How Amazon Became an Engine For Anti-Vaccine Misinformation (fastcompany.com) 191
Type "vaccines" into Amazon's search bar, and its auto-complete suggests "are dangerous" for your search. But that's just part of a larger problem, points out Fast Company (in an article shared by Slashdot reader tedlistens).
For example, Amazon's search results are touting as "best sellers!" many books with some very bad science: Offered by small publishers or self-published through Amazon's platform, the books rehearse the falsehoods and conspiracy theories that fuel vaccine opposition, steepening the impact of the pandemic and slowing a global recovery. They also illustrate how the world's biggest store has become a megaphone for anti-vaccine activists, medical misinformers, and conspiracy theorists, pushing dangerous falsehoods in a medium that carries more apparent legitimacy than just a tweet.
"Without question, Amazon is one of the greatest single promoters of anti-vaccine disinformation, and the world leader in pushing fake anti-vaccine and COVID-19 conspiracy books," says Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine. For years, journalists and researchers have warned of the ways fraudsters, extremists, and conspiracy theorists use Amazon to earn cash and attention. To Hotez, who has devoted much of his career to educating the public about vaccines, the real-world consequences aren't academic. In the U.S. and elsewhere, he says, vaccination efforts are now up against a growing ecosystem of activist groups, foreign manipulators, and digital influencers who "peddle fake books on Amazon...."
Gradually, Amazon has taken a tougher approach to content moderation, and to a seemingly ceaseless onslaught of counterfeits, fraud, defective products, and toxic speech... Despite its sweeps, however, Amazon is still flooded with misinformation, and helping amplify it too: A series of recent studies and a review by Fast Company show the bookstore is boosting misinformation around health-related terms like "autism" or "covid," and nudging customers toward a universe of other conspiracy theory books.
In one audit first published in January, researchers at the University of Washington surveyed Amazon's search results for four dozen terms related to vaccines. Among 38,000 search results and over 16,000 recommendations, they counted nearly 5,000 unique products containing misinformation, or 10.47% of the total. For books, they found that titles deemed misinformative appeared higher in search results than books that debunked their theories. "Overall, our audits suggest that Amazon has a severe vaccine/health misinformation problem exacerbated by its search and recommendation algorithms," write Prerna Juneja and Tanushee Mitra in their paper, presented last month at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. "Just a single click on an anti-vaccine book could fill your homepage with several other similar anti-vaccine books..." Like any products on Amazon, or any content across social media platforms, anti-vaccine titles also benefit from an algorithmically-powered ranking system. And despite the company's aggressive efforts to battle fraud, it's a system that's still easily manipulated through false reviews...
Much of the uproar about misinformation has focused on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, but Amazon's role deserves more attention, says Marc Tuters, an assistant professor of new media at the University of Amsterdam, who helped lead the Infodemic.eu study. The retailer sells half of all the books in the U.S. and its brand is highly trusted by consumers.
For example, Amazon's search results are touting as "best sellers!" many books with some very bad science: Offered by small publishers or self-published through Amazon's platform, the books rehearse the falsehoods and conspiracy theories that fuel vaccine opposition, steepening the impact of the pandemic and slowing a global recovery. They also illustrate how the world's biggest store has become a megaphone for anti-vaccine activists, medical misinformers, and conspiracy theorists, pushing dangerous falsehoods in a medium that carries more apparent legitimacy than just a tweet.
"Without question, Amazon is one of the greatest single promoters of anti-vaccine disinformation, and the world leader in pushing fake anti-vaccine and COVID-19 conspiracy books," says Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine. For years, journalists and researchers have warned of the ways fraudsters, extremists, and conspiracy theorists use Amazon to earn cash and attention. To Hotez, who has devoted much of his career to educating the public about vaccines, the real-world consequences aren't academic. In the U.S. and elsewhere, he says, vaccination efforts are now up against a growing ecosystem of activist groups, foreign manipulators, and digital influencers who "peddle fake books on Amazon...."
Gradually, Amazon has taken a tougher approach to content moderation, and to a seemingly ceaseless onslaught of counterfeits, fraud, defective products, and toxic speech... Despite its sweeps, however, Amazon is still flooded with misinformation, and helping amplify it too: A series of recent studies and a review by Fast Company show the bookstore is boosting misinformation around health-related terms like "autism" or "covid," and nudging customers toward a universe of other conspiracy theory books.
In one audit first published in January, researchers at the University of Washington surveyed Amazon's search results for four dozen terms related to vaccines. Among 38,000 search results and over 16,000 recommendations, they counted nearly 5,000 unique products containing misinformation, or 10.47% of the total. For books, they found that titles deemed misinformative appeared higher in search results than books that debunked their theories. "Overall, our audits suggest that Amazon has a severe vaccine/health misinformation problem exacerbated by its search and recommendation algorithms," write Prerna Juneja and Tanushee Mitra in their paper, presented last month at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. "Just a single click on an anti-vaccine book could fill your homepage with several other similar anti-vaccine books..." Like any products on Amazon, or any content across social media platforms, anti-vaccine titles also benefit from an algorithmically-powered ranking system. And despite the company's aggressive efforts to battle fraud, it's a system that's still easily manipulated through false reviews...
Much of the uproar about misinformation has focused on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, but Amazon's role deserves more attention, says Marc Tuters, an assistant professor of new media at the University of Amsterdam, who helped lead the Infodemic.eu study. The retailer sells half of all the books in the U.S. and its brand is highly trusted by consumers.
Cost of freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the cost of freedom. Everyone is free to share their flawed opinions, their theories, and everyone is free to believe them. You are free to believe the Earth is flat, or that vaccines are a conspiracy to control your mind (first dose is the chip, the second is software programming), or that universal basic income can be paid my taxing "the rich" ever so slightly so they won't even notice but allow everyone to never work again if they choose so, or that the immigration problems can be solved with a giant wall or by providing indefinite room and board for anyone who wants to com, etc, etc. Yes, freedom means we are all free to be idiots too. People are free to not learn and use critical thinking or the ability to do some math which would tell them that while yes, the vaccines are not risk free, the risk to life and well being is much greater if you don't vaccinate yourself. People are sheep, and you either take away their freedom to share information and feed them pre-approved messaging only, of you can try to fight it with correct information which unfortunately in practice causes the opposite effect, or you can simply "go with the flow" - for example use people's inability to gauge risk/reward for example to get them to do what is needed for society, such as creating lotteries for people who vaccinate. Yes, those same people who know there is a risk of vaccine hurting them but cannot objectively gauge that risk, will choose a vaccine simply because there is a chance to win a car or a million dollars - that easily offsets that risk in their mind because it's something very positive, no matter the odds.
Re:Cost of freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all opinions are created equal. You are certainly allowed to believe in stupid ideas, and you can market them freely. But if someone believes in antivaxx conspiracies, then they are an idiot, and if a company pushes disinformation on gullible people, then it is responsible for that. It's not a "cost of freedom" that just so happens to manifest as profit in the bank account of an innocent business. The customer types "vaccines" and Amazon responds "are dangerous". Yes, that's the "eat shit, millions of flies can't be wrong" algorithm, also known as "AI". But it's THEIR algorithm.
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Not all opinions are created equal. You are certainly allowed to believe in stupid ideas, and you can market them freely. But if someone believes in antivaxx conspiracies, then they are an idiot, and if a company pushes disinformation on gullible people, then it is responsible for that. It's not a "cost of freedom" that just so happens to manifest as profit in the bank account of an innocent business. The customer types "vaccines" and Amazon responds "are dangerous". Yes, that's the "eat shit, millions of flies can't be wrong" algorithm, also known as "AI". But it's THEIR algorithm.
Let's put it all those words a bit more succinctly [imgur.com].
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The problem is not that we're all free to express our opinions.
The problem is we have an implicit expectation that companies like Amazon will curate what they carry. That is, we sort of expect that if we search for a book on vaccines, we'll get a book published from a scientist or medical professional that uses the latest research available prior to publishing--not self-published bullshit.
And the real problem is that Amazon does not--and, because of the scale of their operations--they can not--curate what t
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The problem is we have an implicit expectation that companies like Amazon will curate what they carry.
Well, yes, having that expectation is a problem. You shouldn't have it.
I never thought that any old book I might find in Borders or Barnes and Noble was automatically The Truth (TM), nor did I think that it was the bookstore's job to ensure that it was. Nor did anybody else sane think that. There were all sorts of freaky books in those places, from every point of view. So why should it be any different for Amazon?
What about Amazon's freedom? (Score:2)
Amazon is free to keep their property clear of lies that get people killed, if they so choose.
We do draw a line on freedom of speech (Score:2)
Wisdom of crowds (Score:2)
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So much for the "wisdom of crowds."
The wisdom of crowds doesn't work if there is someone making a claim to bias the crowd.
An example....
I don't remember all the details but someone did a study on this a long time ago when it would be a welcome prize to win a cow. The challenge was to guess the weight of the cow and the person that got the closest would win. If every guess was averaged out that average was very very close, within a pound as I recall. The problem is if there's some kind of trusted expert that spoke up with an opinion, such
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Amazon Search sucks (Score:3)
I gave up and search on eBooks and Audible with Google instead, strangely enough it finds things that Amazon Search doesn't, ON THEIR OWN SITE!
I don't even know why it works, since Google also gave up showing what I ask for and return things it THINKS I'm looking for a long time ago.
And people are surprised and appalled... (Score:5, Insightful)
The search results are biased by the previous search results.
So the more people who look for info about vaccines being bad for you, the more likely that similar search terms will give you results like that.
Alas, those of us who think of vaccines as just another bit of medicine don't do Google/Amazon/whatever searches on the subject.
Yes, it's true. I have NEVER looked for information about vaccines on the web. If my doctor says "here, go get this shot", I go and get that shot. I do NOT check on the web for information about the shot (the only reason I even might do that is if the place I get my vaccinations didn't have any of the stuff on hand, and I wanted to get it done right now so I could go on vacation).
So, search results will be biased toward "Vaccines are EVIL" just because the people who think otherwise aren't going to bother searching the web for any information about vaccines other than (faintly possibly) the location he/she/it can get the shot done....
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If my doctor says "here, go get this shot", I go and get that shot. I do NOT check on the web for information about the shot (the only reason I even might do that is if the place I get my vaccinations didn't have any of the stuff on hand, and I wanted to get it done right now so I could go on vacation).
There are three shots right now in the USA, and they are not created equal, and the long-term ramifications differ for each. Your doctor may be diligent, and that's great for you, but a lot of them aren't so much and they are also often hamstrung by a system that does not give them enough time to provide quality care. Being that casual about your health care may harm you.
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Even more so, why would best selling be considered equal to most factual?
The sets might overlap, but there is no reason to expect them to be the same.
Might be true in America ... (Score:2)
So, Amazon (US corporation) profits by selling dangerous bullshit to Amazon.com's customers (in America) ; eventually Amazon's American customer base will become extinct, shortly followed by Amazon itself. Fine.
And the problem is?
It's not Amazon's job ... (Score:2)
Better to let evolution w
That's ONE of numerous suggestions (Score:2)
If you hit on that suggestion, which is several down in the list of suggestions, I think that says more about you than about Amazon.
There are lots of valid reasons to criticize Amazon, but that instance of their search suggestions isn't one of them. I didn't follow it up, so I don't know what the search would have returned if I'd done so. Perhaps that would provide a reasonable basis for criticizing them, but I don't want to train the search engine that way.
OTOH, it's a valid criticism of publicly trainab
Seriously, don’t go down the censorship road (Score:2)
I hate the antivax movement as much as anyone else here, but if you see misinformation being published on Amazon, give it a negative review. Back in the days when a small number of publishers decided what books we were allowed to read, bad information still got published.
Solution for anti-vaccine people (Score:2)
All society has to do for people who don't want to get the vaccine is to say that if you don't get a vaccine and end up needing treatment, the federal government will not pay for any of it, and private insurance doesn't have to cover it either. That way you're free to not get the vaccine, but you have to shoulder the cost of your decision.
Society provides an effective ounce of prevention. If you don't want it, society won't pay for a pound of cure.
Stupid people and book recommendations (Score:3)
Amazon is a wasteland. (Score:2)
Unless you are looking for a very specific product--and you know what product you want based on outside search results--Amazon's search results for most major product lines has become a dumping ground for cheap Chinese ripoffs, junk science books, and poorly made crap. Even in specific product categories it's a dumping grown for low-end products--even worse online than Walmart is in person.
Even if you know what you're looking for and know the company you want to buy it from, Amazon's search process will put
Fuck this. (Score:2)
Re:what about this (Score:5, Interesting)
those that had the corona virus and recovered dont need to take the vaccine because that means their own immune system vaccinated them
Maybe, maybe not. Odds are yes, but there's still a non-zero value that an infected person's immune system did not develop a memory of the antigen, and would not have a strong immune response on reinfection. I leave it to whomever to go with unknown value and statistical assurance of greatly varying degrees or vaccine values of 90%(ish) or higher. People take larger rolls of the die on highways and I still sleep soundly after driving home.
which is a better vaccine than what was hastily made in a laboratory
The exact same mechanism for the production of antigen is the same in vaccine and infection. Your immune system doesn't have some sort of bifurcated production line. So I would question you on your definition of "better" as I am unsure how exactly you are quantifying that.
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Why would the vaccine work when the infection failed to 'develop a memory of the antigen' when 'The exact same mechanism for the production of antigen is the same in vaccine and infection.'?
Re:what about this (Score:4, Insightful)
Your body doesn't react to the same virus the same way twice which is one of the reasons the hospitalisation rate of people who get a repeat infection of COVID-19 is incredibly high.
Also, since you're talking about the vaccine, ask yourself why the mRNA vaccine is received in 2 doses with only the full course of both providing lasting and strong efficacy.
These things have been studied. https://www.pennmedicine.org/n... [pennmedicine.org]
My country's policy as a result of the scientific studies is to only single dose people who have had COVID-19 in the past half a year.
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Your body doesn't react to the same virus the same way twice which is one of the reasons the hospitalisation rate of people who get a repeat infection of COVID-19 is incredibly high.
That sounds to me like people with weak immune systems tend to be hospitalized, and has nothing to do with vaccines being more effective.
That's not telling us anything on vaccines being more or less effective than a recovery from a first infection.
What is the mechanism by which a vaccination provides greater protection? If we can't answer that then it's going to be difficult to prove it is more effective.
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There's various levels of exposure, with a light exposure causing less symptoms, easier recovery and likely not as full of an immune response.
Basically a light exposure doesn't exercise the immune system the same as a heavy exposure and a vaccine is closer to a heavy exposure, especially the 2nd dose.
There's also the varieties of the virus now circulating, you caught a mild case of the original variety, your immune system doesn't defend very well against the Delta variety. Currently I have had one shot of t
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Odds are yes, but there's still a non-zero value that an infected person's immune system did not develop a memory of the antigen, and would not have a strong immune response on reinfection.
This has been studied. Having had COVID-19 is slightly worse than getting only a single shot of the mRNA vaccines and the efficacy is of a shorter duration. But we have also studied if this mechanism can be abused https://www.pennmedicine.org/n... [pennmedicine.org]
And the end result is my country will only single dose you if you've had COVID-19 within 6 months of receiving the vaccination, as the first mRNA shot effectively acts the same as the booster shot and the resulting body's immune response + half course of mRNA vacci
Nice study, but some analysis [Re:what about this] (Score:2)
That's a good study (thanks for the citation), but do note that it was a very small study,.
Also, note that this was a study of antibody and memory cell B response, not immunity. The efficacy of a vaccination is studied by actual infection rates, not by immune response, because there is not a good way to translate immune response into degree of protection. The study shows that people who had COVID19 have immune response and that when they were subsequently vaccinated they showed much higher immune response;
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The net conclusion is that if your goal is to stop the spread, you want to immunize those who haven't had it. The people who have had it already are mostly there, immunizing them contributes little to stoping the spread.
If your goal is to stop the spread, maybe. If your goal however is to increase health outcomes immunising even previously infected individuals is the way to go. There's a body of evidence (well to me body of anecdotes since I haven't gone looking for a study, but the line has been repeated by the Dutch health ministry) which suggests that a reinfection of COVID-19 is significantly worse than the first infection.
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The big difference between the current COVID-19 vaccines and either natural immunity or traditionally developed killed- or attenuated-virus vaccines is that the immunological target is *selected* by a *designer*, as opposed to being chosen by chance. One of the chief selection criteria for a target is that it is highly likely to be conserved by evolution. Your *immune* system has no such way of selecting targets; it picks whatever targets it notices first.
Selecting a good target is a judgment call, but a
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Because the infection and the vaccine both rely on the body's immune system, the vaccine is worthless for an already infected person, regardless of whether the infection triggered long-lasting defense (the vaccine won't do better).
For an already infected person, the vaccine has negative value, because there are some (most likely minor) additional risks involved with it.
That's been studied and proven to be false. Contracting COVID-19 is no better than having a half a course of the vaccine. https://www.pennmedicine.org/n... [pennmedicine.org]
You get a benefit from the vaccine, just as you get a benefit from two courses of the vaccine.
the immune system may develop a more comprehensive defense from infection.
The immune system has only in the most extremely rare cases been able to effectively develop a lasting protection against a single exposure to a virus. An example of this is Varicella Zoster Virus. People who have had Chickenpox have an almost perfect immunity ag
Re:what about this (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you, very informative. I stand corrected.
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Thank you, very informative. I stand corrected.
This is a sentence that I which I would see more often on slashdot. Bravo.
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Don't congratulate me too soon—I still have lots of questions and doubts. The zombie hordes chanting 'believe the science' and the propagandistic media claiming 'disinformation' both have me highly suspicious. I need more details and explanations like the one I was given above to trust Big Pharma and its government lackeys.
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"Big Pharma" is a term politicians created to lambaste the most phenomenally helpful and lifesaving human endeavor ever to have existed: profit-motivated medical research, derived from freedom to pursue such.
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The US is paying the vast majority of the drug development costs, and not all of the developments are life-saving, like minor changes to insulin and other drugs to milk patents as long as they can. And why do 2 EpiPens cost $700? Government-granted monopolies through patents.
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"Big Pharma" is a term politicians created to lambaste the most phenomenally helpful and lifesaving human endeavor ever to have existed: profit-motivated medical research, derived from freedom to pursue such.
But P-hacking isn't. And this is how so many ineffective medicines make it on the market. This is why you often have to try several different medications to get the right mix these days. Now part of that can be chalked up to medicine working on harder problems, but part is from Pharma companies gaming the system (via p-hacking). This is something the FDA needs to be focusing on in the future (and should have been in the past) but I'm pretty sure they won't.
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Don't congratulate me too soon—I still have lots of questions and doubts.
Having questions and doubts is fine.
It is people who refuse to listen when their questions are answered that I would like to see less from.
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Except the virus actively fucks with your immune system to try to make it forget. And yes, nearly all viruses perform some sort of immunomodulation in order to survive in the host. I mean the measles virus even makes your immune system forget all prior viral infections. Reference: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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Except the virus actively fucks with your immune system to try to make it forget.
Except you're wrong. That theory was floated early on during the pandemic, but more recent research says:
"Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-191."
"The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting."
Reference: https://www.n [nature.com]
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How many antibodies? Simply having antibodies is not the same as being immune to a virus.
There's a recent body of evidence that suggest having had COVID is no better than only getting one of the two mRNA courses. The efficacy is poor and fades after a year.
Evidence right now shows that the first mRNA vaccine can act as a booster shot for people who have had COVID-19. https://www.pennmedicine.org/n... [pennmedicine.org]
In my country if you've had COVID-19 you only get a single mRNA shot along with a certificate saying you've b
Re:what about this (Score:5, Informative)
The level of immunization you get from surviving a COVID-19 infection is roughly comparable to the effect of a single vaccine shot. With the second shot, the immunization from the vaccine is better than from an infection. People who have been infected are recommended to get one booster shot anyway.
Also, you should be modded to -2 for that "hastily made in a laboratory" bullshit.
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Also, you should be modded to -2 for that "hastily made in a laboratory" bullshit.
Amen to that. The vaccine was painstakingly created in a laboratory. It's the immune response that's hasty. And frankly, it's often misguided. Excessive and inadequate immune responses are both common!
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"18 months" was considered to be an insanely aggressive plan, and they got it down to under a year. When asked why, was this shortcutting testing, they said no, it was cutting out the red tape.
Let that sink in. For an average treatment, taking years to develop, with exceedingly high testing requirements, and with additional time lost to red tape, now many die in those extra delays?
Statistically it's probably worth it to be faster with a release, and pull it back if there are problems. But those hundreds
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Statistically it's probably worth it to be faster with a release, and pull it back if there are problems.
Probably. But even assuming that's true, it makes people more upset when you kill people than when you let them die.
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Well, they did cheat a bit by running more then one phase of trials at once and IIRC, there were vaccines where this resulted in wasted time and money, but it also resulted in a few successes in record time with pretty good safety. The most danger from the vaccines seems to be the drive to the clinic.
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Some could be immune [youtu.be].
Re:what about this (Score:5, Informative)
those that had the corona virus and recovered dont need to take the vaccine because that means their own immune system vaccinated them
This was studied, and it turned out that not all infections lead to the production of sufficient antibodies to prevent the next infection. There are documented cases of people that got a mild case of Covid, fully recovered with minimal symptoms, and then got reinfected a couple of months later (with the same strain, confirmed by sequencing the virus) and ended up on a ventilator in the hospital.
The research found that, to produce sufficient antibodies, the initial virus load needed to be high. But, this also drastically increased the chances of serious infection that requires hospitalization. With low initial virus load people tended to have mild to no symptoms, but this also produced less to no antibodies, as the body got rid of the virus quickly and before the slower immune response could kick in.
So, the advantage of vaccination is that you can administer a high initial (fake) virus load, without risking hospitalization, and get the immune response that creates the antibodies. Also, with a large number of people without sufficient antibodies, the virus keeps reinfecting them, which keeps the virus circulating. And for some of them it will not stay a mild infection the next time they get it.
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This was studied, and it turned out that not all infections lead to the production of sufficient antibodies to prevent the next infection
This is true of the various vaccines too - there are some cases where the vaccine fails and produces insufficient or negligible immunity. How does the failure rates of the vaccines compare to the "non-immune" rates in COVID survivors?
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How does the failure rates of the vaccines compare to the "non-immune" rates in COVID survivors?
Very similarly. Which is precisely why you get two courses of the mRNA vaccines and why booster shots exist for many other vaccines too. The body is actually not all that good from generating an immunity against a single case of a viral infection. Some viruses we're good at, like the ones which cause Chickenpox, and others not so good.
Incidentally several countries now as a policy will take into account if you've had COVID-19 already as part of their vaccination program. e.g. in The Netherlands you are cons
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Simulation of a high viral load (Score:2)
As the AC said, the vaccines give the immune system a strong signal. That gives me a chance to talk about some of my favorite things.
The teardown of the Pfizer vaccine sequence at berthub.eu shows something where every feature was cunningly designed to maximize spike protein production and get it out to cell membranes.
But wait, there's more!
The immune system kicks into gear when antigen presenting cells, for example dendritic cells, put a pathogen on their cell membranes. They get samples of the pathogen by
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those that had the corona virus and recovered dont need to take the vaccine because that means their own immune system vaccinated them, which is a better vaccine than what was hastily made in a laboratory,
We have proven that it wasn't a "better vaccine" than one made in a laboratory. We have proven that it's efficacy is low and relatively short lived. We've studied this a lot, and in fact we have used the "bodies own immune system vaccination" to drive decisions in our own vaccination programs which is precisely why some countries such as The Netherlands has a policy of only giving you a single dose of an mRNA vaccine if you've had COVID-19. https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/van... [www.rivm.nl] (google translate that one).
You s
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Pedo.
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Matter of fact, that's been studied.
An infection followed by a vaccine shot results in spectacularly higher antibody levels than just an infection. I forget the numbers but they made me go "wow".
That's where the science is in. AFAIK the jury is out on how vaccination alone compares to natural infection. Just at a guess, though, everything about the vaccines is optimized to create a strong immune response, and evolution optimizes the virus to minimize one.
Vaccines after infection (Score:2)
Coupla citations:
Antibody levels higher after two doses of vaccine than after infection:
https://www.contagionlive.com/... [contagionlive.com]
One dose of vaccine after infection is as good as two doses of vaccine:
https://www.nih.gov/news-event... [nih.gov]
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Considering that you descent from a very long line of not the fittest people - civilisation removes the harsh environment pretty quickly - you are not as fit as you think you are.
Also considering how many supid people are out there, what exactly makes you think the evolution has equipped you specifically with enough brains? I mean, you state yourself that a certain information has overwhelmed you to the point of backing off completely so you clearly overestimate your capabilities.
Re:what about this (Score:5, Insightful)
there is so much lies and misinformation for and against this virus and vaccine
When it comes information on the vaccine, there is no such thing as lies or misinformation. Vaccines are now well studied. We know what they should do and know, to a near certainty, how it will affect the vast majority of people. In short, the vaccine helps your own body safely produce antibodies so IF you become infected the means to fight off the infection are already there.
The only ones who think there is "misinformation" on the efficacy of this particular vaccine are the deliberate morons such as yourself*. There are mountains of studies, results, and whatnot out there by some of the most highly regarded medical institutions on the planet about the effects of the various covid vaccines. Anyone who says there isn't enough information is being a deliberate moron* (but I repeat myself).
If you doubt the effectiveness of this vaccine, or vaccines in general, you only need go back in time to 2018 - 2019. The worst measles outbreak in this country in decades because one particular group of people don't believe in vaccines. Neat fact, one of the side effects of measles is it damages your immune system which makes one more susceptible to other infections.
*In this case, calling out people is perfectly acceptable due to their blatant, willful stupidity. The number of cases in the U.S., and elsewhere, has plummeted since people started getting vaccinated.
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The problem with that thinking is that studies have shown that your chances of having that happen to you is quite low. You have more of a chance of walking out of a store and getting run over by a person that didn't see you than of getting those so-called side-effects. Are you going to tell me that you're not going to walk out of a store because it might happen to you? This is a perfect example of you, and others like you, that are failing a
Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are people not allowed to have opinions if they differ from the approved narrative? What happens when the approved narrative is wrong?
In this case the approved narrative on vaccines is not wrong any more than the approved narrative on the earth being an oblate spheroid is wrong. The real question is how much scientific evidence needs to pile up before we finally stop paying attention to the 'alternative narratives' of anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers?
Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha no amount of evidence will help.
There are a lot of people here who are (a) really thick and (b) desperate to be smart. The only way they have of doing this is by being contrarian. You know stupid people go with the crowd therefore smart people go against the crowd. Sometimes it's layered with Einstein mythology in that they sort of believe that he was a long wolf toiling single handedly against the crowd with what appeared to be going completely against all established science.
This is how they picture themselves and by extension as smart as Einstein.
There are several different flavours of anti-vaxxer, climate change denialist etc, but that's the flavour most prevalent here. You cannot convince them they are wrong because their ego is wrapped up in it. Being against the flow is what to them proves they are smart.
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And of course, none of this is new. It's been around for eons. The difference here, which is the story, is that high tech is accelerating this.
Anyway, I remember all the hooey growing up that people would believe in. Uri Geller for instance, my dad checked out his autobiography from the library and I flipped through it and it was amazingly bad and contrived and outright laughable (extraterrestrials were talking to him through his car radio in Israel). I remember thinking how can people be so stupid as t
Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mothers are especially vulnerable because they want to feel like they're personally doing something to help their child. Leaving everything up to doctors feels like they've lost control of the world. It's not just a people dislike or distrust experts, or that they imagine themselves as experts, it's that they want to feel they have some agency and control over their lives and aren't completely at the mercy of those experts.
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That's certainly part of the picture but the book "The Republican Brain" lays out all of the scientifically studied reasons why people make, essentially, poor judgements.
One of the prevailing theories in the book is that many people are incapable of seeing subtleties in arguments/situations
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Please include with your anti-vaxxer, climate change denialist etc, those deluded fools who continue to push the false and fake narrative that socialism is sustainable and leads to better long-term outcomes for societies
Given that the kind of fuckwits who piss and moan about socialism can't even seem to come up with a consistent definition of it, then how about no? Climate change, vaccinations and globe-earthism are all science which are independent of politics and your particular variety butthurt. It doesn
Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to argue here because "socialism" is being tossed out left and right without being defined at all. Some treat it like it's identical to marxism, it's a resurgence of the anti-commie hysteria from the 50s through 70s, as if anything even remotely benefiting fellow citizens is a gateway to full blown totalitarian communist rule. It's absurd. "Socialism" has become a word that means "anything we disagree with."
"Government shelter" is not socialism! Social security is not socialism. Collecting taxes is not socialism. Stop being scared of the non-existent bogeyman.
Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, that won't happen.
You see, I've come to the belief that the 12 people who spread the nonsense know what they're doing. They're the ultimate troll, because they make money profiting off people who believe in it. The 12 core influencers basically sell 2 hour courses for $200-400 a pop on how to spread the conspiracy and all that stuff. Do it a couple of times a week with 400 people attending each time, and that's a sizeable chunk of change (basically millions of dollars).
As the economic theory goes well, "a fool and their money..."
It wouldn't surprise me if those people actually all got vaccinated and believe in a oblate spheroidal earth, because they're perfectly sane people. They just found a way to exploit people out of their money and are making pretty good bank out of it.
The only potential thing stopping us from doing the same is well, a conscience. Otherwise, well, who wouldn't want to make a stupidly easy $80k or more a week doing 2 hour virtual seminars?
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Unfortunately, that won't happen.
You see, I've come to the belief that the 12 people who spread the nonsense know what they're doing. They're the ultimate troll, because they make money profiting off people who believe in it. The 12 core influencers basically sell 2 hour courses for $200-400 a pop on how to spread the conspiracy and all that stuff. Do it a couple of times a week with 400 people attending each time, and that's a sizeable chunk of change (basically millions of dollars).
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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About time those people were charged with fraud. These people are literally causing deaths, they need to have the book thrown at them.
For fraud to be proven:
Fraud:
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Go look up a video recently posted by hbomberguy (Score:2)
If we had a functional government truth and advertising laws would be used to shut them down. We gave up on functioning government back
Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is how much scientific evidence needs to pile up before we finally stop paying attention to the 'alternative narratives' of anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers?
That certainly is an important for each individual to answer for themselves. It pretty much comes down to not having enough time in the day to read every single argument for every single side of every single question.
But that isn't the question being discussed here. What is being discussed here, as usual lately, is whether it is acceptable to publish any arguments other than the commonly accepted one. Or in this specific case whether or not a company that sells books should promote a book that does that.
The idea that people shouldn't be allowed to present alternatives to convention really is an absurd perversion of a basic tenant of the way science is done and it is dangerous. It is as dumb as people who use things like "the science is settled" in an argument as if that is a trump card. The modern equivalent of someone getting stretched on a rack for saying the earth revolves around the sun.
Re: Ministry of Truth? (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue is alternative theories need evedience to support them. While I agree saying stupid things like science is settled is just as dumb, the CDC guidance about masks while a bit all over the place initially also had a strong person (trump saying masks don't work). Except masks did work drastically. Buying time to save lives until the vaccines could be made tested and distributed. The problem is politics wouldn't let the science settle because and entire political party was actively fighting truth.
Tr
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And when in the US history has there been any one person who has controlled party politics with the idea of "support me as a person or I will make you lose"? Politics used to be about the party, or the ideas, or "think o the children", and so forth. The idea that we now have a cult of personality such that you must swear obedience to a mere human being and people are treating this as normal, is very scary.
Is this North Korea now, where obeisance to a party leader is the highest virtue, superseding loyalty
Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not with spreading alternative views. The problem is spreading alternative views that are dangerous and which hurt or kill people. People should not be allowed to say "Tide pods are great, you should eat several of them for breakfast, just don't tell your parents!" The anti-vax thing is very similar, it is encouraging people to get sick, encouraging people to avoid going to doctors (because doctors are evil vaccinators), and so forth.
Free speech has limits and responsibility.
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Free speech has limits and responsibility.
Agreed but that's not what this media crusade is about. If the issue is misinformation, then no group of people have spread more misinformation about COVID than the media itself. The amount of wrong and irresponsible reporting during the pandemic is truly staggering. Examples: "You can get COVID twice", "natural immunity doesn't work", "herd immunity requires vaccines", "5% of people who catch COVID will die" and many many more (ask an immunologist, all of these were clearly wrong when they were publishe
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People have gotten covid twice. Natural immunity is less than getting the double dose of the vaccine.
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Re:Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a religion, it's science. We are in a pandemic, everyone is concerned about health, and getting the vaccines out will help everyone get back to work, and that's the story. The dangers from the vaccine as very minor compared to the dangers of catching covid, and yet you see people worried that they might have flu like symptoms for a day or two.
Fauci is on because he's charismatic and also the head of the most important national center dealing with epidemics. It's not because he's a liberal who contradicts Trump, the only reason Trump was contradicted is because Trump was an idiot and not because of politics. He's been dealing with viruses since he worked on the AIDS crisis. Who else do you want on? Some equal-time anti-vax b-list celeb?
Fauci has pointed out the weak points. It was hastily approved, although the mRNA has been around awhile so that it was not a one-year only rush job. The reason to be fast is because people are dying! My god, we spend 5 years approving a drug in the FDA and the conservatives scream bloody murder that things take too long and that everything should be fast tracked. But we fast track a vaccine and suddenly Fauci is the anti christ and Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson are burning him at the media stake. What the hell is wrong with those people?
Dissenting opinions are everywhere, what do you mean they're not allowed when everyone has heard them loud and clear from the anti science people? The dissenting opinions are that vaccines are harmful and the covid-19 is a both a hoax while simultaneously being engineered in a lab.
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It's the news. If it's national news, they invite on the top people in the field, the best that they can find. If it's local news the invite on local experts, the best they can find. And yes, when I listen to the local radio I hear the covid updates from local county health officials. I presume that this happens where you live also. You will not hear Fauci very often speaking on the local news, and you will not often hear the county health commissioner speaking on CNN or Fox.
What are they supposed to d
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I think the point being can be expressed as, who should do the deciding for where the line is between "paying attention" and "stop paying attention". Do you really want others to be making that personal decision for you? This forum is mostly about on being on team intellect so people should already know for themselves what constitutes enough evidence to reach a conclusion.
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Are people not allowed to have opinions if they differ from the approved narrative? What happens when the approved narrative is wrong?
In this case the approved narrative on vaccines is not wrong any more than the approved narrative on the earth being an oblate spheroid is wrong. The real question is how much scientific evidence needs to pile up before we finally stop paying attention to the 'alternative narratives' of anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers?
You had me at "Oblate spheroid"! 8^) You into astronomy by any chance?
To me, it depends a lot on the narrative source. People who might get their vaccine information from Amazon might as well get it from WalMart customers or that guy who lives under the bridge and plays with his wiener all day.
Those alternative narratives as you note, are simply wrong. A product that is promoted for either money or political purposes. From 5G tracking microchips to a decision that the incredibly lesser odds of death via
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The person you are replying to apparently wants these alternative facts to be promoted without any response from the educated.
Educated people like Yale professor Aruna Khilanan who fantasizes about shooting white people in the head?
Educated and crazy are not mutually exclusive.
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The person you are replying to apparently wants these alternative facts to be promoted without any response from the educated.
Educated people like Yale professor Aruna Khilanan who fantasizes about shooting white people in the head? Educated and racist and crazy are not mutually exclusive. Neither are stupid and uneducated or crazy.
I didn't say Crazy, though did I, muchacho? My point is not that educated people cannot be nuts, but that education is a great alternative to ignorance.
Ignorant and incorrect conclusions are not equally valid as correct truths. This is why a person can't say - "Drink bleach - it's good for you!", is not as equal a statement as "Don't drink bleach - it can kill you."
As an example - https://www.msn.com/en-us/heal... [msn.com]—-far-more-than-previously-known/ar-BB17S7hj
Should we just not allow this to h
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Yeah, no. We've had our experiment with tyranny of the stupid. Didn't work out too well. Time to let the people with functioning brains to run the show again.
So you want to ban the main stream media?
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Your post might have value if it pointed out actual "mistaken" beliefs, and how you determined with certainty that they were mistaken.
Why? We're talking about the specific fact that Amazon has been a dissemination point for your side. That is verifiable by you or me. You want my research compared to an online store? Explain.
"Those alternative narratives as you note, are simply wrong". There's a good starting point for listing those "alternative narratives" and your research...
Sounds a little soplisistic to me. Well, of what use is My individual research, the hours of personal peer reviewed and often cited papers worth - worth if you or someone else just dismisses it? It's not even my field.
No, I have not done the peer reviewed research that will prove once and for all that the world
Re: Ministry of Truth? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no scientific evidence that vaccines are broadly dangerous in some way and there never, ever has been. The famous 'study' by Wakefield that attempted to show a link between vaccines and autism was not only a complete shambles, he was doing it at the behest of a lawyer that wanted to try and make a class action lawsuit so he could represent angry parents and make money off of pharma companies that sold the MMR vaccine. Meanwhile, Wakefield was trying to develop his own measles vaccine because his paper only attempted to implicate the mixed MMR vaccine and he advocated for vaccinating against all the diseases separately.
Alternative scientific theories are fine. There is no contesting science here, though. No studies could ever replicate Wakefield's results because, again, it was all a lie and hinged on the opinions of 12 parents as to whether they thought their child's autism symptoms started soon after the inoculationâ"seriously, that was the main data. Vaccines have been tested again and again and studied and there's zero to indicate that as a category of drug, they carry any real risk (beyond isolated side effects; nobody disagrees about those).
If you want to publish peer reviewed papers and show that vaccines are harmful and upend medical science, by all means. If you want to publish a scam book full of lies that exploits the fears of nervous parents, maybe not.
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And the big one which was absolutely proven false
Wet markets launched coronavirus
I had trouble reading the article because of a pop-up that would keep blocking my viewing. Even so I'll need to see evidence on any thing proven on where the COVID-19 virus came from. There's plenty of people that believe it came from China. There's plenty that believe it came from a wet market. Nothing was proven because China is not allowing independent investigators to come in to look around, and the chances of proving anything fades everyday just because any evidence fades naturally with time, and C
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Modern, large-scale user-facing systems aren't marketplaces of ideas. They're designed to shape consumer *behaviors*, and as a side effect inevitably end up shaping user opinions. That's why my friggin' *news* feed is always flooded with fan shit about superhero movies. It's not that I don't enjoy a good superhero movie, but it's not something that would normally take up much of my attention span and I certainly don't need daily updates on what the actors are up to. The system has categorized me as someon
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What's wrong with any of that? I forget to take mine off after work all the time, they're warm in the winter and I can make faces at people.
And uh, depends on who you're banging, but that mask might be an improvement.
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>"I very commonly saw people wearing masks while they're alone driving in their car."
What a stupid comment. I often leave my mask on in the car because it's more convenient than taking it on and off between locations. Your biases are reading too much into your observations.
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Get off it you conservatives!
Are you claiming anti science stupidity is a tenet of conservatism?
Re:Second Plandemic coming (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of people who have had complications from these vaccines is WAY lower than the number of people who have been saved from complications by them. So even if the vaccines are directly responsible for negative side effects, they're still better than not getting them.
I wouldn't give a fuck about you being wrong except that if people listen to you, more people will die unnecessarily.