I have a bit more leeway to give disenfranchised populations in America when they side-eye new medical procedures and/or subscribe to conspiracy theories about the government trying to do nefarious things to them under the guise of helping them, because there is a long and well-documented history of the American government doing just that, in addition to the ongoing bias of white medical professionals not believing what non-white patients are telling them about their symptoms.
While that's definitely true, the people originating and promoting those conspiracy theories are, let's just say, very much not in those kinds of demographics.
"Disenfranchised minorities don't trust the medical establishment" is one distinct problem; "there's a whole literal industry devoted to making sure nobody else does either by knowingly lying all the time" is another.
The internet in general has a lot to answer for, but Facebook made shit like this a feature rather than a bug, because Nutcases drive "engagement".
Youtube as well. Dislikes, angry comments attacking a video, upvotes or downvotes on that comment, every bit of it further promotes whatever the video originally was. Couple that with sites actively promoting enraging content...
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in December showed Black people, in particular, were far more likely to fear vaccination than white people. Their skepticism stems in part from historical traumas such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, when government researchers left hundreds of Black men untreated for the disease to study its effects. Many Hispanic communities are fearful of interacting with the government in an era of widespread anti-immigration sentiment. Both communities have less access to medical care than white populations.
Some nonprofits are pushing for funding to reactivate the network that successfully encouraged people in minority communities to fill out the 2020 Census - another federal initiative dogged by fear and distrust.
In that effort, hundreds of grassroots groups knocked on doors and held information sessions to dispel fears. They recruited pastors, school teachers and other trusted locals to push the message. A similar model could work for vaccines, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy expert who ran a census outreach effort in southern California.
“Just like you had census hesitancy and equity issues, you have vaccine hesitancy and equity issues,” said Ramakrishnan, who now leads a nonprofit devoted to leveraging census infrastructure for future initiatives, including vaccines.
The White House acknowledged the parallels between vaccine and census outreach, but stopped short of committing to finance similar NGO-led efforts to boost vaccine trust.
The last line indicates that the government shares a lot of the blame, not being willing to spend the money, instead relying on photo ops and endorsements. But conspiracy theories have played their part. Attempts at outreach are seen as part of the conspiracy, after all there is no "White" vaccine outreach. Thankfully, it seems that while the outreach has inflamed some conspiracy theorists, it has also been effective in general, with the % of Black Americans saying they won't get the vaccine dropping down to almost the same proportion as White Americans. https://apnews.com/article/us-news-coronavirus-pandemic-bfabb2d3550141b74fac0080ce9226eb
Campaigns aimed at Black communities across the U.S. are making headway in the effort to persuade people that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. With millions of dollars in assistance from President Joe Biden’s administration, local groups have urged Black Americans to roll up their sleeves for shots and set aside what for some is a shared historical distrust of science and government.
A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in late March found that about 24% of Black American adults said they will probably or definitely not get vaccinated. That’s down from 41% in January. The latest number shows Black Americans leaning against getting shots in almost the same proportion as white Americans at 26% and Hispanic Americans at 22%.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said attitudes toward the vaccine among Black Americans have taken “almost a 180-degree turnaround” as outreach campaigns have worked to combat misinformation.
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Basically - do you know what you've been injected with? No, you don't. And for most of us who understand that vast conspiracies depending on everyone's silence are far-fetched, we're not worried about it
But if you're a minority who gets harmed by America on a daily basis and nobody ever does anything about it? Yeah being afraid of what's in that shot is not exactly unreasonable.
As far as the right wing - vaccine fears are projection. They're afraid because that's what they would do to us
Unexpectedly the founder blurts out the underlying reasons for why she made the cult, which was she nearly died via suicide and rebelled against living in a conservative culture so she just said fuck society. She did this to a reporter, like a confession. That's where the conspiracy theories dig in and become toxic, its a means of "understanding" and "shaping the world" but what is is denial. Examples for conspiracy theorists doing this is normally conservative but this happened to people on the left, which are growing more and more vulnerable to Qanon. In ten years they'll probably be a Qanon offshoot.
You know what? I'm not sure I have a problem with unicult, as presented. she's being straightforward about what it's all about, and what it's all about seems to be chiefly hugs and good vibes. i dunno how long i'd get along with one of these people, but i can dig it from an appropriate distance.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
It's literally the same people who pushed the "Saddam has WMDs!" bullshit back in the early aughts.
Manufacturing consent is made so much easier when the media "forgets" what happened twenty years ago.
You know what? I'm not sure I have a problem with unicult, as presented. she's being straightforward about what it's all about, and what it's all about seems to be chiefly hugs and good vibes. i dunno how long i'd get along with one of these people, but i can dig it from an appropriate distance.
It's left wing Qanon. Don't let the hippy aesthetics fool you, their cult beliefs are deliberately designed too adapt for any "mythology," and builds an atmosphere to draw in those who feel rejected by society created by a woman who knows what she's doing is wrong. The founder needs to move to a liberal area, therapy and a supporting network - not start a cult. Scientology looks good from a distance.
I don’t see the USA using the lab theory as an excuse to start a war with China. The USA isn’t crazy and only starts pointless wars with defenseless little countries, not superpowers.
Unicult appears to be a Discord server and an Etsy shop with less than 3,000 sales, comparing it to Scientology is a bit ridiculous. I'm sure even with the troll name there's some level of grifting, but compare the Google results for Unicole Unicron to Teal Swan. There are many many self-proclaimed spiritual leaders saying wacky shit and trying to sell you something, as far as threats go Unicole doesn't even seem to rate.
Unicult appears to be a Discord server and an Etsy shop with less than 3,000 sales, comparing it to Scientology is a bit ridiculous. I'm sure even with the troll name there's some level of grifting, but compare the Google results for Unicole Unicron to Teal Swan. There are many many self-proclaimed spiritual leaders saying wacky shit and trying to sell you something, as far as threats go Unicole doesn't even seem to rate.
I wasn't comparing it to Scientology as an equal, few cults are - it was an observation about how it "looked nice from afar."
Its a tiny group, that didn't are it any less sinister - the reason cult is in its name? It's a filter so only people who like cult want to join it. A big reason why I fear it is by its potential, and its weaknesses to influences like Qanon and conspiracy theories in general. It has no "guidelines," that's why their members like it they can make it be whatever they want. It's still a threat, but a minor one. I don't think we should be ignoring cults until they killing people, people thought Qanon was a joke until it wasn't. It would be very, very easy for Qanon to turn Yuna Cult into a sub-group, all it would take would be a single member making a sub-group inside it and time to infect the rest through osmosis. Yuna Cult's not a grift, it's an excuse to justify overriding reality with the agenda their members want - that's the appeal. It's made to be catnip for conspiracy theorists. It's tailor made for social media and the computer friendly younger generations, if it gets mainstream it would be incredibly bad.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
Some of the "experts" are actually kinda wackadoo, though. For example one of the authors of the paper "Should we discount a laboratory origin of COVID-19?" thinks it's a prion disease!
A few of the people attached also have said they don't know how their name got on it because they didn't put it there.
Overall it sounds like a smaller scale of the "thousand scientists against climate change" thing, which turned out to be mostly engineers, a few retired physicists and biologists, a bunch of climatologist names harvested off university websites, and the cast of M*A*S*H* to round it out to an even thousand.
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Do they realise we’d know it because the funeral service industry would be doing abnormally high volumes, and they’re not (well, not since deaths started to drop due to vaccine rollouts)?
Even If 1 in 10k got a severe blood clot and 1 in 4 of those died (which is typical of severe blood clots), thats still a ton better than even the most wildly optimistic covid fatality rates?
That would be like 3750 deaths for vaccinating 50% of the population of the US, which was pretty much one bad day during the worst parts of last winter.
And the great thing is, blood clots aren't contagious. I could die of a blood clot, but other people would be safe. But I could catch covid, and even if my symptoms were mild, there's a good chance I can it to someone who wasn't as lucky.
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
I already did.
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
I already did.
VAERS reporting is ANY reports of death after getting vaccinated. Very few, if any, of those deaths are due to the vaccine. It is, as usual, laypeople misinterpreting something they read on the CDC website.
EDIT: The disclaimer for VAERS data from the CDC reads as follows:
Key considerations and limitations of VAERS data:
Vaccine providers are encouraged to report any clinically significant health problem following vaccination to VAERS, whether or not they believe the vaccine was the cause.
Reports may include incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental and unverified information.
The number of reports alone cannot be interpreted or used to reach conclusions about the existence, severity, frequency, or rates of problems associated with vaccines.
VAERS data are limited to vaccine adverse event reports received between 1990 and the most recent date for which data are available.
VAERS data do not represent all known safety information for a vaccine and should be interpreted in the context of other scientific information.
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
I already did.
For reference, the advice I'd give for reaching out to "vaccine skeptics" is to get vaccinated. Statistics and reasoning aren't as useful as having a few people you know get the vaccine without dying.
In a semi-related conspiracy, I read the Vanity Fair article linked in the COVID updates thread about the lab leak theory. It's not a great article for the usual reasons, but what amused me is that halfway through all the hearsay and conjecture (those are kinds of evidence, right?) they noted that years and years ago a bunch of miners digging out bat guano got sick with a virus very similar to COVID. And, really, that breaks their entire argument. There's no need for the Evil Chinese Government to take a natural virus and make it double-bad through Science That Plays God, if the original virus could already infect and kill humans. There's no need for a lab leak when any interaction between humans and bats could potentially lead to patient zero.
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
I already did.
For reference, the advice I'd give for reaching out to "vaccine skeptics" is to get vaccinated. Statistics and reasoning aren't as useful as having a few people you know get the vaccine without dying.
In a semi-related conspiracy, I read the Vanity Fair article linked in the COVID updates thread about the lab leak theory. It's not a great article for the usual reasons, but what amused me is that halfway through all the hearsay and conjecture (those are kinds of evidence, right?) they noted that years and years ago a bunch of miners digging out bat guano got sick with a virus very similar to COVID. And, really, that breaks their entire argument. There's no need for the Evil Chinese Government to take a natural virus and make it double-bad through Science That Plays God, if the original virus could already infect and kill humans. There's no need for a lab leak when any interaction between humans and bats could potentially lead to patient zero.
There are four different hypotheses on the origin of sars-cov-2, here in descending order of likelihood:
From bats via unknown host animal (possibly a pangolin) to humans, probably at a wet market in Wuhan
The virus was being studied at a research facility in Wuhan that studies corona viruses, and it accidentally got out
The research facility is actually a secret Chinese bio-weapons lab, who made sars-cov-2 as a bio-weapon, and it accidentally got out
The secret bio-weapon facility deliberatey released the virus for no doubt nefarious reasons
The first is, from what I understand, by far the most likely. The second is possible, but highly unlikely (the research lab, at least, definitily exists). The last two are pure tinfoil hat.
The current debate, among at least nominally reputable people/organizations, is about the first to hypetheses. No one credible are talking about options 3 or 4.
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
I already did.
For reference, the advice I'd give for reaching out to "vaccine skeptics" is to get vaccinated. Statistics and reasoning aren't as useful as having a few people you know get the vaccine without dying.
In a semi-related conspiracy, I read the Vanity Fair article linked in the COVID updates thread about the lab leak theory. It's not a great article for the usual reasons, but what amused me is that halfway through all the hearsay and conjecture (those are kinds of evidence, right?) they noted that years and years ago a bunch of miners digging out bat guano got sick with a virus very similar to COVID. And, really, that breaks their entire argument. There's no need for the Evil Chinese Government to take a natural virus and make it double-bad through Science That Plays God, if the original virus could already infect and kill humans. There's no need for a lab leak when any interaction between humans and bats could potentially lead to patient zero.
There are four different hypotheses on the origin of sars-cov-2, here in descending order of likelihood:
From bats via unknown host animal (possibly a pangolin) to humans, probably at a wet market in Wuhan
The virus was being studied at a research facility in Wuhan that studies corona viruses, and it accidentally got out
The research facility is actually a secret Chinese bio-weapons lab, who made sars-cov-2 as a bio-weapon, and it accidentally got out
The secret bio-weapon facility deliberatey released the virus for no doubt nefarious reasons
The first is, from what I understand, by far the most likely. The second is possible, but highly unlikely (the research lab, at least, definitily exists). The last two are pure tinfoil hat.
The current debate, among at least nominally reputable people/organizations, is about the first to hypetheses. No one credible are talking about options 3 or 4.
There is also the distinct possibility that there is some overlap or relationship between 1 and 2.
It is definitely possible that there was an initial small scale outbreak and employees at the lab were either investigating this new local illness, or became infected themselves (either in the course of work or incidentally). The fact that they are scientists working in a lab specializing in related diseases led them to be some of the earliest identified / proven cases, because there was no way to identify or confirm the earlier cases as COVID at the time.
With the way the virus spreads prior to symptoms, and how initial cases would be easily misdiagnosed or overlooked, I don't think anyone has a good accounting (or likely any way to do so retroactively) of the earliest spread in Wuhan. There could have been literally tens of thousands of people infected but the first tested and confirmed 'patient zero' was a lab worker.
Just look at how things blew up here in the US and we were looking for it and had (sparse, but some) testing available to confirm cases. Here in Michigan they identified the first four cases and locked the state down almost immediately, but its clear in hindsight there was already broad community spread long before those first tests came back positive. And again, we already knew it was coming here and were looking for it.
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
I already did.
For reference, the advice I'd give for reaching out to "vaccine skeptics" is to get vaccinated. Statistics and reasoning aren't as useful as having a few people you know get the vaccine without dying.
In a semi-related conspiracy, I read the Vanity Fair article linked in the COVID updates thread about the lab leak theory. It's not a great article for the usual reasons, but what amused me is that halfway through all the hearsay and conjecture (those are kinds of evidence, right?) they noted that years and years ago a bunch of miners digging out bat guano got sick with a virus very similar to COVID. And, really, that breaks their entire argument. There's no need for the Evil Chinese Government to take a natural virus and make it double-bad through Science That Plays God, if the original virus could already infect and kill humans. There's no need for a lab leak when any interaction between humans and bats could potentially lead to patient zero.
There are four different hypotheses on the origin of sars-cov-2, here in descending order of likelihood:
From bats via unknown host animal (possibly a pangolin) to humans, probably at a wet market in Wuhan
The virus was being studied at a research facility in Wuhan that studies corona viruses, and it accidentally got out
The research facility is actually a secret Chinese bio-weapons lab, who made sars-cov-2 as a bio-weapon, and it accidentally got out
The secret bio-weapon facility deliberatey released the virus for no doubt nefarious reasons
The first is, from what I understand, by far the most likely. The second is possible, but highly unlikely (the research lab, at least, definitily exists). The last two are pure tinfoil hat.
The current debate, among at least nominally reputable people/organizations, is about the first to hypetheses. No one credible are talking about options 3 or 4.
There is such a thing as gain of function research for nonmilitary purposes so there is a sort of option 2.5 (instead of being “we were designing a bioweapon and oops it got out” it could be “we were designing a drug resistant strain of virus to test new antiviral drugs on and oops it got out”.) Signs of engineering don’t automatically mean intent for military use.
Again no particular evidence for any of it but if it came out what there were signs of genetic tampering in the virus it still wouldn’t be sufficient to immediately jump to “bioweapon”.
Ron Watkins (8chan administrator and thief, QAnon pusher, and likely Q himself) got bored of destroying millions of minds and has moved to a new grift: AlienLeaks, like WikiLeaks but for aliens. UFO conspiracies are a major part of the big giant QAnon hivemind superconspiracy, of course, and anything that Ron Watkins has been involved with his entire life has involved grifting and pushing the most fringe right-wing, so this will almost certainly be more of the same.
Ok but could he have just fucking started with this instead?
The damage that the Q bullshit has done has been almost as insane as the Q bullshit itself. I'd rather have had people obsessing about aliens.
I assume it'll be akin to David Icke's aliens, in that the rich and powerful are secretly aliens. It'd almost make the frazzledrip stuff make more sense, and would then build off the stuff he had before.
A friend I lost to Qanon last summer when the mask mandates, as best as I can tell, literally drove her mad seems to have started down that hole by buying David Icke's stuff wholesale. When you're playing Pokemon Conspiracy and your starting point is "alien infiltrators are trying to reduce the population..."
re: vaccine murdertheories, said friend was, last time I had the stomach to check, claiming mRNA shots had a fatality rate of either one or ten percent. I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my head around that magnitude of "I reject your reality and substitute my own," but there's somehow enough people believing that for a nice, big echochamber about it..
Yup that's what I'm hearing from an anti vax acquaintance. That there are massive amounts of people dying from the vaccine. To my knowledge, no evidence has been presented yet.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
I already did.
For reference, the advice I'd give for reaching out to "vaccine skeptics" is to get vaccinated. Statistics and reasoning aren't as useful as having a few people you know get the vaccine without dying.
In a semi-related conspiracy, I read the Vanity Fair article linked in the COVID updates thread about the lab leak theory. It's not a great article for the usual reasons, but what amused me is that halfway through all the hearsay and conjecture (those are kinds of evidence, right?) they noted that years and years ago a bunch of miners digging out bat guano got sick with a virus very similar to COVID. And, really, that breaks their entire argument. There's no need for the Evil Chinese Government to take a natural virus and make it double-bad through Science That Plays God, if the original virus could already infect and kill humans. There's no need for a lab leak when any interaction between humans and bats could potentially lead to patient zero.
There are four different hypotheses on the origin of sars-cov-2, here in descending order of likelihood:
From bats via unknown host animal (possibly a pangolin) to humans, probably at a wet market in Wuhan
The virus was being studied at a research facility in Wuhan that studies corona viruses, and it accidentally got out
The research facility is actually a secret Chinese bio-weapons lab, who made sars-cov-2 as a bio-weapon, and it accidentally got out
The secret bio-weapon facility deliberatey released the virus for no doubt nefarious reasons
The first is, from what I understand, by far the most likely. The second is possible, but highly unlikely (the research lab, at least, definitily exists). The last two are pure tinfoil hat.
The current debate, among at least nominally reputable people/organizations, is about the first to hypetheses. No one credible are talking about options 3 or 4.
There is such a thing as gain of function research for nonmilitary purposes so there is a sort of option 2.5 (instead of being “we were designing a bioweapon and oops it got out” it could be “we were designing a drug resistant strain of virus to test new antiviral drugs on and oops it got out”.) Signs of engineering don’t automatically mean intent for military use.
Again no particular evidence for any of it but if it came out what there were signs of genetic tampering in the virus it still wouldn’t be sufficient to immediately jump to “bioweapon”.
Fair enough. The wackadoos are definitely all in on the "evil Chinese bioweapon plot to kill all round-eyes" though.
Regardless, my point was really trying to clarify that the current debate among the reputable is between "100% natural via wet market" and "unfortunate non-nefarious lab accident", not between "100% natural" and "Chinese bio-weapon", as evilmrhenry was implying in their post.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
Some of the "experts" are actually kinda wackadoo, though. For example one of the authors of the paper "Should we discount a laboratory origin of COVID-19?" thinks it's a prion disease!
You know what? I'm not sure I have a problem with unicult, as presented. she's being straightforward about what it's all about, and what it's all about seems to be chiefly hugs and good vibes. i dunno how long i'd get along with one of these people, but i can dig it from an appropriate distance.
It's left wing Qanon. Don't let the hippy aesthetics fool you, their cult beliefs are deliberately designed too adapt for any "mythology," and builds an atmosphere to draw in those who feel rejected by society created by a woman who knows what she's doing is wrong. The founder needs to move to a liberal area, therapy and a supporting network - not start a cult. Scientology looks good from a distance.
It doesnt feel left wing, their "we dont agree with society so were going to step to the side in denial" feels much more like fence sitting undecided voter group. This is "thoughts and prayers" latched onto as a coping mechanism by people who need professional help (and some lazy/greedy folks).
Honestly my question is if she blames every criticism on trauma, isnt it the trauma of anxiety that led her father to go out and do something and find her? Isn't that trauma as a positive? Isn't it the trauma she experienced what led her to this cult? How can she deny others criticism as byproducts of trauma when she is a byproduct of her trauma and so is her belief system? IE if society is toxic, and society made her, how is she and what she does, not toxic?
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
Some of the "experts" are actually kinda wackadoo, though. For example one of the authors of the paper "Should we discount a laboratory origin of COVID-19?" thinks it's a prion disease!
the guy you mentioned who claims it's a prion disease;
an antivaxxer who believes masks are dangerous;
an antivaxxer who believes the covid vaccines are bioweapons meant to wipe out the species (and also believes Trump won the election);
a urologist (and also antivaxxer) whose main research focus seems to be fulminating about language purity in Spanish-language research;
someone who claims elderberry syrup and vitamin D are more efficacious than vaccines;
someone who isn't obviously batshit but whose whole career is in mycology;
a VC dude running a few vaguely-defined life-extension startups; and
an "independent researcher" with no publication history, assuming he actually exists.
I'm kind of in awe that that is the group that actually dragged the global conversation into believing this is an Actual Thing.
That's the beauty of manufacturing consent: Have the media repeat something often enough and people will just assume there's something to it, because no one's going to bother to look into who is making a claim, they just know that the claim is being repeated all over the place.
The real question is to what ends this consent is being manufactured.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
Some of the "experts" are actually kinda wackadoo, though. For example one of the authors of the paper "Should we discount a laboratory origin of COVID-19?" thinks it's a prion disease!
the guy you mentioned who claims it's a prion disease;
an antivaxxer who believes masks are dangerous;
an antivaxxer who believes the covid vaccines are bioweapons meant to wipe out the species (and also believes Trump won the election);
a urologist (and also antivaxxer) whose main research focus seems to be fulminating about language purity in Spanish-language research;
someone who claims elderberry syrup and vitamin D are more efficacious than vaccines;
someone who isn't obviously batshit but whose whole career is in mycology;
a VC dude running a few vaguely-defined life-extension startups; and
an "independent researcher" with no publication history, assuming he actually exists.
I'm kind of in awe that that is the group that actually dragged the global conversation into believing this is an Actual Thing.
That's the beauty of manufacturing consent: Have the media repeat something often enough and people will just assume there's something to it, because no one's going to bother to look into who is making a claim, they just know that the claim is being repeated all over the place.
The real question is to what ends this consent is being manufactured.
I read in the newspaper that Biden said it was equally likely that it was "non-nefarious lab accident" or "100% natural wet market". And Fauci seemed to be entertaining the notion from what I read.
So it's not complete tinfoil brigade, and when the non-insane POTUS (compared to the previous lunatic POTUS) says something like this, who made the original claim becomes a lot less important in the discourse.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
Some of the "experts" are actually kinda wackadoo, though. For example one of the authors of the paper "Should we discount a laboratory origin of COVID-19?" thinks it's a prion disease!
the guy you mentioned who claims it's a prion disease;
an antivaxxer who believes masks are dangerous;
an antivaxxer who believes the covid vaccines are bioweapons meant to wipe out the species (and also believes Trump won the election);
a urologist (and also antivaxxer) whose main research focus seems to be fulminating about language purity in Spanish-language research;
someone who claims elderberry syrup and vitamin D are more efficacious than vaccines;
someone who isn't obviously batshit but whose whole career is in mycology;
a VC dude running a few vaguely-defined life-extension startups; and
an "independent researcher" with no publication history, assuming he actually exists.
I'm kind of in awe that that is the group that actually dragged the global conversation into believing this is an Actual Thing.
That's the beauty of manufacturing consent: Have the media repeat something often enough and people will just assume there's something to it, because no one's going to bother to look into who is making a claim, they just know that the claim is being repeated all over the place.
The real question is to what ends this consent is being manufactured.
I read in the newspaper that Biden said it was equally likely that it was "non-nefarious lab accident" or "100% natural wet market". And Fauci seemed to be entertaining the notion from what I read.
So it's not complete tinfoil brigade, and when the non-insane POTUS (compared to the previous lunatic POTUS) says something like this, who made the original claim becomes a lot less important in the discourse.
The pundits pushing this shit are literally the same people who pushed the "Saddam has WMDs" bullshit, in the same newspapers.
It doesnt feel left wing, their "we dont agree with society so were going to step to the side in denial" feels much more like fence sitting undecided voter group. This is "thoughts and prayers" latched onto as a coping mechanism by people who need professional help (and some lazy/greedy folks).
These aren't undecided voters they're political nihilists who want to watch the world burn because society rejected them, which are easy pickings for conspiracy groups. There are leftists like this. Nothing I saw felt centrist to me, they didn't want "balance" hey wanted extreme control of reality through denial and telling everyone to go fuck themselves. Correct, leftists aren't a group who are immune to doing that.
Honestly my question is if she blames every criticism on trauma, isnt it the trauma of anxiety that led her father to go out and do something and find her? Isn't that trauma as a positive? Isn't it the trauma she experienced what led her to this cult? How can she deny others criticism as byproducts of trauma when she is a byproduct of her trauma and so is her belief system? IE if society is toxic, and society made her, how is she and what she does, not toxic?
Cults...... jeez
On the surface she appears to be someone delusional out of her depth, underneath she's a psychopathic narcissist. Both reasons throw logic out the window.
The recent change in the COVID lab escape theory is an interesting example of how conspiracy theories are created/labeled. This time last year a lab escape was a conspiracy theory and social media websites cracked down on people and others were labelled conspiracy nutters. But in the last month the consensus has changed from conspiracy theory to fringe theory. Nothing has changed so far as the facts are concerned. Theres no new evidence in favour of a lab escape and the odds of it being a lab escape haven't changed since last year. It's still highly unlikely that it was a lab escape*. But what has changed is the conversation around it. If the facts haven't changed, then what has? Is it a different president? The efforts of a small group of journalists? A rising wave of anti-China sentiment? I read one article that pinned the change on a WHO investigation (that found no evidence of a lab escape).
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
Some of the "experts" are actually kinda wackadoo, though. For example one of the authors of the paper "Should we discount a laboratory origin of COVID-19?" thinks it's a prion disease!
the guy you mentioned who claims it's a prion disease;
an antivaxxer who believes masks are dangerous;
an antivaxxer who believes the covid vaccines are bioweapons meant to wipe out the species (and also believes Trump won the election);
a urologist (and also antivaxxer) whose main research focus seems to be fulminating about language purity in Spanish-language research;
someone who claims elderberry syrup and vitamin D are more efficacious than vaccines;
someone who isn't obviously batshit but whose whole career is in mycology;
a VC dude running a few vaguely-defined life-extension startups; and
an "independent researcher" with no publication history, assuming he actually exists.
I'm kind of in awe that that is the group that actually dragged the global conversation into believing this is an Actual Thing.
That's the beauty of manufacturing consent: Have the media repeat something often enough and people will just assume there's something to it, because no one's going to bother to look into who is making a claim, they just know that the claim is being repeated all over the place.
The real question is to what ends this consent is being manufactured.
I read in the newspaper that Biden said it was equally likely that it was "non-nefarious lab accident" or "100% natural wet market". And Fauci seemed to be entertaining the notion from what I read.
So it's not complete tinfoil brigade, and when the non-insane POTUS (compared to the previous lunatic POTUS) says something like this, who made the original claim becomes a lot less important in the discourse.
The pundits pushing this shit are literally the same people who pushed the "Saddam has WMDs" bullshit, in the same newspapers.
Is Biden saying the things he's alleged to have said? Or Fauci?
It was also a "people are saying". Please include quotes (to the OP of this concept) if you want it considered seriously. It literally was just "I read in the paper"....
By the time I caught up with the thread the whole Qanon thing blew over... right? Good thing we stopped that crazyness before it spread to offline places, like churches.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
By the time I caught up with the thread the whole Qanon thing blew over... right? Good thing we stopped that crazyness before it spread to offline places, like churches.
Speaking of Qanon, though: is the core "somebody claims to be 'Q', a high-level government official, and posts on 4chan or 8chan or parler or wherever it is now with vague assertions about upcoming events" still going on? Or has it completely transformed into a self-perpetuating conglomeration of memes posted by adherents and bent into whatever fresh direction by GOP politicians/influential racists/foreign intelligence operations?
Speaking of Qanon, though: is the core "somebody claims to be 'Q', a high-level government official, and posts on 4chan or 8chan or parler or wherever it is now with vague assertions about upcoming events" still going on? Or has it completely transformed into a self-perpetuating conglomeration of memes posted by adherents and bent into whatever fresh direction by GOP politicians/influential racists/foreign intelligence operations?
Little of column A, lot of column B.
Mostly instead of it being Q posting some shit and people running with it like at the start, all the nutters are discussing their 'research' and occasionally 'some official' will confirm the popular theory.
They've basically crowdsourced out to whatever fan theory is taking hold and amplify that theory.
It would be sort of fascinating if it wasn't so terrifying.
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While that's definitely true, the people originating and promoting those conspiracy theories are, let's just say, very much not in those kinds of demographics.
"Disenfranchised minorities don't trust the medical establishment" is one distinct problem; "there's a whole literal industry devoted to making sure nobody else does either by knowingly lying all the time" is another.
Youtube as well. Dislikes, angry comments attacking a video, upvotes or downvotes on that comment, every bit of it further promotes whatever the video originally was. Couple that with sites actively promoting enraging content...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-outreach-idUSKBN2B2161 The last line indicates that the government shares a lot of the blame, not being willing to spend the money, instead relying on photo ops and endorsements. But conspiracy theories have played their part. Attempts at outreach are seen as part of the conspiracy, after all there is no "White" vaccine outreach. Thankfully, it seems that while the outreach has inflamed some conspiracy theorists, it has also been effective in general, with the % of Black Americans saying they won't get the vaccine dropping down to almost the same proportion as White Americans.
https://apnews.com/article/us-news-coronavirus-pandemic-bfabb2d3550141b74fac0080ce9226eb
But if you're a minority who gets harmed by America on a daily basis and nobody ever does anything about it? Yeah being afraid of what's in that shot is not exactly unreasonable.
As far as the right wing - vaccine fears are projection. They're afraid because that's what they would do to us
NSFW
Is it about aliens?
Unexpectedly the founder blurts out the underlying reasons for why she made the cult, which was she nearly died via suicide and rebelled against living in a conservative culture so she just said fuck society. She did this to a reporter, like a confession. That's where the conspiracy theories dig in and become toxic, its a means of "understanding" and "shaping the world" but what is is denial. Examples for conspiracy theorists doing this is normally conservative but this happened to people on the left, which are growing more and more vulnerable to Qanon. In ten years they'll probably be a Qanon offshoot.
*And even less likely that it was created in a lab. Part of the labelling of the lab escape theory as a conspiracy theory was the conflating of the lab escape and the lab creation theory. The latter is so unlikely that it is beyond "fringe theory" and falls squarely in the conspiracy theory category. And it seems like it has dragged it's more likely but still highly unlikely cousin lab escape into the conspiracy category.
It's literally the same people who pushed the "Saddam has WMDs!" bullshit back in the early aughts.
Manufacturing consent is made so much easier when the media "forgets" what happened twenty years ago.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's left wing Qanon. Don't let the hippy aesthetics fool you, their cult beliefs are deliberately designed too adapt for any "mythology," and builds an atmosphere to draw in those who feel rejected by society created by a woman who knows what she's doing is wrong. The founder needs to move to a liberal area, therapy and a supporting network - not start a cult. Scientology looks good from a distance.
I wasn't comparing it to Scientology as an equal, few cults are - it was an observation about how it "looked nice from afar."
Its a tiny group, that didn't are it any less sinister - the reason cult is in its name? It's a filter so only people who like cult want to join it. A big reason why I fear it is by its potential, and its weaknesses to influences like Qanon and conspiracy theories in general. It has no "guidelines," that's why their members like it they can make it be whatever they want. It's still a threat, but a minor one. I don't think we should be ignoring cults until they killing people, people thought Qanon was a joke until it wasn't. It would be very, very easy for Qanon to turn Yuna Cult into a sub-group, all it would take would be a single member making a sub-group inside it and time to infect the rest through osmosis. Yuna Cult's not a grift, it's an excuse to justify overriding reality with the agenda their members want - that's the appeal. It's made to be catnip for conspiracy theorists. It's tailor made for social media and the computer friendly younger generations, if it gets mainstream it would be incredibly bad.
Several factors. Trump no longer discrediting it by association, experts saying that it needs to be considered, and Chinese obstructionism.
Some of the "experts" are actually kinda wackadoo, though. For example one of the authors of the paper "Should we discount a laboratory origin of COVID-19?" thinks it's a prion disease!
Overall it sounds like a smaller scale of the "thousand scientists against climate change" thing, which turned out to be mostly engineers, a few retired physicists and biologists, a bunch of climatologist names harvested off university websites, and the cast of M*A*S*H* to round it out to an even thousand.
Same. 1 in 10,000 get blood clots even with the mRNA vac and people are having heart attacks and dying, but it's not being publicized.
Do they realise we’d know it because the funeral service industry would be doing abnormally high volumes, and they’re not (well, not since deaths started to drop due to vaccine rollouts)?
That would be like 3750 deaths for vaccinating 50% of the population of the US, which was pretty much one bad day during the worst parts of last winter.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
Here's a chart this acquaintance sent to me: (spoiler for teh stoopid)
I hate the fact that I actually had to look up and check those numbers. They are correct, the CDC is reporting those numbers, but what this idiot (the person who made chart, not my acquaintance) is failing to mention is that the standard death rate for a population with the size of the current number of people vaccinated (I compared to 2019, just to get a year with some "normal" numbers) is usually MUCH MUCH higher. So a death rate this small is actually a good thing! Less people are dying among the group that reported to the CDC!!
And now I feel like I've wasted half my morning just looking that shit up.
The annoying thing is that I've been hearing talks on NPR and reading articles about how one can "reach out" to their friends who are "vaccine skeptics." They say things like, "make sure to listen" and "don't get angry or make accusations" and "keep trying with the correct information." None of this advice works when your acquaintances are trying to use the same tactics as you! I keep getting emails from this person; and due to family and other personal connections, I can't really stop or ignore this person's emails. They are so worried about me because they're afraid I might get *GASP* vaccinated!
EDIT: The disclaimer for VAERS data from the CDC reads as follows:
For reference, the advice I'd give for reaching out to "vaccine skeptics" is to get vaccinated. Statistics and reasoning aren't as useful as having a few people you know get the vaccine without dying.
In a semi-related conspiracy, I read the Vanity Fair article linked in the COVID updates thread about the lab leak theory. It's not a great article for the usual reasons, but what amused me is that halfway through all the hearsay and conjecture (those are kinds of evidence, right?) they noted that years and years ago a bunch of miners digging out bat guano got sick with a virus very similar to COVID. And, really, that breaks their entire argument. There's no need for the Evil Chinese Government to take a natural virus and make it double-bad through Science That Plays God, if the original virus could already infect and kill humans. There's no need for a lab leak when any interaction between humans and bats could potentially lead to patient zero.
There are four different hypotheses on the origin of sars-cov-2, here in descending order of likelihood:
The first is, from what I understand, by far the most likely. The second is possible, but highly unlikely (the research lab, at least, definitily exists). The last two are pure tinfoil hat.
The current debate, among at least nominally reputable people/organizations, is about the first to hypetheses. No one credible are talking about options 3 or 4.
There is also the distinct possibility that there is some overlap or relationship between 1 and 2.
It is definitely possible that there was an initial small scale outbreak and employees at the lab were either investigating this new local illness, or became infected themselves (either in the course of work or incidentally). The fact that they are scientists working in a lab specializing in related diseases led them to be some of the earliest identified / proven cases, because there was no way to identify or confirm the earlier cases as COVID at the time.
With the way the virus spreads prior to symptoms, and how initial cases would be easily misdiagnosed or overlooked, I don't think anyone has a good accounting (or likely any way to do so retroactively) of the earliest spread in Wuhan. There could have been literally tens of thousands of people infected but the first tested and confirmed 'patient zero' was a lab worker.
Just look at how things blew up here in the US and we were looking for it and had (sparse, but some) testing available to confirm cases. Here in Michigan they identified the first four cases and locked the state down almost immediately, but its clear in hindsight there was already broad community spread long before those first tests came back positive. And again, we already knew it was coming here and were looking for it.
There is such a thing as gain of function research for nonmilitary purposes so there is a sort of option 2.5 (instead of being “we were designing a bioweapon and oops it got out” it could be “we were designing a drug resistant strain of virus to test new antiviral drugs on and oops it got out”.) Signs of engineering don’t automatically mean intent for military use.
Again no particular evidence for any of it but if it came out what there were signs of genetic tampering in the virus it still wouldn’t be sufficient to immediately jump to “bioweapon”.
Fair enough. The wackadoos are definitely all in on the "evil Chinese bioweapon plot to kill all round-eyes" though.
Regardless, my point was really trying to clarify that the current debate among the reputable is between "100% natural via wet market" and "unfortunate non-nefarious lab accident", not between "100% natural" and "Chinese bio-weapon", as evilmrhenry was implying in their post.
Some blogger over on Twitter made a thread last week going through all of the authors for that paper and wow is it a ride. It goes on for awhile and is worth a trainwreck read, but to summarize, we've got:
I'm kind of in awe that that is the group that actually dragged the global conversation into believing this is an Actual Thing.
It doesnt feel left wing, their "we dont agree with society so were going to step to the side in denial" feels much more like fence sitting undecided voter group. This is "thoughts and prayers" latched onto as a coping mechanism by people who need professional help (and some lazy/greedy folks).
Honestly my question is if she blames every criticism on trauma, isnt it the trauma of anxiety that led her father to go out and do something and find her? Isn't that trauma as a positive? Isn't it the trauma she experienced what led her to this cult? How can she deny others criticism as byproducts of trauma when she is a byproduct of her trauma and so is her belief system? IE if society is toxic, and society made her, how is she and what she does, not toxic?
That's the beauty of manufacturing consent: Have the media repeat something often enough and people will just assume there's something to it, because no one's going to bother to look into who is making a claim, they just know that the claim is being repeated all over the place.
The real question is to what ends this consent is being manufactured.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I read in the newspaper that Biden said it was equally likely that it was "non-nefarious lab accident" or "100% natural wet market". And Fauci seemed to be entertaining the notion from what I read.
So it's not complete tinfoil brigade, and when the non-insane POTUS (compared to the previous lunatic POTUS) says something like this, who made the original claim becomes a lot less important in the discourse.
The pundits pushing this shit are literally the same people who pushed the "Saddam has WMDs" bullshit, in the same newspapers.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
These aren't undecided voters they're political nihilists who want to watch the world burn because society rejected them, which are easy pickings for conspiracy groups. There are leftists like this. Nothing I saw felt centrist to me, they didn't want "balance" hey wanted extreme control of reality through denial and telling everyone to go fuck themselves. Correct, leftists aren't a group who are immune to doing that.
On the surface she appears to be someone delusional out of her depth, underneath she's a psychopathic narcissist. Both reasons throw logic out the window.
Is Biden saying the things he's alleged to have said? Or Fauci?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I hope you're doing a bit, as unfunny as it is.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Little of column A, lot of column B.
Mostly instead of it being Q posting some shit and people running with it like at the start, all the nutters are discussing their 'research' and occasionally 'some official' will confirm the popular theory.
They've basically crowdsourced out to whatever fan theory is taking hold and amplify that theory.
It would be sort of fascinating if it wasn't so terrifying.