41–50 of 225 posts
Control of information by a crew of rich guys is bad. Control by the vast mob of malleable munchkins is worse.
I actually think that, on the whole-society scale, less control is the desirable course here. Let individuals do their own filtering. Or not.
Give chaos a chance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>what the hell was “protect Grandma” then? A hopeful wish? It was an accurate assessment of the benefits of the vaccine, which prevents the worst effects and dramatically reduces the risk of death from infection. The vaccine was never intended to prevent initial infection, so they had no reason to delay it's introduction testing for that. My wife's parents are in their late 70s with many health problems and got Pfize…
I agree with you but that’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to pressure on young people to get the vaccine to avoid harming the elderly. If we never tested transmission… what was that about? Why not just let the elderly get it and the young risk it if they wanted? What was behind “by getting the vaccine you are protecting others” when all we actually know is that it protects yourself? There’s probably a…
Vaccines fully preventing transmission is also technically not true, personally I never watched the news and only skimmed the actual studies so I knew it but a lot of the population would probably feel duped. However they do reduce transmission and in fact "protect grandma"---if you don't fall sick you don't cough as much so they reduce the number of infected droplets you fire, though of course this implies you also take other precautions like following the isolation guidelines and not being near your grandma in an enclosed space without a mask while talking a lot. Further if you fall sick and occupy medical facilities during a wave of COVID this may directly affect the ability of your grandma to get any treatment (not just for COVID).
I wish we could expect public messaging to convey all this nuance!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you but that’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to pressure on young people to get the vaccine to avoid harming the elderly. If we never tested transmission… what was that about? Why not just let the elderly get it and the young risk it if they wanted? What was behind “by getting the vaccine you are protecting others” when all we actually know is that it protects yourself? There’s probably a…
The expectation was that because they knew the vaccines reduce the chances of getting symptoms such as coughs associated with transmission, reduced the time people were sick for, and also reduce the viral load in people who got sick, that this would result in a reduced chance that people who caught the virus but were vaccinated would transmit the virus. It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact but they thought i…
Hold on.. not false statements, not defamation, not calls for violence… but “disinformation.” Except that we find out that many things were disinformation every day. My family is increasingly paranoid after the Pfizer executive said they never tested whether their vaccine prevented transmission to the EU a few days ago. Apparently that is not new information technically speaking, but it is so counter-narrative it bog…
The aim is to suppress journalists from spreading corruption scandals and silence whistleblowers and leaks. Basically if you tweet I found this on wikileaks, you'll get jailed first then you will await your trial. Or if you like a whistleblower's tweet, you'll get jailed. The public elections are around the corner, the governing party is losing votes. The economy is in ruins. Corruption scandals pop up everywhere. Fo…
This is an example of censorship being bad because the actual censors won’t be who anyone should want deciding those things.
Possibly the better outcome would be for individuals to learn to take the internet with a massive grain of salt.
I see a lot of people critical of Turkey... and I agree. But the US is not too far away. See AB-2098 in California just signed by governor / likely presidential nominee Gavin Newson [1] which basically gives the state the ability to revoke medical licenses for spreading "false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific contrary to the standard of care" (in other words, go against the CDC or other sta…
Similarly see Alex Jones, I disagree entirely with his politics and virtually everything he's ever said, but ultimately he was just fined approximately $1 billion USD for no more than speaking. Honestly seeing that happen to a private entity is more concerning than it happening to a demographic that already requires government approval to legally operate (medical professional, in this case).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"My family is increasingly paranoid after the Pfizer executive said they never tested whether their vaccine prevented transmission" Can you explain? I have no idea why this is something you or your family would be paranoid about.
It’s more about how it is extremely counternarrative to how it was marketed and sold. If you had told someone, who had gotten the vaccine, that Pfizer did not know whether you could still pass the virus on to your unvaccinated grandmother, you would have been laughed at. But here we are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you but that’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to pressure on young people to get the vaccine to avoid harming the elderly. If we never tested transmission… what was that about? Why not just let the elderly get it and the young risk it if they wanted? What was behind “by getting the vaccine you are protecting others” when all we actually know is that it protects yourself? There’s probably a…
The expectation was that because they knew the vaccines reduce the chances of getting symptoms such as coughs associated with transmission, reduced the time people were sick for, and also reduce the viral load in people who got sick, that this would result in a reduced chance that people who caught the virus but were vaccinated would transmit the virus. It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact but they thought i…
I wonder if they wonder if substantially (the memeplex is...complex) describing it otherwise was to their advantage, in retrospect.
Hold on.. not false statements, not defamation, not calls for violence… but “disinformation.” Except that we find out that many things were disinformation every day. My family is increasingly paranoid after the Pfizer executive said they never tested whether their vaccine prevented transmission to the EU a few days ago. Apparently that is not new information technically speaking, but it is so counter-narrative it bog…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you truly, genuinely think that is what people want, or are you constructing a straw man to beat up? Do you care to make a point, or are you just asking leading questions that create the illusion that you're making a point?
> Do you truly, genuinely think that is what people want I can't honestly believe you don't think there are a lot of people who want that. They've been very up front about it.
Michelle Carter convinced her boyfriend to commit suicide over text messages and was convicted for it. I don’t know if I disagree that trying to use speech to convince a sick person into suicide shouldn’t be legal.
But at the same time I’m generally a free speech proponent and find jailing people for speech abhorrent. But I struggle to believe all speech should be legal if it knowingly ruins lives or causes death.