“It would create a carveout in Section 230 opening social media platforms up to lawsuits for hosting health misinformation. The bill directs the HHS to issue guidelines on what should be classified as ‘health misinformation’.” theverge.com/2021/7/22/2258…
2/ Several voices including myself to @MartinKulldorff to @BallouxFrancois have been slander with the label “misinformation” even though we present evidence and data based views.
This isn’t about your health or safety. It is purely about controlling you and science.
3/ What is “official advice” often contradicts itself. Officials will change their mind or not take a position due to uncertainty. This will force regulators to take unhealthy positions. Trust will fall.
It’s “misinformation” to assume there is one voice in science and medicine.
"If you get vaccinated, about 90% of the time you’re not going to get COVID, even if you do get it, there will be less of the virus in you and your illness is likely to be much milder.” - Jeff Burgess, MD, MS, MPH
1/ "[COVID] has exposed what we all have known existed, but we have tolerated for years: the overt bias of the media, the lack of diverse viewpoints on campuses, the absence of neutrality in big tech, and now more visibly than ever, the intrusion of politics into science."
2/ "We should also fear that the concept of 'the science' has been seriously damaged. Even the best journals in the world have become contaminated by politics and published bad science. That adds to the public’s confusion, and it diminishes trust in experts."
3/ "By now, many in the public have simply become fatigued...So, how do we proceed at this very moment, in this country, with its heavily damaged psyche? Those of us who want the truth must keep seeking it, and those of us who see the truth must keep speaking it."
"Using the background of COVID, we study past mass hysteria. Negative information which is spread through mass media repetitively can affect public health negatively in the form of nocebo effects and mass hysteria."
2/ "We argue that mass and digital media in connection with the state may have had adverse consequences during the COVID crisis. The resulting collective hysteria may have contributed to policy errors by governments not in line with health recommendations."
3/ "Prior scientific research on disease mitigation measures during a possible influenza pandemic had warned against such invasive interventions and recommended a more normal social functioning. Moreover, in reaction to past pandemics, there were no lockdowns."
1/ The COVID law fatigue argument for increase spread is fundamentally flawed and weak as it assumes efficacy. Though people are sick of the nosy, rude, hysterical voices, there is very little IRL evidence that these laws are practical or impact the infection curve notably.
2/ We regularly see articles and tweets condemning a lack of adherence to various incongruent and illogical COVID laws. These suffer from ascertainment and sampling bias.
Those that don’t believe the restrictions won’t follow the restrictions.
Shocking, I know.
3/ Polling data and our individual experience shows that adherence was well into the super majority. No rational mind assumes 100% compliance with any policy. Rather these events were reported because of their heterodoxy and a desire to push conventional thinking.
1/ Lockdowns were based on bad mimesis, not evidence.
"Decisions on implementing lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic were based on what neighboring countries were doing at the time, a new study has suggested." uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavir…
2/ "They found that despite differences in the spread of the virus, countries mimicked each other in a short space of time, with around 80% of OECD nations implementing multiple measures within a two-week period in March."
3/ "'We found that the decisions were not based on, or had a very weak correlation to, standard epidemiological indicators such as infections, deaths, ICU capacity etc. A much stronger determinant was whether many neighboring countries had already implemented measures...'"