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Comment by lucubratory | Hacker News Reader

That's a really good way to handle it. I don't know where the brain worms are from exactly, but I've seen people who don't otherwise have rocks for brains going full-on "All the scientists are wrong, I'm just asking questions, leaked from a Chinese lab!" about this specific conspiracy theory. I get there's a nationalism aspect, but that's no excuse to throw your brain out the window.

Edit: It is weird that on a pretty technical forum there are a bunch of people here who don't know anything about virology disagreeing with the overwhelming scientific consensus in the field, based on overtly conspiratorial thinking (e.g. "Look at the connections, this can't be a coincidence, this man leaked the truth and they silenced him" etc etc). You don't get to scientific consensus on something through a conspiracy. I wonder what the people replying with conspiracy theories think about climate change.

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What specific evidence lends credence to the “overwhelming scientific consensus” you claim?

There’s still no known natural precursor and the only thing we see with a similar Furin cleavage site (which greatly enhanced the virality) doesn’t look like the backbone of the virus. The only US intelligence agency which assessed the situation with moderate confidence was the one who concluded that it was a lab leak. The natural origin conclusion only received low confidence.

Never mind that multiple virologists stated in emails that it looked engineered — until a private call with Fauci, when they recanted, and wouldn’t you know, got millions in grants shortly after.

You seem to be ignoring the actual scientific data, the work of intelligence agencies, and the documented human aspects which impacted this.

But yeah, keep throwing that abuse out there to shame others because they don’t recite the headlines as good as you.

Edit:

People who ignore you led with scientific facts and expert analysis to focus on the documented conspiracy — then try to call your whole post “conspiratorial nonsense” are funny.

Are they self-aware enough to realize they were fishing for a pretense to ignore you?

>Never mind that multiple virologists stated in emails that it looked engineered — until a private call with Fauci, when they recanted, and wouldn’t you know, got millions in grants shortly after.

Are you self-aware enough to know that this paragraph gives the game away that your whole comment is conspiratorial nonsense, or does it feel normal to you to theorise that some US public health official who got caught up in partisan US politics is personally intimidating scientists into agreeing with scientific consensus, and rewarding them with grants for doing so?

Scientists have been caught red handed lying about lab leak

https://www.natesilver.net/p/journalists-should-be-skeptical...

The PRRAR furin cleavage sequence wasn't a previously known furin cleavage pattern and its unlikely that human scientists would have tried to insert that particular pattern into the genome of a virus.

We also now know of natural viruses which are very close to SARS-CoV-2 and only missing the FCS, but at the same time there has been zero evidence that WIV was ever working with SARS-CoV-2-like viruses when their focus was on SARS-CoV-1 like viruses.

And the natural spillover event is the leading theory in the intelligence community, from the ODNI report:

> The National Intelligence Council and four other IC agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.

> The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2, although for different reasons.

> The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.

> Almost all IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered. Most agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory-adapted; some are unable to make a determination. All IC agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon.

The natural spillover theory is the leading theory 5-to-3 compared to other theories and only DoE and the FBI think that the lab leak was more likely. Genetic engineering is not a well-supported theory. And I don't know what evidence DoE or FBI could have that CIA/NSA doesn't that leads them to the conclusion that it was a lab leak.

> People who ignore you led with scientific facts and expert analysis to focus on the documented conspiracy — then try to call your whole post “conspiratorial nonsense” are funny.

You haven't presented any scientific facts. And then you pivoted into conspiracy theories about scientists. Yeah, there was a scientist early on who looked at the FCS and got startled by it and thought it was a smoking gun, and then after considering the scientific evidence he changed his mind. Assuming and stating as a fact that he changed his mind due to financial pressure, without any evidence, is exactly conspiratorial thinking.

> We also now know of natural viruses which are very close to SARS-CoV-2 and only missing the FCS, but at the same time there has been zero evidence that WIV was ever working with SARS-CoV-2-like viruses

WIV collected the viruses from 800mi away which are the known closest relative — but missing the Furin cleavage site.

> only DoE and the FBI think that the lab leak was more likely […] I don't know what evidence DoE or FBI could have that CIA/NSA doesn't that leads them to the conclusion that it was a lab leak

DoE specializes in things like bioterrorism, via one of their analysis labs. FBI similarly. Neither CIA nor NSA do, who specialize in HUMINT and SIGINT respectively.

> natural spillover theory is the leading theory 5-to-3

And as I mentioned before, the only one to asses with moderate rather than low confidence is in that group of 3. When assessing such matters, we need to consider not just the number of analyses, but their relative confidence in their conclusions.

> Assuming and stating as a fact that he changed his mind due to financial pressure, without any evidence, is exactly conspiratorial thinking.

There was more than one — and they changed their opinion after a phone call, not based on later evidence. Feel free to present the evidence you believe changed his mind.

> Assuming and stating as a fact that he changed his mind due to financial pressure, without any evidence, is exactly conspiratorial thinking.

Except that we do have evidence in the timing of him being contacted by an implicated official and later receiving grants from a related organization. Dismissing evidence of collusion as “conspiratorial” because you don’t like the conclusions is bad faith.

> WIV collected the viruses from 800mi away which are the known closest relative — but missing the Furin cleavage site.

RaTG13 is not the known closest relative any more and the spike is considerably different and probably doesn't bind to human ACE2. There's also no known evidence that they ever had 'live' RaTG13 or any other SARS-CoV-2-like virus in the lab.

> And as I mentioned before, the only one to asses with moderate rather than low confidence is in that group of 3. When assessing such matters, we need to consider not just the number of analyses, but their relative confidence in their conclusions.

And it seems whatever evidence they have isn't sufficient to convince any of the other intelligence agencies, and they haven't disclosed what that evidence is. So because one intelligence agency says "trust me bro" while the others are unconvinced that makes the one with the strongest opinion clearly the correct one. That isn't a good way to judge truth.

> There was more than one — and they changed their opinion after a phone call, not based on later evidence. Feel free to present the evidence you believe changed his mind.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/science/covid-lab-leak-fa...

"I cautioned in that same email that we would need to look at the question much more closely and that our opinions could change within a few days based on new data and analyses — which they did."

"The features in SARS-CoV-2 that initially suggested possible engineering were identified in related coronaviruses, meaning that features that initially looked unusual to us weren’t."

"Many of these analyses were completed in a matter of days, while we worked around the clock, which allowed us to reject our preliminary hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 might have been engineered, while other “lab”-based scenarios were still on the table."

"Yet more extensive analyses, significant additional data and thorough investigations to compare genomic diversity more broadly across coronaviruses led to the peer-reviewed study published in Nature Medicine. For example, we looked at data from coronaviruses found in other species, such as bats and pangolins, which demonstrated that the features that first appeared unique to SARS-CoV-2 were in fact found in other, related viruses."

"Overall, this is a textbook example of the scientific method where a preliminary hypothesis is rejected in favor of a competing hypothesis after more data become available and analyses are completed."

> later receiving grants from a related organization

"Virologist accepts grants to continue research" is not exactly a ground-breaking headline.

https://oversight.house.gov/release/covid-origins-hearing-wr...

"""

  The mainstream media downplayed—and even denied—the scientific theory that COVID-19 emerged from the WIV.

  Nicholas Wade testified about the campaign to discredit the lab leak theory. He pointed out that scientists kept in line with the natural origin camp led by Drs. Fauci and Collins because of their dependence on government grants and that the media failed to challenge the forced narrative.

  All witnesses agreed that the possibility of COVID-19 originating from a lab is not a conspiracy theory.

"""

Also don't forget Fauci payed WIV to study bat coronaviruses. But since no document exists saying his money went directly to developing this particular coronavirus, we are supposed to take this as a nothing-burger.

> In 2014, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, the part of the NIH headed by Fauci, awarded a $3.4 million grant to the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, which aims to protect people from viruses that jump from species to species.

> The group hired the virology lab in Wuhan to conduct genetic analyses of bat coronaviruses collected in Yunnan province, about 800 miles southwest of Wuhan. EcoHealth Alliance paid the lab $598,500 over five years. The lab had secured approval from both the U.S. State Department and the NIH.

> That the NIAID funded the project is not in question.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/202...

> That's a really good way to handle it.

Oh you were serious?

Yea I guess I don’t get where anyone would get all that nonsense from.

It’s nothing more than a coincidence that the first people that got sick worked in and around China’s only level4 bio lab, that the NIH was confirmed to 1-degree indirectly funding gain of function research on sars coronaviruses… then after the virus was out the Chinese government came in to prevent access to that facility and it’s data. I mean… how racist do you have to be to give any credit to the conspiracy theory that it didn’t come from a wet market near that lab?

Here we go again...

Covid was an extreme case of "this is the only truth, everyone else has rocks for brains", and then the truth changing overnight. Masks don't help, you don't need them, just wash your hands, to you must wear a mask, vaccinated people don't get sick, don't spread the virus, to whoops, heart issues are just a conspiracy thory, to countries stopping use of specific vaccines due to heart issues.

Don't be like that, accept that other theories are possible, and that we don't know the whole truth yet.

This is a revisionist interpretation of history. The initial recommendation not to go out and panic buy masks was for a good reason, healthcare providers needed them first. And in regards to the behavior of the virus, recommendations were always based on the best understanding of the virus at the time and were updated as those understandings changed. Public health guidance isn't "the science", it is a snapshot of professional interpretation of science at a single point in time.

We're not talking about scientific process, which changes with new evidence, we're talking about calling people as "heads filled with rocks" for suggesting that the current recommendations are bad/wrong/inapropriate/...., censoring them from social networks, calling them covid deniers, conspiracy theorists, having their wikipedia edits removed, doxing them, and in some cases, even doing stuff that affects their livelyhood, possible medical licences etc., then having the 'truth' change, not acknowledge that 'we' were wrong, and 'they' were right and apologizing, but again, doing all those things to the next group (eg. the ones who bought and wore masks in the time when it was "enough to just wash your hands" were "attacked" first, then the "attack" moved over to the ones who didn't want to wear a mask).

If someone (from the government, national 'cdc', whoever) stood up infront of the cameras, said "we fucked up, masks are really needed, we thought so otherwise and gave bad advice, we're sorry, please wear masks", then sure... some will get mad, because their relatives died by following the advice, but for most, it would be a decent thing done by their governments... but banning people who suggested that we need masks, and then banning people who suggested that we didn't need masks without unbanning the first group, is, well... stupid.

> The initial recommendation not to go out and panic buy masks was for a good reason, healthcare providers needed them first.

Oh yeah, just a thing I'd like to see with people in power, scientists in doctors... "we lied to you, because we couldn't fill out order forms in time, you could have died by following our advice, but here's new advice, we're totally not lying now, whoopsie, sorry!" (but without the 'sorry'). How am I supposed to trust them now, when they recommend something else?

> we're talking about calling people as "heads filled with rocks" for suggesting that the current recommendations are bad/wrong/inapropriate/.

There's two different things to discuss here. One is "the science" and one is "public health guidelines", and they're different things. It is one thing to discuss the behavior of the virus in a scientific context. It is another thing to spread memes, FUD, or armchair conjecture in a forum of non-experts that make claims counter to the latest scientific consensus.

> censoring them from social networks, calling them covid deniers, conspiracy theorists, having their wikipedia edits removed,

This isn't a fault of scientists or regulators. This is a failure of social media and their user base. They are incapable of being nuanced enough to determine the difference between scientific discussion, pseudoscience, conjecture, and malice. And so, those platforms became filled with speech that confused all four, and those who managed those platforms threw up their hands and resorted to heavy handed tactics because they lack the capability to do anything more precise.

> If someone (from the government, national 'cdc', whoever) stood up infront of the cameras, said "we fucked up, masks are really needed

When the guidance changed, they did announce the change, along with the reason. The reason wasn't a "fuck up" it was new data that changed the calculus.

> Oh yeah, just a thing I'd like to see with people in power, scientists in doctors... "we lied to you, because we couldn't fill out order forms in time, you could have died by following our advice, but here's new advice, we're totally not lying now, whoopsie, sorry!" (but without the 'sorry'). How am I supposed to trust them now, when they recommend something else?

That isn't at all what happened, or what the problem was. The national stockpile of masks wasn't mismanaged by scientists, it was mismanaged by politicians. And JIT inventory wasn't implemented by distributors and hospital management by scientists, it was done by MBAs. And divesting manufacturing overseas wasn't done by scientists, it was done by wall street. And again, as I said in a sibling comment, the CDC was upfront about the rationale from the beginning.

> There's two different things to discuss here. One is "the science" and one is "public health guidelines", and they're different things. It is one thing to discuss the behavior of the virus in a scientific context. It is another thing to spread memes, FUD, or armchair conjecture in a forum of non-experts that make claims counter to the latest scientific consensus.

But what if the memes and FUD are right? Should we really censor the paranoid conspiracy theorist, that said that you need a mask, when fauci was saying that washing hands is enough? What about when vaccines became available, someone said "even if vaccinated, you'll still get it, you can still spread it to your grandma, and she can still die from it, and the 'vaccinated people don't get ill' is a lie!"? I mean... it turned out to be true, but it got deleted from facebook and it got you banned from a lot of reddit.

> This isn't a fault of scientists or regulators. This is a failure of social media and their user base. They are incapable of being nuanced enough to determine the difference between scientific discussion, pseudoscience, conjecture, and malice. And so, those platforms became filled with speech that confused all four, and those who managed those platforms threw up their hands and resorted to heavy handed tactics because they lack the capability to do anything more precise.

...and wikipedia, the topic of this post.

> That isn't at all what happened, or what the problem was. The national stockpile of masks wasn't mismanaged by scientists, it was mismanaged by politicians. And JIT inventory wasn't implemented by distributors and hospital management by scientists, it was done by MBAs. And divesting manufacturing overseas wasn't done by scientists, it was done by wall street. And again, as I said in a sibling comment, the CDC was upfront about the rationale from the beginning.

The general consensus was, that masks don't help a lot, that's why you don't need them. It wasn't "you really need a mask, and we'll mandate it soon, but we don't have enough for now".

> But what if the memes and FUD are right? Should we really censor the paranoid conspiracy theorist, that said that you need a mask, when fauci was saying that washing hands is enough?

I'll answer this two different ways:

1. For ad supported platforms: Regardless of anyone's moral objections, ad supported platforms have neither the expertise nor desire to do anything otherwise. They are not scientific experts, they aren't any good at moderating nuanced speech, and they barely have the capability to moderate even the most obvious of situations on their platform.

2. In regards to Wikipedia, while they at least attempt to operate in a way that prioritizes information over profit incentives, it has always been a battleground of agendas by people of varying qualification hiding behind keyboards. Truth is just an inherently hard thing to determine, especially when it is a contemporary topic with a lot of change that requires expertise to understand. If it is hard for the world's best experts to come to an answer, it will be even harder others to do the same. Then the question is more about balance of quality -- do you want your platform to contain more information, even if some is wrong? Or do you want to maintain a higher standard, even if you kick out some people who might have been right? What if the wrong information could be dangerous to people's health? Do you bear some responsibility to ensure it is correct? I don't think there's a correct answer for every situation here, but there are absolutely good arguments for why you might not want to let people cry fire in a crowded theatre if the other attendees disagree.

> The general consensus was, that masks don't help a lot, that's why you don't need them. It wasn't "you really need a mask, and we'll mandate it soon, but we don't have enough for now".

What "general consensus" are you referring to? What the CDC said in March 2020 was that masks were recommended to be prioritized for healthcare workers who needed them the most. This was reasonable at the time, and still reasonable in hindsight.

CDC also said:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210402002315/https://www.msnbc...

> And we have -- we can kind of almost see the end. We`re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data.

So, if you listened to CDC, you'd get vaccinated, grandma would get vaccinated, you'd go to grandma, and think you were safe, while infecting her with covid and in a few days/weeks killing her.

If you listened to a "local conspiracy nut", who was telling you that vaccines don't work, that there will be no herd immunity and that vaccines were causing heart issues, you'd be closer to reality than if you listened to the CDC director.

So, do you want a platform that lets all opinions, "correct" and "wrong", to stay there, or a platform that lets wrong 'facts' (because some authority told them they're facts) stay, while deleting true 'conspiracy theories'.

How many times can "authorities" (cdc, whoever) be wrong, and conspiracy theorists right, before we stop censoring the truth to protect the authorities?

> What if the wrong information could be dangerous to people's health? Do you bear some responsibility to ensure it is correct?

Like "if you get vaccinated, you won't get sick and spread it"? Fever and caughing? You're vaccinated right? It's just a cold, go to work, visit grandma, vaccinated people don't get covid, don't carry the virus. I mean.. you're advocating censorship for Bob Average from oregon while supporting the wrong and dangerous information from authorities.

> If you listened to a "local conspiracy nut", who was telling you that vaccines don't work,

A broken clock is wrong twice per day, but that doesn't mean you should consider one as a valid NTP server. (and in fact, the conspiracy nut was still wrong, vaccines do work, to prevent hospitalization and death) Basing a guideline off of data, and updating when wrong, is a more rigorous methodology than fabrication and conjecture.

The quantity and quality of evidence available to support an opinion is a relatively way to measure that opinion's validity. That doesn't make them infallible, but it makes them less fallible than opinions that lack quality rationale.

> So, do you want a platform that lets all opinions, "correct" and "wrong", to stay there, or a platform that lets wrong 'facts' (because some authority told them they're facts) stay, while deleting true 'conspiracy theories'.

Usually something in the middle, depending on the specifics. I think too many people are quick to apply broad free speech ideals to everything, when in reality, context, audience, venue, and impact matters a LOT.

What is "in the middle"? If CDC says "get vaccinated, so you won't infect grandma" and I say "even if you're vaccinated, you can still get covid and infect grandma" ... where's the middle there?

And if your NTP server has failed you once before.. and again.. and again... would it be unreasonable to say "maybe the NTP is wrong" the next time something weird happens with your system clock?

A pretty reasonable middle road is to hold statements supported by evidence made by experts in higher regard than statements not supported by evidence made by non-experts.

The degree to which someone might do reasonably do this, and what action they might reasonably take as a result, depends on the audience, the moderator of the medium, their ability to moderate, and their ability judge the evidence independently.

> The initial recommendation not to go out and panic buy masks was for a good reason, healthcare providers needed them first.

Except that wasn’t the messaging at the time. The messaging at the time was that masks didn’t work. Then, when the supply chain caught up and the authorities wanted to impose mask mandates, the messaging changed and they said masks did work. The “facts” were manipulated in order to align with the desired policy outcomes.

> Except that wasn’t the messaging at the time. The messaging at the time was that masks didn’t work. Then, when the supply chain caught up and the authorities wanted to impose mask mandates, the messaging changed and they said masks did work. The “facts” were manipulated in order to align with the desired policy outcomes.

That isn't true, at least in regards to the CDC's guidance. The CDC was up front about the reasoning from the beginning. There were others who repeated different variations of this, which has clouded this topic for a long time.

> March 24, 2020

> “Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be saved for caregivers,” the government agency says.

> https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-117hr2316ih/html/B...

            (7) In March 2020, Dr. Fauci told Americans not to wear 
        masks, noting: ``There's no reason to be walking around with a 
        mask. When you are in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask 
        might make people feel a little bit better and it might even 
        block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection 
        that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended 
        consequences--people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep 
        touching their face.''.

Also:

            (10) Dr. Fauci also now claims that herd immunity will 
        require 80 to 85 percent of Americans to get the vaccine.

Somehow herd immunity dissapeared from the media too.

That is a quote from a political document with a clear agenda, but in context at the time, that statement isn't damning at all (because means of transmission wasn't as clearly understood), and was clarified just a few days later on CDC's website.

At that time, many people thought that transmission was (or might be) also prevalent thorough surface contact. If that was the case, it would be less of a reason to wear masks, as the general public isn't trained in aseptic technique and, as I'm sure you're observed, touches the heck out of their masks.

In that context, there's not a damn thing wrong with that quote.

> Somehow herd immunity dissapeared from the media too.

Yeah, because we all learned new things! We learned that while the vaccines did do a good job at preventing death and serious disease, they not provide a great deal of immunity. And we also learned that immunity, if any, waned quickly, and people could be infected multiple times. So yeah, there's not much reason to talk about herd immunity, because it ain't gonna happen.

Again, I'm not talking about the scientific process of figuring stuff out, I'm saying that we literally censored people saying otherwise, even if it turned out, that they were correct after all.

> Yeah, because we all learned new things! We learned that while the vaccines did do a good job at preventing death and serious disease, they not provide a great deal of immunity.

Back then? No.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210402002315/https://www.msnbc... (interview with the director of the CDC)

If you went on facebook/reddit back then, the day after that interview, and wrote: "vaccines don't give you a lot of immunity, you'll still get ill, you'll still infect grandma, she can still die from covid, and even with 100% vaccination rate, there will never be herd immunity!", what would happen to your post? Would it stay there? Or would it be removed for misinformation? If you were a public figure and said that out loud, would "the science/experts" agree with your (then and now) perfectly valid theory, or would you be called an antivaxxer, denyer, conspiracy theorist?

If by "we" you mean "social media networks", then yes. They did. Social media networks do a horrible job at managing speech, you won't find a disagreement from me there.

The problem is that Facebook is an expert on the React codebase, not immunology, and their moderators are underpaid, overworked, and unskilled. The best they can do is "if post doesn't match official guidelines, delete".

When people are dying, regulators are breathing down your neck, and you just want to keep selling ads in a freefall market, what would you do? It's understandable that they did what they did. They're a digital billboard company that makes money off of boomer memes, vacation photo sharing, and high school reunion organizing. They're not arbiters of truth.

Social media, mainstream media, if you were a public figure, other public figures, if you were a doctor, then the licencing board... and well also wikipedia would consider your post a fringe conspiracy theory.

In the context of making a statement to the general public, or publishing a journal article? Audience matters, because literacy and messaging makes a difference in how people interpret messages and take action.

Statements that are actually factual are some of the strongest supporting evidence for false conspiracy theories, when given to audiences that don't fully understand the context of the situation. As a basic example, many people misinterpreted things like "you can still get COVID if you wear a mask or vaccinate" as being equivalent to "masks and vaccines don't work", because they're not intimately familiar with how viruses spread and/or how disease impact may vary in outcome. Most people unfamiliar with a topic will have a more general, black-and-white approximate understanding of something, and this is no different for public health topics.

Whether or not a statement should be frowned upon or not really depends not just on the factuality, but also a lot on the context and what it might suggest to the audience.

If someone sees someone else smoking a cigarette in a crowded theater, yells "fire!", and then people die in a stampede to the exits, the statement should be frowned upon, regardless of the fact that it was factual. "Being right" is not always enough.

But we're talking for example about a CDC director talking to concerned public, and she says:

> vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick, and that it`s not just in the clinical trials but it`s also in real world data.

This does not require you to be scientifically literate to be able to understand what she's saying. It's not a scientific show, they're not using greek symbols and formulas, but "vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don`t get sick". This means that a vast majority if not all vaccinated people don't carry the virus and don't get sick (as they don't with eg. polio vaccine, mumps vaccine, whooping cough etc. vaccines).

If we put a scale from "totally work" to "don't work at all", the vaccines would be closer to "don't work".

The cigaretta analogy is bad. This is like seeing dark smoke coming from a long hallway at work, your boss closing of the hallway, saying "we have everythng under control, go back to your office" and your coworker getting arrested for saying "the burning will burn down, run outside".... and then the building burns down.

> If we put a scale from "totally work" to "don't work at all", the vaccines would be closer to "don't work".

The vaccines are highly effective at preventing people from dying or becoming seriously ill. Which is the entire reason to be afraid of the virus to begin with.

"Preventing infection" is only relevant in the context of the consequences of the infection, and muddying the water with discussions about infection probability when the the vaccine is effective at preventing death and hospitalization is a reckless red herring that confuses people.

An equivocation of "you can still get sick with the vaccine" with "the vaccines don't work" is exactly the kind of misinformation crap that should be removed from platforms with any kind of responsible moderation.

There are threads over and over here where you still pushing for the mistrusths you were told.

I’m not making fun of you. I think you are probably an intelligent person who now is forced to persuade themselves that they weren’t lied to, it was just all messy and complicated. That your authority figures weren’t acting in ignorance or bad faith, most people just didn’t get it.

We really are wired for religious tribalism.

I don't know what lie I'd be persuading myself to ignore, since nobody here has provided evidence of one.

New information doesn't make old information a lie. The act of distilling nuanced judgment about a complex topic into a recommendation is not a lie.

Outsiders on many topics believe things are a lot more black-and-white than they really are. The reality is the scope of discussion in the public sphere is always much more narrow than the scope of discussion among experts. You could point to any public statement ever, in any field, and the internal discussions would be more nuanced than the public statement. This isn't prima facie evidence of lying or scheming. Public statements are inherently not a brain dump of internal discussion.

You know how people on this forum and watch the news about a tech topic, and shake their head at how they oversimplify the topics to the point of misunderstanding? That is exactly how public health experts react to people trying to make a fuss about the CDCs response.

Wow, the projection here is blatant! Well done. Also, "a good reason" may be so in the court of (some) public opinion, but not so much in the court of law. No matter how justified one's reasons are, if they lead to somebody's death it is a case for manslaughter, is it not?

It was later drummed up by pretty much all masking enthusiasts that not wearing a mask is equal to murdering a grandma or two, and some "immunnocompromised" people on top. Surely, grand-scale messaging from position of high authority that "you don't need to wear a mask" will have a quantifiable number of associated deaths, and a very substantial one, under such assumption? Why the perpetrators of the message aren't put on trial for manslaughter? After all, the court may find that they had a "good reason" and acquit them of charges! I will have some basis to believe "public health" messaging, but not before such case is heard. What is the chance it will be?

I know it will never happen.

> healthcare providers needed them first.

It's super confusing due to all the lying, but actually that's the revisionist history. The real timeline goes like this:

1. Scientists are asked if masks will work to stop COVID. They say no because there's little to no evidence in the literature that surgical/cloth masks can stop the spread of a respiratory virus. This initial position is correct.

2. There is a very short lived campaign by professional activist types called #MasksForAll which pressures public health officials to recommend masks for everyone.

3. Scientific advisors discuss in private and say things like "it probably won't help but can't really hurt so why not" and agree to support it.

4. Message changes.

5. People demand explanations for why the message changed. Mostly officials stay silent and refuse to answer. Fauci specifically (not so much elsewhere) claims that this was a vast conspiracy (!) to manage supply chain capacity. But this isn't correct and private correspondence uncovered afterwards reveals this, for example, Fauci is asked in private emails what he thinks about masks and answers the same way as in step (1).

What happened here took a lot of work to uncover, but there's no longer any doubt about the correct sequence of events here. The idea of "masks don't work" being a noble lie, is itself a lie, which is why it's so confusing - Fauci and allies lied about lying.

As an example of just one piece of evidence pointing in this direction, a BBC journalist tweeted:

https://archive.is/20201205224307/https://twitter.com/deb_co...

> We had been told by various sources WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying. This point was put to WHO who did not deny

(she later deleted the tweet as orthodoxy inverted and the true reasons for masking were covered up)

But there's also the fact that mask mandates didn't have any effect when introduced, which shows that the initial stance was the correct one. And the posited conspiracy is a stupid one too. Almost all masks were imported and governments can easily seize shipments at the ports to control distribution if they need to. Lying to the public (and by extension, health workers) is by far the most idiotic way to manage supply chains imaginable.

Why did they do this? Public health seems to have big cultural problems with the idea that tradeoffs exist. In both private and public they tend to describe their proposed policies as being cost-free. If you and everyone around you genuinely believes that any health policy is pure upside then why not mandate masks? It can't hurt and might help, therefore, you must do it. But people outside public health culture expect recommendations to be stable and tradeoffs to be justified. So they conclude that they must lie to the public, because they know deep down that expressing their true beliefs and true level of uncertainty would discredit them.

What part of that is a 'lie'? Public communication is always a distilled version of a more nuanced internal discussion. Writing a message with an audience in mind is good communication.

The part where they deliberately say things that they know aren't true.

> Writing a message with an audience in mind is good communication.

Yes, and lying isn't.

what exactly did they say that was not true?

Fauci has admitted on the record that he lied twice, why is this even a question to begin with? Are you just unaware of that?

The problem is that his admission to lying is itself a lie. That's quite the 5D chess move and it has confused a huge number of people. Masks never worked, the claim that they did is a lie. The original claim was correct, and the claim that it was a lie, is a lie. That's just masks, before you even get to other topics.

I haven't seen that, do you have a link?

> It's super confusing due to all the lying, but actually that's the revisionist history. The real timeline goes like this:

Some call it "revisionist history" some call it gaslighting. It was the same with vaccines... get vaccinated, and you won't get it, herd immunity at X% vaccination rate, safe and effective, etc. ...and now? Slightly lower chance to die, but you can still infect and kill grandma, even if both of you are vaccinated.

Imagine seeing ads for a car, buying it, and getting something that doesn't drive, the radio doesn't work, and the car salesman saying "if it rains, you can still sit inside and it'll keep you dry". ...and then finding out, that everyon warning you about that got censored from everywhere.

I think we all underestimate just how much the people who bought into the idea of that car, now have to defend it. Because to admit they got suckered, is incomprehensible.

They’ll go to their graves defending that car.

Someone put together a super clip of all the vaccine propaganda, including all of Colbert’s (literally and proudly, sponsored by Pfizer) song and dance routines… looking at it now, to call it blatant propaganda would be under selling it.

The fact that any special interest can buy influence on commercial television shows has absolutely zero bearing on whether or not public health officials have been truthful or not.

I think scientific experts were clear that they don't know the whole truth, but people citing the experts, not so much. Radio ads called the covid19 vaccine "100% safe," while experts only said it was probably less risky than covid19 itself.

The bigger issue was, if some in the scientific or medical community disagreed, it didn't seem like they could safely voice that disagreement.

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