LegalInsurrection blog links to the latest twiiter expose on how discussions about covid were censored by a think tank.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi examined Stanford University’s ‘Virality Project,’ which was ostensibly meant to combat “disinformation.” Actually, however, it appears to have targeted COVID content that ran counter to the establishment narrative.
So a private thinktank, not a government interfering with free speech, right?
Uh... NO.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey...described the program: Federal health officials in the Surgeon General’s Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Human Services collaborated in a “censorship enterprise called the Virality Project, which procures the censorship of enormous quantities of First Amendment-protected speech.”
Disinformation warriors worked overtime to suppress “false” claims about the side effects of COVID vaccine, especially the true claims. Since the Food and Drug Administration officially (and speedily) approved COVID vaccines, any reports of side effects were automatically disinformation.
The Virality Project recommended that social-media companies suppress “stories of true vaccine side effects” and “true posts which could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy.” The project “routinely framed real testimonials about [vaccine] side effects as misinformation, from ‘true stories’ of blood clots from AstraZeneca vaccines to a New York Times story about vaccine recipients who contracted the blood disorder thrombocytopenia.”
there is a long line of twitter posts, links, and refernces.
This would barely be acceptable if Covid was a severe disase (think smallpox or plague), but in today's world, it has larger implications.
44.To recap: America’s information mission went from counterterrorism abroad, to stopping “foreign interference” from reaching domestic audiences, to 80% domestic content, much of it true. The “Disinformation Governance Board” is out; but truth-policing is not.
Now alas the crazies will say conspiracy theory.
Nuances are important: Which is why one needs free speech. By censoring free speech, you let the crazies and paranoids think they were right.
and one of the results is a loss of trust in the medical community, and in vaccines which save millions of lives but do have side effects that could kill a small number of people.
So do you stop people from spreading conspiracy theories that could result in hundreds dying, or do you use the power of the government to censor such talk?
We saw this dilemma here in the Philippines, with the debacle over the dengue vaccine, which was given to thousands of poor children at risk from that disease.
The Dengue vaccine here in the Philippines had side effects that made getting complicated dengue more common, and probably killed a dozen kids (alJ says many more died ).
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as the film reports: the bad publicity from these deaths resulted in a lack of trust in other vaccines, and as a result dozens of kids dying of measles, etc.
So by the time Covid came around, one would suspect people would not get the vaccine. But that was not true, in part because a lot of us knew people who died of covid: not the elderly (elderly deaths are considered normal) but of the young and healthy middle age folk.
But once the omicron varient started, herd immunity meant the death rate was down, and not a lot of people are getting boosters, although they are still giving it to kids.
Our case load is low: But I suspect that it is because no one is being tested unless they are sick enough to go to the hospital.
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