Covid-19 Vaccine - Where, How & Costs

Status
Not open for further replies.
The basic idea is there.


YouTube said on Wednesday that it was banning the accounts of several prominent anti-vaccine activists from its platform, including those of Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as part of an effort to remove all content that falsely claims that approved vaccines are dangerous.

In a blog post, YouTube said it would remove videos claiming that vaccines do not reduce rates of transmission or contraction of disease, and content that includes misinformation on the makeup of the vaccines. Claims that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that the vaccines contain trackers will also be removed.

The platform, which is owned by Google, has had a similar ban on misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines. But the new policy expands the rules to misleading claims about long-approved vaccines, such as those against measles and hepatitis B, as well as to falsehoods about vaccines in general, YouTube said. Personal testimonies relating to vaccines, content about vaccine policies and new vaccine trials, and historical videos about vaccine successes or failures will be allowed to remain on the site.

“Today’s policy update is an important step to address vaccine and health misinformation on our platform, and we’ll continue to invest across the board” in policies that bring its users high-quality information, the company said in its announcement.

In addition to banning Dr. Mercola and Mr. Kennedy, YouTube removed the accounts of other prominent anti-vaccination activists such as Erin Elizabeth and Sherri Tenpenny, a company spokeswoman said.

The new policy puts YouTube more in line with Facebook and Twitter. In February, Facebook said that it would remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines, including taking down assertions that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract the coronavirus than to receive vaccinations against it. But the platform remains a popular destination for people discussing misinformation, such as the unfounded claim that the pharmaceutical drug ivermectin is an effective treatment for Covid-19.
In March, Twitter introduced its own policy that explained the penalties for sharing lies about the virus and vaccines. But the company has a five “strikes” rule before it permanently bars people for violating its coronavirus misinformation policy.
The accounts of such high-profile anti-vaccination activists like Dr. Mercola and Mr. Kennedy remain active on Facebook and Twitter — although Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has suspended Mr. Kennedy’s account.
Misinformation researchers have for years pointed to the proliferation of anti-vaccine content on social networks as a factor in vaccine hesitation — including slowing rates of Covid-19 vaccine adoption in more conservative states. Reporting has shown that YouTube videos often act as the source of content that subsequently goes viral on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, sometimes racking up tens of millions of views.
“One platform’s policies affect enforcement across all the others because of the way networks work across services,” said Evelyn Douek, a lecturer at Harvard Law School who focuses on online speech and misinformation. “YouTube is one of the most highly linked domains on Facebook, for example.”
She added: “It’s not possible to think of these issues platform by platform. That’s not how anti-vaccination groups think of them. We have to think of the internet ecosystem as a whole.”
Prominent anti-vaccine activists have long been able to build huge audiences online, helped along by the algorithmic powers of social networks that prioritize videos and posts that are particularly successful at capturing people’s attention. A nonprofit group, Center for Countering Digital Hate, published research this year showing that a group of 12 people were responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, dubbing the group the “Disinformation Dozen.” In July, the White House cited the research as it criticized tech companies for allowing misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines to spread widely, sparking a tense back-and-forth between the administration and Facebook.
Dr. Mercola, an osteopathic physician, took the top spot in the Disinformation Dozen. His following on Facebook and Instagram totals more than three million, while his YouTube account, before it was taken down, had nearly half a million followers. Dr. Mercola’s Twitter account, which is still live, has over 320,000 followers.
YouTube said that in the past year it had removed over 130,000 videos for violating its Covid-19 vaccine policies. But this did not include what the video platform called “borderline videos” that discussed vaccine skepticism on the site. In the past, the company simply removed such videos from search results and recommendations, while promoting videos from experts and public health institutions.
Ben Decker contributed research.
Davey Alba
 

TLDR: Explosive stuff, major Brazilian hospital chain accused of pressuring doctors to prescribe hydrochloroquine and ivermectin and covering up Covid deaths in an attempt to bolster Bolsanaro's claims about Covid.
 
I've similarly toned down my opinions about antivaxxers. All that does is raise the heat and noise for no real light.
 
At the risk of being banned. Being banned of this forum because of Jouir (false) Messiah Bolsonaro would be a complete waste...
 
Then this forum may as well become HPCA if bans become political in nature like this. I don't think the mods and admins want that eventuality anyway.
 
I think after 56 pages of posts, this topic is getting annoying.

Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for life for the intentional lies he told.
Personally, I sympathise with the sentiment even if I disagree on sentencing specifics. Not sure why we need to say it on this forum though.
 
I think after 56 pages of posts, this topic is getting annoying.

Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for life for the intentional lies he told.
Personally, I sympathise with the sentiment even if I disagree on sentencing specifics. Not sure why we need to say it on this forum though.
I think it's nice to have a place that aggregates solid news about our progress against Covid. If I wished to learn about progress around the world by myself, I'd be at least doubling the time I spend on the net.

As for Andrew Wakefield, he's a key reason behind the resurgence of anti-vax sentiment from the late 90s on, I think we should expect some references to him in a Bar topic about vaccines.
 
I see a difference between "Andrew Wakefield is responsible for vaccine hesitancy and should be brought to account for it" and "Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for life for the intentional lies he told". One is more appropriate language than the other.
 
I see a difference between "Andrew Wakefield is responsible for vaccine hesitancy and should be brought to account for it" and "Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for life for the intentional lies he told". One is more appropriate language than the other.
Fair point. However, I do think it fits in the Bar. I've made a longer post about the Bar in the Social/Political Commentary topic started by Dannydale.
 
This news story has to my mind a somewhat misleading headline in respect of what the article actually says.
STOCKHOLM, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Scientists behind COVID-19 vaccines could be in the running to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine even though the pandemic is far from over.

Some scientists say it is just a matter of time: If the work that went into developing the vaccines is not recognised when this year's prize is announced on Monday, it will win the award in years to come.

More than 4.7 million people have died from COVID-19 since the first cases of the novel coronavirus were registered in 2019, and many countries still live under severe restrictions intended to curb its spread.

But COVID-19 vaccines have helped some wealthy states return almost to normality while others are yet to receive vaccine doses in large quantities.


Among those seen by other scientists as potential winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine are Hungarian-born Katalin Kariko and American Drew Weissman for their work on what are known as Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines.
 
I think after 56 pages of posts, this topic is getting annoying.

Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for life for the intentional lies he told.
Personally, I sympathise with the sentiment even if I disagree on sentencing specifics. Not sure why we need to say it on this forum though.

This thread must probably die, for the sake of the forum equilibrium - and its members mental health...
 
I think after 56 pages of posts, this topic is getting annoying.

Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for life for the intentional lies he told.
Personally, I sympathise with the sentiment even if I disagree on sentencing specifics. Not sure why we need to say it on this forum though.

This thread must probably die, for the sake of the forum equilibrium - and its members mental health...
What an utterly bizarre statement.
 
I see the US has now hit 700,000 deaths from Covid closing in on the estimated 750,000 deaths from the American Civil War.
 
The message here is its a supplement to vaccination not a replacement for it. Vaccination remains the primary level of defence against Covid-19.

 
Shame you never see data for the AZ vaccine over the longer term. Be ironic after all the bad press it got if it didn’t perform better in lasting longer than these two.

 
  • Like
Reactions: PMI
Labs in China’s Wuhan city dramatically increased the procurement of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) equipment in the second half of 2019, indicating that Covid-19 was “spreading virulently” months before the government reported the first case to the WHO in December 2019, according to a new report.

Data compiled by Internet 2.0, an Australian cyber security company, found that the Chinese government spent nearly twice the amount on PCR tests — used to detect certain viruses — in 2019, compared to the previous year. While China procured the PCR equipment for 36.7m yuan (£4.1mn) in 2018, it spent 67.7m yuan (£7.6m) in 2019.

Other medical experts also approached the conclusion drawn from the research with caution.

Dr Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said that he did not know the specific reason behind the increase in purchases in Hubei province at that time. But he added that the increase in purchases of PCR equipment in general is not surprising as it had become “the methodology of choice for pathogen detection”, even before the pandemic.

 
Hail Pfitzer - for their efficient vaccine (ok, that was a pretty silly joke).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom