Re:You cannot police misinformation in a fair, reproducible,...
by ratsmack on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @02:39PM
(#30263442)
>... it was thought ...
And therein lies the problem. They presented it as absolute undeniable fact, but there were no definitive studies to back up their claims at the time.
Re:You cannot police misinformation in a fair, reproducible,...
by nomel on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @02:46PM
(#30263548)
Yeah, these statements have uncertainty, but they're not being discussed. It seems that uncertainty is being intentionally omitted, and discussion of it is actively fought. This seems a terrible way to maintain trust!
Re:You cannot police misinformation in a fair, reproducible,...
by remarkEon on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @02:44PM
(#30263508)
>At the time those statements were made it was thought the vaccine would prevent transmission
Okay. How did they come to this conclusion? We'll never know, because we're in this asymmetric war about information, where dunking on your political enemies is more important than just being transparent. Showing us how they came to that conclusion, and then going through your points 1-4 would go a long way to restoring that trust (partially), but alas they won't do it.
Fast forward to today. The general consensus is the vaccine typically prevents serious illness and death in most cases for the common variants. It doesn't do a great job preventing infection.
One of the mistakes those in charge made was never admitting something like the following when new, solid information was understood:
1) We were wrong. 2) This is something we've never seen. 3) We're learning as we go. 4) It doesn't do what we said or thought it would do, but it does this.
No one in real power ever says anything remotely like it. They speak in absolutes and it has gotten so bad they are choosing to misrepresent studies to suggest following a path they think is best versus admitting the studies just suck.
Misinformation flagging for something like covid was never going to be practical to implement as there was so much changing on a such a limited timeframe. Toss in politics and the governing structure of the USA and it was never going to work.