Thread by @kylamb8

Today @grahammediagrp rated (true) claims by @GovRonDeSantis as "not true" for their Trust Index for a story on @wjxt4. Not true means "it's fake" and "don't trust it," they say. Well, their Trust Index is fake, then, because their fact-checking is false.

In a presser, the Governor said "Understand a positive test is not a clinical diagnosis of illness," adding the important thing is people do not come down with severe illness. The crux here is there is a difference between the virus and the disease it can cause. See: WHO/CDC

When you test for COVID-19, you're actually testing for the virus. Not everyone that tests positive for the virus has symptoms or illness (disease). In a perfect world, a clinical diagnosis should be made on a number of factors. This continues to be codified by WHO IVD 2020/05.

Nonetheless, @wjxt4 comes along and "fact checks" clumsily. “A positive test for COVID-19 means that you are infected and can be contagious," says @famallergyjax. A positive test for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) does not necessarily mean an active infection.

news4jax.com/health/2021/07…

Still, whether infected or not, the Governor's point is that mild or no symptoms do not indicate presence of the disease and should not be our focus and "cases" do not adequately discern. This point was brilliantly laid out by @MartyMakary in an op/ed.

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…

Not only was the Governor's point not "not true," but the lazy fact-checking largely corroborated it by the Cleveland Clinic.

"“A PCR test for COVID-19 is a test used to diagnose people who are currently infected with SARS-CoV-2, which is the coronavirus that causes COVID-19."

The Clinic quote falsely assumes the "currently" infected part, but makes the distinction between the virus and the disease and a positive test does not indicate an illness or assume contagiousness alone.

But wait, there's more. The Governor also said that immunity from vaccination and also natural immunity from previous infection greatly reduce risk of hospitalization and death. That's a fact. They rated it not true without any evidence as to why...

“Simply having COVID is not providing the same immunity as being vaccinated,” Joshi clarified. “The vaccine boosts immunity much more than natural infection.”

This is not true. But say it were, this is a strawman. The claim was they both reduce risk, not whether one is better.

So these dishonest fact checkers rate a claim that both types of immunity reduce severe disease as "not true" because, without evidence, Joshi claims one is not as good as the other. Huh? That isn't even relevant to the central claim that was made.

Folks need to start policing fact checkers. This is brutally lazy or dishonest or both. Both claims are widely accepted as true and this hatchet job was unable or unwilling to come up with anything resembling a coherent rebuttal.