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Surgeon general warns misinformation an 'urgent threat' to public health:
The surgeon general on Thursday warned Americans about what he called the "urgent threat of health misinformation" amid the government's current push to boost stalling vaccination rates.
Dr. Vivek Murthy's advisory -- the first under the Biden administration -- addresses an epidemic of misinformation and disinformation, and its pernicious impact on public health -- specifically threatening the U.S. response to COVID-19. It frames misinformation as having hindered vaccination efforts, sown mistrust, caused people to reject public health measures, use unproven treatments, prolonged the pandemic and put lives at risk.
"Surgeon general advisories are reserved for urgent public health threats," Murthy said, highlighting his message in the White House briefing room Thursday. "And while those threats have often been related to what we eat, drink and smoke, today, we live in a world where misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nation's health."
He continued, "While it often appears innocuous on social media apps on retail sites or search engines -- the truth is that misinformation takes away our freedom to make informed decisions about our health and the health of our loved ones. Simply put, health misinformation has cost us lives."
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 17 2021, @07:05PM (42 children)
This goes back to the food pyramid, fat vs sugar, and lies about masks so they wouldn't run out for where they were needed most.
It's all your own fault America.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 17 2021, @08:03PM (18 children)
I was going to say much the same. There's nothing new about distrust of government released information - it has proven time and again to be more serving spoken and/or unspoken agendae than to be conveying accurate and non-misleading facts.
I don't doubt that more vaccination would slow the spread of COVID, nor do I doubt that COVID is dangerous, sometimes deadly, and driving high hospitalization rates. I do doubt that the whole story is being accurately conveyed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 17 2021, @08:21PM (12 children)
In 'Murika you have freedom of speech, unless a high profile medical professional disagrees with you. Trust the science!!
Screw the surgeon general.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 17 2021, @08:38PM (2 children)
Something ... unique ... about the 2017-2020 administration was their lack of ability to tell a believable lie. Hearts on sleeves, right out there and just so transparent about so many lies and cover ups. They all lie, they all cover up - but doing it so poorly really did shake up the status quo.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday July 18 2021, @04:01AM (1 child)
Lack of ability or lack of need? When you're throwing a rhetorical fig leaf out for the faithful, you don't have to try very hard. A common manifestation in internet-land is the "rebuttal". Someone says X, but your tribe buddy says X is false. Hence, X is "rebutted" with the quality of the rebuttal being irrelevant. Its existence is enough to ignore X.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 18 2021, @01:53PM
That's sort of self fulfilling - wouldn't have gotten to where they did with their lack of ability to tell a believable lie if they needed to tell believable lies to get there.
We get the government we (as a collective) deserve.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 17 2021, @11:04PM (3 children)
In Runaway we do not trust.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @04:14AM (2 children)
^ That is what gets +4 on Bolshevik News.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:11AM (1 child)
Nah, the real die on the streets in poverty while rich sons of corrupt businessmen become President gets +5.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @11:42PM
Ok. With you so far.
Damnit. For the last time, leave Hunter Biden and his laptop out of this!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @03:19AM (4 children)
My ignorance and idiocy is as good as a highly professional opinion.
Why did you vaccinate?
(Score: 3, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 18 2021, @03:47AM (3 children)
You read my story? I was kidnapped against my will, and dragged to the mad scientist's lab. Several people thought my story funny, in case you missed it.
You wanted a more serious answer? You ain't getting it.
And, it's funny that you pick and choose which experts you want to believe. There are a small boatload of VERY professional opinions that the COVID escaped a lab in Wuhan - but everyone laughed at that idea for more than a year. Why do you choose to believe what you believe? Are you an opinion scientist or something?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:15AM (1 child)
It's deeply problematic that the news media continues to lie about the origins of the virus. While it's not 100% certain that it came from a lab, the features of the virus itself would be extremely unlikely to just happen. And mysteriously, the people investigating the hypothesis have a massive dog in the fight to not find anything at all so that the gravy train continues.
It's really a sad state of affairs that it's legitimately impossible to know which "experts" are spreading legitimate information and which ones are lying. Faucci, shouldn't be trusted, as he's admitted to lying multiple times about rather important pieces of information. Because he lied about the masks and the number of vaccinations needed to hit herd immunity, it's really hard to believe much of anything that he's saying.
Part of being believed is telling the truth now and part of being believed is having generally told the truth in the past. If both aren't true, then it's a legitimate coin flip as to whether or not to believe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19 2021, @01:40AM
How is this trollish?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:20AM
So you get a +1 for the Wuhan leak guess. Fucks sake, can you not see that you predict so many stupid things nobody can take you seriously? The kook news has zero predictive power.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @01:42AM (4 children)
So how come I get 0 flamebait, and you and everyone agreeing with me get 3 insightful? how does that even work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @01:55AM (2 children)
Who are you, anyway AC? Are you me?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:23AM
He's not me. I'd be madder than that if any of my posts were partially misunderstood on teh intranets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @10:13AM
No. I am VERIFIED on twitter. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I HAVE A BLUE CHECKMARK and you do not. THAT MAKES ME BETTER THAN YOU!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @03:48AM
Just pull your pants up, and man up.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 17 2021, @11:35PM (4 children)
The problem runs even deeper than that. You have an education system that teaches rote learning and "believe me for I am your teacher" rather than critical thinking and the ability to fact check. If you have a population that is simply so woefully uninformed that they cannot even verify any kind of information they get, no matter how harebrained, all they can do is believe something. Which is pretty much what you wanted. At least as long as you, and only you, get to control the information.
In comes the internet and now people can actually see how you lied to them. They see, quite blatantly, that you lied to them. So they don't believe you anymore. But what should they do now that they know that you lied to them but they have no way of what is true?
All they can do is turn around and blindly believe someone else. And this is basically what they do.
(Score: 1) by amamandaa on Sunday July 18 2021, @12:37AM (2 children)
We have to choose sides? Fox, or CNN, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @10:15AM
Why not both, when the choice is to nuke them from orbit
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:14PM
Could we put them behind each other to save on bullets?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @12:50AM
> In comes the internet and now people can actually see
how you lied to themany old crap that feeds into their bigotry for a few clicks worth of ad revenueFTFY
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Sunday July 18 2021, @12:50AM (17 children)
Here's the thing with the masks though. Yes, they lied. To the dumbest most gullible most selfish part of the population. To any normal person, you have air that needs to be filtered, an N95 is going to do a better job than a surgical mask. To a normal person, if there aren't enough N95 for a doctor who takes care of a hundred patients a day, maybe you should save the N95 for the doctor, and stay home instead of going to a clown rally, so you don't need the N95.
I had a bunch left over from doing drywall, and I let them sit for a week in a ziplock before reusing them. The same 3 masks lasted me almost year, until I got the vaccine in february. I don't need the government to realize an N95 filters more shit than a napkin. The people who do need someone to tell them that however, are the ones who emptied out shelves of toilet paper. They're going to buy a thousand masks, sell them at a hundred bucks a piece on amazon (this is illegal btw), and throw them away after every use. Then the doctors will get sick and die, and the hospitals will close.
So yes, they lied. A lie that's only not obvious to the people it's designed for. But those subhuman rednecks - they're actively attacking the population. They are the enemy. So, much like the police are allowed to lie to a criminal, because the criminal is the enemy, much like we're allowed to lie to someone we're at war with, yes, no issue with lying to your enemy. And those people who screamed "kill congress, kill the vp, kill fauci" - well it's not fauci's job to take care of them. it's the job of fauci to protect the general population from them hoarding masks for profit, while the doctors get sick and die.
When you punch someone in the face, them beating the shit out of you is not them fighting. It's them defending. And look what we got now - rednecks dying by the hundreds because they're too dumb to take care of themselves. That's just evolution. Which they don't believe in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @03:23AM (1 child)
Damn'd if you do, damn'd if you don't. This does say something about the 'murican cultcha.
(Score: 1, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Sunday July 18 2021, @04:51AM
I was on a plane from Jordan - long flight, I'm a white jew.
for a while, this woman was watching a movie and her kids were playing on an ipad w/ the volume turned up. The husband was sitting in a different row sleeping. Then the lights came off and it was time to sleep. She put on another movie, the ipad battery looks like it died and she couldn't get it to charge from the seat's usb chord. The kids started running around the plane giggling. They were playing the game of "let's find someone sleeping, run up to them, scream in their ear, then run away giggling."
After the second time of being woken up this way, I asked the woman to please control her children, as they were running around screaming at sleeping people. Must have been a good movie she was watching, she ignored me. I called the Jordanian airlines Jordanian flight attendant. He told me "whatcha gonna do, kids are kids."
I then took out a bunch of calcium pills and put them on my tray, and pretended to be asleep. Within 5 minutes the kids took them from my tray. I opened my eyes and said loudly "eat it, it's good candy." Then the wife noticed her kids with a bunch of pills, and yells at me angrily - "what are these pills." I say I dunno, I had a bunch of different pills on my tray, not sure which ones your children stole. She then calls the flight attendant and lies that I have her kids drugs. He observed what happened, so just takes the pills and gives them back to me. Now the movie is off. She put on a cartoon for the little boy, and is holding the little girl rocking her to sleep.
Now I can sleep too, but I'm an asshole to subhuman garbage, so I say "Now you know how to be a parent, you're welcome."
The husband jumps from two rows ahead of me, and starts trying to choke me. I slowly stand up - skinny dude with a gut, I bench 400lb - he's not doing much..
..skip ahead to landing. The cops are at the door, the monkey family, a bunch of "witnesses" in her extended family, and me at O'hare. We each report the story to the cops. I get searched, my bags get searched, my pills go through a cute tiny drug-sniffing poodle. The sandniggers are untouched, because religious freedumb, and the police sergeant at O'hare is.. wait for it... american-born Jordanian. You see, they got specifically him so they have someone who speaks their language.
The sandiggers all tell the same story - the kids weren't bothering anyone, I wasn't sleeping, I handed them dangerous drugs and the mother saved the day, for which I tried to pull off her clothes (I was like 3 rows back and never left my seat). It is when I physically attacked her, that the husband ran over to her seat to protect her. There's like 10 sandnigger witnesses telling this story.
The cop comes over, tells me they got me on video from the plane, and I'm going to jail right now unless I tell the truth and admit I'm guilty. It takes a real towelhead to think this techninque could get results, but the sergeant is a towelhead. The rest of the cops are just looking embarrassed at this point, the young black one apologizes quietly to me.
I call the sergeant a liar, tell him he hasn't watched a tape, and to go watch it. He comes back in half an hour, tells me I'm lucky he's letting me go "this time." You see, he tells me, if you put calcium pills on your tray, it is your responsibility to make sure children don't steal them. Maybe the children are allergic to calcium, and I could have killed them by not stopping them from stealing my calcium. dumb dum dum dum duuuuuuumb.
At this point, he let the sandnigger family and the sandnigger witnesses go. He did not take down their passport information, he did not write down their names. "But I sat there, while a guy ran up to my seat and choked my neck with his hands - this is not ok to do, especially on a plane."
He then tells me there will be an FAA investigation (FAA?), and I will likely be fined, and what they decide for the terrorist sandnigger family he doesn't know. Of course, this sounds funny, since they never ever wrote down their names. Because the sergeant is a racist sandnigger. Sandnigger.
The moral of the story is, the police here are allowed to lie, and this is good. When you have 10 witnesses saying one thing, and one guy saying something else, you can get the guy to confess if you tell him he's on video. Of course, if you are a sandnigger (which does not mean arab, just like nigger does not mean black), you have no interest in what actually happened or doing your job.
Your racist goal is to damage the jew, and aid the terrorist family.
There's nothing wrong with lying to a potential criminal. If he's not a criminal, he tell you you're a liar. There's nothing wrong with lying to the rednecks about masks. It is Not the job of Fauci or the CDC to protect "everyone." If there is a group there trying to make money on the pandemic by hoarding, with people dying as a result, it is his job to protect the population from that small group. And that group isn't republicans. It's like 50000 really stupid rednecks, in a country of 330 million - that's it.
The "damned if you do" does not apply here. 1% of the population who are crazy qanon jew space laser people are indeed damning Fauci and the CDC. No one cares who they're damning. They are the american vesrion of ISIS. This is the problem here - online you see 100 comments on the "damn Fauci" side, and 100 on the "nothing wrong here" side. What you don't see, is the 100 redneck comments are made by 2 people, vs 100 people responding on the rational side. You even see the same on this little site. There's like 50 AC posts per week of "the jews the jews, go hitler," but it's one guy - ethanol fueled, pretending to be like 10 people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @05:20AM (7 children)
I don't agree with that at all. The lie was rather relevant, as people could have made other forms of masks that weren't likely to be in short supply. There were legitimate reasons to question the efficacy of DIY masks due to the fact that they don't provide a tight seal and the material itself isn't guaranteed to stop anything from passing through.
For me personally, it was a moot point as I got infected the same week that it was identified in the area. The mask versus no mask debate hadn't really even started at that point, and there wasn't even testing available. But, given the breathing trouble, the loss of smell and the extreme level of fatigue, it's a fairly good bet that I got it.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday July 18 2021, @09:55AM (6 children)
1. People did make their own masks, and surgical masks were not in short supply and readily available for 2 day delivery on amazon. I know, I ordered a box in March when the pandemic started. There was no question about how well self-made masks, that people were making despite your claim, worked. You do not need a tight seal for a mask to work. You need it to catch most of the liquid that comes out of your mouth and nose when you sneeze. Even coughing into a fist catches most of it. No, it does not catch all of it, but reducing your viral output by 90% means reducing the number you infect exponentially. You are confusing n95, meant to protect you, with surgical masks, meant to protect others from you in case you're infected.
Anyone with a sense of brain (clearly not you, because of your "tight seal" comment) realized masks catch shit when you sneeze. In asian cultures, people have been wearing them for decades when they have a cold or a flu - to not infect others. If you announce you need masks, all masks are going to be gone in a week, and instead of a doctor in a mask, you have a dead doctor, and a redneck piece of shit hoarding a thousand masks, selling them for ten bucks a piece. Just like they did with hand sanitizer, alcohol, and toilet paper.
You know why I could get my small box of surgical masks? Because Fauci lied to the enemy of the people. Again - the surgical masks are to protect everyone from You. It works for every virus that comes out of Your mouth. They do not protect you - only an n95 does that.
>The mask versus no mask debate
you're confused again. there is no debate. just like there's no debate about evolution, just like there's no debate about climate change. there's idiots saying stupid shit, and everyone else laughing at them.
I never got it, my wife never got it. I wore an n95 and went to public places like grocery stores, she wore a surgical mask and a cloth mask. I sprayed all the grocery bags and our clothes and hair with alcohol when we got home, she took a full shower. Then we said fuck it as I got laid off, and decided to take a long vacation in Europe where it was 10x safer. We only came back once the vaccine came out, and I got a gig at the hospital so we could get it immediately.
The redneck enemy didn't wear masks, and still believes the pandemic is a hoax. All they would do is hoard them to resell them, killing everyone else. While you "may not agree" - who cares. Fauci did his job, which is not to let illegal hoarders create a black market, and to leave masks for hospitals and people who have common sense. But mainly, you're making a point by making shit up. He was correct - surgical masks and home made masks do not protect You. That's not a lie - that's a fact. Me wearing one protects You. And I, and my wife, wear them when we have any kind of sickness, nothing to do w/ covid.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @02:20PM (1 child)
I live on the west coast snd there weren't significant numbers of people making our wearing masks until the guidance changed.
You're definitely living up to your name here because you do need a decent seal and that's how masks are typically worn. No need to made excuses or rewrite history. Just admit that the lies cost lives. Aerosal particles are rather small and can easily get around and through things that larger particles wouldn't.
This was hardly just rednecks not wearing the masks, even well educated liberals weren't wearing them because they lied about the science.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday July 20 2021, @07:03AM
>you do need a decent seal and that's how masks are typically worn
that's not how surgical masks are typically worn because they're not designed to have a seal. they're designed to catch liquid spraying forward
>No need to made excuses or rewrite history. Just admit that the lies cost lives.
me: it saved lives by preventing people from hoarding
you: just admit that it cost lives.
you are mentally retarded.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:13PM (2 children)
You were/are most definitely the asshole. While your plane load of "sandniggers" (an asshole term, BTW) were in the wrong, you seem to believe that two wrongs make a right. You want to deny your so-called enemy-of-the-people rednecks the opportunity to order masks, so that you can get yours from Amazon without any problem. I've got news for you, the "rednecks" weren't the ones profiteering on masks and hand sanitizer in 2020. In fact, the biggest offenders of hand sanitizer hoarding, Matt and Noah Colvin, are part of your tribe. The mask man hoarder, Richard Schirripa of NYC, a licensed pharmacist and used car salesman, doesn't look so redneck either. Perhaps you meant Milton Ayimadu who hoarded 200,000 masks in Georgia but then again Ayimadu doesn't sound like he hails from the Ozarks either. You are the epitome of assholedom spreading your own brand of racism and hate as long as you think it benefits you personally.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @06:33PM (1 child)
As the guy described himself, he'd be a "sandnigger" himself were it not for his US passport and membership in the tribe that controls the media and large patches of the US government.
(Score: 1, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Sunday July 18 2021, @11:09PM
and yet here we are. i'm russian, as in family is from moscow as far back as is traceable, whiter than you color-wise (no sunburn), smarter than you (jews have higher iq), more money than you, and superior, genetically, in every way, to you.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @10:21PM
That's a whole lot of words to say "I'm stupid".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18 2021, @03:17PM (1 child)
i always find it amazing that you can still smell stuff with a mask on.
ofc "smelling things" isn't really a physical molecule interacting with the inside of your nose but rather a correctly twirred mini air vortice or mini tornado that floats thru the tiny mask mesh to interact correctly with your nasal hairs or whatnot.
so, if you smell shit, it's not really a tiny particle of real shit that got airborne, got past your mask and into your nose.... riiight?
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday July 20 2021, @07:06AM
and if you cought up a loogie and 99% of the spray gets caught by a piece of cloth in front of your mouth, you've just reduced your viral output by 99%.
let me guess, locks are useless because they're not going to stop the 1% of people with skills to pick them.
you know those shit particles you're smelling? smells bad. what would be worse is having 100x the amount of shit particles. If I throw a turd at your mask, you're going to smell it. but you won't have shit on your face like you do now. you don't need to catch every particle.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Sunday July 18 2021, @07:21PM (1 child)
> who emptied out shelves of toilet paper.
Just as an aside, it turns out the shelves were emptied because everyone bought one more than usual and the supply chain couldn't hack it. It was a failure of the infrastructure to deal with changing events.
https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0 [medium.com]
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday July 20 2021, @07:08AM
lol they didn't buy one more than usual. there were people with cartfulls of sanitizer, masks, and tp. after a couple of months most even tried to return what they couldn't sell.
>It was a failure of the infrastructure
umm, no. it was people loading up carts till there was nothing to load. an act that would have the same result if there was 2x or 3x the stock.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday July 20 2021, @03:57AM (1 child)
Fauci should be in prison. He controlled a program which performed experiments on children in foster care without informed consent.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday July 20 2021, @07:11AM
let's not forget that he raped you dad while you watched, which is why you turned out to be such a dumb faggot. say more things now please. you're very entertaining. like a kid w/ a full diaper screaming someone farted.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday July 20 2021, @04:13AM
The clowns had it covered for 2020 [rollingstone.com], but it's back on for 2021. I guess this year will prove out their strategy one way or the other.