The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here:
As the Atlantic lawyers were making their case, YouTube took down a widely-circulated video about coronavirus, citing a violation of “community guidelines.”
The offenders were Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massahi, co-owners of an “Urgent Care” clinic in Bakersfield, California. They’d held a presentation in which they argued that widespread lockdowns were perhaps not necessary, according to data they were collecting and analyzing.
“Millions of cases, small amounts of deaths,” said Erickson, a vigorous, cheery-looking Norwegian-American who argued the numbers showed Covid-19 was similar to flu in mortality rate. “Does [that] necessitate shutdown, loss of jobs, destruction of oil companies, furloughing doctors…? I think the answer is going to be increasingly clear.”
So I definitely think the YouTube censorship is way over the top. Poor arguments tend to get rapidly destroyed on the internet.
The doctors had a bit of a point with the fact the lockdown is causing a lot of hardship and a lot of hospitals aren’t busy at all right now. So I can sympathize with that.
However they were also really sloppy with the way they were extrapolating numbers. They were basically saying something to the affect that California has run 625,000 tests and had 50,000 positive cases. That is about 8%. So they extrapolated that to come to the conclusion that 8% of Californians had Covid-19 at some point. Which of course is bonkers because those tests weren’t done on a random sample of people.
Anyway they further extrapolate to say that if 8% of the population of California had Covid. California has 39 million people so 8% of that is around 3.1 million people. And out of all those people that supposedly had Covid only 2,000 or so died. So the death rate is actually 0.06%.
You can find the video on Bitchute if you look for it.
The internet is usually really good at debunking garbage arguments, so I don’t understand why they think the censorship was necessary.
I am not surprised that YouTube will take down items that run counter to the prevailing attitude. Medium has been doing the same, Facebook and Twitter as well. “Progressives” like the proles to get the propaganda that they support. Counter propaganda is forbidden. Now, most propaganda is garbage, from all sides. The lazy will take only what they hear and run with it. It benefits the “progressives” to have their chosen gatekeepers prune out anything that might make the proles think.
All that said, I support those doctors due to their frustration at the response, and the likely hood that they could lose their business because of the way the state is responding to the crisis. Their presentation was emotional, but flawed. And it allowed the people who hate them, and the ideas that they put forward, to pick their argument apart and discredit it.
The majority being in favor of the stay at home order does not make it legal.
Just as if the majority were in favor of stringing Whitmer up from a lamppost wouldn’t make it legal.
Taibbi hits the nail on the head.
Journalists know nearly nothing about the subjects they write, and care even less. Their job is to sell even more ignorant people crap they don’t need, whether it’s a quack cure for impotence or fascism with Chinese characteristics.
It’s 2020.
Anybody who is doing important work in any field and has something to say of general interest can say it on social media.
Any statesman who has something to say can say it on social media.
Anybody who wants to advertise his quack cure for impotence can do that online too.
What in the name of all that’s good and decent do we need journalists for? Not one in ten thousand has the courage to actually speak truth to power or do more than recycle press releases. (The exceptions are routinely murdered by Deep State agents.)
Forget teaching them to code. Put them to work picking vegetables. Code can be written in India.
Tiabbi wrote a long article that did not say this:
“Media is corrupt and provably so.”
Wrote a lot of words that made a lot of excuses and avoided the true problem.
Three words. Media is corrupt.
In Minnesota, the death toll is 78% Nursing Home and Assisted Living residents. 78% of about 300 deaths.
One single facility has 47 deaths so far. 47 out of 280 beds, and about one residents hundred are still sick. I don’t think we succeeded in flattening the curve successfully. But we have flattened our economy.
I think most people can decide a prudent course for themselves. The two doctors made some interesting points that will undoubtedly become the common wisdom after some reflection: this is the first time I am aware of where the healthy populace, rather than sick people, have been quarantined on a very large scale. They didn’t lock up the people of Venice when a new ship came into the harbor. They made the ship stand offshore for 40 days. And lockdowns are hideously expensive and have other health costs. Further, the lockdowns for the most part are indiscriminate–every town and village, every age group, every business–except groceries, lottery tickets, and marijuana here in Illinois. You don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Furthermore, the virus is being passed around anyway, so we get the worst of everything.
The two doctors made it very clear that they were extrapolating based on what they had seen. They made it very clear that they had a financial interest in a policy shift, as indeed we all do.
The one question that they asked, which I think every public health official should be asked, is what are we trying to do? Lockdowns appear to slow the transmission, but they don’t eliminate the virus. Isn’t this a case of if you don’t get it now, you will probably get it later? So we are stretching this out, but not eliminating it, because we can’t. We are going to have to live with it. When I was young, we still had polio. We lived with it. We are going to have to live with this.
Let’s get on with life.
censoring differing opinions would be ok because a virus is killing .0002 % of humans?
yikes
especially since about 80 % of the so called covid deaths are not covid19 deaths
CF, if you are talking total world population you can add another zero, 0.00002% maybe, because as we know numbers from NYC and other areas in the US are inflated to get more money from the federal government. They were not only told to inflate the numbers they were given an incentive to do so.
The truth is not acceptable.
Every time I click to get back to the main page I get a database error.
Bemoaning censorship on this blog is absurd.
Yeah, the comment is interesting. Is that you, Robert or Kate, commenting?
The 1st response under that comment nailed it:
You either believe in freedom of speech or you do not.
Boo-hoo!
If fact, the linked comment is interesting only in the push back in the responses below it. Matt Taibbi has carved a nice niche as an honest lefty who believes in the classical liberal value of free speech. See J.S. Mill, On Liberty. Good for Matt; good for the rest of us.
No doubt the Media is totally one-sided.
But Conservatives, I’ve found to my chagrin, are quite happy to censor.
Different shibboleths. Same blinders.
Lol “censorship”. One private company (youtube) removed content they did not agree with. The doctors from California were given a prime time spot on Fox News (the most watched news network in the US), the video is still easily found searching Google, links on Facebook, etc. As near as I can see, YouTube is the only platform to remove this video. But even YouTube has left the doctors’ several other videos up and available for viewing.
Yet you all are talking like it’s some sinister shadowy plot to banish these doctors to Siberia lol
Do I like the fact that YouTube removed the video? Nope. Was it politically motivated? Absolutely. Should a private company be obligated to give a platform to anyone and everyone even if they disagree with them? Nope.
If Rosie Barton and Heather Malick decided they wanted to upload some loony left wing pro-Liberal content here on Smalldeadanimals should Kate be obligated to post it? Of course not.
The docs have the right to say whatever they want – they most certainly do NOT have the right to force any private company to distribute those views.