I don’t want to detract from the OP too much, but after listening to a vet’s story (Peter Wright, who joined James Herriot’s practice) last night about how foot and mouth disease spread in the UK (air borne; and after 2000 animals were infected, with 6 million animals culled to prevent the spread), the story struck me with its similarities to Covid. The vet wrote about how horrible it was for many farmers to lose their animals. I then Googled to see if there were any conspiracy theories in response. Wow! The similarities are striking!
An outbreak of “foot and mouth” disease in Britain has was caused by a strain of the virus which only exists in a government laboratory three miles away from the first reported case. This strain of the virus does not occur naturally outside the lab and is not found in the wild. The lab is owned by the British government and part of it is run by an American pharmaceutical corporation which profits from the manufacture and sale of “foot and mouth” vaccine.
What goes around, comes around. Pandemics occur, and will do so. Conspiracies will naturally arise in their wake.
Thanks.
With respect to COVID issues, I respectfully but vehemently disagree.
One side has been pushing hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, the notion that vaccines rearrange human DNA, that vaccines are accompanied by microchip implants, that vaccines are untested, that vaccines are part of a globalist conspiracy by Bill Gates to wipe out African populations, that Colin Powell’s death proves the vaccines are ineffective, and such.
The other side has been reporting the statements by CDC, WHO, and the epidemiology community. In the early months of the pandemic, some statements were based on imperfect knowledge, to be sure, but they have always been based AFAICT on the best scientific evidence available at the time.
Do you really find no difference between the two sides? Based on the history of our interactions, I’d predict you would find a very strong difference in reliability between the two sides.
When people say “conspiracy theory,” they usually mean something that is not supported by any evidence; that is too complex or expensive to be practical; and that there are other, less sinister explanations for what is going on that are far more likely.
If someone cries “conspiracy theory,” ask them to be specific. They aren’t necessarily trotting out the phrase as a magic shibboleth; they may have some good reasons for finding it unconvincing.
Bear in mind that there are different levels of “unreliable.” There is a big difference between “doing our best to come up with the best explanation given limited data and tight time constraints” on the one hand, and “snake oil and tinfoil hat paranoia” on the other.
Hi @Chris_Falter! Good to see you here. My argument is not the one with which you take issue. I’m saying that media has in general demonstrated that they are unreliable. One side or the other is going to be “more correct” about one issue or another. I’m arguing that the media is diseased, and the covid wars are a symptom.
To you I will say, regarding covid, you’re being more gracious than I feel. I think Fauci foolishly treated adults like children from the beginning (“masks won’t help you” was manipulative rather than honest). In addition, as I read somewhere, “I’m not sure the virus came from a lab in China, but I’m 100% sure there was a massive cover up.” Fauci was involved in that. Jon Stewart on the Colbert Late Show was hilarious in that regard.
But my point is this: I don’t want to litigate the details of covid itself and ignore the underlying disease. We cannot separate the science around covid from the culture wars and the propaganda machines - lies, distortions, and cover-ups - on both sides.
What makes you think that Jon Stewart is in any way qualified to speak as an expert on the issue? It would seem like giving credence to such a presentation by such a person does not manifest the kind of discernment that you have customarily exhibited in our previous discussions.
Hi @Chris_Falter! Your link fits well with the point I’m trying to make here. They are correct in their narrow point: Fauci cannot be implicated in the $600K grant to EcoHealth if it was used in China for GoF. But “factcheck” should be called “factspin.” They don’t lie per se, but they are selective in the facts they choose and the facts they omit or disparage. That article is very carefully researched to make Rand Paul look bad and Fauci look good. But Paul’s questioning of Fauci went well beyond that narrow point. It’s not mentioned that the NIH did fund GoF research before the moratorium.
Here is a little background and a very short list of distortions at factspin: Factcheck .org | CensorTrack
They try to appear objective and non-inflammatory so they can give legitimacy to the anger of the left.
But regarding Fauci:
We don’t agree here. Fauci pushed the “conspiracy theory” perspective on the Lab Leak idea back in early 2020 when he would know that no one really knew for sure. Do we agree on that? It’s a narrow point, but I believe he knew lab leak was very possible even as he condemned the idea. If he didn’t know this, he’s not as smart as I think he is.
I think Stewart’s rant at that time was instrumental in making it possible to discuss the lab leak theory. It was funny! That’s all I’m saying.
But for the context of this discussion, I guess it depends which side of the propaganda wars one follows. If you follow one side, he’s a hero, on the other he’s brain dead.
Well, he’s an ophthalmologist, if that tells you anything about his epidemiological training and qualifications to speak authoritatively about vaccines and ivermectin. I’d like him better if he were a heron.
The “lab leak” theory is, arguably, plausible. I don’t know how plausible Fauci’s involvement is so I won’t comment on that.
The ideas that Bill Gates is using the vaccine to inject microchips into us all, that covid is caused by 5G, that covid does not exist, that the death toll from covid is exaggerated, that masks are ineffective, or that the risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefit, on the other hand, are not.
The problem is that the plausible scenarios such as the “lab leak” theory tend to get touted by the people who are also making a song and a dance about scenarios that range from implausible to outright science fiction. This does mean that occasionally those of us who are challenging misinformation may end up making mistakes. But that’s simply because the conspiracy theorists have been crying wolf.
Do fact checkers make mistakes from time to time? No doubt they do. Nobody is perfect. But that doesn’t give anyone a free pass to claim that they’re making things up out of whole cloth just to promote “narratives.”
Hi @Christy! The link you provided says that in 2019 some people in Kosovo and Macedonia were exploiting a business opportunity, and made some money off facebook by posting cutesy Christian stuff on what the article calls “Christian troll farms,” which facebook algorithms then pushed into American Christians’ pages. From this fact they assert “the vast spread of Facebook misinformation is largely powered by coordinated efforts among foreign professionals working together to spread provocative content in the U.S.”
But from that data one can only conclude that troll farms can game Facebook algorithms. Full stop. That second sentence in the article is totally non sequitur.
Besides, I’m not sure lots of Americans need any Russian help coming up with junk beliefs! The problem as I see it is the junk beliefs on both sides fueled by a media industry that thrives on junk beliefs and a political class that thrives on division.
So you believe that there were coordinated eastern European efforts to spread " cutesy Christian stuff" only, and this had nothing at all to do with all the documented coordinated attempts by foreign agents to intentionally spread disinformation intended to destabilize American society? We believe different things. My understanding of the coordinated disinformation campaign is not informed solely by that one article, but I don’t have time to compile a bunch of links to somehow prove my case. This is a topic that has been referenced repeatedly in the news over the last few years, and the Facebook leak is only the latest iteration on a consistent theme. Christians have been especially susceptible to foreign disinformation campaigns. I think this is a well established fact.
My understanding of Fauci’s early statements is a little different than yours. It seemed to me that he was rejecting the idea of lab creation, not just lab leak. And the evidence then and now is strongly against lab creation.
Fair enough.
Would you characterize the Wall Street Journal as liberal mainstream media, @Marty?
I thought there would be COVID-related discussion at the link, but I didn’t find any. What I did find was not in the least convincing to me. Do factcheck sites sometimes make errors? Of course they do. But the critique you cited is filled with what-aboutism (everyone is sloppy, so why are you criticizing Trump?)
The critique also frequently begs the question. For example, some humans–particularly sociopathic narcissists–lie more frequently than others. And politicians are humans. Therefore some politicians can and will lie more frequently than other politicians. Hitler lied a whole lot more than FDR, for example. Are you with me so far?
Given that foundation, the assertion that factcheck.org is biased because they find more lies by one politician than by another is not credible to me. If Factspin wants to make a credible argument, they would need to show that, for example, a president from the other political camp uttered falsehoods/lies over 30,000 times.
This was the general tenor of the arguments from the site you linked, and COVID was not even mentioned. Your citation of the site, for all its flaws, did however serve as a useful reminder that not everyone starts with the same assumptions, so we often need to work carefully, together, to find reliable sources of trustworthy information. This is what the scientific community aims to accomplish through the peer review process, which in spite of its imperfections is better than the alternatives.
What do you think would be a credible source of information on COVID vaccines and treatments, Marty? Do you think the Cochrane Organization is trustworthy? Do you think that Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, and Lancet are trustworthy sources?
That may overstate the case, depending on what you mean by ‘creation’. If the Wuhan lab was doing at least some kinds of gain-of-function research on some (otherwise unknown) precursor virus to SARS-CoV-2 – e.g. something as simple as passaging the virus through some lab animal repeatedly – that made it more infectious in humans, there would be no genetic evidence one way or the other. That scenario would require a conspiracy, since the lab workers would all have to have lied about their activities, but it would be a plain old conspiracy, not the kind of thing imagined in conspiracy theories.
