Is NewsGuard A Propaganda Machine?

Author: Public-Choice

Posts

Total: 38
Topic's author
#31
Public-Choice
Public-Choice's avatar
Debates: 19
Posts: 1,065
3
4
8
Public-Choice's avatar
Public-Choice
3
4
8
-->
@oromagi
If the AP ran any inaccurate information
AP official admissions of inaccuracies on RussiaGate coverage:

One really laughable piece of fake news from the AP in general was when they said an Israeli ambassador worked for the Trump Administration:

They also erroneously reported on the infamous Trump-Georgia call:

So. No. AP is not a great news source. They regularly get facts wrong. They especially got facts wrong about RussiaGate.
#32
oromagi
oromagi's avatar
Debates: 117
Posts: 8,696
8
10
11
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
8
10
11
-->
@3RU7AL
-->@oromagi
"deliberately infect" is my editorial comment
in other words, a lie
No.  That is an honest assessment of the Great Barrington Declaration.  Here's Scientific American making the same assessment:

Topic's author
#33
Public-Choice
Public-Choice's avatar
Debates: 19
Posts: 1,065
3
4
8
Public-Choice's avatar
Public-Choice
3
4
8
-->
@oromagi
  Here's Scientific American making the same assessment:

"My authority says your authority is disinformation."

Do you dispute the fact that more than 10,000 epidemiologists, doctors, virologists, and more agreed to the declaration?

Do you claim that John Ionnidis is a hack?

Do you think Martin Kuldorff is a hack?

This is the problem here. You made brazenly false claims about the Great Barrington Declaration. You then backpedaled and said it was your "editorial comment" when pressed.

And now let's digest your authority:
1. Is it a republishing from The Conversation, which has writings from people that are loaded with opinionated viewpoints and not always hard science and data.

It also makes up unfounded claims about the GBD:
The Great Barrington Declaration suggests the U.S. should aim for this immune threshold through infection rather than vaccination.
No it doesn't. It says:
Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. 

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
It does not, in any capacity tell people not to get vaccinated. It also does not, in any capacity, says infection instead of vaccination is how to obtain the threshold. In fact they even approve of the odea of using vaccines, as evidenced from the statement bolded.

The article also makes another false claim abput the GBD:
First, the plan wrongly assumes that all healthy people can survive a coronavirus infection. Though at-risk groups do worse, young healthy people are also dying and facing long-term issues from the illness.
It actually says:
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. 
The NEVER claim that young people and healthy individuals don't die of COVID. They rightly claim, and the author does agree with this, that healthier people don't die of COVID nearly as often as immunocompromised people.

They then launch into a tirade against Sweden, which is one of the most successful countries against COVID-19:

Denmark has a population death percentage of .001%
Sweden has an older population, fewer doctors and hospital beds, more obese people, and is extremely urbanized compared than Denmark and, despite that, has managed to lower death rates with each new wave of infection while Denmark is currently at their highest amount of COVID deaths. Sweden simply front ended their deaths whereas Denmark is now dealing with them.

So to compare lockdowns to no lockdowns, Sweden is winning.
#34
3RU7AL
3RU7AL's avatar
Debates: 3
Posts: 14,582
3
4
9
3RU7AL's avatar
3RU7AL
3
4
9
-->
@oromagi
No.  That is an honest assessment of the Great Barrington Declaration.
"deliberately infect" speaks to intent

it's funny how your "editorial opinions" are not lies, but other people's "editorial opinions" are
#35
oromagi
oromagi's avatar
Debates: 117
Posts: 8,696
8
10
11
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
8
10
11
-->
@Public-Choice
Again, you seem desperate to change the subject away from Bill Gates.

I looked through all your corrections and none of them retracted any salient point regarding the Trump administration's many criminal, covert relationships with Russia.  I'm glad that the AP is so dedicated to truth-telling and so concerned about getting details like names and job descriptions right.  None of these corrections retract any significant detail of that story although I suppose even petty details fall under the rubric of "any inaccurate information." I'll update my prior remark to state:  "If the AP retracted any important element about the Trump administration's many, many secret meetings with Russians, many, many proven lies about those secret meetings and at least the 11 obstructions of justice Trump committed in the cover-up of those secret collaborations, I am not aware of one."


#36
oromagi
oromagi's avatar
Debates: 117
Posts: 8,696
8
10
11
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
8
10
11
Again, you seem to be desperately running away from your OP about Bill Gates.

"My authority says your authority is disinformation."
  • False.  Scientific American isn't being used as a source for any information so much an example of mainstream thinking.  Deliberate Infection is not a dishonest assessment of the GBD's plan, but a rather uncontroversial description of that plan.
Do you dispute the fact that more than 10,000 epidemiologists, doctors, virologists, and more agreed to the declaration?
  • The fact is that GBD claims that 15,972 people have signed the declaration claiming to be "medical & public health scientists."
  • Since that just means that somebody signing the declaration checked a box that said "scientist" by their name and no further auditing has been done to determine the accuracy of those claim, we can't  say that "more than 10,000 epidemiologists, doctors, virologists, and more agreed to the declaration" is a fact, no.
    • Wikipedia:  "While the authors' website claims that over 14,000 scientists, 40,000 medical practitioners, and more than 800,000 members of the public signed the declaration, this list—which anyone could sign online and which required merely clicking a checkbox to claim the status of "scientist"—contains some evidently-fake names, including: "Mr Banana Rama", "Harold Shipman", and "Prof Cominic Dummings"
    • John Ionnidis: "Most importantly, however, petitions should not be used to prove that the positions of the signatories are scientifically correct. As has been previously observed, this is a fallacy implying that the larger the number of scientists who sign, the more valid their scientific positions are. Vote counting is a faulty method of scientific inference. Science is replete with situations where vehement majorities have held wrong beliefs."
Do you claim that John Ionnidis is a hack?
  • John Ioannidis is a scientist of tremendous reputation (although he is not ""one of the world's most renowned immunologists alive today" as you claim since he's not an immunologist at all) who badly underestimated the fatality rate of COVID-19 and the time it would take to develop an workable vaccine.
    • Ioannidis did not sign or support the Great Barrington Declaration and has publicly denounced the value of scientific petitions.
      • Ioannidis did generally agree that lockdowns were an overreaction
      • If Sweden based their policies on Ioannidis's predictions or advice, as you claim, I can't verify that.
  • It would not be accurate to associate Ioannides with the GBD's plan although he did study the impact following that statement.
Do you think Martin Kuldorff is a hack?
  • no but again, badly mistaken.  In particular, Kulldorff's  recent claims that the flu is more harmful to children than COVID flies in the face of mortality stats and long-term impact studies.
You made brazenly false claims about the Great Barrington Declaration. .
  • The GBD was an Republican economist's solution to a public health emergency brought to us by the same thinktank who says sweatshops are good for the economy and climate change is no big deal.
  • My position is well summarized by Wikipedia:
    • "The document presumed that the disease burden of mass infection could be tolerated, that any infection would confer long term sterilizing immunity, and it made no mention of physical distancing, masks, contact tracing, or long COVID, which has left patients with debilitating symptoms months after the initial infection.  The World Health Organization (WHO) and numerous academic and public-health bodies have stated that the strategy is dangerous and lacks a sound scientific basis. They say that it would be challenging to shield all those who are medically vulnerable, leading to a large number of avoidable deaths among both older people and younger people with pre-existing health conditions.  Moreover, the WHO said that the herd immunity component of the proposed strategy is undermined by the unknown duration of post-infection immunity.  They say that the more likely outcome would be recurrent epidemics, as was the case with numerous infectious diseases before the advent of vaccination.  The American Public Health Association and 13 other public-health groups in the United States warned in a joint open letter that the "Great Barrington Declaration is not grounded in science and is dangerous". The Great Barrington Declaration received support from some scientists, the Donald Trump administration, British Conservative politicians, and from The Wall Street Journal's editorial board."

It also makes up unfounded claims about the GBD:
The Great Barrington Declaration suggests the U.S. should aim for this immune threshold through infection rather than vaccination.
No it doesn't. It says:
Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. 

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
It does not, in any capacity tell people not to get vaccinated.
  • That's quite clear- let's not wait for the vaccine(which, by Oct 4th, Russia & China already had vaccines developed and US emergency approval was 45 days away and AIER knew that), let's get infected now and hope that's the end of COVID.  The GBD exactly suggests that "the U.S. should aim for this immune threshold through infection rather than vaccination."   GBD didn't expressly oppose vaccine but did expressly oppose waiting six more weeks for it.
It also does not, in any capacity, says infection instead of vaccination is how to obtain the threshold. In fact they even approve of the odea of using vaccines, as evidenced from the statement bolded.
  • False
    • "The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally
      • In modern times, herd immunity has never been achieved by allowing a disease to run through the population unfettered.
      • The percentage of participation needed to achieve herd immunity is different for each disease, unknown for SARS-like viruses, and herd immunity is simply not possible for some diseases, including coronaviruses like the common cold.  We didn't know then but are now increasingly confident that herd immunity is not achievable
      • Every study, then and now, including in Sweden shows that when low risk folks go back to normal, the danger to high-risk people increases substantially.  While that trade-off is economically sound, no ethical health professional may knowingly trade on increased harm to humans, whatever their workplace productivity.

The article also makes another false claim abput the GBD:
First, the plan wrongly assumes that all healthy people can survive a coronavirus infection. Though at-risk groups do worse, young healthy people are also dying and facing long-term issues from the illness.
  • I agree that GBD made no assumption that many young people would not die and that SA inaccurately, however charitiably, thought they might.
It actually says:
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. 
  • In fact, people over 85 died of COVID about 200 times more 18 and unders.  People over 65 are about three times as likely to die from a COVID infection as people under 65.  So, GBD's statement was false by orders of magnitude.
  • We now know for a fact that COVID is far more dangerous to children than the flu, short term and especially long term.
They then launch into a tirade against Sweden, which is one of the most successful countries against COVID-19:
  • Successful is a relative term.  If we are going by deaths per captia, then Sweden ranks 120th out of 165 countries.  Many nations did worse, but Sweden did worse than Germany, much worse than Denmark or FInland, more than twice as bad as Norway.  Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, Japan all had far fewer deaths per capita than Sweden.
  • Sweden fared better than 2/3rds of EU although notably more deaths than any country it borders- Norway, Finland, Denmark who all had tighter restrictions.  Sweden did do lockdowns in spite of your claims but  later and more limited than most countries.
    • Sweden's economic impact was definitely less than most EU countries
      • However, the Govt. of Sweden now regrets having made the trade-off recommended by GBD:
        • "The chosen approach was based on a belief that it was possible to protect older people and other at-risk groups from infection, an approach that emerged fairly quickly as more of a hope than a plan of action that could in fact be implemented. In the absence of such a plan, earlier and additional steps should have been taken to try as far as possible to slow the spread of the virus in the community."
        • Mortality among over 80yrs olds and nursing home employees increased by 20% in 2020 while actually decreasing in Norway.  That is the very trade-off that the GBD said was preventable and the overwhelming majority of experts said wasn't.
Sweden  has managed to lower death rates with each new wave of infection while Denmark is currently at their highest amount of COVID deaths. Sweden simply front ended their deaths whereas Denmark is now dealing with them.  So to compare lockdowns to no lockdowns, Sweden is winning.
  • False.  That was true in 2020.  Now Sweden's death rate stands at  205.49 per 100,000 compared to Denmark's far better 127.18 per 100,000
  • I'm with Scientific American here- AIER's plan to sacrifice the elderly on the altar of Dow Jones was economically sound and politically beneficial to Trump but scientifically reckless and ethically busted.




#37
oromagi
oromagi's avatar
Debates: 117
Posts: 8,696
8
10
11
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
8
10
11
-->
@3RU7AL
"deliberately infect" speaks to intent.
  • Yes, AIER's stated  intent was to massively increase infections.  Their unjustified hope for herd immunity could not be achieved otherwise.
it's funny how your "editorial opinions" are not lies, but other people's "editorial opinions" are
  • Bill Gates has fuck all to do with NewsGuard.  NewsGuard gave AIER a shitty rating for reliability and AIER is doing some fake news revenge disinformation campaign. That lie was stated as fact and can not be honestly called opinion.
  • Public-Choice has asked whether NewsGuard is propaganda and the only fact he brought to bear on this question is the falsehood that Bill Gates owns it therefore it must be propaganda.  There's no room for opinion there- the premise is simply non-factual.
Your stated  Editorial opinon:  "apparently newsguard is going to be integrated into the microsoft edge web browser in order to "warn" everyone about what bill gates thinks is "disinformation" is ignorant of the fact that NewsGuard was integrated into Microsoft Edge in 2018 with no connection to Bill Gates, but your sarcastic remark is actually reasonably factual.  To the extent that most honest fact-checkers are probably in general agreement with Bill Gates about what constitutes "disinformation" on the the internet, I think NewsGuard probably does warn people about disinformation that Bill Gates, unrelated as he stands, probably does likewise think of as disinformation.  



#38
Greyparrot
Greyparrot's avatar
Debates: 4
Posts: 25,965
3
4
10
Greyparrot's avatar
Greyparrot
3
4
10
-->
@3RU7AL
"deliberately infect" speaks to intent

it's funny how your "editorial opinions" are not lies, but other people's "editorial opinions" are

Exactly.. because you can also honestly say "deliberately protect" ... as we all know now that natural immunity is more robust than a vaccine treatment that mimics natural immunity.

And that intent should be no less valid.

But as usual, Oro will take the side of big monopolies like big Pharma because he is forever the megaphone of the elites. All the little peons are, of course, lying in comparison.