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Facebook Now Censors Medical Questions They Don't Like Us Asking

7/21/2020

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  Today the Facebook censoring dept. just disparaged a medical professional who openly asked; "What if the quarantining the healthy doesn't save lives?".
  In basic high school logic, that statement is called a hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact, but a hypothetical.  Politifact, the anointed bearer of all things truthful, decided that hypotheticals like the one stated by the medical professional are not allowed.  The public is not supposed to ask; "what if". We are supposed to believe as fact, whatever the govt. decides is truth.
  Another question posed by the physician..
‘What if wearing a mask in public is not effective?’
Politifact also said; "This is inaccurate. Official guidance from public health experts says wearing a mask in public can prevent the spread of the coronavirus."
  This is a ramping up of academic censorship by facebook. It's an environment where some 'what if' questions will be punished. Not only will the person posting the questions be punished, but Facebook says that if the group doesn't step in and punish the group member, then Facebook will punish the whole group.


  In short... Questions are not claims. Questions are essential in higher ed learning. It's how we challenge each other to become better thinkers and avoid intellectual laziness. We must never let others do our thinking for us, but that exactly what Facebook says we must do, especially if our politics is not in line with the orthodoxy that Facebook demands of all discourse on their website.
​
  Youtube is doing similar censorship, but they are taking a different route in controlling content. A recent Oklahoma political rally to defend monuments was put on by a citizen group.  Youtube shut down the live feed because a white mother had an open carry firearm in the video frame.  Youtube said that their policy is now banning any live content with people bearing firearms.
  Nevermind that the same videographer ran a 2 hour live feed of a Black Panther Open Carry rally in the same city. Hundreds were carrying arms and they were predominantly black.  It's evidently just the white folk who are the problem with guns, in youtube's political agenda?
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  Here's the illogical rant that Politifact published and Facebook accepted as empirical proof that a set of Questions are false claims of fact.
Fact-checking a California reopen protest video

In this April 17, 2020, file photo, protesters demonstrate against stay-at-home orders that were put in place due to the COVID-19 outbreak, in Huntington Beach, Calif. (AP)

Daniel Funke

By Daniel FunkeMay 14, 2020

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

  • A popular Facebook video shows a Southern California doctor giving a speech at a protest demanding local officials reopen the economy.

  • The speech contains several misleading and inaccurate claims about the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, the severity of the virus and how to slow its spread.

Protests calling for state and federal governments to reopen have become a source of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.

A May 7 clip on Facebook shows a doctor giving a six-minute speech about California’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. In it, the doctor makes several misleading claims about the severity of the virus and the efficacy of social distancing and face masks.

"My name is Dr. Jeff Barke and I’m here representing thousands of physicians across the country whose voices are being silenced because we don’t agree with the mainstream media and the experts who are telling us what to do," he says at the start of the video.

The article was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

(Screenshot from Facebook)

Using Google Maps, we determined that the location of the video is the steps of the Riverside County government office in downtown Riverside, Calif. Protesters congregated in the city, which is about 55 miles east of Los Angeles, on May 5 to demand county supervisors lift local stay-at-home orders. Barke is a physician who runs a primary care concierge service in Newport Beach, Calif.

While some of Barke’s claims are accurate, several of the claims are misleading or false. We fact-checked five of them below.

‘What if quarantining the healthy doesn’t save lives?’

This is inaccurate. We rated a similar claim False.

The science behind social distancing is clear: The novel coronavirus primarily spreads via person-to-person contact. So the less contact you have, the less likely you are to spread or contract the coronavirus.

That’s the reasoning behind several state stay-at-home orders, including California’s. And, while it’s difficult to assess the exact impact of social distancing policies, data and preliminary research suggest they’re working.

According to numbers published by the Los Angeles Times, the seven-day average of coronavirus deaths per day has remained relatively constant since mid-April. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a statewide shelter-in-place order March 19. 

RELATED: To stop coronavirus in its tracks, here’s your guide to 5 degrees of separation

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center used a mathematical model to measure the effectiveness of social distancing measures in a mid-sized American city like Seattle. An early release of the upcoming study notes that "while social distancing interventions were in place, 20% of new cases and most hospitalizations and deaths were averted, even with modest reductions in contact among adults."

Still, social distancing and self-isolation are just stopgap measures until there is a treatment or vaccine for the coronavirus.

"It’s important to emphasize that we’re not out of the woods yet," said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in his May 12 testimony to the Senate. "We need to stay vigilant with social distancing. It remains an imperative."

‘What if wearing a mask in public is not effective?’

This is inaccurate. Official guidance from public health experts says wearing a mask in public can prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

In an email to PolitiFact, Barke sent us two articles as evidence for his claim: one from CNN and one from Real Clear Politics. Both highlight how, in the early days of the pandemic, public health officials did not advise healthy people to wear face masks because there were shortages for health care workers treating COVID-19 patients.

However, that guidance has changed.

The CDC now advises anyone who goes out in public to wear a mask. Since infected people may not show symptoms for up to 14 days, the goal is to prevent them from unwittingly spreading the coronavirus through coughs and sneezes.

Face masks do not block some very fine particles in the air that may be transmitted by coughs or sneezes. That means they’re not a reliable way of preventing someone who’s wearing one from contracting the airborne coronavirus particles and getting COVID. 

RELATED: To fight COVID-19, CDC now says wear masks in public

But, since masks do prevent the spread of larger respiratory droplets, they are effective at preventing someone from spreading the virus to other people. Different kinds of face masks offer varying degrees of protection.

Many health care providers use N95 respirators, which filter out at least 95% of airborne particles. Generic surgical masks are also effective at blocking respiratory droplets. 

However, the CDC does not advise the American public to use either kind of mask as a COVID-19 prevention measure, since there have been shortages around the country. Instead, it advises people to wear cloth face coverings in public. 

"Given the current crisis, and lacking an alternative, many layers of densely woven fabric would be the most effective, because it allows for lots of voids in the layers where particles can be trapped," Richard Peltier, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, previously told PolitiFact.

‘Never in the history of this great republic have we quarantined the healthy’

This is inaccurate. While official federal policy on social distancing is new to the coronavirus pandemic, similar measures were taken at the local level to contain the spread of the 1918 influenza. And research shows they worked.

A 2007 study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School and the CDC found that the greatest reductions in weekly death rates due to the influenza occurred in cities that implemented measures like quarantine, self-isolation, school closures and social distancing. New York City was one example.

"Typically, individuals diagnosed with influenza were isolated in hospitals or makeshift facilities, while those suspected to have contact with an ill person (but who were not yet ill themselves) were quarantined in their homes with an official placard declaring that location to be under quarantine," the authors wrote. "New York City mounted an early and sustained response to the epidemic and experienced the lowest death rate on the Eastern seaboard."

RELATED: Laura Ingraham wrong about 'no real scientific basis' for social distancing

Another study, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came to a similar conclusion. The authors found that cities that employed early, layered interventions had death rates 50% lower than cities that didn’t take similar steps.

"Non-pharmaceutical interventions have been shown to help reduce the overall number of cases and virus-related mortality," David Hamer, professor of global health and medicine at Boston University, told PolitiFact.

‘The fatality rate of this virus is in the ballpark of a bad seasonal influenza’

This is misleading. While it’s hard to estimate the precise fatality rate of COVID-19, public health experts have said it appears to be higher than the seasonal flu.

As evidence to support his claim, Barke sent us three links: one to a post on a job site for biotechnology jobs, one to a post from Medical News Today and one to a story on a website called Just the News. While they all address the difficulty of nailing down an exact fatality rate for the coronavirus, none of them prove Barke’s claim.

According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the case fatality rate of COVID-19 is 6% in the U.S. They derived that statistic by dividing the number of deaths by the number of confirmed coronavirus cases.

That’s an imperfect measurement, as many mild cases of COVID-19 go unreported. If those cases were counted, the case fatality rate would decrease. But, as we’ve reported, the death toll may also be higher than we know. 

RELATED: Is COVID-19 America's leading cause of death?

Given that uncertainty, there is no indication that the coronavirus has a similar fatality rate to the flu, which usually hovers under 0.1% and is calculated annually using a mathematical model. Available data suggest that it is more lethal than the flu.

"It is surprisingly mild only to those who were not listening to competent epidemiologists, and it is in fact considerably worse than seasonal flu," Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, previously told PolitiFact.

‘As we see unemployment increase to Depression levels, we also see suicide increase, we see domestic violence increase, we see child abuse increase, we see alcohol and drug abuse increase’

These claims are accurate.

In April, the U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7% — the highest level since the Great Depression. Businesses around the country were forced to close their doors to comply with stay-at-home orders, and 20.5 million people lost their jobs.

That economic uncertainty has correlated with a spike in mental health concerns across the country. 

The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, a Texas nonprofit, created models that show, as the economy continues to worsen because of the pandemic, suicides and drug overdoses will also tick up. That’s because researchers have established a link between economic instability and mental health problems.

Experts also say the coronavirus pandemic has created the circumstances for an increase in domestic violence and child abuse. 

The New York Times reported on how hotlines and authorities around the world are getting more domestic violence calls. The American Psychological Association says that’s because "stress and social isolation can raise the risk of domestic violence."

"Before the pandemic, a survivor or victim could flee a violent situation by staying with a family member, going to a shelter or filing a protective order with the police," the organization wrote. "For many, such options aren’t easily available right now."

That risk extends to instances of child abuse, which organizations like the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network have said are rising as children are isolated with their abusers. RAINN saw a 22% increase in calls to its hotline by the end of March, NPR reported.

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    David Van Risseghem  is the Publisher of SoonerPolitics.org. The resource is committed to informing & mobilizing conservative Oklahomans for civic reform.  This endeavor seeks to utilize the efforts of all cooperative facets of the Conservative movement...

    ​"No politician 'checks off every box" in your list of issues. You have to prioritize and use personal discretion regarding every current and future issue that you can imagine. Then you have to also judge integrity & consistency. A candidate's openness to study the issues & courage to think for themselves. Then you need to review their honesty & work ethic.  I respect any voter's decision, when they've informed themselves and took voting seriously." - David Van Risseghem
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 SoonerPolitics.org is committed to informing & mobilizing conservative Oklahomans for civic reform & restored liberty. We seeks to utilize the efforts of all cooperative facets of the Conservative movement... Content of the diverse columns are solely at the discretion of the dozens of websites who create the content.   David Van Risseghem  is the founder of this platform.
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