[_Understated_]

Well, in salmon30salmon's defence: the mainstream media are completely and utterly missing in action when it comes to COVID.

They only parrot what the gov tells them and investigate nothing these days.

There are countless credible scientists saying that we are getting this incredibly wrong on so many levels yet mainstream media does not mention anything other than government narrative.

When did you see any news coverage of criticism of the "vaccine"? I mean, on a scientific level, not government ineptitude at rolling it out.

Edit: I can't reply for some reason but here's a video talking about the "vaccine"[0] and here's the Great Barrington Declaration[1]. Here is criticism from the BMJ [2] stating that (according to my maths) it's only 19% effective... in addition, it's designed to TREAT the symptoms, not cure you... what kind of vaccine is that?

[0] - https://www.bitchute.com/video/edombs4NcvQ6/

[1] - https://gbdeclaration.org/

[2] - https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-...

[selimthegrim]

Which credible scientists? Levitt? Bhattacharya?

[disgruntledphd2]

That BMJ article he linked is relatively worrying, so much so that I may actually read the FDA reports for the Pfizer vaccine.

[selimthegrim]

See my reply above - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25826062

[salmon30salmon]

I love you and thank you for coming to my defense but please do not link vaccine distrust with my views. I trust the data and the science behind the vaccines and believe we need to be getting them distributed as soon as possible

[_Understated_]

No worries. Noted.

My point wasn't about vaccine distrust although that's part of it. It's more about not having a competent media that will at least say "we will question everything" and investigating along those lines. COVID is the prime example in my opinion so I provided links when asked.

[salmon30salmon]

I think it isn't the media not questioning, I think the media realizes that Covid is the gift that keeps on giving and they won't look that gift horse in the mouth.

It's like the trope about media coverage of plane crashes except instead of being an acute incident the media can play off of our fears day after day

[selimthegrim]

The comments on the blog in [2] rightly criticize his assumption of high false negatives in the symptomatic but excluded arm

[disgruntledphd2]

So, I went and followed the link (helpfully it goes to the correct table, though you'll need to scroll down a bit).

https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download#page=18

This is the first point where 300 odd people were excluded from the analysis because of protocol deviations. Worryingly, this number was much higher in the treatment group. While I hope that blinding would have prevented any motivated exclusion, it's still quite concerning.

His second main point (which is actually really interesting), is that there were 3500 cases of symptoms consistent with Covid-19 that weren't revealed by a PCR test. I'm not sure what to think of this (and note that this number swamps the actual numbers of confirmed cases by about 10x), except that it matches with anecdotal evidence I've seen around negative tests in the presence of symptoms.

The details of the second point can be found here: https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download#page=42

As a meta-point, the world would be a better place if more people clicked on linked and attempted to interrogate the soruces of things.

[selimthegrim]

I was referring to his second main point.

[disgruntledphd2]

I only see one comment giving out about it, and it reveals an absolutely touching faith in peer-review practices.

[DanBC]

> When did you see any news coverage of criticism of the "vaccine"?

There's no credible criticism of the vaccine. Can you point to any?

[fatsdomino001]

I suspect what you deem credible is substantially different from what's credible to people who are critical of the covid mrna treatment.

[_Understated_]

But there is NO criticism at all... credible or not.

[yazaddaruvala]

What do you mean “credible or not”?

Are you suggesting the media knowingly discuss information they cannot find as credible?

[_Understated_]

Credibility is in the eyes of the viewer: what you view as credible may not be what I view as credible.

And, to that end, whether you would agree with the criticism or not, there is none anyway. No questioning or investigation by media of any sort around COVID science. That was my point.

Even if a hillbilly right-wing conspiracy theorist came onto CNN to talk about aliens or lizard-people that would at least be something but there is nothing but acceptance that what the government says is the ONLY answer.

[yazaddaruvala]

> but there is nothing but acceptance that what the government says is the ONLY answer.

To be fair there is a lot of non-government and also non-media sources of information about mRNA in general and mRNA vaccines.

Understanding how things work helps me make my own decisions about the safety. This talk was one of the better ones I found. It is clearly meant for other researchers or as a university lecture[1], so if they say something you don’t know or understand do pause often (I definitely had to) and get educated about the related science.

My conclusion: Most of this stuff is relatively old science. I was even taught parts of it in high school decades ago (i.e. not politicized). The only unknowns for me are the COVID specific spike protein, and potential overproduction/overreaction by my cells. Given many people (including some friends) have now been exposed to this specific spike protein, it is clearly inert from a non-COVID perspective. And therefore overproduction/overreaction seem to be not a big deal, given the inert nature of this specific spike. And of course now we have data from many people taking the vaccine that it’s not an issue.

Anyways, I don’t distrust the media, but I subscribe to “trust and verify”. Regardless of why you want to verify, the internet allows you to become somewhat educated on most topics in about a week. And if you wanted to spend 3 months you could even become very educated[2] on that specific topic. Might as well take advantage of it for yourself.

[1] https://youtu.be/tVh1s06H_nw

[2] it’s even possible to become an expert over the internet, but would require multiple years and enough dedication that’s it’s probably simpler to just go to college for the subject. But it’s definitely possible, so leverage it as much as you can.

[fatsdomino001]

Well there is criticism, it's just not being reported on - but I think that's your point.

Overall the degree to which information is being controlled right now is pretty alarming.

[_Understated_]

See my edit above... couldn't reply at the time for some reason