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Fair enough. You're right, you didn't call for anyone to be banned, I take that back. The CDC lied about a different topic, whether they would monitor the VAER

Fair enough. You're right, you didn't call for anyone to be banned, I take that back. The CDC lied about a different topic, whether they would monitor the VAERS database. The NIH lied about masks (Fauci stated in the NYT that he had lied to try and preserve masks for healthcare workers), and herd immunity (Fauci in the NYT again, he changed his claims about the herd immunity threshold based on opinion polling). "Re Zeke Hausfather tweet, interestingly he's not denying there's an emergency" Yes as I said, he's a well known climatologist who very much has done his bit to stoke claims of doom. I picked him as someone who can in no way be labelled as out-of-field, not a specialist or in some way a minority scientist. Yet he is now pushing back on claims that are to be found all over media, politics and even this forum e.g. a well known US politician has claimed that "the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change". That's clearly nonsense but saying so means now even Hausfather finds himself labelled a "denier" who is outside the consensus. If he can be, anyone can. So he's a good illustration of the risks of this ban-anyone-who-disagrees-with-whatever approach, which to your credit you aren't proposing, but obviously PayPal and others are implementing.

n4r9 4y ago
Thanks. I looked up the Fauci mask-wearing incident. So apparently as the Chief Medical Advisor in March 2020 he advised against wearing masks, then shortly afterwards revised it to recommending mask-wearing, and said that his initial advice was based on a lack of data as well as preserving masks for healthcare. I can't find his exact quote, but so far I'm not sure that he actually lied about what the science shows? I mean it does all sound pretty weaselly, but it's not on the same level as what the Daily Sceptic is publishing. We genuinely didn't have much reliable data at the time. So to me this seems like a separate issue, what should the government advise, based on the science? There are lots of other factors coming in to play; it becomes a game of predicting how the public will respond to what's said and whether to advise things "just in case". Here in the UK it certainly felt like the government was basically playing catch-up and giving out advice only if they thought it had a high chance of being followed.
- henearkr 4y ago
  Yeah it's a little bit like saying that Copernicus was lying about the Solar System. In the end, the aim of the Daily Sceptic seems more to undermine and weaken (by discrediting them) the ways of action that exist to address the current crises.
- origin_path 4y ago
  He definitely lied without question. Like I said, he admitted it outright, and has done so more than once. There's an article here about it that provides all the links needed to verify this, written by an epidemiologist: https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-cdc-masks.html https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-... As the article states, there was no change in available data. That is yet another lie. If there was, he'd have pointed to the new study and everyone would have been looking at it, because it would be extremely famous as the study that upended mask science. No such study exists. One day "the science" changed, except it hadn't really changed, simple as that. He did the same with vaccine herd immunity: "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, “I can nudge this up a bit,” so I went to 80, 85." The man is a liar. He makes claims about scientific issues that he makes up on the spot to generate policy compliance. He ran most of the US COVID response, therefore nothing he said can be trusted, nor can anything said by anyone who reported to him. That makes him by far the biggest source of COVID misinformation out there, by his own admission! "it's not on the same level as what the Daily Sceptic is publishing" That's right! The Daily Sceptic was created specifically to combat the sort of COVID misinformation government officials like Fauci, Ferguson and SAGE were spreading. I don't read it much anymore but I read it throughout COVID and its writers never lied, or at least I never caught it if they did. And they reply to people trying to "fact check" them, they don't ignore criticism. Every day, they downloaded the data, downloaded the papers, checked them against the claims being made and documented when they didn't match. They showed that "the science" was being made up on the fly and frequently built on bullshit. They are by far the best COVID fact checkers out there, which is why establishment authoritarians inside PayPal can't stand them. "Here in the UK it certainly felt like the government was basically playing catch-up and giving out advice only if they thought it had a high chance of being followed." The UK enforced its decisions via police power and fines, it wasn't voluntary. But regardless, the UK health authorities also routinely spread misinformation. As just one example SAGE claimed there was no data on Omicron severity so they'd assume it was as severe as delta, even though from the moment Omicron was discovered it was accompanied by data showing it was far less severe. They just ignored all of it, in an attempt to keep lockdowns going as long as possible. And they lied to the government about the contents of their own meetings (Sunak talked about this). Fundamentally, if you want to crack down on COVID misinformation, government agencies have to be the first to go. Nobody else comes close to their impact.

n4r9 4y ago

Thanks. I looked up the Fauci mask-wearing incident. So apparently as the Chief Medical Advisor in March 2020 he advised against wearing masks, then shortly afterwards revised it to recommending mask-wearing, and said that his initial advice was based on a lack of data as well as preserving masks for healthcare. I can't find his exact quote, but so far I'm not sure that he actually lied about what the science shows? I mean it does all sound pretty weaselly, but it's not on the same level as what the Daily Sceptic is publishing. We genuinely didn't have much reliable data at the time. So to me this seems like a separate issue, what should the government advise, based on the science? There are lots of other factors coming in to play; it becomes a game of predicting how the public will respond to what's said and whether to advise things "just in case". Here in the UK it certainly felt like the government was basically playing catch-up and giving out advice only if they thought it had a high chance of being followed.

henearkr 4y ago
Yeah it's a little bit like saying that Copernicus was lying about the Solar System. In the end, the aim of the Daily Sceptic seems more to undermine and weaken (by discrediting them) the ways of action that exist to address the current crises.
origin_path 4y ago
He definitely lied without question. Like I said, he admitted it outright, and has done so more than once. There's an article here about it that provides all the links needed to verify this, written by an epidemiologist: https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-cdc-masks.html https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-... As the article states, there was no change in available data. That is yet another lie. If there was, he'd have pointed to the new study and everyone would have been looking at it, because it would be extremely famous as the study that upended mask science. No such study exists. One day "the science" changed, except it hadn't really changed, simple as that. He did the same with vaccine herd immunity: "When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, “I can nudge this up a bit,” so I went to 80, 85." The man is a liar. He makes claims about scientific issues that he makes up on the spot to generate policy compliance. He ran most of the US COVID response, therefore nothing he said can be trusted, nor can anything said by anyone who reported to him. That makes him by far the biggest source of COVID misinformation out there, by his own admission! "it's not on the same level as what the Daily Sceptic is publishing" That's right! The Daily Sceptic was created specifically to combat the sort of COVID misinformation government officials like Fauci, Ferguson and SAGE were spreading. I don't read it much anymore but I read it throughout COVID and its writers never lied, or at least I never caught it if they did. And they reply to people trying to "fact check" them, they don't ignore criticism. Every day, they downloaded the data, downloaded the papers, checked them against the claims being made and documented when they didn't match. They showed that "the science" was being made up on the fly and frequently built on bullshit. They are by far the best COVID fact checkers out there, which is why establishment authoritarians inside PayPal can't stand them. "Here in the UK it certainly felt like the government was basically playing catch-up and giving out advice only if they thought it had a high chance of being followed." The UK enforced its decisions via police power and fines, it wasn't voluntary. But regardless, the UK health authorities also routinely spread misinformation. As just one example SAGE claimed there was no data on Omicron severity so they'd assume it was as severe as delta, even though from the moment Omicron was discovered it was accompanied by data showing it was far less severe. They just ignored all of it, in an attempt to keep lockdowns going as long as possible. And they lied to the government about the contents of their own meetings (Sunak talked about this). Fundamentally, if you want to crack down on COVID misinformation, government agencies have to be the first to go. Nobody else comes close to their impact.