[_heimdall]

We can't have free speech if anyone has the authority and power to identify and silence what they consider lies.

Flat earthers are an easy example as a vast majority of people understand that the earth is in fact not flat. You seem to take that as an example of why we can't allow people to share such ideas, of given air time you worry that more would believe it. There's an easier answer though, people know the earth is a sphere despite the flat earth idea being out there. The idea gets little air time because so few people think its possible or true.

Silencing an idea gives a certain air of feasibility to it, one in charge does need to bother silencing something that is obviously false and easily disproven.

Moving your argument to anything more widely considered than flat earth and the line between lies and truths is much less clear, and therefore the line of where speech should be silenced is much trickier. Covid should have made this clear, health officials and governments have walked back on almost all of the ideas that they claimed to be dangerous lies during the pandemic response. Something unclear can easily be branded as a lie by one with power and a microphone, that doesn't mean it is a lie though and definitely doesn't mean that we all still have free speech rights if the people in charge can silence us.

[mschuster91]

> Silencing an idea gives a certain air of feasibility to it, one in charge does need to bother silencing something that is obviously false and easily disproven.

Allowing an idea or a viewpoint to be part of legitimate media discourse gives an even larger air of legitimacy - the so-called "Overton window" [1]. The far-right across virtually all Western countries has been very successful in expanding that window and shifting the idea of where the "center" lies very far to the right.

An example here from Germany is Beatrix von Storch, who called for allowing the police to shoot even at refugee children attempting to cross the borders back in 2016 [2], leading to major national outrage. Nowadays, articles of border police actually shooting on refugees don't even make the headlines any more, it's just a "this also happened" line.

> Covid should have made this clear, health officials and governments have walked back on almost all of the ideas that they claimed to be dangerous lies during the pandemic response.

There are only two major things that turned out to be actually wrong: that "ordinary" cloth masks protect against covid (which indeed was a lie, to prevent people from hoarding masks needed for healthcare and some sorts of employment) and that vaccines provide sterile immunity (they didn't in the end, but early data from when these statements were made suggested that this were the case and many people didn't realize that science can and does improve over time).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

[2] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/fluechtlingskrise/beatri...

[3] https://www.profil.at/ausland/eu-migrationspolitik-die-bruta...

[_heimdall]

> Allowing an idea or a viewpoint to be part of legitimate media discourse gives an even larger air of legitimacy

When you say "allow", what do you mean exactly? I'm not sure why a legitimate media outlet would give air time to the idea of the earth being flat, for example. No one has to allow or disallow this, other than those working for the news outlet and deciding what they want to present.

> There are only two major things that turned out to be actually wrong: that "ordinary" cloth masks protect against covid (which indeed was a lie, to prevent people from hoarding masks needed for healthcare and some sorts of employment) and that vaccines provide sterile immunity (they didn't in the end, but early data from when these statements were made suggested that this were the case and many people didn't realize that science can and does improve over time).

There were plenty of other examples. Corona viruses mutate frequently, this was known well before Covid but the lie was repeated to explain why vaccines would work. Two weeks was never going to stop the spread, another lie that would have been clear to anyone with a basic knowledge of novel pathogenic spread. Herd immunity was not a realistic goal, Fauci admitted later that his targets for vaccine uptake were kept lower than realistic because he didn't think people would find the real numbers feasible. Ivermectin is not just a horse dewormer, though reasonable to think it wouldn't help with Covid it has human uses and saves countless people from river blindness. The lab leak hypothesis is, and was, a real possibility despite the campaign to brand it as dangerous and xenophobic.

I could go on but you get the point. There were much more than 2 lies pushed from the highest levels during Covid. Often they may have had good intentions, but that doesn't really matter in the context of free speech or lies in my opinion.

[mschuster91]

> When you say "allow", what do you mean exactly? I'm not sure why a legitimate media outlet would give air time to the idea of the earth being flat, for example. No one has to allow or disallow this, other than those working for the news outlet and deciding what they want to present.

I'm German. We have quite the extensive list of stuff that's banned from public discourse - it's mostly "old Nazi stuff" related obviously like Holocaust denial, but in recent years there have been quite the few additions, especially around conspiracy myths relating to antisemitism [1], war crime denial/downplayment [2] or "from the river to the sea" when it's related to Hamas [3].

Personally, I support this - it makes it clear for everyone what is and what is not considered acceptable part of democratic discourse.

> Corona viruses mutate frequently, this was known well before Covid but the lie was repeated to explain why vaccines would work.

Vaccines did and do work. Yes, people still died of Covid even with vaccinations or vaccinations against different strains, but at significantly lower rates than without the vaccines. It's been quite the time since the last reports of hospitals having to resort to use fridge trucks as makeshift morgues [4].

> Two weeks was never going to stop the spread, another lie that would have been clear to anyone with a basic knowledge of novel pathogenic spread.

Two weeks was indeed short, but four weeks was enough to crush at least the first wave of COVID in Germany [9]. I'm reasonably certain that, had we kept up the response intensity and agility at that level and coordinated it internationally, the following waves would have been much, much less severe.

> Herd immunity was not a realistic goal, Fauci admitted later that his targets for vaccine uptake were kept lower than realistic because he didn't think people would find the real numbers feasible.

Yeah, thank COVID deniers and antivaxxers for that one - there are quite the few countries who managed to get nearly everyone vaccinated [5]. When the President shills horse dewormer or shining UV lights into one's arse [6], that sets an example for the general population - and not a very good one. Of course, the ideal vaccination target would be close to 100%, but even lower targets massively help at stopping the spread.

> Ivermectin is not just a horse dewormer, though reasonable to think it wouldn't help with Covid it has human uses and saves countless people from river blindness.

Trump and large parts of the political (far) right shilled ivermectin explicitly against covid despite there being no evidence that it would actually help against covid. I can't find it any more because Google has gone down the drain, but IIRC the positive correlation of ivermectin with Covid was in populations that suffered from worms, so the patients got better as their body didn't have to fight covid and parasites at the same time.

> The lab leak hypothesis is, and was, a real possibility despite the campaign to brand it as dangerous and xenophobic.

People didn't just see it as a possibility. The President actually called COVID "kung flu" as a result of the theory cropping up, and his followers didn't waste time in (pun intended) trumping up [7]. I distinctly remember people even calling for war or other retaliatory action against China - it was more than justified IMHO to push back hard on all of that, if only to prevent a repeat of the shameful events during WW2 [8].

[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/bhakdi-antisemitismus...

[2] https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/volksverhetzung-voe...

[3] https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/hamas-parole-river-...

[4] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/07/us/new-york-coronavirus-v...

[5] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1203308/umfra...

[6] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-wants-bring-light-insi...

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/technology/how-anti-asian...

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

[9] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19-Pandemie_in_Deutschla...

[_heimdall]

I think you and I actually agree more here than it seems reading the thread.

I don't agree with the idea of having specific ideas legally banned. Though being from the US I am used to the idea of having free speech and am pretty well wired to oppose laws that limit speech. I don't see any problem with a community (country in this case) coming up with speech laws that they agree with. I wouldn't consider Germany to have free speech as a right, though that may very well be by design as I'm not sure if that's even considered to be a thing.

Where we diverge here is in specific examples of lies during the pandemic response.

> Yeah, thank COVID deniers and antivaxxers for that one - there are quite the few countries who managed to get nearly everyone vaccinated

At least in the US, herd immunity claims were the fault of health leaders rather than those opposed to the vaccines. Early on Fauci frequently quotes around 60% vaccine uptake as a threshold for herd immunity. As the vaccine rollout began his number kept climbing, ultimately leading to him admitting that the earlier numbers were lower on purpose as 85-90% would have seemed unreasonable to the public. He may have been worried about how it abti-vaxxers would respond, but it was Fauci setting those targets which he knew were lies.

I only brought up Ivermectin because there were specific lies being told about it from the top. I totally agree there was no scientific reason to think it would be effective against Covid, I saw infrequent claims of its use as an antiviral but never saw clear data. The lie, though, was branding it as a horse dewormer. That's more a lie of omission as it isn't only a horse dewormer, but a lie none the less.

With regards to the lab leak hypothesis, I wouldn't begin to justify or defend Trump or any of his supporters. They're free to believe and say whatever they want, I can simply ignore it or try to show how they're wrong in a specific topic (same for Biden supporters or anyone else, dumb isn't party-specific).

That said, justifying a lie by pointing to a dangerous idiot isn't a good precedent in my opinion, and doesn't change the fact that they were lies. Health officials colluded to write papers and push a PR campaign to discredit the idea and anyone considering it. They knew that gain of function research of covid viruses was going on in the Wuhan lab and that a leak was possible. They also knew they had absolutely no evidence to support a zoological transfer.

Trump may well have been spouting his own lies, I honestly don't know if he can tell the difference between truth and lies, but my point was simply that many in charge, including those with degrees and credentials that claim to be signs of expertise in the field, knowingly lied about many, many things during the pandemic.