.
As far as I know, no one in my country (The US) was forced to take a covid vaccine. Some were compelled financially I have no doubt, but they would seem to me like fish that just realized that they were swimming in water after not having even realized it their entire lives. No wonder they were pissed; I can't say I've ever really gotten over it myself.
I treat it like anything else: I wouldn't be shocked to see evidence that incorrect things show up in places like the lancet. But I assume it's on par with the best I can get my hands on, so I use it.
I'm gonna skip the "technically not forced" debate, been through it too many times. I'll agree to disagree.
Is the fish metaphor to say that it was some people realizing how little control they have over their lives or something like that? Amen if so.
As to the fish thing, you understood me correctly - when we are born, we are thrown into a world we did not create and have vanishingly little control over, and seemingly less as wealth and power accumulate into the hands of a few. I'm told that well-adjusted people are capable of adapting to their circumstances, and it is a mark of mental illness that one can not.
> I aim to provide accurate and reliable information based on the extensive range of texts I’ve been trained on, which include a variety of reputable sources. However, because I’m not infallible and my knowledge is based on patterns in data rather than direct verification, it’s a good idea to cross-check critical or detailed information with primary sources or expert opinions, especially for academic or highly specific topics. If you have any doubts or need detailed, current, or specialized information, consulting additional sources or experts is always a smart approach.
>The report added weight to calls for a broader probe into the theory that the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from a laboratory.[6][7] However, a WHO report states "introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway".[3] Since then, the head of the WHO COVID-19 origins investigative team, Peter Ben Embarek, has stated that the Chinese authorities exerted pressure on the WHO report conclusions, and that he in fact considers an infection via a researcher's field samples to be a "likely" scenario.[8]*
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...
Edit: typo
Even today Wikipedia says "explanations, such as speculations that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a laboratory have been proposed, such explanations are not supported by evidence." But if you look at the actual evidence it was almost certainly a lab leak.
Which news stream was this?