While the world pushes back against COVID-19, Facebook has a pandemic of a different sort – medical misinformation At the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic in April, 82 websites spreading health misinformation attracted an estimated 460 million views on Facebook. This is according to research by US-based global activist org Avaaz, which found that bogus health claims on Facebook accrued an estimated 3.8 billion views in one year. " …
I think that we should make everyone who publishes statements and information be prepared to provide evidence that there is serious evidence that demonstrates that it's correct and not a lie.
This is tough - it means that you can't accuse the president of being stupid unless you present evidence, but it also means that the president has to tell the truth too. This has to be applied universally - if you are caught lying then you must be held responsible, so don't share a post if you like it but have no serious evidence that it's correct - it doesn't matter if you are Biden, Trump, or Freddie on the street corner. Equally we need to accept that people make mistakes and when we make mistakes than we need to acknowledge that we were wrong. Nobody is perfect.
What if you post something like "Hey everyone, look at what this idiot is suggesting! How dumb is this?" and then either Copy/Paste or link to something really stupid? You've published it but you've also made it pretty clear it's not something you are recommending anyone does (except maybe the Jackass crew).
Should you be responsible for proving why it's a bad idea, or do you expect (hope) your audience has enough intelligence and/or understanding to figure it out for themselves?
We really need a "Won't someone think of the adults?" icon as well...
Gosh. What a surprise.
I never would have thought. A multinational corporation that lives on ads delivered by clicks is not doing enough to stop successful pages that disseminate false information.
Who'd've thought ?
Certainly - we have to change everything. The issue is who says it's a lie and what evidence do they have? Misinformation is destroying us because the internet spreads it so fast. These days everyone say that amphetamine sulfate high speed internet is a good thing - but too much of it causes serious damage.
This really points to the sad state of science education. Many claims don't even meet the "smell" test but are believed. I have fun sometimes by claiming the Earth is flat and many people can't seem to come up with effective counter arguments. I even tell them before hand what I am going to do.
I agree to a point. If you're going to get health information from Facebook then the laws of Darwinism will hopefully come into play.
However...that's only any good if it only affects you, the idiot. So injecting bleach, drinking colloidal silver, buying random drugs off the internet. Crack on, it's your funeral, or it will be in reletively short order. But when your actions affect the wider population or your kids that's a different story. So the antivax loonies, covid deniers etc they are putting people other than themselves at risk. In fact you're putting me and my family at risk; so really I want you taken out of the equation.
Please note that natural selection usually relies on the selectee being removed from the gene pool before breeding or on them passing on negative characteristics to offspring.
I suspect many may be early breeders (gee, how did that happen?) so successful Darwinism regrettably mainly relies on them damaging their offspring.
Which antivaxxers at least seem to be able to do.
However Covid quack remedies and the like are more likely to harm the more "mature" individual.
Post articles on ivermectin and covid19, like: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-020-0336-z
and facebook/#hatebook often disappears the articles, downgrades the person's later posts, and bans them... with no way to appeal (the link provided is usually broken, never goes to a real human, and evidence for why it is banned is not presented except to say someone else says it is not so without addressing the actual therapeutic involved.)
With multiple clinical trials happening, it is nearly impossible to get early results, with posts & people being purged, before your dead,
NCT04343092 NCT04381884 NCT04374279 NCT04374019 NCT04360356 NCT04351347 NCT04345419 NCT04382846 NCT04373824
While some people believe it is because of patented drug push (for money),
Others think it is political (more dead people = political gain against unfavoured people in political office)
WHO said, as China was kicking out foreign journalists...
World Health Organization (WHO) @WHO
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China
https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/who-haunted-by-old-tweet-saying-china-found-no-human-transmission-of-coronavirus/
as doctors in China who said otherwise were "disappearing"... we knew & know otherwise...
To paraphrase this Fox News confused 'fest.
AC: "Coronavirus is fake",
David: "No it's real but WHO mislead us by quoting Chinese preliminary investigation, so its WHO's fault &/or China's fault"
To AC: it is real, they really are dying. Those bodies are real not crisis actors pretending to be dead.
To David Halko: CDC confirmed a human to human transmission January 30th, it was in the very earliest US cases. TRUMP KNEW:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/30/cdc-confirms-first-human-to-human-transmission-of-coronavirus-in-us.html
In case #5 and #6, the husband caught it from his wife. January 24th & January 30th.
Trump has no excuse. By January 30th, they already were sure it was human to human.
Kushner was the one that scrapped the national testing plan, because the virus was hitting blue states harder and he thought it was politically better to let them die. He knew it was human to human transmission, he thought as long as it was democrat voters infecting democrat voters, he'd refuse to help, because their deaths would help Trump at election time.
KUSHNER KNEW.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jared-kushner-coronavirus-strategy-democrat-governors-a9648831.html
Trump was the one who pushed states to open up three weeks too soon with that fake excel data plot. They knew it was human-to-human transmission then:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-advisor-kevin-hassett-excel-function-cubic-model-coronavirus-2020-5
People wanted to help the economy, they trusted their leaders, they went out to restaurants and venues and shopping. They are not to blame, they were trying to be good citizens and their leaders told them it was OK. They were lied to by the Whitehouse and its co-conspirators.
Even now, opening up schools and spreading corona virus to families via their children. Trump and Fox know damn well the kids are active virus spreaders and yet still push for it. Even as kids and teachers are getting the virus, they're still lying to their viewers.
It's the Trump virus.
It could be stopped in 3 weeks with a proper leader, but he does everything in his power to keep it going.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191111/23032743367/masnicks-impossibility-theorem-content-moderation-scale-is-impossible-to-do-well.shtml
I know a lot of people will just keep saying"all they need to do is throw more money at the problem", so I'm sure I'm just shouting at the wind here.
First identify the problem. For some stuff, it might be easy. 1+1 != 3, Pi !=4, and the Earth isn't flat*. All problems with lots of history to support the conventional wisdom. Even if 1 is a bit of an odd number, at least judging by the proof.
But throw in more controversial topics like global warming, or the sudden appearence of a 'novel' virus and the truth can be less certain. Quinine's potential effectiveness was 'fact checked' long before any real trials had been conducted, and even when they were, there were problems. Model assumptions about spread and lethality have been shown to have overstated the risks, but to be slightly fair, those predictions were made when little was really known about Covid. And the Lancet had to retract papers after discovering problems with data quality.
So when world leading, peer-reviewed journals can't spot problems, what chance would the likes of Facepalm, when all they're really interested in is hoovering up data & flogging ads. Not to mention regulatory aspects around being platform or publisher, and the potential for litigation involving anything medical.
*So.. Easy way to see the Earth's curvature is to set out to sea, or a large lake, and watch the shore or other vessels disappear below the horizon. But take away the water and you end up with a large, flat surface like salt lakes, where the effect may not be as apparent. So obviously when there's water present, what you're really seeing is the effect of sailing up the meniscus caused by surface tension. Now back to drilling for turtles..
The reason the anti-vax crowd exists is because it costs around $1000 to fully vaccinate a child in the USA. To some parents that's a lot of money, they don't want to pay it. But the guilt in risking the child's life needs to be mitigated, so they hook onto whatever lie makes it OK in their head. "Vax causes autism, so you're actually saving your kid" screams the troll, so person can pretend to themselves that they are actually helping their kid by not vaccinating them.
Facebook though, knows damn well who is behind it, because it sells them adverts, it doesn't need a complex algorithm, the lies are driven by only two groups:
https://www.newsweek.com/anti-vaxx-groups-buy-facebook-ads-1471762
"More Than Half of All Anti-Vaccine Facebook Ads Posted by Just Two Groups...just two groups (the World Mercury Project and Stop Mandatory Vaccination) were responsible for 54 percent of ads categorized as anti-vax. Pro-vaccine ads also tended to have more varied and more specific aims related to a single vaccine"
Facebook sells adverts, and then pro-vax groups need to spend money on adverts to counter the anti-vax groups. The fake controversy generates revenue for Facebook. It's very cynical.
Of the two groups:
"World Mercury Project" claims the mercury in vaccine preservatives causes autism. I class this as misguided entrenchment. Once the mercury claim was tested and debunked, Kennedy should have changed course but didn't.
"Stop Mandatory Vaccination" is more cynical. Larry Cook runs Go Fund Me page to generate income from his push, and makes a lot of money.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vaxxer-larry-cook-has-weaponized-facebook-ads-in-war-against-science?ref=scroll
"GoFundMe records show Cook has raised $79,900 for four separate anti-vax messaging campaigns. One of them, which raked in $56,636, was earmarked for the creation of his website and interviews with parents who believe their children were injured by vaccines. "
Flat earthers are trolls, I don't think any of them actually believe what they're saying.
Scientists are not immune from buying into broken logic when they need to, see superposition, quantum teleportation, reverse time-antiparticles, inflation... the list goes on and on. This is entrenchment too.
Entrenchment is human nature, the MAGA-ettes will vote Trump because to do otherwise would require them to admit to themselves they made a mistake. Easier to entrench and shut down cognitive logic than to recognise the error. The bigger the error, the more obvious the missed data, the easier it is to entrench rather than rethink.
The light begins to dawn. Insulated as I am by the NHS it had not occurred to me that basic life-saving inoculation was so expensive in the USA.
Nonetheless, I don't really believe that antivaxxers at the (not going to be) consumer level are necessarily making that judgement, attractive though the logic is: I think instead a lack of knowledge of the relative risks and a serious belief in 'if it wasn't true, they wouldn't be allowed to say it' is equally a driver. What I don't know and can't figure is what the people leading the campaign are getting from this... Donations? Flogging their own snake oil?
FFS I had not idea that you had to pay for vaccines in the USA. It's a national health benefit, that's crazy.
My baby just had her 3rd round of vaccinations this week. She was vaccinated against 7 different diseases in this round. Did I worry about the effects the antivaxxers promote about, totally, even though I think it's crap. I worried more about the pain she went through at the time and about the week she's going to feel ill as those 'evil' vaccines do their work.
Did I make the right choice? Fucking right I did. Of course there is a risk from vaccines. Just as there is a risk from any drug or treatment. But the risk from not vaccinating is massively higher than any risks from the vaccines themselves.
Risk of death from measles if unvaccinated 0.2% (10% if you're malnourished). Risk of brain damage 0.1%.
Risk of death from measles vaccine (to date) - 0% no attributable deaths.
The autism thing was debunked as well the author ostricised AND even if it were true it was still safer to give the vaccine than not to.
But then I'm sure it's all a cover up. I've worked in the public sector for 16yr and the government couldn't manage a cover up if it tried.
Conspiracy theories are great fun but a conspiracy needs discipline, loyalty and a fine degree of control. No one had a government competent enough to do that.
Incompentence, governments can do by the boatload. But a conspiracy? Nah sorry they just couldn't do it.
The light begins to dawn. Insulated as I am by the NHS it had not occurred to me that basic life-saving inoculation was so expensive in the USA.
Yup. But also probably quite profitable. Given the history and quantity of standard childhood innoculations produced, I somehow doubt they cost $1,000. But it's also an issue with potential Covid vaccination where cost per dose is reportedly high, may only provide 6 months or so protection.. And some countries are suggesting vaccination will be compulsory. Where it will be, it'll be interesting to see if that also means free, and paid for as a public good.
Nonetheless, I don't really believe that antivaxxers at the (not going to be) consumer level are necessarily making that judgement, attractive though the logic is: I think instead a lack of knowledge of the relative risks and a serious belief in 'if it wasn't true, they wouldn't be allowed to say it' is equally a driver. What I don't know and can't figure is what the people leading the campaign are getting from this... Donations? Flogging their own snake oil?
I suspect it's a combination of things. So there's some mistrust around 'Big Pharma', sometimes justified, eg Purdue & OxyContin. That may also be based on the way dodgy statistics gets used to promote products.. Which is an area where relative risk is misused, ie with statins. So 2,000 people are enrolled in a trial with 1,000 being given the drug and the rest a placebo. 2 in the placebo group get ill, 1 in the drugged group. Use relative risk to market drug as improving outcomes by 50%. Sell your product, even though it has very little effect.
Which is also the problem with Covid vaccines. Gilead's seems to have very little effect, and maybe only a minor improvement in outcomes if people are already ill. Moderna's trial consisted of only 45 healthy patients, 50% of which suffered side effects, so might be bad in a wider trial where patients have a wide range of pre-existing conditions. But it hasn't stopped governments pre-ordering millions of doses. And to make life even more interesting, vaccine makers are being granted immunity from liability because it's a public health emergency and products are being rushed to market. And then there's quinine.. If that works as a preventative medicine, there may be no need for expensive, untested vaccines. Which means less profits for 'Big Pharma', and incentives to create negative PR.. And there seems to be more data suggesting quinine has some positive effect. But Trump said it's good, therefore it's bad, and never mind the science. And quinine was 'fact checked' long before any real trials were conducted.
But such is politics. Personally, I won't be rushing to get vaccinated, and want to wait to see the outcomes of proper clinical trials. Or the outcome of mass-vaccinations with relatively untested vaccines or anti-virals. And I think there's a real danger in that if there are negative outcomes, or just not much in the way of postives (ie limited immunity), then the anti-vaxxers will seize on that to create even more distrust in 'Big Pharma'.
We live in interesting times..
The toxic combination of
- politicised pandemic control
- individualism (= selfishness)
- religion
- health as a profit centre
- a large, impoverished underclass living from hand to mouth
is demonstrating America's structural defects
It's not going to get better
Buy popcorn futures
I double ANYONE in the medical profession has ever said that any vaccination is guaranteed to work and is never going to cause harm.
The best they can do,( and that is good enough for me) is say that any risks are so low they are hard to calculate.
After all, no doctor would say that any surgery is guaranteed to work and is risk free. But then getting out of bed is a "risk", driving a card is a BIG risk. LIFE is a risk. We all have to manage these risks ourselves.
It's the way of modern humans. WE've been infantalised for so long many people have abdicated responsibility for their own lives.
Therefore teh answer to all wrongdoing and bad choices becomes "it's not my fault I did/did not do the thing. YOU should have stopped me".
I think it's where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a case of if, then, PANIC! So a lot of anti-vaxxers seem to pick on mercury in vaccines. Mercury is toxic, therefore vaccines are toxic. Just overlook the quantity being tiny and falsely correlate with a perceived rise in autism. And more importantly ignore the far more severe risks of kids catching the diseases they should be immunised against. There may have been a better argument around some adjuvants, ie shark-derived ones may make you grow sharp teeth, fins and lazer beams.. Or not given we produce squalene naturally ourselves.
Then of course there's social media, which gives anti-vaxxers a voice. Or allows us to learn more about the science and in theory make informed choices.. Unless that's censored, in which case it can just add to the conspiracy and become Big Pharma trying to hide the TRUTH! Luckily that hasn't hit RetractionWatch, yet.
FB's "rebuttal" of the accusations that they're not doing enough is to quote <Big Numbers>, instead of quoting percentages.
This is straight out of the Politicians' Playbook. You will regularly see that when accused of something like "90% of your children are in poverty", the answer is always "We've spent <currency>10M on the problem". This neatly avoids answering the actual question.
So, obviously FB have now hired a bunch of spin doctors with political experience.
Unfortunately, generally speaking, it seems most journalists struggle with numbers, being rather of a literary background, so these tricks don't seem to be challenged as often as they should (obviously this doesn't apply to the fine journos at Vulture Central!).
skirted around earlier is the medical costs in the USA
You can have co-pays on your health insurance that put out of reach regular visits to your doc because you have to pay the first $500/$1000/$5000 of any treatment
So a visit to the docs gonna set you back $200... which you have to pay
Much better to search google or farcebok about your symptoms and hope the info is correct.
In that situation, as a seller of fake cures and snake oil, I'm going to buy FB ads to advertise my cure for warts (just send $10 cash to this website and we'll never deliever anything), and my FB ads pop up on the person that cant afford to goto the docs feed.
Hmm $10 for a cure or $200 for an actual doc...
And farcebok makes money on running the dishonest ad....
Hmm $10 for a cure or $200 for an actual doc...And farcebok makes money on running the dishonest ad....
Netflix has a series on the 'Wellbeing' industry, which is worth billions, and often pseudo-medical. One episode close to my heart (or liver) was on fasting. Patients paid presumably a lot more than $200 for a supervised 28 day, water only fast. Promoted as a way to lose weight and 'cure' diabetes. One is a given as it's basically starvation for a month, the other is probably only temporary. It also included the doc running the clinic stating that patients shouldn't go back to eating 'greasy, slimey, rotting dead flesh'.. So presumably a militant vegan.
Being diagnosed as T2 diabetic, I did a lot of reading on the subject, figured it basically meant I was carb intolerant. So I cut most of those out of my diet and switched to 'OMAD', or one meal a day. So a form of fasting. But I make sure that meal is nutritionally complete and still include meat or fish for fats and proteins. As a result, I lost 20kg and my HBA1c levels are normal. But I suspect if I went back to eating the NHS or WHO dietary recommendations, those would go back up because those recommend a carb-heavy diet.. which is kinda bad for a diabetic, and probably why T2 diabetes is such a problem.
But a simple, and fairly obvious lifestyle change that didn't result in me wasting money on any of the fad diets or health supplements advertised on Facepalm, or other lifestyle/wellness sites.
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