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Comment by concinds | Hacker News Reader

> "potential to mislead"

I can't find that expression anywhere in the Lead Stories article. Facebook outright labelled the BMJ article "false" and containing "false information".

Beyond that, should fact-checkers really become an "optics police"? For every single news story, you will have (wild) misinterpretations on social media. It becomes too convenient if a fact-checker can point to those, and then have Facebook limit the spread of the original story. This is a question of poor FDA oversight. There have been several instances throughout this pandemic: see the recent FDA resignations, and the GAO report[0]. Oversight is not about pro vs anti vaccine, this is about people's health[1]. Oversight should always be robust, even in emergency situations.

[0]: https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2021/11...

[1]: story from Japan https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/07/third-person-d...

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My bad, the actual quote is "Missing context ... Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people"

As far as whether Facebook should become "optics police" I think it's obviously a difficult decision, but with life and death questions such as "is the vaccine safe" I have to go with yes, facebook shouldn't let itself propagandize people who decide to read headlines instead of articles.

>life and death questions such as "is the vaccine safe"

Is that not a misleading thing to say yourself? Plenty of vaccinated have died. And for those unjabbed but with permanent acquired immunity, the jab may be safe yet at the same time have no material effect to save their life.

What's plenty? The number matters because it may be insignificant.

The CDC makes it hard to find the data but it's at least hundreds per day in the US.

For example in Texas, from Jan-Oct of this year 8 percent of covid deaths were fully vaccinated: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/09/texas-unvac...

Most of that time period was before Delta or Omicron were dominant, not to mention the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes greatly over a ~6 month period, so the situation today is likely higher than 8 percent.

I'm not sure I follow the thread on how plenty of folks that are vaccinated have died (from being exposed to COVID-19, likely from those unvaccinated) means that the vaccine is not safe. The article you linked says those unvaccinated are 40x more likely to die (although it might be more like 14x with more recent data). Similarly, unvaccinated are more likely to spread COVID-19.

Unvaccinated are more likely to contract the virus from a family member. [0]

> According to the analysis, 25 percent of vaccinated contacts exposed to a household member with an infection contracted one themselves.

> In contrast, 38 percent of unvaccinated contacts got an infection.

> The study results suggest that because the viral load of vaccinated people drops off more quickly, their infection may be infectious for a shorter time than for unvaccinated people.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccinated-people-can...

As best we can tell, no one has "permanent acquired immunity". 36% of those infected never develop antibodies. Of the remaining 64% that do, most lose their antibodies in less than a year.

> Plenty of vaccinated have died.

From the vaccine?!?

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