from the It-is-SO-GOOD-"they"-are-afraid-to-let-us-tell-you-about-it! dept.
Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser
Peddlers of Medical Misinformation Are Using Social Media 'Censorship' as a Selling Point
Speech OnlineSpeech OnlineThis week, we're looking at the state of free speech on the internet, how we got here, and where we're going.
No one has ever accused Mike Adams, the self-proclaimed Health Ranger, of being an understated guy, but recent events have taken him to new, shouty heights. After Adams' website, Natural News, had its page suspended by Facebook in June for violating the company's spam policies, Adams likened the suspension to genocide and said President Trump should use the military, if necessary, to break up tech companies. But Adams—and other peddlers of medical misinformation, including many anti-vaccine personalities—are also working hard to make their supposed muzzling by social media companies into a selling point and a profit-driver.
In an email blast on June 30, Adams accused Google of gaming search results to "to defame and attack all natural health topics, all while banning natural health websites from its search results." He added that the search engine giant "has gone all-in with Monsanto, Big Pharma, chemotherapy, pesticides, 5G, geoengineering, fluoride and every other poison you can imagine."
And then, naturally, he turned around and offered to sell his audience the supplements So Powerful That Google Is Trying to Hide Them (emphasis his):
P.S. Despite Google's malicious attacks on health and nutrition, the truth is that nutritional supplements works. For the next day or so, we've got an event running on PQQ, CoQ10 and other specialty supplements that dramatically increase your intake of cell-supporting nutrients (including brain-supporting nutrients). Check out the details here.
It is emblematic of the strange moment we've arrived at in the selling of misinformation online, particularly the medical variety. In recent months, several social media giants have announced their intention to crack down on that misinformation, including most particularly anti-vaccine content. (Pinterest made the "vaccine" hashtag literally impossible to search for since virtually every search resultshowed up anti-vax content.)
But the process has been late, slow, and inconsistent. Take Instagram, which banned some anti-vaccine hashtags in March, but left others alone. Today, some of those banned hashtags, like #vaccineskill, have made a noticeable comeback, and there are anti-vaccine accounts aplenty, including Vaccine Truth,which has 60,000 followers. Or take the lively world of fake cancer cures: theWall Street Journalrecently noted that YouTube and Facebook are still overrun with the same fake cancer treatments that have been circulating online for years. That includes black salve, a longtime faux treatment for skin cancer that in actuality just burns skin away without killing cancer growths, and the entire opus of Robert O. Young, who promotes things like juicing regimens and "alkaline infusions" to cure cancer, infusions that critics say are functionally just injections of a baking soda cocktail. Young went to prison in 2017 for practicing medicine without a license, and he was ordered to pay over $100 million in a civil lawsuit filed against him by a terminal cancer patient who'd used his treatments the following year. Yet he's back on Facebook and busily selling his products through a network of interconnected pages.
In other words, the social media companies' supposed "crackdown" has been bizarre, partial, and in some cases, not permanent. The entire muddled process has certainly complicated business for people who make a living selling misinformation. But it's also given them a recognizable new selling point, a way to claim to the audience they still very much have on these same social media platforms that their ideas simply must work, which is why Big Government and Big Pharma are trying to muzzle them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:29AM (28 children)
I'm tired, didn't even read far into TFS let alone TFA, but let me guess: banning or censoring something makes people more interested in knowing what they are forbidden from knowing and such censorship is ultimately counterproductive. It seems like this would be a corollary to the Streisand effect -- it must have a name.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:37AM (24 children)
Too tired to read, not tired enough to comment.
What makes you believe this is a good starting point for a conversation on S/N? (why should I believe your answer to other's comments - that you may be too tired to read - are coherent enough?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:54AM (21 children)
Sometimes, bitching is easier than doing a search, but besides that, the summary should have been better. Acronyms should always be spelled out the first time unless it is nigh on certain the audience will already know it. Here, if you write "IBM" -- you can get away that. But write a FLAS ("Fucking Lazy Ass Summary")? Screw that. Do better.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:16AM (20 children)
Tip: your OP bitching is offtopic.
Someone trying to run a ruse accusing "censoriship" ("supplements So Powerful That Google Is Trying to Hide Them")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:18AM (17 children)
Oh snap!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:48AM (16 children)
I wonder how it has not being exposed until now, to the point that "the Soup" needed ban them as dangerous fraud?
Excerpts from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
---
Indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:54AM (15 children)
People criticized them, they actually took one of the worst posts down... so far so great. Exactly as it should happen.
Then you try to wipe them off the internet and give decent folk a reason to think their insane ramblings are actually important.
Oh, you so got them!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:15AM (14 children)
As opposed to what? Searching for "vaccine" and getting the first pages full of "anti-vaxxers" content?
Dam'd if you do, dam'd if you don't.
I s'ppose the safe way for a business like "the Soup" is at least appear to reasonable do something, lest they risk being accused of conspiracy to defraud. Like, you know, strictly business reasons; and it may be no business of yours to teach them how to run theirs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:35AM (1 child)
Don't anti-vaxxers use lots of common keywords that you can filter out?
Start with "-conspiracy"
Bet that will block most of them.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:45AM
Yeah. RFC3514 [ietf.org] and all that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:47AM (11 children)
You shouldn't be afraid of the fact that some of those pages might be critical of vaccines.
No. Really. You just shouldn't be afraid of this.
This is exactly how it's supposed to work.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @07:15AM (10 children)
Free speech is among the things a government cannot take from you.
Google is a private company, you have no claim over how they manage their business!
Here, suppose you are running a second car business. Are you OK with a bunch of greenhead tree-hugging hippies (me included) to use your sale-yard to hold a protest against dinojuice-powered-anything? Because, you see, by your own measure, the protesters right to free-speech should trump your right to private property.
Google search pages are exactly that: their second-hand sale yard, the only difference is they don't sell second hand cars but second hand information!
They sell adspace there. If their customers don't like how the returned search pages look like, they are free to take their ad-placement money elsewhere.
If you, as a (non-paying) consumer, don't like how the returned search pages look like, you a free to take your search (as a service request) elsewhere. (here, try DuckGoGo. Or Bing. Or even Yahoo. Or Amazon/ebay/twitter/facebook)
Guess who will Google try to please in the first priority?
Can you fault them for trying to run a profitable business as they see fit?
I hope it is clear that what I/you/anyone-but-Google are or are not afraid of bear no consequence of how Google is conducting their business. And it is right to be so.
Surprise!!!! It's not working as it is supposed (by you). Does this upset you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday July 17 2019, @07:31AM (6 children)
Google is a private company, you have no claim over how they manage their business!"
As a leftist, I'm shocked and disgusted. to see people who pretend to be leftists endorsing this narrative.
Google is a private company that was built on communally funded infrastructure. The internet. Built at taxpayers expense and essentially forced on massive populations that had no desire for it.
We have testimony in courts and in the very House of Representatives as to how these companies have wound up holding what amounts to the public square, with significant effects on our elections.
If that's the case then they are no more private than the local utility companies are.
Monopoly contractors have to follow constitutional restrictions.
Oooh checkmate.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @08:27AM (3 children)
How you are leaning is equally irrelevant. Until a court or the legislators decide otherwise, this is how it is. The most recent decision [soylentnews.org] on the matter specifically refused to "consider whether private social media companies are bound by the First Amendment when policing their platforms."
Disgusted or not, you do accept the laws of the land as the rules to govern the society you live in, aren't you?
They are still using computers that paid for, and energy they are paying for and the work of tens/hundred of thousands of employees they pay salary for and they do pay taxes to maintain that infrastructure (even if they try to avoid them as much as possible)
Point: they are not using exclusively that public infrastructure that you mention.
As it is the case for many other companies. Are you objecting, for example, to the right of states to ask the sale tax from Amazon because the business is conducted over internet (and the delivery is performed using roads paid from public funds)?
If yes, are you so left leaning to go full-throttle and say "whenever a business uses any public infrastruicture, no matter how infinitesimal, they must deliver their services on the basis of 'use according to your needs, pay according to you ability'" or something [wikipedia.org]?
Oh really? I guess those taxpayers don't derive any benefit in using this public infrastructure now, or what?
You run out of "internet public square" or what?
It's not like the Internet bandwidth is choke full so that's the reason you can't find yourself a way express your voice and must ask google to cut you a slice from theirs.
Really? Seems that I remember how the 4chan, 8chan and gab services do exist in the same internet space and the Internet didn't burst at the seams.
But maybe it's the "public attention" the limited resource that you want a bigger chunk of (and not the access to Internet)?
If so, tough luck, I can't remember any democratic law governing what the public must or must not pay attention to (even if I remember times when listening to "Voice of America" could have landed me in jail, but it was under a communist regime in East Europe, some almost 30 years ago).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:05PM (2 children)
I just don't understand why some people who are otherwise on the left suddenly become hardcore free marketeers when it comes to corporations censoring people on near-monopolistic platforms, when in almost every other instance they profess skepticism of corporations. These corporations are not your friends, and they are not just censoring right-wing people (despite right-wingers pretending that that is so). Youtube, for example, is screwing over nearly all forms of independent media, including the likes of Kyle Kulinski and David Pakman, who are obviously not right-wing. The only saving grace so far is that independent media hasn't been outright censored on the platform in general, but what it does show (yet again) is that corporations are not on the side of ordinary people and value money above all else. They don't care if you're left-wing or not, so stop with the free market extremism on this matter and wake up to the fact that when giant platforms like Google, Youtube, and Facebook use censorship or biased algorithms to promote propaganda news outlets, it has negative externalities on the rest of society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @07:37PM
They are authoritarians.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @10:24PM
Because their rights are your rights too. If the state can force them to do things contrary to their private interest, the state can force you too.
Careful what you wish for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:31PM (1 child)
SoylentNews was also built on that communally funded infrastructure.
Are you in favor of them being forced to post all Aristarchus submissions? Afterall, they are violating his free speech rights!
You are a monopoly when you have been convicted of being a monopoly and no sooner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:13PM
Have you ever heard of regulatory capture? Why do you have so much faith in a system which is so utterly broken? If we leave everything up to our corrupt system to decide, nothing will ever change.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Wednesday July 17 2019, @03:03PM (1 child)
Whether or not it's technically applicable by law, the fundamental concept of free speech is something worth being upheld. Calling out companies when they violate that principle is necessary to ensure that the idea of free expression isn't eroded over time. And we probably should update the law to ensure that our communication infrastructure upholds those principles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:29PM
Agreed, therefore the SN editors must immediately post all Aristarchus subs. This violation of Aristarchus' free speech rights shall not stand!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @07:32PM
And THEN you people will again be searching for some external cause when Trump gets reelected.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:16AM (1 child)
You're right. I was thinking of the DRC article elsewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @12:14PM
You should have read tfa, the headline is very misleading. This is actually about how there is no fermi paradox because dozens of extraterrestrial civilizations are monitoring us. They use the tiny, ubiquitous, and self replicating probes we call insects.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 17 2019, @07:16AM (1 child)
Too tired to comprehend, but still enough of the Amygdala to thrash about and attempt to bite something.
Why would doctors not want you to know about the most recent advances in cancer treatment, with involves the transplantation of goat testicles into your own? [nationalgeographic.com]
OH, sorry, that was a cure for Republican Penile Bob Dole Syndrome. Sorry about your cancer. But still, they must be hiding something, because, if you were able to be cured, just by saying the words "Miserere animae meae sunt Mariae Virginis de Fatima", or "アミダ仏の名前", they would not want you to know, since they would lose money. Therefore, all these bogus cures must work! Don't forget the Marijuana oil, which is not psycho-active, so why would anyone be pushing it, unless it worked: or, they were making money off it? They are making money off it. And you will die, your life will mean nothing, because of your pathetic attempts to cling to it. Only realize the truth. There is no health care. There is only single payer. For great justice.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @07:34AM
You missed the "And that's The Truth that will set you Free" in the ending, magister.
After such a brilliant build-up, a lost sale-opportunity.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:49AM (2 children)
Pretty much. Except it is even more dumb in this case. You have people pushing the idea "They" don't want us to know that vaccines are dangerous, big medicice is concealing miracle cancer cures,etc. So what do "They" do? Try their damnedest to prove them right by breaking every law and principle America stands for in the most obvious and blatant way possible, as if they are in a rope-a-dope with the scammers to move more snake oil.
But we know better, they aren't in cahoots they are just this stupid. We are ruled by morons.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:38AM
We are ruled by morons.
A minor bug with majority rule...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 17 2019, @07:29AM
Is that so? You mean *They* have no rights over their own search pages, generated by *their* computers running on energy paid by *their* money?
Are you happy to pay *them* (via IRS collected taxes) a just compensation [wikipedia.org] for their loss of profit in making *their* search pages a "public use"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:45AM (3 children)
The internet treats censorship as damage to be routed around.
Sorry mang, that also includes illegal information.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Wednesday July 17 2019, @12:25PM (2 children)
This sort of information largely isn't even illegal. At least in so far as it's not illegal to lie. Which is why you very rarely ever see these peddlers of Supplements, Complementary, and Alternative medicine (S.C.A.M.) so bold as to ever mention outright that they can do something really specific and objectively verifiable like "cure cancer", instead they say something nebulous like "helps boost the immune system" or other similar fluff that's supposed to make someone without a sceptical frame of mind to think that their nostrum or therapy or whatever actually does something medically useful. They almost always have that infamous Quack Miranda Warning [scienceblogs.com]:
in fine print somewhere. I'm sorry, but I've lost one parent dead to cancer and have the other with permanent brain damage from a stroke because they both credulously believed in this S.C.A.M. stuff instead of real medicine. Anything that can prevent these peddlers of lies and snake oil from getting higher profiles is a good thing I think.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:37PM (1 child)
I'm sorry, but I've lost one parent dead to cancer and have the other with permanent brain damage from a stroke because they both credulously believed in this S.C.A.M. stuff instead of real medicine. Anything that can prevent these peddlers of lies and snake oil from getting higher profiles is a good thing I think.
I'm sorry to read you lost your parents to cancer. I was diagnosed with stage-IV colon cancer 6 years ago, given a 10% change to survive at the time. Once it spread all four lobes of my lungs 3 years ago, I was given 2-6 months to live. Over these six year, and particularly during the last 3 after which I was expected to be dead, I found a lot of holistic crap and nonsense being touted as effective cancer "cures." Ironically, my oncologist turned me onto the least likely-sounding thing of all--high THC cannabis oil of all things (google Rick Simpson Oil if you're interested)--which I almost didn't try EVEN THOUGH MY DOCTOR told me about other patients that had successfully used it. That's how incredulous I was, and it was only when my wife begged me to to try it that I relented.
I did not think it would work any better than any of the nonsense "cures" being bandied about, but I figured my wife would be less stressed if I just did it anyway, and at least with all that THC in my system I would die with relatively little pain (or even awareness, if I was lucky).
Six months later instead of being dead I was in complete remission and back at work, and I've been healthy ever since. I can't say it was an enjoyable experience--it turns out that the thing that kills the cancer is the very thing that makes you high, and being stoned 20 hours/day for months on end is a miserable experience (though a cakewalk compared to chemo).
In any event, there are some real diamonds among all the shit, and I was lucky enough to have an Oncologist who risked their job to point me in the right direction (they are contractually obligated to never mention any possible treatments other than surgery, radiation, chemo, and hospital-approved studies, even for things they know work, and even when the hospital itself is observing shocking curative results in their palliative care for people using medical marijuana, go figure).
This problem is made more difficult by an FDA that will not allow any significant studies on medical cannabis, particularly studies that might threaten a multi-trillion dollar chemo industry, and herein lies the real problem. We need scientific studies for this, and while there are thousands of people who have survived late-stage, normally survivable cancers thanks to RSO, myself included, that is still no substitute for proper, double-blind studies if you want to (a) verify the medicine works and (b) see it adopted and used by millions of others who would benefit, and aren't willing, or desperate enough, to step outside of the bounds of orthodoxy to try things out (and most of those who are, will try things that don't work because how, without good scientific studies, is anyone going to tell on their own?). There are hints (studies in Israel for example, where they've actually moved past proving Rick Simpson Oil works and are now trying to determine which strains are best suited for fighting which cancers), but when your own government blocks such studies, finding these sorts of things can be very difficult.
And herein lies the rub. The anti-vaxxers and other shills exploit a very real problem in order to legitimize their scams: industry capture of regulatory boards and suppression of scientific inquiry for political, religious, or industry-supporting purposes. They can do this very effectively because the problem is real, and real solutions are being deliberately buried for financial or political gain along with all of the dangerous crap.
It's a hard problem to solve, because you can lose a lot of good information along with the bad, and censorship is a slippery slope. On the other hand, there is a need for curated information, and for not having demonstrably nonsensical crap filter to the top of search results. There are no easy answers to this, and absolutist positions such as "it's a business, the can do what they like!" or "any censorship is bad, let people figure it out for themselves!" are both dangerous over-simplifications of a very nuanced and complex problem, the solution to which (if one exists) will likely have to be just as nuanced and almost certainly lies somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum. A good start might be eliminating regulatory capture of our government agencies and returning them to a state of reliable neutrality, and not allowing them to block studies like this, but even so, that merely addresses one problem, and still sidesteps the underlying complexity of sorting through information and misinformation, and striking a good balance between curation and "censorship."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:44PM
sigh, that should read "normally UNsurvivable cancers"--where's the edit button when you need it.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:38AM
So "Buy the secret pills that the man (twitter, facebook, youtube, whomever) doesn't want you to know about ... now with long lost secret ingredients from the depths of Atlantis". Sure I can see that working. I'll take three of the blue once and one of the red.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:22AM (2 children)
If you can't find an article on Pubmed supporting it, or even mentioning your cure as inconclusive or fraudulent, not interested.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @12:17PM (1 child)
Look up low carb diet on pubmed and see if you can find a study that includes people actually on such a diet. They still think 50% carbs is "low carb" when it is actually 5-20%.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday July 17 2019, @06:52PM
There's this mention [nih.gov], does this count?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday July 17 2019, @02:31PM (8 children)
This is an attempt to smear everyone that questions conventional medical and nutritional science. If we had been this censorious about doing that in the past, everyone would still be eating margarine, avoiding eggs, and "healthy fats" would never have been used.
Anything that questions anything that big pharma labels a "vaccine" is labelled "anti-vaxx". I'm not anti-vaxx, I'm pro-useful-vaxx. That means I don't do flu vaccine every year. This year the flu vaccine turned out to be about 9% effective. 9%. Since your immune system is LOWER for about 2 weeks after a flu vaccination, that means the flu vaccine did more harm than good this year. Look it up. Those governments MANDATING a flu vaccine are irresponsible tyrants.
Don't even get me started on the HPV vaccine scam. Have you seen the scar-mongering commercials they use to sell that stuff now? "Mom, did you know?" OMG! It will be 50 years before we really know if the vaccines are effective at ALL in preventing cervical cancer (and... "other cancers" in men? Really?) but we've already seen the nasty side effects that they sometimes cause.
And Rick Perry actually made that one mandatory for all Texas school children at one time. THAT demonstrates the power of big pharma on our governments.
This shows their power over big tech (they are a HUGE advertiser after all - how do you think big tech makes their money, anyway).
The point is, we need to have these discussions, we need to hear about people's experiences, and we don't need these multinational corporations acting as filters for all of that.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday July 17 2019, @04:00PM (4 children)
While I agree with you that we should have healthy discussion and should be very cautious about censorship, it's hard to agree with you when you spout obvious BS.
Can I ask where you found that 9% number? The CDC's preliminary estimate [cdc.gov] from February was 47% effectiveness overall, including 44% effectiveness against the H3N2 strain. The reason I mention that latter number because the second wave of flu this spring was unusual, and H3N2 protection is known to decline faster after getting vaccinated compared to other strains. When the second wave hit, it was too long after many people were vaccinated to provide the best protection.
But even given that, the only place I've seen a number of 9% quoted is here [statnews.com], which claims a 9% effectiveness against the second strain (presumably H3N2) which I've already noted was expected to be lower that late in the season. But that link there also notes the overall estimate of effectiveness for the 2018-19 flu season was still 29% overall. Not good, but not 9%. Typically, for the past decade or so, effectiveness for the vaccine is usually 40-50% or so [cdc.gov], hardly something to scoff at for being completely ineffective, especially when it's estimated that tens of thousands of people die every year due to complications from the flu. If you're a healthy (younger) adult, you might get by with something relatively mild, or you might be hospitalized, but will likely survive. If you're a senior or small child, the consequences of being around people who get the flu could be much more dire. Note again the second link above (the one I found which had something resembling your 9% claim), which also notes that the vaccine in the 2018-19 season likely prevented 40,000 to 90,000 hospitalizations this year.
I'm not saying there flu shots are perfect. I went for several years without getting them myself. I was suspicious myself. About two years ago I spent some time reading about the scientific difficulty in producing an effective vaccine from year-to-year (which involves predicting which viruses will be prevalent that year, an inexact science, but which still tends to lead to 40-50% effectiveness or more most years). If you read the scientific studies on flu viruses, you'll understand perfectly well why the vaccine can't work better yet. It's not a Big Pharma conspiracy.
And claims like "the flu vaccine did more harm than good this year. Look it up. Those governments MANDATING a flu vaccine are irresponsible tyrants" are irresponsible and reckless hyperbole with no basis in fact.
Perhaps you can make an argument that mandatory vaccination with the flu vaccine is as-yet unwarranted given its unpredictable effectiveness, but I'd listen to you a lot more if you actually used real figures rather than BS hyperbole.
Okay, once again, I'm not going to necessarily argue in favor of mandatory vaccination here yet either, but again your claims are rather irrational. According to the WHO [who.int], "The main burden of HPV-related disease is due to cervical cancer. HPV was estimated to cause 100% of the almost 260,000 deaths from cervical cancer worldwide in 2005." and also "91% of global estimated HPV-related cancer deaths are due to cervical cancer."
So, for your claim that the vaccines might NOT be "effective at ALL in preventing cervical cancer" would require that all science around cervical cancer and all links to HPV be bogus. Are you seriously claiming that? If so, I suggest again you go read some actual science, rather than spewing invective and conspiracy theories about Big Pharma.
Once again, if you're willing to engage in rational debate about such things and justify why the cost/benefit analysis of the HPV vaccine may not justify widespread or mandatory vaccination, I'd be willing to listen. But if you're going to argue "we need to have discussions," then you're setting a really bad example for the kind of unfiltered discourse that could be productive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:02PM (1 child)
That's very interesting information that you quoted from the CDC and WHO. What you, and many others, are failing to realize is that a significant portion of the population no longer has any trust or faith in government institutions. Or even non-government institutions anymore. So all your information and statistics from those sources will not be believed by large portions of the population.
That the majority will learn of this information primarily via the large media outlets, who are known to be lying liars who lie, will reduce belief in the information even further.
This is all a small part of the larger story of the collapse of our former high-trust civilization into a low-trust civilization.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 18 2019, @03:06AM
I realize this, but who do you trust then? There are independent studies that aren't funded by the vaccine companies or the government that come to similar conclusions and list similar stats (maybe not the most recent year for the flu vaccine, as the data hasn't been processed yet). Do we not trust any scientists either? Instead, do we then just turn to some random guy with a "medical" website that spouts unsupported claims?
People do trust SOMEBODY -- they trust the people who peddle the narrative they already believe. In this case, it may be some random dude on the internet rambling on about how Big Pharma wants to kill everyone. Does anyone here think I *like* Big Pharma? I absolutely do not. There are lots of abuses, and we have a horribly dysfunctional medical system.
But that doesn't mean that all studies are part of a massive conspiracy. You just need to have the sense to evaluate individual studies and their sources yourself.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday July 17 2019, @08:46PM
Besides, the medical industry has issues beyond insurance woes. For example, there is never a cause of death listed as Chemotherapy. If chemo kills you, which is kinda what it was designed for, your cause of death is listed as cancer. That isn't accurate, the medical industry does not have integrity.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday July 17 2019, @10:41PM
I have to confess to not reading the entire article. You're right, it was from the later strain, but, still 29% is lousy.
You're leaning a bit into propaganda territory, here (are you in the industry, by chance?), but I'll bite. In 2013, CDC found that the flu vaccine was only 9% effective for seniors [sfgate.com]. And you're completely ignoring all the risks. And there ARE risks. Any time you are injected with chemicals and foreign bodies there is a risk. Walking around with a lowered immune system for a couple of weeks is a well-known common one. If you think the risks are worth it, there is no reason you should not be allowed to accept them and get the shot. That does NOT mean it's okay for a tyrant to force you into taking it.
More propaganda. You could have just said "Why don't you think of the children" like that horrible advertisement. You stat says NOTHING. First, boys do not get cervical cancer, why are you risking their health with this terrible vaccine? The WHO is very heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, but I won't bother pointing that out, since you take what they say is gospel. But look at your quote: an "estimate" resulted in "100%". I reads like a lie.
Are you claiming that HPV always leads to cancer, and that all cervical cancer is caused by HPV? Not even your WHO link claimed that. How effective will the vaccine be at preventing cancer? We can't know for MANY YEARS, because only very rarely does HPV actually cause cancer. Most HPV infections in young men and women are transient, lasting no more than one or two years. It is estimated that the infection will persist in only about 1% of women. Usually, the body clears the infection on its own. The vaccine only protects against a few strains.
And, again, you're acting like there are no downsides to taking the vaccine. That is demonstrably false! People sensitive to it can become disabled for life. Quite a risk for a possibility of maybe avoiding a cancer.
The best way to avoid cervical cancer? That has actually dramatically reduced cervical cancer death in the last 40 years? Regular PAP smears!
Pretty sure you're just lying, here, because you're acting like vaccines themselves have no risks and can never harm anyone. You need to do that before it can become an actual "discussion," and not just you shouting propaganda.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by ilsa on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:40PM (2 children)
Considering how completely and utterly wrong you are about the HPV vaccine (I'm being generous and saying you are misinformed, rather that flat out lying), you managed to single handedly justify the rational behind the censorship.
The problem is that refuting bullshit is 100x more time and energy consuming than it is to spit out bullshit. I could go into a long essay about all the ways in which you are wrong, but I am not willing to invest that kind of time in some stranger with an armchair medical degree who will just make up some excuse and handwave whatever I say anyway.
Now multiply that by the sheer number of kooks and crooks out there who have a vested monetary interest in spreading medical falsehoods. It's a massive game of whackamole, and we are now reaching the point where entities, both individual and corporate, are saying "enough is enough".
You wanna have some idiotic opinion about something you know nothing about? That's fine. NO ONE is under any kind of obligation to hand you a megaphone so you can shout that opinion to the world.
(Score: 1, Troll) by curunir_wolf on Thursday July 18 2019, @09:41PM (1 child)
... says the pharmaceutical shill.
You know what happens when you censor people JUST FOR QUESTIONING what's going on, and responding by IGNORING all known risks and spouting clear propaganda?
You lose all trust.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Friday July 19 2019, @04:40PM
Right, so because I called you out on your blatant lies, I'm with BIG PHARMA(TM). How very typical.
You claim that you're "questioning". You are not. You are making flagrantly incorrect statements and asserting them as if they were fact. And then you try to use your conviction in lieu of actual facts, and then throw a temper tantrum when people call you on it.
The HPV vaccine has been wildly successful. Countries that have mandatory vaccine programs are *already* seeing a drop in rates of things like Cervical cancer. You'd know that if you had bothered to do even a modicum of research instead of relying on your armchair medical degree.
So yeah, go back to the youtube comments and peddle your vagina rocks, quantum water or whatever scam you peddle to satisfy your misanthropy.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:29PM
What I don't understand is why these people haven't been charged with practicing medicine without a license, or outright fraud?
It's one thing to have an opinion about something. No one can stop you from having an opinion no matter how idiotic it is.
It's another to make a website and establish a business revolving around that opinion and making money selling fraudulent nonsense to people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:58AM
No shortage of that variety.