We need to stop trying to enforce "the truth" to other people. Just let people talk and have different opinions. That includes letting people having conservative values, because lately this thought police is getting out of control.
If a government body declares that there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19, am I not entitled to evaluate other evidence and conclude that this statement of fact is incorrect?
> Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.
https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...
Fact: On Jan 5, 2020, the WHO had "no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission".
You can hold the opinion that they should've been more aggressive about the potential of that changing. You can hold the opinion that the WHO should figure out a way to rely less on member nations accurately reporting information to them. As the statement notes, much was unknown to the WHO at that point:
> There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster...
So you would say that the WHO should be 'entitled to their own set of facts', separate from that of the PRC, correct?
That would imply that "How do we determine the credibility of organizations?" is a sometimes-difficult exercise in human judgement, correct?
No, not really. "The WHO doesn't have reports of X" and "No one has reports of X" are separate (if related) facts.
> That would imply that "How do we determine the credibility of organizations?" is a sometimes-difficult exercise in human judgement, correct?
"Is this organization credible?" is an opinion, that you might back up with various facts.
Right. 100% Agreed.
And that implies that a fact like "On 5 January 2020, the WHO said 'Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.' " is based on an opinion like "The WHO's web administration team is credible and would not have misleadingly changed the content of a web page"
Unless you start comparing that fact with other facts as reported the internet archive or a checksum in your database...which also has credibility questions.
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I'm just saying "Sadly, there is no way to escape using human judgement somewhere." I suspect we agree on most relevant object-level questions about vaccines and COVID-19.
I realise I sound pedantic. In normal times, I just round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1 and go on with my life.
There is substantial contemporary reporting of the WHO's statements from January, and the Internet Archive has it snapshotted on Jan 9. http://archive.is/jZByM
It is wise to exercise judgement in that direction for the same reason it is wise to round 0.9999999999999999999 up to 1
It is often wise to round 0.999 up to 1.
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I'm not saying '2+2=5'.
I am saying '2+2=4'. You are saying '2+1.99999999999999999=4'.
https://birdsarentreal.com/ is fun to chuckle at, but it's not a useful philosophy for encountering the world.
So you'd like to be 'entitled to your own set of facts' about how to summarise that WHO post because I am a fallible human, correct?
Would you say that Facebook are composed of infallible humans who never misinterpret the results of dense scientific papers? Or can the human judgement they exercise on complex topics be mistaken?
It is simply not factual that that statement states "there is no risk of human->human transmission of COVID-19". It explicitly states otherwise, in fact.
> There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster...
This isn't even a new thing: Op-Eds (i.e. "opinion" and not necessarily "fact") are a common information propagation tool, one that isn't unique to Facebook.