https://phys.org/news/2022-05-disinformation-flourished-pandemic.html
A small team of researchers at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in France has explored why disinformation seemed to flourish during the global pandemic.
One of the more remarkable features of the global pandemic is the seemingly unceasing stream of misinformation attributed not just to the virus and the people who were being infected, but in the ways the medical community has responded to the threat. From ridiculous claims regarding supposed cures to the baseless claims made by anti-vaxxers, misinformation has flourished. In this new effort, the researchers wondered why this has been happening and they looked at the sources of news, both reliable and unreliable, as participants in a supply and demand news ecosystem.
[...] The researchers were not able to ascertain why the unreliable news sources were able to respond more quickly, but suggest that the end result was higher visibility for unreliable sources, leading to widespread disinformation gaining traction, and ultimately, acceptance.
[Journal Reference]: Pietro Gravino et al, The supply and demand of news during COVID-19 and assessment of questionable sources production, Nature Human Behaviour (2022)
DOI: DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01353-3
Do you agree with this assessment?
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @02:12PM (51 children)
Like the war going on now, everything that comes out of Kiev is debunked within 24-48 hours after release.
And the supposed protagonist is asking for more money and weapons instead of humanitarian aid?
So ya, the misinformation is obvious and even more amplified when you can no longer trust what comes from the actual word itself, "news";
Every major news outlet is just a propaganda mouth piece for its respective owning oligarchy.
The poles have flipped.
News with a sprinkle of misinformation to Misinformation with a sprinkle of news.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @03:20PM (17 children)
How many sock puppet accounts do you have, in order to upmod to "+5 insighful" an anonymous coward's post that is clearly the result of a Putin astroturfer ? Or are mods on this site really that gullible and easily fooled ?
Enough I guess to also downmod this post to hell very soon.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @03:27PM (11 children)
What, you're complaining that his Schwartz is bigger than yours?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:26PM (10 children)
Moron. Schwartz = black. Schwanz = cock.
(Score: 4, Funny) by unauthorized on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:34PM (7 children)
This anon has a fake nerd card. Shame him! SHAME!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @06:49PM (6 children)
"may the schwarz be with you"! help the baby nerds grow into full blown mature nerds!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @08:32PM (5 children)
Ah, nerd culture is dead in the young. Where I am was once a center of nerddom. There are still a few left, but most of the potentials are watching out that they are up to date on the current gender count, treading carefully, so they can get through school without being canceled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:46PM (1 child)
All they gotta do is avoid crusty farts like you, and kids I know are nerdier than ever. Maybe you're just jealous because you had to grow up with a bunch of toxic jock shit?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:39AM
Says the nerdy incel.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @01:35AM (2 children)
What is a gender?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @10:21PM (1 child)
Nothing but a miserable pile of pronouns.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 31 2022, @09:49PM
Some pronouns are more preferred than others.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:34PM (1 child)
I sentence you to watch "Spaceballs" fifty times until you get the reference. I expect your next post to include a reference to 'ludicrous speed,' young man.
--Pizza the Hutt
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @03:08AM
I watched "Spaceballs" the requisite 50 times in 1 minute. Played at ludicrous speed, of course.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:33PM
Obviously, more people are seeing through the smoke and mirrors. And, you're not one of them. How can you be so woke, and see so little?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:37AM (1 child)
Depending on how heavily the insightful mod is rated, it could only take 2, 3 at the most.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:57PM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @01:25PM
"clearly the result of a Putin astroturfer "
Wow, insecure much?
Can't handle the truth?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:14PM
How many sock puppet accounts do you have, in order to upmod to "+5 insighful" an anonymous coward's post that is clearly the result of a BIDEN astroturfer ? Or are mods on this site really that gullible and easily fooled ?
Same can be said of your post!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @03:21PM (16 children)
Something has flipped here too. Just a few months ago, a post like the above would have been immediately modded -1 Troll.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @03:46PM (9 children)
Runaway has reactivated his sock puppets since his lame journals are being thrashed by anyone with a brain.
Aristarchus is right, ban runaway, he's violated sock puppet rules too long even though he swore he'd stop. Now we get to watch him get all smug and say prove it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:35PM (8 children)
Maybe an admin should weigh in here. If sock puppets modded the post in question, they weren't Runaway's socks.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:08PM (2 children)
Nobody else seems to get it, so here it is: disinformation is the old-old-original fake news meme, with a new paint job.
Remember when the left first introduced the "fake news" term and it backfired because the fake news was all of left-wing making. The Republicans jumped on the term, after watching CNN for ten minutes. Can't wait for the newly-improved antifa, woke and CRT.
Ministry of Truth... like the old Ministry of Truth, but now Truthier. It's all a little too 1984 for my taste.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @07:33PM (1 child)
IOW, everything the hook-nosed Jews and their Shabbos Goy accomplices don't like is fake news/disinfo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2022, @11:53PM
Uh oh, the incel is back. No secret why you're still a virgin!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @12:57AM
Of course, they weren't Runaway socks, because Runaway says so! Brilliant! This is the same Runaway that admitted to lying and sockpuppetry, and called for the death of 50 million of his fellow Americans. Combine this with the fact that our British editorial team claims not to know what Breitbarf is, and it is easy to imagine that they are ignoring the runaway socks problem. But yes, the moderation patterns here are suspicious. If only we had hemocyanin back, again!
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 01 2022, @02:58PM
Just mod as off-topic, and scroll past.
Technically, that could be perceived as an admin weighing in, but no admin powers or insights were used in the creation of it, so consider it just friendly user-to-user advice.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday June 01 2022, @05:43PM (2 children)
We have already answered several emails that we have received regarding the moderation. The is no evidence of any sock puppet activity, from any specific user account. They are all accounts that have existed for several years, some since the beginning of the site, with a couple of exceptions. All of the accounts that moderated have behaved normally in all previous moderations. Those exceptions did not influence the final moderation result. People seem to have have extreme views on this particular discussions.
Most people complaining appear to be saying that anyone who disagrees with them must be a sock puppet. It must really hurt them to discover that not everyone thinks that their opinions are valued and appreciated.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2022, @09:16PM
No evidence, eh? So just like the Aristarchus case, then.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday June 02 2022, @04:52AM
Ari's sock-puppets were easily identified because of poor security. He compromised each of his accounts. However, that was not instrumental in his banning.
He was banned for doxing.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:01PM (2 children)
It's interesting that the post at the top of this thread was modded to 5, Insightful very quickly after it was posted. How likely is it that five different readers did that?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @06:26PM (1 child)
How likely ? Impossible, that's how likely. It's obvious to anyone with a least two brain cells that this is the result of moderation manipulation.
But what do you expect from disgusting Putin-cock-sucking sociopaths who take this monster's money to spread his filth all over the internet ?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 01 2022, @03:07PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:06PM
The Church of the Current Thing moved on to Roe v Wade and is now moving toward even newer things.
People can talk about what they think instead of having to be publicly devout.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:10PM
Holy crap you are right!
And your post would have been down modded too!
Soylentnews get a+Trust for moderation, wow, times haves changed.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:10PM
The score as of Saturday afternoon:
Flamebait=1, Troll=6, Insightful=10, Overrated=3, Total=20
Who are the good guys?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:50PM (1 child)
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/25/sandy-hook-proved-the-need-to-enhance-k-12-security-congress-armed-ukraine-instead/ [thefederalist.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @01:33AM
Looks like Flamebait Federalist Society Spam to me. Let's see if the Admin let this one stand, a sort of stare spamitis, or come to the murderous rescue of American ammosexuals.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday May 28 2022, @10:49PM (12 children)
Sounds like you trust Putin propaganda just fine. That's you and your imaginary upmodders rare birds indeed.
Is there something wrong with asking for money and weapons when you're at war and have a good chance of repelling the invaders? It's bizarre that you even think that's an issue worth mentioning.
Moving on, we see one of the ways that fast release cycle works: "is debunked within 24-48 hours after release". This is classic disinformation tactics - when something is asserted hit back [soylentnews.org] with a fast debunk/rebuttal. It doesn't matter what the other side said, it's "debunked", often merely by stating disagreement - notice it didn't matter what the Ukraine claimed, to you it was debunked.
My take is that debunking is a comforting, reality dodging ritual. Ukraine (or someone else for that matter) says something scary. The debunkers provide the flimsy pretext you need to continue believing.
One wonders if your debunkers also debunked the following ridiculously ideas: 1) Russia would invade Ukraine, 2) Russia would have any difficulty taking out the cowardly, corrupt Ukrainian government, 3) Russia wouldn't even achieve air superiority (still hasn't), 4) Russia wouldn't lose a third of its initial invading force in three months, or 5) that Russian officials are so scared of the truth that they're jailing people for telling it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @01:37PM (1 child)
No one is denying that there is misinformation on both sides, however, at this point the Americans are clearly in the lead!
Just because we want to debate both sides of the issues, does not mean when your little feelings get hurt, that the GOOD Americans are doing good...they are a bunch of fucking misinformation whores worse than anything coming out of Russia.
It seems there are too many little whining children on here who have no idea about reality and will do anything to keep there little America feel good club going at the cost of truth.
Wake up out of your propaganda zombie programming, holy fuck!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:56PM
Only because Russians shot themselves in the foot. The lesson here is that if you violate perceived social norms, like the outrageous lying Russia did just prior to the start of the war or the ongoing bullying of Ukraine (yes, there are US equivalents which led to the same thing), your propaganda is greatly weakened.
You aren't debating both sides, you're continually whining about the Americans. Sorry, one of the reasons that "the Americans are clearly in the lead" is because the US propaganda is more truthful! What I find remarkable about your failure to understand what's going on here is that propaganda only works when it is believed. Starting off with outright lies that are easy to disprove (not merely "debunk" in 24 to 48 hours!) destroys the value of that propaganda. Russia did that.
For more examples, Ukraine has bragged continually about its abilities to do surprising damage to Russian forces. There has to be some basis in truth to that because they're still here three months later. That makes any claims they make to victories, stuff destroyed, alleged superior tactics, etc more believable. Because something has to be working heavily in Ukraine's favor in order for them to still be here.
Meanwhile, what are the Russians claiming? They're just suppressing everything about what's going on. You don't have any openness or willingness to admit when things aren't going well. That opacity harms Russian propaganda even in the absence of hostile propaganda. No news is not good news.
I'm not the zombie here. You're the one whining about the propaganda gap rather than just understanding the lesson it teaches and moving on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:26PM (4 children)
Wow actually sounds like your the troll here.
And you get +5 for American astroturfing?
Fancy to play a game of, "Guess whose sanctions are working where?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJPAex6bl60 [youtube.com]
Of course, there is no way you can win this game being as busy as you are playing the sycophant to American propaganda.
To see your face in the next months as all the fake shit coming out of America shows opposite of what they report in the news. Empty shelves and big inflation for you...but don't worry, in your mind your little play world is safe.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 29 2022, @03:05PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @02:19PM (1 child)
In a year your predictions will look as stupid as your "inflation doesn't matter" statements from last year look today, but you'll have moved on to being smugly wrong about the next thing by then and will never acknowledge it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 30 2022, @11:15PM
Too bad we can't bet for real. I could use a little spending money. And you won't find any "inflation doesn't matter" statements from me. Ever.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 01 2022, @04:30PM
And that vid is nothing but cherry picking. It's trivial to find examples of tall women and short men, that doesn't prove that men are statistically shorter than women. It doesn't prove anything apart from an intent to distort facts and deceive. Thanks for so clearly identifying yourself as someone who likes to do such things.
At the time you made it, I bet you thought your post would make you look good, didn't you? You're funny.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @07:37PM (2 children)
Just like Jew communists in Poland's military were killing Germans in German territory that was given to Poland as a result of Germany losing in WW1 and Hitler "invaded" to stop the killing after exhausting all efforts to keep the peace. The same rat-faced Jews are doing the same thing they did in WW2, and idiots like you still regurgitate the Jew lies.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 29 2022, @08:33PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 30 2022, @11:19PM
To emphasize that, Putin is invading allegedly because Ukraine is full of people allegedly like you - with your same concerns about Jews and whatnot. Putin isn't on your side.
I'm not either, but I'm upfront about it.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 01 2022, @03:35PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 02 2022, @02:51AM
The quality of the debunking depends on the quality of the argument and supporting reasoning/evidence. If I were to dispute something which had been debunked effectively, I would use the argument not the fact that a debunking occurred. When AC brags how fast Ukrainian propaganda gets debunked, they're not even remotely interested in arguments.
That leads to my above generalization about debunking. It's an activity that can be done well or poorly. That it's done is in itself pointless - saying far more about the psychology of the poster.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @07:30PM
The subversive Jew running The Ukraine will not stop fighting to control ethnic Russian areas of The Ukraine until every last brave Ukrainian White Nationalist is dead!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 28 2022, @02:53PM (47 children)
Gubbermint gave contradictory and unconvincing statements and responses, from day one. Gubbermint includes, China, WHO, the US government, the various agencies within the US government, and even the star of the show, Dr. Fauci. Each and every one would make a statement, you could wait a week or three, and that same person/government/agency would make a contradictory statement.
If officials hadn't looked like a bunch of fools and assclowns, any "misinformation" would have failed to get traction.
The pandemic was bungled thoroughly by governments around the world, starting with China.
Maybe next time, everyone tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Yeah, right, I'm holding my breath . . .
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0, Troll) by legont on Saturday May 28 2022, @03:02PM
Yes, exactly. "Information" was and still is even worse than disinformation. No wonder folks don't know what to believe in.
It's everywhere. The pandemic is just one example.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @03:13PM (38 children)
How can you tell the truth when you don't know what it is yet ?
When the pandemic started, we knew very little about it, yet people demanded that we do something about it. So information was given about what we knew from data gathered from previous and similar situations. And the reason official channels changed their tune every few weeks is because new information became available every few weeks. That's the thing with reality: It's not black or white, but infinite shades of grey.
Unfortunately, people in general, people like you, have primitive, binary minds, that deal only with absolutes: Black or white, good or bad, vaccines "work" or "don't work", gubbermint "lies" or "tells the truth", etc.
The reason misinformation always seem to dominate is that it offers primitive minds these absolutes, while truth only offers reality, reality being that we don't know everything, we learn everyday, we make mistakes, we sometimes have to make life or death decisions that simply cannot be delayed, based on incomplete and/or unverified information.
That's why misinformation always wins: Because, overall, the human mind sucks.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 28 2022, @04:10PM (29 children)
People in China knew what was happening, very early on. Those people were silenced. China gets primary blame, because they were embarrassed at the idea that one of their labs suffered a breach, and released a virus. Had China been open and honest, the pandemic would have been handled very differently.
WHO was all mealy mouthed early on. Nothing to worry about, was the first indications from them.
The name "Trump" gets a whole lot of people's panties wadded up, but Trump initially went in the right direction. Quarantine, shut down travel from China. He didn't go far enough, but idiots around the nation decided that Trump was racissss, and advised people to go out and hug a Chinese. Of all the idiotic things that have been said, and that have happened, that was the most idiotic. You're threatened with a possible pandemic, so you should run out and start hugging complete strangers?
The mask fiasco. "No, you shouldn't wear a mask. Oh, yes you should wear a mask! If you're caught without a mask, you'll be arrested, tortured, canceled, and maybe shot!" FFS, Fauci was the primary idiot with all that nonsense.
The dishonesty over the vaccine. Various authorities are pushing for vaxxes and redundant boosters for kids as yound as two years old. The reason? It's not because the kids will be safer, it's because the pharmaceuticals will make more money when their vax has been approved across th board for everyone. There is a profit motive to get everyone vaxxed that overrides common sense.
Let's not forget New York warehousing Covid victims in nursing homes, with the very people most threatened by the virus.
In each of those cases, people KNEW BETTER. The common man in the street would know better than to put sick people in the same buildings, probably even the same rooms, as aged people.
Pandemics and epidemics aren't a new thing, after all. We had the example of the 1918 flu epidemic for an example. There have been a number of other epidemics to learn from. Instead of using that prior knowledge, we had officials pandering to various interests.
Hug a Chinaman. FFS. The first super spreader event, pushed on fools by Democrats and progressives.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @05:14PM (13 children)
Tu quoque, Runaway?
Is this the whole truth?
Is this nothing but the truth?
Is this the truth?
Is this the truth?
Is this the whole truth?
Is this the truth?
Is this the whole truth?
Is this nothing but the truth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @05:53PM (1 child)
The asshole that modded that post as "Spam" should lose their modding privileges, like, forever!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @06:35PM
You mean Runaway? Or one of his many sock puppets? I remember making a joke about someone being his sock oulpet and he said "you don't even KNOW" which means he's running a veritable army. I notice long time users that seem to come back for a short time, then disappear, rinse repeat. Probably half the active posters are Runaway and Ari sock puppets these days.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @01:02AM (10 children)
A Spam mod, on a post calling Runaway's truthfulness into question? If the truth can be spam modded, then what ever left IS disinformation. Admin, remove this spam mod. Shit is getting real.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @10:29AM (9 children)
+5 Insightful, but with a hidden Spam mod of spite still hanging out its back. ADMIN! Do your job! Remove this illegal spam mod.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 01 2022, @04:53PM (5 children)
Pay us.
> Remove this illegal spam mod.
This is not the correct way to report perceived mod abuse. What even made you think an admin would read your post?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday June 01 2022, @05:06PM (4 children)
How can a Spam moderation be 'illegal'? In which country is there a law against Spam moderations. Grow up.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2022, @09:19PM (3 children)
Illegal? Against the rules. Not kosher. Just like sock-puppeting itself. Of course, it is not illegal, if it is done with admin permission, right?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday June 02 2022, @04:56AM (2 children)
Sock-pupptting is not permitted on this site - period. If you have evidence, or even a reasonable suspicion, of a sock-puppet account please send it to admin [at] soylentnews.org.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03 2022, @06:37AM (1 child)
What about an unreasonable suspicion? Or that one user modded another? Evidence of collusion, no? Amazing that there are any soylentils still left.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday June 03 2022, @06:52AM
If you have any evidence of that then please inform us too.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday June 01 2022, @05:04PM (2 children)
AC - you know what you can go and do, don't you?! If you want to report moderation abuse the address is admin[at]soylentnews.org.
I don't answer to you, nor will I ever do. If you want a sensible exchange - get an account and act like an adult in your communications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2022, @09:23PM (1 child)
Noted. Seems that Buck Feta has gone from a movement to have a news aggregation and discussion site that was responsive to the users, to a tyranny of the admins. Happens in nearly every revolution, we have gone into the Terror, or the purge of Stalin, stage. Oh well, fun while it lasted.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday June 02 2022, @05:05AM
If people wish to hide behind the Anonymous Coward nickname, then we may not know whether they are a long time member of our community or if the post that they are making is their first ever 'contribution' to the site. They are entitled to their opinion and to express it on this site. Usually, they refuse to use email to discuss matters with the administration. They do not have a say in how this site is managed and run. We can do nothing to support them nor will we respond to their demands unless they follow the the usual methods of contacting the staff.
Their complaining about moderation in the comments is Off-Topic at best.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by unauthorized on Saturday May 28 2022, @05:18PM (9 children)
Silenced? Sure they put a gag order on the lab initially to prevent panic and misinformation, but the discovery was announced like... 6 days later on national TV by the same authority which issued the gag order. They had already notified WHO even before the gag order was issued. That's not exactly a coverup, the Chinese government was very upfront about the virus but waited until they had the full details before releasing information to the Chinese public.
(Score: 1, Touché) by deimtee on Saturday May 28 2022, @05:35PM (3 children)
Bullshit. The Chinese government is still denying that it came out of the Wuhan labs.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Saturday May 28 2022, @05:58PM (2 children)
That is came out of the lab is not certain. Based on available evidence I'd give odd of, perhaps, 40% that it did, 50% that it came from the wet market, and 10% that it had some other source.
Why do you feel a need for certainty when the evidence is so equivocal? Would it change anything *you* should do? To what do you attribute the monkeypox epidemic?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @06:38PM
The CHYENUH BAD narrative is how they keep from acknowledging that Trumpco killed their meemaw.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 01 2022, @05:05PM
I dunno - who's been publishing papers on monkeypox research recently?
<clicky> <clicky> <clicky>
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995820X22000414
WUHAN!!!!!!!
You made me search for that! You knew I'd find it too!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday May 28 2022, @11:42PM (1 child)
When a doctor gets summoned to the police station and forced to sign a letter saying he was making false statements, I will never see that as anything other than a coverup.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51364382 [bbc.com]
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Sunday May 29 2022, @08:56PM
All that demonstrates is the very East Asian effort to save face and the fact that China is pretty authoritarian. To allege the they are is engaging in coverup when they officially announced COVID to their citizens a few days later and had already informed international organizations already seems a rather forced interpretation. When the Chinese government wants to do a coverup, they handle it like the Tiananmen Square thing. They don't publicly announce it on national TV a few days later.
(Score: 5, Informative) by quietus on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:52PM (2 children)
Let's add a bit more nuance to this, shall we?
While the Chinese did announce the discovery of a novel coronavirus at the beginning of January (early second week or something), they also stated that the virus was not human-to-human transmissible, and only mumbled about that maybe being the case at the very end of January.
That's a bit strange, as Dr Li Wenliang in all probability wasn't alarmed by just a few cases: and he tried to signal the world by the end of December. That means that at that time the hospitals in Wuhan must already have been flooded with patients with strange disease symptoms during a couple of weeks or more -- of whom a lot must have died, as treatment was unknown and the location was a mega-city with a very high population density, the Chinese habit of ordinarily eating out for dinner and the generally weak state of Chinese health care.
(I do not even mention all the non-legitimate guest workers who make up the bulk of the work force in any Chinese city, and have no healthcare facilities to turn to, apart from a makeshift (and private) hospital somewhere on the street side, where the best they can hope for is the opportunity to buy some antibiotics).
Simple hospital fact checking by the Chinese authorities should have revealed that -- or maybe not, as people in Chinese hospitals tend to die from complications, completely unrelated to treatment -- and out of a precautionary measure, any responsible medic would have presumed this was spread by human-to-human interaction.
Yet the Chinese government refused to say so, and keep on insisting, more than two years later, that the vast amount of cases in China is asymptomatic (i.e. their early detection warning system is just perfect) and, until a few months ago, when the Shanghai ruckus started, there were only, what, 1,700 covid victims out of a claimed population of 1.4bn people -- a number that is nearly daily, and with glee, being contrasted with the number of victims in the United States and the West.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by unauthorized on Sunday May 29 2022, @08:28PM (1 child)
Oh boy, my favorite and it isn't even my birthday!
According to official data, the number of weekly COVID deaths in Jan 26 (the first data point we have) were a grand total of 39. They announced the human-to-human transmission in Jan 19, roughly two weeks after the initial announcement of the virus. I have no idea why you'd expect to see "flooded" hospitals but even in the US it took more than a month after the virus showed up until you started seeing mass hospitalization. Viruses aren't magic, it takes time to reach epidemic levels of spread.
The "strange disease symptoms" part is total bullshit, COVID has similar symptoms to the flu and is easily misidentifiable especially if you have a mild case (which is most cases) and no way to easily test it.
Chinese life expectancy is 77 years, which is well above the global average and growing at an appreciable pace of 0.22% per year. This is comparable to other countries at a similar state of economic development such as Turkey for example, which has a life expectancy of 78 and yearly growth of about 0.28%. Meanwhile with the addition of COVID, the US has now officially dropped bellow China in average life expectancy at slightly bellow 77 (previously it was 79). Granted, there are many things that can be said about the US healthcare system but I'm not opening that can of worms.
That part is more questionable, but it has nothing to do with the early stages of the pandemic, nor with withholding knowledge of the virus itself. It is plausible that they actually had little to no COVID cases because they had very strict lockdowns, where as the lockdowns in the west were far less restrictive. However, we really have no data to contest the Chinese sources so it's all speculation.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday May 30 2022, @05:16PM
I expect there was good reason for a Chinese eye specialist to try to alarm other people about a non-eye related disease with strange symptoms in his hospital. Given that Wuhan Central Hospital, where he worked, has minimum 2,000 beds, and is the central hospital for Wuhan City (10M+ population), I guess that good reason was not a mere grand total of 39 cases. Doctors, in general, do not panick lightly, you know -- so I expect there must have been rumors of at least hundreds to thousands of cases circulating among medics by that time. Note also that Wuhan Central Hospital is a tertiary hospital i.e. one you can enter only after you've been referred to by primary and secondary hospitals.
Doctors are quite intelligent too. What do you think that alerting the media about an unknown infectious disease shortly before the Christmas shopping season would do to the career of an American physician, if he or she was wrong?
Indeed, it is very hard to identify an unknown covid-variant, and easy to just put this away as a severe start to the flu season. Yet, with all his medical training, contacts and experience, he didn't, and the Chinese government started pulling out all the stops at the end of January to build new hospitals at break-neck speed: all because of a mere 39 deaths, on a population of 1.4billion people.
Maybe you should do a bit of light travel around China ... oh yes, you can't: a retour flight from Europe to Beijing costs 15K for 2 persons, can be cancelled at any time -- without the ability to recover your money -- and you still need to spend 2 weeks in hotel quarantaine, at least. And when you travel around, people are by law obligated to notify the police. All due to covid, and its other grand total of 1,700 deaths (again, on a population of 1.4bn people).
No, that's not plausible at all, not for anybody who has ever visited a Chinese city. They're pretty busy, and there's a pretty high density of living. In fact, simply by looking at the (cramped) conditions of living, you cannot come to another conclusion than that covid-19 must have been far worse there than in the United States (and Europe).
As to the lockdowns being far less restrictive in the West: there's a reason why the Chinese authorities welded the complete entrances to apartment blocks shut after a while. That's apart from the organisational scale -- far easier to check upon a small town with 8,000 people than a mega-city with 10M -- and the logistics of getting food to homes. And that's without even mentioning that there's no reason to expect the average official stupidity [yimg.com] to be at a lower level in the East.
The official data are that the US has a little over a million victims by now, and the Chinese do not even have a statistical error. Yet they just-not declared war on Australia for asking an independent international investigation into the origins of covid-19. The WHO finally got in for 2 weeks on a tight leash after 1.5 years of biting their tongue -- but that didn't stop the Chinese from accusing the WHO's director-general of making "irresponsible remarks" [reuters.com] because he dared to suggest that a zero-covid policy also causes additional victims due to cancer treatments and the like being postponed.
If you want further, but inofficial data, it's easy: just contact a couple of former China expats, and ask them about Chinese healthcare and society.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @05:55PM (4 children)
Uh huh... And who was running that lab? The Americans!
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 28 2022, @06:10PM (3 children)
BINGO!! We have a winner here! And, with Dr. Fauci's knowledge and approval. He had bragged earlier, before the unplanned(?) release of the virus, about the accomplishments the lab had made.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @06:40PM
Jesus may you help this poor sod who worships death and violence. Forgive him his sins, he knows exacrly what he is doing, but deep down he wants love and acceptance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 31 2022, @11:58PM (1 child)
You realize that would mean Trump did it right? Ah yes, I forgot how Trump somehow magically gets credit for everything and blame for nothing. Dear Leader is infallible to cultists like runaway!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 01 2022, @12:30AM
*rolleyes*
Someone had to teach Trump what a pandemic was, in 2020. He's about as qualified as a viral researcher as . . . Biden!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @05:24PM (6 children)
You don't have to know the real truth to know that at least one of two contradictory statements is false.
It was assholes like you who saw COVID as a brilliant way to attack Trump and the Republicans, who made it a hell of a lot worse than it needed to be. Knee jerk opposition to any action by the R Government. Remember "Hug a Chinaman"? Court cases about closing borders and imposing quarantines? How about Democrat state governments sending COVID positive people into old age facilities?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Saturday May 28 2022, @06:09PM
Yeah, there were a lot of really stupid statements. But closing the borders wouldn't have done *that* much good, since COVID was already in the country and starting to spread. The idiotic thing was that when the borders were closed, they let people through them for political reasons without requiring a quarantine period. Now that was REALLY stupid. If you're going to close the borders, make them secure, which means quarantine for anyone getting through. (At that time it would have needed to be a 2 week quarantine [that was the official medical guess], because there weren't any good tests, and we didn't know the incubation period. Now we've got tests, so we know that one week with tests at each end is nearly always sufficient, if both tests are negative.)
Also, they never did implement contact tracing. In the early days that could have made a lot of difference in slowing the spread. (And slowing the spread is all that could have been done. Even New Zealand finally admitted that they couldn't keep it out. But they kept it out until there were decent treatments and vaccines.) (The way the news tended to describe slowing the spread was "flattening the hump", but they meant the same thing.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @08:32PM (2 children)
Actually, I do not. What was it? Is this part of the conspiracy theory?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 29 2022, @07:20PM (1 child)
https://summit.news/2020/03/30/in-late-february-nancy-pelosi-encouraged-large-groups-to-congregate-in-chinatown/ [summit.news]
Strange - it seems the internet has been mostly laundered of "hug a Chinese person". Lots of hits for a mayor in Italy, but few hits for Democrats in the US. But, yes, Trump said something about Chyna Flu, Chinatown saw a drop in business, so Pelosi and others jumped on the Italian "Hug a Chinaman" wagon.
There are two videos on that page, you should watch them both, to see how Pelosi contradicted herself, always trying to make Trump look bad.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @08:20PM
Strange, yes. Laundered? Chinese? Not racist? Conspiracy theories often depend on the absence of evidence. That means they really don't want you to know about the "hug a Chinese" program, or, that it never actually existed. Times like these call for a Razor of Ockham.
Runaway has a Democratic Woman Derangement syndrome, among his other deleterious conditions: mere mention of Hilary, Nancy, Greta, or Chelsea is enough to get him foaming out the mouth, almost like he has been operantly conditioned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @10:00PM
Trump lost. Get over it, trumptard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @08:20AM
It seems you haven't noticed how often Trump contradicts himself.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:48PM
Part of telling the truth is disclosing the uncertainty level in the data. This is something that leadership is inherently bad at.
"I'm Buzz Lightyear, I'm always sure!"
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday May 29 2022, @12:26AM (2 children)
It's almost as if they were learning and reacting to new information and a changing situation.
Watch a baseball game, particularly when someone hits a fly ball. Notice how the outfielders move about on the field? That's because their job is to catch the ball even if the wind affects it and not to stand in a fixed position in the outfield.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 29 2022, @01:59AM (1 child)
That might sound reasonable, for some of the players. But, then, there's China . . . they KNEW what they were dealing with, and they silenced those who would speak out.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @06:58AM
Fuck off, Runaway! And take your goddamned conspiracy theories with you! This shit is getting old.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday May 29 2022, @09:47AM
So instead of correcting information when we get more data and thus can refine our statements, we should double down on wrong information because it makes people more comfortable to be told the same stuff, even if it's wrong?
Just checking, after all, government is here to serve its constituents, if they want to be lied to, that can be arranged.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @05:46PM (2 children)
The English speaking world was too busy trying to use the initial problems in China as yet another stick to beat them with. Remember the "fake virus", the "not a hospital, an internment camp", China bad! China Bad! CHINA BAAAD!" Remember when that researcher published a fake paper claiming it was avian flu and when the Chinese gov caught him out and made him retract it, thus potentially saving millions of lives, the western news was too busy claiming "China bad! China mutes researcher. China awful! Kung Flu hahaha dumb chinks!"
We could have stopped C-19 in its tracks within a few months, actually admitted that the Chinese are also human beings that were obviously frightened and panicked and needed help, and ... OMG ... cooperated. Imagine that. The disinfo psychopaths would have had nothing to play with.
I can never, ever trust the news (broadcast or social), nor our supposed leaders (political, business, tech nor social) ever again. I will also never forgive them. They have turned our world into a fractured, broken one, right at the moment when we should have come together and celebrated our shared humanity to overcome disaster.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 29 2022, @07:22PM (1 child)
We don't see a lot of Chinese shills here. Welcome, I guess.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2022, @12:03AM
Lol and here comes to Republican to repeat CHINA BAD!
If you think OP was shilling that just shows how fucked up you are runaway. How dare someone suggest cooperation during a pandemic???? We remember Trump's response to COVID, but you just want to spin away all the shit your death cult pushes. Don't worry, at this point no one is shocked by your increasingly unhinged hatred