Stupid Russian Disinformation Campaign Targets Oxford Vaccine (thetimes.co.uk) 147
The Times of London reports that "a Russian disinformation campaign designed to undermine and spread fear about the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine has been exposed by a Times investigation."
Pictures, memes and video clips depicting the British-made vaccine as dangerous have been devised in Russia and middlemen are now seeking to "seed" the images on social media networks around the world. The crude theme of the distorted images is that the vaccine, millions of doses of which will be manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant Astrazeneca, could turn people into monkeys because it uses a chimpanzee virus as a vector.
The campaign is being targeted at countries where Russia wants to sell its own Sputnik V vaccine, as well as western nations.
CNN points out that this "monkey vaccine" narrative "has been voiced by Russian officials and the state media before."
CNN points out that this "monkey vaccine" narrative "has been voiced by Russian officials and the state media before."
If accurate, is a crime against humanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everything I've heard from Scott Atlas seems to be sound. His talk on school closings a few weeks ago was chilling: http://adam.curry.com/enc/1593... [curry.com]
Do you have anything specific you're talking about?
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Somehow? Fauci suggested Vitamins D3 and C. The one percent you assert is capable of understanding can search for others, they may find zinc and flavenoids such as HCQ.
I suggest more than 1% can think on their own. Used to be a lot more when grandparents passed along their experience, but still more like 50%. The nanny state is busy reducing that number.
As far as exposure to virus...go outside and breathe. If you are still alive after a week, you have a functioning immune system.
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So 20%-40% of the population having been infected is enough for herd immunity?
Dr. Scott Atlas is not an infectious disease expert.
The real infectious disease experts say that 70%-80% will be the threshold. And that's notwithstanding that the disease is still *far too recent* to have any data on whether immunity will last.
With a case fatality rate of ~2.5% in the US, you will be looking at 5-6 million deaths before herd immunity is reached. Even if you somehow made the CFR drop to 1%, you'd still be looking
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So 20%-40% of the population having been infected is enough for herd immunity?
Add to that the people who have T cell resistance, and clear the virus without developing antibodies. Could be as many as 50%
Dr. Scott Atlas is not an infectious disease expert.
Perhaps he read some papers about it. And people can be right without being experts. And paraphrasing the old maxim, it's hard to get experts to understand something, when they get paid to not understand it.
The real infectious disease experts say that 70%-80% will be the threshold. And that's notwithstanding that the disease is still *far too recent* to have any data on whether immunity will last.
50% T cell immuity + 20% antibody immunity gets that threshold. T cell response from 2002 SARS-CoV-1 infection still exists. Some studies suggest 75% of asymptomic "cases" have T c
Re:If accurate, is a crime against humanity (Score:5, Insightful)
I was thinking of Andrew Wakefield, who should be rotting in a concrete cell.
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Andrew Wakefield is a nobody. Just another scientist or doctor who gets ignored by dumb people and smart people alike, and someone who has been stripped of all titles in life.
You want to throw someone in prison, Jenny McCarthy is your person. She's responsible for the mass spread of the Wakefield's fraudulent claims..
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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She's not a liar, she's wrong.
I didn't say she was a liar. But being wrong isn't a defense against causing injury to others, there's a whole section of legal code dedicated to precisely that form of injury.
But the point is the same. Some random scientist's fraudulent claim is hardly the basis for a direct liability claim for death. After all, the very people who need to believe his claim are also directly those who dismiss the advice of scientists and medical professionals. Now there's a dichotomy.
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If you could possibly believe that a vaccination could turn you into a monkey, you should not take it, you are a defect in the human race and you should pass, preferably without breeding.
You are being trolled, like the prejudiced cunts you are, it is so easy. I spotted the trolling in an instant, that you would take it seriously just shows how wildly prejudiced you are.
I mean seriously, can you not pick a mass mocking. Well done times, you racist pommie cunts, you just got exposed. Hey is there a wolf vacc
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In any case this is the Russian disinformation campaign you were supposed to find. Worry about the thirty-five others that you're not even aware of are Russian disinformation.
tl;dr: Russia is the absolute master of subtle propaganda. If this is "stupid" and easily found then it's because they wanted it to be easily found.
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Hey, more than half (!) of the human race believes in an invisible man in the sky that has superpowers. Being turned into a monkey by Science is pretty unspectacular in comparison.
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Hey, more than half (!) of the human race believes in an invisible man in the sky that has superpowers.
An invisible man with superpowers who actively hates amputees and cancer patients. Who is omnibenevolent. Sure.
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A lot of people are stupid. That doesn't mean they deserve to die, or not to have kids. And evolution really doesn't fucking work that way - only stupid people believe that stupid people not having kids somehow magically makes a species smarter. So really, if you believe in that so much, start by sterilizing yourself. You're part of the ideocracy yourself, man.
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*be, not ne
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We have known about this for years now, there have been numerous reports into Russian interference in elections and spreading divisive propaganda. Nothing gets done, the "winners" who benefitted from it are in complete denial.
We can't stop it and there are no real consequences for Russia doing it.
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Well as long as we're playing word yoga, let's talk about the word "civilized". To be civilized is to be capable of and willing to act in manner that enables peaceful or at least orderly coexistence with others.
I don't dispute that the Russian people are civlized, but their government is not.
What I think we should do about it is disconnect them from the Internet. Shove them back behind the Iron Curtain where they belong. This will unfortunately be a hardship for the Russian people, but Russia's presence
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Need not go to war with Russia. Stop being buddies would be a good enough start.
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So far the WHO thinks the virus has infected 780m people, and that just over 1m have died from it.
That makes a lethality rate of 0.14%, not far off influenza which stands at 0.1%
Do you have any reference for the 780 million? I'm also not sure what you mean by "lethality rate".
If you mean case fatality rate (CFR), as per [1], the number of _confirmed cases_ as of today is about 40 M and deaths is at 1.1 M, thus giving 2.8% as a (very rough) estimate of the CFR. That's a poor way of estimating the CFR though, for a number of reasons.
As for infection fatality rate (IFR), the estimates I've seen are more around 0.6% or so for a country like the United States. For countries with e.g.
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The really funny part (Score:5, Informative)
Will be when Americans start touting this as "proof" vaccines are bad.
If you don't think that's possible, you haven't been paying attention [bbc.com].
Brian said he and his wife didn't have one firm belief about Covid-19. Instead, they switched between thinking the virus was a hoax, linked to 5G technology, or a real, but mild ailment. They came across these theories on Facebook.
"We thought the government was using it to distract us," Brian explained, "or it was to do with 5G."
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People using Facebook as their primary news source is fucking cancer.
There is a difference between journalism and random, untraceable Internet guy posting link to veryrealnews.russiatoday.ru
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People using Facebook as their primary news source is fucking cancer. There is a difference between journalism and random, untraceable Internet guy posting link to veryrealnews.russiatoday.ru
There is a reason for the recent TV commercial based on the joke "It has to be true, I saw it on the internet". Well, this is the internet isn't it. So:
I'm a 50+ male engineer who is a French high fashion model in my second job.
There, I've realized my dream (sigh).
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Impressive. While some members of the human race have effective intelligence, the same is obviously not true for all of its members.
That headline (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll figure it out either way (Score:1)
Re:That headline (Score:5, Insightful)
"Even if it's true"
Having to entertain the beliefs of people who object to things that are true is how we got here in the first place.
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The people who fall for these arguments are not smart. They are greedy, maybe educated, but privatize what the want over what makes sense. They believe that flying spaghetti monsters will reward them if the kill enough doctors or children. They believe both that government is so organized that it can run complex conspiracies, w
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If something's stupid, I'll probably figure that out.
That headline isn't written for you. It's written for the many people on the world with a demonstrated track record of being unable to figure out if something's stupid.
brb They put that 5G tower up again, going to burn it down again. This Corona thing won't get me.
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It's not supposed to be convincing. It's supposed to be distracting. It's meant to create argument and disagreement and confusion (even just "who said this") confusion. The people who author disinformation campaigns know what they're doing and why.
Wait a minute... (Score:2)
Are the Russians getting their ideas from Cowboy Bebop episodes now?
fair play? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:fair play? (Score:5, Insightful)
In all fairness, there have been a plethora of cartoons making fun of the Russian Vaccine too. Why is that ok while these are not?
Because the Russian vaccine hasn't passed the rigorous tests, which are ongoing for other vaccines.
So, on one side we have a deployed Russian vaccine, which didn't go through proper trials and an Oxford vaccine, which is during the trials, so claiming before trials are finished that the vaccine is not working sounds like a deliberate disinformation.
Re:fair play? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have not seen any such cartoons. But I'll bite: Russia touted it as being all-but ready, but it was pretty clearly just a data and methodology-free photo op for Putin.
I suppose the other difference is that between an international free press of varying levels of quality, and the various propaganda outfits that Putin allows to exist in Russia.
Nobody ever got Novichoked for dissing The Lancet.
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So far there are no reports of a negative campaign directed at these countries regarding the Sputnik vaccine.
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In all fairness, there have been a plethora of cartoons making fun of the Russian Vaccine too. Why is that ok while these are not?
Why is it okay to laugh at a comedian telling a story about getting fired, and not okay to laugh at your colleague for actually getting fired?
When you *are* the joke (which the Russian vaccine *claims* are) it's okay to get laughed at.
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Russian citizens mocking their government's vaccine is different than the Russian government spreading disinformation about vaccines to other country's citizens.
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Because:
1. Cartoons are not disinformation campaigns. They are not intended to be taken as true and even children know this.
2. The complaints against the Russian Vaccine are based on facts, not lies.
3. Those cartoons are not a government campaign, while the Russian disinformation campaign is sponsored by the government.
Ooh ooh ah ah! (Score:1)
Title is wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
The "stupid" part is that the targets of the campaign are stupid. Not that the campaign is stupid.
Anti-Vaxxers, Climate-deniers, Trump voters: they are all the same.
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Thank you for outing yourself as an idiot!
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Try using Google you ignorant fuckface. Only 3% of forest land is owned by the State.
"Of the approximately 33 million acres of forest in California, federal agencies (including the USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service) own and manage 19 million acres (57%). State and local agencies including CalFire, local open space, park and water districts and land trusts own another 3%. 40% of California's forestland i
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Not sure why your comment was modded down. It's right on the nose. The campaigns would only be stupid if they were not working. But the effects of spreading disinformation nowadays has been wildly successful.
I can't get that angry with Russian (or other) disinformation campaigns. They're only doing what they can to improve their positions. It's inevitable. And would be a completely moot point if it weren't for legions of useful idiots.
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https://www.newsweek.com/anti-... [newsweek.com]
Most of the subjects were female, at 89 percent; 78 percent were parents, 29 percent were employed, and 24 percent had a post-secondary education. Of the total, 56 percent supported Donald Trump, and 11 percent supported Bernie Sanders.
Another surprising finding was the diversity we saw among people who posted anti-vaccination content. For example, they traversed the political spectrum from the far right to the far left.
Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
Both the Russian and Oxford vaccines are subpar because they rely on Adenoviral capsid for entry .. which I have many times before stated why it's not the ideal solution (though likely to be much better than no vaccine in this case). I prefer the German and US companies approaches of mRNA vaccines than use LNPs for delivery.
Whenever I talked on here about the Russian vaccine I previously pointed out some of the problems of adenoviral vector vaccines but the adenovirus fans and Russian agents still modded me down without even pasting a fake flaw with the reasoning.
In the Russian vaccine Adenovirus vectors Ad5 and Ad26 (booster) are being used .. those are some of the best vectors we have, especially for in vivo transfection, (except maybe Ad35) .. but, the problem is that THEY ARE ONE SHOT VECTORS. When you take a shot, your immune system develops antibodies against the vector itself .. so next time you take an Ad5 or Ad26 based vaccine it will get destroyed by the immune system. That means if we get a worse pandemic than Covid-19 (which is no Ebola), or, you need gene therapy .. and you took this vaccine you're fucked and will have to use a shittier vector. Reference (Russia's own limited study result): https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com] --> "After one injection of vaccine components, not only is an immune response to target antigen formed but also an immune response is seen to components of the vaccine vector. "
Second, some people may have already gotten similar adenoviruses (a fairly common virus), that means this vaccine won't work for them because their body will destroy the vaccine before it does its job. Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] --> "However, although HAd5 vectors were highly efficacious in pre-clinical studies, they did not perform as anticipated in clinical trials due to pre-existing HAd5 immunity in the participants from natural exposure. Adenoviruses are some of the pathogens that can cause the common cold and a significant proportion of the human population have antibodies against these viruses due to past infections naturally acquired in the community, notably during childhood"
Third, when an adenovirus based HIV vaccine was tested about 10 years ago, it actually increased susceptibility to HIV in humans and in primates (apparently by fucking with the innate immune system and/or enhancing the uptake of the virus into APCs though the latter might not be the vector's itself's fault). Reference: https://www.nature.com/news/20... [nature.com]
No adenoviral vector vaccine has been previously shown to work in humans to the FDA's satisfaction, let alone been approved for use in humans (although, there's an approved rabies vaccine for dogs).
British Medical Journal (a top tier scientific journal) on the risks: https://www.bmj.com/content/37... [bmj.com]
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Please mod parent +1 Informative.
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Mod the parent up, it's the only valuable reply in this thread.
Re: Ironic (Score:2)
Chump Virus (Score:2)
The Oxford vaccine has had problems and ADE is a real concern, as well as the general concerns about primate-derived vaccines (cf. Polio vaccine problem era).
But, if true, what the Russians are actually doing is finding some chumps to parrot a stupid story, so that everybody who has any problems with the virus will be composed with the Chimp Chumps and dismissed, regardless of how the data turns out.
That being more profitable than scaring dumb people, it's more likely to be an MI5 operation, possibly using
Stupid monkey (Score:2)
You can be turned into a monkey or a 1950's-era satellite. Your choice.
Re: Stupid monkey (Score:2)
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You're right, I expect all of the doctors, medical advisors and health experts responsible for choosing a vaccine to be totally convinced now that the Oxford vaccine will turn people into monkeys, nothing stupid there, this disinformation campaign is infallible.
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Ok, do you think the anti-vaxxers will care who's making the vaccine? Can you imagine an anti-vaxxer saying "I don't want the English vaccine because it turns people into monkeys, give me the untested Russian vaccine instead"?
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Which is why the dis-info campaign is stupid, the conspiracy won't convince experts not to buy the English vaccine and it will harm vaccine uptake for the product they want sold.
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Well maybe the summary is stupid because it assumes the troll farm is in cahoots with the Russian Vaccine maker. It's not in Russia's interest to feed the anti-vaxxers conspiracy theories at a time when it wants to sell a vaccine worldwide.
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You appear to be assuming that everybody is consuming this disinformation in equal amounts, which is not the case. This is a big internet, dude.
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Nope, you assumed I assumed that, IDK why.
One of the oldest plays in the playbook: (Score:4, Insightful)
The longer they and other countries like China can keep Western countries confused and disorganized, the better for them and any items on their respective agendas.
While it's utterly ridiculous to say that any vaccine could resequence your DNA and turn you into a primate, and equally ridiculous that anyone would produce a vaccine that would do such a thing even if it was possible, this pandemic has demonstrated precisely how stupid and gullible some people are, especlally when they're in a constant state of terror and panic. Simultaneously it's making our respective countries a laughingstock in front of the world that any of our citizens are dumb enough to believe such total nonsense.
Zoological error (Score:3)
Chimpanzees are not monkeys.
In fact chimps are closer related to humans than they are to monkeys..
(although the closest relative to chimps are bonobos)
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At what point.. (Score:4, Interesting)
..do these attacks start to be considered acts of war. This isn't some ransomware situation This is attacking the integrity of a potential global life saving medicine.
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..do these attacks start to be considered acts of war. This isn't some ransomware situation This is attacking the integrity of a potential global life saving medicine.
Always, I mean providing it's your enemy doing it. If you do it yourself then it's considered a service to the citizens oppressed by a foreign regime.
Not sure why you are so against America https://bemorepanda.com/en/pos... [bemorepanda.com]
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lol
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Free speech as an act of war? That is a pretty bizarre idea.
Educate your population better, and in particular enable people to do fact checking. Well, better do not do that after all, because it could tragically backfire on basically all politics. People may even revive the ages-old sound political tradition of (literal) defenestration for the worst offenders.
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You seem to be misunderstanding the concept of "free speech".
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Oh, I do understand it well, and I do understand the US population generally does not. But an "act of war" requires more than just some disinformation. Of course, the US is a rogue nation that has placed itself outside of any rules for "civilized" warfare, so it can claim anything is an "act of war", but at the same time that claim is completely meaningless.
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Lol, you seem to be under the impression that the rest of the Western world would side with Russia in such a situation. Russia has been the enemy of the West since Putin's dictatorship started. It has worked for near two decades at cross-purposes to the US and its Western allies and this is not just one act of "disinformation". This is the latest act in a long line of systemic behavior by an authoritarian regime.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander (Score:1)
Let it happen (Score:2)
Are you stupid enough to buy into Russian propaganda? Feel free to take the Russian vaccine, or don't take any vaccine at all. I mean, COVID is a liberal hoax, right? And if you do catch COVID (didn't you just say it was a hoax?) you can just spray a little bit of Trump-brand disinfectant (tm) into your lungs and wash it down with some chloroquine. You'll be right as rain and ready to attend those MAGA rallies again in no time.
Or, yo
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The problem with letting evolution go this way is that it hops from nearest local optimum to nearest local optimum. A better solution would be to allow for simulated annealing. The fewer people get eliminated from the gene pool, the larger our search space becomes. Think of it this way, "evolution" may mean that a person born with a heart condition will die early. Is that best for humans long term? No. Because what if that person had the genetics for superior intelligence, or stronger muscles? Society and t
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However, this discussion is about buying into Russian propaganda, which pretty much amounts to an intelligence test. And a very low-bar one, at that. If a grown adult is dumb enough to buy into that sort of thing, the chances are vanishingly small that they'll make any contribution to our species. There was a time when a strong physique could make up for stupidity, but that time is long, long gone.
I'm being f
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Find out how useful stupid people were to their labor force of the Soviet Union. Or find out how Germany was doing in the 1930's until the end of the war.
Well maybe we're not talking about stupid people per se, but rather uneducated people who never learned about critical thinking. After all the skills for critical thinking will have to be learned first. Intelligence helps at faster learning and faster application, but if people aren't being taught only the fewest appe
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While we still need some manual labor, the required amount is getting less and less, and that amount it unlikely to ever go up again. Ever.
Even a barista needs to deal with the internet. Nowadays, any sort of real farmer in a modern country needs to deal with satellite maps, crop biology optimization and
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They don't even speak German, their handlers tell them what to do. There was a huge controversy about this practice this year.
I also happen to have relatives who employ people in modern manufacturing facilities here in Germany. They al
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I'm in the US midwest. Even though it's called the "rustbelt" the truth is that it's still an industrial powerhouse. I've visited quite a few places, and the amount of automation is high, even at the grungy plants that you'd consider low-tech.
Maybe this is because the really low-value-add stuff has been taken by other countries. For example, there are plenty of car assembly, car subassembly and med
Very old line of attack (Score:2)
The 'Little Masquerade' (Score:2)
The Little Masquerade: Russiaâ(TM)s Evolving Employment of Maskirovka [dtic.mil] by Major Morgan Maier of the United States Army Major School of Advanced Military Studies United States Army Command and General Staff College Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
What is Maskirovka (Russian Military Deception)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Monkeys? (Score:3)
It might turn people into monkeys? That's terrible!
At least it won't turn us into mammals.
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I have literally been saying that for a year.
Under which account? The one you're using is a few days old.
Re:The boy that cried Russian (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, there's something Russia likes more. (Score:2)
They like it when they can get US media companies to do their dirty work for them and convince the public, with no evidence whatsoever other than a lie endlessly repeated for four YEARS that the American president who has damaged their economy with his trade and energy policies is actually their stooge and must be removed/stopped.
Yeah, if Russia wanted to sow chaos into the American system, and do so on-the-cheap (something they've tried repeatedly since 1917) , they succeeded wildly in 2016 and after with
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Is she incorrect?