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I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these thi

• mandmandam 2y ago
  > I'm going to need to see some evidence for this. It's a google search away friend. I'll source one thing for you though, pick whatever you think is craziest. > How is it that I was reading science papers and media reports on them daily at the time, covering all these things you claim were censored? How would I know? Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft, Reddit, Apple, Pinterest, Spotify and Amazon, among many more, have admitted to removing content. Many of those cases were extremely high profile. Facebook removed and suppressed nearly 200 million posts [0], many of them true. Twitter censored scientists for saying true things that the Biden Admin didn't like, as documented in the Twitter Files (which were heavily smeared as a "nothingburger"). [1] > Droplet vs airborne was a frequent debate It shouldn't have been. Aerosol scientists emphasized early on that respiratory activities like talking and breathing produce tiny droplets (aerosols) that can stay suspended in the air, potentially spreading the virus. This knowledge should have been applied sooner. Air purification in classrooms and nursing homes could have been a thing almost immediately, but even now it hasn't been seriously pursued. (Outside the top private schools anyway.) > as were the costs/benefit of lockdowns For all the debate, they still got rammed through pretty much everywhere. Since then, everything that many people had been saying came true, and now we have a generation of children that teachers are describing as "feral" with the most genuine concern. Excess cancer deaths, widespread mental health crises, a huge transfer of wealth to the rich, economic hardship for many, a huge rise in domestic violence. The people who predicted this were smeared seven ways to Sunday, and you'd have to be in a strange bubble to have missed it. Perhaps the censorship worked after all? > especially the potential side effects of the vaccines. Again, this has been explicitly acknowledged as a topic which got heavily censored, by the companies that did the censoring no less. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc all did it, and all report being asked to remove things that "could be seen as" going against whatever position was du jour. > Information at the time moved lightening quick, things were barely even published before being all over the media. Some information moved a lot faster than other info... Because of acknowledged mass suppression and censorship. There's no damn good reason that I and many others could take a glance through Daszak's paper and recognize it as bullshit immediately, but it took years to be acknowledged as such by media and academia. It also took a long time for those Whatsapp chats where top scientists admit to being told to say that a lab-leak was "impossible", even though they suspected it was quite likely. To this day, the conversation about funding GOF research has not had its time in the sun. > The lab-leak theory was not taken seriously Serious people took it seriously from day one. There was never a good reason not to, and many good reasons to demand an immediate investigation of WIV, GOF research in general, and the role of our own money funding the exact type of research that could create a coronavirus like this. > I remember several high profile articles on it. So do I, and I remember them being pretty easy to see for the hack jobs they were as well. The NYT had a genuinely good one after like a year and a half, long over due. > Your narrative sounds like some fantasy. Again, you can name one specific thing that I have claimed and ask me to source it for you; I won't do everything. All of this is easily findable. I didn't even get into some of the gnarlier stuff, like how all across the West nursing homes were seeded with sick patients resulting in a huge number of early deaths. That was a suppressed story you might have missed, even though there were bits and pieces of it written up. Again, there's been very little accountability for that since. What's pure fantasy is that we had some sort of reasoned debate, followed best-practice protocols, and came to measured decisions. * * * 0 - https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170 https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1170 1 - https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-files-platform-suppressed-valid-200142382.html?guccounter=1 https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-files-platform-suppressed...
  • tensor 2y ago
    Science works on consensus and iteration. Government policy generally (and I think should) follow that process, not form policies on minority opinions at the time. For instance, although the droplet vs airborne debate was incorrect initially, the error was found and corrected via consensus, and government policy follow that consensus. That's how it SHOULD work. Most of your writing is a bias filled rant, complete with misinformation (no, the consensus for science was that the lab leak was extremely unlikely, and still remains so today as far as I've seen, again, a few individual researchers thinking it likely does not make consensus). You seem heavily invested in going against consensus and best practice, and I'm genuinely not interested in that position as I disagree with it. While things could have been better, given the circumstances the scientific community and world governments generally did a good job at protecting people. On the topic of what should be allowed on social media, there is room for debate there, but I stand by that freedom of speech does not require you have equal standing or that people listen to you. I don't believe fringe science or non-science deserves equal time in the spotlight. So I suspect we won't be coming to any agreement.
    • mandmandam 2y ago
      > You seem heavily invested in going against consensus and best practice You think best practices were followed? ... Really? And I'll happily go along with a consensus that I feel was freely obtained, which is not what we are talking about. I do it all the time. > but I stand by that freedom of speech does not require you have equal standing or that people listen to you Do you believe that the amount you can be heard should depend on how much money you have? Do you believe that an Administration should be allowed make secret decisions on what's shown to people? > I don't believe fringe science or non-science deserves equal time in the spotlight. So I suspect we won't be coming to any agreement. Maybe it wouldn't be fringe if millions of posts about it hadn't been suppressed. Or if there'd been any serious attempt at investigation - gathering data, scientifically. Or if we hadn't sent millions of dollars to fund research into this exact thing, and then lied about it as the pandemic raged. That data could have been very useful for policy. There's a lot to it, and you've shown no sign that you actually understand the arguments. It's all appeals to authorities, who have consistently shown us just how captured they can be for some time now. Think of the 2008 financial crisis, or ivy-league colleges sending riot squads on peaceful protesters, or the APA 'legitimizing' and assisting torture, or the Supreme Court tolerating obvious bribery, Congressional insider trading, etc etc.