Alex Berenson goes home devastated - Berenson permanently suspended from twitter

Im not asking. wrote:

rojo wrote:

I do think questioning the narrative is useful. Particularly when it's coming from big pharma. I mean the idea that we are already agreeing to get a 3rd booster shot when we don' tknow if that's needed is kind of crazy. I was already to get one until you posted that NY Times article.

Thanks.

It’s incredibly telling that Rojo doesn’t respond to The Unkle or any anti-vax conspiracy theorists, but to someone who’s on the side of FACTS, which is that the vaccine works. Cool, Rojo

I think Rojo sees Unkle and Co as obviously wrong and probably finds it more interesting to debate/foster discussion with people who know a little about what they're talking about. That is, the debate is more around the center: school-closures, vaccine-mandates vs. encouragement, boosters, other policy positions that generally have reasonable people on both sides.

Berenson found himself sometimes in these debates, but mostly was just stoking fringe conspiracies that this is/was all a big lie and vaccines will kill us all or something. Also importantly, he never once changed his mind when presented with contrary evidence -- he just moved onto the next grift.

Harambe wrote:

Im not asking. wrote:

[quote]rojo wrote:

I do think questioning the narrative is useful. Particularly when it's coming from big pharma. I mean the idea that we are already agreeing to get a 3rd booster shot when we don' tknow if that's needed is kind of crazy. I was already to get one until you posted that NY Times article.

Thanks.

It’s incredibly telling that Rojo doesn’t respond to The Unkle or any anti-vax conspiracy theorists, but to someone who’s on the side of FACTS, which is that the vaccine works. Cool, Rojo

I think Rojo sees Unkle and Co as obviously wrong and probably finds it more interesting to debate/foster discussion with people who know a little about what they're talking about. That is, the debate is more around the center: school-closures, vaccine-mandates vs. encouragement, boosters, other policy positions that generally have reasonable people on both sides.

Harambe thinks people hang on his ridiculous speculation.

Stick to pontificating on who you assume died of Covid. It shows your crazy so much better.

The Unkle wrote:

Harambe wrote:

It’s incredibly telling that Rojo doesn’t respond to The Unkle or any anti-vax conspiracy theorists, but to someone who’s on the side of FACTS, which is that the vaccine works. Cool, Rojo

I think Rojo sees Unkle and Co as obviously wrong and probably finds it more interesting to debate/foster discussion with people who know a little about what they're talking about. That is, the debate is more around the center: school-closures, vaccine-mandates vs. encouragement, boosters, other policy positions that generally have reasonable people on both sides.

Harambe thinks people hang on his ridiculous speculation.

Stick to pontificating on who you assume died of Covid. It shows your crazy so much better.

Shut up already

Harambe wrote:

I think Rojo sees Unkle and Co as obviously wrong and probably finds it more interesting to debate/foster discussion with people who know a little about what they're talking about. That is, the debate is more around the center: school-closures, vaccine-mandates vs. encouragement, boosters, other policy positions that generally have reasonable people on both sides..

If he thinks they’re wrong then he needs to say they’re wrong. All I see is him tell pro vaccine people that they’re wrong. SAD

The Unkle wrote:

Harambe wrote:

It’s incredibly telling that Rojo doesn’t respond to The Unkle or any anti-vax conspiracy theorists, but to someone who’s on the side of FACTS, which is that the vaccine works. Cool, Rojo

I think Rojo sees Unkle and Co as obviously wrong and probably finds it more interesting to debate/foster discussion with people who know a little about what they're talking about. That is, the debate is more around the center: school-closures, vaccine-mandates vs. encouragement, boosters, other policy positions that generally have reasonable people on both sides.

Harambe thinks people hang on his ridiculous speculation.

Stick to pontificating on who you assume died of Covid. It shows your crazy so much better.

+1

I think you have Harambe on the ropes. A lot of your points he can't argue against and he starts obfuscating & rationalizing. Of course, he always resorts to his ad hominem attacks & insults (nothing new there). Your maturity in discussing such a controversial subject shows. Harambe is a thirtysomething going on eighteen. Maybe his contract with pharma will end & he'll just fade away. Lol.

This brings us back around to the original question.

If we jump into the way-back machine, before the Internet, there were news media gatekeepers called editors. Anyone could write a letter to the editor and I don't think anyone held the position that the newspaper was obligated to print every letter it received.

Social media platforms began as "editor-free" zones, and that was amazing for those of us who grew up in an era of gatekeepers. Every "letter to the editor" gets printed and disseminated world wide!!! For people in my demographic, it was really a kind of revolution.

However, people now in their teens-twenties never had editors. They grew up in the editor-free environment, but many of them are now asking for editors to filter what they see. It seems that a lot of the disagreement about this issue results from a "generation gap." Pre- and post-Internet people are coming at this issue from completely different media habitats...and each group seems unable to figure out why the other could possibly hold their respective positions.

I'm a pre-Internet person. Many of us probably tend to err on the side of "the less editorial control, the better." We see (saw?) the Internet/social media as a place for us to get a bunch of different points of view, and feel like we can recognize the whackos when we see them, and, therefore, there's no need to block them. In other words, to someone like me, the fact that someone is saying stupid stuff is not grounds for silencing that person. Any private company, I agree, has the "right" to do what they want, but the original question asked whether this was good or bad.

Harambe, is your position that it's good purveyors of misinformation be blocked because you feel that a good number of social media users lack the ability to filter out the noise?

Harambe wrote:

DontFeedTheTroll wrote:

I think this falls into the category of "technically accurate, but misleading".

As it happens, most vaccines don't provide sterilizing immunity. The smallpox vaccine and measles vaccines do, but the annual flu shot that we all know and love does not.

The fact that vaccinated people spread COVID far less than unvaxxed, even if the difference isn't 100%, makes his tweet misinformation.

No, it doesn't. His tweet is an opinion. Not every wrong opinion is "misinformation".

Harambe wrote:

Berenson has not been forecasting inasmuch as he has been deliberately misinterpreting real-time data to paint either a minimizing picture of COVID or to fearmonger vaccines.

I'd say Berenson' s main take is that Covid is (mainly) a deadly disease for the old and/or infirm and that society needs to take steps to reflect that. That's his world view. Sure 600,000?+ Americans have died from the disease but he'd say most of them are very old or had pre-existing conditions and the life years lost compared to other pandemics is small. You call that minimizing Covid, he'd say it's factual. So I can't read into his motives whether he's deliberately misinterpreting things or not. His world view is also total contrarian.

I believe he advocated for his mother to take the vaccine.

Granted most of his post are not making this distinction and he can express his views with hyperbole or crudely but he isn't come quack.

I'm not so sure why he's so adamantly opposed to the vaccine effective vs death narrative but I heard him when pressed on the radio what his critics would say and he said something along the lines of "they'd say I don't acknowledge enough the vaccine is effective against preventing death" so you could argue he doesn't give the full picture.

He's pointed out many problems with the vaccine (personally I am vaccinated and think the data shows it is still very effective against death), but sometimes will say them pretty crudely more along the lines "the vaccines doesn't work" rather than "the data for the vaccine is not nearly as effective as initially touted".

One could easily argue that Berenson's opponents have said things that aren't true as well. "if everyone would just get vaccinated Covid would be over narrative" isn't really true is it?. People express things crudely on the internet.

I generally support his ability to express his opinion on the internet on COVID, especially in light of how wrong many of the "experts" have been. The poster talking about how originally the Catholic Chuch was the only way acceptable to communicate with God was a good one.

Fauci and CDC originally said no need for masks. So if someone then advocated for masks they should have been banned from twitter too? Or only people who are wrong in one direction?

Even now twitter cracks down on people who saying masks don't work (which really might be a crude way of saying they are highly ineffective). If the cloth masks don't work that well, isn't that something people should know so they can take the proper precautions if they are afraid of getting Covid?

The CDC doesn't say to double mask or said if you were vaccinated you didn't need to wear a mask (until they reversed course). Should people who advocated for double masking been banned for going against CDC guidelines?

And the "consensus" opinion isn't often as consensus as one things. What if the CDC and WHO disagree on something? People have been emailing me throughout COVID saying there is blood on my hands because we generally allow covid discussion. Discussion and debate I think leads to better outcomes. Although I'm pretty sure at one point we were deleting posts with the lab leak possibility because all the experts said that was nuts. Now it is considered very plausible.

This article is interesting to look at 6 months later.

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

I would love to see the author and Berenson have a debate rather than Berenson being told he can't express his views.

wejo wrote:

He's pointed out many problems with the vaccine (personally I am vaccinated and think the data shows it is still very effective against death), but sometimes will say them pretty crudely more along the lines "the vaccines doesn't work" rather than "the data for the vaccine is not nearly as effective as initially touted".

One could easily argue that Berenson's opponents have said things that aren't true as well. "if everyone would just get vaccinated Covid would be over narrative" isn't really true is it?. People express things crudely on the internet.

I generally support his ability to express his opinion on the internet on COVID, especially in light of how wrong many of the "experts" have been. The poster talking about how originally the Catholic Chuch was the only way acceptable to communicate with God was a good one.

1) He hasn't pointed out "many problems." He has exaggerated, used incomplete data and speculated randomly to get traffic... it's called trolling.

2) He isn't kicked off the internet, he is kicked off of Twitter. Surely he could come to LRC and troll instead.

3) "Consensus" means more the realm of people who willingly engage with data and do not exaggerate for traffic lmao. The point is to discuss reality, not create it to feed your masses.

If you have lived through the whole range it is just as likely you have come to the conclusion that there needs to be more editors. The reason is that more is not better and the average person is not smart enough to discern misinformation. This has become painful clear. It can result in very dangerous behavior.

Fringe absurdity gets more eyes than the boring center. In the same way as news wants to sell you on fear and not being safe, online posters get a following by throwing out total crazy. Not because it is true but because it attracts attention.

I read lots of things wrote:

Harambe wrote:

The fact that vaccinated people spread COVID far less than unvaxxed, even if the difference isn't 100%, makes his tweet misinformation.

No, it doesn't. His tweet is an opinion. Not every wrong opinion is "misinformation".

So he’s either a gigantic moron who can’t make sense of painfully obvious stats

Or

He’s spreading misinformation knowingly.

Cool, what a useful pundit.

epo boosted wrote:

Coach Jeff ROC wrote:

Harambe, is your position that it's good purveyors of misinformation be blocked because you feel that a good number of social media users lack the ability to filter out the noise?

If you have lived through the whole range it is just as likely you have come to the conclusion that there needs to be more editors. The reason is that more is not better and the average person is not smart enough to discern misinformation. This has become painful clear. It can result in very dangerous behavior.

Fringe absurdity gets more eyes than the boring center. In the same way as news wants to sell you on fear and not being safe, online posters get a following by throwing out total crazy. Not because it is true but because it attracts attention.

My position is basically that if Twitter want to go after misinformation that’s good! Ideally they would be thorough and fair and come down on all political sides, but going after public health misinformation in a pandemic is undoubted good for the platform and honorable.

On a broader scale, I don’t see social media being nearly as monopolistic as many do (for many reasons), so I take zero issue with content moderation of all shapes and fairnesses in general. I’d prefer if there were widely used social networks with reasonable content moderation policies but I certainly don’t believe I have a right to that nor do the companies have an obligation.

epo boosted wrote:

If you have lived through the whole range it is just as likely you have come to the conclusion that there needs to be more editors. The reason is that more is not better and the average person is not smart enough to discern misinformation. This has become painful clear. It can result in very dangerous behavior.

Fringe absurdity gets more eyes than the boring center. In the same way as news wants to sell you on fear and not being safe, online posters get a following by throwing out total crazy. Not because it is true but because it attracts attention.

I'm not saying that I agree with you, but your position makes sense according to your perspective. If "the average person is not smart enough to discern misinformation," they are potentially vulnerable to engaging in "very dangerous behavior." From your position, preventing the spread of misinformation is ethical.

You know... it's kind of like...

The average person has a pre-existing condition called "not smart enough," so they are vulnerable to infection by "misinformation." Thus, everyone has a responsibility to "mask up" our online discourse to protect them.

wejo wrote:

I'd say Berenson' s main take is that Covid is (mainly) a deadly disease for the old and/or infirm and that society needs to take steps to reflect that. That's his world view. Sure 600,000?+ Americans have died from the disease but he'd say most of them are very old or had pre-existing conditions and the life years lost compared to other pandemics is small. You call that minimizing Covid, he'd say it's factual. So I can't read into his motives whether he's deliberately misinterpreting things or not. His world view is also total contrarian.

Rest of post snipped for length…

.

Wejo, a few thoughts on why Berenson is particularly Bad and not really representative of the good-faith contrarian side.

1) 650k excess deaths. Estimates I’ve seen suggest average years of life lost at 10! Plenty of people hospitalized and chronically injured on top of that! This is with 40% infected (roughly) after significant efforts taken to control the spread in most places in the US. It’s pretty easy to imagine 90% infected and something like 1.4 MILLION dead Americans. Berenson’s take is alarmingly callous and just wrong, in my opinion.

2) Nuance can be very important in a complicated and evoking public health emergency. If you have a large platform and you say “the vaccine doesn’t work” then that’s what you’re saying. Your words are consumed by millions before you’ll even get a chance to go “oops, let me clarify.” There’s no leeway for these kind of click-baity statements meant to elicit emotion more than convey meaningful emotion. Now, I know all sides had people saying stupid hyperbolic things but the simple answers are a) when you have 650k dead Americans the people on the “Covid is bad” side are generally closer to the truth and b) fearmongering vaccines is a particularly pernicious and harmful argumentative stance to take. Berenson manages to thread the needle of terribleness.

3) There are plenty of contrarians who aren’t actively working to prolong the pandemic (sorry that’s objectively what antivaxxers are doing. We have ICUs full all over the country and people dying because of it).

Francois Balloux is another decent example of someone with some pretty contrarian takes who clearly is still operating from a position of reason. I don’t agree with everything he says but almost all of it seems to be in good faith. Saying “vaccines don’t work” is decidedly, clearly, and rather despicably not.

Lastly, there are many valid criticisms that the CDC and WHO butchered the correct public health messaging. Somehow they managed to not pair this with minimization of mass death worldwide and fearmongering of the most effective tool we have to stop (or slow down, if you believe Berenson’s takes on waning) the pandemic. Good faith debate takes place all the time and Twitter doesn’t ban for it. Berenson left that behind before the first bodies were cold in NYC.

wejo wrote:

This article is interesting to look at 6 months later.

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

I would love to see the author and Berenson have a debate rather than Berenson being told he can't express his views.

A lot of good debate has been deleted here over the years with no explanation!

wejo wrote:

This article is interesting to look at 6 months later.

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

I would love to see the author and Berenson have a debate rather than Berenson being told he can't express his views.

that's rich coming from a site owner who routinely bans people for expressing their views.

I would LOVE to see Rojo and Wejo come out in support of vaccines and public health. INSTEAD, they do backflips to defend Berenson and go out of their way to point out the flaws of those who support facts and science, as in vaccines.

pathetic

wejo wrote:

People have been emailing me throughout COVID saying there is blood on my hands because we generally allow covid discussion. Discussion and debate I think leads to better outcomes. Although I'm pretty sure at one point we were deleting posts with the lab leak possibility because all the experts said that was nuts. Now it is considered very plausible.

pathetic that you go out of your way to criticize those who support FACTS, as in vaccines, instead of radical conspiracy theorists like The Unkle

Im not asking. wrote:

The Unkle wrote:

I think Rojo sees Unkle and Co as obviously wrong and probably finds it more interesting to debate/foster discussion with people who know a little about what they're talking about. That is, the debate is more around the center: school-closures, vaccine-mandates vs. encouragement, boosters, other policy positions that generally have reasonable people on both sides.

Harambe thinks people hang on his ridiculous speculation.

Stick to pontificating on who you assume died of Covid. It shows your crazy so much better.

Shut up already

Very clever response. "For a pro vaxxer" being the qualifier