The pandemic's wrongest man

[TitanTiger 20,472]

If you're trusting Fox News for accurate info on the pandemic, vaccines and such, you're consigning yourself to a steady diet of misinformation and bull****.  In terms of COVID news, ditch it cold turkey.  At the very least, supplement it with news from other mainstream sources.  

The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man
In a crowded field of wrongness, one person stands out: Alex Berenson.

Derek Thompson
6:00 AM ET
Staff writer at The Atlantic

The pandemic has made fools of many forecasters. Just about all of the predictions whiffed. Anthony Fauci was wrong about masks. California was wrong about the outdoors. New York was wrong about the subways. I was wrong about the necessary cost of pandemic relief. And the Trump White House was wrong about almosteverything else.

In this crowded field of wrongness, one voice stands out. The voice of Alex Berenson: the former New York Times reporter, Yale-educated novelist, avid tweeter, online essayist, and all-around pandemic gadfly. Berenson has been serving up COVID-19 hot takes for the past year, blithely predicting that the United States would not reach 500,000 deaths (we’ve surpassed 550,000) and arguing that cloth and surgical masks can’t protect against the coronavirus (yes, they can).

Berenson has a big megaphone. He has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News’ most-watched shows. On Laura Ingraham’s show, he downplayed the vaccines, suggesting that Israel’s experience proved they were considerably less effective than initially claimed. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, he predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness and death in the U.S.

The vaccines have inspired his most troubling comments. For the past few weeks on Twitter, Berenson has mischaracterized just about every detail regarding the vaccines to make the dubious case that most people would be better off avoiding them. As his conspiratorial nonsense accelerates toward the pandemic’s finish line, he has proved himself the Secretariat of being wrong:

• He has blamed the vaccines for causing spikes in severe illness, by pointing to data that actually demonstrate their safety and effectiveness.
• He has blamed the vaccines for suppressing our immune systems, by misrepresenting normal immune-system behavior.
• He has suggested that countries such as Israel have suffered from their early vaccine rollout, even though deaths and hospitalizations among vaccinated groups in Israel have plummeted.
• He has implied that for most non-seniors, the side effects of the vaccines are worse than having COVID-19 itself—even though, according to the CDC, the pandemic has killed tens of thousands of people under 50 and the vaccines have not conclusively killed anybody.

Usually, I would refrain from lavishing attention on someone so blatantly incorrect. But with vaccine resistance hovering around 30 percent of the general population, and with 40 percent of Republicans saying they won’t get a shot, debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death.

Berenson’s TV appearances are more misdirection than outright fiction, and his Twitter feed blends internet-y irony and scientific jargon in a way that may obscure what he’s actually saying. To pin him down, I emailed several questions to him last week. Below, I will lay out, as clearly and fairly as I can, his claims about the vaccines and how dangerously, unflaggingly, and superlatively wrong they are.

Before I go point by point through his wrong positions, let me be exquisitely clear about what is true. The vaccines work. They worked in the clinical trials, and they’re working around the world. The vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson seem to provide stronger and more lasting protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants than natural infection. They are excellent at reducing symptomatic infection. Even better, they are extraordinarily successful at preventing severe illness from COVID-19. Countries that have vaccinated large percentages of their population quickly, such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel, have all seen sharp and sustained declines in hospitalizations among the elderly. Meanwhile, countries that have lagged in the vaccination effort—including the U.K.’s neighbors France and Italy, and Israel’s neighbor Jordan—have struggled to contain the virus. The authorized vaccines are marvels, and the case against them relies on half-truths, untruths, and obfuscations.

---

Berenson’s claim: In country after country, “cases rise after vaccination campaigns begin,” he wrote in an email.

The reality: In country after country, cases decline after vaccination campaigns begin.

One of Berenson’s themes is that the mRNA vaccines are badly underperforming outside the clinical trials and are possibly even causing a spike in cases after the first shot. But just this week, CDC researchers studying real-world conditions came to the opposite conclusion: The mRNA vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer are 90 percent effective two weeks after the second dose, in line with the trial data. “COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for all eligible persons,” they concluded.

Still, Berenson pushes the argument that the vaccines are causing suspicious illness and death. On Twitter and in his email to me, Berenson claimed that an “excellent” Denmark study showed a 40 percent rise in infections immediately after nursing-home residents received their first vaccine shot.

I reached out to that study’s lead author, Ida Rask Moustsen-Helms at the Statens Serum Institut, who said that Berenson had mischaracterized her findings. She explained to me that the Danish nursing homes in question were already experiencing a significant COVID-19 outbreak when vaccinations began. Many people in the long-term-care facilities were likely already sick before their vaccine was administered, and “these people would technically count as vaccinated with confirmed COVID-19, even if the infection happened prior to the vaccination or its immune response,” she said. With limited vaccines, countries ought to give the first vaccines to the groups most likely to get COVID-19. That’s exactly what seems to have happened here. Berenson is scaremongering about the vaccines by essentially criticizing their wise distribution.

In our emails, Berenson further argued that many of the perceived benefits of the vaccines are illusory. “It is very hard to distinguish the course of the epidemic this winter in countries that have vaccinated heavily, such as Israel and the UK, and those that have not, such as Canada and Germany,” he wrote.

This is hogwash. In the U.K. and Israel, hospitalizations have fallen by at least 70 percent since mid-January, and they remain low. In Canada, hospitalizations fell by significantly less, and in Germany, the seven-day average of COVID-19 cases has more than doubled since mid-February; its government has debated a new lockdown.

This stage of the pandemic is a race between the variants and the vaccines. In many states, such as Michigan and New York, normalizing behavior combined with more contagious strains of the virus are pushing up cases again. This is not evidence that America’s vaccination campaign isn’t working. Quite the opposite: It highlights the urgency of moving faster to deliver vaccines, which are our best chance to control the spread of contagious variants.

Berenson’s claim: Pfizer-BioNTech’s clinical-trial data prove that the companies are being shady about vaccine efficacy.

The reality: His “proof” is a total mischaracterization of trial data.

Berenson seems to enjoy spelunking through research to find esoteric statistics that he then dresses up with spooky language to make confusing points that sow doubt about the vaccines. Arguing that COVID-19 cases spike after the first dose, he directs people to the Pfizer-BioNTech FDA briefing document, which reports hundreds of “suspected but unconfirmed” COVID-19 cases in the trial’s vaccine group that aren’t counted as positive cases in the final efficacy analysis.

But “suspected but unconfirmed” doesn’t refer to participants who were probably sick with COVID-19. On the contrary, it refers to participants who reported various symptoms, such as a cough or a sore throat, and then took a PCR test—and then that test came back negative.

“His point is absolutely stupid, and I would know because I enrolled participants in the Pfizer-BioNTech trial,” Kawsar Talaat, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “He’s talking about people who call in and say, ‘I have a runny nose.’ So we mark them as ‘suspected.’ Then we ask them to take a PCR test, and we test their swab, and if the test comes back negative, the FDA says it’s ‘unconfirmed.’ That’s what suspected but unconfirmed means.”

When I emailed Pfizer and BioNTech representatives about Berenson’s claim, they struggled to even understand what I was talking about. Someone was taking a group of several thousand people who had tested negative for COVID-19 and, from afar, diagnosing all of them with COVID-19? “Does not make sense,” a BioNTech spokesperson responded curtly.

If you were enrolled in Berenson’s vaccine trial for SARS-CoV-2 and never contracted the virus, but one day you told a clinician that you had a bit of a cough, Berenson would mark you down as “infected with COVID-19” and blame the vaccine. That’s the logic here, and, as you can tell, it’s not really logic; it just seems like an attempt to find something—anything—wrong with the vaccines.

Berenson’s claim: The mRNA vaccines dangerously suppress your immune system, possibly causing severe illness and even death.

The reality: His claim is based on a total misunderstanding of how the immune system works.

Berenson wrote in an email that “the first dose of the mRNA vaccine temporarily suppresses the immune system.” He has claimed on Twitter that the mRNA vaccines “transiently suppress lymphocytes,” or our white blood cells, and suggested that this might lead to “post-vaccination deaths.”

Scientists tore this one to shreds. “The claim he is making is simply fearmongering, connecting a simple physiological event with bogus claims of deaths,” Shane Crotty, a researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told me. “The observation of lymphocyte numbers temporarily dropping in blood is actually a common phenomenon in immune responses.”

A little background is useful here: White blood cells are the immune system’s scouts. After an effective vaccination, some of them leave the blood and go to the site of inflammation, such as the arm that received the shot. “The cells are not gone,” Crotty said. “They come back to the blood in a few days. It is generally a good sign of an immune response, not the opposite.” To demonstrate that the vaccines are counterproductive, then, Berenson is pointing to the very biological mechanism that strongly suggests they’re working just as scientists expected.

Readers are surely familiar with other biological events that sound bad in the short term but are part of a normal, healthy process. When you lift weights at the gym, your muscles experience small tears that recover and then strengthen over time. Imagine if some loudmouth started screaming in the middle of the weight room, “You all think you’re building your muscles, but actually you’re tearing them to shreds, and it could kill you!” You would probably carry on calmly, assuming that this guy just got a little overexcited after finding a Yahoo Answers article about muscle formation and stopped reading after the first paragraph. Berenson’s claim is basically a version of that, but for your immune system.

“Actually,” Talaat said, “his argument is even worse than your analogy. Muscles really do tear at the gym. But lymphocytes don’t go away. They just move. What he’s describing as dangerous in these tweets is just the regular functioning of our immune system.”

Berenson’s claim: In Israel, the shots are causing a scary number of deaths and hospitalizations.

The reality: Israel is a sensational vaccine success story: a nearly open economy where COVID-19 rates are plunging. See for yourself!

On February 11, Berenson warned his followers that early data from Israel proved that vaccine advocates “need to start ratcheting down expectations.” This was a strange claim to make at the time: An Israeli health-care provider had reported no deaths and four severe cases among its first 523,000 fully vaccinated people. But the claim seems even more ridiculous now, in light of Israel’s incredible success since then. New positive cases in Israel are down roughly 95 percent since January. Deaths have plunged, even though the economy is almost fully open.

When I asked Berenson to explain his beef with Israel’s vaccine record, he sent a link to a news story in Hebrew that, he said, reported “several hundred deaths and hospitalizations and thousands of infections in people who have received both doses.” I can’t read Hebrew, so I reached out to someone who can, Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel. He replied by email: “This link actually shows that the vast majority of those who died were NOT vaccinated.” By Segal’s calculations, the vaccines have reduced the risk of death by more than 90 percent in the Israeli population. Segal also said that “numbers of infections only went down, and even more so among the age groups who were first to vaccinate.”

Berenson is wrong about all sorts of little things when it comes to Israel, but I want to emphasize how straightforward and obvious the big picture is here. Israel is a world leader in vaccinations. Its COVID-19 cases have plunged, and its economy is roaring back to life.

Berenson’s claim: Healthy people under 70 shouldn’t get a vaccine.

The reality: Outside of extremely rare cases, every adult should get a vaccine—and if it’s authorized for children, children should get it too.

I wanted to know where Berenson stood on the most important question: Who does he think should get a vaccine, and who does he think shouldn’t? This was the core of his answer:

For most healthy people under 50—and certainly under 35—the side effects from the shots are likely to be worse than a case of Covid. Over 70, sure. The grey zone is somewhere in the middle and probably depends on personal risk factors.

This response has two huge problems. First, although the disease clearly gets more severe with age, drawing a line at 70 is nonsensical. Those in their 50s and early 60s are three times more likely to die from this disease than a 40-something, and 400 timesmore likely to die than a teenager, according to the CDC.

Second, the suggestion that the vaccine’s side effects are worse than having COVID-19 is ludicrous. The vaccine can cause chills, fever, and other symptoms in the first few days. That’s just the immune system doing its job; severe illness from the vaccines is vanishingly rare. But severe illness in a pandemic is not rare. More than 40,000 people under age 50 have gone to the hospital with COVID-19, according to COVID-NET, a surveillance network that captures hospitalization data. Several studies have indicated that at least one-third of hospitalized people suffer from long-term symptoms of COVID-19. (Guess what seems to alleviate the symptoms of some of these patients? Getting vaccinated.)

The idea that the vaccine is worse than the disease for the under-70 crowd falls apart utterly when we consider the “side effect” of death. Roughly 100,000 people under 65 have died of COVID-19. Meanwhile, out of more than 145 million vaccines administered in the U.S., a CDC review of clinical information found no evidence that they had caused any deaths. The current score in the competition between non-senior pandemic deaths and conclusive vaccine deaths is 100,000–0.

One hundred thousand to zero. That might be the most important statistic in this whole mess. Berenson doesn’t tweet blatantly falsifiable statements about the vaccines every day. For the most part, he peddles doubt, laced with confusing and expert-sounding jargon, which may seem compelling at first but can’t survive contact with expert opinion.

To be honest, I initially had serious doubts about publishing this piece. The trap of exposing conspiracy theories is obvious: To demonstrate why a theory is wrong, you have to explain it and, in doing so, incur the risk that some people will be convinced by the very theory you’re trying to debunk. But that horse has left the barn. More than half of Republicans under the age of 50 say they simply won’t get a vaccine. Their hesitancy is being fanned by right-wing hacks, Fox News showboats, and vaccine skeptics like Alex Berenson. The case for the vaccines is built upon a firm foundation of scientific discovery, clinical-trial data, and real-world evidence. The case against the vaccines wobbles because it is built upon a steaming pile of bull****.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-wrongest-man/618475/

[AUDub 11,136]

Berenson is a known quantity if you're familiar with his stance on weed. No place for facts in any of his fervor on whatever cause he attaches himself to. 

[CoffeeTiger 5,084]

Good article, but will be completely useless because this is all waaayyy too deep and detailed for any person that would actually need this. Any given Fox News conservative would skim this article, look you dead in the eye and say:  "Yeah....well of course the scientists and vaccine makers would tell you the guy is wrong...it's because he's exposing the truth they don't want you to hear" And that would be it. They wont offer any counterpoint or evidence because they don't need any real proof or evidence to support their beliefs that Berenson is telling them the truth. They are naturally skeptical of medicine, science, and vaccines due to decades of brainwashing, so all they really need is someone who appears at least semi-credible to tell them in easily understood, simple language that they are right and the vaccine is dangerous and it is doing bad things, and they shouldn't take it. 

 

They view science, education, and government in America as being arms of the Democratic Party and thus institutions that they shouldn't trust.

Edited April 1, 2021 by CoffeeTiger

[TitanTiger 20,472]

I post stuff like this fully realizing the hardcore down-the-rabbit-hole folks on this will only dig in their heels.  I post it anyway for the quiet lurkers and fence sitters who are really looking for the truth but get confused by the proliferation of made up bull****  - so they have good information to fend off this garbage.

[I_M4_AU 7,783]

29 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

"Yeah....well of course the scientists and vaccine makers would tell you the guy is wrong...it's because he's exposing the truth they don't want you to hear"

I literally have never heard anyone on FOX say this.  Why do some (especially on this forum) leftist like to lump every conservative and/or Republican into one big category? 

[CoffeeTiger 5,084]

36 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

I literally have never heard anyone on FOX say this.  Why do some (especially on this forum) leftist like to lump every conservative and/or Republican into one big category? 

 I'm saying this is what people who regularly watch FOX News and believe Berenson would tell you if they were forced to read this article, because that's a very, very common line I've heard and seen from Republican's both in real life and online when talking about anything that provides statistics or evidence contrary to any given view they hold.  

 

Now, I do differentiate between Conservatives and Republicans. Republicans are one big category and that's one way they are able to hold so much power in America despite being a minority party with a shrinking voting base. Because the vast majority of Republican's believe in and value the exact same things and believe in standing together against "other" forces. In todays climate, Republicans are focusing almost as much effort on forcing out their own few party member's who still don't toe the Party line as they are at defeating Democrats. I also live in Alabama where every single Republican candidate for public office is almost an exact carbon copy of each other in terms of what they say they believe in and what issues they feel need fixing. 

 

There are plenty of Conservatives outside of the Republican party who do have differing views on issues, and that's were you get the right leaning/moderate Democrats and the self labeled  Moderates or Libertarians who might believe 70-80% of what the Republican Party espouses socially or fiscally, but views the Republican party itself as too toxic or exclusionary. 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by CoffeeTiger

[TitanTiger 20,472]

41 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

I literally have never heard anyone on FOX say this.  Why do some (especially on this forum) leftist like to lump every conservative and/or Republican into one big category? 

From the article's first few paragraphs:

Berenson has a big megaphone. He has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News’ most-watched shows. On Laura Ingraham’s show, he downplayed the vaccines, suggesting that Israel’s experience proved they were considerably less effective than initially claimed. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, he predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness and death in the U.S.

 

Also, I'm not a leftist.

[I_M4_AU 7,783]

35 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

From the article's first few paragraphs:

 

Berenson has a big megaphone. He has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News’ most-watched shows. On Laura Ingraham’s show, he downplayed the vaccines, suggesting that Israel’s experience proved they were considerably less effective than initially claimed. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, he predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness and death in the U.S.

 

 

Also, I'm not a leftist.

I didn’t quote you and was not talking to you.  If your ears were burning, that’s on you.  I didn’t even reference the article.  You’re right though; reading is fundamental.

[AUDub 11,136]

1 minute ago, I_M4_AU said:

I didn’t quote you and was not talking to you.  If your ears were burning, that’s on you.  I didn’t even reference the article.  You’re right though; reading is fundamental.

Do you... um... do you know how forums work? 

[I_M4_AU 7,783]

46 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

 I'm saying this is what people who regularly watch FOX News and believe Berenson would tell you if they were forced to read this article, because that's a very, very common line I've heard and seen from Republican's both in real life and online when talking about anything that provides statistics or evidence contrary to any given view they hold.  

 

Now, I do differentiate between Conservatives and Republicans. Republicans are one big category and that's one way they are able to hold so much power in America despite being a minority party with a shrinking voting base. Because the vast majority of Republican's believe in and value the exact same things and believe in standing together against "other" forces. In todays climate, Republicans are focusing almost as much effort on forcing out their own few party member's who still don't toe the Party line as they are at defeating Democrats. I also live in Alabama where every single Republican candidate for public office is almost an exact carbon copy of each other in terms of what they say they believe in and what issues they feel need fixing. 

 

There are plenty of Conservatives outside of the Republican party who do have differing views on issues, and that's were you get the right leaning/moderate Democrats and the self labeled  Moderates or Libertarians who might believe 70-80% of what the Republican Party espouses socially or fiscally, but views the Republican party itself as too toxic or exclusionary. 

 

The people who watch FOX AND believe Berenson have got to be a limited source of data points and hard to categorize, but you seemed to have the knowledge with no data to back it up.

The country is divided as it has ever been and there doesn’t seem to be any common ground.  However, we can hold out hope that we can find some.

[I_M4_AU 7,783]

7 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Do you... um... do you know how forums work? 

Yes I do.  When a poster tries to pass on a narrative that was not part of my post, I have the right to correct them.

[homersapien 11,357]

While the absolute and total ignorance of Berenson should certainly be exposed - as this article does - the question that really fascinates me is, what is the psychology behind it?  I am assuming he is intelligent enough to actually understand the facts - otherwise he wouldn't be clever enough to distort them, even if rhetorically.

What's interesting to me, is why?  What's his motivation?

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by homersapien

[TitanTiger 20,472]

35 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

I didn’t quote you and was not talking to you.  If your ears were burning, that’s on you.  I didn’t even reference the article.  You’re right though; reading is fundamental.

First of all, you posted in a public thread.  Anyone can respond to you.

Second, you literally posted in the thread I started and where I made the Fox comment.  Not to mention that Coffee's post you quoted referenced the Fox aspect of my post. 

Third, if you don't read the articles that posts are based on, but comment on things they say, then it's on you when you say dumb stuff that could have been avoided by actually reading.

Dear God, it's like you're in some contest to sound as ridiculous as possible lately.

[homersapien 11,357]

21 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

I didn’t quote you and was not talking to you.  If your ears were burning, that’s on you.  I didn’t even reference the article.  You’re right though; reading is fundamental.

You said that you never heard that on Fox:

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

I literally have never heard anyone on FOX say this.  Why do some (especially on this forum) leftist like to lump every conservative and/or Republican into one big category? 

Regarding your question, it's obviously  not practical  to single out ever individual and parse their beliefs, so people tend to equate statistical trends with parties.  Accordingly, Republicans are now the party of Trump.

And it's not like Republicans don't do the same thing with characterizing Democrats.

 

 

[CoffeeTiger 5,084]

 

41 minutes ago, creed said:

I don't know this Berenson person. Probably because I don't watch FOX, CNN, or any left/right political programming. I do occasionally read commentary that is supported by real data, or at least what I consider real data, but it's hard to find. However, to suggest the democratic party is perfect in their understanding and use of science or education is laughable. Just like the republicans they use both incorrectly to advance their agenda.

 

I never said that the Democratic party is perfect in their use of science. I don't agree with everything the Democrats consider to be 'science', especially areas that deal with psycology and mental health where there is still a lack of data and evidence to support the lefts preferred outcome, BUT I do believe that science backed up by numerous studies and scientific consensus is almost always believed and trusted much more by people on the left and middle than people on the right, and the consensus science is almost always more correct than the skeptical view on the other side. 

a few relevent Examples:

Climate change. When I was in high school, I was taught by my conservative science teachers, and it was pretty well established in Conservative circles at that time, that Climate change was basically 100% false and that the earth was NOT actually warming up, but was instead going though just a normal small fluctuation that wasn't captured in available historical data. Climate change was nothing but a left wing hoax to create more regulations and choke free market capitalism. 

Now a days, Conservatives are a lot more willing to admit that "yes, the earth is warming up and changing" but they still mostly don't agree that human pollution is a primary cause., but in the original case, the climate scientist and the left were certainly more on target from the start than the Right was.

Vaccines: The science and left typically view vaccines and medicine as a safe necessity to curing and stopping the spread of diseases. The Right is MUCH more willing to embrace the idea of anti-vaccine 'science' that alleges various things regarding 'autism' 'bio tracking' 'mind control' 'Big Pharma corruption'. ect. Science and the left pretty much squashed these ideas as soon as they come up, while the Right generally has to be more accepting of these conspiracies because there are is a portion of their base who believes in them in various forms.  True, Not everyone on the Right believes these things but among the people who do a vast majority would identify as conservative. 

Covid: Easy one, early 2020 science and the left were saying we needed to take precautions and that this could become bad and spread widely. The right said that's a lie, that it will disappear, be easily defeated, and few if any precautions will be needed because it's not going to be worse than a common cold....

 

By no means are the left right on every scientific issue, but on the major issues I think the left has a vastly better track record with scientific accuracy than the Right does. 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by CoffeeTiger

[creed 1,635]

13 minutes ago, CoffeeTiger said:

 

 

I never said that the Democratic party is perfect in their use of science. I don't agree with everything the Democrats consider to be 'science', especially areas that deal with psycology and mental health where there is still a lack of data and evidence to support the lefts preferred outcome, BUT I do believe that science backed up by numerous studies and scientific consensus is almost always believed and trusted much more by people on the left and middle than people on the right, and the consensus science is almost always more correct than the skeptical view on the other side. 

a few relevent Examples:

Climate change. When I was in high school, I was taught by my conservative science teachers, and it was pretty well established in Conservative circles at that time, that Climate change was basically 100% false and that the earth was NOT actually warming up, but was instead going though just a normal small fluctuation that wasn't captured in available historical data. Climate change was nothing but a left wing hoax to create more regulations and choke free market capitalism. 

Now a days, Conservatives are a lot more willing to admit that "yes, the earth is warming up and changing" but they still mostly don't agree that human pollution is a primary cause., but in the original case, the climate scientist and the left were certainly more on target from the start than the Right was.

Vaccines: The science and left typically view vaccines and medicine as a safe necessity to curing and stopping the spread of diseases. The Right is MUCH more willing to embrace the idea of anti-vaccine 'science' that alleges various things regarding 'autism' 'bio tracking' 'mind control' 'Big Pharma corruption'. ect. Science and the left pretty much squashed these ideas as soon as they come up, while the Right generally has to be more accepting of these conspiracies because there are is a portion of their base who believes in them in various forms.  True, Not everyone on the Right believes these things but among the people who do a vast majority would identify as conservative. 

Covid: Easy one, early 2020 science and the left were saying we needed to take precautions and that this could become bad and spread widely. The right said that's a lie, that it will disappear, be easily defeated, and few if any precautions will be needed because it's not going to be worse than a common cold....

 

By no means are the left right on every scientific issue, but on the major issues I think the left has a vastly better track record with scientific accuracy than the Right does. 

 

I do believe, like you, in climate change, but we may disagree in the root cause of the change. What do you think is the root cause?

[TitanTiger 20,472]

6 minutes ago, creed said:

I do believe, like you, in climate change, but we may disagree in the root cause of the change. What do you think is the root cause?

@CoffeeTigerand @creed, would you guys mind starting a different thread for climate change discussion?

[I_M4_AU 7,783]

30 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

First of all, you posted in a public thread.  Anyone can respond to you.

Second, you literally posted in the thread I started and where I made the Fox comment.  Not to mention that Coffee's post you quoted referenced the Fox aspect of my post. 

Third, if you don't read the articles that posts are based on, but comment on things they say, then it's on you when you say dumb stuff that could have been avoided by actually reading.

Dear God, it's like you're in some contest to sound as ridiculous as possible lately.

I commented on Coffee’s made up quote in bold.  It disparaged all conservatives and Republicans and I questioned him on it.  I did not comment on things the article said, but pointed out people’s tendency to lump all people of one group into their perspective of the world.

To your point about FOX and Berenson; I watch FOX and I am a conservative/Republican and have been vaccinated, so I must not have thought too highly of Berenson’s opinion.  FOX has a lot of opinionated people on their broadcasts and, like most people, I can hear their opinions and decide for myself what to believe.

 

[AU9377 4,918]

23 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

I literally have never heard anyone on FOX say this.  Why do some (especially on this forum) leftist like to lump every conservative and/or Republican into one big category? 

I get what you are saying, but so much of the blame for that falls squarely on prominent Republicans and their inability to take a position that is in any way deviating from the Fox/Trump band wagon. Can you imagine if OAC controlled the Democratic party to the extent that Trump controls the Republican party?  I can't.

[I_M4_AU 7,783]

21 minutes ago, AU9377 said:

I get what you are saying, but so much of the blame for that falls squarely on prominent Republicans and their inability to take a position that is in any way deviating from the Fox/Trump band wagon. Can you imagine if OAC controlled the Democratic party to the extent that Trump controls the Republican party?  I can't.

FOX is an openly conservative news outlet.  Most of the other outlets claim to be unbiased in their reporting.

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt warned that the news media is providing “an open platform for misinformation,” pushing back against the notion that outlets should always be giving two sides of a story equal weight.

Accepting the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism from Washington State University, Holt talked about attacks on the news media, at one point telling the virtual audience, “I think it’s become clearer that fairness is over-rated.”

“Before you run with or tweet that headline, let me explain a bit,” he said. “The idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in. That the sun sets in the west is a fact. Any contrary view does not deserve our time or attention.”

He said that “you won’t have to look far to find more current and relevant examples,” but there has been widespread attention to misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and Covid-19.

“Decisions to not give unsupported arguments equal time are not a dereliction of journalistic responsibility or some kind of agenda. In fact, it’s just the opposite,” Holt said. “Providing an open platform for misinformation, for anyone to come say whatever they want, especially when issues of public health and safety are at stake, can be quite dangerous. Our duty is to be fair to the truth. Holding those in power accountable is at the core of our function and responsibility. We need to hear our leader’s views, their policies and reasoning. It’s really important. But we have to stand ready to push back and call-out falsehoods.”

https://deadline.com/2021/03/lester-holt-nbc-news-edward-r-murrow-award-1234724932/

This type of thinking by anybody in the main stream media is dangerous. I know what he is alluding to, but to go full in on only reporting what a journalist thinks is reality without any investigation is not what we rely on the media for.  Case in point; 

 

CNN is being ridiculed online for insisting there is “no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth” — with critics telling the network to “look just below the waist” for insight.

The left-leaning network’s statement was quickly shared online after it appeared in a news story Wednesday about South Dakota banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.

“It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth,” CNN’s Devan Cole wrote.

https://nypost.com/2021/04/01/cnn-ridiculed-for-saying-no-consensus-for-assigning-sex-at-birth/

Do you think the CNN story fits the Lester Holt criteria for news we should be subject to?  I don’t, but according to the woke this is investigative journalism at its best.

The best we can do as people is to look for ourselves as to what seems to be true and not fall for anybody’s propaganda.

[homersapien 11,357]

On 4/1/2021 at 3:42 PM, I_M4_AU said:

I commented on Coffee’s made up quote in bold.  It disparaged all conservatives and Republicans and I questioned him on it.  I did not comment on things the article said, but pointed out people’s tendency to lump all people of one group into their perspective of the world.

To your point about FOX and Berenson; I watch FOX and I am a conservative/Republican and have been vaccinated, so I must not have thought too highly of Berenson’s opinion.  FOX has a lot of opinionated people on their broadcasts and, like most people, I can hear their opinions and decide for myself what to believe.

 

How do you explain that approximately 50% of your fellow Republican men are resisting vaccination?

Do you think Fox's promotion of people like Berenson have at least a role in that?

[DKW 86 7,418]

On 4/1/2021 at 1:52 PM, homersapien said:

While the absolute and total ignorance of Berenson should certainly be exposed - as this article does - the question that really fascinates me is, what is the psychology behind it?  I am assuming he is intelligent enough to actually understand the facts - otherwise he wouldn't be clever enough to distort them, even if rhetorically.

What's interesting to me, is why?  What's his motivation?

 

Take a long look at who else believes this stuff...

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/celebrities-anti-vaxxers-jessica-biel-847779/

https://www.newsweek.com/every-celebrity-speak-out-against-vaccines-1552427

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-covid-anti-vaxxers-dozen-b1822705.html

The 12 anti-vaxxers who were identified in the study were Joseph Mercola, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Ty and Charlene Bollinger, SherriTenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins.

And on and on....

[AUDub 11,136]

4 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Take a long look at who else believes this stuff...

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/celebrities-anti-vaxxers-jessica-biel-847779/

https://www.newsweek.com/every-celebrity-speak-out-against-vaccines-1552427

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-covid-anti-vaxxers-dozen-b1822705.html

The 12 anti-vaxxers who were identified in the study were Joseph Mercola, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Ty and Charlene Bollinger, SherriTenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins.

And on and on....

I've ripped into McCarthy, Kennedy and Mercola in the past here. Can't stand them. 

[DKW 86 7,418]

7 hours ago, AUDub said:

I've ripped into McCarthy, Kennedy and Mercola in the past here. Can't stand them. 

Is there something in the water in Southern California? These people are anti-science, anti-reality, anti-rational thought AND are held up as role models and thinking people honestly because they were gifted with good genes and often no brains. 

And really, to be very frank, homey has asked the most interesting question in all this. Why? I really have no clue other than the wish to be contrarian? I got nothing other than self vainglory as to Why?

There are some very small numbers of negative consequences in very small, almost minute, segments of the population. But, the vast majority have come to herd immunities, etc where we have essentially wiped out certain diseases from our general population.

On the flipside of WHY? Can these people not see that? I have no answer and do not suppose to have one.

Edited April 3, 2021 by DKW 86

[AUDub 11,136]

42 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Is there something in the water in Southern California? These people are anti-science, anti-reality, anti-rational thought AND are held up as role models and thinking people honestly because they were gifted with good genes and often no brains. 

And really, to be very frank, homey has asked the most interesting question in all this. Why? I really have no clue other than the wish to be contrarian? I got nothing other than self vainglory as to Why?

There are some very small numbers of negative consequences in very small, almost minute, segments of the population. But, the vast majority have come to herd immunities, etc where we have essentially wiped out certain diseases from our general population.

On the flipside of WHY? Can these people not see that? I have no answer and do not suppose to have one.

It's truly become a nationwide phenomenon that crosses ideological boundaries now.

The main reason it's around these days has to do with parents of autistic children. "My child was born perfectly healthy and somehow developed autism. Can't have been anything I did. Must have been those dastardly vaccines!"

This is a population primed to be taken advantage of by cranks looking to make money (Mercola, Kennedy), people with a built in distrust of the government and authority in general (the Bollingers), straight up rich dingbats (name a celebrity) or some combination thereof.

From there it's just sort of spread its wings to both ends of the spectrum, becoming a stock conspiracy theory. 

Edited April 3, 2021 by AUDub