I continue to suffer from the worst cough I’ve had in recent memory, but in the spirit of keeping the plague chronicle at least limping along until my health returns (I hope by the weekend), I draw your attention to an analysis of tweets discussing the risk of Mpox among children and young people in school by Benjamin Knudsen, Tracy Beth Høeg and Vinay Prasad.
The authors looked at Twitter accounts bearing medical or public health credentials tweeting about the (basically non-existent) risk that Monkeypox posed to children between May and October 2022. Their search criteria yielded a corpus of 262 tweets from 188 different credentialed accounts, 215 or 82% of which “overstated or exaggerated the risk of [Monkey]pox to children or young people in the school setting”. A mere 47 or 18%, meanwhile, managed to provide accurate information.
Healthcare professionals and academics – precisely those people held to represent ‘The Science’ – had the least accurate assessments; journalists, simply by managing to be merely hit-or-miss, achieved far higher reliability.
What is more, tweets categorised as “inaccurate” or “exaggerated” accumulated vastly more likes, as hysterical twitterers with medical credentials have vastly more followers.
Experts, far from being impartial oracles, are in fact self-interested careerists, and we all live in the world that Eric Feigl-Ding has made. Public health gurus and social media virus understanders only have relevance when people are panicking, and exaggerating the risks that viruses pose to children is one of the simplest ways to get people to panic. It’s also, unfortunately, one of the most harmful and destructive messaging strategies anybody could imagine.
This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“Tartan army don’t socially distance”.
Like those Scotland fans at the pub in Aberdeen when Scotland qualified… good for them anyway. Maybe we could learn something from them?
I notice stamping and clapping instead of singing and shouting at footy matches doesn’t seem to have caught on. I wonder if any Scots will take any notice of the nut jobs who said they shouldn’t go to Manchester?
“Bloomsbury staff must be vaccinated”.
Seriously, what jobs will be left for us second class citizens in apartheid Britain? lying government scum. Even plumbers who occasionally do a job in a care home have to comply if they want to keep their job, apparently.
Against Vaccine Passports is a worthy cause, but there seem to be precious few businesses in their directory. Early days.
Anyhow, such things could be a lifeline in apartheid Britain.
There’s a similar site called openforall with a lot of businesses on it, but there doesn’t seem to be a search function, so not easy to use.
“Covid secure wedding”.
I tell you now, we are no way “out of this” as long as such crap continues.
Followed by a socially distanced honeymoon?
I thought that was normal?
I’m due to attend a wedding soon but I’m having severe reservations. The couple aren’t too obsessive but other family members are. I’m absolutely through with all this crap so it’s going to be….interesting.
Go anyway, and when any of the vaxxers get a bit snarky, demand to know what they’re so afraid of if they’ve been vaccinated? If their vaccine works, then they’re at no risk from you, unless they don’t believe the vaccines work, in which case, why did they have a potentially cytotoxic poison injected into their veins?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Du2wm5nhTXY
Spike protein is very dangerous, it’s cytotoxic (Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Bret Weinstein)
“One in four Covid patients hospitalised while vitamin D deficient die”.
Tallies with what some of us have been saying for ages, and explains a lot – including why Norway and Finland appear to have done so well.
Sir Simon Stevens as Sancho Panza….his faith in Quixote’s imaginary world clearly wavering……..
So Saint Ardern got the Holy Snake Oil without pain. Amen, O Most Holy One.
Soon all Kiwis will have been jabbed, amen amen.
And then they will open their borders,will they?
Only to other jabberwocks, for sure,
And then we’ll see how effective the snake oils really are.
Or if the shots do snicker-snack!
Hope the cunt dies
Agree.
she got the saline one obvs – lets see if she keels over or gets some hideous rash all over her face within a week of getting it – can’t risk the people in charge of this awfulness not being alive and kicking to be in a position to exert their authority and keep that madness going until the job is done
The risk/benefit analysis is swinging round to favour giving the AstraZeneca jab to people in their 30s, according to MailOnline
Yeah, right. All my friends in their 50s who got covid, and there are quite a few, were all absolutely fine and no-one went near a hospital. If you are in your 30s and get covid, you will be fine and won’t go to hospital. If however you get a blood clot you might need medical assistance, I would suggest.
This is dangerous propaganda and dangerous manipulation of statistics, if ever I saw it.
I wonder if the lazy incompetent journos have read about the record levels of post vaccine mortality among young adults in Israel. Or even care.
Absolutely disgusting and shameful. Why would LS highlight this article except to expose its deceitfulness.
Precisely because it is deceitful?
I’m not upset at seeing this kind of article, except at the politics behind it.
Indeed, the stats they’re trying to push in that article are amazing. Looking at the comments it seems no one is being taken in by them. For a start the figures don’t take into account the comorbidities of the ICU/hospital intake.
Trying to make a case using data points of 1.5 vs 1.9 per 100,000 is crazy. Approx 9m 30-39yo in the U.K. so 1.5 equates to 135 people and 1.9 171 people.
How many of those 171 would be morbidly obese? How many of those 135 would be perfectly healthy?
As predicted in April.
Ah but now they claim they can treat the blood clots. So that’s all right then.
Andrew Lloyd Webber backing down in the face of mild bullying from the govt is disappointing if predictable. Businesses rebelled in Italy and I believe largely got away with it, and Italy is a much more heavily policed country than the UK.
As I am apparently as ‘dangerous as a drunk driver’ I don’t really care what this twat does.
Spineless weirdo
the obvs bought him off with some kind of a bung or something – way they have bought off the bulk of the UK population with their furlough, business grants [which will never be repaid] and eat out to help out etc
He wanted to help the government by using the ‘passports’ as a show of ‘defiance’ but obviously not go enough tickets to push that one
Fat old cuck without testicles is all mouth and no trousers? Say it isn’t so !!!!
The hand wringing about the Tartan Army from the Daily Fail was hilarious. More of this please !
Was quite interesting also that the Daily Fail is now trying to scare under 40’s into taking the shot and doing the Governments dirty work for them.
How can an increase from 0.8 to 1.9 every 100,000 cases be regarded as significant? I’m amazed they didn’t have a headline claiming over 100% increase !!!!
Number of healthy people, aged 0-40, who died within 28 days of a positive test in the past 10 weeks I hear you ask? 2 !!!!!
OMFG
Clownworld !!!
supposedly “healthy” people. As was broadcast to the world last weekend, just because you appear to be in peak fitness doesn’t mean there’s not something potentially fatally wrong with you.
Relative risk reduction is their playpen. The zombies are all in the playpen, unaware that there’s a world outside the barrier of lies.
Have “dipped in” to GB news on and off since it opened and perhaps I’ve been unlucky but I was expecting a albeit more moderate tv version of TR, but, oh dear, it comes over as a “all day breakfast tv” station featuring the usual “brain dead” content you would expect from daytime tv and the one show.
What do my fellow sceptics think?
Sadly I agree, had high hopes but the presenters talk over each other all the time and it’s just irritating to listen to and the content while less biased than that if other outkets us pretty much drivel.
Haven’t heard that they’ve had any of the alternative experts on regarding lockdowns or the vaccines, but then, as you say, I only dip in and then pretty quickly dip out.
Lozza Fox was on in the evening a couple of nights ago – good interview – made good case, plus Andrew Neill the other evening also made the case well and concluded with “so the public health emergency is clearly over” which was heartening, but otherwise would tend to agree – less biased than other MSM and the talking over each other and low production values are a bit irritating
Yes, I have occasionally hit an interesting bit, but overall it is pretty dire so far.
Agreed. I had to retune my Freeview recorder to get it and soon realised I needn’t have bothered
I’ve been similarly unimpressed so far. Their only plus point is to have proper interviews with people who’d never get invited onto other MSM news channels except to get shouted over and accused of being some sort of -ist.
Dan Miller’s piece in the CW is a must read, as ever.
The image about who is really in charge is also worth sharing….
best article I have read yet
I thought the country was already thoroughly trashed by the government and gullible arseholes.
“Brits in 30s now more risk of Covid than blood clots from AZ jab” – The risk/benefit analysis is swinging round to favour giving the AstraZeneca jab to people in their 30s, according to MailOnline”
There we go. Right on time.
Who could possibly have predicted that?
Just a basic observation. Nothing particularly new, but illustrative.
I’m sitting in a pub, waiting for a meal.
I was challenged about a mask on entry. Well – I guess they have to.
“Exempt”
But – then – ”Have you anything to prove it?”. A year on, FFS.
I restrained myself – I have every sympathy with serving staff. But I think that the steam from ears was noted.
Two things :
– The sheer absurdity of the interior mask regulations (putting on masks for a piss, otherwise no masks etc etc) are so absurd that anything with a brain would fall about laughing rather than observe them.
– The reactions of my companions : “Don’t make a fuss” as I (quietly) fumed.
We are truly fucked.
WEF twitter page promoting books the other week.
I wonder if Bloomsbury will be selective, under instructions what to publish.