Anti-Vaccine Groups Avoid Facebook Bans By Using Emojis (arstechnica.com) 371
Pizza slices, cupcakes, and carrots are just a few emojis that anti-vaccine activists use to speak in code and continue spreading COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook. Ars Technica reports: Bloomberg reported that Facebook moderators have failed to remove posts shared in anti-vaccine groups and on pages that would ordinarily be considered violating content, if not for the code-speak. One group that Bloomberg reviewed, called "Died Suddenly," is a meeting ground for anti-vaccine activists supposedly mourning a loved one who died after they got vaccines -- which they refer to as having "eaten the cake." Facebook owner Meta told Bloomberg that "it's removed more than 27 million pieces of content for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy, an ongoing process," but declined to tell Ars whether posts relying on emojis and code-speak were considered in violation of the policy.
According to Facebook community standards, the company says it will "remove misinformation during public health emergencies," like the pandemic, "when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm." Pages or groups risk being removed if they violate Facebook's rules or if they "instruct or encourage users to employ code words when discussing vaccines or COVID-19 to evade our detection." However, the policy remains vague regarding the everyday use of emojis and code words. The only policy that Facebook seems to have on the books directly discussing improper use of emojis as coded language deals with community standards regarding sexual solicitation. It seems that while anti-vaccine users' emoji-speak can expect to remain unmoderated, anyone using "contextually specific and commonly sexual emojis or emoji strings" does actually risk having posts removed if moderators determine they are using emojis to ask for or offer sex.
In total, Bloomberg reviewed six anti-vaccine groups created in the past year where Facebook users employ emojis like peaches and apples to suggest people they know have been harmed by vaccines. Meta's seeming failure to moderate the anti-vaccine emoji-speak suggests that blocking code-speak is likely not currently a priority. Last year, when BBC discovered that anti-vaccine groups were using carrots to mask COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, Meta immediately took down the groups identified. However, BBC reported that soon after, the same groups popped back up, and more recently, Bloomberg reported that some of the groups that it tracked seemed to change names frequently, possibly to avoid detection.
According to Facebook community standards, the company says it will "remove misinformation during public health emergencies," like the pandemic, "when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm." Pages or groups risk being removed if they violate Facebook's rules or if they "instruct or encourage users to employ code words when discussing vaccines or COVID-19 to evade our detection." However, the policy remains vague regarding the everyday use of emojis and code words. The only policy that Facebook seems to have on the books directly discussing improper use of emojis as coded language deals with community standards regarding sexual solicitation. It seems that while anti-vaccine users' emoji-speak can expect to remain unmoderated, anyone using "contextually specific and commonly sexual emojis or emoji strings" does actually risk having posts removed if moderators determine they are using emojis to ask for or offer sex.
In total, Bloomberg reviewed six anti-vaccine groups created in the past year where Facebook users employ emojis like peaches and apples to suggest people they know have been harmed by vaccines. Meta's seeming failure to moderate the anti-vaccine emoji-speak suggests that blocking code-speak is likely not currently a priority. Last year, when BBC discovered that anti-vaccine groups were using carrots to mask COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, Meta immediately took down the groups identified. However, BBC reported that soon after, the same groups popped back up, and more recently, Bloomberg reported that some of the groups that it tracked seemed to change names frequently, possibly to avoid detection.
The eagle flies at midnight (Score:3, Insightful)
The bunny eats the carrot
The shoe taps to a different beat
May God have mercy on us all
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:3)
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:5, Informative)
you can not force others to sequester themselves
You have no right to demand that others take a drug. That is not what freedom, or this country stands for.
Sigh.
Mandatory quarantine has existed in the US since there has been a US, and this country didn't even make it to the Civil War before seeing its first vaccine mandates, so you can go ahead and silence those fife-players in your head. You're waxing patriotic about a past that didn't exist in anything approaching the form you think it did. When we went through this 100 years ago, the people seen as un-American were the ones refusing to cooperate. Prior generations, overall, did not define 'freedom' in terms of the right to willfully endanger others in the name of proving that you can't be made to do something. That's a child's version of freedom. It's by no means new, but it is really only in the current solipsistic internet age that we have reached a critical mass of self-involvement such that society is at risk of severe degradation, if not outright destruction, by those for whom freedom is coterminous with anarchy.
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, the COVID vaccine does not prevent infection, and does not prevent spread.
If you don't contract covid you can't spread it to others. You also don't die as easily as the unvaccinated.
But even if it did, you can not force people to take it
Yes, you can [jhu.edu]. States have the authority to mandate people get vaccinated, just as they already do for children who attend school [imgur.com]. Or did you forget about that?
and you can not force others to sequester themselves because you don't want to do something.
Wrong again [findlaw.com], kiddo.
Now, as far a speech goes, you have no right to demand that people listen to someone else. IF they choose to be stupid, that is on them.
And thank you for proving this point so eloquently.
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Would that make you uncomfortable? Would you have to show every just how extra manly you were?
What's there to argue about with some cowardly ass incel on the internet talking about shooting people in the head?
Come on, you trolls aren't even fucking clever these days. Are you guys getting dumber, or just lazier?
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The actual efficacy of the vaccines is dubious at best
This is a lie. [nih.gov]
and there's plenty of legitimate reasons to abstain.
There are some. They're well documented, and you don't have one of them.
A friend of mine was literally paralyzed by it and spent 6months in rehab
You're a liar.
What's your angle, you fucking bottom feeder?
Being a free country means you can't make people do things - maybe you need to move
That's not what it means in the fucking slightest.
It means you get to vote for the government that governs you from amongst your peers. Though I'm starting to wonder if your peers aren't located in St. Petersberg, making you in fact, ineligible to vote here.
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I'm beginning to think that you're a fucking moron.
International coalition of lying government. (Score:3)
We should believe the government, always. Government infallibility is real, and anyone who contradicts that is a liar.
Yes, don't trust us Europeans.
Your US government has managed to buy all of our countries in Europe so they keep repeating the same lies as your government.
All the local health agencies are also paid to all cook the numbers in order to support your government's lies.
All the rest of the planet is part in a giant conspiracy to support the lie that your goverment tells you.
---
Seriously: That's the thing I've never understand. Okay, you don't trust YOUR government. Then look at what all the other are doing. If s
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You're absolutely right. I should have phrased it differently.
You're right, you should have. The reason you didn't isn't because you made a casual mistake though. The reason you didn't is because you are searching to disclaim an argument by attacking its source.
Yet another gradeschool fallacy of yours.
"We should always believe the things private individuals and organizations do, when the government tells us to believe them. Always."
No, you should believe them because they're good science. And they are.
When you can find a peer reviewed study demonstrating the errors in this one, I'll entertain your argument.
Until then, you're a fuckwit employing gradeschool logical fallacies in your morning shi
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Nature has no agency.
You do and by spreading lies about the efficacy of life saving medication, you have a degree of culpability.
There is blame to go around and you, personally, share in some of it.
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Err... if it was more deadly I think they _would_ vaccinate. It is all about weighing the odds. Extremely small odds of serious illness against the fully unknown odds of long-term adverse effects of a vaccine...
Seriously: at 51 years of age and in reasonably good health, the risk of me dying this year from something completely else, like a car accident, shooting, falling down my stairs, cancer, etc etc is about 70 (yes seventy) time higher than me dying from Covid-19. And yes you can calculate these odds: h [brain2web.nl]
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Hell yeah, great idea, a payer funded medical system. That should be interesting to behold, well, if you're in another country, that is. Let's play through that scenario, shall we? Ronnie Redneck's dad, an avid anti-vaxxer, caught "da rona", is coughing his lung out and will die for sure if he doesn't get an ICU bed (he probably still will, but with an ICU bed he at least has a fighting chance). Of course that bed costs like 2000 a day and Ronnie doesn't have that kind of money, and most certainly not for t
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:3, Informative)
Oh you want to leave others alone and be left alone? Stop using
- roads
- street lights
- water mains
- public schools
- the internet
In other words, move to the forest where you have no opportunity to interact with society.
It'll be a win for you, AND society.
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, misinformation is best countered by information. The narrative has garnered a cult-like adherence. Even discussing the reality of efficacy is like walking into a mosque, waving a drawing of Mohammed.
Oh give me a fucking break.
The kickback isn't against "discussing the reality of efficacy".
The reality of efficacy, is that the vaccines are efficacious.
They're not perfect, by any means, but claiming their efficacy is, "dubious at best" is flat out misinformation. And you trying to mischaracterize that is nothing but gaslighting.
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:5, Insightful)
That we can have this conversation is what matters, even I am wrong. Destroy me with facts and logic. That's the point.
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The person you replied to however said this:
Seriously, the COVID vaccine does not prevent infection, and does not prevent spread.
That is misinformation.
People are not beholden to host their misinformation.
Refusing to give them a platform is not silencing dissent. It's not censoring critics.
It's removing misinformation from the discussion pool.
That is a natural part of any discussion medium. You get rid of the disruptive elements.
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:5, Informative)
The full context is missing here. The rest of that statement "what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission. So if you're going home to somebody who has not been vaccinated, somebody who can't get vaccinated... I would suggest you wear a mask in a public indoor setting," Walensky stated."
Which makes sense. If you have the vaccine and are infected (which can happen) you are still contagious. This is obvious and taken out of context to say "It doesn't stop transmission!". This is being disingenuous. It stops transmission when it prevents infection. When it fails to prevent infection it prevents sever illness. While you have covid you are contagious. This is not new information.
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm unsure about the CNN statement you're speaking of, however, from the official release [cdc.gov], what is said is:
High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus.
Correct, the vaccine does not stop you from spreading the virus if you are infected with the virus.
This is another case of you being too stupid to understand what is being discussed. You are a perfect example of why we shouldn't have intelligent people giving stupid people information. It really needs to be filtered down through several steps until it's in a format you can digest.
Re: The eagle flies at midnight (Score:5, Informative)
100% agree here. All the douchebags whining about "misinformation" are really whining about "facts I don't like to hear".
What "facts" are those? There were no facts in the GP post. Everything in there was a gross distortion of reality. None of it is true unless you grossly misunderstand what vaccines actually do, and believe that preventing 100% of transmission is required to qualify as "preventing transmission" or "preventing spread".
By the anti-vaxxers' strict definition, no vaccine has ever "prevented transmission" or "prevented spread" of any disease. They do, however, reduce the rate of transmission and spread. That's how vaccines eliminated smallpox and brought polio infections to within the margin of error. That's also how vaccines eliminated the original (and probably more deadly) strains of COVID.
The only part you left out is how the uncertified drugs have actually killed people.
Not sure what uncertified drugs you're talking about. Both mRNA viruses are FDA-approved.
I'm sure that the vaccines probably have killed a few people from anaphylaxis. That's a risk with any vaccine. Proving that the vaccines caused any other deaths is way, way harder than you realize, because of all the uncontrolled variables.
For example, COVID-19 vaccination often serves as a statistical proxy for other risky behavior. In many countries, you have to be vaccinated to go to bars, go to school, participate in school sports, or do various other activities. That means that all of the risk inherent in those activities gets concentrated among people who are vaccinated, and goes away for people who aren't. Surprise, surprise, this makes a statistically significant difference in the rate of death and serious illness, because as a result, vaccinated people are more likely to be exposed to an actual cause of death and serious illness (e.g. COVID-19, RSV, influenza, etc.).
When statisticians properly control for all of those confounding variables, they conclude that the vaccine doesn't cause a statistically significant increase in deaths, which means that there's no proof that they cause deaths. After 12.7 billion doses, any real causation would almost certainly be known and well documented. The lack of such smoking guns pretty conclusively proves your statement incorrect.
Death rates are highest in the countries with the highest vaccination rates.
LOL. No.
COVID testing rates are the highest in countries with the highest vaccination rates, so COVID deaths are more accurately reported in those countries. That's one big difference between wealthier countries and poorer countries.
Want proof? In the early days of the pandemic, people in developing countries were reportedly dying at much lower rates than people in developed countries [worldbank.org] (on average). Later studies determined that India and Zambia both underreported COVID deaths by about a factor of 10 [bmj.com]. This was almost certainly true in other developing nations for the same reason: testing costs money.
The problem is, you're taking a correlation and immediately assuming causation, rather than looking for confounding variables (differences that affect both of the two correlated things), and by doing so, you're jumping to wildly incorrect conclusions. Worse than that, you're spreading those wildly incorrect conclusions as if you know what you're talking about. Unfortunately, some people will probably believe you, because you are somehow able to sound smart while doing things that would get you a failing grade in any college-level science or statistics class.
But that doesn't mean you're right. You couldn't be further from correct.
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left one out:
"bless their heats"
they're mostly southern. they'll understand. (and they'll be really angry by it. go look it up.)
hey, if they want to increase their death rate, its their right. less R voters.
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(really do need a new keyboard.)
ahem. spelled correctly, it goes:
"bless their hearts"
yeah, that makes about as much sense as the misspelled version to anyone not from the south, but we should spell it correctly, at least.
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What? My mother was a saint!
Re:The vaccine is super safe and effective. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mandate, because there are morons like you who've been avoiding it since the former guy was in office. Because science is *so* anti-GOP.
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It's so safe and effective, Biden had to mandate people take it. So naturally, I did the opposite.
I'm unvaxxed and I'm still alive! :)
Proof that we can't fix stupid.
100% of people who get vaccines will die ... (Score:2)
... eventually.
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... eventually.
It's worse than that -- 100% of dead people were habitual breathers.
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It's worse than that -- 100% of dead people were habitual breathers.
Makes me sick. You know who else was a habitual breather? /:=|
Cockney Rhyming Slang (Score:5, Interesting)
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While I have no interest in the vaccine discussion
Eh, but you are taking part in the discussion? Unless you are also bothered by the fact that criminal rings have to use code to communicate as well. If you have to use code to communicate, it more likely means that you are doing something bad and not that you are being oppressed.
And about free speech. It's all about the government protecting it, not private enterprises, and still only if it is not harmful. Anti-vaxxers are definitely harmful.
Re:Cockney Rhyming Slang (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech entitles you to spout your lies anywhere you want without government intervention. It does not prevent me from kicking you out of my bar for being an asshole.
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Wait ... You think that the US Government is paying Facebook to censor speech that they don't like. Speech like clearly false vaccine misinformation.
You're even more delusional than I thought. Seek help.
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I've had flu shots before and NEVER caught the flu after having the flu shot.
You're a liar. You've never had a flu vaccine, and you fucking know it.
Here's some reference material [cdc.gov] for you, so that you can re-tune your misinformation peddling to sound more believable in the future.
Flu vaccines have always been of limited efficacy.
They do a good job of stopping you from getting the disease they target, and if you do still end up getting it, they do a good job of reducing its symptoms, including adverse outcomes.
In case your ass is too lazy to read, I'll quote the most important
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Re:Cockney Rhyming Slang (Score:4, Insightful)
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In a system where the Government cannot control speech, compel or censor, then it is the duty of the citizenry to do so.
If some piece of shit is trying to advertise the destruction of your way of life, on your very, very expensive speech-amplification system you 86 his ass.
Been that way since the dawn of time.
What you're want couldn't be any less American. It's fucking
Re:Cockney Rhyming Slang (Score:4, Insightful)
You hate that people are expressing opinions that disagree with your opinions. Your solution is not debate but to silence them.
You are the problem, not the solution.
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You hate that people are expressing opinions that disagree with your opinions. Your solution is not debate but to silence them.
Nonsense.
There's plenty of room for debate.
Nobody is trying to silence debate.
What you are doing is misconstruing debate with the peddling of misinformation. You're doing this because you know it's the only real way you have to fight your "right" to spread misinformation.
It's not clever.
You are the problem, not the solution.
Oh ya? The real solution is to have the government tell private institutions what they can and cannot say, or allow people using their platform to say? Get the fuck out of here, you clown.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You are implying that the US government is paying Facebook to allow the US public to speak, and abusing that position to police it vicariously through Facebook.
As long as the US government is not compelling, either by providing monies (with implicit threat to remove in the case of noncompliance), or via threat of criminal or civil action, then it's just a private organization choosing to coordinate with the Government.
It's no d
continued... (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
but to keep his masters happy. Insert various "Big ****" entities....pharma, ag, mining, finance, govt, tech..
What the fuck are you talking about. Zuck is richer than them. How are they his "masters". He's an amoral fucker but you're talking insane conspiracy shit.
Re:continued... (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuckerberg is nothing without advertisers. If they go away tomorrow then facebook stock is worth fuck-all by tomorrow night. He does what the corporations want him to do or he becomes irrelevant and another shit platform of fuckery arises.
Why Shut Them Down? (Score:2)
I thought the concern that justified shutting down inaccurate posts about vaccines was that it would *spread* inaccurate information, i.e., that people who didn't know any better might see such posts and suddenly start worrying that vaccines could cause harm. If they are speaking in code then it sounds like that's not an issue.
It sounds more like people an enraged that the 'bad people' aren't being punished and, at least in theory, that wasn't the justification for banning such speech.
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The anti-vaxxers are stupid but they're not too stupid to get their message across, especially given that the bulk of the effort spent on the messaging is probably done by literally paid trolls. Now the cool new secret among those distrustful of government is going to be the dumbfuck emoji code. Only it's not actually a secret. They will spread it far and wide.
That's fine by me (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as Facebook's algorithms aren't directing random idiots into these forums for the sake of engagement and ad views then it's not an issue. That's the real issue here. Facebook's algorithms exist solely to line Mark zuckerberg's pockets. While I firmly believe in section 230 of the CDA that doesn't preclude forcing Facebook to disclose how their algorithms work
Re:That's fine by me (Score:5, Informative)
Do you believe masks prevent Covid spread?
Yes. [pnas.org]
Do you believe Pfizer shots and boosters prevent spread?
Do you think that's a clever way to phrase that question? The make a person less likely to contract the disease, and thus less likely to spread it.
In the case that someone gets the disease anyway, does it make them less likely to spread it? Of course not.
Are you actually denying that they lower your chances of contracting the disease, or are you claiming that people spread the disease in spite of not contracting it?
Do you believe 6 foot social distancing and plastic shields at retail counters prevent spread?
Yes. [pnas.org]
Do you believe Indians and Chinese workers are stealing your jobs? Or your woman folk?
What is this bizarre racist shit?
I saw your name, and immediately smiled the prospect of seeing a well-formed shitpost this evening. You've let me down. This is a lazy ass shit-post.
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Sorry, everyone I know has been vaccinated, and afterwards, we've all contracted covid-19. I happen to be one of them, so you and PNAS can take your sponsored studies and stuff them.
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Do you believe that you are a clever troll?
Ask your doctor (Score:3)
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I dont want to be in a universe where "pizza" is NOT an answer to most questions worth asking.
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Pizzapathie works! If I have a headache, I take a pizza cardinale and 2-20 hours later the headache is gone!
Sometimes it gets worse, though. That's how I know the pizza is actually working, that's the so-called "initial worsening". Just take another pizza and you're good.
Of course, the use of therapeutic pizza is being squelched and silenced, I bet you didn't even hear about it yet because big pharma is trying really, really hard to keep a tight lid on it because nobody would buy their overpriced pills anym
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I don't really get the allure to dying on a hill over "the wuhan kung-flu democrat CCCP death virus hoax"
. unfortunately obfuscation is essential online . (Score:3)
My friends don't use social media, have no concerns about bans. But we have concerns about spyware.
We tend to be adults, so we use email. Some of those I correspond with even use gmail. So we are careful about what we say. Certain words get modified to avoid attention. 'Pyrite' often replaces a word that some listeners are tuned to. 't0r' with a zero might arise at times. 'Presidunce' might replace a reference to a recent reviled media personality. The word 'pregnant', 'abortion' and variations requires extreme care in online discussions in the US recently. And any mention of a product name is an invitation to be spammed. I use a Google calendar for convenience with all my devices, but for privacy my sentences are all jammed together with no space between words. Each word starts with a capital letter so it's easy for me to read, but hard for a bot.
We encourage all who communicate online to obfuscate their discussions. If you are a criminal, you too will benefit but the social benefit of privacy is worth it.
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No one cares about your dumb shit emails about abortion and Trump, including the US government. Unless you're planning actual criminal acts (as in not shit you made up) you might as well wear a tin foil hat to protect you from 5G mind control for all the good coding words like "pregnant" will do you.
"The government found out I'm against abortion like a full third of the country! Oh no it's going to... do absolutely nothing about that because no one fucking cares".
Have fun with that though, it's your own was
Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Dawn, Stove (Score:2)
Nine
Kind-hearted
Homecoming
One
Freight car
Say, this might be worse than we thought!
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That sounds like Bob the Angry Flower's self-penned eulogy [angryflower.com].
What is the objective here? (Score:2)
I thought the point of intervening against vaccine "misinformation" was to prevent it from creating confusion for the general public on the actual public health guidance.
If these groups are speaking in their own private emoji code, that can't possibly cause confusion with actual public health messaging. So what is the justification of intervening to disband them? At that point just seems like moral persecution that isn't accomplishing anything.
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At this point, there ain't much you can do anyway. These people are locked in their circle-jerk of mutual reinforcement and patting each other's back for being so incredibly smart and having that soon-to-be only quality sperm on the planet (hey, even incels have hopes and dreams) and the best you can do is ignore them and wait for Covid to take care of the problem eventually.
The thing is, with every infection you have roughly a 1 in 20 chance to catch long covid or some other lasting symptom that cripples y
Sounds like James Veitch and his entire family (Score:2)
in a single facebook group
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I have three questions (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, it's a free country and if someone thinks their loved one was killed by a vaccine I absolutely think they should be allowed to talk about it without being censored (even though private corporations can legally censor things).
However, I have three questions for these folks:
So yeah, these are rhetorical questions. Let me explain.
The average annual death rate in the United States in 2018 and 2019 was 719 per 100,000 or 0.719%. Since the population is about 328 million, the expected number of deaths in a normal year is roughly 2,358,000, and the expected number of deaths in a typical week is roughly 45,300. This is called the base rate. It's the number of deaths you would expect soon after people literally eat cake, if they eat cake once a year.
Now let's consider that in 2021, 515 million vaccine doses were given to people in the U.S. according to this Covid vaccine tracker [bloomberg.com]. This is much greater than the total population, so the number of deaths from natural causes that we should expect within a week of a vaccine dose is also much higher than the total population - roughly 71,000 if I calculate correctly.
That is, if people at risk of dying of natural causes receive Covid vaccines at the same rate as other people, and if we guess VAERS reports are filed if the death occurs within a week of vaccination, there should be about 71,000 VAERS reports for 2021 in the U.S. How many VAERS reports are there in actuality? According to OpenVAERS, there were 9,763 death reports in 2021 in the U.S. after Covid vaccination.
So... I'm guessing various deaths that occurred more than one day after vaccination were not reported to VAERS, and that some especially sickly people weren't given vaccines because they were expected to die immediately. But the hypothesis that almost all of the deaths reported were "natural causes" is completely supported by the same VAERS data that anti-vaxxers love to talk about.
And guess what? I've listened to various anti-vaxxers for a great many hours, and never once have I heard them talk about base rates, or any synonym thereof. I even tried Googling anti-vaxxer Steve Kirsch's web site. [google.com] No results except one confused commenter asking the other antivaxxers why "the rate of hospitalization and fatality in unvaccinated is higher than that of vaccinated" was a "base rate fallacy" (it's not a base rate fallacy, bub, but if you visit the Wikipedia page for base rate fallacy [wikipedia.org] the diagram at the top about Covid vaccines will blow your mind).
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but if you visit the Wikipedia page for base rate fallacy [wikipedia.org] the diagram at the top about Covid vaccines will blow your mind).
I tried to explain this to a British fellow on this site a few times, as he was obviously falling prey to the fallacy while trying to interpret NHS statistics, there.
I'm good with moving numbers around in my head, so it was obvious to me what was going on, but I'm unfortunately terrible at converting that into a neat picture that clearly demonstrates the system I've got operating in my head.
That picture you mention though- is fucking perfect.
This post should be modded up to the moon.
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All I can say, is you can't let them win. They want you to get tired of pointing out that they're nothing buy slimy fucking weasels trying to alter the perception of reality by their peers into the one that's most comfortable to them. They're waiting for the second you stop so that they can post their shit unchallenged. At tha
Re:Let them eat cake (Score:2)
And obviously, I should have titled that "Let them eat cake".
And you know, I've explained multiple forms of anti-vax base rate fallacy to my anti-vax father and it never had the slightest effect on him, nor did he have any counterargument that I did not address immediately. Nor did my uncle being put on a ventilator, and they dying of Covid, affect his opinion that vaccines are the real threat (my uncle died of a stroke actually, he says. Covid merely distracted the doctors from treating a deadly stroke
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And if there wasn't at the same time a pandemic going on that killed over a million Americans (and counting), your numbers would even mean something.
Dog ate the biscuits (Score:2)
Most social media platforms utterly failed (Score:2)
I think YouTube and Facebook did a reasonable job but Twitter was abysmal. Even today you can see antivax shitheads on Twitter who accumulated tens of thousands of followers throughout the pandemic and Twitter has done nothing to shut them down. In fact an antivaxxer would have to say something egregiously newsworthy and dumb for them to do anything. So far from cracking down on
Just ask a chemist. Please talk to chemists. (Score:3)
As always (Score:2)
Codes (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're speaking in code, then you are not spreading (mis)information to the general public.
You are communicating to people who already know the code, and thus are already aware of and/or already support your philosophy.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Shutting down disinformation is all good and we (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you. The US Government absolutely must not police speech.
Private entities, however, have always enjoyed their right of free agency to tell people that say things they don't like to go fuck themselves off to their own property.
Section 230 (Score:2)
Remember, folk, that it's Section 230 that protects companies' rights to remove misinformation.
Some misguided people want to remove this in the misguided idea that misinfomation is somehow useful speech.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember, folk, that it's Section 230 that protects companies' rights to remove misinformation.
Not quite.
S.230 gives a company immunity from civil suit that seeks to hold them accountable for being accessory to civil tort.
If you remove S.230, it does not make them unable to censor. What it does, is make them liable for any content posted on their site, unless they have zero moderation rules whatsoever.
The result of this will be immediate censoriship of any potentially troublesome text, which is the actual goal, here.
Removal of S.230 means a site must be 4chan, or treat every single post as a pot
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That is the government having Facebook do something government is explicitly prohibited from doing, which is a violation of the Constitution. Just as the police can't ask a PI to violate your 4th Amendment rights, no government agency can ask Facebook to ce
Re: (Score:3)
My employer, when formulating their wellness plan, used the Daily Recommended Calories published the the FDA as their recommended daily food target.
Now, there's 2 ways one could look at that.
One could look at that as:
My private employer has taken something published by the US government, and made the independent and free decision to use said information for its own private uses.
Or,
The GUBMINT is in cahoots wi
Re: (Score:2)
I said to quit comparing a private organization to the US government.
That in itself is on par with the very evil you claim to be afraid of.
Re: (Score:2)
Did your Russian-to-English translator software fuck you there, or are you trying to be clever be calling "rights" a "left"?
Further, asserting a right of free agency scuttles my legitimacy? You're like a real-life fascist, aren't you?
Re:This isn't about science (Score:5, Insightful)
For the love of fucking anything decent in you, stop spreading the misinformation. Just go crawl back into your fucking hole.
Re: (Score:2)
Jesus dude, are you having a stroke? Do you smell the color "orange" right now? You're a kook, and you're spouting kookery that wasn't even cutting edge kookery two years ago.
You are spouting stale kookery, at least give us some new kookery - maybe something about "how corrupt Ukraine is" or "10% for the big guy" or some shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop doing the drugs son. They seem nice now but in a few years when you are an even worse drooling wreck and your family won't take you out of the house you'll regret it.
Me I'm just happy I didn't have to get the vaccine or risk any of the side effects.
Though I do wish I didn't have to have my nose rubbed in how stupid people in my profession can be. Imagine thinking you could go from zero to a completely new product in less than a year without actually testing it.
Of course pretending shit works is nothing
Re: (Score:2)
You keep posting the same bullshit, and you ignore every well-cited post demonstrating that you're wrong.
Your goal is to tire out those who seek to shed light on your lies, so that your misinformation is posted without challenge.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you slimy little insect.
You keep posting the same bullshit, and you ignore every well-cited post demonstrating that you're wrong.
Your goal is to tire out those who seek to shed light on your lies, so that your misinformation is posted without challenge.
Off your meds again?
Look just because you got conned into doing stupid things doesn't mean the whole world will go along with it. You should be thankful to have this warning before you wind up doing something irreversibly idiotic.
You say you proved me a liar? Hey hows Zero Covid doing in China?
Oh while you were locked in your house in Oregon and the benevolent authorities were shutting down everything they could, I was tanning at the beach on ocean drive.
Your brain obviously works better than mine.
Re: (Score:2)
Off your meds again?
Oh shit! Good one !!!!111
Look just because you got conned into doing stupid things doesn't mean the whole world will go along with it. You should be thankful to have this warning before you wind up doing something irreversibly idiotic.
Conned?
Look, if tanning your perineum in peace was worth riding start, lonely red line [ourworldindata.org], then more power to you, buddy.
It's a shame Darwin didn't come for you this time, but I can tell from your demeanor that he will before the end. People as willfully stupid as you just don't get to have old age punched on their ticket. Driving head on into a family returning from their grandmother's funeral while you're shotgunning a beer is far more likely.
You say you proved me a liar? Hey hows Zero Covid doing in China?
What the fuck does that have to do wit
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't lived in Oregon in 20 years.
How fortunate for the people of Oregon.
And let's be honest with each other. There's very little chance you were doing anything than working a deep fryer in some fast food restaurant kept afloat by people like me who needed to eat.
Whatever you have to tell yourself, personally I have no doubt the next time you are honest with me, anyone else or even yourself, it will be the first time.
Your brain obviously works better than mine.
Yes, yes it does.
LOL sure it does. That's why you just had to make up a whole story so you could feel good about being wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
How fortunate for the people of Oregon.
Oh shit, you are SO johnny-on-the-spot with the witty comebacks tonight! Man, your sisterwife must be so impressed with you, big boi!
Whatever you have to tell yourself, personally I have no doubt the next time you are honest with me, anyone else or even yourself, it will be the first time.
Keep walking that line [ourworldindata.org], sad, sad little man.
LOL sure it does. That's why you just had to make up a whole story so you could feel good about being wrong.
What story was made up, my little shitposting trash dweller?
Further, what was I wrong about?
Please, do show everyone how the big internet meany who called you a liar was wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
How fortunate for the people of Oregon.
Oh shit, you are SO johnny-on-the-spot with the witty comebacks tonight! Man, your sisterwife must be so impressed with you, big boi!
Whatever you have to tell yourself, personally I have no doubt the next time you are honest with me, anyone else or even yourself, it will be the first time.
Keep walking that line [ourworldindata.org], sad, sad little man.
Yeah I think I'll just quote your post and leave that as my response. It does a better job than I could demonstrating you have noting but garbage to contribute.
LOL sure it does. That's why you just had to make up a whole story so you could feel good about being wrong.
What story was made up, my little shitposting trash dweller?
Further, what was I wrong about?
Please, do show everyone how the big internet meany who called you a liar was wrong.
If you think that shows you in a good light, shows me in a bad light or helps your case, I am more than willing to let you have the last word.
Re: (Score:2)
Just to shut your shitposting ass up, I'll just give you the standard antivax rebuttal.
The CDC still won't release test data from the Vaccine.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ [foxnews.com]... [foxnews.com]
This is misinformation. [factcheck.org]
The missing clinical data you speak of is missing in nearly all approvals for childhood vaccines. Adult trials are used. They don't generally do clinical trials on fucking kids, you fucking animal.
We knew the vaccine never prevented transmission
Pfizer didn't even bother to test.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfr [newsmax.com]... [newsmax.com]
This is another bit of misinformation. Whoever invented it thought they were clever, but they're not.
The question
Re: (Score:3)
It wasn't meant to show anyone in any light. It was a challenge, one you sidestepped.
Oh it seemed like a child ranting to me. But what the hell I'll let you try to recover some dignity.
Just to shut your shitposting ass up, I'll just give you the standard antivax rebuttal.
The CDC still won't release test data from the Vaccine.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ [foxnews.com]... [foxnews.com]
This is misinformation. [factcheck.org]
Seems your article is leaving something out.
https://www.washingtonexaminer... [washingtonexaminer.com]
A court order that is forcing them into it and that they haven't complied with yet. Well I guess when you want to keep the data for 75 years before showing it to anyone it's going to take work to pry it out.
They actually never will as the Covid vaccines didn't undergo the testing regimes that are required of Novel Vaccines. But what
Re: (Score:2)
Seems your article is leaving something out.
https://www.washingtonexaminer... [www.washin...xaminer...] [washingtonexaminer.com]
A court order that is forcing them into it and that they haven't complied with yet. Well I guess when you want to keep the data for 75 years before showing it to anyone it's going to take work to pry it out.
They actually never will as the Covid vaccines didn't undergo the testing regimes that are required of Novel Vaccines. But what the hell I never worry about other people using beta products.
The article left nothing out.
You're misconstruing what the court case is about. This is SOP for a misinformation peddler.
This case is not about clinical safety data, it's about all information the FDA has on all testing regarding the vaccines.
This is in relation to public comments the FDA made about the vaccine, that it could not back up.
I.e., it asserted that "the Vaccine does not cause changes in the genome of the person who takes it".
The FOIA release will prove that they couldn't really say that. T
Re: (Score:3)
Covid was a "bad flu" no doubt and killed people with lots of chronic illness, which is just like a bad flu in any year.
Your post is at odds with the stories my personal contacts have told me. Covid is more than a bad flu, and the mRNA vaccines seem to help a lot.
I'm not confident I'm going to persuade you that this time, the governments and big pharma were mostly right. However I don't believe it's possible for any organization to pull off the kind of global-scale conspiracy it would take to fake so much evidence that corroborates with the official story. Too many people with divergent interests would have to have been i
Re: (Score:2)
No, the governments and 'big pharma' were partially correct, and even then it was by accident.
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck off, liar. Nothing you said in your post was even remotely true.
Re:The Final Chapter Has Not Been Written! (Score:5, Informative)
There is already enough information from medical groups & researchers to conclude that there was a bunch of BS in the vaccinations, the reporting, the counting of Covid cases and logging of Covid deaths, because of the US Govt. giving bonus payments when a hospital claimed a patient had Covid.
This is a flat-out lie.
I remember when this drivel was making its rounds on FB, though.
This isn't an opinion you formed from your own stable geniusness [khn.org]
.
Moderna's vaccine has been conclusively shown to be nearly worthless & has been banned in many countries.
Another lie, built upon a kernel of truth.
Moderna was paused in several countries for people under (30 in some locations, 12 in others) due to an increased risk in myocarditis (still less than the risk of myocarditis from catching COVID, mind you), and that such people should be administered Pfizer/BioNTech instead.
Side effects of vaccines are real as have over classification of Covid deaths & illnesses as the US Govt. gave increased subsidies to hospitals for patients who had or were stated to have Covid, whether they did or not. That artificially increased the # of Covid cases & deaths because it was profitable for hospitals.
This is just a reformulation of Conspiracy Theory #1.
Yet, the US Government has given immunity to vaccines developed in 6 months time that would normally take 6 years to clear the FDA/CDC guidelines.
This is another lie, built upon yet another kernel of truth.
It is true that without the FDA fasttracking, it would normally take quite a bit longer for such drugs to come to market.
That doesn't however imply that safety testing was not done.
Or that the CDC hasn't had it publicly well documented. [cdc.gov]
The whole Covid response was a mess in my estimation, and the estimation of a lot of lifelong medical researchers and vaccine developers.
Of course it was. And that mess was further compounded by populist swamp dwellers fancying themselves politicians stoking the fears of the ignorant masses, in an attempt to concentrating their fear into power.
The final story on Covid will be written in a book with accurate statistics probably within a year and we will find out how bad the CDC and US Gov't were in their actions & the financial profits which went to some government employees, which was indeed influenced by political operatives who wanted to benefit their side of the "aisle." There is an unverified claim that certain CDC employees profited by owning various vaccine mfgrs stocks & the CDC is silent on this.
What you're going to find out is that a lot of really stupid people pulled themselves out of the gene pool for us, so that people like Trump and Bolsonaro could get headlines.
The statistics in play now make that pretty fucking clear.
Covid was a "bad flu" no doubt and killed people with lots of chronic illness, which is just like a bad flu in any year.
No, it wasn't.
I had 2 family members die of COVID, and I had 2 who are probably permanently on SSDI, now.
I personally had it, and ya, it could be characterized as the worst flu I ever had (while my wife seemed to skate right through it), the fact is, it was a disease that killed people at a much higher rate than any flu normally does.
The US is sitting at 1.06M deaths from COVID in 2 years, which is about 10 years of flu deaths for us, per covid year- and that was with the extensive countermeasures taken, that have not coincidentally reduced flu deaths during the COVID years to zero in some c
Re:of course (Score:5, Interesting)
A person who is not vaccinated is at a higher risk of becoming infected with COVID.
A person who is infected with COVID is at a higher risk (100%, in fact) of spreading COVID to you than someone who is not.
This means that people working with you who are not vaccinated are a statistically higher risk to the safety of your workforce than those who are vaccinated.
Let's imagine that you've got a disorder that has left you dangerously immunodeficient.
Let's imagine that you've just ended up in the hospital, unable to breathe.
You're a few shreds of airborne RNA surrounded in a envelope of lipids away from certain death.
Should that doctor be vaccinated for influenza?
Ya, he fucking should be. If not, he shouldn't be treating your weak ass.
Is demanding that he be such fascism? Of course it isn't, you fucking idiot.
This isn't Kristallnacht, or Dachau, you intellectually dishonest sheet of pond scum.
Policy in the US has been that, except in exceptional circumstances, an employer can mandate vaccination (though they shouldn't, unless they have a very good reason to).
This isn't fascism. It's being fucking rational.
Trying to dilute the meaning of that word makes me wonder what your real goals are.
Makes me wonder if you are in fact a fascist yourself, like one of the fuckers at Charlottesville who roll their eyes and smile while they say Nazis are bad for the cameras.
Re: Get rid of the Democrats (Score:3)
It makes zero difference to anyone else but you.
This is a lie. The reasons why are known, I suspect even by you. More people vaccinated means less disease everywhere, for less long, thus better protecting those who cannot be vaccinated. Less people vaccinated means more care needed, thus more burden on the healthcare system as a whole.