Report: 65% of Social Media Anti-vax Propaganda Comes From Just 12 People (npr.org) 297
Long-time Slashdot reader jhylkema writes:
Just 12 people account for the lion's share of anti-vaccination propaganda posted to three of the leading social media outlets, according to a study from a London-based group opposed to online hate and disinformation. A study (PDF file) conducted by the Centre for the Countering of Digital Hate identified the "Disinformation Dozen" people, including RFK Jr., Joseph Mercola, and Sherri Tenpenny... In its study, the group blasts the social media companies for allowing their platforms to be abused and calls for them to be de-platformed.
"Living in full view of the public on the internet are a small group of individuals who... are abusing social media platforms to misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines," the study said in its introduction. "Facebook, Google and Twitter have put policies into place to prevent the spread of vaccine misinformation; yet to date, all have failed to satisfactorily enforce those policies."
Some misinformation spreaders complain they're being censored, NPR reports, adding that "After this story published on Thursday, Facebook said it had taken down more of the accounts run by these 12 individuals."
But the study concludes anti-vaccine misinformation has already spread to an audience of 59 million followers. And yet "Analysis of a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen...
"Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over 689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers."
"Living in full view of the public on the internet are a small group of individuals who... are abusing social media platforms to misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines," the study said in its introduction. "Facebook, Google and Twitter have put policies into place to prevent the spread of vaccine misinformation; yet to date, all have failed to satisfactorily enforce those policies."
Some misinformation spreaders complain they're being censored, NPR reports, adding that "After this story published on Thursday, Facebook said it had taken down more of the accounts run by these 12 individuals."
But the study concludes anti-vaccine misinformation has already spread to an audience of 59 million followers. And yet "Analysis of a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen...
"Analysis of anti-vaccine content posted to Facebook over 689,000 times in the last two months shows that up to 73 percent of that content originates with members of the Disinformation Dozen of leading online anti-vaxxers."
Prosecute those 12 for manslaughter then (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure the problem will go away pretty quickly
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Well if they claim that vaccines is not needed then just make them prove this by infecting them with high doses of Covid-19. Unfortunately the mortality rate [jhu.edu] is low enough that they would probably survive.
Re:Prosecute those 12 for manslaughter then (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately the mortality rate [jhu.edu] is low enough that they would probably survive.
They may survive, but they may also have lung and heart damage, brain fog, weakness, blood clots, and a whole host of other symptoms [mayoclinic.org] which last for months and months.
Re:Prosecute those 12 for manslaughter then (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately the mortality rate [jhu.edu] is low enough that they would probably survive.
They may survive, but they may also have lung and heart damage, brain fog, weakness, blood clots, and a whole host of other symptoms [mayoclinic.org] which last for months and months.
Brain fog indeed. For example, one guy survived. but thinks he won an election -- that he lost by 7 million votes... :-)
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Brain fog indeed. For example, one guy survived. but thinks he won an election -- that he lost by 7 million votes... :-)
That's probably a pre-existing condition in that case though
I know a polio survivor (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a polio survivor who has some "interesting" things to say to the anti-vaxxers. She hopes that they catch polio, or similar.
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I also knew one and did a lot of work on a system that his company had installed. We weren't that close, but one of his younger partners was a close friend in those days. I remember his house had these special rails and a kind of inner staircase on the side to help him use the stairs. Going by our relative ages, he probably missed the vaccine by only a few years.
But returning to the current story I have three primary areas for questions:
(1) Can the results be generalized? In other words, how many public iss
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Treating influencers as publishers? (Score:2)
Seems like a major stretch. Even if the influencers are being paid, they are more in the role of authors than publishers. (But the existing laws don't restrict publishers that much. (Though there are certain publishers whose books I avoid. I have learned they publish trash. These days I actually tend to disproportionately favor niche publishers like Haikasoru and Abacus.))
My MEPR-based approach would be to let the jackasses bray as much as they like but filter them out. The trick is to figure out what dimen
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> My general "theme" in this area is time management via MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation)
Do you have a newsletter?
Re:I know a [Facebook] survivor (Score:2)
No, but if you have an actual question, then I can probably try to answer it.
If you are going for a Funny mod point, then I doubt you'll get it. You certainly didn't earn one.
But you can think of MEPR as largely similar to the secret profiles Facebook and the google and Amazon (and others) are already compiling about you. (IBM recently removed or hid their public demonstration of a old MEPR-like system with a few hundred dimensions.) Hard to get any solid numbers, but based on the reports I've read, I estim
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If people like you would stop spreading misinformation, we wouldn't consider things like this as a necessity.
This sort of thinking is a result of your antics.
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It's not censorship when people ignore you because you have a history of spewing bullshit. The 'extremism' is just responding to your extremist bullshit.
Stop spewing bullshit and it won't bother you so much. Start actually telling the truth, based on facts, and things like this wouldn't matter or be necessary.
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Anti-vaxxers are stupid but I don't see the need to have so much hater for them. They don't want to get their asses vaccinated its their right. An if they want to die of a disease the rest of us don't suffer from, that is thier right too. Fuck'em
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I also don't want them anywhere near any kids who might not be old enough to get vaccines.
Good point. I forgot about the kids. That kind of makes my position a little more difficult to defend.
Inspiring (Score:5, Interesting)
Who says you can't make a difference in todays world!
just look what 12 random shit heads can do with nothing but a twitter account and some inspired focused trolling
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Well maybe the car isn't strictly necessary, but that doesn't mean it isn't wanted.
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It's all in the marketing (Score:2)
False (Score:2)
These 12 morons afraid of vaccines are just the loudspeaker for other idiots -- they are swappable. It's like saying if youtube went away, people wouldn't watch video clips. No, the vaccine-fearing crowd would just flock elsewhere. There are many people who would be willing to take up the cause if those 12 weren't broadcasting venom. Plus the list loses credibility because they missed a lot of people like Alex Jones and others. These ones are the most entertaining so people consolidate around them. I remem
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I don't recognize the other names in the report, but RFK Jr has been a long-time anti-vaxxer. Being a Kennedy gives him a considerable platform for whatever he wants to talk about, even though his own family bemoans how wrong he is about vaccines.
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I still get a laugh from Howard Stern doing his Ted Kennedy impression. Ted said his grave won't have an eternal flame but instead an eternal glass of Chivas Regal scotch.
Still, 72% of Canada wants "mandatory" vaccination (Score:4, Informative)
https://globalnews.ca/video/69... [globalnews.ca]
another 18% are only "somewhat opposed". I'm thinking that about 80% would at least sign off on it as not being worth a protest, which is anybody's definition of "overwhelming majority".
Overall, I think the pandemic will be very, very bad for the anti-vaxxers. In Canada, and certainly in India.
Could the motivation be to make a buck? (Score:2)
Not anti-vax (Score:3, Insightful)
It’s frustrating to me that any discussion of vaccines gets me immediately annihilated as an “anti vaxxer.” I’m not anti anything, other than anti-bullshit.
For example with covid, study after study has shown that if you’ve already had covid, you don’t NEED a vaccine. Your body’s natural immunological response is strong against reinfection. yet this is nowhere in the headlines, and nowhere in the discussions of “vaccine passports.” All I hear is, “everybody vaccinate, everybody vaccinate, you can only take your mask off if you vaccinate” and that’s bullshit. Previously infected individuals possess natural immunity just as strong as vaccination, and children have basically 0 death rate from covid, they do not NEED to vaccinate against covid. You know who NEEDS to vaccinate? old people. And compromised people. And probably obese people, since according to the CDC they account for 78% of the hospitalizations. That’s not body shaming, that’s fact. This paragraph isn't anti-vax, it's fact.
But even as I type that, chance are you’re lining up to call me a troll, an anti-vaxxer, etc. If you are, you’re the asshole, not me. I’m the one with science.
A large-scale (5 million) study by Denmark using PCR tests, found a 0.65% reinfection rate, and researches gave an 80% efficacy to natural immunity following infection. Compare that to the Johnson&Johnson vaccine, which has a 67% efficacy. Or the minimum efficacy for vaccines in the US, 50%. It was published in the Lancet in March ’21. Fact. There was no degredation in effectiveness over time, either. Fact.
Denmark’s study also examined 48 published scholarly articles that found reinfection rates to be less than 1%. The researchers noted that “most of these peer-reviewed articles report that reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 is a rare event occurring in less than 1% of COVID-19 cases.” Fact.
A commentary on that study, also published in the Lancet, said, "When looking at natural immunity, we identified three cohort studies: one peer-reviewed article of reinfections in residents in two nursing care homes and two preprint articles, one that followed up 43000 individuals in Qatar and found an estimated 95% protection against reinfection, and one of over 20000 health-care workers in the UK that found an 83% lower risk of reinfection for at least 5 months after the first infection."
Facts.
The government of Iceland, intelligently, is accepting proof of prior infection as equal to proof of vaccination. Finally, some intelligent people.
That UK study referenced, which was published in the Lancet in April ’21, tracked 25,661 public health workers and found they had an 84% lower risk of reinfection after having covid-19. Fact. Researchers wrote "This study shows that previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces effective immunity to future infections in most individuals.”
In a commentary of that study, published in the same journal, another researcher noted, "the findings of the authors suggest that infection and the development of an antibody response provides protection similar to or even better than currently used SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.”
Elsewhere the author states, "natural infection protects robustly from asymptomatic and symptomatic reinfection."
Where are those headlines?
As well, regarding T cell immunity in addition to antibodies, a study from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and published in Science on Jan 6 2021, found that “the immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus natural infection induced a strong response, and this study now shows that the responses last.”
Also, a study published in Nature on July 2020 found that survivors of the 2003 SARS virus retained immunologic T cell memory 17 years after infection, and it also protected them from covid-19. The researchers noted, “We
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I think you should slow down with the "...you’re lining up to call me a troll, an anti-vaxxer, etc".
Only about 10% of America has had covid so far, so yes, we need to get as many people vaxxed as possible. 90% of America has not had covid, so yes, the push for mass vaccination is ju
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Actually, we should not be mandating vaccines for ANYONE. Do you know why Mengele was considered a war criminal? Because his patients didn't have a choice. Think about that long and hard.
So, vaccine mandates are the equivalent of Mengele's worthless medical torture^X experiments [jewishvirtuallibrary.org].
Yup, you're an anti-vaxxer's anti-vaxxer from the word go.
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Re:Not anti-vax (Score:5, Insightful)
Itâ(TM)s frustrating to me that any discussion of vaccines gets me immediately annihilated as an âoeanti vaxxer.â Iâ(TM)m not anti anything, other than anti-bullshit.
You are an anti-vaxxer because your comment parrots several bits of shopworn anti-vax propaganda.
For example with covid, study after study has shown that if youâ(TM)ve already had covid, you donâ(TM)t NEED a vaccine.
Absent a positive PCR test, how do you know you previously had COVID? Absent an immune titer test, how do you know you have adequate protection against COVID? And why should the possibility of natural immunity stop you from obtaining the practical certainty of immunity that the vaccines confer? Also, how effective is your "natural" "immunity" against the variants, much less how much more effective is it against the variants? [the-scientist.com]
Previously infected individuals possess natural immunity just as strong as vaccination
You're grasping at straws to justify not getting the vaccination. That makes you an anti-vaxxer.
A large-scale (5 million) study by Denmark using PCR tests, found a 0.65% reinfection rate, and researches gave an 80% efficacy to natural immunity following infection. Compare that to the Johnson&Johnson vaccine, which has a 67% efficacy.
Grasping at straws again. Cherry-picking. And you just contradicted yourself.
Denmarkâ(TM)s study also examined 48 published scholarly articles that found reinfection rates to be less than 1%.
So you probably can't get COVID again after having been infected. That's excellent news. I'd rather get the immunity from some shots than risk death or disability from the virus, TYVM.
Natural immunity's biggest problem is that it doesn't make politicians powerful or CEOs rich.
Yup, there it is, another shopworn anti-vax lie. The health care industry makes a shitload more money treating sick people than it does from prevention. If what you said was true, then the industry would want people to get infected rather than lose money from getting vaccinated.
Just a bunch of ... (Score:2)
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>chiropractors
Fuck but I hate those snake oil salesmen. They've successfully infiltrated legitimate healthcare with their bullshit, there's always more will to support them than to eliminate them.
They know nothing of real medicine, at best they are offering a weird massage and at worst they are extremely dangerous when fiddling with things they don't understand. Mostly in the middle they spread pseudoscience which has a vague and unquantifiable negative effect on public health and general understanding
This stat shows us why social media is broken (Score:3)
If 12 people on social media is all it takes to replace the will of the majority on a major issue that dominates the news, what's to stop a group of 12 from imposing their own agenda on any other issue, especially one that may be important in the long run but not so immediately newsworthy?
Cabal of 12 (Score:3)
So researchers have uncovered a cabal of 12 unelected people operating in the shadows who have managed to influence billions of people.
But Bill Gates is the real enemy.
Treat it as a crime (Score:4, Insightful)
I think of anti-vaxxing as something akin to bomb-scares & swat-calling. It should be a criminal offence to wilfully & deliberately endanger people's health & even their lives. Treating it like this & specifically criminalising it sends a clear message to everyone that it's dangerous & wrong. It'd also give courts probable cause to subpoena data that may reveal the identities of people who anti-vaxx on social media platforms.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 is a really nasty disease that causes all kinds of organ damage & long-term effects, as well as killing some people. You really, really don't want to get it or spread it to others. Getting vaccinated will save millions of people's health & lives. Do it for your family, friends, & community & help those around you to get vaccinated too.
Give 'em the Kevin Trudeau treatment (Score:2)
Those of us of a certain age remember infomercial huckster Kevin Trudeau [wikipedia.org]. He published books with titles like "Secrets they don't want you to know" on topics from weight loss to cancer cures to personal finance. All of them were bullshit, of course, and he was ultimately sentenced to 10 years in prison after repeatedly evading court-ordered restitution while maintaining an opulent lifestyle. Before that, he entered into a consent decree with the FTC requiring him to post a $10 million bond before publish
The absence of a credible retraction (Score:3)
Unless they have found a spokesperson who is credible to the audience who saw the original lies, and then makes sure they see the correct information in a credible way, the damage is done. That's 59 million people whose minds were poisoned and will never see or believe the truth. That's the problem with social media like Facebook and Twitter.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:4, Insightful)
A statement like that requires specifics, exactly what hasn't been transparent?
I apologize in advance if I misunderstand your intent, but in general statements like that are made by people where it's clear that anything that doesn't fit their desired narrative must be a lie or the truth is being hidden, i.e., goalpost moving.
Do trolls have reflections? (Score:3, Insightful)
His intent is to troll you and he's afraid of censorship because he must be aware that he deserves it? Just speculating. No idea what goes on in such "minds".
I have some substantive comments on the story, but this thread is not the place for them.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:4, Informative)
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was passed into law in the US in 1986, so probably not soon. The reason that law was passed was that the vaccine divisions of pharmaceutical firms were being shut down due to personal injury lawsuits over purported effects that could never be proven or disproven but which were receiving large jury awards.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah I spent half a day with a fever. The government needs to compensate me for the few tylenol capsules I took.
Re:Why worry about anyone else? (Score:5, Insightful)
As the AC said, it sounds like the vaccine caused him half a day of feeling like crap. Personally, I spent a day feeling like crap, worth the trade off in my opinion.
My government (BC) suggested turning on American TV and waiting a few minutes for a drug commercial and consider the list of side effects from almost all medicine.
Even the worst vaccine gives a 1 in 600,000 chance of a blood clot, way better odds then a woman taking the pill or anyone getting hospitalized with Covid, where the odds are 1 in 4 of getting a clot.
Seems most people just can't realistically judge danger.
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"Even the worst vaccine gives a 1 in 600,000 chance of a blood clot, way better odds then a woman taking the pill or anyone getting hospitalized with Covid, where the odds are 1 in 4 of getting a clot.
Seems most people just can't realistically judge danger."
Indeed. Just look at all the people playing Lotto.
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My government (BC) suggested turning on American TV and waiting a few minutes for a drug commercial and consider the list of side effects from almost all medicine.
Also, tell your doctor if you have had an organ transplant.... Well yeah.
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The point is that all drugs have side effects. Aspirin kills thousands a year, Acetaminophen is consistently in the top 10 killers of children, in a horrible way (liver failure) and anyone can buy them.
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It was a side effect from the vaccine.
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Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Informative)
I don't intend to get vaccinated and the reason is I don't trust the government.
Too bad we don’t have any means for us non-government folks to communicate to each other their own experiences getting the vaccine. Oh right, we do.
I got the J&J shot about a month ago. Felt like crap for about a day afterwards. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Informative)
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Do you in fact have any valid reasons, or just logical fallacies?
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For example:
That's an example of the "ad hominem" fallacy. Shall I go on?
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I don't intend to get vaccinated and the reason is I don't trust the government.
Good work. I mean considering the vaccines were developed by the private sector you didn't even manage to get to the end of your first sentence before saying something profoundly stupid. Well technically you didn't even manage to get 7 words in before saying something stupid, so actually there's a lot of stupid in your post.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't intend to get vaccinated and the reason is I don't trust the government.
Your mistrust of government seems to be selective. On the one hand, you won't get a life-saving vaccine because of your supposed mistrust of the government, yet here you seem to uncritically accept what the Air Force says about the trillion-dollar boondoggle that is the F-35 [slashdot.org]. So yeah, I think you're just trying to get your rocks off by "owning the libs".
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I was reading about a smallpox pandemic in Montreal, back in the 1880's or so. There were a lot of people, mostly the French on the poor side of town, who refused to take the vaccine. A lot of their arguments sounded familiar.
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I was reading about a smallpox pandemic in Montreal, back in the 1880's or so. There were a lot of people, mostly the French on the poor side of town, who refused to take the vaccine. A lot of their arguments sounded familiar.
Interesting. Montréal happens to be where my family was living when the Salk vaccine came out. There was no opposition to it then.
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Darwin took care of the smallpox antivaxers.
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Hey, their Priest assured them that they'd go to heaven.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Informative)
When the autism rates went through the roof and i chose to believe the autism was caused by vaccines given to babies...
You mean when they started studying autism in more detail and found more people affected by it.
At least you're willing to admit you're an idiot. You get props for that.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Insightful)
At least you're willing to admit you're an idiot. You get props for that.
And a cruel, sociopathic idiot at that. Even assuming arguendo that vaccines cause autism (they don't), he'd rather have kids die from horrific infectious diseases than be autistic.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:4, Insightful)
and i chose to believe
In the future I recommend choosing to believe science rather than your own ignorant bullshit. It saddens me that you're an "old man". I thought people outgrew ignorance at some point in their lives.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Informative)
Information about vaccine side effects is not easily available.
There is definitely a lot of missing on the transparency and data availability side.
Bullshit. Any side effects are literally printed in every story about the vaccines and all one has to do is go the manufacturers web site to find information. Then there's the CDC, NIH, whatever the UK version is, and so on.
The paper I received today when I got my shot has a list of possible side effects several sentences in length. Everything from a sore arm to severe reactions.
Lies like yours are the same ones talked about in the story.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Insightful)
Just demand transparency from the government, and the problem will go away
How perfectly obtuse.
These people do not understand molecular biology, these people do not want to know how it works, they want to be angry. There is a significant body of evidence that points to the conclusion that these people cannot be placated with anything but the total and absolute capitulation to their insane demands. When there demands are met they will move onto the next target of their ire. These are not reasonable people.
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A famous guy had something to say about that in 1860, so not a new phenomenon.
"A republic, if we can keep it." (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what Benjamin Franklin said, but that Subject was definitely used in The Atlantic last year.
Guessing you [sphealey] might mean Abe Lincoln? Maybe the thing about fooling all of the people all of the time?
But the problem is different now. You don't need to fool all of the the people all of the time. You don't even need to fool most of the people some of the time. Heck, you don't even need to fool 51% just on election day. With careful gerrymandering to pick the voters, selective disenfranchisement, discouraging enough people against voting at all, and a heavy dose of cunning focus on a few key "swing states" we can can even wind up with a few rich fanatics calling all of the shots that matter. Money = Speech! And how.
Maybe not a completely new phenomenon, but at some point the quantitative changes accumulate to the point that it becomes qualitatively different, even new.
Solution time? It won't happen, but depoliticizing the Supreme Court would be a good place to start. How about a special little power for nonpartisan Justices? Each nonpartisan would be able to compel two partisans to recuse from any political matter brought before the Court. Effectively that means nominating one nonpartisan Justice would be worth three partisans. Based on a simple definition: Nonpartisan Justice = confirmed by a majority of the Senators from BOTH parties. That used to be the norm most of the time. But nowadays that's such a forlorn idea that even I have to dismiss it as a joke. So I guess the punchline is that RBG was the last surviving nonpartisan Justice.
Data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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SCOTUS justices have a long history of not voting the way the partisan who nominated them may have intended. This has not changed over time, so there is no need to "depoliticize" the Court.
Re: There's no need to censor anybody (Score:3)
Neither are the people who believe the information posted by these dozen. But if you deplatform them then you will just cause their followers to say, "what are you afraid of?!" Then they will double down on their stance because they see an attack.
Censoring people with bad ideas is the worst thing you can do. Fight bad ideas with good ideas, bad information with good information.
There will always be fringe kooks. You can't fix everyone. But providing good info, in a positive way (not calling people idiots o
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These people do not understand molecular biology, these people do not want to know how it works, they want to be angry.
So true, and this moron is a perfect example [justpo.st] of, "You're not putting chemicals in body!"
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If they're not reasonable, how do you expect them to vote for somebody who is?
I don't. Only a fool would think that there is a way to can pierce their veil of absurdity without being a counted among their friends and family.
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The long-term solution is to pass a misinformation/disinformation law so that businesses that push this kind of information for profit (e.g. Fox News, OANN, Brietbart, etc.) will end up losing money from paying heavy fines and either go out of business or stop pushing misinformation/disinformation. The result of this radically reduces the number of individuals that are susceptible to extreme ideologies and conspiratorial thinking. Essentially, it will slowly de-radicalize them. If you want more info, the
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds like censorship
No more than being punished for falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater because in both cases the well-being of people are in the balance. You may not recognize it but they are harming their viewers/readers by filling their minds with false beliefs.
I'm just not sure if really rational people are pro-censorship, as opposed to more transparent and honest institutions.
I'm all for more transparent and honest government but it will do nothing to quell the deluge of extremists spouting misinformation and disinformation. You could give them unlimited access with absolute transparency and they would still be screaming.
The irony here is that you want "more transparent and honest institutions" but then you categorically reject a proposal that would force businesses to be more honest. I certainly hope you can recognize that as a contradiction.
Re:There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Informative)
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Harris was quite vocal leading up to the election that she did not trust the vaccine at all
“If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it,” - Kamala Harris October 7th 2020.
Why are you lying?
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âoeIf the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, Iâ(TM)ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, Iâ(TM)m not taking it,â - Kamala Harris October 7th 2020.
Translation: "If the former president says the sky is blue, then I'm going to assume it's green unless and until I've had a chance to go out and see for myself that it's blue." Given the former president's record going back the better part of four decades, I'd say that's an entirely reasonable position.
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Anyone can see what color the sky is and where I live it's grey right now.
Basically she said if Trump told her that the sky was blue, she would check to see for herself before believing him. I would too.
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In September, Harris, then the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate, hesitated when asked if she would take a vaccine that was approved before the election.
“I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump,” Harris said, “and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about. I will not take his word for it.”
What Kamala Harris said about vaccine skepticism [washingtonpost.com]
As far as I know, Biden has given himself credit for ramping up the rollout of the vaccines. He perhaps has given himself too much credit, but the initial rollout under Trump was slow and Trump didn't come anywhere near the number of vaccines he claimed he would.
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There's no need to censor anybody. Just demand transparency from the government, and the problem will go away
Not even when...
'How Lies on Social Media Are Inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict [slashdot.org]
?
Re: There's no need to censor anybody (Score:2)
Re: There's no need to censor anybody (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that I am not sure what the solutions to this are. Censorship won't work as people will just move from one censoring platform to another non-censoring one. Censorship has never worked in the past on other issues, and of course there are philosophical issues with censorship. Shining the light of facts on such things won't work either, as every time an anti-Xer (for your favorite choice of X) is confronted with facts that contradict X, they either morph their conspiracy into something else, or use the facts as justification for their belief by saying that the facts are just the product of the liberal elite, the bad scientists, the whatever, and that they have "alternative facts" (and no that is not a particular dig at Trump -- alternative facts exist for all sorts of things unconnected to politics).
What has partially worked with some of these people is the Klan strategy. The Klan was somewhat contained for a long time because they went broke from being sued (and I am not minimizing the individual damage done by the Klan in the time that they were somewhat contained). This strategy is currently being used by Dominion Voting systems. Also long term, better education would help, but that's a 100 year solution that does nothing to address the current situation.
Perhaps we have to try a little bit of all of the strategies, and then live with the fact that there will always be nutjobs.
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What medical basis do you have for being scared of long term side effects? Are there long term effects for Polio or even Hep C vaccines? You're grasping and trying to find anything to cling to the notion that somehow you knew all along that vaccines aren't safe.
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I've taken the vaccine. I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I just don't believe anyone should be so confident in a type of vaccine that has only recently been tried in a large quantity of humans.
BTW, I recommend that you don't pretend to know someone based on 5 sentences they wrote on Slashdot.
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I don't know of any vaccine that has long term side effects. "Long term side effects" has just become a generalized boogeyman.
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True: we will not know all that we really need about the vaccine for several years. But they have been through trials and the incidence of side/bad effects has not found to be high. It is a balance of risks but it seems clear that if you vaccinate 1,000,000 people the number suffering ill effects is much less than those suffering long Covid or dying.
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This is a brand new type of vaccine that has never been given to billions of humans before. And it's not like medical studies have never been wrong before.
That’s how these conspiracy pushers work though, they start with the plausible and then extrapolate it into the absurd. It’s like saying:
“Do you realize your door locks aren’t 100% secure? Someone could break into your house tonight and sodomize you with a live weasel! If you care anything about your safety, you’ll buy our anti-weasel sodomy security system right now. Be sure to share this message with all your friends and family, you never know who could wake up next with
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This is a brand new type of vaccine that has never been given to billions of humans before
Nope.
mRNA vaccines were developed for SARS and MERS. And went through the entire testing regimen. And it's been quite a few years since those folks got shots, without any surprise effects.
To make COVID shots, they replaced the mRNA payload. While it's theoretically possible that this will cause an issue, it's about as likely as a pile of gold appearing on my driveway tonight. mRNA degrades very quickly, and the spike protein it codes for doesn't do anything but mimic a protein you already have.
The other
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Anti-vaxxing has become prevalent with Covid. People seemingly do not believe in vaccines any more and still wear masks after they are vaccinated. Madness.
What are you talking about? I wore a mask before I got vaccinated to protect other people. I wear a mask now that I have been vaccinated to protect other people. I have very good reasons for doing so [businessinsider.com].
It's not about me. It's about us. It should always be about us.
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It's not about me. It's about us. It should always be about us.
Unfortunately, that's the part of the argument where you lose some people.
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A vaccine doesn't mean you can't get infected. It means you fight off the disease faster.
In some vaccines, you fight it off fast enough that you can't spread the disease. In other vaccines, you fight it off slower and become an asymptomatic carrier for a time.
We don't know yet which kind the various COVID vaccines are. So the advice is to wear a mask because the vaccine may make you an asymptomatic carrier. And a mask is a pretty small ask so that you don't kill a dozen or so people.
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Since the rate of fully vaccinated people in the US is around 35%, and the rate of vaccinated at all people is ~50%, are you sure they don't have a point?
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With science, the medical advice changes when the weight of the evidence changes. With faith-based medicine, the advice remains the same regardless of the evidence. If weather forecast says you don't need an umbrella, the weatherman who doesn't change his forecast when the clouds roll in is a crank.
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The problem with your explanation is that scientific evidence said that masks worked to protect against the spread of this kind of disease well before anyone ever caught this pandemic. It's why surgeons wear them. It's why doctors and nurses often wear them. But some people lied about that because reasons. Tenpenny presumably knew she was wrong, and lied for one reason. Fauci and Swalwell lied for a different reason or reasons. They all should have known better.
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At first, it was considered that the main means of spread was through actual contact, something that masks wouldn't help and may have made worse, due to touching a contaminated surface and then adjusting your mask. Later it was found to be mostly spread through the air and masks being a good idea.
Re:"anti-vax misinformation" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, Fauci and CDC came out against masking in the spring of 2020 with two arguments: that masks would promote a false sense of security and that that the time there was a shortage of PPE.
When scientists find out they were wrong, they change their minds. Twitter troll farms do not.
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Officials like Fauci failed to articulate those reasons well, but mostly they just never articulated those reasons.
Incorrect. Dr. Fauci was not allowed to articulate reasons to wear a mask because the con artist didn't want to look bad [businessinsider.com] to the rest of the world. It's the same reason he admitted he downplayed the severity of the pandemic [cbsnews.com] despite being warned in January and February [businessinsider.com] he needed to get ahead of the game.
Even after being warned, the con artist continued to lie about the severity of the pandemic mo [npr.org]
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Your first link says nothing about what Fauci was allowed to say or not. Your other links are off-topic copypasta. You are as full of disinformation as any of these anti-vaxxers.
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Did you read the study? It doesn't seem so. Just let me quickly quote something from the study:
Participants used the mask on every shift for 4 consecutive weeks.
and
Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.
Yes, it cautioned against repeatedly using the same cloth-mask for long periods of time since that means virus and bacteria starts to incubate in them leading to respiratory illnesses. Which has fuck-all to do with how masks stops the spread of airborne virus-laden droplets to people around you.
The simple solution
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This "study" is just a counter marketing campaign and not some neutral, sober, analysis of the arguments these 12 make accompanied by their counterarguments
We did that. Repeatedly demonstrated that their claims are false.
They continue to make the claims. Because it makes them money, and they're going to continue making these claims as long as they make money from lying.
One example is about a mask study that proved wearing a mask is bad for you
One example of lying about a claim is this one right here. Your study doesn't back your claims.
It shows a higher infection rate of certain infections among cloth-mask wearing workers in a hospital, compared to masks made with another construction, and one of the shittiest "control groups" I've