One may run into the pseudo-science of Facebook, YouTube, and many of the social media, which have the ability to halt free speech. I will not argue the 1st amendment or internet law. We need to understand that within “the narrative”, there need to be layers of biased experts. When I speak to my patients about Covid, I am not up against Facebook warnings, Twitter labels, and YouTube demonetizations. I am up against the Fact-Checkers who give cover to those decisions.
Companies like Facebook and You Tube are Gatekeepers, but we must understand we are not fighting just the social media tech companies but the “non-profits” who are the Keymasters, if one understands the Ghostbuster reference.
See the Bias
In a City Journal article about a Facebook “Partly False” label on an article supported by a published, peer-reviewed research, the Keymaster for Facebook is a company called Science Feedback. They labeled a German Study retrospectively looking at complaints from results of children wearing masks. This was not a prospective study with some children wearing masks and some not. This is no different from the CDC making decisions based on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The information is submitted can be inclusive or may be missing. But German research is done retrospectively well enough to be published. But from Science Feedback,
In summary, the claim that the study cited by the GreenMedInfo article shows mask-wearing leads to many harmful physical and psychological effects in children is unsupported and misleading. This claim ignores several limitations in the study that preclude such a conclusion from being drawn, such as its lack of controls and failure to account for confounding factors and bias in the study population.
Science Feedback can critique studies, but the particular studies and the resulting labels show bias. The CDC and social media companies use similar articles to support masks and other “preventive measures” which have the cover of groups like Science Feedback. It is easy to discuss or critique science literature and then use this information to make public policy advisements. But this is not what Science Feedback is doing.
Fact-Checkers do not correct wrongs
In the City Journal article, an example of Science Feedback checking Then President Donald Trump when he stated that Vaccines would be ready in several weeks. The Fact-checkers labeled this INACCURATE.
The article cites a 15 September 2020 interview with the U.S. President Donald Trump on the television show “Fox and Friends” as evidence that a COVID-19 vaccine will be available in weeks. During the interview, Trump claimed that the vaccine will be ready “in a matter of weeks” and that it will be delivered “immediately upon getting it.” However, these statements contradict scientists’ estimates of the vaccine timeline. (My Underline)
Science Feedback references a Politico article as a substance to it’s ” science”, as kept in the paragraph above under “estimates”. Originally the main critique was of the Donald Trump quote at several weeks, which was off by a couple of weeks, where Science Feedback was off by many months. Then to turned added that the critique of the original blog post was also that the vaccinations would be “compulsory”. Which is proven “Partially True” with compulsory vaccines by medical organizations, cruise ship lines, and discussions of vaccine passports.
As a sidebar; all evidence “Fact-Checkers” use usually leads to other evidence against their narratives on other matters. A case in point is using the Politico article above, this leads to another Politico article that contradicts Science Feedbacks propaganda. Two points from Politico;
“I might even go so far as to say that this facemask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take the Covid vaccine because the immunogenicity may be 70 percent and if I don’t get an immune response to a vaccine it’s not going to protect me,” Redfield said. “This facemask will.”
Eleanor Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University’s School of Public Health, said while it’s known that masks work in controlled settings, few studies have measured the effectiveness of how they are being used in the real world. She also noted it’s not yet known how effective a vaccine will be.
Fact-checkers do not correct wrongs, they just rewrite the propaganda.
The Hole Fact-Checkers Dig
Because of the above quotes, I looked at the review done by Science Feedback when looking up “masks” on their own website. One of the most recent was a review about mask effectiveness and changes on CDC information. You can read the review HERE. But Science Feedback gives one reference from the Lancet, a well-known Medical Journal.
Serial cross-sectional surveys were administered via a web platform to randomly surveyed US individuals aged 13 years and older, to query self-reports of face mask-wearing.
Additionally, mask-wearing in 12 states was evaluated 2 weeks before and after statewide mandates.
This is a “data obtained by survey” model during a June into July 2020 time period, cherry-picking states with mask mandates and information. All of these types of pro-mask articles from this time period are only mentioned currently to mislead the public betting the public will not check the Fact-Checkers. Not much different from the original described research Science Feedback labeled as “UNSUPPORTED”.
In fact, a similar type of article was to be released titled, Decrease in Hospitalizations for COVID-19 after Mask Mandates in 1083 U.S. Counties with one of the co-authors being Dr. Monica Gandhi, Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). This was withdrawn, but cause the short time period within the research came to be found false because of the resulting increase in cases in the Mask Mandate counties.
The authors have withdrawn this manuscript because there are increased rates of SARS- CoV-2 cases in the areas that we originally analyzed in this study.
This Lancet article has been debunked many times over by individual county and state comparison data. Follow California compared to Florida. Look at recent increased cases of mask mandating and 90% plus compliance in India. Compare North and South Dakota with Minnesota. The debunking is supported HERE.
The Truth Is Out There
I recommend all my patients, which means all of you, read a rare bit of Covid journalism from all places the British Medical Journal. Written by freelance journalist, Laurie Clarke, can be found HERE.
