Coronavirus COVID-19 Thread

[NaffNaffBobFace]

COVID Corner - Some reports from some news outlets from today, Saturday 18th of September:

- World: Global Confirmed 227,860,623 Global Deaths 4,682,527

- US: Confirmed 42,012,046

- UK: Holiday bookings surge after travel rules change

- UK: Ronapreve: 'Most vulnerable' to get new Covid drug next week

- Australia: Victoria police and anti-lockdown protesters in violent clashes

- Singapore: Singapore records highest daily case increase since April 2020

- Anti-vaxx: Nike and Amazon among brands advertising on Covid conspiracy sites

 

[Jolly_Green_Giant]

- Anti-vaxx: Nike and Amazon among brands advertising on Covid conspiracy sites

I never understood the big deal with stuff like this. Not just the websites mentioned, but all over the internet. Who cares where you see ads? Not once does it cross my mind that the stupid ad I see on the internet means they fully endorse whatever shitty site I'm visiting. I strongly dislike this hypercritical stance on seemingly everything permeating through our society. It's like Chinese water torture, all the small things add up and its enough to drive a person crazy. Catering to the highest sensitivities in the name of progress with no end in sight. Our world is drastically different from what it was 20 years ago, where do you think stuff like this is going to get us 20 years from now? Advertisers wont want to advertise on anything but sesame street, and I'm sure someone would even complain about that. Its all turning into a nontheistic religion, its the same thing that pissed me off as a kid with bible thumping christians except the people in this new religion won't admit they're part of it. Original sin. Repent. Excommunicate the heretics. Dogmatism at its finest. Trust us we know what's best for you.


/rant.

 

[Montoya]

Anti-vaxx: Nike and Amazon among brands advertising on Covid conspiracy sites

In their defense, non of these companies do 100% of their own online marketing. Their budget is farmed out to marketing firm A who then sends a portion of marketing firm B, who then sends a portion of marketing firm C and so on to ten or even 20 levels deeper from there.

 

[Montoya]

Who cares where you see ads?

We all should, because if your incentive to spread anti-vax information was a financial one based off traffic, then these ads pay your bills. How many people have died because of some crap they read on a site like that?

Take away the financial incentive to spread misinformation and actual lives will be saved.

 

[Jolly_Green_Giant]

We all should, because if your incentive to spread anti-vax information was a financial one based off traffic, then these ads pay your bills. How many people have died because of some crap they read on a site like that?

Take away the financial incentive to spread misinformation and actual lives will be saved.

I hold the unpopular opinion that people should be allowed to speak freely even if its misinformation. I don't care what it is, I believe everyone and I mean everyone should be able to speak as freely as anyone else regardless of how it affects peoples lives. I never think to myself "man I really wish I could force someone to shut the fuck up" because I would want the same liberty of speech afforded to me. Would I love for a lot of people to shut the fuck up? Of course, but im not going to cross that line and start policing peoples speech, written or otherwise. Imagine shutting down speakers corner in hyde park because someone there is spreading disinformation.

I understand where you're coming from speaking on the financial incentives involved, but me? Trying to get them shut down for misinformation just goes against something I value deeply. The idea, not the legislation, but the idea of absolute free speech is something I was raised with.

Now, with that said, if you feel strongly one way or another and wish to do something about it, such as pulling advertisements from a site that doesnt represent your values, then by all means do what you have to do to effect change. I just know I'm in no position to police anyone for the things they write or say, I don't like the idea and it upsets me. I understand peoples concerns with "dangerous" speech, but I also wish to speak freely myself no matter the circumstances.

I'm not writing out a novel to go into the details, to keep it short I do understand we have laws to protect people from harassment and the such but thats a different conversation.

 

[Montoya]

I hold the unpopular opinion that people should be allowed to speak freely even if its misinformation. I don't care what it is, I believe everyone and I mean everyone should be able to speak as freely as anyone else regardless of how it affects peoples lives.

Being Jewish, I strongly disagree.

How fucking stupid are we as a species if we can't look back at recent history and see the path that can lead us down?

The reason you don't care is because misinformation, lies or bad propaganda has not affected you directly. If half your family dropped dead from COVID because of facebook memes, would you feel differently or would you still maintain your position?

Misinformation is like delicious chocolate covered crack to a populace that uneducated, ignorant, angry or scared. Just tell them their way of life and rights are being threatened, paint the target on "the other" which are unpatriotic, evil blood drinking child killers that want to destroy your country. It works every fucking time, for thousands of years, every fucking time, all the way back to the Roman empire.

I will actively shut down, delete, remove and edit away any misinformation, lies and half truths that could result in another person harming themselves or others.

Social media is a relatively new invention and half the country are not mentally evolved enough to be able to differentiate between a 4chan meme and reality.

The adults in the room need to take charge before 40% of the fuckers in the country kill themselves trying to prove that their facebook memes are rooted in reality.

 

[Montoya]

If anybody thinks Im being hyperbolic in that we need to protect idiots from themselves, which I feel is a fucking patriotic thing to do for your fellow countrymen:

This is Sherry, she unironically reposts this to her facebook:

Most of you here will be able to spot the misinformation, error or lie in almost every line of that.

Unfortunately, there are thousands that will not bother to fact check any of that because a friend liked the post, and they trust that friend to be smart, so therefor it is all fact.

Sherry does her research, she has a even has a news channel which gives her the "real" truth!

Unfortunately a series of poor decisions lead to her to an untimely death from something which was probably 99.9% preventable if she just got her shot:

 

[Jolly_Green_Giant]

@Montoya if you put it that way, then yeah i probably would think differently if it was my family. I did think about the third reich and what allowing those ideas to propagate meant, along with any other horrific person who persuaded millions to their own demise. I just don't know man. I don't expect you to stop what you're doing, and if its within your power to do so I'm sure you do it with good purpose. To me free speech was always just a ruleset of the game of life. Built in, unchangeable, transcending any opinion or law. What am I supposed to do with my values if I do not think about affording everyone else the same right? This is something my mind can be changed on, because this really does reach something deep with me and I really truly do see where you're coming from. How am I supposed to see true free speech for myself as inalienable while also saying everyone else is not entitled to the same. Then, its no longer a right, its a privilege afforded to you by other individuals. That is fine for a lot of other things, but not for free speech, to me anyways. Opening my mouth or putting my thoughts on paper should flow freely. That makes me think of all the terrible things i could say or think and show the world. Should I have that much freedom? I place the burden on society to tolerate my thoughts and emotions, but I do not hold them responsible. I just don't want to be a hypocrite.

I don't want the wrong people silencing people. Think about all the people who have lived in this world in days past, present, and will come to be in the future. What if in the future you get another person who defines peoples culture, who has the support of the majority to start silencing anyone they please. It may be a completely different moral framework than your own, and the people can believe from the deepest depths of their souls that they're doing the right thing. But what if theyre wrong? What if genocide is a good idea to them too? They could rise to power through silencing the minority. I know im going off into a story here but im really trying to convey how I feel about this. If you start silencing everyone whos to stop someone from silencing you? "why would I be silenced, I know I'm doing the right thing". You see where im going with this? I could just say fuck it you're right but I want you to see why I'm conflicted on this. I think its a rational position.

 

[Radegast74]

I hold the unpopular opinion that people should be allowed to speak freely even if its misinformation. I don't care what it is, I believe everyone and I mean everyone should be able to speak as freely as anyone else regardless of how it affects peoples lives.

The problem is that, nowadays, "misinformation" is being weaponized by bad actors, with their own agenda, to further their own gains. It would be one thing if it was the "old-fashioned" misinformation taht we have always faced all through history, but now everything has changed with the internet.

I'm not going to go into too much detail, because it gets politiical really quickly, but through a combination of the internet & sites like Fecebook, *foreign* countries intent on unraveling our society and way of life can, and are, using internet platforms to reach out and influence people, not for anybody's good, but for the nefarious purposes of the foreign bad actors.

The core of the problem is that repeatedly seeing a false message actually leads people to believe it is true! See

Illusory truth effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I just saw this yesterday, it provides some really good background info. Unfortunately, all we can do is study what has happened in the past, we can't really get a grip on what is happening now, but I suspect there hasn't been much of a change, other than the particular websites/trollfarms:

Facebook forced troll farm content on over 40% of all Americans each month

Report blames Facebook’s prioritization of engagement over all else.

arstechnica.com

This link below has the review of the internal Facebook report, where they studied the problem themselves:

Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows

“This is not normal. This is not healthy.”

www.technologyreview.com

Troll farms—professionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content, often propaganda, to social networks—were still building massive audiences by running networks of Facebook pages. Their content was reaching 140 million US users per month—75% of whom had never followed any of the pages. They were seeing the content because Facebook’s content-recommendation system had pushed it into their news feeds.

The report found that troll farms were reaching the same demographic groups singled out by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 election, which had targeted Christians, Black Americans, and Native Americans. A 2018 BuzzFeed News investigation found that at least one member of the Russian IRA, indicted for alleged interference in the 2016 US election, had also visited Macedonia around the emergence of its first troll farms, though it didn’t find concrete evidence of a connection. (Facebook said its investigations hadn’t turned up a connection between the IRA and Macedonian troll farms either.)

Remember --> this is an internal Facebook report...they know their own numbers! See below for how bad it gets:

Its revelations include:

• As of October 2019, around 15,000 Facebook pages with a majority US audience were being run out of Kosovo and Macedonia, known bad actors during the 2016 election.
• Collectively, those troll-farm pages—which the report treats as a single page for comparison purposes—reached 140 million US users monthly and 360 million global users weekly. Walmart’s page reached the second-largest US audience at 100 million.
• The troll farm pages also combined to form:
  • the largest Christian American page on Facebook, 20 times larger than the next largest—reaching 75 million US users monthly, 95% of whom had never followed any of the pages.

I left that last bit in there to emphasize --> even if a person doesn't want to see misinformation, they are getting it shoved in their face. At a certain point, even if you never had formed an opinion, the effect of seeing "misinformation" over and over (&over&over) probably would lead to an average person thinking it was true. Based on some of the weird, weird stuff I see both on the internet and IRL, this is getting really, really bad for us.

 

[Jolly_Green_Giant]

The problem is that, nowadays, "misinformation" is being weaponized by bad actors, with their own agenda, to further their own gains. It would be one thing if it was the "old-fashioned" misinformation taht we have always faced all through history, but now everything has changed with the internet.

I'm not going to go into too much detail, because it gets politiical really quickly, but through a combination of the internet & sites like Fecebook, *foreign* countries intent on unraveling our society and way of life can, and are, using internet platforms to reach out and influence people, not for anybody's good, but for the nefarious purposes of the foreign bad actors.

The core of the problem is that repeatedly seeing a false message actually leads people to believe it is true! See

Illusory truth effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I just saw this yesterday, it provides some really good background info. Unfortunately, all we can do is study what has happened in the past, we can't really get a grip on what is happening now, but I suspect there hasn't been much of a change, other than the particular websites/trollfarms:

Facebook forced troll farm content on over 40% of all Americans each month

Report blames Facebook’s prioritization of engagement over all else.

arstechnica.com

This link below has the review of the internal Facebook report, where they studied the problem themselves:

Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows

“This is not normal. This is not healthy.”

www.technologyreview.com

Remember --> this is an internal Facebook report...they know their own numbers! See below for how bad it gets:

I left that last bit in there to emphasize --> even if a person doesn't want to see misinformation, they are getting it shoved in their face. At a certain point, even if you never had formed an opinion, the effect of seeing "misinformation" over and over (&over&over) probably would lead to an average person thinking it was true. Based on some of the weird, weird stuff I see both on the internet and IRL, this is getting really, really bad for us.

I see your point and thanks for putting all this together. The misinformation is hyperreal and it does make it different than days past. In your face, 24/7/365, you're right. Montoya is right as well by saying that it doesnt really affect me. I can for the most part distinguish truth from fantasy but that doesnt mean everyone else can. It still causes an internal conflict because its just a hard pill to swallow, not in the sense that it bothers me, it just makes me have to think about the compatibility of my values with today's society. I feel I am doing the right thing by standing by my position on principle, but I really do see the points you and montoya are making. I told montoya the other day I was in Denial. I don't want to believe every news article that comes my way with this caricature they create of the dumb misinformed hard headed people we keep seeing. The news is ridiculously sensational and as you mentioned, its 24/7 in your face, so I have a tendency to want to ignore it. The stories may be true, but the headlines can be misleading and they sometimes just bury the lead. I haven't had Facebook in years, so I don't really see all of the shitty posts you all see. Facebook is another rage bait machine, so I just dismiss anything I see from there.

Ill figure this out. I know you guys are right, and I clearly see why. But as I said earlier these have been my values all my life, and I think for good reason. These are unprecedented times and I guess its best to learn to adapt.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

I haven't had Facebook in years, so I don't really see all of the shitty posts you all see. Facebook is another rage bait machine, so I just dismiss anything I see from there.

My honest opinion is in the old days (have been with The Facebook since about 2007?) I used to get something out of the User/FB relationship. I used to be able to use it as a communication system and they used to get my data to analyse in return. Feels like a very one-way relationship now where I'm not getting half of what I used to get out of it.

The pandemic was the last nail in the coffin for my account. The being fed almost nothing but ads and promoted pages, the redesign that fed me almost nothing but ads and promoted pages but then tried to palm it off as my fault for only seeing that nonsense because I didn't know/have hours to invest in knowing which settings to switch to make it magically okay again... and then to mostly only see Pandemic Bullshit posts from the people I did have as friends on there? Nope. Back away slowly.

...I still go on once every couple of months to see if all of the stupid has warn off yet, and I basically look like this:

Do you notice how coming out of the hedge a little smile appears and then vanishes as one retreats back in again?

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

COVID Corner - Some reports from some news outlets from today, Sunday 19th of September:

- World: Global Confirmed 228,346,288 Global Deaths 4,689,258.

- US: Chris Rock reveals he has coronavirus and urges people to get vaccinated

- Turkmenistan: Getting Covid in a land where no cases officially exist

 

[Jolly_Green_Giant]

My honest opinion is in the old days (have been with The Facebook since about 2007?) I used to get something out of the User/FB relationship. I used to be able to use it as a communication system and they used to get my data to analyse in return. Feels like a very one-way relationship now where I'm not getting half of what I used to get out of it.

The pandemic was the last nail in the coffin for my account. The being fed almost nothing but ads and promoted pages, the redesign that fed me almost nothing but ads and promoted pages but then tried to palm it off as my fault for only seeing that nonsense because I didn't know/have hours to invest in knowing which settings to switch to make it magically okay again... and then to mostly only see Pandemic Bullshit posts from the people I did have as friends on there? Nope. Back away slowly.

...I still go on once every couple of months to see if all of the stupid has warn off yet, and I basically look like this:

Do you notice how coming out of the hedge a little smile appears and then vanishes as one retreats back in again?

Ha, I feel you man. Luckily I even missed the pandemic stuff. I think it was 2018 since I last used it. My biggest thing was the false reality people were creating. Id rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not. Like you said, Facebook was nice when it was just talking civilly with friends and family but then one day for me it was like something snapped and everything was different. It was a slow boil, and it finally boiled over.

Instead of checking on it once in a while, just ask the people you really care for for their numbers and then delete your account. I don't think you'll regret it.

 

[Bambooza]

The problem is that, nowadays, "misinformation" is being weaponized by bad actors, with their own agenda, to further their own gains. It would be one thing if it was the "old-fashioned" misinformation taht we have always faced all through history, but now everything has changed with the internet.

I'm not going to go into too much detail, because it gets politiical really quickly, but through a combination of the internet & sites like Fecebook, *foreign* countries intent on unraveling our society and way of life can, and are, using internet platforms to reach out and influence people, not for anybody's good, but for the nefarious purposes of the foreign bad actors.

The core of the problem is that repeatedly seeing a false message actually leads people to believe it is true! See

Illusory truth effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I just saw this yesterday, it provides some really good background info. Unfortunately, all we can do is study what has happened in the past, we can't really get a grip on what is happening now, but I suspect there hasn't been much of a change, other than the particular websites/trollfarms:

Facebook forced troll farm content on over 40% of all Americans each month

Report blames Facebook’s prioritization of engagement over all else.

arstechnica.com

This link below has the review of the internal Facebook report, where they studied the problem themselves:

Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows

“This is not normal. This is not healthy.”

www.technologyreview.com

Remember --> this is an internal Facebook report...they know their own numbers! See below for how bad it gets:

I left that last bit in there to emphasize --> even if a person doesn't want to see misinformation, they are getting it shoved in their face. At a certain point, even if you never had formed an opinion, the effect of seeing "misinformation" over and over (&over&over) probably would lead to an average person thinking it was true. Based on some of the weird, weird stuff I see both on the internet and IRL, this is getting really, really bad for us.

It is political but not sure how this is new. History is filled with propaganda, state agents working towards "miss-information" and the very lack of information sharing leading to tribal knowledge. In fact, I would go so far as to say that tribal knowledge while the medium it is shared through has changed the presents of tribal truths has not. There has always been a battle over the propagation of truth and the tools used to distort it. Even in this forum, there is a tendency to only report on the facts that continue to support one's views and the convenient ignoring of truths that are inconvenient.

How easy it would be to take the Isreal study that shows Natural immunity has a statistical significance in protecting against covid then vaccine immunity. Nothing about this statement is false but it does not show the whole picture it lacks context and relevance in the fact that while it is true those who have had covid are now more protected than those who had the vaccine it misses the fact that if you take two groups of people who have not had covid expose one to covid to generate the natural immunity, vaccinate the second then reinfect both groups the total deaths in the first group would be significantly higher then the second due to the first infection death risk. But even this does not cover everything as the Isreal study does point to a benefit to those under the age of 40 with no medical risk factors in fact benefiting from natural immunity over vaccine immunity. In all honesty, the truth is in the details even within the mainstream media they do not necessarily lie but they do omit lots of details or simply do not report on areas and have become far more option prices and what they think their customers need to hear then bastions of truth-telling.

And @Jolly_Green_Giant is right there is an adherent risk in the filtering and censoring of people. Even when they are spreading misleading and lies it's far more beneficial to either let them be and show them to be the charlatan they are than it is to attempt at any sort of censoring. For as much as your think, it's for the benefit of society and used for good it never stays that way. The best way to think about it is what would be the damage done if the opposing party had this same power and used it? How would it impact you if they got to decided what is true and what is censored?

Remember in my example with the Isreal study both statements were true.

 

[CitizenDad]

View: https://youtu.be/cpc5lOXH1Js

 

[Radegast74]

It is political but not sure how this is new. History is filled with propaganda,

I really don't have time to explain every idea or thought in a post, but since you seemed to miss the gist, maybe I ran by the idea too fast.

Below is a picture of an RV at the beach this morning...I circled in yellow what I would call the "old-fashioned misinformation" that has been going on since time immemorial. Calling your political rivals child-molesters was probably old in Roman times. But in the old days, if you had a weirdo view, you were really marginalized. It would be really, really difficult to find others who thought the same way as you (depending on your geographic location, your exact circumstances, etc.).

When I say "really, really" difficult, what I mean is, by comparison with the reality of today and the internet. See the highlighted circle in orange (the risky click of the day...). Now, anybody with any weirdo view can set up an internet page, and not only meet and converse with other weirdos, but, spend the entire day immersing themselves in their weirdness. Then after immersing themselves, just sit, simmer and stew in really, really weird ideas. And follow other links and Facebook pages to other weird ideas (or, even weirder ideas)...The opportunities for a bad actor are not only order of magnitudes greater, but orders of magnitude *easier*.

Quick example...Tokyo Rose was the Japanese propaganda tool in WWII...how many people on the US mainland actually listened to her, or were able to listen to her? In today's day and age, she would have bunches of Facebook pages, Twitter handles, etc., and would be regularly seen by a much larger number of people.

 

[Bambooza]

I really don't have time to explain every idea or thought in a post, but since you seemed to miss the gist, maybe I ran by the idea too fast.

Below is a picture of an RV at the beach this morning...I circled in yellow what I would call the "old-fashioned misinformation" that has been going on since time immemorial. Calling your political rivals child-molesters was probably old in Roman times. But in the old days, if you had a weirdo view, you were really marginalized. It would be really, really difficult to find others who thought the same way as you (depending on your geographic location, your exact circumstances, etc.).

When I say "really, really" difficult, what I mean is, by comparison with the reality of today and the internet. See the highlighted circle in orange (the risky click of the day...). Now, anybody with any weirdo view can set up an internet page, and not only meet and converse with other weirdos, but, spend the entire day immersing themselves in their weirdness. Then after immersing themselves, just sit, simmer and stew in really, really weird ideas. And follow other links and Facebook pages to other weird ideas (or, even weirder ideas)...The opportunities for a bad actor are not only order of magnitudes greater, but orders of magnitude *easier*.

Quick example...Tokyo Rose was the Japanese propaganda tool in WWII...how many people on the US mainland actually listened to her, or were able to listen to her? In today's day and age, she would have bunches of Facebook pages, Twitter handles, etc., and would be regularly seen by a much larger number of people.

View attachment 21375

Then there was Satire, witchdoctors, and snake oil.

No, I got your point and I don't agree with it. While it seems that information and indeed information we don't agree with propagates quickly, so does truth. The only thing that has changed is the speed of communications and in some way, the amount of information has become overbearing (information overload) but the formation of groups, groupthink, tribal affiliation, and such is still the same. While it seems tribe members can communicate and reach others far quicker it's debatable and I think misses the reality of history and how the past is scattered with this.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

COVID Corner - Some reports from some news outlets from today, Monday 20th of September:

- World: Global Confirmed 228,688,628 Global Deaths 4,694,578

- Australia: Violence at vaccine protest closes Melbourne sites

- UK: Scotland, Shielders get 'lower vaccine protection'

- Ireland: Covid disinformation at Irish hospital condemned

- New Zealand: New Zealand: Auckland to move out of level 4 lockdown

- UK: Trials begin in Manchester for new Covid drug

- Vaccines: Pfizer vaccine safe for children aged 5-11, drugs company says

- China: China reports 49 new cases, down from 66 the day before

- India: India is to restart exporting Covid vaccines from next month

- UK: UK lockdown led to a huge fall in teen pregnancies

- Cambodia: Researchers are collecting samples from bats in northern Cambodia in an attempt to understand the coronavirus pandemic returning to a region where a very similar virus was found in the animals a decade ago.

UK records 36,100 new cases – as it happened

Thanks for following along – this blog is now closed. You can catch up with the latest coronavirus coverage here.

www.theguardian.com

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

COVID Corner - Some reports from some news outlets from today, Tuesday 21st of September:

World: Global Confirmed 229,256,381 Global Deaths 4,703,757.

- US: Covid-19 has now killed as many Americans as the 1918-19 flu pandemic

- UK: Mask-wearing on public transport sees big drop to just 20%

- New Zealand: Men caught smuggling KFC into lockdown-hit Auckland

- Germany: German petrol station worker killed after face mask row

- UK: England: 100,000 children off school with Covid or suspected Covid in one day last week

- Vaccines: Johnson and Johnson booster shot gives ‘94% protection’

- Nigeria: Around 20% of workers in Nigeria have lost their jobs as a result of COVID-19

- Finland: Finland’s government has approved plans for a national “corona pass”.

- UN: The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, described the world as getting an “F in ethics” over global vaccine distribution.

- UK/US: British prime minister Boris Johnson has been telling US media that “sweet reasoning” and “persuasion” were behind the high take up of the Covid vaccination in the UK.

US Covid deaths reach average of 1,900 a day – as it happened

Thanks for following along – this blog is now closed. You can catch up with the latest coronavirus coverage here.

www.theguardian.com

 

[PeppaPigKilla]

- UK: UK lockdown led to a huge fall in teen pregnancies

lol