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How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

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Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#551

Post by the_why_of_y »

yehosef wrote: post #492

Any discussion of this that ignores the role of vaccine manufacturers in this process are simply lacking. The government had no real incentive to push a policy against science except financial interests (and the influence of people with financial influence.) Case it point - the demonization of ivermectin - one of the safest drugs ever created that saved so many people's lives ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3446627…

You mean doctors like this Dr. Karas here one lost their license?

As early as November 2020, Dr. Robert Karas, the jail’s doctor, told inmates who had contracted COVID that he was giving them a cocktail of vitamins, antibiotics, and steroids when in fact he was administering dangerously high doses of the dewormer.

“At no point were Plaintiffs informed that the medications they were consuming included Ivermectin,” the lawsuit says. “Further, Plaintiffs were not informed of the side effects of the drug administered to them or that any results would be used for research purposes.”

As a result, these men experienced diarrhea, bloody stools, stomach cramps, and vision problems, the lawsuit says, all of which suggest ivermectin poisoning.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/01/inmates-sue-arka...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#552

Post by newsclues »

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.

As someone that has been trained by one of the few organizations that develops leadership (military)...

The communications and advise from the medical establishment and media, were so terrible that that I question incompetence and lean towards corruption.

The flip flopping, the political and idealogical justifications, the theatre of everything without substance.

The People can handle nuanced messaging, what they can't handle is lies, obfuscation, and leaders who refuse to admit they are wrong.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#553

Post by mhh__ »

seneca wrote: post #258
88913527 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you supposed to communicate 1 in 10^7 chance of anything happening versus communicating it's risk-free. The public isn't educated well enough to ascertain the difference. College-educated members of society sure, but what about the rest? Health messaging has to be broadly applicable. Most people won't have an issue, so it's simplest to convey this idea.

Sorry, are you suggesting that people without a college education are too ignorant to make judgements about their own health and that it's therefore ok to lie to them? This sort of high handed paternalism is exactly the attitude that has destroyed faith in institutions.

We shouldn't lie but 99% of college grads are either nominally or practically innumerate, a probability alone isn't enough

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#554

Post by brigandish »

jltsiren wrote: post #518
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 managed to secure its national borders tightly. Once you were inside the "lockdown facility", which was effectively the entire country, you could continue living more or less as before. Other countries had to resort to internal lockdowns, because land borders are harder to secure. Cross-border truck traffic was particularly problematic, as it involves a large number of people crossing borders and continuing inl…

And yet Japan still experienced large waves of infection of every variant, prior to reopening the borders to tourists and after reopening the borders (which only happened properly in the last couple of months). Possibly because the borders weren't really closed as "essential" travel by Japanese nationals among others occurred, and of course, trade. Much to the chagrin of far too many nationalists the sakoku[1] is a distant memory.

Aside from which, it's been known since 2020 [nature 1] that such closures are ineffective once the virus is international, as pointed out in [nature 2]:

> We found no evidence in favor of international border closures

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku

[nature 1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03605-6#content

[nature 2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05482-7

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#555

Post by autoexec »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #550
autoexec wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No doubt! Even if the CDC hadn't lied they'd still have a lot to answer for.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#556

Post by yosame »

finikytou wrote: post #505
jamiek88 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101113442... thats ok. you can lie and twist the reality but it won't work with people who can read or listen.

That article is about UV light, not bleach?

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#557

Post by leereeves »

int_19h wrote: post #491
leereeves wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gave them the mandate to control information about Covid? Trump was president at the time and he certainly didn't. And even granting, for the sake of argument, that someone within the government had that job, suppressing disagreement and debate is not the right way to do it.

From the article: "Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes. At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” according to emails sent by Twitter emplo…

And Trump was wrong to do that, but please note that I was replying to:

> There are people within the government whose job it was to respond to the covid pandemic. Part of that response involved educating the public about the disease and best practices related to it, which therefore included fighting misinformation.

It wasn't Trump pushing Twitter to ban anything that disagreed with the CDC's official position, and Trump separately pushing to ban misinformation about panic buying doesn't justify it.

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#558

Post by finikytou »

yosame wrote: post #556
finikytou wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101113442... thats ok. you can lie and twist the reality but it won't work with people who can read or listen.

That article is about UV light, not bleach?

because the parent video never mentionned bleach. He asked if we could have something that could disinfect from the inside. CNN translated that as bleach. just like they translated the hunter biden story as russian propaganda. that is US media so its nothing special. what is special is that educated people are talking about bleach while they have access to the source material and can tell there is not once mention of bleach

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#559

Post by stefantalpalaru »

groby_b wrote: post #306
a_bonobo wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel Germany is a slightly different beast as a large part of the anti-vax crowd in Germany seems to recruit itself from left-ish/Green corner of politics, the people who've been anti-Monsanto for decades. It's not a far jump from there to anti-vax (it's all big US companies etc.)

How's that different from the US? Nominally left-leaning yoga moms are a huge part of the antivax moxement. It's the same thing - a lack of understanding, an unwillingness to think critical, a naive belief that "nature good, human-made bad" without any nuance, and the willingness to deify their prophets of "natural healing".

> Nominally left-leaning yoga moms are a huge part of the antivax moxement. It's the same thing - a lack of understanding, an unwillingness to think critical, a naive belief that "nature good, human-made bad" without any nuance, and the willingness to deify their prophets of "natural healing".

Nice straw man you've got there. It would be a shame if this scientific bibliography were to shatter your worldview: https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795...

Re: How Twitter moderated the Covid debate

#560

Post by pclmulqdq »

slg wrote: post #532
causi wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do people think would have been the proper approach here Tell us the truth. "N95s should be reserved for medical personnel but surgical masks provide nominal protection for yourself and significant protection for others you might infect." People realizing the CDC can and will lie to them has already been and will be far into the future responsible for countless deaths. Not only that, it makes us question what el…

Once again, there was already hoarding. This would have led to even more hoarding which would have led to even more deaths. Maybe it is just that I started this ordeal in a more cynical place than others, but this one example of the CDC not telling the full truth is not some earth-shattering revelation to me. The government has lied to us countless times. I assume they will continue to lie to us in the future. At lea…

The government lies, yes. The government shouldn't be upset that people think they are lying about big things if they are willing to lie about small things.

Prior to COVID, the CDC and vaccination programs in general had a sterling reputation for helping you a an individual. So much so that Amish and Hassidic communities would sometimes get vaccines at their recommendation. That reputation is now out the window, at tremendous damage to our public health.

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