And Sinclair really doesn't hold a candle to Nexstar and Gray Television, who have managed to buy up the vast majority of local affiliates over the past several years.
In the early 2000s I was always astonished by how utterly misinformed Fox News viewers were. In 2021 I am always astonished by how utterly misinformed MSNBC CNN and Fox News viewers are. On certain subjects like the statistical risk of a 35-year-old healthy person getting hospitalized for covid, Fox News viewers are actually the best informed. They still overestimate the risk but not by orders of magnitude that the other two sets of viewers succumb to. My father is a rabid MSNBC and CNN viewer, and like many of your typical resistance boomers is grossly ignorant about most things happening in the world. In December he was ranting to me about how the US could have had zero covid if someone else had been president. While I agreed with him that it had been mishandled I tried to explain to him that there wasn't any countries able to keep it out except for very isolated island nations. He was completely ignorant of this. He also freaked out when I contracted covid in February before I could give vaxxed. I was trying to explain to him that I'm very fit and healthy and relatively young but he really thought I was going to have to get hospitalized. This is when I started learning about the statistics on actual hospitalizations versus what the public thought. One difference between these groups of people who watch these utterly stupid channels is that Fox News viewers are pretty aware that they watch biased news. They weren't in the early 2000s though. MSNBC and CNN viewers think they're witnessing objective reporting in general. My father is always quick to say that he reads articles from the AP as if they are objective. They are absolutely not objective anymore. Ideological capture is a thing. And it was purely ideological when the AP told their reporters to call what was obviously rioting "mostly peaceful protests". The aftermath of that absurd line of thinking was me witnessing many family members who were right of center to completely lose any and all faith in journalistic institutions. It was a watershed moment in media becoming untrusted by most of the working class.
In some populations, a person has a better chance of catching covid and dying than they do of saying they watched Chris Cuomo last night.
Note: Just curious. Didn't even know about this "Let's Go Brandon" thing until now.
The difference between lying and joking is always in context. If I dress as a police officer for Halloween it's fine, if I lead you to believe I actually am a police officer it is a crime. There's also a middle ground where someone could mistake my costume for impersonation.
I don't know what aspect of this video violated the terms of service, but I think political videos on all sides regularly make statements that aren't supported by 'mainstream' fact checking sources and therefore might fall outside the policies of services like Youtube.
If you want to argue that all speech with 'political intent' should be protected I am open to that conversation! But that is not the standard held by most services, including Youtube, which Bryson Gray agreed to when he uploaded his song.
One type of humor is known as "trolling". The basic idea is to see how much of a reaction you can get from something pointless and stupid. Now many people are making songs with the lyric "Let's go Brandon" and they are receiving hate mail, being banned, being demonitized, etc. This reaction is seen as outsized for a reference to a fairly well known piece of pop culture. Thus, to those who find outsized reactions funny, this is funny.
Ours not to reason why.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
If I recall correctly, the Biden administration and the CDC both made public statements telling everyone that they would no longer need to continue wearing masks once they were vaccinated.
"At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days."
Did you think the vaccines would prevent you from contracting covid?
Wear your masks people.
This portion of your comment in particular is false.
People who receive two COVID-19 jabs and later contract the Delta variant are less likely to infect their close contacts than are unvaccinated people with Delta. Relevant Nature article (October 5, 2021).
However, good job on the masks part, please keep wearing them! :-)
"The study shows that people who become infected with the Delta variant are less likely to pass the virus to their close contacts if they have already had a COVID-19 vaccine than if they haven’t1. But that protective effect is relatively small, and dwindles alarmingly at three months after the receipt of the second shot. "
> less likely to infect their close contacts than are unvaccinated people with Delta
I don't see these as contradictory. Vaccines are more effective against transmissions, yet vaccines don't slow down transmissions in a significative way. As per the article:
> Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus.
> A reduction was also observed in people vaccinated with the jab made by US company Pfizer and German firm BioNTech. The risk of spreading the Delta infection soon after vaccination with that jab was 42%, but increased to 58% with time.
Fully agree on the mask though. Plus social distancing, if possible.
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge, MA USA
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA
Turner Fenton Secondary School, Brampton, ON Canada
> Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States
Almost like there's this spot where, once you have enough people vaccinated, the virus can no longer spread.
Hmm. Wonder why that could be. Certainly it couldn't possibly be exactly what experts have been telling us for the past century.
As I have said elsewhere in this thread I don't agree with the lyrics in that video. I find the video itself to be childish and silly but that would basically be 99% of rap and pop music in general.
They have not halted the spread because of vaccine misinformation like this very video which you are defending.
Your question should be directed at the creator of the video, not the HN user.
Regardless of whether the pandemic is over or not, the statement isn't a lie and therefore the quote is incorrect. The vaccine significantly slows ths spread and from both theory and past experience can fully stop it, given a high enough vaccination rate. At best it hasn't come to fruition yet and at worst it won't not because the statement is a lie but because people actively prevented it from coming true, despite all reason and logic.
Based on what data do you come to that conclusion?
The vaccination rate of a country is not correlated with its covid infection rate:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
And after 3 months of being fully vaccinated, people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y
From the article:
> Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus.
Across different countries the testing methodologies are too different to meaningfully compare with.
Finally your last paragraph only applies if the vaccinated person gets infected with delta in the first place (in other words has a breakthrough infection).
95% of COVID-19 deaths are happening among the unvaccinated right now, you’re spreading FUD about what’s basically a miracle.
1) "The vaccination rate of a country is not correlated with its covid infection rate". From the article: "The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated." You can interpret this as either the vaccine not working (unlikely) or that high-income countries such as Iceland and Portugal test a larger share of their population than low-income countries such as Vietnam and South Africa (very likely), thus confounding the relationship between vaccination levels and reported Covid cases.
2) "And after 3 months of being fully vaccinated, people are just as likely to spread the virus as unvaccinated people". From the article: "The risk of spreading the Delta infection soon after vaccination with that jab [Pfizer] was 42%, but increased to 58% with time." Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine.
The word "significantly" has a specific statistical meaning. The paper discussed on the Nature article implies it is not a statistically significant difference between 67% and 58% (likely accounting for covariance and measurement error).
Unless you have a different source showing there is statistical significance between those two results?
You may interpret all you want, but I was just pointing out the lack of solid data supporting the claim: "The vaccine significantly slows the spread"
Almost 3 billion people have been fully vaccinated worldwide and yet there is still no evidence that the vaccines have any effect at all in slowing the spread of the virus. I find this rather remarkable.
This situation could very well push the evolution of the virus towards more dangerous strains. Like what happened with Marek's disease among chickens:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathog...
> Your quote shows that the AstraZeneca vaccine loses effectiveness over time. However, the chance of an unvaccinated person passing on the virus is 67%, which is significantly higher than the 58% for a person who received the Pfizer vaccine.
Pfizer buys you a bit more time, but the downward trend in your immunity is unmistakable too:
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/coronavirus/1626980447-vaccin...
https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/reports/vaccine-efficacy-safet...
In New Zealand, the unvaccinated are largely the indigenous Maori, not stereotypical anti-vaxxers.
But yes, there's hard-to-reach people in every ethnicity. What I've enjoyed is the orgs who are vaccinating Māori and Pacific Islanders - always tell the community to come along even if you don't fit in either ethnicity, you'll still get a jab. I just love that. It's the way it should be!
We're all people, let's look after each other.
Given enough time, all populations will eventually attain herd immunity.
How has this been shown?
Countries with a high vaccination rate don't have a lower infection rate than other countries:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
And after 3 months of being fully vaccinated, whatever level of immunity you had is completely gone by then:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y
> Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus.
The only thing that remains, is some protection against symptomatic disease.
And sever disease needing hospitalization and death. And these indeed the things we want to avoid. Both as individuals and as a society. Because if/when hospitals fill up then you have a trouble. This is what people don't get. (They also don't get that they could end up in a hospital or a morgue with some probability, so I don't even mention that.)
One of my friend's father has been waiting for an operation for half a year here (in Hungary). They couldn't do it in the spring because the hospitals were overcrowded with covid patients. Then they couldn't do it because the waiting lists grew during that period. Then somehow he got in about a week ago with the help of a former high ranking official (yeah, gotta love Eastern Europe) just to be sent home the next morning, because there weren't enough free beds in the ICU any more. Yes, anecdotal, but this is the thing we try to avoid.
Sorry to hear about your friends' father.
The second link is about a study that looks at transmission of the Delta variant from a breakthrough infection. It did not look into wether the chances of getting infected after vaccination decreased.
Finally the vaccine dramatically reduced your chances of dying. I'd say that's some pretty good protection from symptomatic disease, not just some protection.
You are trying to make a statement about a counterfactual what if ___ country didn't vaccinate the imputation being that the vaccines aren't effective because 2 different countries with dozens of confounding factors doesn't show a high enough correlation.
It is a remarkable conclusion to suppose that studying individuals in the same society fewer got infected if they were vaccinated because of comparison between different societies.
It would be as if we proved that people didn't smoke in the USA got lung cancer far less than smokers but you sprung up with a study that showed that rates of smoking between societies wasn't highly correlated with lung cancer ergo smoking didn't cause lung cancer. One would logically suppose that your study didn't prove what you think it proved.
At limit you are supposing that if we got 100% vaccinated somehow we would see as much covid spread despite everyone having antibodies which are known to decrease chance of infection and extent of spread ergo effecting the time one remains infectious and how many virions are available to be spread.
Beware of anyone who doesn't feel the need to disprove that raindrops fall in buckets who nevertheless has proven that storms can't cause floods.
More importantly.
The MRNA vaccinations are 95% effective at keeping you out of the hospital or the grave.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7038e1.htm
This is even more important than decreasing spread.
Source?
> You are trying to make a statement about a counterfactual what if ___ country didn't vaccinate the imputation being that the vaccines aren't effective
I linked to an analysis by a Harvard professor. Who uses official government data of the respective countries. So I think I have good reason to take that seriously.
> because 2 different countries with dozens of confounding factors doesn't show a high enough correlation.
Yes there must be many confounding factors. But your phrase: "doesn't show a high enough correlation" is putting it mildly. How about: no correlation at all?
But I would love to see data that shows a population-level effect of mass vaccination on the covid infection rate.
> The MRNA vaccinations are 95% effective at keeping you out of the hospital or the grave.
This is the sort of percentage that got thrown around a lot at the start of the vaccination campaign. But for protection against infection/transmission. Just one of many examples:
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-israel-va...
The idea that the vaccinated have become (mostly) asymptomatic spreaders of the viruses, is nothing to celebrate. This is a scenario that can push the evolution of the virus towards more dangerous variants:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathog...
A mutation which increased its spread slightly among vaccinated individuals by 10% while increasing the mortality of the unvaccinated by 10x would be fitter yet. This isn't fate because the space the virus explores is driven by its actual difficult to predict particulars not hypothetical thought experiments but I wouldn't bet on covid going away, I wouldn't bet on people choosing to be more likely to die and abandoning vaccination, and I wouldn't bet on covid becoming safer for the unvaccinated in the short term.
The odds are overwhelming that if covid does get worse despite our work in developing increasingly effective therapies the unvaccinated will have it much worse. So if you choose to stay among the unvaccinated I would expect your prospects in the next several years range from bad to worse. Make your own decisions accordingly.
Yes. This is what that Quanta article was all about. Here's the link once more: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathog...
> The odds are overwhelming that if covid does get worse despite our work in developing increasingly effective therapies the unvaccinated will have it much worse.
Agreed. There's a tragedy of the commons there.
Edit: and while we're here, here is politifact's take:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/14/joe-biden/...
Concluding it's "half true" fits this thread well :)
I say this as someone who's vaccinated; that is not true. It can limit the spread by reducing the viral load you give off, but you can still be vaccinated, get the virus, be asymptomatic (or not) and transmit it.
When US media reports on activities like this in countries like China and Russia they call it censorship. When they report on the same activities in the US they call it "protecting the public from misinformation".
It's a very very slippery slope to ban things. Who gets to choose what gets banned? Who gets to say what is misinformation or not?
It blows my mind how shortsighted most of my left of center friends are on this topic. They seem to have this delusion that these levers of power are only ever going to be controlled by the people they agree with. In the early 2000s a lot of people I argued with were totally supportive of the Patriot act. They were generally conservatives and were just completely confident it would never be used against US citizens. Now those same people are witnessing calls from people on the left who wants opposed to Patriot act to use it against US citizens with right-wing politics.