Facebook Studies the Spread of 'Vaccine Hesitancy', Finds Small Group Has Big Influence (adn.com) 316
The Washington Post reports:
Facebook is conducting a vast behind-the-scenes study of doubts expressed by U.S. users about vaccines, a major project that attempts to probe and teach software to identify the medical attitudes of millions of Americans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The research is a large-scale attempt to understand the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy, or the act of delaying or refusing a vaccination despite its availability, on social media — a primary source of health information for millions of people...
Its early findings suggest that a large amount of content that does not break the rules may be causing harm in certain communities, where it has an echo chamber effect... Just 10 out of the 638 population segments contained 50 percent of all vaccine hesitancy content on the platform. And in the population segment with the most vaccine hesitancy, just 111 users contributed half of all vaccine hesitant content... The research effort also discovered early evidence of significant overlap between communities that are skeptical of vaccines and those affiliated with QAnon, a sprawling set of baseless claims that has radicalized its followers and been associated with violent crimes, according to the documents...
Facebook, which owns WhatsApp messenger and Instagram, collects reams of data on its more than 3.3 billion users worldwide and has a broad reach onto those users' devices. Public health experts say that puts the company in a unique position to examine attitudes toward vaccines, testing and other behaviors and push information to people.
But the company has a steep hill to climb when it comes to proving that its research efforts serve the public because of its history of misusing people's data.
Facebook is removing content which violates its policies. Yet the documents obtained by the Post say "While research is very early, we're concerned that harm from non-violating content may be substantial."
Its early findings suggest that a large amount of content that does not break the rules may be causing harm in certain communities, where it has an echo chamber effect... Just 10 out of the 638 population segments contained 50 percent of all vaccine hesitancy content on the platform. And in the population segment with the most vaccine hesitancy, just 111 users contributed half of all vaccine hesitant content... The research effort also discovered early evidence of significant overlap between communities that are skeptical of vaccines and those affiliated with QAnon, a sprawling set of baseless claims that has radicalized its followers and been associated with violent crimes, according to the documents...
Facebook, which owns WhatsApp messenger and Instagram, collects reams of data on its more than 3.3 billion users worldwide and has a broad reach onto those users' devices. Public health experts say that puts the company in a unique position to examine attitudes toward vaccines, testing and other behaviors and push information to people.
But the company has a steep hill to climb when it comes to proving that its research efforts serve the public because of its history of misusing people's data.
Facebook is removing content which violates its policies. Yet the documents obtained by the Post say "While research is very early, we're concerned that harm from non-violating content may be substantial."
Facebook etc are the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
If they were not being used as a carried of this false information then the number of anti-vaxxers would be very small. Those platforms give undue prominence (due to rankings) to these crackpots.
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I was really surprised when my Cardiologist last month told me to not get it. He said he was very comfortable in advising me against it since he knows I've never had the flu and over course of my life around ages 10, 18, and 30 I actually got a stipend to donate blood at a medical college research lab along with many others that never have had symptoms of the typical flu. But the main reason my Cardiologist advised is over the rise in blood clots whereas several countries have banned at least one manufactur
Re: Facebook etc are the problem (Score:2)
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less effective than wearing no mask due to providing the person with a false sense of security
There is zero chance that doing it wrong is worse than no mask at all unless you're using a mask as an excuse to ignore other recommendations. If the primary goal is stopping viral outflow, it means it doesn't even matter if you put your mask on backwards to the last time you wore it, never wash it, etc.
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because the government realised that we cannot shutdown all services, not even for two weeks.
Do you really think two weeks would have been worse than everything that has come about instead? Nobody says "all services" should include hospitals/ERs, etc. But the number of things deemed essential in the beginning shows it wasn't being taken seriously.
There were several countries that had effective shutdown procedures that worked...until we started travelling there again.
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Masks are in fact very effective when used properly. One of the important factors is that everyone has to be using them. The mask primary protects other people from the mask-wearer, not the other way around. If there is an infected person not wearing a mask, the virus can still get in through the eyes. Masks plus goggles, or some sort of face shield with a seal would be even better. Also, a simple cloth mask is not as effective as a mask with a proper filter material. The effectiveness of the mask is also g
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Actual reality does not seem to bear out your assertion. Wearing masks is definitely better than wearing no mask. It was still too little in that kind of environment, but still had value. Remember that the number of customers that flow through a store are much higher than the number of employees. Preventing the customers from being infected by the employees is therefore important. You also want to protect them from other customers and to protect the employees from the customers, but the worst case scenario
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Can you explain these half a dozen infection vectors? Do you need a mask for your anus? You certainly appear to be talking out of it, so I guess it is possible that an airbourne virus can enter your body there.
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Why would anyone link a study to a borderline illiterate AC?
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Anyone who understands the concept of Bernoulli Trials will realize that masks DO NOT work
What about people who understand the concept of R value [wikipedia.org]?
Re: Facebook etc are the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who understands the concept of Bernoulli Trials will realize that masks DO NOT work
What about people who understand the concept of R value [wikipedia.org]?
Thank you. Finally, someone on this thread who actually has a clue.
If on average, each sick person spreads a virus to 2.5 people and you lower that by... let's say 75% through a combination of masks, distancing, and limits on gatherings, then now people spread it to 0.75 people. So instead of every person on earth being exposed after a year, the number of new cases declines.
More importantly, the aggregate risk and individual risk are exponentially related, but dependent on one another in both directions. The aggregate risk to the population as a whole starts from a single case or a small number of cases, and each new single case starts from the greater body of people who are running around and spreading it. Each affects the other.
So if everybody spreading it to less than one person on average, the aggregate risk exponentially converges to zero with a floor function — that is, once the number of cases drops below one case, it becomes zero cases. You can't have a fraction of a sick person. And once that aggregate risk drops to zero, the individual risk also drops to zero by virtue of nobody having the virus to give it to any individual; 30% of zero is still zero.
That's where we were heading in California when they first started reopening. If Governor Newsom had stood up to businesses and refused to reopen until the count hit zero (probably less than a month), and if our foolish President had enacted similar policies nationally, the pandemic would have completely ENDED last April or May.
Anyone who doesn't understand this and continues to make patently absurd statements like "eventually it will catch up to you," has no business talking about this subject, because they are just reducing the quality of information that is out there, and thus putting others at risk needlessly.
Re: Facebook etc are the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
It will catch up to you for several reasons.... 1. Your assumption of "say a 75% reduction in spread" is wishful thinking and not based on any studies I have seen. The link cited by the poster states that R for COVID is 3.3-5.7.
That is vastly higher than the general consensus estimate, which is about 2.3 +/- .4. It might be that high when you have large numbers of people living in close quarters (e.g. a college frat house), but the R0 in ideal conditions is very different from the actual R0.
At best case, it would take the lower range of this to ever get below 1.0. Early studies indicated that for every case of COVID reported 20-30 people were infected so R could potentially be even higher.
I don't remember them being that high — I thought it was more in the 5–10 range — but either way, we now know that those estimates were drastically underestimating the number of initial cases because of the delayed symptoms.
2. The study I have seen regarding efficacy of masks basically assume you would be wearing masks at home to get below 1.0.
Then that study was fundamentally flawed. Exactly nobody assumes you should wear masks at home. It is absolutely useless to wear masks in the home, because you're sharing food, you're sharing surfaces, and you're sharing air continuously for tens of hours per week. No mask could be even slightly effective in that environment.
Only prolonged, extreme lockdowns would stop anything at that point. Furthermore, the study assumed that mask efficiency has to be > 75% to achieve R values below 1.0. Once again not realistic.
Except that in the early days of the pandemic, I kept a spreadsheet in which I computed a daily R0 estimate for my part of the Bay Area using the week-over-week case growth as a very close approximation of R0 (because the median incubation period is about 6 or 7 days). Our R0 was considerably BELOW ZERO after the lockdown went into effect. We were winning, and we would have eradicated COVID-19 entirely in California within about three to four weeks, and that's WITH open grocery stores and hardware stores, and with take-out from restaurants. I'm pretty sure one more month at that level of lockdown would have been survivable. And then it would have been over except for cases coming in from other states. And if other states had done the same, and if air travel were temporarily suspended except for critical travel, that would take care of itself.
3. Your assumption of eradication assumes that the disease will be handled uniformly across the globe.
Not at all. My assumption of eradication assumes an intelligent set of elected leaders who would mandate two-weeks of absolute quarantine for anyone arriving into the country from overseas (whether U.S. citizens or otherwise), followed eventually by more carefully tuned policies in which travel from countries that have mandatory quarantines and zero case count would be exempt from the mandatory quarantine, ending only after the combination of vaccines and lockdowns eradicate the virus in the rest of the world.
Smart policies can mitigate pandemics. Unfortunately, at least in this country, there seem to be too many selfish a**holes for whom the smallest inconvenience is too large a price to pay for everyone else's safety. And ultimately, that's why we have half a million coronavirus deaths instead of about 15,000, which is about what we would have had if we had stayed shut down a little longer until the case count hit zero. We could have stopped it. We should have stopped it. We failed. And that's what happens when profit comes before lives, when money comes before people. Until we fix that fundamental problem with our societal mindset, our country will continue to fail. We must, must, must all agree that lives are more important than dollars if we are to be the country that our citizens deserve.
Re: Facebook etc are the problem (Score:2)
Not sure why this was marked "Troll" as it is one of the most truthful comments on this article. Apparently the Ministry of Truth doesn't want the real truth to spread.
Re:Facebook etc are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many examples of warehouses and grocery stores where the staff were 100% masked and every employee still got infected.
Two things.
One, the customers need to wear a mask for that to do any good. They are better at stopping the outflow of droplets, but once they're in the air, the water evaporates and smaller particles can be breathed in through a mask. The employees weren't even wearing masks until the virus was already nearly everywhere. The coordinated response was more than a month too late.
Secondly, it only works up to a certain air concentration of viral particles. This was why social distancing was recommended in addition to masks - but it only works well outside. Put too many people in an enclosed space for very long and the masks become useless. On the grocery store side, many stores were limiting shoppers to one per family (when possible) for this reason.
You can make jokes about how the number of deaths are insignificant to you, but it just shows you don't value other people.
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
What other purpose can this effort be for than to make more effective propaganda to manipulate the masses?
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What other purpose can this effort be for than to make more effective propaganda to manipulate the masses?
To figure out how to identify the more harmful propaganda and eliminate it before it causes damage?
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The problem is one person's harm is another person's help. Who is the arbiter of truth here?
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The problem is one person's harm is another person's help. Who is the arbiter of truth here?
Reality. Hundreds of millions of injected doses with only a very, very small number of negative results. The evidence from the pre-approval trials was convincing, the evidence from the post-approval deployment is overwhelming.
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The idea that the truth is unknowable has been one of the most effective propaganda tools ever.
Good job spreading it further!
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Who's interpretation of their research?
Christ mate, they have simple plain English explanations.
The CDC has had to reverse itself quite a few times before and several times during this pandemic.
Welcome to science.
Just saying, "the CDC is the source of truth" is fun and probably makes you feel good.
Well you can fuck right off, buddy. You think you know better than the CDC when it comes to matters of disease? Yeah, now you can fuck right off.
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Exactly right, it's to stop the spread of harmful ideas and propaganda. Harmfulness as determined by Facebook's stockholders.
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People are right to be hesistant (Score:2, Insightful)
Project Veritas apparently got a recording [projectveritas.com] showing that Zuckerberg himself is sympathetic to this movement. Should this surprise you? Not in the least. The same CEOs that tell you the wundermagik of their devices for all ages won't let their kids use their devices and services much. If you want to know what a company really thinks about its products and policies, see how the leadership acts in private if possible.
I'm hesitating because I am perfectly happy to let tons of people volunteer to beta test this b
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Even if you're immune, you can still spread the disease if you come into contact with the virus (at least until you wash up). You're just not likely to actually get sick yourself. The virus is here to stay.
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Re:People are right to be hesistant (Score:5, Funny)
Why do you libs have to make everything about Trump?
Re:People are right to be hesistant (Score:5, Informative)
Why in God's name do you think the Pfizer vaccine has NOT been tested? It was tested on thousands of humans prior to public release.
Maybe you are referring to multi-decade testing for long term side effects, which obviously can't have happened since the vaccine has only been around for a year. In that case I must point out, multi-decade testing for long term side effects of the COVID-19 disease has also not been tested.
I suspect you are suffering from the naturalistic fallacy [wikipedia.org]. It goes like this:
Natural things are good. Unnatural things are bad. Viruses arise in nature without any intervention from humans, so they are good. Vaccines are created in laboratories by humans, so they are bad.
This is called a "fallacy" for a reason. People who think this way are acting irrationally. Arsenic and cancer are both natural! Ibuprofen is unnatural! The exercise of finding other counter-examples is left to the student.
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He didn't say it hadn't been tested, merely that he's content to let beta test it for him ( name THAT fallacy if you can ). I don't disagree with him either; as you pointed out the long term implications of this type of vaccine isn't known ( can't be known ), so it's fair to remain hesitant. I certainly won't be taking the vaccine until I know what things look like at the 10-15 year mark.
I believe the short term side effects are minimal, and the severe reactions are a statistical anomaly ( suggesting an u
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The vaccine is not untested. It has gone through a three-stage trial and several countries have given it regular approval, not just emergency approval like the FDA. Germany has not pulled emergency authorization. Germany is one of the countries that waited for results that could justify regular approval. Even after regular approval, it is possible that side effects show up which cannot be detected during the testing, but any such side effects necessarily have a very low probability or they would show up dur
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So you just turned a science issues in a political issue. Congratulations.
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The long-term studies about the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines was done in response to the SARS and MERS outbreaks. The new vaccines use the same "formula", with a different mRNA payload. mRNA degrades very quickly in the body (that's why we have DNA), so it can't stick around and do long-term harm.
So no, they're not "untested".
Also, if you're not doing things like wearing masks and social distancing while taking your "brave" anti-pharma stand, you're going to kill someone.
The Problem with Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
You're hamstrung by your need to communicate with your family/neighbors/enthusiasts and narcissism.
And that's how Facebook gets you to sit in their high chair and spoon feed you their curated drivel.
Re: The Problem with Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet somehow we kept in touch with family and friends before Facebook existed. Ask around. It's true.
Re: The Problem with Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the past tense phrasing is all too correct. My first warning about Facebook was a decade ago, before Groupthink started taking hold. I noticed that it was causing people to isolate themselves but tricking them into thinking they were more social than ever. I pointed out to my wife that before facebook she would talk in the phone with her best friend from high school at least once a week. They would have lunch at least once a month. Since Facebook, I constantly challenge as to when the last time they got caught up. The response is - we are constantly keeping up with eachother - . I dont consider reading someones status updates as keeping up. They havent actually heard each others voices in 3 years. It has been at least 5 years since they met face to face, and before that another 5 years. She lives a 20 min drive away.
And that one thing is probably the most benign aspect of Facebook at this point. Online interaction with potential NPCs does not create the same mental wellbeing as actually having real life interaction. You would get a lot more benefit chatting up a stranger in a pub than sitting alone swiping to refresh your feeds. If you use Facebook for anything more than a Directory, you are missing out on something a lot better
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With your wife and her friend, maybe they're just naturally growing apart and FB is just showing the symptoms. Total speculation.
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And yet somehow we kept in touch with family and friends before Facebook existed. Ask around. It's true.
No, we didn't. I asked around... on Facebook. And it wasn't true. Before Facebook I didn't keep in touch with pretty much anyone. Neither did lots of other people I know.
Why everyone seems to think that everyone is like them, I'll never understand. People are constantly criticizing people for not being like them, then they act like everyone should have the same concerns they do. Is 99% of everyone incapable of empathy? That would explain a lot of things.
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Losing touch and losing track of people absolutely used to be a thing. One day you'd take out your address book -- a *physical* address book, mind you -- and i'ts full of people who are important to you but whose addresses and phone numbers were years out of date.
Every novel communication technology unites people in new ways, but also *divides* them in new ways. The telephone ended the ancient and universal custom of visiting people unannounced. You can reach out and talk to anyone you know any time, but
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I think you're right about Facebook's ability to keep people connected who otherwise would be dated entries in an address book, but how real are these connections?
I dropped Facebook in 2016 after about 7 or so years of using it. By 2016, I was in regular "Facebook" contact with dozens of people I really liked from my past. But it didn't really ever turn these into "real" relationships again, even the ones who were local.
I think there's a mirage effect to these Facebook relationships that makes them a lot
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I think it depends.
I grew up in a family with eight kids. We are all very close and see each other quite frequently - about every week or two for those that live withing driving distance. Those that have moved to a different part of the country come back every year and spend one or two weeks at one of our houses -- longer if they have the vacation to do so. We communicate on social media pretty much every day. Social media is *useful* to us. That doesn't make our relationships "fake".
Now I do have a nu
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They give you a place to read and write comments on issues and topics that you are interested in, not unlike Slashdot.
Re: The Problem with Facebook (Score:2)
Oh look, another 'study'. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh look, another 'study' which amounts to, "People are spreading disinformation and that's awful."
FTFY.
Studying successful disinformation campaigns is a worthy endeavor because it can help identify disinformation campaigns quickly before they cause real harm. You can cry fould because you bought into the disinformation but that does not change the real harms it does to society as well as individuals.
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Ah, Slashdot. I especially enjoy the way you've been modded down here for stating facts. I presume you were talking about how unvaccinated populations produce additional mutations [sciencemag.org], or for that matter simply about how they act as a reservoir of disease.
Another concern is that we could deliberately withhold vaccinations from some nations, then use their unvaccinated status as an excuse for almost any kind of abuse.
Plan A (Score:2)
When critics and some doctors say nutrients don't work, they cite tests that used embarrassingly small doses that, of course, don't work.
The iMask protocol for Ivemctin and some supplements , is still on the low end of useful doses for vitamin C and D.
https://covid19criticalcare.co... [covid19criticalcare.com]
Sure, just like lack of election confidence (Score:2, Interesting)
A small group of Republican lawmakers repeated the lie that there was election fraud over and over again until their base believed it. Now they claim that we need to do certain things restore faith in our election process when they deliberately damaged it.
A small group of anti-vaxxers and political manipulators repeated assorted lies about the vaccinations' effectiveness, hazards, and microchips from Bill Gates (as if he were competent enough to arrange such a thing and have it actually work, noobs.) But be
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Yeah your life was so much worse under trump right?
The problem isn't so much that it was worse for those four years, as that he did things that made life worse for all people which will last much longer than four years.
The problem with you is best described fifty cents at a time, trollbag.
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What did he do that made life worse for people like us?
He shit all over the EPA. (and also the USPS, but that's a far lesser problem.)
Even Richard Nixon could have told you why that was a bad idea. If you're dumber than Nixon, nobody should give a fuck what you have to say.
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Yeah your life was so much worse under trump right? Your life was at the pinnacle of success under Biden/Obama right?
Heh. The funny part about trying to taunt from your position is just how far you have to zoom out before you land on a remark you think may cause fists to pound the table. "Oh yeah? Well how does a coupla months of Biden compare to - uhhh - 8 years of Obama... HUHH??"
Re:Sure, just like lack of election confidence (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't it amazing how quickly Trump recovered from COVID
No. It's also not amazing how idiots like you think that should be amazing even though he got access to medical care that the rest of us don't. He had access to special treatments that neither you nor I will receive regardless of how critical our condition becomes. And here you are, cheering for that situation.
What's amazing is how easily led you useful idiots have turned out to be. We all knew you were gullible, but we had no idea how gullible.
Re:Sure, just like lack of election confidence (Score:5, Informative)
What were these treatments? That's pure conspiracy theory material.
The primary treatment Trump received that isn't widely available is Regeneron's monoclonal antibody therapy. It was (and still is) experimental, which means that it's not generally available outside of specific studies (unless you're the president). It's also very expensive.
Remdesivir is another expensive drug Trump was given, one that hasn't proved to be generally effective at saving the lives of COVID patients, but it does reduce the duration of the disease.
Trump was also given dexamethosone which isn't experimental or expensive and has proven very helpful for severe cases of COVID. He also got zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and aspirin, all of which are widely available, and may not have had anything to do with his COVID treatment.
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At the very least, monoclonal antibody treatments. Something you're not getting unless you're way worse off than he was.
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Yeah they gave him oxygen and air evacuated him to a hospital where he received not yet approved medications. Just like your average person would...
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Your average person would have to wait until they're even worse off to get the kinds of treatments he got. You think your average person is getting monocolonal antibody treatments on day one?
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Which was funny, because he actually won in 2016 and still claimed voter fraud. How it is that people believed him in 2020 is a mystery.
True Believers apply! (Score:4, Interesting)
We're just starting to learn the influence of tiny groups of loudmouths in using effectively viral marketing to advance political efforts. This suggests organization of it, instead of "grass roots" arisings.
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Propaganda has been understood for centuries.
And yet people are practically lining up to claim that other nations aren't using it as a weapon, like Russia for example, even though we have ample evidence that they are doing so. But hopefully someone will trot out your comment and cite it back to you next time you claim that no such manipulation is occurring.
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Lots of things have been understood for a long time and people still vehemently disbelieve them. The fact that we understand propaganda doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Most Americans believe angels are real and their kid smoking a doobie means they're on the road to dying in an alley of an overdose. Propaganda was effective a long, long time before the Internet. The internet does give quicker feedback about how well it's working though.
"social media — a primary source of health i (Score:2)
"social media — a primary source of health information for millions of people"
Either FaceBook vastly overestimate their importance, or there are a lot of people getting their health information from the wrong primary source.
If it's the latter, how do we fix it?
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It's not clear that we can.
In that case, we should improve the quality of the information, ideally to the point at which it is correct. Then there's no problem.
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But what is "correct?"
Something that's correct for a 75 year old overwieght person with heart and lung issues is going to be very different than what's correct for an 18 year old healthy person. It's impossible to communicate that in 140 characters. Getting one of these vaccines is probably correct for most people, but not everyone (like people with certain allergies?) and there're a lot of unknowns so quashing any and all negative assertions can fuel the conspiracy theories and be counterproductive.
It's pr
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but not everyone (like people with certain allergies?)
And even people with allergies aren't at a very great risk. Unlike traditional vaccines, the mRNA vaccines do not rely on anything replicating in bovine blood serum or anything like that. If you read through the process and even look at the ingredient label, there's practically nothing in there. mRNA, lipids to protect the genetic material, and a few basic chemical buffers.
Echo chamber for me but not for thee? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems Facebook only has a problem with echo chambers when they exhibit a narrative which is deviant from Facebook's.
Small groups lead (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is anyone surprised at this finding? Pick any topic, study how it is discussed, and you'll find there is a small group of "leaders" and a large group of "followers".
Having run a popular BBS system in the past, and multiple forums, there can be hundreds or thousands of "lurkers", and a few people who post. On a technical forum, many people just wish someone else will ask their question for them, and read the answer when it comes. Search engines just make that a lot easier now.
It's human nature, and not part of a "grand conspiracy to champion X". How many people lead a protest because they believe in the cause, as opposed to those who go along with it because it seems like a good idea?
Sick of hearing stupid excuses (Score:2)
The vaccine is for the protection of the whole of society, globally not just in the UK or USA therefore everybody who is eligible should be taking it. I will be getting my first dose tomorrow afternoon.
I wouldn't ever propose making any vaccination mandatory but there are restrictions already in place for those who do not e.g. you are not allowed to enter certain countries without proof of a yellow fever vaccination. Personally I would love to see legislation stating, "If you are eligible but refuse the Cov
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These are the unintended consequences of the liberty-first Constitution. It all works great if everyone contributes to society and wants to work toward common good. But being completely selfish and/or antisocial is legally uninhibited and will eventually be the downfall of the entire system.
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Already one vaccine is halted in several european countries for investigating blood clotting issue.
A bit of an overreaction, too. The blood clotting rate didn't even exceed that of the general population, meaning there's practically no correlation to having had the vaccine.
I won't speak about the J&J vaccine because it's more like a traditional vaccine with the greater risks and unintended side effects. But the mRNA vaccine is a very precise thing. There is practically no side effect that wouldn't also be caused by being exposed to the virus itself, but it would only be whatever damage could be ca
One of the largest groups ... (Score:2)
those affiliated with QAnon
QAnon isn't an organization. It's an ideology. It's a bunch of conspiracy theorists finding patterns in noise. 50% of nurses avoiding a vaccine is a pretty big pattern.
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QAnon isn't an organization.
It's a disorganization. There may be no structure, but lots of the adherents hang around the same places online and this makes them a de facto group that one can be affiliated with.
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There's a ton of anti-vaxx nurses. They spout things that they know is false from their own schooling, but the draw of the conspiracy theory overwhelms their training.
My response is not "those nurses must know something!", it's "how could our standards for nurses be that low?"
My approach (Score:2)
Shrug. Whenever. (Score:2)
Is COVID real? Yes. Is it cause for concern? Yes, especially if the now well-known risk factors apply to you. Is it as deadly as ebola? Or smallpox? No.
The vaccination "plan" here in British Columbia says I will be eligible later in the summer. My health and lifestyle raise no flags, so I'm in "Shrug. Whenever." mode. External factors (e.g. international travel) may drive my decisions, since based on available data it's not clear I need a vaccine at all. Does this make me a skeptic?
...laura
Some Reasons (Score:2)
Pfizer has been fined for fraud more than any other US company. They are the least trustworthy corporation in the US.
Pfizer is immune from lawsuits, even if the vaccine becomes contaminated through negligence.
The vaccine was approved by emergency, in a very abbreviated manner.
For a pandemic, death rates are very low for younger people.
I personally know 3 people who suffered fro.m severe fatigue after the second shot. Anecdotal yes, but people are influenced by personal experience.
It feels good to think that
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I personally know 3 people who suffered fro.m severe fatigue after the second shot.
One would hope so. It's called an immune response. It happens when you get sick, too - for the same reason.
The small group (Score:2)
Could it be that the "small group" is "the scientists"? Off with their heads!
Conspiracists... (Score:2)
Conspiracists spread disinformation on multiple topics, would have thought it? Pretty much everybody with their wits intact.
It is the same people spreading the anti-vaxxer message before COVID, as after it. They also share other B.S. memes for years like lifestyle schemes, flat earth, homeopathy and healing crystals.
In the UK it also crosses over into those that propagate generalise bigotry, racism and crypto-fascism such as brexit and blame the immigrants.
Re: (Score:3)
Eventually, those that don't vaccinate will be on the receiving end of a serious (or fatal) disease that could have been prevented. The problem eventually solves itself. They either die or gather immunity "the old fashioned way." People that would rather not experience the nostalgia of getting sick to get those antibodies can vaccinate and go on with life.
Re: (Score:2)
Eventually, those that don't vaccinate will be on the receiving end of a serious (or fatal) disease that could have been prevented. The problem eventually solves itself. They either die or gather immunity "the old fashioned way." People that would rather not experience the nostalgia of getting sick to get those antibodies can vaccinate and go on with life.
Or they won't die or gather immunity. When the society reaches herd immunity the people who are not vaccinated will be pretty well protected as well.
Re:Easy solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
People that would rather not experience the nostalgia of getting sick to get those antibodies can vaccinate and go on with life.
They can go on with life until those unvaccinated people produce a variant that their vaccination doesn't protect them against. Then they're back to square zero.
Permitting people not to vaccinate is going to harm the rest of us. At what point do we consider refusing vaccination a hostile act? Because it is going to do us active harm.
(My answer is... after we vaccinate everyone on the planet willing to be vaccinated. Because we will have the same problem with small countries that can't afford vaccination if we don't step up and make sure they get the vaccine.)
Thanks for the validation (Score:3, Interesting)
When my posts in good faith get modded troll, I know I'm on the right track. I can always use the mod abusers as a weather vane. If they try to bury an idea, I know it's a good one.
Re: (Score:2)
I've more than once modded your posts up even though I didn't agree, because they were insightful or informative. Disagree != Troll.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I think there's a simple solution to people who won't take basic public health measures. Just don't let them use public infrastructure.
Re: (Score:2)
Relatively speaking, the infection rate of SARS-CoV-2 is not that high. It's just that it's so easy to walk around not knowing you're sick that's the reason it's spreading. If we get enough willing people to vaccinate, the virus will probably not be spreading around enough to generate too many new mutations.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that's some good sci-fi right there. What about getting a vaccine, versus exposure and natural development of antibodies would prohibit your incubation scenario from happening? Why is the vax, which triggers the production of a protein that, then, triggers the production of antibodies coded toward that prot
Re: (Score:3)
Eventually, those that don't vaccinate will be on the receiving end of a serious (or fatal) disease that could have been prevented. The problem eventually solves itself. They either die or gather immunity "the old fashioned way." People that would rather not experience the nostalgia of getting sick to get those antibodies can vaccinate and go on with life.
Yes, your implicit trust of big pharma (who you spend the other half of your time demonizing as greedy and untrustworthy) is the key to a healthy, risk-f
Re:Easy solution. (Score:5, Informative)
The long term damage is still being studied. Given the choice I would rather not catch covid.
https://blogs.bcm.edu/2021/02/... [bcm.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
The long term damage is still being studied.
The study of long term damage needs to include that my kids have missed an entire year of school and I'm out of work.
Given the choice I would rather not catch covid.
If catching covid would end the lockdown for my family, I'd go find someone infected and ask them to cough in my face.
Re: (Score:3)
The study of long term damage needs to include that my kids have missed an entire year of school and I'm out of work.
That's the damage of half-assed government response, not the virus per se.
Re: (Score:2)
The vaccine's survival rate is even higher. It's literally mRNA coded to create a protein and nearly nothing more.
If you're worried about the reproductive organs of the young, they'd better get a vaccine. COVID-19 infects the testes and causes reduced fertility and is part of the reason the death rate was higher for men than for women.
https://doi.org/10.5534/wjmh.2... [doi.org]
Re: Easy solution. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: One percent (Score:2)
Wrong (Score:3)
This is like saying only those people who get into car accidents need to wear seatbelts. While it might technically be true, it's also meaningless since you can't know in advance if you will have an accident. Also just because your personal risk of long-term complications is low, doesn't mean you won't spread it to others. It's just a little needle you big baby. Grow a pair and take it like a man.
Re: (Score:2)
A simpler fact is that if a vaccine is 95% effective, then 1 in 20 people of the vulnerable people exposed could still get a severe infection. The goal is to prevent that by not having the virus circulate in the first place.
The number of people under 50 who have died in the past year from the virus is not insignificant. The number of people with long-term health consequences or infertility are even higher.
Re: (Score:2)
When did it become a bad thing to be "hesitant" about experimental treatments? Informed consent, and all that.
What, you mean the Russian vaccine? That's the only one of them of which I'm aware that was being used before it was tested.