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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#541

Post by ethanbond »

echelon wrote: post #513
eddhead wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jim Baker is a double agent for the FBI. Everyone is Quite obvious of why he was there.

> Jim Baker is a double agent for the FBI. Geopolitical hat on. Elon Musk is getting close to the Saudis (Twitter), China (Gigafactory Shanghai), and Russians (necessary industrial inputs). In the past few months he's casually suggested a handover of Ukraine and Taiwan. Now he's turning on the Democrats and the FBI, or at least certain members of those organizations. My mind wonders if the DoD will sour on his role a…

Yeah even going so far as replying “Epic thread!!” to Medvedev’s propaganda tweet thread with 2023 predictions like “the US will experience civil war and Musk will win the presidency in states that have been given to (?) the GOP.”

4 hours later he tried to backpedal, which is perhaps the only move more pathetic than having boosted the propaganda in the first place.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#542

Post by the_why_of_y »

brigandish wrote: post #486
andy_ppp wrote: post #441

That we’re still debating this stuff is ridiculous, everyone seems to be trying to create a narrative out of actions performed with good intentions and imperfect information. I think Twitter and the press had an almost impossible job attempting to manage public health messaging. There does not need to be a red vs blue debate on this as if it’s some religious war. The way it’s debated verges on conspiracy theory to me…

> we have loads of evidence the societies with more locking down and more extreme interventions saved more lives Japan had no lockdowns (because current law prevents such government overreach). Would you like to compare death figures between the more populace and much older and therefore, on the face of it, much higher risk Japan, with Germany?

There is an important aspect of culture that you're missing here.

If the government simply recommends to follow certain protocols for the health of the community, a Japanese person is culturally inclined to do their duty.

In contrast, a lot of red-blooded Americans are going to yell "socialism" and emphatically refuse to do anything that would benefit their neighbour, in some cases even if it would also benefit themselves, as we have seen.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#543

Post by causi »

ethanbond wrote: post #534
causi wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There WAS a LOT of misinformation about covid, and a lot of it could cause real harm. Quite true. Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. That irrevocably shattered a whole lot of people's fa…

This whole part of the narrative is, unfortunately, a story about how people cannot be delivered nuanced messages even while screaming that they deserve nuance. The CDC did not say that makes do not work. They said we do not know if masks work, which was (and mostly still remains) true. Only person who said we have positive knowledge that masks don’t work was USSG Jerome Adams, and that was pretty late in the ordeal.

February 29th 2020 was "pretty late in the ordeal"?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#544

Post by brigandish »

stonogo wrote: post #494
brigandish wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have loads of evidence the societies with more locking down and more extreme interventions saved more lives Japan had no lockdowns (because current law prevents such government overreach). Would you like to compare death figures between the more populace and much older and therefore, on the face of it, much higher risk Japan, with Germany?

Japan, famously possessed of a masking tradition which long predates COVID-19 and equally famously possessed of hundreds of thousands of shut-ins pre-pandemic ('Hikikomori'). Not a useful comparator to a nation that had neither.

The masking had no effect on either influenza, of which it suffered regular pandemics, nor COVID-19, as even though people wore them at work and, laughably, outside in the open air

a) the virus is aerosolised

b) Japan still experienced large waves of infections

c) the masks used are not of the requisite quality nor used properly (if you've ever had the horror to witness an old man pull down his mask to cough because he doesn't want to sully the mask, which perhaps he wants to wear tomorrow too, you'll know what I mean)

d) most transmission occurs at home, which may be the only place Japanese people do not usually bother with masks

e) Hikikomori is a real social phenomena in Japan but the vast majority of people are not hikikomori, nor did most people isolate. Even at the height of "soft lockdown" there were still lots of people moving around and work from home was still not something widespread.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#545

Post by finikytou »

zimpenfish wrote: post #520
finikytou wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people did make fun of him suggesting using UV. CNNing of the mind works well in the distopia that has became the western world. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101113442...

But that paper is specifically not about COVID-19 - "it is reasonable to suggest a human Coronavirus HCoV-OC43 as a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2" - and is only tested in-vitro - "For each irradiation experiment 50 μl of virus suspension [...] was placed in each well of a black 24-well plate". It might encourage people to give grant money for further research but it is 100% not evidence for the efficacy of "sticking a UV…

yes it is not evidence and I don't think trump's tone was 100% sure of it. he just asked if there might be a way. that doesn't totally sounds dumb to look at it according to prior research.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#547

Post by brigandish »

the_why_of_y wrote: post #542
brigandish wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have loads of evidence the societies with more locking down and more extreme interventions saved more lives Japan had no lockdowns (because current law prevents such government overreach). Would you like to compare death figures between the more populace and much older and therefore, on the face of it, much higher risk Japan, with Germany?

There is an important aspect of culture that you're missing here. If the government simply recommends to follow certain protocols for the health of the community, a Japanese person is culturally inclined to do their duty. In contrast, a lot of red-blooded Americans are going to yell "socialism" and emphatically refuse to do anything that would benefit their neighbour, in some cases even if it would also benefit thems…

How strange, I can remember seeing hordes of people out for hanami, in bars, on trains, in stadiums… I foresee lots of seppuku for not doing one's duty!

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#548

Post by chiefalchemist »

arcticbull wrote: post #432
causi wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There WAS a LOT of misinformation about covid, and a lot of it could cause real harm. Quite true. Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. It was obvious to everyone and their dog that masks help stop the spread of respiratory infections. That irrevocably shattered a whole lot of people's fa…

> Thing is, there wasn't that much of it before the CDC spent over a month spewing bullshit telling people not to wear masks because masks don't stop the spread of COVID. They made it clear after the fact that this was done because there wasn't an adequate supply of masks for 330M people, and they needed to secure a supply for first responders. The job of the government is to make tough decisions like this in times o…

> They made it clear after the fact that this was done because there wasn't an adequate supply of masks for 330M people, and they needed to secure a supply for first responders. The job of the government is to make tough decisions like this in times of crisis

Tough decisions? Yes, lies - with a straight face? No. Now what? How can you do public health without public trust?* How can you govern effectively when the record showed you lied?

The irony? I still see people wearing masks; the kind of mask that are proven to be ineffective.

* On top of it we were assured these people were "the experts." However, this wasn't our first respiratory pandemic. Yet we were completely unprepared? What is their area of expertise? Lies?

Publib health and government based on lies isn't sustainable. Yet anyone who questioned that was marginalized? It get worse and worse.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#549

Post by rightbyte »

devtul wrote: post #420
afpx wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there are literally millions of medical experts recommending taking vaccines, why would you expect most people to do otherwise? We're not all medical experts. And, we can't survive without trusting others.

It wasn't really a recommendation per gov policy in many countries, it was take the shot or else type of deal. Also any talk that didn't toe the official line was deemed "misinformation".

The goalposts for what was "misinformation" moved all the time too. Making the whole misinformation information campaign silly stupid, but one just doubled down on it.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#550

Post by chiefalchemist »

autoexec wrote: post #525
arcticbull wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's still lying. They gave you, the individual, false information, ... Yes it was lying. Yes it was false information. No, that's not outside the scope of their role at times. > ... and not for your own good. Quite the contrary, that misinformation would actually harm you if you believed it. No, it was for the individual good. Hoarding of masks by randos in the middle of nowhere leading to no supply for the firs…

> Again, a crap situation, but one that the CDC wasn't responsible for. They simply messed up. All they had to do was say nothing and reach out to the manufacturers making N95 masks and their retailers. Just going to Walmart and Amazon and getting them to pull their stock would have prevented the vast majority of people from getting their hands on them. A non-trivial number of Americans at the time had already been w…

The better question is: Knowing we've had a respiratory pandemic in the recent past, and knowing another would happen eventually, why were we so unprepared? And who - naming names - is responsible for that?

Why isn't this being asked and discussed?

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