> ... but the WHO hates both efficiency and fun even more than it hates freedom, it seems. Sad Can someone clarify this part for me please? I find it incredibly hard to trust an author who starts a supposedly serious article with such sensationalist bullshit.
The complaint is over the name, your placement of the ellipses is really unfortunate as the snipped portion of the sentence answers your question. Regarding the tone, I would not read so much into this; if you read a little bit further in the article (you can just ctrl+f and search for who, it doesn't have a lot of occurrences either as WHO or who) you'll find that the author Mowshowitz agrees with the world health organization regarding their recommendation not to restrict travel. It bears mentioning that at least on a literal level, the WHO recommending against a travel restriction is the WHO doing the opposite of hating freedom, so we are forced to conclude that the sentence you chose to highlight was intended to be read tongue-in-cheek.
Especially not the leader who created this bio weapon and unleashed it on the world.
Care to substantiate that for all of us? I think it's safe to assume you can't. Now think about the effect of posting an oft-repeated but unsubstantiated, controversial meme like this. Did you accomplish something? Movement towards a goal? (Maybe you just got a feeling of catharsis?) Was it worth the effort & other effects?
I can't speak for "all of us" but the conversation you're encouraging has no value to me, and I'd prefer not having to scroll past it if it's all the same to you.
I'm sure this person means well, and is very intelligent, but I stopped reading at the byline. I went and found what this person's expertise actually is. Zvi Mowshowitz is a former professional Magic: The Gathering player who also held a developer intern position at Wizards of the Coast Magic R&D. He is known for having created innovative and sometimes game-breaking decks TurboZvi and My Fires. Now, there is a balanc…
I think you should continue doing what works for you, but I would ask you to consider carefully recommending your remedy to others. The explainers you're mentioning kick down a lot of doors, whether their conclusions are correct or incorrect. They collect a lot of sourced information in one place, and widen the channels between everyone and information when they do blog. You said yourself this person's blog posts were well footnoted. That is an incredibly valuable, dying practice on the internet. Consider for a moment the people that are experts. Consider the grad student working elbow to elbow next to the doctorate researcher, who are not on a corporate or government payroll and do not have the resources and trappings that come with such positions. The infohazards you rightfully avoid as being wrong and repeating misinformation comes at a high cost to you, are worthless to these people. They're researchers. Their job is being wrong, many times, as quickly as possible, until they can finally be right about something. What they want is that wealth of information. And frankly, it's dwindling. We don't have the wealth of information in 2021 that we had in 2016. The rigor you'd see on an average wikipedia page is missing. News articles, including those quoting experts, allow their authors more leeway than ever to post their own opinions and interpret news, regardless the news source. It's becoming incredibly difficult to find all the facts in one place. I am absolutely not going to downplay the harm that misinformation does and I applaud you for taking intelligent steps to avoid spreading it. As an individual your policy, not reading something you're likely to repeat, is laudable. There's just room for both you and your explainer friend on this internet of ours, isn't there? And room for a diversity of approaches toward using our time online, I say. What's important is that we all care very much about the truth, and I am optimistic where that is concerned.