The US gov pressured social media companies to censor posts about both those topics for political reasons, even though a lot of what was said turned out to be true
> censor posts about both those topics for political reasons
In the context of Covid disinformation, "political reasons" is simply not correct. We're only 2 years out but it was clear even at the time that there was a concerted effort to pretend there wasn't an active pandemic and governments were right to crack down on it.
The only thread connecting them is "disinformation" which is tenuous at best. It's not clear to me what Zuckerberg's letter refers to because the article seems to move between the topics as though they're basically the same thing.
According to Wikipedia itself, the WHO seems to find it a likely theory...
>The report added weight to calls for a broader probe into the theory that the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from a laboratory.[6][7] However, a WHO report states "introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway".[3] Since then, the head of the WHO COVID-19 origins investigative team, Peter Ben Embarek, has stated that the Chinese authorities exerted pressure on the WHO report conclusions, and that he in fact considers an infection via a researcher's field samples to be a "likely" scenario.[8]*
Are you disagreeing with the “chilling effect” section of the article, or are you implying the effect could not have been real due to the current length of the article?
There were certainly attempts to suppress it such as the Proximal Origins paper. And the public "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories" letter where privately the were saying it was "so friggin likely". The reasons do seem kind of political, though more to cover up establishment cock ups and not upset the Chinese than a left right thing.
Even today Wikipedia says "explanations, such as speculations that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a laboratory have been proposed, such explanations are not supported by evidence." But if you look at the actual evidence it was almost certainly a lab leak.
There's a scene is "30 Rock" where Alec Baldwin gives a speech the morning after a party that got way out of hand about how they must now all face each other in the cold, hard light of dawn. To me, it sort of feels like we are living through that now after covid. We've learned things about people that we didn't really want to know; particularly that others don't place a lot of value on our lives (something that anyone who grew up with a health condition could already have told you). It's all rather discomfiting.
I suppose it's human nature to reach out for miracle cures, but the way people behaved in the pandemic still surprised me. Reaching for random drugs like hydroychloroquine or dewormers (why couldn't it have been a fun drug like cocaine?) and eschewing actual covid vaccines makes one wonder how it is possible that one shares a reality with their fellow humans. Obviously they do not.
It's pretty simple, the different realities like you said. People consume and trust different streams of information (for a whole bunch of reasons). Your info stream probably told you that people were gobbling horse goo and aquarium cleaner and dying by the droves, while threatening your grandmother, and you believed it because the sum total of your experience told you that was the most believable of the options.
Other peoples experiences led them to believe sources saying that there was a thing called ivermectin that sees use in agriculture but also in billions of human doses as an antiparasitic that seems to be helping against covid (and that big corporations are not to be trusted).
There are life stories behind each of these perspectives. Many people with either of these perspectives had never heard of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine before their media of choice started praising or condemning them. Then suddenly they were experts.
I never took any of it. Was that the right decision? It seems to have worked out at least. I do try to avoid the trap of thinking any of the stuff blasted out by the media corporations, at no cost to you, has any other purpose than to get you to 1) vote a certain way or 2) buy a certain product, or 3) support some forever war. The news corps aren't just generously informing you - there has to be an ROI.
Interestingly I knew an engineer who took fish medication long before covid, and I came to respect that sort of DIY ethos for medicine and have taken it on myself where possible. Veterinary medications are just medications, so that sort of characterization tended to fly over my head a bit. But if there was a drug that easily cured covid, it would be obvious because it would easily cure covid.
> But if there was a drug that easily cured covid, it would be obvious because it would easily cure covid.
And that could explain why a lot of people believed ivermectin works: they had covid, they took ivermectin, they got better. They don't see the alternate universe where they didn't take it and they also got better, because that's what happens most of the time.
I'm convinced this is why so many other people think the vaccine was a miracle. We were being blasted with the idea that covid was a death sentence, so if you had a plain old mild case (like most cases were), it had to be because of some intervention (ivermectin or the shots or the phase of the moon).
I think this is true for most of the shit the medical industry tries to push on you, but I'm a kook and I know it.
Yes, the dynamic you identified is why sham treatments have sold for millennia. Teasing out what works is tricky. For some (to include people I knew) covid was a death sentence, but the fatality rate was around one percent, wasn't it? You'd never fly on a plane that crashed in one out of one hundred flights, but still they aren't too bad as odds go. Even so, once the vaccine came out, the only people I knew who died of covid were those who did not take it. Merely the observation of one individual, but it seems to match the wider data that was found.
So given that information, what is one to do? I took the vaccine and take the newer versions now too along with a flu shot.
The worldwide population COVID-19 infection fatality rate was estimated at about 0.27%, so substantially less than 1%. That number varied widely based on age.
> the fatality rate was around one percent, wasn't it?
According to one report at least, it was 1% for folks in their 60s. For younger demographics it was quite a bit less than that.
> We report IFR estimates for April 15, 2020, to January 1, 2021, the period before the introduction of vaccines and widespread evolution of variants. We found substantial heterogeneity in the IFR by age, location, and time. Age-specific IFR estimates form a J shape, with the lowest IFR occurring at age 7 years (0·0023%, 95% uncertainty interval [UI] 0·0015–0·0039) and increasing exponentially through ages 30 years (0·0573%, 0·0418–0·0870), 60 years (1·0035%, 0·7002–1·5727), and 90 years (20·3292%, 14·6888–28·9754).
You make the best decision you can for yourself, and sounds like you did that. The frustrating part is when other people felt entitled to make that decision for you.
As far as I know, no one in my country (The US) was forced to take a covid vaccine. Some were compelled financially I have no doubt, but they would seem to me like fish that just realized that they were swimming in water after not having even realized it their entire lives. No wonder they were pissed; I can't say I've ever really gotten over it myself.
I treat it like anything else: I wouldn't be shocked to see evidence that incorrect things show up in places like the lancet. But I assume it's on par with the best I can get my hands on, so I use it.
I'm gonna skip the "technically not forced" debate, been through it too many times. I'll agree to disagree.
Is the fish metaphor to say that it was some people realizing how little control they have over their lives or something like that? Amen if so.
Yes, it's a profound thing to threaten someone's livelihood, though at the same time, society will squash individuals when genuinely threatened; never doubt that for a minute. For a time, it seemed like the vaccines might stop transmission of covid, but that seems to have been a bust. They do, however seem to rather clearly help an individual's response to the virus, and so it seems like it became a matter of individual responsibility.
As to the fish thing, you understood me correctly - when we are born, we are thrown into a world we did not create and have vanishingly little control over, and seemingly less as wealth and power accumulate into the hands of a few. I'm told that well-adjusted people are capable of adapting to their circumstances, and it is a mark of mental illness that one can not.
> It's pretty simple, the different realities like you said.
Agreed.
> Your info stream probably told you that people were gobbling horse goo and aquarium cleaner and dying by the droves, while threatening your grandmother
That's not even close to the truth. There were reliable reports of people admitted to hospital with this but nobody in their right mind thought "droves" of people were taking dangerous quantities of ivermectin or drinking bleach.
