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38% of US adults believe government is faking Covid-19 death toll

21 points by jay_kyburz 5y ago

jay_kyburz 5y ago
I believe misinformation is fast becoming our biggest problem. It makes all other problems so much more difficult to discuss and solve. It undermines democracy itself. I think we need clearer lines about what is a "carrier" and what is a "publisher". In my view, if you perform any kind of moderation you are a publisher and should be held responsible for any harm caused by misinformation you serve. We then need publicly funded bodies and a functioning judicial system to move quickly to silence things that are said that are just not true. Whether you are reading it on Facebook, Google, or somebodies random website, we have to stamp it out. It's a huge, difficult task. But hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to covid alone because people don't trust media, they don't trust officials, the don't know what to believe.
- wsc981 5y ago
  Censorship is horrible and would in fact be the end of democracy.
  - Fricken 5y ago
    You can't have a functioning democracy without an informed populace. Censorship and disinformation are 2 sides of the same coin.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      Was it misinformation that let you support the war in Iraq? What was the source of the information?
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        People, corporations and, most important of all, government officials should be held liable for the consequences of any misrepresentation made to the public. In fact, the only excuse for a government official to present materially false information is national security, and, even then, they can usually do the "I cannot confirm or deny" or "I have no recollection of" dance. What we have is large organizations that profit from misinforming a large population. This endangers democracy and the very fabric of our societies. The freedom of the press comes from the requirement of an informed population for the functioning of a democracy. When the organization ceases to inform, it should not enjoy the legal protections afforded to the press.
        raxxorrax 5y ago
        They should be hold accountable, but that did not happen and can only happen if government is strictly prohibited to influence content, even if it is misinformation. This is why the constitution of the US is pretty good despite its age (I am not from the US). But true, maybe it didn't foresaw companies becoming so influential that they rival states. But the solutions I heard was forcing these companies to moderate content, an approach that is so obviously flawed that I cannot believe how many supporters the idea can mobilize. Still, government misinformation is still a threat. The Russian interference story was a pretty big scandal in my opinion because it was mostly made up and worse media and intelligence agencies corroborated on direct lie. Exactly like they did on Iraq. This has Operation Mockingbird quality at least and people responsible didn't face any repercussions. Frankly, the only people that would let them face consequences are the allegedly stupid flyover rednecks. But if these people really are stupid, what do I call the others? Is there a geopolitical tension with Russia or Putin? Sure. Would Putin try to get people in the US to fight each other? Of course! But I doubt he would have needed to do much to be honest, not because of a lack of trying.
        rbanffy 5y ago
        > Exactly like they did on Iraq. That was very shocking, because it eroded public good will towards the US, making it obvious the government would use whatever falsehoods to justify an illegal war despite the fact international experts on the ground were clearly stating the opposite. That and using its privileged position in the UN Security Council to avoid any repercussions, effectively nullifying the organization and showing it has no teeth against the US. The Russia thing has some interesting facets however. Did Putin actually plan on Trump being elected? I very much doubt so - nobody in their right mind would expect that. Was he pleased? I bet he was. We know Russia has been financing disinformation campaigns in Europe to destabilize the EU, and the far-right has embraced that as a convenient way to reach power. The damage that caused to US politics will take decades to repair, and even if it can heal itself is debatable at this point.
    - wsc981 5y ago
      But you can't even trust the government or media to provide honest information most of the time. What you need is a critical press, which in my opinion is mostly gone in my country of origin (The Netherlands), probably many more countries in the Western world. Some examples from US that show the press not operating in a honest way would be the Trump "Russia gate" debacle and the "horse dewormer" coverage of Ivermectin.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        > What you need is a critical press What we need is a press that's dedicated to present the truth. Think of it as something similar to the BBC, but fully independent and impossible to influence without getting exposed.
        impendingchange 5y ago
        What if press organizations were not allowed to be for-profit?
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    We have censorship everywhere you look. There is no porn on Facebook, not many links to illegal stuff in Google. I've been thinking about it all day, and perhaps it is OK if half the world is walking around thinking the earth is flat. Perhaps it doesn't really matter if our leaders don't believe in science. Does it really matter that 700,000 people died of covid unnecessarily? But does it really matter if your speech is censored if nobody believes what you say anyhow? just another mad voice in a sea of madness? But assuming the whole point of society is to try an improve the lives of people living in it, I think we need a foundation of trust, and we should do out best to suppress things that undermined that trust. Trust in our officials, Trust in our media, Trust in each other.
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  So social media companies need to abide by Section 230 and stop moderation, returning to their roles as “carriers” only. Yes there are caveats, but mostly they can’t both expect protection of the First and Section 230 simultaneously.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Or they need to be able to demonstrate they did everything they could to suppress the use of their platforms to actively harm the public. When a prominent personality says vaccines cause autism, they are willingly harming society and should be held accountable for the harm they cause.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  > responsible for any harm caused by misinformation you serve. That would enable even more political prosecution of subjects and would put extreme chilling effects on everyone including any press outlet.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    The prosecution would need to make a case that the misinformation you published is false and causes harm. If the journalist can prove it's not false, or, if the information is false, that they were quoting a source in good faith, then the source should be on the hook, not the journalist. Remember: you shouldn't lie in public forms, you shouldn't lie to the press, and the government shouldn't have more secrets than what is strictly needed for its operation.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      You should not lie, but it isn't unlawful. Otherwise we would all be in prison. I think that is not enforceable in the slightest and a ridiculously totalitarian approach regarding truth. Public officials lie to the press all the time if you include withholding information. Causing harm is extremely subjective and you don't even find 2 humans that completely agree here.
- refurb 5y ago
  So was the lab leak theory “disinformation” or not. Because it went from “fully debunked” to “probably true” in the span of 6 months. You’ll have to excuse me when the “Ministry of Truth” tells me what to believe.
  - tzs 5y ago
    There is no "the" lab leak theory. There have been a ton of different lab leak theories. And none have went to "probably true".
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    Wouldn't it be nice to have a press that would just tell us that there is not enough information to know one way or the other. Too boring. Won't generate enough clicks.
giga_chad 5y ago
Is it really "misinformation" if you believe that government could be lying about something? They lie all the time about all sorts of things.
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  Really, in the past decade or so we’ve had some of the most egregious, of what were once thought to be, conspiracy theories proven true, and proof that members of the establishment lied, even under oath, to protect them. Now all of the sudden we are to expect everyone to blindly trust the government blindly? And let’s not get started with party lines!
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    Likewise, few years ago, big pharma was one of the most hated industries, willing to do business on people getting sick, by any means necessary. Today they are treated as saviors of humanity.
- tzs 5y ago
  In the case of COVID deaths there are a whole bunch of jurisdictions doing their own counting and reporting. City governments. County governments. State governments. The federal government. I believe there are also non-government entities such as health insurance providers and hospital networks providing data. This limits how much governments that are reporting aggregates across their small jurisdictions within them such as state and even more so federal government can fudge the numbers without it being apparent to anyone who checks their sources. Also there is non-death data that should decently correlate with deaths but is reported by different people which provides another check on the death numbers. For example, number of ICU COVID patients should move similar to number of COVID deaths. That data would come from admissions records or transfer records of hospitals.
refurb 5y ago
Jeeze. Sensationalist reporting. The actual survey question was “Do you think the government is exaggerating the number of Covid 19 deaths?” That’s different than “faked”. One could answer “true” if they believed anyone who dies and tested positive from Covid is counted as a Covid death, which overestimates what people imagine when they think of “Covid death”. That would be exaggerating the numbers, but not necessarily faking them.
- giga_chad 5y ago
  Is it really such a stretch of imagination that the government could be faking/gaming some stats?
  - refurb 5y ago
    No, it’s not. They’ve done so in the past. My argument is just that the headline doesn’t even summarize the survey correctly. The 38% who said “yes” were agreeing to a much softer conclusion.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Nextgrid 5y ago
In all these "the government is out to get you" stories I never understand the motive. The government has no incentive to kill you, quite the opposite. Dead people don't pay taxes. The government is also completely incompetent at leading a normal, above-board project, so do you really think they'll be able to successfully lead and keep quite about a nationwide conspiracy?
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  "the government is out to get you" mustn't be the source of the lacking trust. Governments constantly fake numbers relating to crime, threats, unemployment and any other statistic to paint officials in a good light or to just hide the mentioned incompetency.
- refurb 5y ago
  Having spent time outside the US in shall we say, more “authoritarian” countries, the idea here is not that the government is out to “get you”. The idea is the government will “massage” numbers to come to the conclusion they want. The government wants as many people vaccinated as possible. As such they have little incentive to correct Covid deaths if the current number is an overstatement. And don’t get me wrong, counting Covid deaths is not trivial. So it’s not manipulation of data, it’s more like “our current way is fine in all it’s flaws”.
- impendingchange 5y ago
  When political leaders run on platforms that they do not deliver on when elected, people tend to mistrust the organizations those leaders manage.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Really? Then why do governments historically go to war so frequently, and often for trivial matters like family honour of the king, or to intervene in conflicts far away that could never reach the homeland? Tax is irrelevant, governments can just print whatever the shortfall is (and they do). Realistically, there are lots of incentives for governments to kill their own population. Beyond national security there's the standard reason of just making mistakes, and then avoiding admitting to having made them. It happens regularly throughout history. As for conspiracies, sure they can do that. Snowden revealed massive conspiracies that had lasted decades and involved thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. Now we learned that the US government seems to have funded Chinese research that led to SARS-CoV-2 escaping into the wild. You might counter that these are the ones they failed to keep quiet, but they were kept quiet for a long time. Who knows how many more are out there. The discovery rate on conspiracies is certainly not 100%.
GaryTang 5y ago
Personal anecdote: I do have a family member that passed away and the cause was mislabeled as COVID(He never tested positive). So one sympathizes with the 38%
- h2odragon 5y ago
  We had a week in the summer of 2020 where the only 3 deaths in the county were a person who shot two people and then himself. Made a big splash in the news, only murder in years. That week, the county health dept. reported 3 COVID deaths.
catlikesshrimp 5y ago
I think there should be an introduction to vaccines in highschool biology. We have known for several decades that people fear shots and that political upstarts will take advantage of that. My own conclusion is we need the general population to have fundamental understanding of what a vaccine is. And that microchips need energy sources.
- peteradio 5y ago
  Do you honestly think that large proportions of people pushing back against the covid vaccine mandates believe the 5g shit?
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Possibly the OP does believe that. I used to live in that bubble. There is an undercurrent in US media and academia that "flyover country" is populated by inbred primitives clinging to obsolete superstition and impervious to reason and science. Perhaps thank Iraq war era Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for kickstarting the phenomenon.
  - catlikesshrimp 5y ago
    O M G. By commenting that for a circuit to work it needs an energy source, I supposed you would understand that there is no such thing in vaccines. But the general population has no idea about this because it isn't taught in school. They just have facebook and whatsapp fakenews. That's why I propose the topic be included in education curriculum, it has been causing problems for some decades
- giga_chad 5y ago
  The definition of what a vaccine is just changed this year though. This talk about "microchips" is the definition of misinformation, I've never seen anyone seriously propose that, it's only used to paint anyone who has any kind of doubt about the "vaccines" and "vaccine mandates" as a crazy person.
  - catlikesshrimp 5y ago

21 points by jay_kyburz 5y ago

I believe misinformation is fast becoming our biggest problem. It makes all other problems so much more difficult to discuss and solve. It undermines democracy itself. I think we need clearer lines about what is a "carrier" and what is a "publisher". In my view, if you perform any kind of moderation you are a publisher and should be held responsible for any harm caused by misinformation you serve. We then need publicly funded bodies and a functioning judicial system to move quickly to silence things that are said that are just not true. Whether you are reading it on Facebook, Google, or somebodies random website, we have to stamp it out. It's a huge, difficult task. But hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to covid alone because people don't trust media, they don't trust officials, the don't know what to believe.

wsc981 5y ago
Censorship is horrible and would in fact be the end of democracy.
- Fricken 5y ago
  You can't have a functioning democracy without an informed populace. Censorship and disinformation are 2 sides of the same coin.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Was it misinformation that let you support the war in Iraq? What was the source of the information?
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      People, corporations and, most important of all, government officials should be held liable for the consequences of any misrepresentation made to the public. In fact, the only excuse for a government official to present materially false information is national security, and, even then, they can usually do the "I cannot confirm or deny" or "I have no recollection of" dance. What we have is large organizations that profit from misinforming a large population. This endangers democracy and the very fabric of our societies. The freedom of the press comes from the requirement of an informed population for the functioning of a democracy. When the organization ceases to inform, it should not enjoy the legal protections afforded to the press.
      - raxxorrax 5y ago
        They should be hold accountable, but that did not happen and can only happen if government is strictly prohibited to influence content, even if it is misinformation. This is why the constitution of the US is pretty good despite its age (I am not from the US). But true, maybe it didn't foresaw companies becoming so influential that they rival states. But the solutions I heard was forcing these companies to moderate content, an approach that is so obviously flawed that I cannot believe how many supporters the idea can mobilize. Still, government misinformation is still a threat. The Russian interference story was a pretty big scandal in my opinion because it was mostly made up and worse media and intelligence agencies corroborated on direct lie. Exactly like they did on Iraq. This has Operation Mockingbird quality at least and people responsible didn't face any repercussions. Frankly, the only people that would let them face consequences are the allegedly stupid flyover rednecks. But if these people really are stupid, what do I call the others? Is there a geopolitical tension with Russia or Putin? Sure. Would Putin try to get people in the US to fight each other? Of course! But I doubt he would have needed to do much to be honest, not because of a lack of trying.
        rbanffy 5y ago
        > Exactly like they did on Iraq. That was very shocking, because it eroded public good will towards the US, making it obvious the government would use whatever falsehoods to justify an illegal war despite the fact international experts on the ground were clearly stating the opposite. That and using its privileged position in the UN Security Council to avoid any repercussions, effectively nullifying the organization and showing it has no teeth against the US. The Russia thing has some interesting facets however. Did Putin actually plan on Trump being elected? I very much doubt so - nobody in their right mind would expect that. Was he pleased? I bet he was. We know Russia has been financing disinformation campaigns in Europe to destabilize the EU, and the far-right has embraced that as a convenient way to reach power. The damage that caused to US politics will take decades to repair, and even if it can heal itself is debatable at this point.
  - wsc981 5y ago
    But you can't even trust the government or media to provide honest information most of the time. What you need is a critical press, which in my opinion is mostly gone in my country of origin (The Netherlands), probably many more countries in the Western world. Some examples from US that show the press not operating in a honest way would be the Trump "Russia gate" debacle and the "horse dewormer" coverage of Ivermectin.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      > What you need is a critical press What we need is a press that's dedicated to present the truth. Think of it as something similar to the BBC, but fully independent and impossible to influence without getting exposed.
      - impendingchange 5y ago
        What if press organizations were not allowed to be for-profit?
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  We have censorship everywhere you look. There is no porn on Facebook, not many links to illegal stuff in Google. I've been thinking about it all day, and perhaps it is OK if half the world is walking around thinking the earth is flat. Perhaps it doesn't really matter if our leaders don't believe in science. Does it really matter that 700,000 people died of covid unnecessarily? But does it really matter if your speech is censored if nobody believes what you say anyhow? just another mad voice in a sea of madness? But assuming the whole point of society is to try an improve the lives of people living in it, I think we need a foundation of trust, and we should do out best to suppress things that undermined that trust. Trust in our officials, Trust in our media, Trust in each other.
bigodbiel 5y ago
So social media companies need to abide by Section 230 and stop moderation, returning to their roles as “carriers” only. Yes there are caveats, but mostly they can’t both expect protection of the First and Section 230 simultaneously.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Or they need to be able to demonstrate they did everything they could to suppress the use of their platforms to actively harm the public. When a prominent personality says vaccines cause autism, they are willingly harming society and should be held accountable for the harm they cause.
raxxorrax 5y ago
> responsible for any harm caused by misinformation you serve. That would enable even more political prosecution of subjects and would put extreme chilling effects on everyone including any press outlet.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  The prosecution would need to make a case that the misinformation you published is false and causes harm. If the journalist can prove it's not false, or, if the information is false, that they were quoting a source in good faith, then the source should be on the hook, not the journalist. Remember: you shouldn't lie in public forms, you shouldn't lie to the press, and the government shouldn't have more secrets than what is strictly needed for its operation.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    You should not lie, but it isn't unlawful. Otherwise we would all be in prison. I think that is not enforceable in the slightest and a ridiculously totalitarian approach regarding truth. Public officials lie to the press all the time if you include withholding information. Causing harm is extremely subjective and you don't even find 2 humans that completely agree here.
refurb 5y ago
So was the lab leak theory “disinformation” or not. Because it went from “fully debunked” to “probably true” in the span of 6 months. You’ll have to excuse me when the “Ministry of Truth” tells me what to believe.
- tzs 5y ago
  There is no "the" lab leak theory. There have been a ton of different lab leak theories. And none have went to "probably true".
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  Wouldn't it be nice to have a press that would just tell us that there is not enough information to know one way or the other. Too boring. Won't generate enough clicks.

giga_chad 5y ago

Is it really "misinformation" if you believe that government could be lying about something? They lie all the time about all sorts of things.

bigodbiel 5y ago
Really, in the past decade or so we’ve had some of the most egregious, of what were once thought to be, conspiracy theories proven true, and proof that members of the establishment lied, even under oath, to protect them. Now all of the sudden we are to expect everyone to blindly trust the government blindly? And let’s not get started with party lines!
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Likewise, few years ago, big pharma was one of the most hated industries, willing to do business on people getting sick, by any means necessary. Today they are treated as saviors of humanity.
tzs 5y ago
In the case of COVID deaths there are a whole bunch of jurisdictions doing their own counting and reporting. City governments. County governments. State governments. The federal government. I believe there are also non-government entities such as health insurance providers and hospital networks providing data. This limits how much governments that are reporting aggregates across their small jurisdictions within them such as state and even more so federal government can fudge the numbers without it being apparent to anyone who checks their sources. Also there is non-death data that should decently correlate with deaths but is reported by different people which provides another check on the death numbers. For example, number of ICU COVID patients should move similar to number of COVID deaths. That data would come from admissions records or transfer records of hospitals.

refurb 5y ago

Jeeze. Sensationalist reporting. The actual survey question was “Do you think the government is exaggerating the number of Covid 19 deaths?” That’s different than “faked”. One could answer “true” if they believed anyone who dies and tested positive from Covid is counted as a Covid death, which overestimates what people imagine when they think of “Covid death”. That would be exaggerating the numbers, but not necessarily faking them.

giga_chad 5y ago
Is it really such a stretch of imagination that the government could be faking/gaming some stats?
- refurb 5y ago
  No, it’s not. They’ve done so in the past. My argument is just that the headline doesn’t even summarize the survey correctly. The 38% who said “yes” were agreeing to a much softer conclusion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Nextgrid 5y ago

In all these "the government is out to get you" stories I never understand the motive. The government has no incentive to kill you, quite the opposite. Dead people don't pay taxes. The government is also completely incompetent at leading a normal, above-board project, so do you really think they'll be able to successfully lead and keep quite about a nationwide conspiracy?

raxxorrax 5y ago
"the government is out to get you" mustn't be the source of the lacking trust. Governments constantly fake numbers relating to crime, threats, unemployment and any other statistic to paint officials in a good light or to just hide the mentioned incompetency.
refurb 5y ago
Having spent time outside the US in shall we say, more “authoritarian” countries, the idea here is not that the government is out to “get you”. The idea is the government will “massage” numbers to come to the conclusion they want. The government wants as many people vaccinated as possible. As such they have little incentive to correct Covid deaths if the current number is an overstatement. And don’t get me wrong, counting Covid deaths is not trivial. So it’s not manipulation of data, it’s more like “our current way is fine in all it’s flaws”.
impendingchange 5y ago
When political leaders run on platforms that they do not deliver on when elected, people tend to mistrust the organizations those leaders manage.
native_samples 5y ago
Really? Then why do governments historically go to war so frequently, and often for trivial matters like family honour of the king, or to intervene in conflicts far away that could never reach the homeland? Tax is irrelevant, governments can just print whatever the shortfall is (and they do). Realistically, there are lots of incentives for governments to kill their own population. Beyond national security there's the standard reason of just making mistakes, and then avoiding admitting to having made them. It happens regularly throughout history. As for conspiracies, sure they can do that. Snowden revealed massive conspiracies that had lasted decades and involved thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. Now we learned that the US government seems to have funded Chinese research that led to SARS-CoV-2 escaping into the wild. You might counter that these are the ones they failed to keep quiet, but they were kept quiet for a long time. Who knows how many more are out there. The discovery rate on conspiracies is certainly not 100%.

GaryTang 5y ago

Personal anecdote: I do have a family member that passed away and the cause was mislabeled as COVID(He never tested positive). So one sympathizes with the 38%

h2odragon 5y ago
We had a week in the summer of 2020 where the only 3 deaths in the county were a person who shot two people and then himself. Made a big splash in the news, only murder in years. That week, the county health dept. reported 3 COVID deaths.

catlikesshrimp 5y ago

I think there should be an introduction to vaccines in highschool biology. We have known for several decades that people fear shots and that political upstarts will take advantage of that. My own conclusion is we need the general population to have fundamental understanding of what a vaccine is. And that microchips need energy sources.

peteradio 5y ago
Do you honestly think that large proportions of people pushing back against the covid vaccine mandates believe the 5g shit?
- angelzen 5y ago
  Possibly the OP does believe that. I used to live in that bubble. There is an undercurrent in US media and academia that "flyover country" is populated by inbred primitives clinging to obsolete superstition and impervious to reason and science. Perhaps thank Iraq war era Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for kickstarting the phenomenon.
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  O M G. By commenting that for a circuit to work it needs an energy source, I supposed you would understand that there is no such thing in vaccines. But the general population has no idea about this because it isn't taught in school. They just have facebook and whatsapp fakenews. That's why I propose the topic be included in education curriculum, it has been causing problems for some decades
giga_chad 5y ago
The definition of what a vaccine is just changed this year though. This talk about "microchips" is the definition of misinformation, I've never seen anyone seriously propose that, it's only used to paint anyone who has any kind of doubt about the "vaccines" and "vaccine mandates" as a crazy person.
- catlikesshrimp 5y ago