Author Topic: Misleading or false claims by the media  (Read 152608 times)

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #450 on: May 31, 2019, 10:40:02 AM »
Wasn't the EPA the agency where the staffers tried to create a "shadow" disclosure regime for the "real EPA"? 

The "norm breaking" you're citing really isn't "before he took office," honestly, you can't appoint heads to agencies before you take office.  And seriously, the idea that someone trying to reform bureacracy would appoint from within it is just silly.  When Trump appoints an outsider, the immediate story was about how they were unqualified - specifically because they didn't have inside the agency norms - whereas when Obama did it the immediate story was about how they were a visionary bringing new ideas to the agency.

Trump has been victimized, he's also victimized others. 

But it's pretty clear that the "rules" that others apply to Trump are not the same that applied to Obama.  Obama says, I can't reform immigration acting alone, then goes ahead and creates DACA by exercising his enforcement discretion, Trump comes along, correctly states that as DAPA was ruled unConstituional DACA is also very likely unConstitutional and I will be exercising my enforcement discretion to unwind it.  Gets enjoined.  In what world are they treated the same, when Obama's unConstitutional action is given more weight than Trump's Constitutional action?  In the worst case, Trump has to have at least as much Executive Authority as Obama, yet, that's not how it was applied.

Obama's IRS targets conservatives, officials plead the fifth, every effort is made to prevent disclosure.  Not obstruction.  Trump is attacked by a false claim that his campaign colluded with the Russians, spied on, investigated for two years by a team made up solely of his political enemies, that he cooperates with fully (except for not personally sitting for an interview - which given the gotcha interviews they were running is entirely sensible), and is labelled with "obstruction" that relies on a theory of obstruction that was specifically written to prevent an Arthur Anderson style destruction of records (you really should look at Barr's memo if you haven't already).  Or how about how Hillary destroyed emails that were the subject of a subpeona?  Trump is "obstructing" justice by venting to his White House counsel about how Mueller has conflicts (which he does) but Hillary wasn't by destroying her hard drives?

I get hating Trump.  I don't get applying such completely different standards.

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #451 on: May 31, 2019, 12:44:44 PM »
I don't agree with your interpretations about what is or isn't constitutional, but we have courts to decide that. We could rehash many debates from the past, but that's my basic position. As I've stated before, Hillary knew how to better obscure and obfuscate. That either makes her more innocent, or simply an effective mob boss, but either way it leaves her less vulnerable. Maybe getting charitable contributions for her organization is as bad as having foreign dignitaries pay to stay in your hotels, but the legalities are more obscured.

Lots of leaders have gone into organizations and worked to reform them without smashing everyone to bits, or to install someone openly hostile to the organization's mission. It would be like making a union activist the CEO of Walmart.

Obama didn't enter office and immediately set to work dismantling everything Bush did. Naturally, the people who worked for eight years to put policy in place are not going to be too happy about having that work unraveled at the stroke of a pen. Some of those people are going to leak information, just like if you are an a-hole boss, some employees are going to steal from you.

Trump could have boiled the frog more gradually, but that's not his style and not what he promised.

Crunch

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #452 on: May 31, 2019, 03:21:38 PM »

I get hating Trump.  I don't get applying such completely different standards.

About those double standards ... here's Obama who was in Brazil for the digital convention, VTEX Day, which took place Thursday in Sao Paulo:

Quote
"Some of you may be aware our gun laws in the United States don’t make much sense,” Obama said, “Anybody can buy any weapon any time — without much if any regulation, they can buy it over the Internet, they can buy machine guns."

That's just blatant lying. The guy is lying sack of *censored*. He knows this is not true but he just goes with it. This is a lie roughly of the same quality as a 5-year-old insisting he didn't run in the house and break the vase despite it all being caught on the home security system.

But these lies are OK, aren't they?

LetterRip

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #453 on: June 02, 2019, 03:30:34 PM »
Quote
That's just blatant lying. The guy is lying sack of *censored*. He knows this is not true but he just goes with it. This is a lie roughly of the same quality as a 5-year-old insisting he didn't run in the house and break the vase despite it all being caught on the home security system.

Which do you think are lies?

You can buy guns over the internet. 

https://www.midwayusa.com/buy-guns-online

You can buy machine guns in the US.

Quote
Under federal law, machine guns — considered automatic weapons — are tightly regulated but legal to own as long as they were made before May 1986 and are registered with the federal government.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/10/02/nevadas-lax-gun-laws-make-easy-assemble-gun-arsenals/723569001/

Perhaps,
Quote
Anybody can buy any weapon any time — without much if any regulation

Not quite "anybody" and not quite "any weapon" and not quite "any time".  - You probably can't buy a nuke, of course in the context we can assume he meant guns.  Most automatic weapons can be bought - but it does take a permit that can be a pain - I think that falls fairly under the 'without much ... regulation' - and they can only be bought used.  For "anybody" - are you upset because there are in fact legally prohibited people - would "nearly anybody" be acceptable to you?  For "any time" - I suppose there might be some places that have mandatory holidays that it can't be bought on.

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #454 on: June 02, 2019, 05:41:00 PM »
“ship it to your local FFL“

Clearly the buy guns on the internet meme is intended to imply that Amazon is just going to leave it at your doorstep.

Crunch

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #455 on: January 07, 2020, 04:42:24 PM »
Related:

Quote
Attorneys for Nicholas Sandmann filed a $275 million lawsuit Wednesday against NBCUniversal over its coverage of the Kentucky teen, accusing the network of creating a “false narrative” driven by its “anti-Trump agenda.”

The lawsuit, the third filed by the Sandmann attorneys against major media outlets, alleged that NBC targeted the Covington Catholic High School student in its reporting on his Jan. 18 encounter with Native American activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial.

“NBCUniversal created a false narrative by portraying the ‘confrontation’ as a ‘hate crime’ committed by Nicholas,” said the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

$275 million.  I hope he gets every penny of it.

CNN settled their lawsuit with Sandmann today. The amount has not been made public but I'm betting it's enough to send Sandmann to any university he wants. Other lawsuits are moving forward and will likely fund his retirement. Fake news has a price tag.

Wayward Son

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #456 on: January 07, 2020, 04:50:14 PM »
Wow.  How much do you think Biden will get for this video?

Or Obama for for this photoshopped picture?

Crunch

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #457 on: January 08, 2020, 04:17:31 PM »
Depends, did CNN run it as true? Did other media outlets run them in heavy rotation and insist they were accurate?

Are Biden and Obama public figures or private?

Kasandra

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #458 on: January 08, 2020, 05:31:44 PM »
Lucky that Conservatives and FOX News have star investigator James O'Keefe on their side to report his veritas. 

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #459 on: January 22, 2020, 03:49:11 PM »
Okay, this isn't exactly a false claim, but it's still awful.

Quote
Wuhan coronavirus death toll rises, as city imposes transport lackdown

Lackdown? really CNN? Have you obsessed over Trump so much that you are writing headlines the way he tweets?

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #460 on: March 31, 2020, 02:50:12 PM »
Meanwhile in Breitbart world:

https://www.breitbart.com/

Headline screams:

CNN Cuomo Tests Positive for Coronavirus

But Will Continue To Anchor Show

Italics are theirs. Clearly trying to imply that he's going to the studio. The article clarifies later that he's working from home, as he has been.

From the comment section, close to the top:

Quote
This is irresponsible. Even if his work was essential, if he's positive for Covid 19 he should be in isolation on lockdown, the same expectation they have for the rest of us. And his work is definitely NOT essential.

wmLambert

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #461 on: March 31, 2020, 04:38:37 PM »
...Italics are theirs. Clearly trying to imply that he's going to the studio. The article clarifies later that he's working from home, as he has been.

No, The italics do not scream that he is breaking self-isolation. By now everyone knows you can continue working without being stupid about it. It takes someone with a personal agenda to assume the worst of those you don't particularly approve of. Editors always screw up their added headlines for articles. I think that is proof of the Peter Principle. The guys in charge should let the authors of an article set the headline.

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #462 on: March 31, 2020, 04:42:33 PM »
I wonder if you'd be so forgiving if it was about Trump.

Remember back when he refused to enter isolation after being exposed, and it remained unclear if he was even tested? I'll bet you beefed about articles in the MSM giving him a hard time for that.

Plus I already demonstrated that it misled at least one person without having to dig to find him.

wmLambert

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #463 on: March 31, 2020, 05:41:43 PM »
...Remember back when he refused to enter isolation after being exposed, and it remained unclear if he was even tested?

Why nitpick trying to find anything at all to denigrate the President? He has been polite and soft-spoken all during this crisis, yet listening to the news media, you'd think he's been spitting and shouting. Actually, he's been more accomodating to Mayors and Governors who have fought him tooth and nail since he was elected.

Kasandra

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #464 on: March 31, 2020, 06:00:20 PM »
Quote
Why nitpick trying to find anything at all to denigrate the President?

"Nitpick" :D :D

Quote
He has been polite and soft-spoken all during this crisis

Woo-ha-ha-ha!  That is really good!  How many reporters has he insulted and attacked in just the past week?

Quote
Actually, he's been more accomodating to Mayors and Governors who have fought him tooth and nail since he was elected.

It really is all about him, isn't it?  In a dire emergency and crisis, he remembers who he thinks insulted in the past and makes sure to get even with them.

He's the President you want, but not the President the rest of us deserve.  You'll never understand that, but TWS rules!!

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #465 on: March 31, 2020, 08:50:45 PM »
Quote
During a Fox News town hall filmed in the Rose Garden, Trump slammed Cuomo for not ordering ventilators years ago. The president pointed to reports that Cuomo, a Democrat, chose to ration the state’s supply of emergency ventilators rather than order more in 2015.

If that's accommodating I'd hate to see antagonistic.

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #466 on: April 01, 2020, 11:25:45 AM »
Quote
He has been polite and soft-spoken all during this crisis

Woo-ha-ha-ha!  That is really good!  How many reporters has he insulted and attacked in just the past week?

Zero people acting as reporters at the time they were 'insulted or attacked,' a very few acting as political opreratives though.

Quote
Quote
Actually, he's been more accomodating to Mayors and Governors who have fought him tooth and nail since he was elected.

It really is all about him, isn't it?  In a dire emergency and crisis, he remembers who he thinks insulted in the past and makes sure to get even with them.

Delusion, Kasandra is thy name.  Trump has been gracious with all of them.  DeBlasio literally went from refusing to close the schools (under pressure from advocates for the poor) and encouraging people to go to street fairs to the next day closing schools (under pressure from the teacher's union and Cuomo) and screaming about how Trump was killing everyone (and it's not his, DeBlasio's, fault), to panicking people left and right with bizarre announcements, and Trump has not only helped him, he's even said complementary things about him.  Trump has said complementary things about Gavin Newsome and Cuomo, both of whom are not remotely fans of his politically.

In fact I'm really glad Trump's been the bigger person and not the paranoid bogeyman you try to paint with your partisan fantasy.

Quote
He's the President you want, but not the President the rest of us deserve.  You'll never understand that, but TWS rules!!

I agree, you don't deserve him, but damn glad we have him, the death toll would have been much greater under Hillary, and heaven forbid if Biden had been President.  "They" would never have let Biden anywhere near this response, don't think anyone in America thinks Biden could handle this, and that says everything you need to know about why Biden shouldn't be President - which begs the question of why exactly he's the nominee of a major party?  Figure head?  Puppet?  What exactly?

yossarian22c

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #467 on: April 01, 2020, 02:20:57 PM »
...
I agree, you don't deserve him, but damn glad we have him, the death toll would have been much greater under Hillary, and heaven forbid if Biden had been President.  "They" would never have let Biden anywhere near this response, don't think anyone in America thinks Biden could handle this, and that says everything you need to know about why Biden shouldn't be President - which begs the question of why exactly he's the nominee of a major party?  Figure head?  Puppet?  What exactly?

I don't know why you think that about Hillary. Other than closing the border to China I don't see how Trump has managed this crisis well. Testing roll out in the US was poor, we are struggling to get enough PPE and medical supplies to hospitals and we were slow to recognize the spread and get big sections of the country (primarily NYC) shut down before the huge growth in cases occurred.

One thing I will say, the economy will recover better under Trump. Senate republicans would have never passed a 2 trillion dollar stimulus (running a 3 trillion dollar deficit for the year) under Hillary.

ScottF

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #468 on: April 01, 2020, 02:34:08 PM »
Testing roll out in the US was poor, we are struggling to get enough PPE and medical supplies to hospitals and we were slow to recognize the spread and get big sections of the country (primarily NYC) shut down before the huge growth in cases occurred.

One thing I will say, the economy will recover better under Trump. Senate republicans would have never passed a 2 trillion dollar stimulus (running a 3 trillion dollar deficit for the year) under Hillary.

I'll refrain from the Hillary/Trump comparison, but I'm not convinced the US was exceptionally slow or has performed poorly compared to other countries of similar size (geo and population). Compared to South Korea, Singapore, sure.

And I'm still waiting to hear opinions as to who's at fault for any PPE shortages.

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #469 on: April 01, 2020, 03:22:10 PM »
I don't know why you think that about Hillary.

Because virtually all the problems you've described below are directly traceable to government process and inertia getting in the way of solving a problem.  I have zero confidence that Hillary could have motivated the business community in the way Trump has, which has gotten them jumping at the chance to help.  More likely she'd have seized them as the Progressives are clamouring to have done and left the FDA process in place (which means we'd being doing less than a thousand tests a week at this point) and then lamented that she'd done all she can and that these things take time.  Fast track?  Bulldozing bureaucratic roadblocks?  Nope.  Instead of companies all pitching in and doing their best, their talent would have been replaced and wasted with  Washington bureaucrats.

The solution of the left is always more government, even when government itself is the problem.

Quote
Other than closing the border to China I don't see how Trump has managed this crisis well.

First of all, Trump took tremendous flack for that, and now it seems a no brainer.  What does that say about the brains that counseled against it?  Would the parties have flipped on that point?  Possible, could see Republicans crying about the economic consequences and leftists loving the totalitarian control of peoples movement, but it's not convincing to me that Clinton would have ordered a travel restriction.  A Clinton admin, would have been stuck fighting the last war with the bureaucrats in the FDA in control.

I mean heck, even Fauci if you listen to him talk about double blind studies doesn't seem to get it.  There's a time for a perfect process, and a time for a less perfect process.  Running a lengthly double blind study where you deliberately let some people die on a placebo to try and get an accurate result during a pandemic is a mistake.  It's science without considering the ramifications of the science.  Now would be the time to look at results based on time (use prior cases as a rough control, and compare different treatments to each other).  If you find something that seems to have markedly better results and is otherwise safe, why would you need a double blind study?  I note too, French authorities have now joined multiple other countries in making the drug cocktail Trump lauded the standard treatment protocol (and seem to think not including their results in your analysis as not "academic" is offensive).

Quote
Testing roll out in the US was poor....

it absolutely was, and is 100% the fault of the CDC and FDA process that refused to even consider expediting approvals and releasing control until they were bulldozed.  Keep in mind the process was targetted at limited clinical proofs of the infections - based, it appears on the flu identification process where you only need to identify strains to pick the targets for the ongoing vaccination program, rather than anything remotely designed to utilize mass testing to stop a plague.  It doesn't seem to have occurred to the CDC that there could have been a need or even a utility in being able to rapidly roll out hundreds of thousands of tests in short period of time.

That's 100% tied into the rigid, rigid controls that we've built out around the FDA and medicine.  You've heard me complain about it before, with industry estimates putting the price tag of bringing a new drug to market at something like $1.6billion after you go through the FDA process.

Normally thta's a mixed bag.  The FDA ensures we have the best quality of medicines in the world.  But they do that at a tremendous cost of time and process, which is exactly what we don't have during a pandemic, when "good enough" has to be "good enough."

Quote
...we are struggling to get enough PPE and medical supplies to hospitals...

Haven't really quoted it, but there's an interesting analysis of that, which seems to show that the medical reserve was depleted by the Obama administration during the couple health crisises they navigated and never restocked.  Would be moderately interested to see if that was true.

Its also one of those things that has really highlighted how unwise it's been to let China take over critical manufacturing processes.

I also find it interesting that some of this seems to be a state versus federal issue.  The federal equipment reserves are being held centrally so that they can send them to the localities that need them, meanwhile some of those localities that haven't been hit are demanding equipment to create their own reserves.  Even NY has apparently made demands to increase their warehouse of equipment so they can further apply it against future demands.  Trump's policy on this is the right one, the central reserve can't empty itself out based on future expectations that may never occur, when it needs to be ready to react to current demands.  When you hear states claiming a shortage of equipment, consider whether they really have a current need.

Quote
... and we were slow to recognize the spread and get big sections of the country (primarily NYC) shut down before the huge growth in cases occurred.

There's truth to that.  But much of that comes from no one having an accurate read on just how communicable the disease is.  I mean the Chinese claim to have slowed or stopped spread before the US numbers exploded.  Based on what we've seen that seems to be really suspicious.  Is it a lie?  Does it mean they really did create it?  Don't want to speculate too much, but if they really stopped it, I'm guessing they committed atrocities that the world may never hear about.

A big part of that is from people being stupid and not following directions, I mean there was super spreader party nearby in CT (it's been written about in national publications).  The articles say there were 50 guests, all rich, all world travellers (the local word is 200+ guests and catering and other staff on top - but they are lying to say they were under the 50 person guidance).  That one party has been the source of cases and clusters all over the state, country and even the world.  Spring breakers are another example of dumb behavior.  Lest you think that's old, they just had a story about Texas students that charted a flight to Mexico a week and a half ago where 30% came back infected.  Heck, when they first closed schools here a bunch of parents started scheduling physical playdates and posting these get togethers to their social media.

Oh, and it's important to remember, that notwithstanding our national focus, the federal government doesn't have the general authority to do much of what you might want or expect.  It was no mistake that when Trump spoke about "locking down" NY, NJ and part of CT, Cuomo immediately said it was beyond Trump's authority and would be a Civil War.  Cuomo can lock down NY and order it's schools closed, Trump can't.

Again, on the timeline you can see that what Trump has been saying is optimistic but generally an accurate reflection of what the responsible agencies were doing and saying.

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #470 on: April 01, 2020, 03:49:13 PM »
Quote
There's truth to that.  But much of that comes from no one having an accurate read on just how communicable the disease is.  I mean the Chinese claim to have slowed or stopped spread before the US numbers exploded.  Based on what we've seen that seems to be really suspicious.  Is it a lie?  Does it mean they really did create it?  Don't want to speculate too much, but if they really stopped it, I'm guessing they committed atrocities that the world may never hear about.

You seem to be implying that China secretly vaccinated a billion people? How otherwise would they have benefited from "creating it" in terms of stopping the spread through their population?

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #471 on: April 01, 2020, 04:52:36 PM »
No, doubt they didn't vaccinate their populace.  Most likely they went full on totalitarian and ruthlessly suppressed the entire region, including measures word of which hasn't leaked.  Whether they just had better intel than they shared or knew ahead of time how infections it would be doesn't change that.  Suspicion here just goes to exactly how ruthless they actually were.

If you want to go full out conspiracy theory, then they deliberately released it in an area they could control knowing enough about it's communicability to be able to set up effective firewalls that they knew the rest of the world couldn't emulate.  But since it hit them first they are above suspicion.  Then they sit back and watch it ravage the rest of the world and try to look like heroes by sharing medical supplies.  If it starts to slow or doesn't hit where they want, they can always reintroduce it to the areas they're looking to infect.  Since they already know how to stop it from transmitting, they should have fully effective border controls on having it reintroduced to their country.

Edited to Add:  All of this is conspiracy theory speculation.  I think you should ask yourself how would you tell the difference between an intentional ct on their part and an accident or random occurrence, and consider whether factors you see in the future are influential on that decision tree.  There may be nothing to it, but I can't say I trust the Chinese government and their history on this is filed with lies and cover up. 
« Last Edit: April 01, 2020, 04:55:10 PM by Seriati »

TheDeamon

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #472 on: April 01, 2020, 05:55:04 PM »
Quote
There's truth to that.  But much of that comes from no one having an accurate read on just how communicable the disease is.  I mean the Chinese claim to have slowed or stopped spread before the US numbers exploded.  Based on what we've seen that seems to be really suspicious.  Is it a lie?  Does it mean they really did create it?  Don't want to speculate too much, but if they really stopped it, I'm guessing they committed atrocities that the world may never hear about.

You seem to be implying that China secretly vaccinated a billion people? How otherwise would they have benefited from "creating it" in terms of stopping the spread through their population?

No, the theory at present is that Covid19 is still spreading in China, but they've got news/information blackouts preventing word from getting out.

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #473 on: April 01, 2020, 06:09:04 PM »
Quote
There's truth to that.  But much of that comes from no one having an accurate read on just how communicable the disease is.  I mean the Chinese claim to have slowed or stopped spread before the US numbers exploded.  Based on what we've seen that seems to be really suspicious.  Is it a lie?  Does it mean they really did create it?  Don't want to speculate too much, but if they really stopped it, I'm guessing they committed atrocities that the world may never hear about.

You seem to be implying that China secretly vaccinated a billion people? How otherwise would they have benefited from "creating it" in terms of stopping the spread through their population?

No, the theory at present is that Covid19 is still spreading in China, but they've got news/information blackouts preventing word from getting out.

I'm almost certain that's the case. Or maybe they have no deaths from coronavirus because everyone who gets it dies of a gunshot wound, and then the test is reported negative because they can't cough on anyone. :P

wmLambert

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #474 on: April 01, 2020, 08:39:15 PM »
...If you want to go full out conspiracy theory, then they deliberately released it in an area they could control knowing enough about it's communicability to be able to set up effective firewalls that they knew the rest of the world couldn't emulate.  But since it hit them first they are above suspicion.  Then they sit back and watch it ravage the rest of the world and try to look like heroes by sharing medical supplies.  If it starts to slow or doesn't hit where they want, they can always reintroduce it to the areas they're looking to infect.  Since they already know how to stop it from transmitting, they should have fully effective border controls on having it reintroduced to their country.

If you want full conspiracy theory, don't forget the unproven Internet claim that George Soros owns a pharmaceutical company in Wuhan.

wmLambert

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #475 on: April 01, 2020, 10:13:38 PM »
I just looked up the WuXi Pharma Tech Inc., that Soros owns. It is in Wuhan. I think he has his fingers in eleven different pharmaceutical companies. I looked up companies that George Soros owns, and found the eleven pharmaceuticals. Then I looked up the map of where WuXi is. Then I looked up where Wuhan is. Same spot on the map.

TheDeamon

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #476 on: April 02, 2020, 04:43:53 AM »
Ohhh myy

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #477 on: April 02, 2020, 01:37:28 PM »
 ;D that's a good one! April fool!

wmLambert

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #478 on: April 07, 2020, 05:28:35 PM »
...I don't agree with your interpretations about what is or isn't constitutional, but we have courts to decide that.

Up until Trump started adding Constitutionally-based judges, there were always some available for Leftist activists to refer things to, who would stamp the activist view without sense or justice. Most things in the Constitution are very easy to understand, and the writings in the Federalist Papers underscore meaning.

Crunch

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #479 on: May 20, 2020, 10:19:47 AM »
Interesting twitter thread from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and a pretty frigging smart guy:

Quote
Just had a fascinating conversation with my smartest friend who is also anti-Trump. He says he gets his news from CNN, MSNBC and the NY Times. So I tested him to see the quality of his general knowledge on the hydroxychloroquine story.

He had never heard that zinc has to be combined with hydroxychloroquine to be effective (or so the hypothesis goes). So he did not know the studies showing no effect without the zinc were not telling you much.

He was not aware that something like a quarter of doctors would prescribe hydroxychloroquine and zinc based on the situation and the risk assessment. He believed there was zero medical opinion agreeing with Trump.

He had never heard of "off-label" prescribing of meds, and that it is fairly normal. He believed any doctor doing such a thing was violating healthcare norms with "unproven drugs."

He was not aware the frontline healthcare workers (some not all) have been taking hydroxychloroquine (and probably zinc) for months.

He was not aware that multiple other countries are routinely prescribing hydroxychloroquine (and zinc I assume) and they have actual doctors there too.

He was not aware that the ONE time Trump's handling of the coronavirus departed from the opinion of experts (Fauci in particular), Trump was right: Closing travel from China. He believed Trump was ignoring experts.

I tried to explain to my friend that the news media pre-2016 sometimes said true things, but we no longer live in those times. I recommended he broaden his news sources so at least he is EXPOSED to the entire news. He resisted because, you know, FOX News blah, blah. Lost cause.
 
What fascinates me the most about this situation is that my friend is an Ivy League graduate and easily in the top-five-percent of well-informed people in society, and he pays attention to the news. He was shocked when I told him how much "news" (context) is kept from him.

If you think this is a criticism of the left, you're only partly right. I'm criticizing anyone who doesn't sample the news from both left and right. But I do observe that conservatives are far more likely to know the story on both sides because "mainstream" news is ubiquitous.

Also, my friend had never seen the Russian troll farm memes (which looked like a sixth grade project) so he actually believed those memes changed the election. No one who has seen them believes that.

He also believes that if 17 intelligence agencies say something is true, it's because all 17 independently looked into it. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks that. In the real world, a few people in one agency have an opinion and the rest say it sounds good to them.

He also believed it is a fact that Russia hacked the DNC. It might be a fact. It might not. But we certainly don't KNOW it to be true.

rightleft22

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #480 on: May 20, 2020, 10:58:56 AM »
Quote
Interesting twitter thread from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and a pretty frigging smart guy:

Not sure what this proves? All people who disagree with trump = "anti-Trump" and all people who are 'anti-trump' are ill-informed = you win

I remember watching Bill Maher go after various evangelist to prove his point about religion.  He tended to go after the lowest fruit, the easy targets.
My bet is that your opinion on Scott Adams being a 'pretty frigged smart guy' would change if if politics changed. But sure enjoy out echo chamber

LetterRip

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #481 on: May 20, 2020, 01:16:10 PM »
He had never heard that zinc has to be combined with hydroxychloroquine to be effective (or so the hypothesis goes). So he did not know the studies showing no effect without the zinc were not telling you much.

One theorized mechanism for theoretical benefit of HCQ is that it is an zinc ionophore.  That isn't the only theorized mechanism.  Quercetin is also a zinc ionophore and has none of the nasty side effects of HCQ.  So if that is the mechanism one is hoping to exploit, HCQ is absolutely not the medication you want to use.

Quote
He was not aware that something like a quarter of doctors would prescribe hydroxychloroquine and zinc based on the situation and the risk assessment. He believed there was zero medical opinion agreeing with Trump.

Doctors are tying all sorts of things.  Some doctors recommend homeopathy, others healing stones.  The willingness of some doctors to recommend something isn't an endorsement of the effectiveness of something.

Quote
He had never heard of "off-label" prescribing of meds, and that it is fairly normal. He believed any doctor doing such a thing was violating healthcare norms with "unproven drugs."

Many people are unaware of off label prescribing.  So not really surprising.  However off-label prescribing without solid evidence of efficacy can be malpractice.  So yes many of these doctors are violating healthcare norms and if a patient under their care died from arrythmia while taking HCQ - they are almost certainly going to lose a malpractice suit.

Quote
He was not aware the frontline healthcare workers (some not all) have been taking hydroxychloroquine (and probably zinc) for months.

Not really surprising - some healthcare workers also use homeopathic remedies (there are apparently 200,000 doctors who use homeopathy), energy bracelets etc.  With 10s of millions of healthcare workers you will find all sorts of beliefs.

Quote
He was not aware that multiple other countries are routinely prescribing hydroxychloroquine (and zinc I assume) and they have actual doctors there too.

Yep, people are succeptible to hope over evidence in every country.  Once studies revealed that it was much more dangerous than expected and had no benefit it has been abandoned.  Basically Raoult was a French researcher, so it got the most press and pressure to prescribe in France.

Quote
He was not aware that the ONE time Trump's handling of the coronavirus departed from the opinion of experts (Fauci in particular), Trump was right: Closing travel from China. He believed Trump was ignoring experts.

The WHO recommended quarantining all incoming travelers because travel bans from a particular location often result in people taking alternate routes through other countries (such as through the UK).  So Trump was indeed ignoring the experts.

Quote
What fascinates me the most about this situation is that my friend is an Ivy League graduate and easily in the top-five-percent of well-informed people in society, and he pays attention to the news. He was shocked when I told him how much "news" (context) is kept from him.

Nothing Adams said above was news worthy.  Nothing was 'being kept' from his freind.  Adams appears to be fairly ignorant himself.

Quote
If you think this is a criticism of the left, you're only partly right. I'm criticizing anyone who doesn't sample the news from both left and right. But I do observe that conservatives are far more likely to know the story on both sides because "mainstream" news is ubiquitous.

That is hilarious - conservatives are consistently the least informed about any topic - they are often worse informed than people who don't have any news source (ie 'conservative' sources actively disinform).

Quote
Also, my friend had never seen the Russian troll farm memes (which looked like a sixth grade project) so he actually believed those memes changed the election. No one who has seen them believes that.

Again - pure ignorance from Adams here.  There was an enormous variety of Russian disinformation campaigns - some of it was fairly transparent, others were highly sophisticated.  Transparent stuff is actually extremely effective on subset of the population. 

Quote
He also believes that if 17 intelligence agencies say something is true, it's because all 17 independently looked into it. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks that. In the real world, a few people in one agency have an opinion and the rest say it sounds good to them.

Complete BS - the vast majority of agencies in wealthy western countries have independent sources in most governments.  They do use shared information, but they also vet stuff through their own sources.

Quote
He also believed it is a fact that Russia hacked the DNC. It might be a fact. It might not. But we certainly don't KNOW it to be true.

We know it far better than we know most things we consider to be facts. The evidence is pretty overwhelming.

Adams may be smart, but he certainly hasn't applied it here.

Crunch

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #482 on: May 20, 2020, 01:25:09 PM »
Quote
Interesting twitter thread from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and a pretty frigging smart guy:

Not sure what this proves? All people who disagree with trump = "anti-Trump" and all people who are 'anti-trump' are ill-informed = you win

I remember watching Bill Maher go after various evangelist to prove his point about religion.  He tended to go after the lowest fruit, the easy targets.
My bet is that your opinion on Scott Adams being a 'pretty frigged smart guy' would change if if politics changed. But sure enjoy out echo chamber

Your bet would be lost. Adams often says things I don't agree with but he usually backs it well. He's got a consistent and solid logic to much of what he says.

What's telling is that the whole thing is about the issues of an echo chamber which, since you disagree, you call it an echo chamber. The entire thing was about having limited your information intake and being very poorly informed and how you should reach out to other outlets for information: "I recommended he broaden his news sources so at least he is EXPOSED to the entire news". Of course, it's not surprising you would reject that message

Crunch

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #483 on: May 20, 2020, 01:26:49 PM »

Adams may be smart, but he certainly hasn't applied it here.

I know, I know. Anybody you disagree with is stupid. We get it.

rightleft22

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #484 on: May 20, 2020, 01:43:51 PM »

Adams may be smart, but he certainly hasn't applied it here.

I know, I know. Anybody you disagree with is stupid. We get it.

Aren't we all doing that?  Someone disagrees with us and not only are they wrong their stupid. That's the problem when things become polarized as either or. Anyone giving ground... well that's a slippery slope. Certainty is what matters, even if we are wrong, we are most certain that our wrong is right as its for the right reasons. 

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #485 on: May 20, 2020, 06:46:40 PM »
He had never heard that zinc has to be combined with hydroxychloroquine to be effective (or so the hypothesis goes). So he did not know the studies showing no effect without the zinc were not telling you much.

One theorized mechanism for theoretical benefit of HCQ is that it is an zinc ionophore.  That isn't the only theorized mechanism.  Quercetin is also a zinc ionophore and has none of the nasty side effects of HCQ.  So if that is the mechanism one is hoping to exploit, HCQ is absolutely not the medication you want to use.

And?  The point wasn't that there may not be other zinc facilitators available, but rather those advocating hydroxychloroquine are primarily advocating it for early intervention (not death bed treatment) and in combination with zinc.  If you haven't heard this it is primarily because your primary news sources don't cover it.

Quote
Quote
He was not aware that something like a quarter of doctors would prescribe hydroxychloroquine and zinc based on the situation and the risk assessment. He believed there was zero medical opinion agreeing with Trump.

Doctors are tying all sorts of things.  Some doctors recommend homeopathy, others healing stones.  The willingness of some doctors to recommend something isn't an endorsement of the effectiveness of something.

You mean like recommending the use of quercetin?  Lol.  Again, point was that he didn't know of the rather common trend both in the use in the US and internationally for medical professionals to be taking it as a prophlatic against infection. Says nothing about whether it works, but it does hurt the hydoxychloroquine bad meme if medical providers are convinced enough to use it themselves.

So why wouldn't the friend be aware of it?  Again, choice of their news providers.  Meanwhile you mention homeopathic medicine, but you can find hundreds of CNN articles on that topic (I grant most negative, but not all).  Honestly, you seem to be trying to imply that any use of a medicine off label is somehow the same thing as shoving a healing rock up your rear.  It's not.  There's clinical support for use of off label medicines they just haven't gotten to the level of a medical trial proof (which given the expense in the US of that process makes sense - why spend a billion on verifying a medicine if articles can be published that cause doctors to prescribe it off label). 

It's kind of stunning to me though that after all the climate change threads and the overwhelming belief in the power of modelling, the left has completely ignored the power of those techniques to establish meaningful corrollations.  Yes, traditional medical trials are the way to establish causation, but the selective endorse - based on political convenience - of statistically relevant corrollations seems telling.

Quote
Quote
He was not aware that multiple other countries are routinely prescribing hydroxychloroquine (and zinc I assume) and they have actual doctors there too.

Yep, people are succeptible to hope over evidence in every country.  Once studies revealed that it was much more dangerous than expected and had no benefit it has been abandoned.  Basically Raoult was a French researcher, so it got the most press and pressure to prescribe in France.

Again what's your point?  Is there some reason that such news is not relevant?  The media pretends Trump is pushing an outlandish theory, you've analogized it to healing rocks.  Why would the fact that other countries' doctors and even their health authorities have reached the same conclusion about its potential to be useful not be something that is news?

I can't see any reason to not cover that.  When media instead limits their coverage to imply that Trump is an outlier and suppress all evidence that he is not, the media is actually lying about what is going on.

Quote
Quote
He was not aware that the ONE time Trump's handling of the coronavirus departed from the opinion of experts (Fauci in particular), Trump was right: Closing travel from China. He believed Trump was ignoring experts.

The WHO recommended quarantining all incoming travelers because travel bans from a particular location often result in people taking alternate routes through other countries (such as through the UK).  So Trump was indeed ignoring the experts.

That's a stretch even for you.  Medical authorities in the US have been all over this, and there is zero evidence that Trump has ignored them  in any way deterimental to the US response.  Again, the evidence is to the contrary that where he departed it was a better decision.  If you don't know that you've missed out on important information, and if you find that you believe the opposite you've just internalized false information.

Quote
Quote
What fascinates me the most about this situation is that my friend is an Ivy League graduate and easily in the top-five-percent of well-informed people in society, and he pays attention to the news. He was shocked when I told him how much "news" (context) is kept from him.

Nothing Adams said above was news worthy.  Nothing was 'being kept' from his freind.  Adams appears to be fairly ignorant himself.

Lol.  Everything he pointed out was "news worthy," it's hard to even fashion a sensible way to take your comment in a world where the petty is routinely determined to be newsworthy that information directly contrary to a false media narrative is not newsworthy.  It doesn't have to turn out to be true to be newsworthy, I mean we've suffered through 3 years of a Russian collusion story that was a total lie, was none of that newsworthy either?

Quote
That is hilarious - conservatives are consistently the least informed about any topic - they are often worse informed than people who don't have any news source (ie 'conservative' sources actively disinform).

So say studies written by leftist activist in academia designed to "prove" that point.  Really easy to claim conservatives are the "least" informed if you rate information levels by how well you repeat back information that CNN broadcasts without regard to whether that information is true or false.  The fact that you have to claim conservative sources lie to make your point is telling.  It's not that conservatives are misinformed, its that they disagree with liberal narratives.

I mean by golly, any one on the left that's ever repeated back some form of the Russian collusion being obvious or proven is someone that's completely misinformed.  Anyone that repeats back that the Obama Administration was scandal free - remarkably misinformed.  That entering into the Paris Accord helped the environment or pulling out hurt it - remarkably misinformed.   But if all you do is judge by the CNN position on these or dozens of other fake stories and false narratives your study will of course "prove" what you want to hear.

Quote
Quote
Also, my friend had never seen the Russian troll farm memes (which looked like a sixth grade project) so he actually believed those memes changed the election. No one who has seen them believes that.

Again - pure ignorance from Adams here.  There was an enormous variety of Russian disinformation campaigns - some of it was fairly transparent, others were highly sophisticated.  Transparent stuff is actually extremely effective on subset of the population.

Can you provide the evidence.  As far as I've seen most of the disclosed material came through the Mueller report, and that conclusively showed that the Russian troll influence was immaterial in scope compared to the actual spending by the campaigns, let alone the thousands of Americans that spent and the millions of Americans that tried to influence the election.

This is another one of those things that has become a tenant of faith for the left, that their complete failure to be exposed to anything objective whether from another news source or otherwise has let fester into a rock solid belief in a fake story.  Russian propaganda had no real effect on the election.

Quote
Quote
He also believes that if 17 intelligence agencies say something is true, it's because all 17 independently looked into it. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks that. In the real world, a few people in one agency have an opinion and the rest say it sounds good to them.

Complete BS - the vast majority of agencies in wealthy western countries have independent sources in most governments.  They do use shared information, but they also vet stuff through their own sources.

Again, literal and documented reality.  You can find plenty of objective deep dives that show how the judgement on this was not independently reached.  That key conclusions were reached only by 2-3 or agencies and even then only by effectively small teams at those agencies.

The fact that you seem to think it's false says more about your lack of exposure to contrary news than about the reality behind the statement.

Quote
Quote
He also believed it is a fact that Russia hacked the DNC. It might be a fact. It might not. But we certainly don't KNOW it to be true.

We know it far better than we know most things we consider to be facts. The evidence is pretty overwhelming.

In actual fact the "revealed" evidence is pretty much non-existant.  The FBI never looked at the servers, and Crowd Strike didn't verify they were hacked by the Russians.  There may be other evidence, but it largely consists of take our word for it claims by the CIA about it "fitting a pattern" or their opinions on who would have had to authorize it.

I am wondering though if you are using some kind of different definition of "facts" here.

Quote
Adams may be smart, but he certainly hasn't applied it here.

Or maybe you just proved his point.  You don't seem to have been exposed to much of reality or contrary evidence either.  Maybe it would behoove you to expand the sources you are reviewing.

TheDrake

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #486 on: May 20, 2020, 07:32:37 PM »
Quote
Can you provide the evidence.  As far as I've seen most of the disclosed material came through the Mueller report, and that conclusively showed that the Russian troll influence was immaterial in scope compared to the actual spending by the campaigns, let alone the thousands of Americans that spent and the millions of Americans that tried to influence the election.

I can't speak for Adams "friend", assuming he even exists and has been quoted correctly, but as to the assumption that this is not known is silly. What we all generally agree on is that Russia made the attempt and that people fell for it, and even wound up making plans to go to non-existent rallies. Nobody thinks this turned enough votes to decide the election, but that it did influence the election.

I'm certainly not going to plow through his other points, just based on this foolishness.

ScottF

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #487 on: May 20, 2020, 08:33:37 PM »

Adams may be smart, but he certainly hasn't applied it here.

I know, I know. Anybody you disagree with is stupid. We get it.

Aren't we all doing that?  Someone disagrees with us and not only are they wrong their stupid. That's the problem when things become polarized as either or. Anyone giving ground... well that's a slippery slope. Certainty is what matters, even if we are wrong, we are most certain that our wrong is right as its for the right reasons.

Not everyone.  Although we're all susceptible to that impulse. That said, I've seen a fairly recent pattern of certain folks feeling compelled to label sources as ignorant, lacking basic science knowledge, etc. Which is a shame because it detracts from what might be otherwise interesting counterpoints. If I end up being one of those - I expect to be called out on it.

wmLambert

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #488 on: May 20, 2020, 10:26:44 PM »
Interesting twitter thread from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and a pretty frigging smart guy:

Quote
...He also believes that if 17 intelligence agencies say something is true, it's because all 17 independently looked into it. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks that. In the real world, a few people in one agency have an opinion and the rest say it sounds good to them.

That mention of 17 agencies resonated, and I remembered it was Clapper who said all 17 Intelligence agencies agreed with what he was pushing. He later was forced to admit the only people who supported his info were four minions, and he just sent it off to all the other agencies and claimed their suoort.

More confirmation: The Daily Caller said: "When Hillary Clinton claimed “17 intelligence agencies” agree on Russian meddling in the third presidential debate, a host of media outlets including The New York Times rated the claim as 100 percent true. Nine months later, those same outlets say the stat is obviously false, and there’s been a “simple” explanation as to why all along.

A closer look at how the claim survived and thrived over those nine months reveals a startling lack of skepticism in the press when it comes to the Russia narrative. The truth is the great majority of the 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community had nothing to do with the investigation and made no judgments about the matter."
« Last Edit: May 20, 2020, 10:31:24 PM by wmLambert »

LetterRip

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #489 on: May 20, 2020, 10:37:18 PM »
And?  The point wasn't that there may not be other zinc facilitators available, but rather those advocating hydroxychloroquine are primarily advocating it for early intervention (not death bed treatment) and in combination with zinc.  If you haven't heard this it is primarily because your primary news sources don't cover it.

I've heard it recommended for early, for late, with zinc, without zinc, etc.  The evidence is thus far little or no benefit at all - and significant increased risk of death.  The 'research' supporting it has been horrendously flawed.  The research showing harm has generally been well done.

Quote
You mean like recommending the use of quercetin?

I didn't recommend quercetin, I said that if we wanted a zinc ionophore, then it would be far more logical to try a supplement than is GRAS (generally recognized as safe), rather than a medication with known serious side effects.  I also pointed out early on that death was expected with HCQ because the ezymes that metabolize it are oxygen dependent and thus a hypoxic individual is getting a much larger effective dose.

Quote
Lol.  Again, point was that he didn't know of the rather common trend both in the use in the US and internationally for medical professionals to be taking it as a prophlatic against infection. Says nothing about whether it works, but it does hurt the hydoxychloroquine bad meme if medical providers are convinced enough to use it themselves.

It wasn't a 'common trend' - the absolute numbers of medical professionals doing so was quite small.  The reality is that many doctors are extremely ignorant of science.  Only 20% can do basic bayesian reasoning - something that is absolutely mandatory to understanding things like drug treatment effectiveness.

Quote
So why wouldn't the friend be aware of it?  Again, choice of their news providers.

Because it isn't important.  WHy would they cover it? Medicine isn't a popularity contest - the evidence is overwhelmingly that HCQ is dangerous and shows little or no benefit.  There wasn't every any good evidence to think it might be useful.

Quote
Meanwhile you mention homeopathic medicine, but you can find hundreds of CNN articles on that topic (I grant most negative, but not all).

I'd be interested in you pointing to evidence of major news organizations doing news pieces supporting homeopathy.  It would be completely irresponsible of them to do so, just as doing article suggesting that HCQ had benefit before any serious studies showing such would be irresponsible.  Responsible journalists don't advocate for dubious medical claims.

Quote
Honestly, you seem to be trying to imply that any use of a medicine off label is somehow the same thing as shoving a healing rock up your rear.  It's not.

Off label use when there is good evidence (ie well done study supporting its usage) is responsible.  Off label use without such support is indeed esentially the same thing.  It is faith based rather than evidence based.

Quote
There's clinical support for use of off label medicines they just haven't gotten to the level of a medical trial proof (which given the expense in the US of that process makes sense - why spend a billion on verifying a medicine if articles can be published that cause doctors to prescribe it off label).

Completely agree, there just wasn't any such evidence for usage of HCQ.  There is legit off label usage, and dubious usage.  The evidence simply was never there to suggest we should even try HCQ. 

Quote
It's kind of stunning to me though that after all the climate change threads and the overwhelming belief in the power of modelling, the left has completely ignored the power of those techniques to establish meaningful corrollations.  Yes, traditional medical trials are the way to establish causation, but the selective endorse - based on political convenience - of statistically relevant corrollations seems telling.

There was no useful evidence supporting usage of HCQ.  Raoult's trials were horrendously done - he excluded the people who got seriously ill and died who were on HCQ when calculating his average viral load stuff.  The New York doctor was presenting an absurdity regarding how many cases he had treated, the reality was he was almost certainly misdiagnosing people who had colds and other minor illnesses.

Quote
Again what's your point?  Is there some reason that such news is not relevant?

Yes.  As I said above - responsible news organizations don't write about treatments that don't have evidence to support them.  They report only when there is adequately vetted evidence.  Of course I'm not saying that news organizations acted responsibly in their reporting on all COVID-19 stuff.  The idiotic claim of high rates of COVID-19 infections in California reporting was irresponsible.

Quote
The media pretends Trump is pushing an outlandish theory, you've analogized it to healing rocks.

He was pushing a theory without scientific support.  It was actually more dangerous than promoting healing rocks or homeopathy, since those can't kill you (well, homeoupathy can have contaminated water, but most preperations are unlikely to kill you).

Quote
Why would the fact that other countries' doctors and even their health authorities have reached the same conclusion about its potential to be useful not be something that is news?

The doctors didn't "reach the same conclusion".  In France, the French President was also pushing HCQ and the Raoult paper got a lot of coverage - so people pressured their doctors to prescribe it.  Just like in the US, patient pressure often results in them getting what they want.  Politicians desperate to be seen as doing something push dubious hope.  The vast majority of doctors who prescribed HCQ felt it had little or no benefit, but it was what the patient wanted.

Quote
I can't see any reason to not cover that.

Because such coverage would be irresponsible for a drug without evidence of benefit that has known dangerous side effects including a risk of death.  The coverage that it did get has probably resulted in more deaths.

Quote
When media instead limits their coverage to imply that Trump is an outlier and suppress all evidence that he is not, the media is actually lying about what is going on.

He was an outlier.  It wasn't viewed by most prescribing doctors as helpful, they were perscribing it due to patient pressure not out of expectation that it would help.  France was using it because of politics and desperation for hope, not science.

Quote
That's a stretch even for you.  Medical authorities in the US have been all over this, and there is zero evidence that Trump has ignored them  in any way deterimental to the US response.  Again, the evidence is to the contrary that where he departed it was a better decision.  If you don't know that you've missed out on important information, and if you find that you believe the opposite you've just internalized false information.

No, he departed in a worse decision.  The expert advice was quarantine, instead of travel bans.  We implemnted travel bans but not quarantines.  So all of the US citizens who returned to the US did massive spread of infections.  Similarly the travelers from other countries and through other routes that weren't banned resulted in the infection still spreading about the same as countries who did neither travel bans nor quarantine.

Quote
Lol.  Everything he pointed out was "news worthy," it's hard to even fashion a sensible way to take your comment in a world where the petty is routinely determined to be newsworthy that information directly contrary to a false media narrative is not newsworthy.  It doesn't have to turn out to be true to be newsworthy, I mean we've suffered through 3 years of a Russian collusion story that was a total lie, was none of that newsworthy either?

Everything reported on and suspected about Russia was accurate.  There was the meeting with the Russian lawyer by Trump Jr. and other Trump high level campaign members. It was deemed that Trump Jr. and others might plead lack of knowledge of the relevant law and thus the case wasn't strong enough to garuntee a conviction.  There were meetings with Trump campaign members and Russia.  Stone definitely colluded with Russia (via the GRU under the name Guccifer) and coordinated with the Trump campaign.  However there wasn't specific evidence of whether the Trump campaign had knowledge of Stones working with Russia.

Quote
So say studies written by leftist activist in academia designed to "prove" that point.

Ah yes, the liberal/academic/leftist/media conspiracy

Quote
The fact that you have to claim conservative sources lie to make your point is telling.  It's not that conservatives are misinformed, its that they disagree with liberal narratives.

Facts aren't a 'liberal narrative'.  There is objective reality even if you choose to ignore it.

Quote
I mean by golly, any one on the left that's ever repeated back some form of the Russian collusion being obvious or proven is someone that's completely misinformed.

BS.  There was plenty of evidence that it happened but it was felt those for whom we had evidence of them doing so, could plead ignorance of the law, so they weren't prosecuted.  Ignorance was an affirmate defense against the charges that would have been brought.

Here is an excerpt from the Mueller report,

Quote
The Office considered whether this evidence would establish a conspiracy to violate the foreign contributions ban . . . solicitation of an illegal foreign-source contribution; or the acceptance or receipt of “an express or implied promise to make a [foreign-source] contribution” . . . There are reasonable arguments that the offered information would constitute a “thing of value” within the meaning of these provisions, but the Office determined that the government would not be likely to obtain and sustain a conviction for two other reasons: first, the Office did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals acted “willfully,” i.e. with general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct; and, second, the government would likely encounter difficulty proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold for a criminal violation.

So they didn't think they had enough evidence to prove that the acted willfully, but they absolutely had evidence that it happened.

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #490 on: May 21, 2020, 12:56:09 AM »
And?  The point wasn't that there may not be other zinc facilitators available, but rather those advocating hydroxychloroquine are primarily advocating it for early intervention (not death bed treatment) and in combination with zinc.  If you haven't heard this it is primarily because your primary news sources don't cover it.

I've heard it recommended for early, for late, with zinc, without zinc, etc.  The evidence is thus far little or no benefit at all - and significant increased risk of death.  The 'research' supporting it has been horrendously flawed.  The research showing harm has generally been well done.

Except that's not true either.  The US research has been almost entire limited to the extremely ill.  That would mean the primary potential benefit of the treatment - suppression of the virus before it has a chance to overwhelm the body - was never going to be demonstratable.  The treatment is not a cure for someone already damaged, it's a method to slow viral progress to allow the body to fight it off.

Again, the fact that you think what you do is a function of source bias.

Quote
I didn't recommend quercetin, I said that if we wanted a zinc ionophore, then it would be far more logical to try a supplement than is GRAS (generally recognized as safe), rather than a medication with known serious side effects.

If the only point was the zinc you'd have a point.  Again, there's plenty of discussion about how HCQ could also be supporting the body and inhibiting viral reproduction, it's role in allowing zinc to operate is a force multiplier not the only predicted method of action.  Honestly though I don't care, if there's a better choice than HCQ I'd love to get it into trials ASAP.  It's only political spite that wants it to not be HCQ to the point of promoting flawed studies.

Quote
I also pointed out early on that death was expected with HCQ because the ezymes that metabolize it are oxygen dependent and thus a hypoxic individual is getting a much larger effective dose.

Yep.  Which is why a "test" that limits its use only to individuals that have already suffered severe lung damage is flawed.

By the way, hearing much about ventilators these days?  The "early results" on what was expected to be a "gold standard" life saving treatment were so terrible they started to give ventilators a bad reputation.  Granted, we'd need a serious study to separate out whether ventilators are causing fatal damage to weakened lungs or the only chance the patient has, but I don't you see demanding double blind studies for COVID patients on that front.  Why not?  Treatment for a novel virus that causes heavily lung damage is actually by ventilator is actually experimental.  Its just something that we have every reason to have suspected could be effective.

Quote
It wasn't a 'common trend' - the absolute numbers of medical professionals doing so was quite small.  The reality is that many doctors are extremely ignorant of science.  Only 20% can do basic bayesian reasoning - something that is absolutely mandatory to understanding things like drug treatment effectiveness.

Can you define "quite small"?  I'm not taking your word for it.  I note that Google has been flooded with left wing "stories" claiming it's not common but not one of them actually provides statistics, most commonly they cite to the "limited studies" and ignore the actual question of how many are taking it off label.

You won't get an argument from me that doctors are good with statistics.  They're almost a sucky as the rest of the population with them.  The problem is though at this stage we have no good statistics, everything is just reasonable or unreasonable projections that analogize to known effects in other contexts.

That's why your position in particular is so dangerous and disingenous.  You pretend that we have a choice between known rock solid confirmed results and completely made up lies.  We don't.  We have a straight forward choice between how widely we allow people to take treatments that have reasonable probabilities of effectiveness while we are working on developing rock solid confirmed results.  Your opposition to HCQ is political not scientific, and pretending its because there hasn't been a double blind study or because "early results" from studies that were designed to fail based on the expected mechanisms of action give you cover to pretend that you are not being political.

Unless you are saying it's better to let he disease go untreated than let people take medicines that have reasonable probabilities based on their known effects of being helpful the opposition to HCQ can only be political.  And you can't pretend you based this on the recent results, you opposed it before any studies had been conducted.

Quote
Quote
So why wouldn't the friend be aware of it?  Again, choice of their news providers.

Because it isn't important.  WHy would they cover it?

It's a funny test you advocate.  They will cover any thing at all, whether it's unimportant, fake, a lie, completely nonsense if it supports their anti-Trump memes.  But if it's counter to them it can be covered.

It's really simple here though.  You are just telling yourself a self serving lie.  It actually is news and important.

Quote
Medicine isn't a popularity contest - the evidence is overwhelmingly that HCQ is dangerous and shows little or no benefit.  There wasn't every any good evidence to think it might be useful.

Again none of that is actually true.  There's no "overwhelming" evidence that HCQ is dangerous.  It's risks are widely known and it's used by certain segments of the population routinely.  Like any treatment there are risks and they may or may not be worth it compared to the benefits.

The evidence it could be useful is in fact pretty good. Its anti-viral properties have been known about for decades.  The mechanism through which it operates is known and reasonable for consideration for an impact on COVID 19, and it's show in lab tests to have an effect on the virus.  If it wasn't connected to Trump it would be one of the top candidates for trials without any one blinking an eye.

Again, you seem to be of the view that we'd be better off dead than for Trump to have been right. Cause you've really bought into something the science doesn't prove, which if you were being consistent you'd have to have acknowledged.

Quote
Completely agree, there just wasn't any such evidence for usage of HCQ.  There is legit off label usage, and dubious usage.  The evidence simply was never there to suggest we should even try HCQ.

I think this is beating a dead horse, but your claim his is false.  HCQ's potential here may never pan out, but it's absolutely wrong that there isn't evidence supporting that potential.  It's known  effects are almost certainly the reason it was tried in the first place.  I can't even imagine how any one could have the knowledge on this topic you sometimes seem to have an not be aware of that.  HCQ wasn't pulled off them medical shelf at random.   

Quote
There was no useful evidence supporting usage of HCQ.  Raoult's trials were horrendously done - he excluded the people who got seriously ill and died who were on HCQ when calculating his average viral load stuff.  The New York doctor was presenting an absurdity regarding how many cases he had treated, the reality was he was almost certainly misdiagnosing people who had colds and other minor illnesses.

You are making a common mistake.  Flawed studies produce flawed results. They still produce evidence.  It's just of less utiilty.  Again, it's almost like you'd have to run a double blind study before you'd accept that a house needs to be built with walls on all sides.  Double blinds are to week correlation from causation, no one actually cares though if we can get a "correllation" of getting better about what the real cause is.

The NY doctor is actually a funny case, because he was using it more closely in line with how its actually projected to work.

Quote
Yes.  As I said above - responsible news organizations don't write about treatments that don't have evidence to support them.

That's literally a lie, they do it all the time.  It's political blindness that's causing you to make this claim. No one out there wrote anything about HQC that wasn't true.  The President didn't even go that far.  He gave an optimistic message that was qualified.

Again the reason you think otherwise is that your sources misrepresent what actually happened.

Quote
They report only when there is adequately vetted evidence.

Again its a lie.  How many reports have quoted a time line to develop a vaccine.  Probably hundreds of thousands.  There's no vetted evidence that supports that.  We'll read reports of the "next great thing" in medicine that ultimately pan out to be not much.

Quote
Quote
The media pretends Trump is pushing an outlandish theory, you've analogized it to healing rocks.

He was pushing a theory without scientific support.  It was actually more dangerous than promoting healing rocks or homeopathy, since those can't kill you (well, homeoupathy can have contaminated water, but most preperations are unlikely to kill you).

Again that's false.  There is scientific support.  You not liking research that has been ongoing for decades does not magically delegitimize it.

Quote
No, he departed in a worse decision.  The expert advice was quarantine, instead of travel bans.  We implemnted travel bans but not quarantines.  So all of the US citizens who returned to the US did massive spread of infections.  Similarly the travelers from other countries and through other routes that weren't banned resulted in the infection still spreading about the same as countries who did neither travel bans nor quarantine.

Now you are being ridiculous.  The expert advice could have been to shoot on sight that doesn't make it possible or legitimate.  The travel ban was a radical departure from precedent and the left immediately whined about it being unnecessary and racist.  Travelors were directed to self quarantine, which is pretty much the extent of the legal authority.  They ignored it, and blue state politicians undermined it.  I saw deBlasio telling NY'ers to get out and mingle to go to China Town and mingle with the crowds.  Pelosi in late February visting Chinatown and saying "That’s what we’re trying to do today is to say everything is fine here," Pelosi said. "Come because precautions have been taken. The city is on top of the situation."  That's in the last week of February, almost a month after Trump's original travel ban.

Lie to yourself if you want, there is ZERO chance that mandatory quaratine was happening.

Quote
Everything reported on and suspected about Russia was accurate.

False.  Most everything reported on and suspected about Russia was actually false.  Most was a fantasy spun from the minds of political operatives of the left that the media uncritically pretended wer real. 

Quote
There was the meeting with the Russian lawyer by Trump Jr. and other Trump high level campaign members.

Which lawyer met with DNC operatives before and after the meeting.  Sounds like collusion with Russia doesn't it?

Quote
It was deemed that Trump Jr. and others might plead lack of knowledge of the relevant law and thus the case wasn't strong enough to garuntee a conviction.

Total garbage interpretation and a lie.  Nothing prevented Mueller from bringing that case if there was crime. He spared no measure in pursuing others with less basis.

What killed that case is actually in Mueller's own report.  There has NEVER BEEN ANY CASE THAT FOUND PROVIDING TRUE EVIDENCE OF A CRIME ISA THING OF VALUE.  Without that fact there can't be a crime.  He also found that it would have been impossible to show that Trump Jr. knowingly "violated a law" against that standard both because there's no way to know something is a crime if t's NEVER been found to be one and because he didn't have an awareness of the law.

And it's rich, because it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump Jr. paid for it in any event.  It's only a "crime" if its free.  Good thing Hillary's lawyers paid for their Russian misinformation.

Quote
There were meetings with Trump campaign members and Russia.

No there weren't.  You've misstated the truth.

Quote
Stone definitely colluded with Russia (via the GRU under the name Guccifer) and coordinated with the Trump campaign.

Again you've made false claims.  You're confused about who "colluded" with Guccifer, you've repeated an unproven claim about Guccifer's identity (and ignored that no one would have had any way to"know" that Guccifer was anything but the hacker he appeared to be), and you've overstated the coordination on that front.  Again, never shown which is why Stone is in prison for lying rather than conspriracy.  In fact, his trial pretty much conclusively showed he didn't coordinate anything in a material way that he was essentially a braggart.

Quote
However there wasn't specific evidence of whether the Trump campaign had knowledge of Stones working with Russia.

There wasn't specific evidence that Stone did work with Russia.  or that Stone would have had any reason to believe he was.

Quote
Facts aren't a 'liberal narrative'.  There is objective reality even if you choose to ignore it.

I agree facts aren't a liberal narrative, the liberal narrative and facts have nothing in common other than they can both be expressed in words.

I don't know what you've been reading lately, but you've dropped way off the deep end on confirmation bias of false statements.

Quote
Quote
I mean by golly, any one on the left that's ever repeated back some form of the Russian collusion being obvious or proven is someone that's completely misinformed.

BS.  There was plenty of evidence that it happened but it was felt those for whom we had evidence of them doing so, could plead ignorance of the law, so they weren't prosecuted.

Except you are lying.  Mueller's conclusion was that there was no evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia.  Listing out "contacts" and pretending there's more to it is exactly the basis behind this being a complete hoax. 

Quote
Ignorance was an affirmate defense against the charges that would have been brought.

Not even remotely.  You misunderstood it's role in the report and have grossly overgeneralized its applicability. 

Don Jr. did not benefit from Presidential immunity.  He benefitted because there was no plausible way that Mueller could have made a case.  We have a word for that in legal circles, it's called innocent.

You seem to believe that being innocent really means that you "got away" with it.

Not sure why quoted Mueller, it just demonstrated that you don't understand him.  "...second, the government would likely encounter difficulty proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold for a criminal violation."  It's right there.  Mueller wrote the entire section to tell you that there was no crime, but to pretend there was.

You specifically were his target audience.  You fell for it.  Meuller admitted this was not illegal conduct, hence he couldn't prove it but he wanted you to think it was a crime and you do.  You don't blink an eye at Hillary buying Russian misinformation, but Don Jr. neither buying or even receiving what was supposed to be true evidence of a crime by Hillary is a crime in your mind.  Do you realize how far you have to be down the nonsense rabbit hole to rationalize that?

Quote
So they didn't think they had enough evidence to prove that the acted willfully, but they absolutely had evidence that it happened.

Its sad to see how effective propaganda is.  Meuller told you it wasn't a crime, and you deluded yourself into thinking it was.  It has zero to do with Don Jr.'s knowledge, any prosecutor would have taken that case if that was all they had to prove.  They do it all the time.  They impute the knowledge they flip a defendant.  He didn't bring the case because the theory is garbage.  You really fell for the idea that it would be criminal for a Russian national to send you court documents from Russia showing your opponent committed a crime?

When even smart people are this easily mislead it explains a lot about why the country is where it is.

Kasandra

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #491 on: May 21, 2020, 06:17:26 AM »
Quote
Its sad to see how effective propaganda is.  Meuller told you it wasn't a crime, and you deluded yourself into thinking it was.

No he didn't.  Next to endless repetition of false information (and outright lies), bloviation is another tried and true technique to wear down the opposition and make it seem like what you're saying is accurate.  Besides the mountain of nonsense facts that you constantly try to turn into evidence, nobody bloviates better than you!  Mueller said:

Quote
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

The reason for that circumspect statement is that Mueller believed that the DoJ couldn't indict a sitting President.  This statement leaves open the option for Trump to be indicted after Mueller's official role is terminated and Trump leaves office.

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #492 on: May 21, 2020, 02:14:02 PM »
Quote
Its sad to see how effective propaganda is.  Meuller told you it wasn't a crime, and you deluded yourself into thinking it was.

No he didn't.  Next to endless repetition of false information (and outright lies), bloviation is another tried and true technique to wear down the opposition and make it seem like what you're saying is accurate.  Besides the mountain of nonsense facts that you constantly try to turn into evidence, nobody bloviates better than you!  Mueller said:

Quote
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

The reason for that circumspect statement is that Mueller believed that the DoJ couldn't indict a sitting President.  This statement leaves open the option for Trump to be indicted after Mueller's official role is terminated and Trump leaves office.

Don Jr.  Kas is not the President.  Do you want to try again?

Kasandra

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #493 on: May 21, 2020, 05:47:24 PM »
Quote
Don Jr.  Kas is not the President.  Do you want to try again?

Is that byzantine labyrinth of back and forth who knows who or what you were referring to. My comment stands.

LetterRip

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #494 on: May 21, 2020, 07:21:19 PM »
Except that's not true either.  The US research has been almost entire limited to the extremely ill.

There has been research in a variety of countries at all intervention points.  None show benefit.

Quote
That would mean the primary potential benefit of the treatment - suppression of the virus before it has a chance to overwhelm the body - was never going to be demonstratable.  The treatment is not a cure for someone already damaged, it's a method to slow viral progress to allow the body to fight it off.

Has been investigated, hasn't been found to be of benefit.

Quote
If the only point was the zinc you'd have a point.

It hasn't shown any benefit as an antiviral without zinc and causes increased mortality.  So it should be eliminated.  The inhibit acidification of endosomes theory didn't pan out.  So all that remains is the zinc ionosphore - which it shouldn't be used for because there are safer zinc ionosphores.

Quote
Yep.  Which is why a "test" that limits its use only to individuals that have already suffered severe lung damage is flawed.

The people who show up at hospitals do so because of their hypoxic status - anyone who is sick enough to realize they are sick, are probably too sick to take HCQ.

Quote
By the way, hearing much about ventilators these days?  The "early results" on what was expected to be a "gold standard" life saving treatment were so terrible they started to give ventilators a bad reputation.

No, they work fine.  What was happening is people were calculating mortality ignoring those who were still recovering.  You have early COVID-19 mortality in about half the cases that eventually die, but rarely have rapid recovery after going on a ventilator.  So if you calculate deaths/(deaths+recovered) early on you get like 80% mortality rate, because the vast majority of the people who went on ventilation are neither dead nor recovered in the first week.  If you let the entire cohort go to completion you get 20% mortality rate - in line with expectations from other countries.  This was another case of bad math and bad reporting.

Quote
It found that, overall, about 20% of Covid-19 patients treated at Northwell Health died, and 25% of those placed on ventilators died. [...] This study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, describes the outlook for patients with severe Covid-19 disease. The report originally said that 12% of patients needed ventilators and that 88% of them had died.


https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/health/coronavirus-ventilator-patients-die/index.html

That 88% number was based on the deaths/(deaths+recovered) from early on; the 25% is based on most of the cohort being resolved.  Hmm I guess you need to find better news sources, since clearly this is rather important news that you didn't have.  Incidentially I pointed out the math error when this was first discussed (though it may not have been on Ornery).

Quote
Granted, we'd need a serious study to separate out whether ventilators are causing fatal damage to weakened lungs or the only chance the patient has, but I don't you see demanding double blind studies for COVID patients on that front.  Why not?  Treatment for a novel virus that causes heavily lung damage is actually by ventilator is actually experimental.  Its just something that we have every reason to have suspected could be effective.

No we don't need such a study, we need doctors better trained in math so they don't make such basic errors.


Quote
You won't get an argument from me that doctors are good with statistics.  They're almost a sucky as the rest of the population with them.  The problem is though at this stage we have no good statistics, everything is just reasonable or unreasonable projections that analogize to known effects in other contexts.

We actually do have some reasonablly good statistics.  The New York antibody study was pretty well done.  I still think they are underestimated false positives but they weren't getting absurd results.  Based on 20% of NYC being infected and assuming no false positives, and no more deaths among the currently infected but not recovered - they would have a 1% Infection Fatality Rate.  Using slightly more realisitic assumptions (the false positives are 3-5% range; that about 1/3 of the mortality in the unrecovered is yet to occur) that puts the IFR in the 1.5-2% range.  Entirely consistent with finding in countries with extensive tracing and idenfitication of the infected.  What I'd really like to know is what the antibody rate is for just elderly cohorts.  Since most of the deaths are concentrated in the elderly.  If significantly more or fewer than 20% of the NYC elderly have caught COVID-19 that could significantly impact the expected IFR.

There was a really good study comparing false positives among various antibody tests (though I think they screwed up one test - since it wasn't showing any false positives.  They were planning to redo that test, but don't know if they did). 

Quote
That's why your position in particular is so dangerous and disingenous.  You pretend that we have a choice between known rock solid confirmed results and completely made up lies.

No that isn't my position.  We have some fairly good studies, some god-awful studies or studies with major errors, and we have unfounded hopes.  It is dangerous to push unfounded hopes - it gets people killed.  It is dangerous to misrepresent statistics or have major statistical errors in papers that understate the risk of COVID-19 - it gets people killed.  The vast majority of the major errors have been in papers that are claiming a reduced risk.

Quote
We don't.  We have a straight forward choice between how widely we allow people to take treatments that have reasonable probabilities of effectiveness while we are working on developing rock solid confirmed results.

That is completely wrong.  There was never any solid reason to expect HCQ to be effective and it was known to be dangerous.  So it was entirely reasonable to not use it unless and until there was good evidence of effectiveness.  When Trump announced it was a 'game changer' there was one underpowered study from China that was so small the result was likely statistical noise and then there was Raoult's publication where he calculated viral loads by excluding the cases then went on to be ventilated or died.  If you exclude the worse outcomes from one group average, you can't compare it to an average that doesn't exclude the worst outcomes.  If you exclude the worst outcomes from both averages, then it doesn't show any benefit.  Thus his result was purely bad math.

Also no one had suggested HCQ + Zinc at that time.  The HCQ + Zinc was proposed after HCQ was proving ineffective.  It was a pivot once it became clear that it wasn't useful.

Quote
Your opposition to HCQ is political not scientific, and pretending its because there hasn't been a double blind study or because "early results" from studies that were designed to fail based on the expected mechanisms of action give you cover to pretend that you are not being political.

My opposition has been purely scientific.  There have been far more studies of HCQ and COVID-19 than you seem to think, the majority had to be stopped early because of negative outcomes from the HCQ.

Quote
Unless you are saying it's better to let he disease go untreated than let people take medicines that have reasonable probabilities based on their known effects of being helpful the opposition to HCQ can only be political.  And you can't pretend you based this on the recent results, you opposed it before any studies had been conducted.

There was never any 'reasonable probability' to begin with.  What gave you the impression that such existed?  The only support was based on Raoult's bad math.

Quote
Again none of that is actually true.  There's no "overwhelming" evidence that HCQ is dangerous.  It's risks are widely known and it's used by certain segments of the population routinely.  Like any treatment there are risks and they may or may not be worth it compared to the benefits.

As said for hypoxic individuals, once you reach the fever stage you generally are hypoxic, and most people won't go for treatment until they have at least a fever.  You also have to drastically lower the dosage for people with poor kidney function.  Since the people most at risk of death for COVID-19 are also those with poor kidney function - it is never reasonable to give them HCQ.  People who 'routinely take it' are generaly young (most lupus patients are women age 18-44, median age at death for women with lupus is 59) and not at risk of hypoxia and don't have compromised kidneys.

Quote
The evidence it could be useful is in fact pretty good. Its anti-viral properties have been known about for decades.  The mechanism through which it operates is known and reasonable for consideration for an impact on COVID 19, and it's show in lab tests to have an effect on the virus.

There are literally millions of compounds that have 'anti-viral properties' - pick any plant and you will get 100's to 1000's of such compounds.  Lab tests ('in vitro') are generally done at enormous multiples of the lethal dose (over 100x the LD50 isn't uncommon), which is why it isn't considered to be very persuasive.  At pharmaceutical dosages most of them have no effect.  Something isn't promising' until there are animal studies ('in vivo').  There was never any real reason to suspect that there would be useful in vivo effectiveness.

Quote
If it wasn't connected to Trump it would be one of the top candidates for trials without any one blinking an eye.

It wouldn't be a 'top candidate' - it would be one of many 1000 candidates.

Quote
Again, you seem to be of the view that we'd be better off dead than for Trump to have been right.

No.  There was simply never any reason to think that Trump's views should matter at all - he has never shown even a basic understanding of science - so him pushing a compound shouldn't be persuasive either for or against it.  Instead based on the known risk factors it should have been low on the list of things to try.  The reason for the initial trial in China appears to have been 'availability bias' - someone heard of the in vitro study from a number of years back on SARS-CoV-1 and decided to give it a try - as with most doctors being unaware that in vitro studies are usually at doses so extreme that they almost never point to useful in vivo compounds.  In vitro studies are to screen out useless compounds to give you candidate compounds, but the candidate compounds are usually 1 in 10,000 expectation of usefulness.
 
Quote
Cause you've really bought into something the science doesn't prove, which if you were being consistent you'd have to have acknowledged.

Look, none of you seem to have an even basic grasp of the science.  Which is fine, there are plenty of things I'm a complete ignoramous on as well.  You are talking though as if you think you have knowledge.

Quote
I think this is beating a dead horse, but your claim his is false.  HCQ's potential here may never pan out, but it's absolutely wrong that there isn't evidence supporting that potential.  It's known  effects are almost certainly the reason it was tried in the first place.  I can't even imagine how any one could have the knowledge on this topic you sometimes seem to have an not be aware of that.  HCQ wasn't pulled off them medical shelf at random.

It wasn't pulled of the shelf at random.  But the dosings we can safely take can only give a 5-10% reduction in viral load.  (A healthy person who isn't hypoxic and no compromised kidneys can do a loading dosage of 800 mg, and then maintenance of 400 mg three times a week.  This will give (peak) blood cocentrations in the 500 ng/mL range which is 1.5 uM.  HCQ is about 1/25th-2/25th as potent as CQ.  CQ requires .1 uM for a 20% inhibition of virus.  So HCQ would need 2.5 uM for 20%.  If the effectivness is linear, that would be a 12% reduction (also blood concetration isn't maintained at peak so this is an overestimate) in viral load for safe dosing for healthy adults.  However that was for healthy adults.  Compromised liver clearance due to hypoxia or compromised kidneys - reduces safe dosing by at least 50%.  So we are looking at a maximum 6% reduction in viral load - probably more like half of that.  This isn't a 'game changer' - it is unlikely to show any clinical benefit.

Quote
You are making a common mistake.  Flawed studies produce flawed results. They still produce evidence.

It did produce evidence, if you recalculate properly you get essentially no viral load difference.  So it Raoult provided evidence against the theory.  The NY doctor didn't provide any evidence because there is no reason to think he was treating COVID-19 patients.

Quote
It's just of less utiilty.  Again, it's almost like you'd have to run a double blind study before you'd accept that a house needs to be built with walls on all sides.  Double blinds are to week correlation from causation, no one actually cares though if we can get a "correllation" of getting better about what the real cause is.

This had nothing to do with blinding.  The first was a calculation error; the second was misdiagnosis.  Correcting the calulation shows no benefit.  Misdiagnosis provides no evidence either way.

Quote
The NY doctor is actually a funny case, because he was using it more closely in line with how its actually projected to work.

He was using the zinc + HCQ, but since there is no expectation that his patients actually had COVID-19 it isn't evidence of anything - other than at the dosage he was using it apparently didn't kill his patients.

Quote
Quote
Yes.  As I said above - responsible news organizations don't write about treatments that don't have evidence to support them.

That's literally a lie, they do it all the time.  It's political blindness that's causing you to make this claim. No one out there wrote anything about HQC that wasn't true.  The President didn't even go that far.  He gave an optimistic message that was qualified.

He said it was a 'game changer' - see above - at safe dosages it can have little or no effect - and at the time he made that statement it was purely based on the HCQ usage without zinc as done in Raoult's study.

Feel free to point out 'responsible news organizations' writing about drugs that have dangerous side effects as treatments without evidence.  If you mean it 'had evidnece' - see above.

Quote
Quote
They report only when there is adequately vetted evidence.

Again its a lie.  How many reports have quoted a time line to develop a vaccine.  Probably hundreds of thousands.  There's no vetted evidence that supports that.  We'll read reports of the "next great thing" in medicine that ultimately pan out to be not much.

We were talking about a drug with known dangerous side effects.  Speculating there might be something useful 'in the future' is not promoting, endorsing, or otherwise implying that a drug with known serious risks is effective when there isn't evidence of such.


Quote
He was pushing a theory without scientific support.  It was actually more dangerous than promoting healing rocks or homeopathy, since those can't kill you (well, homeoupathy can have contaminated water, but most preperations are unlikely to kill you).

Again that's false.  There is scientific support.  You not liking research that has been ongoing for decades does not magically delegitimize it.[/quote]

So we differ in what 'scientific support' for a medication means.  I'd say my opinion on the matter is far more informed than yours is.

Quote
Now you are being ridiculous.  The expert advice could have been to shoot on sight that doesn't make it possible or legitimate.

Requiring quarantine is not ridiculous.  It is fairly standard practice for highly contagious diseases.

Quote
The travel ban was a radical departure from precedent and the left immediately whined about it being unnecessary and racist.

As stated by the WHO travel bans are essentially entirely ineffective due to rerouting.

Quote
Travelors were directed to self quarantine, which is pretty much the extent of the legal authority.

It most definitely is not the 'extent of the legal authority'.  There was a mandatory federal quarantine on the 195 who flew directly from Wuhan.  They were put on a military base and not allowed to leave for two weeks (one attempted to and was placed under individual quarantine).

Quote
They ignored it, and blue state politicians undermined it.  I saw deBlasio telling NY'ers to get out and mingle to go to China Town and mingle with the crowds.  Pelosi in late February visting Chinatown and saying "That’s what we’re trying to do today is to say everything is fine here," Pelosi said. "Come because precautions have been taken. The city is on top of the situation."  That's in the last week of February, almost a month after Trump's original travel ban.

NY was infected from Italy.  California was infected from China.  It wasn't Chinatown that was the source.

Quote
Lie to yourself if you want, there is ZERO chance that mandatory quaratine was happening.

Except it did happen, but only once.  The further requests of the CDC were refused.

Will ignore your Russian stuff, since it has been hashed out here before and you seem rather fact immune and it isn't really relevant to the discussion.  I'll only address Guccifer - he was confirmed to be a Russian agent through a couple of ways.  Here is one I recall, they were able to narrow it down to a specific GRU officer.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/dnc-lone-hacker-guccifer-2-0-pegged-as-russian-spy-after-opsec-fail/

There is also some coverage of GRU and their Guccifer cutout in the Mueller report, though significant parts were redacted.

Enough time wasted with you.  Back to me working on medicine.

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #495 on: May 21, 2020, 09:04:12 PM »
Quote
Don Jr.  Kas is not the President.  Do you want to try again?

Is that byzantine labyrinth of back and forth who knows who or what you were referring to. My comment stands.

Then you're just being ridiculous.  The President wasn't in the meeting.  Mueller was free to charge everyone who was.

Seriati

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #496 on: May 21, 2020, 09:28:09 PM »
LR, I've seen this chart a few times and it actually seems like a pretty good source for information.  https://www.ashp.org/-/media/8CA43C674C6D4335B6A19852843C4052.ashx

You can follow it down to HCQ and it pretty much lays out the case for why it was being considered, and the current conclusion seems to be that more study is required.  The actual studies have mixed results, with some showing good results and some (particularly in US hospital settings showing bad).  It's not shown any ability to reverse the disease in the seriously ill, but the jury seems to be out about it's efficacy on those that are not already seriously ill.

Again, this is not the position you have been selling that it would be some special kind of malpractice to think it would work.  But it's not a proven result either.  If you look there's at least 10 trials that seem to be ongoing, which again seems to contradict your certainty.  You want to explain why he medical community is still pursuing it when apparently you've seen enough to make a decisive conclusion?

And I apologize that's all I have time for tonight will have to take a look at the rest tomorrow.

LetterRip

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #497 on: May 21, 2020, 11:22:27 PM »
Seriati, thanks for the link - it is actually quite a good source.  Don't have time to respond substantially for now, not sure when I will.   Briefly though - of three studies with 'good results' are the two by Raoult, and one Chinese study that had 32 patients in the treatment and control group.  All of the others studies the treatment group had worse (or 'no better') outcomes.  If you do the Raoult study properly it actually has worse outcomes for treatment group,

Quote
Although the study started with 26 patients in the HQ or HQ+AZ group, data from only 20 treated patients are given, because not all patients completed the 6-day study. The data for these 20 patients looks incredibly nice; especially the patients who were given both medications all recovered very fast.

What happened to the other six treated patients? Why did they drop out of the study? Three of them were transferred to the intensive care unit (presumably because they got sicker) and 1 died. The other two patients were either too nauseous and stopped the medication, or left the hospital (which might be a sign they felt much better).

[...]

So 4 of the 26 treated patients were actually not recovering at all. It seems a bit strange to leave these 4 patients who got worse or who died out of the study, just on the basis that they stopped taking the medication (which is pretty difficult once the patient is dead). As several people wrote sarcastically on Twitter: My results always look amazing if I leave out the patients who died, or the experiments that did not work.

https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/03/24/thoughts-on-the-gautret-et-al-paper-about-hydroxychloroquine-and-azithromycin-treatment-of-covid-19-infections/

So you basically have one positive ok study (but too small to reach any conclusions), a study by Raoult that when properly analyized shows worse outcome than no treatment (and a second study by Raoult that seems to have similar flaws), and 7 studies that show either worse outcomes or no benefit.

Kasandra

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #498 on: May 22, 2020, 08:58:22 AM »
New Lancet pub on study of Hydroxychloroquine:

Quote
A study of 96,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on six continents found that those who received an antimalarial drug promoted by President Trump as a “game changer” in the fight against the virus had a significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not.

People treated with hydroxychloroquine, or the closely related drug chloroquine, were also more likely to develop a type of irregular heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, that can lead to sudden cardiac death, it concluded.

The study, published Friday in the medical journal the Lancet, is the largest analysis to date of the risks and benefits of treating covid-19 patients with antimalarial drugs. It is based on a retrospective analysis of medical records, not a controlled study in which patients are divided randomly into treatment groups — a method considered the gold standard of medicine. But the sheer size of the study was convincing to some scientists.

Crunch

  • Members
    • View Profile
Re: Misleading or false claims by the media
« Reply #499 on: May 22, 2020, 09:18:26 AM »
Meanwhile, potential VP pick Amy Klobuchar talks about how her husband took HCQ. Credits it for saving his life.

Just need that body count a little higher, right?