…from the NY Times…..
When the coronavirus surfaced last year, no one was prepared for it to invade every aspect of daily life for so long, so insidiously. The pandemic has forced Americans to wrestle with life-or-death choices every day of the past 18 months — and there’s no end in sight.
Scientific understanding of the virus changes by the hour, it seems. The virus spreads only by close contact or on contaminated surfaces, then turns out to be airborne. The virus mutates slowly, but then emerges in a series of dangerous new forms. Americans don’t need to wear masks. Wait, they do.
At no point in this ordeal has the ground beneath our feet seemed so uncertain. In just the past week, federal health officials said they would begin offering booster shots to all Americans in the coming months. Days earlier, those officials had assured the public that the vaccines were holding strong against the Delta variant of the virus, and that boosters would not be necessary.
As early as Monday, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to formally approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which has already been given to scores of millions of Americans. Some holdouts found it suspicious that the vaccine was not formally approved yet somehow widely dispensed. For them, “emergency authorization” has never seemed quite enough.
Americans are living with science as it unfolds in real time. The process has always been fluid, unpredictable. But rarely has it moved at this speed, leaving citizens to confront research findings as soon as they land at the front door, a stream of deliveries that no one ordered and no one wants.
Is a visit to my ailing parent too dangerous? Do the benefits of in-person schooling outweigh the possibility of physical harm to my child? Will our family gathering turn into a superspreader event?
Living with a capricious enemy has been unsettling even for researchers, public health officials and journalists who are used to the mutable nature of science. They, too, have frequently agonized over the best way to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.
But to frustrated Americans unfamiliar with the circuitous and often contentious path to scientific discovery, public health officials have seemed at times to be moving the goal posts and flip-flopping, or misleading, even lying to, the country….
…
What researchers have not done is explain, in ways that the average person can understand, that this is how science has always worked.
The public disagreements and debates played out in public, instead of at obscure conferences, give the false impression that science is arbitrary or that scientists are making things up as they go along.
“What a non-scientist or the layperson doesn’t realize is that there is a huge bolus of information and consensus that the two people who are arguing will agree upon,” Dr. Sever said.
Is it really so surprising, then, that Americans feel bewildered and bamboozled, even enraged, by rapidly changing rules that have profound implications for their lives?….
One way to conquer uncertainty is for everyone to be vaccinated. Are you James?
James, please answer the question: Are you vaccinated?
This is way too simplified.
When you have between a third and a half of the country believing in all sorts of conspiracies, believing ,without any evidence whatsoever ,that the presidential election was stolen from the obvious loser and that the scientists and doctors are in cahoots against them?
Is it any wonder we are in the fix we are in?
And anyone who believes that FDA approval of this vaccine is going to have any effect among the anti Vaccine Republicans is a damn fool.
Don’t you get it?The FDA is part of the “conspiracy!”
Fox Vews pushed the idea that a dewormer for horses and cattle could be a solution for Covid-19. As a result of this “reporting”, quite a few people from Mississippi and Alabama (in particular) landed in the hospital.
The USA has serious problems with what is allowed to appear on news shows. The situation is totally out of control.
Final FDA approval won’t win over die-hard members of The Cult.
But it should be helpful in persuading the persuadable, those often-apolitical folks (whom many of us knwo) who hesitate because of vague and inarticulate doubts about the vaccine’s safety. So the final approval (to be followed soon, I hope, by final approval of the other safe and effective vaccines) is quite valuable.
That is, of course, so long as people are sensitive and tactful enough not to berate or belabour the unvaxed with told-ya-so harangues such “See, the government and the CDC and the MSM were right, stupid; so what feeble, dumb excuse do you have for your social irresponsibility?”
For members of The Cult, however, the FDA is just part of the Conspiracy, together with that arch-villain, “Dr.” Anthony Fauci, peddler of death.
¶ A Harvard professor’s systematic study of how Covid misinformation spreads from the fringes, and what lethal myths to expect will gain wider currency soon.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/23/business/harvard-professor-predicted-covid-disinformation-web-heres-what-may-be-coming-next/
Every day around 9 p.m., Joan Donovan bids her wife good night, heads into her home office — which she calls the “dungeon” — and binges white supremacist videos and conspiracy theories on YouTube.
Donovan’s nightly ritual, which often lasts until 2 a.m., is difficult but essential to her research at Harvard Kennedy School. At a time when false claims around COVID-19 and politics are running rampant, the former punk-rocker from Saugus has been able to predict what types of disinformation will travel from the darkest corners of the Internet to — in some cases — the highest levels of the US government.
She was one of the first researchers to predict medical disinformation would upend the fight against COVID. She also saw xenophobia associated with the pandemic on an alt-right YouTube show, weeks before former President Trump called it the “China Virus.” And at 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 6, the day pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol, she warned on Twitter that “today we will witness the full break of the MAGA movement from representative politics.”
Now, she has a broader warning: If Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media companies don’t change their algorithms, any number of recent lies spreading online could take hold in the next few months and threaten the national discourse around the pandemic recovery, climate change, and racial inequality.
“Tech companies have built a system in which people spread misinformation so much further, so much faster, and in such higher velocities, that fighting it is like bringing a garden hose to a 30-story building that’s on fire,” Donovan said in an interview. “We need updated regulations that would ensure protection for the public interest.”…
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/08/23/business/harvard-professor-predicted-covid-disinformation-web-heres-what-may-be-coming-next/
Good job…..
But regulation isn’t gonna work in this country
Especially with the Trump stuff ipening the doors for reality bending
Remember Rebeka in Florida giving the virus numbers?
They went after her to silence the reports
Then?
As the recent post here points to?
Things from the experts change as more is found out
Bit Yes
Deliberate misinformation IS WRONG and dangerous
Good post Dave.
“Regulation isn’t going to work in this country.” Even the most impractical Republicans believe in some regulations. I thought everyone knew that! That doesn’t mean that many regulations are unnecessary, but it is equally true that there is a need for some regulations that don’t currently exist. The challenging part is determining when they are needed.
The challenge would be enacting them in the first place…..
And we DO have TONS of regulations
But the ones against what u say out loud have limits….
This IS America
Lies and all
Witness the last 4 years, eh?
It’s not u Z
It’s just the advent of social media makes it almost impossible to ‘regulate’ shit online……
Toooo many avenues
The trade-in for the internet has resulted in the wild west like social media
Other countries impose regulations and apply fines. We can too.
We’re JUST talking about America
Right, the US has the benefit of economies of scale so that it is relatively cheaper to monitor here than in other countries. So, if they can do it, we should be able to do it better, much better, and at a lower per capita cost.
Sorta ‘Big Brother’ and 1984 rolled togther?
Whose gonna check on them?
Character matters. I just don’t want to live in a society where the media can blatantly lie and get away with it. And right now, the media is out of control. Almost half the country isn’t vaccinated and some people are buying de-wormers as a response to COVID-19.
At what point are things out of control? Would you even know?
I agree with u Z
But the media is and shall remain free to run its own show
It’s a ‘First Amendment’ thing
The good, bad, ugly snd yes sometimes lies….
It just ‘is’
Free speech has limits and it must. People are dying because others are lying.
I never met someone who so often would admit (or at least claim to admit) That the status quo has problems, but have no intention to try to fix them.
Is there any way I can post here without expecting to get repeated condescending comments from you? No one likes this type of back and forth. How about if I don’t reply to you, and you don’t reply to me? As long as you don’t lie (the thing you are demanding that you have the right to do), and we don’t talk to each other, we should get along fine.
Z..
Ur comments ARE YOU OWN…..
They stand free and clear as ur view just Jack ‘s stand to mine…
Just like me?
Ya give and ya gotta take…..
It how things work
Ah Z?
You got MAJOR Props for ur inflation prediction……
THAT don’t count?
We defer to u on financial stuff
THAT don’t count either?
James is the type guy who believes it’s ok to yell “fire” in a crowded theater.
“Free speech” and all that.