#I appreciate that it is pro-masking propaganda

[narse-tantalus]

Since I just saw a post on the same blog about countering the spread of misinformation using the SIFT method I'm going to apply it here.

Stop

Is this post provoking an emotional response? Yes

Is it trying to? Also yes.

What do I already know about the source? Twitter screenshots on Tumblr are unreliable. I know nothing about the linked pmc19.com but it doesn't look like a government or university website url.

Investigate (The Source)

What can you find about the author/website creators?

the link to pmc19.com/data resolves, and that website does seem to be the source of these claims, although the current numbers are slightly off those reported in the tweets, likely because we're a week later.

pmc19.com links to a PDF with "Background on Dr. Hoerger and the PMC". There they discuss how Dr. Hoerger (who claims copyright of the webpage at the bottom) is trained in clinical psychology, has taught and was doing an MBA in 2019 on strategic management. It claims he's "an expert in personality, emotions, and affective decision science..." and mentions he did a masters degree wich involved a lot of stuff... And also epidemiology.

The PMC is apparently "The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative" with unnamed members who have " led many projects to keep people safer during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic." and "The PMC dashboard is cited in grant applications, including at least two grants already funded. It has been cited by trusted organizations like the People’s CDC, news outlets, and scientific journals, including several papers published in JAMA journals."

Which really sounds like they think I should trust them at least as much as I trust people who write grants, and/or "The People's CDC" -- this makes me think they are unlikely to be an accurate source.

Here's Dr. Hoerger's bio at Louisiana Cancer research center:

https://www.louisianacancercenter.org/people/michael-hoerger-phd

It says "Dr. Hoerger conducts psychosocial research to reduce the emotional and physical burden of serious illnesses. Dr. Hoerger is an international expert in psychosocial oncology as well as pandemic mitigation." And the lists a bunch of psychology stuff. Literally never mentions pandemics again. If he's an "international expert in pandemic mitigation" a) I'd expect him to work somewhere other than a Cancer center b) I'd expect his bio to mention his pandemic mitigation work. Maybe he's new to all this pandemic stuff? He certainly doesn't claim to be an epidemiologist on the pmc website, just to have worked on a project that involves it.

When I google "The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative" the second result is this webpage which questions their methodology and suggests that their model is incapable of making accurate predictions -- claiming it's always going to be biased towards whatever happened on the same dates last year -- both low and high. (I'm summarizing and interpreting a huge amount here,so read it yourself, and the source is just a blog post so not intrinsically more credible...) But it is note worthy that the main 3rd party discussion of this organization is someone questioning the utility of their predictions.

https://buttondown.com/abbycartus/archive/we-need-to-talk-about-the-pandemic-mitigation/

What is their mission? Do they have vested interests? Would their assessment be biased?

Their mission seems to be to "track" or predict cases of covid -- but like better than the real CDC and epidemiologists. Presumably this is born out of concern for immunocompromised individuals, or boredom, or needing a project for a Strategic Management MBA, or distrust of Official Sources.

They appear to have a vested interest in pandemic mitigation, and therefore alarmism and possibly in not agreeing with official sources. Their assessment may well be biased!

Do they have authority in the Area?

No. They mention precisely 0 epidemiologists working for or with them. I don't see a reason to trust their models more than my physics grad student friends who made pandemic models on a lark in 2020.

Find Better Coverage

The official CDC (Centers for Disease Control) webpage on Covid data is here:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

It indicates lower numbers than last year for everything they track, numbers that are kind of ticking up in recent weeks, but numbers that are forecast (if I'm reading that right) to reach a smaller peak than in prior years.

Notably the CDC is not making any directly comparable claims about number of people infected or infectious. Or how many might be infected next month. I believe this is because these are fundamentally unknowable from the data they have, and that speculating on them would be irresponsible for public communicators of science. Sure, one could create models that predict those numbers, but publishing the results to the public without context on the uncertainties of the models would be irresponsible since people might make life or death decisions like wearing a mask or getting a vaccine based on those bad predictions. Or they might just rage at people online who disagree with them. Idk, I'm not a science communicator.

Don't trust the CDC? Tough. The New York Times ended their own covid tracking in 2023 saying:

After more than three years of daily reporting of coronavirus data in the United States, The New York Times is ending its Covid-19 data-gathering operation. The Times will continue to publish virus data from the federal government weekly on a new set of tracking pages, but this page will no longer be updated.

This change was spurred by the declining availability of virus data from state and local health officials. Since few states report more than once a week (and some no longer report data to the public at all), the weekly data reports from the C.D.C. have become the most reliable source of information on the virus’s spread.

There new webpage is here and it was last updated in March 2024, it says:

These Covid tracking pages are no longer being updated. Get the latest information from the Centers for Disease Control, or find archived data from The Times’s three year reporting effort here.

John's Hopkins University has this to say:

On March 10, 2023, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center ceased collecting and reporting of global COVID-19 data. For updated cases, deaths, and vaccine data please visit the following sources: Global: World Health Organization (WHO) U.S.: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

So yeah, reputable sources have stopped caring and link you to the CDC as the place to get your info.

Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to their Original Context

The pmc19.com website does appear to be the original context for these claims. Thank you OP for linking that.

My Verdict:

These claims are misinformation. Specifically they claim numbers that are based on a model that was not created by subject matter experts, that disagrees with the trends reported by the CDC and it's epidemiologists. Either government employed epidemiologists are wrong and no university epidemiologists want to call them out on it... Or the PMC is wrong. Since they aren't epidemiologists... They're probably wrong. Moreover: If you don't trust the CDC you shouldn't The PMC because in their technical apendix they claim to use CDC data to make their projections. The only way the PMC could be right is if all other epidemiologists are wrong about the COVID pandemic and how to interpret wastewater and hospitalization data.

The PMC and Dr. Hoerger are engaging in academic sounding BS. They have incentives to be alarmist and fear monger, and don't seem to care or understand that they're using a model that probably doesn't have predictive value.

Data source: https://pmc19.com/data/

[balkanradfem]

I realized today that Lindsay Ellis left youtube due to mobbing, and I'm devastated about it. It's terrifying what she was put thru, and how badly it traumatized her. Her goodbye message shows that she got hurt until it broke her, until she regretted everything she had ever done, and has become frightened of other human beings alltogether, not knowing who will turn against her next.

I relate deeply to being isolated and smear campaigned into traumatic fear of people, and I'm enraged that a mob of males managed to do it to her, just because she was a woman with a public voice. Lindsay Ellis was the absolute ideal of liberalism; she was sensitive to every minority, supportive of every pro-liberal propaganda, great supporter of every woke category, contributed greatly with her opinions to every issue liberals fought for. I watched her video 'Mask Off' with bated breath, completely in shock that she had the courage to make it, because it was raw and powerful and brilliant. She apologized for miniscule missteps, and it kept going thru my head, that had she been a male, she would have been considered an absolute icon of progressiveness. She'd be praised as the absolute best, most precious, nuanced and important ideal, proof that males are 'becoming perfect' and 'can do no wrong'. Instead, she was berated over tiny shit males have never been called out in their lives. It made me sick.

She got mobbed because she was a woman with a voice online. Males decided it was not okay for women to get as far as she went in the society, and suffocated her as a threat to any woman who'd dare to try. I looked up the videos of people sharing their thoughts of her leaving, and they were all made by males. Every single one. Not only they did this, but they get to shape the public opinion of it. Disgusting.

It was only in the comments I was able to find people acknowledging how much she has done for the youtube community. She entered the stage of youtube filled with angry male videos, and she provided brilliance, humor, nuance, intellectual analysis, she created a genre of media essays that didn't exist beforehand, and paved the way for many other women to speak and gain public voices. She was the number one in how popular, funny and well-received her videos were. I remember being completely obsessed the first time I found them, I've never seen interesting and educational content like that before. I've learned so much about the ways movies are written, shaped and put together, I've learned more about creating stories than I did anywhere else. I've appreciated and loved her content. I didn't agree with all of it, but I didn't need to, I've benefited from it all the same.

My heart hurts that I couldn't do anything for her in return, that I've done next to nothing to support her when she was getting torn into pieces by the mob. It confirms her horror and pain about how people turn their back on you as soon as you lose popularity.

I want to know if there's any way we can organize to protect women when this is happening to them. I don't want to see another woman chased out of public space because she dares to speak her mind. I don't want to leave another woman who helped, taught, encouraged, and benefited others, to be unprotected against an angry mob intent on traumatizing her. I don't want to see this happening to my favourite women online, and I want to know what we can do.

[ericsexcellentexplanations-blog]

V for Vendetta - 3/5

Movies in this modern era can make one feel emotions without that individual even noticing. Although movies are not real, they can immerse one in genuine feelings and emotions. The cult classic V For Vendetta projects a very motivational and deep mood by the use of cinematography, sound, and by the amazing costume design. 

V for Vendetta is a movie that follows a man named V, and his quest to right the wrongs in his society and gain revenge. Taking place in the late 2020’s the movie depicts a dystopian future of United Kingdom which has been outlawed by a totalitarian government. We are first introduced to V as a masked vigilante saving Evey, an influential character in the film. V believes that the world that he lives in needs change and he is the one to execute that change. At first, the minority accepted the rules and there weren’t any rebellions to release themselves from those rules. He sparks the first bit of his revolution by blowing up Old Bailey, accompanied by triumphant music, enlisting fear into the totalitarian government. Even though, V is labelled as a terrorist by a totalitarian government, his charismatic personality creates an sympathetic persona which allows the audience to understand his views of society.

The camera angles and lighting in the movie V for Vendetta reflect a very intense and mysterious disposition. Throughout the whole movie, hard lighting is used almost constantly. Especially when “V” is on screen, hard lighting is used to emphasize the emotionless mask he has on. The deeper shadows in the background solidifies his mysterious personality he portrays throughout the movie. Camera angles are used effectively in this film as well. Camera angles are used effectively during fight scenes. Wide and long shots are mostly used to show the audience the whole scale of the fight and the number if people that are in the shot. Furthermore, physical relations are also used very effectively. This is shown in the conference room with Adam Sutler, the high chancellor of the totalitarian government. Adam is projected onto the screen looking down at this “finger men”. This physical relation, shows the bold presences of Adam, identifying his significance and power. 

Sound effects in V for Vendetta are one of the most widely manipulated aspects of sound in the movie. Whether it’s the sound of a knife or a building exploding, sound effects are inserted very strategically. The costumes in V for Vendetta put the viewer is a somewhat disturbed and mystified mood. Although it’s always the same, V’s costume brings to the movie an aspect of mystery. The Guy Fawkes mask he wears over his face adds impending vagueness to the character, making the viewer obsessed with discovering V’s identity. V’s costume adds just the right amount of suspense, leaving the viewer constantly shrouded in mystery. Evey’s costume in the second half of the movie gives the movie a chaotic and horrific nature. After Every shaves her head, the tone of the movie, specifically her character, takes on a new substance. The slight inane aspect of the movie turns into a major tone just by the manipulation of a costume and shows the change of belief in Every.

The outlining message in V for Vendetta can be construed to pro terrorist propaganda. Many viewers can perceive the movie to defend violence and terrorism however, I believe the movie has a deeper meaning. It warns them of how apathy and idleness can allow a government to strip rights and freedoms right out from under a person’s nose. Unless the people speak out and hold the government accountable, nothing is done to stop the theft of their civil liberties. Correlating to current issues, as debates continue to rise about government control taking over people’s privacy on social media and unless strict actions are constructed unwarranted actions will continue. “V for Vendetta” is a movie that makes viewers think. Is V right in what he is doing? Could the totalitarian rule portrayed in the movie ever exist? Most importantly, it carries the message of political action. Rather than looking at the violence V causes in the movie, look at the inaction of the public that led to violence as the only option. Reflecting current media and society it bring me to think that the citizens voice is the most important as we see the control that the government and countries currently have. We must be politically active and reflect our current societal values as losing privacy and power is currently a sensitive topic.

The empowering message in this film is unforgettable, teaching the audiences a valuable lesson of empowerment. I finished watching this film with many outlying questions, however, over time I came to appreciate its lessons and views. I would definitely recommend this film to anyone and it will be a movie that I will continue to reflect upon.

[liugeaux]

Congratulations we won, now what?

So, the United States of America elected a new President this week. While I don't know if new is the right word to use we definitely elected a DIFFERENT President. Congratulations, right now depending on who you voted for, you’re probably experiencing intense joy or bitter disgust. While this seems like a big change for both sides of the political scale, I feel like it’s definitely a positive election for both parties. Here are a few things we as a country need to do as we dive into 2021, to ensure the best future for our country.

Let me break this down by party.  

First off let’s talk to the Democrats.  

Number 1: Congratulations you should see this as a victory. Joe Biden, while not the ideal candidate, was at least good enough to defeat a republican candidate that dabbled in tyranny and is compulsively selfish. He will actually work with his Republican counterparts and help regain our respectability abroad. He’s not the Trojan Horse for socialism the right paints him to be and much of the left isn’t happy with his centrist ideals, but he’s a professional who knows how to do this job. At the very least he can begin the healing process we need so badly.  

Number 2: Calm down! Sure we will have a blue president for 4 years, however, the silent minority of this country has spoken and it's very obvious they are not ready for the progressive ideas that are currently being floated by a large portion of left-wing politicians.That doesn't mean this isn’t a shift in the right direction, it absolutely is, however what we should learn from this is that we have a long way to go. Force-feeding far-left agendas like, is not going to get us where both you and I think the country should go. Keep fighting the good fight, understand that there are people who will just not agree with you and that doesn't mean they're wrong it just means they have fundamentally different ideas of what this country is about. We’ve been finding middle ground for centuries, we can continue to do that in the 2020′s.

Next Let’s Talk To the Republicans, oh wait, I’m sorry, the GOP. 

Number 1: Congratulations you should see this is a victory. Sure you lost the presidency, however This election should serve as an opportunity for the conservatives of this nation to purge themselves of the Trump energy that has been driving their political landscape for 4 years. Conservatism, Republicans, and anyone who considers themselves “right wing”, are not inherently bad and the preference for small government and self-reliance is a respectable ideology that had a large hand in building this country. However, the Trump juice that has been fueling the red of states for the past 4 years has done more damage to the idea of conservatism than anything else in the past 30 years. This is your opportunity to move forward and re-establish yourself as a party for the people and not for a narcissistic pseudo billionaire that was only ever out to benefit himself and his friends. 

Number 2: Calm down! Sure we will have a blue president for 4 years, however thanks to the current Commander in Orange Julius, the Supreme Court is stacked in your favor for the next generation, and somehow the hatred for Donald Trump didn’t bleed over into the Congressional races. In fact, it looks like you're going to pick up some seats in both the House and Senate. Politically speaking, the conservative agenda is still alive and well in Washington, and arguably in the hands of smarter and more well-intentioned Americans than Donald Trump. Effectively, you guys are still in charge. When we inevitably have another conservative president, hopefully it will be someone that America can be objectively more proud of..

Now let me talk to both of y'all.

Please use this moment to galvanize the country. Media outlets, Public Figures and Social Media are actively pitting you against each other and while both sides believe it's to advance their agenda all it's really doing is crippling the whole system. Many people weren't voting FOR Trump they were voting against a liberal agenda that they fear, don’t understand or have been fed propaganda about. Do I want Universal Health Care? Absolutely! Do I want higher education to be more affordable? Absolutely! Do I want more wealth equality? You bet! Do I want to overhaul the entire criminal justice system? More than you will ever know! However, the current approach, and might I say “cancel culture” narrative that is so prevalent in liberal politics right now would doom any legitimate attempt at creating a better America through any one of these measures. 

Like it or not, conservatives aren't going anywhere. They make up nearly half of this nation, and for any social programs to truly work effectively, conservatives have to agree to put in a legitimate effort to back them. While I appreciate the gusto and energy that the modern liberal movements have been channeling, I don't see your current approach making any headway any time soon.

Conservatives, I get it, you don't like change. Our country, since its founding, has always adopted the more progressive mindset as generations pass, it's the natural progression of things. Whether you want to believe this, many of these “fringe liberal ideas'' are inevitable. Abolishing Slavery and Women’s Suffereage were once “fringe liberal ideas” and we see what happened with those. What you think is far left now, in 2-3 generations will be commonplace and considered moderate. The slow march to the inevitable progressive future isn't something you should be stopping, it should be something you are monitoring and regulating. Make progressive work within your ideals of individual freedom. Use your scepticism to ensure these progressive ideas are done right and fit in with amendments in the Constitution. The way I see it, Progressives are there to throw wild pro-citizen ideas at a wall, and Conservatives are there to adjust those things into a usable state. It’s the natural order of things. Both sides have to realize that at some point, you must reach across the aisle for anything to work. 

Side Note

I'm happy with the outcome, but the last 4 years have pulled a mask off of the American people in a way I never anticipated. A lot of our problems stem from inherent cracks in the foundation of our origins and we can’t ignore those cracks anymore. We aren’t a perfect nation, we never were and depending on the metric you’re looking at, one could argue that we've never even been that great. As a millennial, I've been told my whole life that America is the greatest country on Earth and that I can have anything I want if I just put my mind to it. We are the land of opportunity, and a beacon for the rest of the world to envy. As I’ve grown up, Millennials have gotten the reputation of an entitled generation that expects everyone to cater to their needs, often referred to as the “everyone gets a trophy generation.” That’s not who we are. Millennials are a generation of Americans that were sold a bill of goods only to find they were built on half-truths and hollow platitudes. Instead of just accepting it for what it is and letting the inevitable cynicism of adulthood take control we understand that we have a voice and that the bill of goods we were sold is obtainable. The fight for that may sound like entitlement, when in fact it's an optimistic hope that we can make things the way they should be. Don’t feed us propaganda and then be surprised when we believe it.

Once millennials are done, we will have the country you promised us, the way we were always told it would be and ironically, we will make America great, FINALLY.