Preventing the spread of Fake News and Misinformation

[C_Clayton_Jones]

I understand what you're saying and agreed with it most of my life.

I want to agree with it now but the lies are getting people killed. It's keeping a virus alive to mutate into new and more lethal variants. It's causing people to ingest chemicals that harm and in some cases, kill them.

I think there should be a limit to the ability of people to be able to lie through their teeth.

Private social media and message boards are indeed at liberty to enact self-imposed limits.

Conservatives certainly aren’t going to stop lying, and they’ll always find a way to propagate their lies.

Remember that the right’s campaign of lies is to provoke anger and frustration, among other things.

Call out the lies, state the facts, and move on – that’s the best that can be done.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

It will be interesting to see where the GOP is 10 years from now. If they don't get control of their party away from the cartoonish figures; it may be a future that finally includes a viable third party.

Ten years from now the GOP will likely be in control of the WH and Congress.

The problem is that what the GOP is doing is working – however wrong and reprehensible.

The voters – particularly independent voters – practice cognitive dissonance when it comes to the GOP: they see the likes of Trump and Congressional Republicans as ridiculous jokes, while voting for and supporting Republicans at the state and local level.

And because the states determine who the president is and who controls the Senate, Republicans will always have the advantage when it comes to controlling the Federal government – it’s the key to Republican minority rule.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

I think a third part is just going to muddy the water.

Correct.

Indeed, independent voters constitute a de facto third party – and it was the fence-sitters who gave us Trump.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Third parties serve an important role in our political system by forcing major political parties to address new issues they might not have previously addressed very much. A third party can also break stalemates in congress.

That’s top-down reasoning, and it won’t work.

“All politics are local.”

The two political parties are creatures of the states; the states control elections – the two-party system is a Hydra with 50 heads.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

AP News say, "Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been"
NBC News says, "Unvaccinated people over 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid"
NPR says, More than 97% of people entering hospitals right now are unvaccinated.
Public Health Insider reports "And, people who are not fully vaccinated are getting seriously ill and dying at much higher rates than the vaccinated population."

Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated

Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the United States now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the vaccines have been and an indication that daily deaths — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the shots.

apnews.com

Unvaccinated people over 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with Covid, CDC report finds

The study of over 40,000 Covid-19 cases in Los Angeles County also found that unvaccinated people were nearly five times more likely to be infected.

www.nbcnews.com

New data dashboard tracks COVID-19 risk for unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people – PUBLIC HEALTH INSIDER

Since July, COVID-19, cases have increased rapidly in King County. The worsening outbreak is affecting all of us. And, people who are not fully vaccinated are getting seriously ill and dying at much higher rates than the vaccinated population. That's clear on a new data dashboard, which shows...

publichealthinsider.com

And yet, conservatives will continue to lie about the pandemic, with nothing but contempt for the facts.

 

[Persuader]

We've all seen it on USMB and elsewhere, fake news and misinformation on just about every major topic of public interest, global warming, elections, covid-19, foreign policy, domestic policy, legislation, crime, etc..... When we see posts that are filled with false information that is contrary to, trusted news services, science, trusted leaders, and often just plain common sense, we feel obliged to prove the poster is wrong. Generally speaking this not the best way to stop the spread of misinformation. It actually increases it. It is exactly what the poster wants, an invitation to provide more misinformation in support of his augment. When we play this game with the poster we become part of the problem, not the solution.

Fake news is bad for democracy — and in a pandemic, it may be a matter of life or death.

What is

And your position on the big whopper lies Biden just told during his Afghanistan fiasco?

the democrats think anything biden says is a ok whether it is a lie or not does not matter to them.

They completely disregard the long history of lying by biden as well as the fact he was forced to drop out of his first presidential race for lying and plagerism.

 

[Persuader]

C-Span
Associated Press
BBC
The Economist
NPR
Reuters

Any story that does not appear in one of the above is most probably false news or only of local interest.

Can anyone say naive?

 

[frigidweirdo]

And Fox is successful peddling crap; as long as it’s successful, that won’t change.

Yes, of course. The argument being made was that you'd separate the news from the crap. But you'd still have the crap.

It's difficult. How do you stop the crap, but still have the freedom to form an opinion?

 

[g5000]

Ivermectin: a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction with indicated efficacy against a new global scourge, COVID-19

In 2015, the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, in its only award for treatments of infectious diseases since six decades prior, honoured the…

www.sciencedirect.com

You fool.

.

Well, I read the link. Very interesting.

However, it is roundly debunked here: Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 5: The Nobel Prize gambit

I hope you will take the trouble to read that link as I did yours.

Some bits:

The review is as bad as you might imagine, given certain members of its author list. What do I mean? Let’s just say that at least one of the authors should be familiar to regular readers of this blog: Peter McCullough.

I first encountered Dr. Peter McCullough in May, when he was promoting an imminent “Holocaust” due to COVID-19 vaccines. At the time, he was being billed by the likes of Joe Mercola and Mike Adams as “doctor with the most citations in the National Library of Medicine on these topics” (i.e., COVID-19). He’s also a consultant cardiologist and Vice Chief of Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and Principal Faculty in internal medicine for the Texas A & M University Health Sciences Center who’s been making the rounds on the COVID-19 conspiracy circuit. By June, I encountered him promoting the idea that COVID-19 vaccines are designed for “global depopulation“.

[snip]

Mr. Scheim is a retired computer database developer and hasn’t been an active member of the NIH or the US Public Health Service for 25 years.

[snip]

That part about 400 subjects plus the 92% reduction in mortality is a narrative I had heard before. Hmmm, I wondered, Which study is that? It sure sounds familiar. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was a study out of Egypt (Elgazzar 2020) that (1) had never been peer reviewed and only been available on a preprint server; (2) as the largest randomized trial of ivermectin for COVID-19 drove seemingly “positive” results in meta-analyses even though the rest of the studies without it wound up producing a negative result; and (3) was very likely was fraudulent, complete with plagiarism and data that appeared to have been made up, leading to its retraction from a preprint server—surely the first time I had ever seen that before!



While I was tooling around the internet and looking up studies about ivermectin, I found the same thing. The Egyptian study was faked and has been withdrawn: Flawed ivermectin preprint highlights challenges of COVID drug studies



More:

What about the rest of the studies cited in this review? There were two animal studies, one of which is a study in golden hamsters that’s been on a preprint server since November, not a good sign it will ever passing peer review. Interestingly, the study showed no effect of ivermectin on viral load, although it claimed to show a major effect on SARS-Cov-2-associated pathology, including loss of sense of smell. The study was not blinded, something that researchers doing animal research often forget to do, even though failure to blind can cause the same problems in animal research as in human clinical trials. The second study wasn’t even of SARS-CoV-2, but of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), a type 2 family RNA coronavirus similar to SARS-CoV-2. This study was not blinded, either, except for the pathologist examining the liver sections for signs of viral infection. Given that it didn’t even test ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 and didn’t really show that MHV is so similar to SARS-CoV-2 that the results would be generalizable, color me less than impressed by these animal studies.

[snip]

Does this sound familiar? It’s the same sort of ecological “analysis” that an astroturf group was doing for hydroxychloroquine last year that I discussed. The methods of this study are equally awful, which is probably why this article, too, is only on a preprint server thus far, and guess what? It’s a study whose first author is David Scheim, a man with no discernable expertise in the sort of complex epidemiology that would be required to make sense of the Peruvian data, while the other author is Juan Chamie of—you guessed it!—the FLCCC. I’ll say about this study the same thing that I said about the HCQ astroturf site: This is all utter rubbish, methods, conclusion, and all, as you will see. It’s so bad that it reminds me of a study by two antivaxxers without any qualifications in epidemiology, Neil Z. Miller and Gary S. Goldman, that tried—and failed—to correlate the number of vaccines in the recommended vaccine schedules of various countries with those countries’ infant mortality rates.

 

[DrLove]

Is that a selfie?

.

No, laughing at you for taking his horsey dewormer.
Might work on your head lice problem though

 

[OKTexas]

Well, I read the link. Very interesting.

However, it is roundly debunked here: Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 5: The Nobel Prize gambit

I hope you will take the trouble to read that link as I did yours.

Some bits:

The review is as bad as you might imagine, given certain members of its author list. What do I mean? Let’s just say that at least one of the authors should be familiar to regular readers of this blog: Peter McCullough.

I first encountered Dr. Peter McCullough in May, when he was promoting an imminent “Holocaust” due to COVID-19 vaccines. At the time, he was being billed by the likes of Joe Mercola and Mike Adams as “doctor with the most citations in the National Library of Medicine on these topics” (i.e., COVID-19). He’s also a consultant cardiologist and Vice Chief of Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and Principal Faculty in internal medicine for the Texas A & M University Health Sciences Center who’s been making the rounds on the COVID-19 conspiracy circuit. By June, I encountered him promoting the idea that COVID-19 vaccines are designed for “global depopulation“.

[snip]

Mr. Scheim is a retired computer database developer and hasn’t been an active member of the NIH or the US Public Health Service for 25 years.

[snip]

That part about 400 subjects plus the 92% reduction in mortality is a narrative I had heard before. Hmmm, I wondered, Which study is that? It sure sounds familiar. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was a study out of Egypt (Elgazzar 2020) that (1) had never been peer reviewed and only been available on a preprint server; (2) as the largest randomized trial of ivermectin for COVID-19 drove seemingly “positive” results in meta-analyses even though the rest of the studies without it wound up producing a negative result; and (3) was very likely was fraudulent, complete with plagiarism and data that appeared to have been made up, leading to its retraction from a preprint server—surely the first time I had ever seen that before!



While I was tooling around the internet and looking up studies about ivermectin, I found the same thing. The Egyptian study was faked and has been withdrawn: Flawed ivermectin preprint highlights challenges of COVID drug studies



More:

What about the rest of the studies cited in this review? There were two animal studies, one of which is a study in golden hamsters that’s been on a preprint server since November, not a good sign it will ever passing peer review. Interestingly, the study showed no effect of ivermectin on viral load, although it claimed to show a major effect on SARS-Cov-2-associated pathology, including loss of sense of smell. The study was not blinded, something that researchers doing animal research often forget to do, even though failure to blind can cause the same problems in animal research as in human clinical trials. The second study wasn’t even of SARS-CoV-2, but of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), a type 2 family RNA coronavirus similar to SARS-CoV-2. This study was not blinded, either, except for the pathologist examining the liver sections for signs of viral infection. Given that it didn’t even test ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 and didn’t really show that MHV is so similar to SARS-CoV-2 that the results would be generalizable, color me less than impressed by these animal studies.

[snip]

Does this sound familiar? It’s the same sort of ecological “analysis” that an astroturf group was doing for hydroxychloroquine last year that I discussed. The methods of this study are equally awful, which is probably why this article, too, is only on a preprint server thus far, and guess what? It’s a study whose first author is David Scheim, a man with no discernable expertise in the sort of complex epidemiology that would be required to make sense of the Peruvian data, while the other author is Juan Chamie of—you guessed it!—the FLCCC. I’ll say about this study the same thing that I said about the HCQ astroturf site: This is all utter rubbish, methods, conclusion, and all, as you will see. It’s so bad that it reminds me of a study by two antivaxxers without any qualifications in epidemiology, Neil Z. Miller and Gary S. Goldman, that tried—and failed—to correlate the number of vaccines in the recommended vaccine schedules of various countries with those countries’ infant mortality rates.

That's all interesting, but you missed the point of my post. It was to show ivermectin isn't just a "horsey dewormer", as an idiot said, but doctors received the Nobel Prize for research of its applications in human infectious diseases.

.

 

[OKTexas]

No, laughing at you for taking his horsey dewormer.
Might work on your head lice problem though

Yeah, what was I thinking, if it had been a selfie of you it would have been taken from this angle.

 

[Flopper]

Those "clinical trials" are only looking for immediate and drastic effects.
There has never been any vaccines like this ever before.
And clearly the CDC does not understand anything about them.
The CDC site on mRNA vaccines is so incredibly stupid and wrong, that it is a national embarrassment.

Here is what the CDC claims:

Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines

Learn how mRNA vaccines trigger an immune response against COVID-19.

www.cdc.gov

{...
mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious diseases. To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.

A Closer Look at How COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Work​

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.

1. First, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are given in the upper arm muscle. Once the instructions (mRNA) are inside the muscle cells, the cells use them to make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them.
2. Next, the cell displays the protein piece on its surface. Our immune systems recognize that the protein doesn’t belong there and begin building an immune response and making antibodies, like what happens in natural infection against COVID-19.
3. At the end of the process, our bodies have learned how to protect against future infection. The benefit of mRNA vaccines, like all vaccines, is those vaccinated gain this protection without ever having to risk the serious consequences of getting sick with COVID-19.

...}

That is just ridiculous.
There is no way an intramuscular injection can possibly get mRNA into cells, and if it could, it would be far too dangerous for anyone to take.
And if you did get mRNA into our own cells, then those cells would be attacked and destroyed by our own immune system, which would be highly dangerous, depending on which cells got contaminated.
Nor would there be any way of regulating dosage, since our cells would all react differently to an mRNA injection.
Some people would not produce any spike proteins, while other would produce so many that the immune response would be fatal.

I have read how mRNA REALLY works, and it is nothing at all like this.
The mRNA is injected into large stem cells in a factory, where insertion into cells is easily done with micro syringes, under a microscope.
Then spike proteins are later harvest for the vaccines.
That is ALL the vaccines contain, just spike proteins, nothing else.

Clearly the CDC is incompetent and just flag waving for big pharma.
There is no intellectual integrity at all.
There was no real valid testing done.
While these vaccines seem to be saving lives, we have no idea at all what the possible side effect are going to be.

There is no doubt that injections do break into muscle cells, however that is not the primarily means that mRNA enters the cells.
MRNA, which is very fragile is encapsulated in something called lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) in order to reach the cell. LNPs increase translatability and stability to ensure mRNA’s delivery to the cell. It is LNP that breaks the cell membrane. When the mRNA vaccine is delivered into our cells it breaks free of the LNPs . Endocytosis is thought to be the answer based on previous vaccine knowledge. Endocytosis is a cellular process in which something is brought into the cell by engulfing it in a vesicle (small fluid bubble). In mRNA vaccines, the LNPs take advantage of the natural process of endocytosis. The LNPs are engulfed in a bubble, triggering a reaction that allows the nanoparticle to enter the cell and eventually release the mRNA.

And no, the CDC knows how mRNA vaccines work. Often the CDC talking heads and their minions who write corvid vaccine information at a 2nd grade level for public consumption give the impression that the CDC is just a bunch politicians and public relations people. Far from it, the CDC has 1700 research scientist which include 32 virologist plus 2500 epidemiologist. The CDC is recognized worldwide as the premier national healthcare agency in the world. In fact, the CDC does most of research for the WHO.
COVID | Biomechanics in the Wild

​

 

[Flopper]

And whom exactly is going to complete that ‘overhaul’?

Again, most news reporting entities do report ‘just the news’; it’s cable news you’re having an issue with.

TV networks and later cable news decided that news had to be a money maker which meant it had to be entertaining and it had to delivery a message that the audience wanted to hear in order to improve ratings and advertising revenue. The only ones that can fix the problem is the news media. To do so there must be some incentive. That could from government as well as private organizations awarding certifications. As long as news is a big money maker, it will never be unbiased or anything approaching it.

 

[Flopper]

Yes, of course. The argument being made was that you'd separate the news from the crap. But you'd still have the crap.

It's difficult. How do you stop the crap, but still have the freedom to form an opinion?

You can't. News commentary be it on TV, cable, radio, internet websites, or social media is a fact of life in a free society. What needs to happen is the real news outlets need to eliminate the bias, interpretation of the news, and opinions so they can distinguish themselves as providers of the actual News. There also needs to be some education of the public along these lines. Regardless of ideological differences, the public should feel comfortable getting the news on any news site. News should be regarded as a public service just as weather and traffic reports.

 

[frigidweirdo]

You can't. News commentary be it on TV, cable, radio, internet websites, or social media is a fact of life in a free society. What needs to happen is the real news outlets need to eliminate the bias, interpretation of the news, and opinions so they can distinguish themselves as providers of the actual News. There also needs to be some education of the public along these lines. Regardless of ideological differences, the public should feel comfortable getting the news on any news site. News should be regarded as a public service just as weather and traffic reports.

Then, what's the point of changing news outlets?

Seems like you want change for the sake of change, and not because it'll serve a purpose.

 

[Flopper]

Then, what's the point of changing news outlets?

Seems like you want change for the sake of change, and not because it'll serve a purpose.

I believe fixing the news will do a lot of good. Nothing you can done about commentary. Today the public hardly notices the difference between news and commentary and in my opinion that's what leads to the belief that all news is fake news, the news media can't be trusted, etc. The public needs more places for straight news.

 

[frigidweirdo]

I believe fixing the news will do a lot of good. Nothing you can done about commentary. Today the public hardly notices the difference between news and commentary and in my opinion that's what leads to the belief that all news is fake news, the news media can't be trusted, etc. The public needs more places for straight news.

How? If people are stilling going to be manipulated, nothing will change. They'll just not bother watching the news.

People know the difference between news and commentary, or they don't. And if they don't, they won't notice it if you separate it.

 

[g5000]

That's all interesting, but you missed the point of my post. It was to show ivermectin isn't just a "horsey dewormer", as an idiot said, but doctors received the Nobel Prize for research of its applications in human infectious diseases.

.

No, they received the Nobel Prize for their research on MICE and ivermectin.

They had nothing to do with infectious diseases. It was all about parasites.

Stop making stuff up, please.

 

[g5000]

That's all interesting, but you missed the point of my post. It was to show ivermectin isn't just a "horsey dewormer", as an idiot said, but doctors received the Nobel Prize for research of its applications in human infectious diseases.

.

It's funny that you spread fake new/misinformation in a topic about preventing the spread of fake news/misinformation.

Ivermectin has always been about parasites, not infectious diseases. It is most definitely a dewormer. Always has been.

The researchers did not receive the Nobel Prize for their work in human infectious diseases. THAT IS A FLAT OUT LIE.

https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/campbell-lecture.pdf

There is a question that warrants a slight digression here. In the past few weeks I have ofen been asked how I felt when I heard that I had won the Nobel Prize. I can say without hesitation that my mind was instantly flooded by two emotions. One was a sense of joy and gratitude. The other was a feeling of sadness—sadness that so many of the people who made this discovery a success could not be named individually. But I represent the research team at Merck & Co., Inc., and in that role I feel honored and grateful beyond imagining.

The mouse I mentioned a moment ago was a single mouse. I do not mean that the mouse was unmarried. I mean that the special diet that proved to be so very special was tested, not in a conventional experimental group of mice, but rather in just one mouse. Te diet was special because it had been supplemented with a liquid in which a bacterium had been allowed to flourish. Other solitary mice got other diets supplemented with other liquids in which other bacteria had flourished. But the bacterium that cured the mouse of its worm infection was the only one that did so. This method of testing “fermentation broths” for anti-worm (anthelmintic) efficacy had been developed by Dr. John Edgerton and his technical staff in the Merck Laboratories, where also the reduction of experimental group size to a singleton had been pioneered by Dr. Dan Ostlind [1, 2]. The liquid that had been added to the diet of that mouse had been fermented by a bacterium that was one of hundreds of microbes that had been sent to Merck & Co. Inc. by Satoshi Ōmura and his team of chemists and microbiologists at the Kitasato Institute in Tokyo. I had the pleasure of visiting Dr. Ōmura in Tokyo many years later; and he shares with me the prize that has brought us here today.