Headlines that signal that the story will be misleading and/or stupid

[arthwollipot]

Those of us who regularly watch Colbert and Seth Myers have known about the "unified Reich" thing for a couple of weeks now.

[Meadmaker]

Those of us who regularly watch Colbert and Seth Myers have known about the "unified Reich" thing for a couple of weeks now.

One of the annoying things about the MS feed is that they rerun a lot of stories. In the "news" feed, you can get things that are days or even weeks old.



Today's helping of stupid comes from USA Today:

"COVID guidelines caused millions to suffer. Now Fauci admits 'there was no science behind it.'"

I'm really confident Fauci didn't say that.

Actually, I read this article already, but I knew what to expect. During congressional testimony, Fauci used those words when describing the "6 feet rule". What it was obvious he meant, and which he clarified later, was that there was no clinical trial that measured virus transmission rates based on exact distance.

It was, as Mr. Spock said in Star Trek IV, a guess. Except I hated that portion of that movie, because estimates aren't guesses.

Anyway, the headline writer wants you to believe that everything done to prevent Covid transmission, whether it was masks, lockdowns, six feet rules, or anything else, was all a bunch of rubbish that Fauci made up. Of course, that's nonsense. The actual text of the article is only slightly better.

[Admin]

uring congressional testimony, Fauci used those words when describing the "6 feet rule".

It's the same as masks - you can't do a controlled trial, because people know if they're wearing a mask or not, or whether they're close to someone or not.

The ideas both made sense, and retrospective studies shows both were effective at reducing the spread.

[stanky]

no wavering faith yet, in the vaccine?
Lab leak?
No scam?

That's a lot of edifice to support.

[arthwollipot]

You don't need faith in the vaccine. You have evidence.

[Meadmaker]

no wavering faith yet, in the vaccine?
Lab leak?
No scam?

That's a lot of edifice to support.

Ideally, none of that would be political. Alas, everything is political.

I don't think there were any scams involved, though. When it is all written, I think it's possible that the scientific consensus will be that we overreacted.

It is also possible that the vaccines had more side effects than we wished to believe, possibly even fatal ones. Conservative media was abuzz today about a new study that "showed" there were excess deaths and said that might be attributable to the vaccine. I say "showed" in quote marks, because that kind of study doesn't really show anything. It suggests something worth investigating, if it's done right. Certainly nothing in the condensed version of the story shared by Dennis Praeger et. al. was enough to show anything.

The lab leak controversy was the one that confused me the most. The truth is that we simply have no way of knowing whether or not it was a lab leak. I would be stunned and amazed to find that the Chinese were not doing bioweapons research. It's certainly possible that something got out. We don't have evidence of it, but we don't have evidence of anything else, either. At the time the story was a big story, I could understand why people insisted that they believed it was a Chinese plot. People are paranoid. Of course they'll say that. What I didn't understand was that there were a huge number of extremely vocal people insisting it couldn't be a lab leak. This is a case where absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Moreover, in terms of response to the virus, it didn't matter. Regardless how it came into being, it was a respiratory virus with higher than usual lethality. Its origins would not change the appropriate response to it.

[arthwollipot]

"Lab leak" doesn't necessarily imply "bioweapons research". There are lots of reasons to research viruses in a lab, including "gain of function" research, that don't involve bioweapons.

[stanky]

it's handy that we have easy access to all bio-weapons research being done around the world, so we can make accurate judgements.

There's a good one brewing about ticks and purposeful infections using engineered bacterium that escaped via the tick(s) carrying it. Happened near Lyme, CT, U.S. where such a research lab exists. Three novel tick-spread diseases emerged from...

not paranoid of government so much as aware of what we've done in the past.

[Admin]

The lab leak controversy was the one that confused me the most. The truth is that we simply have no way of knowing whether or not it was a lab leak.

There's been a strong vested interest in placing the blame on the lab, and therefore the CCP, yet there isn't a single piece of evidence to support it.

On the other hand, viral traces were found at the Wuhan market, where exotic species were known to be traded. All early cases had links to the market, not the lab, and coronaviruses jumping from animal reservoirs to humans is well-known and resulted in both MERS and SARS-1.

Ockham's Razor says natural origin, and until actual evidence for a lab leak turns up, I'm sticking with it.

[Meadmaker]

The lab leak controversy was the one that confused me the most. The truth is that we simply have no way of knowing whether or not it was a lab leak.

There's been a strong vested interest in placing the blame on the lab, and therefore the CCP, yet there isn't a single piece of evidence to support it.

On the other hand, viral traces were found at the Wuhan market, where exotic species were known to be traded. All early cases had links to the market, not the lab, and coronaviruses jumping from animal reservoirs to humans is well-known and resulted in both MERS and SARS-1.

Ockham's Razor says natural origin, and until actual evidence for a lab leak turns up, I'm sticking with it.

(emphasis added)

Re: the bolded: I didn't know that.

Of course.....that's what they would say, isn't it?

I guess where I'm coming from is that anyone who even suggested the possiblity that this could have been an engineered organism was branded a conspiracy theorist. Anyone who suggested it was a possibility worth investigating was branded a conspiracy theorist. It became one of those articles of faith, so common in politics these days. I don't know a whole lot of virology or epidemiology, so if someone tells me that it has characteristics of an engineered organism, I''m not going to tell them they are nuts. I'll just ask for expert opinion on the subject.

And, aye, there's the rub. The media doesn't provide expert opinions. It doesn't pass along expert opinions these days. It takes sides based on politics. So that was what was happening at the time. The lab leak hypothesis was being bandied about and the media was saying either, "Anyone who say is't a lab leak is a kook." or "Anyone who says it isn't a lab lieak is covering up for the communists."

Even the information you posted above is more in depth than I saw in the media at the time. Obviously, it must have been reported somewhere, or you wouldn't know it, but even that tiny, superficial level of detail was more than what was presented in most of the coverage.