It’s really unfortunate that these authorities have already sacrificed their respectability by being dishonest with the American people in the mask debacle.
What mask debacle? Masks have been shown to be quite effective against aerosolized viruses, and the “5nm limit” has been shown to be a historical error of interpretation - droplets up to 100nm have been shown to be transmission vectors even in the original Tuberculosis experiment where the 5nm value was misinterpreted from, and non-medical masks are quite effective in these upper size ranges.
Further proof can be seen in the latest flu season - there simply wasn’t one at all. At least in British Columbia, where numbers of flu sufferers were so negligible that they dipped beneath statistical error levels.
US officials have been playing very loose with the truth about these things.
>U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams even told Americans in a late February tweet that they need to “STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
As time went on, the tone changed, and Americans were encouraged to wear face masks, with many places requiring them.
Now Fauci has admitted that the reason Americans were initially discouraged from using them is because there was a shortage, as Adams acknowledged in the second part of his February tweet.
“We were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci told The Street. "We wanted to make sure the people, namely, the healthcare workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in harm's way to take care of people who you know were infected with coronavirus, and the danger of them getting infected. We did not want them to be without the equipment they needed."
Why are you still beating this drum? I agree they were not totally truthful but it seems like an altruistic motive, even with them saying that, hospitals and medical workers were needing to go to extreme lengths to procure masks for their workers. It does seem more important in those early days to prioritize the front-line medical workers versus regular ole folks who could stay home.
The damage has been done. Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter (and “MSM” but that’s not new)... they’ve made their priorities clear. We know who they are. They have zero credibility at this point.
There is some tragic irony here. That loss of credibility creates a void of trust. Who fills the void? Well, ironically, it’s the very same propagandists that Facebook et al claim to be defending against with their censorship. The “fake news” spam blogs exploit this lack of trust to push transparently biased agendas. People gravitate toward the sources compatible with their biases. But nobody notices when some misinformation slips into the same source.
This should not be a surprise. Threads on this topic a year ago were filled with the same criticism. By censoring opposing ideas, you give them reason to exist. By wasting your credibility, you create a situation where censoring and deplatforming a viewpoint only serves to amplify its cause.
I think everyone realizes that introducing curation means that sometimes the curators will get it wrong. I still think having some curation is better than none.
Before people get mad that Facebook is trying to control the truth, don't forget that their algorithms already manipulate the news and it's been happening for years. Their algorithms prioritize user engagement, which means prioritizing news that provokes conflict and fear and conspiracy. That creates a huge bias, it makes people feel like the world is much more divided and dangerous than it really is.
That's a problem that's on them to fix, and the solution is probably more curation not less. For them to get it wrong on the man-made theory, that's one of the less harmful things they've done so far.
10 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 32.9 ms ] threadFurther proof can be seen in the latest flu season - there simply wasn’t one at all. At least in British Columbia, where numbers of flu sufferers were so negligible that they dipped beneath statistical error levels.
>U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams even told Americans in a late February tweet that they need to “STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
As time went on, the tone changed, and Americans were encouraged to wear face masks, with many places requiring them.
Now Fauci has admitted that the reason Americans were initially discouraged from using them is because there was a shortage, as Adams acknowledged in the second part of his February tweet.
“We were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci told The Street. "We wanted to make sure the people, namely, the healthcare workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in harm's way to take care of people who you know were infected with coronavirus, and the danger of them getting infected. We did not want them to be without the equipment they needed."
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/06/17/fauci...
The point here is REAL information was censored effectively killing the conversation for nearly a year.
We should all be concerned when a corporation has the power to determine 'truth' with this outsized impact.
There is some tragic irony here. That loss of credibility creates a void of trust. Who fills the void? Well, ironically, it’s the very same propagandists that Facebook et al claim to be defending against with their censorship. The “fake news” spam blogs exploit this lack of trust to push transparently biased agendas. People gravitate toward the sources compatible with their biases. But nobody notices when some misinformation slips into the same source.
This should not be a surprise. Threads on this topic a year ago were filled with the same criticism. By censoring opposing ideas, you give them reason to exist. By wasting your credibility, you create a situation where censoring and deplatforming a viewpoint only serves to amplify its cause.
Before people get mad that Facebook is trying to control the truth, don't forget that their algorithms already manipulate the news and it's been happening for years. Their algorithms prioritize user engagement, which means prioritizing news that provokes conflict and fear and conspiracy. That creates a huge bias, it makes people feel like the world is much more divided and dangerous than it really is.
That's a problem that's on them to fix, and the solution is probably more curation not less. For them to get it wrong on the man-made theory, that's one of the less harmful things they've done so far.