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YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

reuters.com

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Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#851

Post by nl »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #798
nl wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending WHOs treatment of Taiwan. I think that incident was atrocious. Your link says (about the Dec 31 email): "Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease. However, because at the time there were as yet no cases of the disease in Taiwan, we could not state directly and conclusively that there had been human-to-…

I apologize if this is presumptuous of me, but I get the impression that you don't live here, haven't followed this topic in much detail and probably haven't read anything at all in local media from that time frame. Here's more background: Dr. Li Wenliang's email warning colleagues about the outbreak was sent on December 30th. Multiple Taiwanese doctors were working in Wuhan at that time. Taiwan's very early and very…

There was no hard proof, but there was a great deal of circumstantial evidence. Yes, it's possible Taiwan's CDC was overly suspicious due to memories of how SARS was covered up in 2003. However, given the way epidemics spread, the wiser course is to take circumstantial evidence of transmission very seriously.

I agree with this entirely. But I don't think there is any evidence that the WHO - or China - thought otherwise.

I'd note that the WHO bulletins from both Jan 5[1] and Jan 12[2] mentioned "Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported." (Jan 12, Jan 5 was similar).

Now this turned out to be wrong, but that doesn't indicate a cover-up. As your link from Taiwan said, no one definitively knew.

I'm very aware of the messages (not emails) shared by the doctor. I know he was forced to retract them by the regional government, and later exonerated by the central government. I think the dates here are important - as you mentioned it was Dec 30 he sent them, and by Jan 20 the central government had taken over. I do think the Wuhan regional government did try to minimise news of the outbreak, and I think criticism of that is fair - but needs to be tempered by acknowledgement that the central government acted relatively quickly and didn't try to hide things.

I think it's likely that external pressure from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and elsewhere made it clear to the central government that they needed to intervene.

[1] https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...

[2] https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#852

Post by anonymousiam »

bduerst wrote: post #69
anonymousiam wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reinfections were likely from a genetically different strain. So was Trump more right or more wrong with his simplified message? I would say that if he tested negative, he would be unable to transmit infection so that part would be true. I would say that he could not be infected (with the same strain) so that would be also true. I don't believe any sensible person believes that they become immune to all strains a…

Not really, given that the genetic strains are pretty well tracked and regionally locked. It's more likely that the reinfections came from different immune responses, where the first infection was beat with a cytotoxic T-cell response (viral defense) but not an antibody response (viral and bacterial defense), the latter of which increases immunity with antibodies.

Could you please post a source for SARS-Cov-19 genetic strain tracking? Are all of the testing facilities doing gene sequencing on their positive results?

The re-infection cases that I read about were shown to have been from different strains. Perhaps this is not the common case, but without more information, I am reluctant to accept your statement at face value.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#853

Post by PravinLal »

owlbynight wrote: post #174

I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#854

Post by rmrfstar »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #847
rmrfstar wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Them is the IC right?

Not sure who the IC is, but I thought we were talking about the New York Times.

The "Intelligence Community".

That massive (and growing) unaccountable bureaucracy with secret law that types up the talking points the NYT helpfully launders into national security "journalism".

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#855

Post by garbagetime »

refurb wrote: post #363
garbagetime wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes it does in some cases. Take Alzheimer's disease for example. What is the mechanism for the disease? We don't know. But the consensus is it's not amyloid plaques, based on the most recent data. Some scientists think it still is, but the consensus is it's not. The scientific justification we have (in the situation you describe) for our belief comes from the data, not the the consensus. >Scientific truth is not bla…

The scientific justification we have (in the situation you describe) for our belief comes from the data, not the the consensus. But the data is not always unambiguous. There can be, and often is, two competing theories. It is often consensus as to which one is accepted as mainstream. I got back to my Alzheimer’s example. It’s the general consensus that the amyloid hypothesis is wrong. However, there are those that ho…

Your definition of consensus was worded in a way which was confusing to me, so I have reworded it: "Conensus is what most scientists think is the best interpretation of the data".

Sure. I don't have any significant disagreement with that definition.

>The bacterial hypothesis is another good example. The data supported that stress and diet was the cause of stomach ulcers. That was the “scientific truth”.

Not scientific truth. Perhaps the strongest theory given the evidence. Point is, consensus irrelevant non-factor for scientific strength of theory.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#856

Post by dgb23 »

mherkender wrote: post #701
dgb23 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things are going to need to be sacrificed I say this for emphasis, not to personally attack you: Whenever I read or hear this it makes me extremely suspicious, because it often doesn't come from those who will do the sacrifice themselves. Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroi…

I really hate this hand-wringing over supposed censorship. The Internet has had to deal with trolls and cheaters from day one. If someone sends a packet that indicates they got a headshot in a multiplayer FPS, they could be cheating so we invented anti-cheat. If someone spams an email account claiming to be a Nigerian price, it doesn’t mean that’s true so we invented spam detection. If someone makes a blog post claim…

I‘m not saying that nothing should be done to counter blatant lies and cheating. I just think it is much more effective, free and sustainable to use emphasis and counterarguments.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#857

Post by dgb23 »

ardy42 wrote: post #781
dgb23 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things are going to need to be sacrificed I say this for emphasis, not to personally attack you: Whenever I read or hear this it makes me extremely suspicious, because it often doesn't come from those who will do the sacrifice themselves. Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroi…

> Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroism, instead of facing public discourse and the consequences thereof. > YouTube is a private entity but they correctly assess that they have a significant responsibility here. But curating social media content is not unheard of, Wikipedia m…

That last point is really intriguing. My comparison was unfair. Also the products are very different. With Wikipedia you get collectively curated and moderated content. With YouTube it’s many competing part-products that try to get attention. Apples and oranges.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#858

Post by _wwz4 »

BariumBlue wrote: post #821
crusso wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's naive to say that laissez faire speech is going to solve all issues The arguments for free speech are fundamentally the same arguments for democracy itself. If people can't decide the value of information, why again are we trusting in the decision-making value of each and every voter? If we filter speech, maybe we should just cut to the chase and filter out voters by testing of some sort?

Do you think we should filter out astroturfers and Russian bots? What about human written Russian propaganda crafted to harm our society? What about a US citizen who crafts propaganda to spread intentional misinformation and harm society but benefit themselves? We don't let non-citizens vote. We don't allow free political speech nor the right to assembly at polling places. We have independent election observers. We h…

Do you think we should filter out astroturfers and Russian bots?

I don't think that anyone is complaining about the filtering of deliberate fraud from outside influences. What people are complaining about are the obvious biases exhibited by the large social media companies. Take this new Hunter Biden example. Twitter claims that they don't want to promote hacking and releasing of private information. Hunter Biden's laptop was abandoned, not hacked. Besides, where was that privacy stance a week or two ago when Trump's taxes were leaked? Facebook claimed unreliable sourcing for the story. Where were such concerns when anonymous sources were claiming that Trump had said that our troops were "suckers and losers"? Or when anonymous sources were claiming that Trump had been peed on by Russian hookers?

We have independent election observers.

Yeah and we balance things out by letting both major parties watch for funny business. Who watches Facebook and Twitter? Those companies are loaded with ex-Democrat operatives in senior positions. They've run out anyone who even smells halfway conservative. Facebook and Twitter have demonstrated time and again that they aren't just getting rid of fake news and bots. They're weighing in on complex political and statistical issues by silencing information sources that they don't like.

there are actors who want to harm the free and good faith discourse of our public forums

Yeah and evidence shows that some of those people are controlling information from within the social media giants.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#859

Post by dgb23 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #613
marbletiles wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to preserve free speech (really "free promotion" or "free publishing" in this case, as there are other avenues for these videos) is exactly what you say — consequences. Newspapers have free speech, but are subject to libel laws, for instance. There's no real mechanism to hold YouTube to account for promoting and spreading this stuff, and they are naturally incentivised for that mechanism never to come about.…

Funny how consequences always means bad ones, "people who say something I don't like get the stick!" and then later "I never thought I would get the stick sobs person brutalized with stick!". Free speech is sancrosanct for a reason.

Consequences doesn’t just mean punishment.

Re: YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

#860

Post by minerjoe »

leetcrew wrote: post #513
blub wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, if we could snap our fingers and wish social media out of existence tomorrow nothing really bad would happen, besides some influencers becoming poorer. The opposite of social media today (election manipulation, divided societies, ethnic cleansing) is the state of affairs before social media, which wasn't bad at all. I'm struggling to think of large-scale benefits social media has brought us, because the ind…

> Actually, if we could snap our fingers and wish social media out of existence tomorrow nothing really bad would happen, besides some influencers becoming poorer. I disagree. I would lose the ability to contact many good friends.

Why are you dependent on Facebook for these things? If you suddenly lost your account, you would lose those friends or would you find another way to communicate?
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