Masks and dis- mal- information

It's no wonder people don't trust the "fact checkers." Anyone can read the label on the box of the masks we've all been wearing for 2 years. We can see the photo of the label which Politifact gives a "false." Then the checker does double back flips to tell us not to believe our eyes, or common sense. Or even me who told you almost 2 years ago there was no peer-reviewed research on mask efficacy and safety published before the current epidemic. I was checking every 2 weeks for anything that could justify muzzling children (aka child abuse) and loyal Americans. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

I also suggested two years ago using a mask to protect yourself if you are high risk with co-morbidities (like me), and I was ridiculed and declared a hater for not wanting to protect others. Yet, that is also now being promoted as a reason to wear flimsy masks by both the CDC and medical web sites.

Yesterday I was given a small N95 mask at Marc's, a grocery store, brand Moldex. Impossible to use and has staples next to skin. Probably meant to be stored at the workplace, but won't fit into a pocket or purse, or side tray in a car. There are 2 elastic bands for holding it to the head with collapse resistant Dura-Mesh® shell and soft foam nose cushion. It read, Warning: Misuse may result in sickness or death. IMO, if used properly you could suffocate.

Who controls the information that is supporting your beliefs and values?

There are many ways to interpret statistics for this lockdown, and this is just one of them--Case Fatality Rate--CFR. It is the political slant of the writer which determines which is selected. I'm a conservative Christian, so CFR supports many of my points. The Case Fatality Rate for the seasonal flu is about .1% to .2%.  That's higher than the CFR for Covid19.  By age, Covid19 looks very bad, unless you realize many or even most, of the people who were/are most at risk (in China it is 20%) are not in the labor force, and not in school. So why were the schools and the economy shut down?⁠

Most of the fatalities had co-morbidities. So why was the health system which managed those diseases for us put in peril? See the other methods at Ourworldindata.org to find the figures that match your level of fear and anxiety, your politics and your list to the left or right so you can be better informed than the Facebook and Google fact checkers and the Washington Post.
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I'm a retired academic librarian (Slavic studies, Latin American studies, agriculture, veterinary medicine over the course of 25 years) and although I've forgotten a lot, I do remember well that to the victor belong the archives. Whoever controls the information controls what you are allowed to know, even in your public library. And keep in mind that public librarians are 223:1, liberal to conservative, higher than the ACLU.   And right now, that is Big Tech. If they can shut down the most powerful man on the globe, the President of the United States, imagine how they can crush us!

Note: Case fatality rate, also called case fatality risk or case fatality ratio, in epidemiology, the proportion of people who die from a specified disease among all individuals diagnosed with the disease over a certain period of time. Case fatality rate typically is used as a measure of disease severity and is often used for prognosis (predicting disease course or outcome), where comparatively high rates are indicative of relatively poor outcomes. It also can be used to evaluate the effect of new treatments, with measures decreasing as treatments improve. Case fatality rates are not constant; they can vary between populations and over time, depending on the interplay between the causative agent of disease, the host, and the environment as well as available treatments and quality of patient care.

Case fatality rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths from a specified disease over a defined period of time by the number of individuals diagnosed with the disease during that time; the resulting ratio is then multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage. This calculation differs from that used for mortality rate, another measure of death for a given population. Although number of deaths serves as the numerator for both measures, mortality rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the population at risk during a certain time frame. As a true rate, it estimates the risk of dying of a certain disease. Hence, the two measures provide different information. (Britannica)

Lockdown computer model from 14 year old's science project

Maybe someone else would have come up with the same computer model for a lockdown and social distancing as a 14 year old girl did for her science project in 2006. But as of now, she's the only culprit. It had never been tried before, and for good reason. It would destroy the world economy and kill millions more than the virus.

Social Distancing for Coronavirus Has a History - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Also, the FB "fact checkers" still have a grey/black shield over my research on the lack of research about SKSAM and this virus (spelled backwards)

National Association of Black Journalists

The National Association of Black Journalists in partnership with Facebook is looking for emerging journalists to participate in fact-checking fellowships in U.S. newsrooms. That should be interesting given that there are many black conservatives and their opinions and stories are being ridiculed or deep-sixed. Hey, kids, you dance with the one who brought you whether black, white, or other. 

It's interesting that in the article it is referred to as a "fact checking industry." What? Race baiting and woke poking are also industries--with a few at the top doing extremely well. Journalism is all about facts? I thought it was about opinion. Daily Beast and WaPo call their opinion rags "news." How about the fact that more blacks voted for Trump than any Republican in recent history? Or, maybe that blacks were opening and investing in their own businesses at an unprecedented rate under this president, or that lower income Americans benefitted at a higher rate from the Trump tax cuts than higher quintiles? What about "defund the police" with BLM hurting blacks more than other groups by ignoring crime? Think they'll give that story a fail just because there is a black fact checker on fellowship.

If we must have racial balance in all professions, how about NFL, NBA and MLB? I don't see enough Asians and women on those teams.

Biden’s biggest lies—the pandemic, taxes, immigration, etc.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/08/bidens-greatest-hits/?

Biden falsely accused Trump of being late in imposing travel restrictions on China. In fact, the United States was not late getting off the mark compared with other countries around the world.

In his campaign kickoff speech on April 29, 2019, Biden falsely claimed that “all of” the tax cuts signed into law by Trump “went to folks at the top and corporations that pay no taxes.” Those with higher incomes reaped greater benefits from the tax law, but most households received a tax cut.

During a Democratic debate in January, Biden defended his 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, claiming the Bush administration “said they were not going to go to war” and only sought weapons inspections. But days before the vote, then-President George W. Bush said, “I hope this will not require military action, but it may.”

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that Biden sponsored received bipartisan support at the time, but it has since been criticized for some of its provisions, such as mandatory minimum sentencing, and its impact on mass incarceration. Asked at a CNN town hall to defend the crime bill, Biden contended that the law “did not put more people in jail, like it’s argued.”  Others say it exacerbated the situation.

Biden falsely claimed that Trump “asserted that immigrants would, quote, ‘carve you up with a knife.’” Trump said that about MS-13 gang members, not immigrants in general.

At least three times in February, Biden falsely said he was “arrested” 30 years ago while trying to visit Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, where the future leader of South Africa had been imprisoned at the time. But Biden later admitted that he was “stopped” at the Johannesburg airport — not arrested.

We don’t need fact checks on the nuzzling and hair smelling. We’ve all seen the videos.

Facebook fact checkers are actually censors

"I dig into the prevailing media narratives about coronavirus, including “fact checks,” that have themselves been proven false. You’ll be amazed at who Facebook is letting help censor information about China’s controversial Wuhan lab. (Hint: she’s a scientist who works at the lab…)"

There are a few investigative reporters left in the country. Sharyl Attkisson is one of them.

https://sharylattkisson.com/2020/04/facebooks-fake-coronavirus-fact-check-podcast/

Other good sources to confirm the liberal lies from Kelly Kullberg:

Just the News, https://www.facebook.com/JustTheNewsReports/

Luke Rosiak at Daily Caller, Kevin Mooney at The Daily Signal

www.InfluenceWatch.org by Capital Research Center

Fact checking Trump’s lies

"Do Trump’s tweets contain lies? Galli (Christianity Today article condemning Evangelicals who support Trump) himself gives no examples, but the Washington Post on December 16 carried an article, “President Trump Has Made 15,413 False or Misleading Claims over 1,055 Days.”

What exactly are these alleged lies?

Strongest economy? The Washington Post article contains a link to their “Track Checker” webpage, where the “lies” are listed by category. The most common one (repeated 242 times) is Trump’s claim that that the US economy is now “perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history.” But the Post says this is a lie because “By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton – or Ulysses S. Grant.”

What the Post doesn’t tell you is that it depends on what you are measuring. The total economic output of the United States in Eisenhower’s last year (1960) as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for inflation, reached a record high of $3.26 trillion. By 1968 (Lyndon Johnson’s last year) it had risen to $4.8 trillion. In Bill Clinton’s last year (2000), GDP was up to $13.1 trillion. The current projection for 2019 is that GDP under President Trump will reach $21.4 trillion. Therefore, judging by the total economic output of the United States, it is completely true to say that we are currently living in “the strongest economy in our country’s history.” Trump is not lying, but the Post is using some other measurement (such as percentage growth rate) in order to claim that Trump has told this lie 242 times."

One of my liberal Democrat relatives is supposed to be a whiz in math, yet he too makes this common mistake. Doesn’t adjust for inflation or doesn’t distinguish among rate, percentage, or number. It’s easy to lie for the fact checkers, too.

https://townhall.com/columnists/waynegrudem/2019/12/30/trump-should-not-be-removed-from-office-a-response-to-mark-galli-and-christianity-today-n2558657?

Is Snopes reliable?

Snopes, the fact checking source on the Internet, doesn’t always get it “right,” but they seem left to many conservatives because the right leaning people don’t check out stories they see on the internet and pass them along. The right makes it a cottage industry for them and keeps them in business. Facts are facts. Today I corrected a Mother Teresa quote on FB—the “Do it anyway” saying that you see everywhere on posters--for about the 10th time. It was written by Kent M. Keith in 1968. They (Snopes) cite their sources, and those can be biased—every source has some bias just by what it chooses to report or leave out. Also, keep in mind some responses called “Snopes” come from its “Forum” which is a discussion group, and not sourced. Snopes does editorialize, but so do I. There’s no reason for them not to have an opinion on the sources they find if it's positive about Trump or negative about Clinton.  There are other fact finding web sites, so you can always check more than one source (I often do), but 9 out of 10 times, Snopes is best.

About Snopes and other fact checking websites

I'm a librarian, and I've been impressed by Snopes' research, the on-line search operation conservatives hate.  The owners have never kept it a secret that they are a small operation.  When you go to the library you can get a lot better information asking one reference person who will go after your question with a good strategy, experience, and a gut feeling that develops over time (or you're the 10th person that day to ask), than you will if you try to google it yourself and look at the first 5 based on an algorithm that favors some advertiser. 

In my opinion, the reason people don't like Snopes is because they put faith in a really dumb viral story they saw on the internet, and get mad when it is disproven. There are more fact finders debunking right wing stories than left because the right seems to have so many gullible folks. (Better gullible than mean and destructive, right?) When I write a conservative blog entry, the screamers and nasties are usually liberals who call me every imaginable name--but they are really mad about the facts I cite. (My filter deletes people with bad manners.)

I NEVER share a story without checking it first, and probably 50% of the time there are errors or exaggerations--quotes from famous people seem to be the worst—why try to improve on Billy Graham or John Wayne?  It’s a mystery.

Facts don't belong to a political party, but politics do definitely influence which questions are answered. Is Snopes' ownership liberal?  Probably.  And librarians are 223:1 liberal to conservative, but most people still go to the library for information and pay taxes to support them.

http://www.rd.com/home/rumor-detectives-true-story-or-online-hoax/

When voting to increase your property taxes. . .

[Politifact.com] “We first checked with the Romney campaign, which said the figure came from the College Board, which produces an annual study of college costs. The College Board found that for the school-year 2008-2009, the average published tuition and fees for in-state students at public four-year colleges and universities was $6,585. By the 2011-2012 school year, it stood at $8,244. That’s an increase of slightly over 25 percent. So the claim has a grain of statistical truth.  “

Then Politifact goes on to do a different statistic—all costs—and claims since that cost is around 20%, the add is mostly false!  Also it was working with a Spanish language ad and didn’t like the translation.

Why put this in a campaign? It's about state supported colleges. Well, states are struggling to support our state institutions because they have all those mandates from the feds--and Obamacare will only increase that as more get bumped from employer insurance to Medicaid. That said, when I stroll across the campus at OSU, I can't believe the plush, lush, extravagant buildings and perks students of the 21st century have. College tuition and fees today are 559% of their cost in 1985. Makes medical costs look like a bargain.

Eleven AP fact checkers for Palin’s book

Did AP fact check Obama's book? Just point to the article. It used 11 on Palin. She must really be a threat.

Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine plus Calvin Woodward all contributed to the article “fact checking” her book. Mark Steyn said that equaled about l.8333333 errors/facts per writer. Surely, if all 11 actually read it they could have found more. I find errors in books and web pages all the time. Spent some time tonight at a FEMA site and found three errors within three clicks. And the facts they disputed? Not so much. They were really flimsy--like “railed against taxpayer-financed bailouts.” Please? Most Americans on both the left and right have done that.

Has AP in 10 months of brilliant journalistic analysis even come up with 11 criticisms of Barack Obama? Like his deficit which makes George W. Bush, the biggest spender up to Jan. 20, 2009, look like a penny pinching piker? Taking over huge segments of the economy? Calling the Cambridge police stupid? Not knowing how or when to salute? Bowing to foreign leaders? Or his marxist passion to redistribute wealth? Or how about that terrorist trial he wants in New York City? Don't bother to count. It was just a rhetorical question.

Has AP ever looked so ridiculous?