I’m also a participant and I don’t control the conversation. You can post about whatever you want. The moderator part only comes into play when someone breaks the rules and any posts that are intended to be “moderator” posts we highlight in yellow. If the posts are white, we are just speaking for ourselves like anyone else around here.
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Since apparently we all love a good conspiracy, here’s one for you. Ask yourself, who stands to profit off you mistrusting science or health organizations like the CDC, NIH, or WHO? It turns out that it’s the “alternative medicine” industry – a 70 billion dollar industry that makes most of its profits from direct sales and has little to no oversight (Complementary And Alternative Medicine Market Report, 2030). You don’t actually need to demonstrate that any of your products work, just throw up a testimonial or two and make vague claims about wellness. Or better yet, tell people in person about how taking four drops of vampire blood took away your cancer or something-the FDA can’t regulate that, ha! Judy Mikovits is at the top of the Amazon best seller’s list, selling at least 5-10 thousand books a day now. A $15 a pop that’s $150,000 in book sales every day that she’s ‘famous’ again. If she even gets a quarter of that she’s making $37,500 a day off of disproven scientific nonsense and making up conspiracies. That’s a sweet deal! Where do I sign up?!
The only way you get into trouble is claiming you can treat a disease, but just say it “improves wellness” or “boosts your immune system” and you can get away with anything. This industry is lying to you (most people are well intentioned and just want to help) but guess who their enemy is? It’s science based medicine. It’s the FDA, the CDC, the NIH. The FDA will crack down on people making untested claims – like the bleach drinking cult from Florida. Or Jim Baker touting colloidal silver and then complaining about his freedoms and rights when the FDA cracks down on him.
Contrast this to science based medicine that has very strict regulatory practices. And that’s a good thing. Because guess what, the pharmaceutical industry would love to pull a fast one on you too. What most people don’t realize is that the FDA is protecting them from corporate evils. Here’s an amazing story of how the FDA saved many millions of lives by ONE woman refusing to let a drug be approved without RIGOROUS EVIDENCE of EFFICACY and SAFETY:
These organizations are your friends. They are protecting you from people who are the equivalent of snake oil salesman. They also protect you from any quick slips that Big Pharma wants to pass off on you (Big Pharma needs to demonstrate that their products are safe and actually do something). You DO NOT want to see Big Pharma bypass the FDA. And you are being lied to continually by many leaders in the anti-vaccine/anti-science movements and they want less regulation and oversight than they already have. You DO NOT want to see that happen. What you need to start demanding is alternative medicine (some of which could actually work or have an affect beyond a placebo) doing rigorous clinical trials. DO NOT buy their products until they show you the evidence of its efficacy and safety. For example, did you know that lavender and tea tree oil sometimes can cause breasts to grow on prepubescent boys? Lavender and Tea Tree Oils May Cause Breast Growth in Boys | National Institutes of Health (NIH)
These things are chemicals, and they need to have rigorous studies done on them. They need to be tested against controls in double blinded studies. You can’t just say oh this killed bacteria or a virus in a petri dish, therefore it’s effective against COVID-19. You know what else kills bacteria in a petri dish? A flamethrower. Demand the studies and refuse to buy products until they are demonstrated to work.
This is the real conspiracy. The CDC and NIH are your friends. The FDA is a good thing. It would be amazing is colloidal silver taken internally kills COVID-19 (hint: it doesn’t), but it is a good thing to crack down on people who are lying to you (either intentionally or they don’t know any better). It saves you false hope, a waste of your money, and people profiting off of this virus.
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Ah, good old Judy, of “Plandemic” who knows so much more than anybody! This is the respected researcher that claims that wearing a face mask activates viruses. (btw, Gounod’s “Faust” is streaming free from the Met this week.)
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If you have shared "Plandemic, " you have earned this diploma!
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I appreciate Christy’s post. My only concern about the increase in deaths being attributable to Covid is that some have told me that that would be because too few are brave enough to seek care for heart attacks and so on during this “false” pandemic (it has indeed caused people to present later for strokes and heart attacks). I think that the increase was more consistent with Covid, as it seems too early in the game to reflect the MI’s, etc. However, it’s hard for me to argue that accurately.
I have been struggling with my own stress and impatience. Here’s a post by Jared Byas I have posted earlier about how we can interact with those with whom we disagree.
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I suppose one could check the statistics on that. Aren’t there medical records for how many heart attack and stroke victims were successfully treated by hospitals over March and April on a ‘normal’, prior year, and then look at the difference between that and how many still presented themselves for treatment over the same time period this year. Assuming a worst-case 100% mortality for the difference (heart attack victims who stayed home), one could then see if that difference could begin to account for the COVID mortality count. Perhaps such records aren’t easy to come by, but it might lay to rest that particular suspicion.
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Here’s maybe a better video than the last one for sharing with people:
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You’ve made my day. But think of the ‘study’ such a thing would require.
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Thank you for this, Matthew. I look forward to sharing this video with any and everybody.
Should we extend the same courtesy to ISIS? I WhatsApp my council to clean up graffiti. I expect other responsible agencies to do the same on a larger scale. To take down vandalism.
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I have had the same struggle. I do think there is a boundary where free speech becomes so dangerous that it has to be taken down. I don’t know where it is exactly in the conspiracy theory case.
And who gets to decide what is dangerous? Dangerous in what way?
In the case of ISIS, it is probably safe to say that the majority agree that ISIS is dangerous. It is probably a little harder to get the majority to agree that conspiracy theories in general are dangerous. I think this is why a lot of people, although disagreeing with conspiracy theories, also disagree with censoring them.
I read one article that stated the film was taken down because of unauthorized use of clips on it, not for the positions taken, but do not know if that is true.
Flat Earth videos can stay. YEC stuff stays. Medical misinformation like wearing masks causes you to continually get sick from COVID-19 is dangerous in the sense that if followed, it can lead to increased infections or death.
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I am fully on board with wearing masks, even if it only shows respect towards other people or is a symbol of solidarity against this thing. However, it is my understanding that the data on how effective mask wearing is is mixed.
If there is newer or more affirmative data on the subject that I am missing, I am open to it. But based on what I’ve seen (and I am most obviously not a scientist, nor have I looked up a ton about this)I don’t know that if a ton of people watched this video and quit wearing masks, that it is any more dangerous than if they didn’t.
that’s a good question. I vacillate a bit on whether it applies to the current situation. It has certainly caused some to make martyrs out of Mikovits and others, that they have had their videos taken down. On the other hand, at what point will we reach a critical mass of people following silly advice, or ramping up death threats to Dr Fauci, or using WHO as a scapegoat and defunding their care of the weak and vulnerable children (of which they do protect many in other diseases) overseas? It doesn’t seem that the majority of people are listening to refutations. With everyone staying at home and seething over not being allowed to be out and about, the tension and pressure to rebel gets bigger. I’m not sure what the best option is. Probably it’s not censorship–at least, not alone. More likely, it’s focusing on how to get them back to work with proper PPE, etc. That may quiet their motivation to question–if we show we care. Thanks.
Different platforms had different reasons. YouTube took it down for copyright violations, Facebook for contradicting WHO guidance and saying wearing face masks was dangerous.
Yeah it’s tricky. In the one study with four people that had volunteers cough towards something like 7 inches away. Why they chose 7" is beyond me. We would need a little more data than that to warrant questioning the advice of the CDC. Why would the CDC recommend masks in the first place? Do you think it’s so we all look funny? Are they just making stuff up as they go? Here’s a recent infographic:
Here’s a report from 2014 which concluded:
Our findings suggest that a homemade mask should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection.
Both significantly reduced the amount of microorganisms expelled by people but the professional masks by 3x the amount.
Overall, we could use more research but it seems to be helpful in reducing transmission through droplets.
One thing it doesn’t do is keep reinfecting you which is what she claimed. She also spoke ignorantly about their efficacy and in general promotes all kind of quackery and sows distrust in the CDC and NIH. Her advice very well can lead to people not taking things seriously and then they might spread the virus to vulnerable populations or get it and sadly die as several conspiracy theorists proponents already have.
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It doesn’t matter what the majority think, except in parliaments. It’s what the consensus of authorities in open societies think. It should be easy to quantify how much damage is done by anti-vaxers as an example of public health terrorists, worse than ISIS in the developed West, they have to be taken down. In every sense.
Klax, are there any conspiracy theorists like Mikovits in your country? Or are folks more trusting? Thanks.