Brainwashed morons recently displaying their low IQs.
The segment at the end of All In last night was disheartening to say the least, but shows the extent to which a significant proportion of Americans have become brain-fucked by the Right's endless misinformation and propaganda. The segment detailed the work of one NBC news reporter examining the toxic effects of propaganda and misinformation on too many gullible people. These people then become infected with the mind virus being spread by FOX, Limbaugh and their ilk, to the extent it's believed the disease is exaggerated or even non-existent. A "liberal lie" and attempt to bring the Maggot -in- Chief down.
As Janice spotted one guy on the tube with a sign asserting 'COVID 19 is a Lie' she delivered a typical "Janice" response: "I'd just like to force that fool into an ICU, grab a contaminated intubation tube and force it down his bloody throat!" Okay, you go girl, tell it like it freaking is! No holding back!
On the All In segment the NBC News reporter noted that Dr. Hadi Halazun opened his Facebook page to find a man insisting to him that "no one's dying" and that the coronavirus is "fake news" drummed up by the news media."
On the side of the enlightenment and sanity, however, we have The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists acknowledging that the COVID-19 pandemic is akin to a slow moving nuclear war or disaster, e.g.
Recognition of this by Scripps infectious disease researcher Kristian Anderson, led her to acknowledge (WSJ, March 26, p. A8):
"Life is not going to be back to what we consider normal for years to come. We need to figure out how we are going to function as a society for the next three years."
One would think even the dumbest Trumpie conspiracy wacko would get that, but as Hadi discovered, it is tantamount to trying to convince a flat Earther the planet is spherical. Hadi, making the usual assumption that reason can penetrate the brain of a Trump zombie, tried to engage and explain his firsthand experience with the virus. It was all for naught as one might have expected. The reason is that it is well nigh impossible to penetrate the irrational armor of a conspiracy wacko. And I deliberately choose that term as opposed to "conspiracy theorist". Why?
In previous blog posts I noted Barbadian psychologist Pat Bannister's categorization of those who invoke conspiracies and how she differentiated them:
1- Conspiracy analysts
2- Conspiracy theorists
3- Conspiracy crackpots or wackos
2- Conspiracy theorists
3- Conspiracy crackpots or wackos
At the top of the hierarchy were conspiracy analysts, such as Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Harold Weisberg, Richard Charnin and others (like yours truly)). These were serious people possessing some measure of intellect who brought their scientific, mathematical and other aptitudes to the investigation of multiple aspects of putative real conspiracies like Iran-Contra and the JFK assassination. These people put in real man hours and actually published their work in authoritative media (e.g. BOOKS - real books!) and respected forums as opposed to spreading bunkum through half-assed posts in the lowest dreg regions of the net, like 4chan and 8chan.
By contrast, the "conspiracy theorist" put forward conspiracy conjectures but didn't advance adequate evidence or documents to support them. Or, if such were advanced, they didn't meet elementary scientific standards for acceptance, including consistent data selection.
By contrast, the "conspiracy theorist" put forward conspiracy conjectures but didn't advance adequate evidence or documents to support them. Or, if such were advanced, they didn't meet elementary scientific standards for acceptance, including consistent data selection.
The bottom feeders of the classification scheme were conspiracy crackpots or wackos, like Alex Jones, e.g.
Jones is most famous for his off the wall bunkum that the Sandy Hook/Newtown massacre was a federal "false flag" operation. Those 20 kids weren't really slain, they were merely actors- as well as the teachers- in an elaborate script to befuddle the public and make them demand gun confiscation across the land. Now, compare that gibberish to the current psychotic bunkum, e.g.
- The virus isn't real it was created by the "fake" news media
-Hospitals aren't really being overrun with critical care patients, they are part of the plot to spook the public
-Bill Gates is behind the vaccination effort because he really wants to use the shots to inject microchips into people's bodies to control them,
In Dr. Hadi Halazun's own encounter with the conspiracy crackpots, a Facebook user insinuated that he wasn't a real doctor, saying pictures from his profile showing him at concerts and music festivals "proved it." This NY cardiologist- trying to enlist facts to break through the psychotic bubble, and informed him:
"'I am a real doctor. There are 200 people in my hospital's ICU!'"
The reply from the cretin? "Give me your credentials!.'
According to Dr. Halazun:
"I engaged with them, and they kicked me off their wall. I left work and I felt so deflated. I let it get to me."
Dr. Halazun, like many other health care professionals, is dealing with a bombardment of misinformation and harassment from conspiracy wackjobs, some of whom have moved beyond posting online to pressing doctors for proof of the severity of the pandemic. In one case, back in March, a yahoo in farm country actually told a reporter that he has yet to actually SEE a person dying of the so-called virus. To him, it was basically an unreal fantasy unless he could get up close and personal to death.
No surprise this level of detachment from reality is taking a toll on medical heroes across the country. They put in 12-14 hours a day of blood, sweat and tears to save patients and are greeted afterward by rank denials and disbelief. . Halazun actually related to the NBC reporter that dealing with conspiracy wackos is the "second most painful thing I've had to deal with, other than separation of families from their loved one."
Several other doctors shared similar experiences, saying that they regularly had to treat patients who had sought care too late because of conspiracy bunkum spread on social media and that social media companies have to do more to counteract the forces that spread lies for profit.
Dr. Duncan Maru, a physician and epidemiologist in Queens, New York, said he had heard from colleagues that a young patient had come into the emergency room last week with damage to his intestinal tract after having ingested bleach. The incident occurred just days after President Donald Trump suggested that "injection" of disinfectants should be researched as a potential coronavirus treatment.
Ignorant, overfed buffoons who fancy themselves journalists (like Holman Jenkins Jr.), might laugh and lay all blame on the media for "misinterpreting" Trump, and not finally figuring out he mostly talks off the cuff, e.g.
But it's no laughing matter, and running interference for the Dotard does no one any favors. As Dr. Maru put it:
"Folks delaying seeking care or, taking the most extreme case, somebody drinking bleach as a result of structural factors just underlines the fact that we have not protected the public from disinformation,"
The structural factors in this case include Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which have struggled to contain the spread of misinformation, some of it coming from positions of authority, like Trump himself - now ready to concoct a conspiracy that the virus was created in a Chinese lab.
To be sure, social networks have taken a variety of steps in recent weeks to thwart misinformation, such as providing dedicated portals for vetted information from public health officials and banning content related to conspiracy ideations around 5G wireless technology. Despite the efforts, the distribution networks built up in recent years by fringe media personalities (e.g. Jones) and kooks on websites like 8chan have proven resilient.
Whitney Phillips, a assistant professor of communications who studies the spread of disinformation at Syracuse University, said the coronavirus outbreak offers a look at how conspiracy thinking is now, in some ways, more organized. As Phillips observed:
"With these conspiracy 'theories', the reason they're impervious to fact-checking is that they have become a way of being in the world for believers. It isn't just one narrative that you can debunk. It is a holistic way of being in the world that has been reinforced by all the other bullshit that these platforms have allowed people to consume for years."
Again, I'd merely correct the good professor that true theories are ultimately testable by the data, by facts. However, ideations - the term I prefer to use here, are not. Ideations are a combination of paranoid fantasies (such as the belief the Parkland victims - students were paid actors, to try to get lawmakers to take guns away) and plain old nonsense without any rational merit, period. (Such as Bill Gates wanting to use a vaccine to inject microchips into people. Only a devoted and congenital moron could buy that.)
Further, the organized harassment campaigns, lies and urban legends targeting doctors are a real-life symptom of what the World Health Organization dubbed the "infodemic" as the coronavirus started to spread throughout the world earlier this year. See e.g.
For his part, Dr. Halazun has since stopped engaging with the trolls on Facebook, some of whom claimed that "the hospitals are empty" and that the virus was part of a plot to vaccinate or microchip U.S. citizens. His choice was a wise one, given - as Dr. Pat Bannister once observed: "A psychotic ideation cannot be argued with. The only real treatment is electro-convulsive therapy...or a lobotomy."
Don't believe it can get worse? Trump is already planning a perverse PR blitz (as reported on All In last night) to argue the COVID death counts are exaggerated. This despite the fact they are actually much more likely under counted. Never mind, his zombies will latch onto any new nonsense to use as confirmation for their bilge and bullshit ideations.
Oh, and there's also mind rot for the "higher level" intellects too, in the WSJ's op-ed pages - which continue to be totally divorced (as if in a bubble of insanity) from its main news pages. Hence, one beholds the moron hack Joseph Sternberg ('The Coronavirus and Project Fear 3.0', p. A15 today) spewing crappola about the virus "not nearly as deadly as early data from China suggests" - despite now nearly 80,000 dead Americans. By contrast, the WSJ's main pages (A1, A8) present a veritable compendium (including anatomical images) of the sundry ways this virus destroys the body from ravaging the lungs to "the brain, the kidneys, heart, vascular, digestive, gut and nervous systems". And yet a fool like Sternberg actually tries to claim the "policy makers" (scientists) are "guided less by the science than by a perceived public demand for a draconian response". No you can't make this shit up. And this is why U.S. deaths from COVID-19 will indeed surpass 100,000 by the end of this month.
Now for some levity: Janice's favorite cartoon:
See also:
Oh, and there's also mind rot for the "higher level" intellects too, in the WSJ's op-ed pages - which continue to be totally divorced (as if in a bubble of insanity) from its main news pages. Hence, one beholds the moron hack Joseph Sternberg ('The Coronavirus and Project Fear 3.0', p. A15 today) spewing crappola about the virus "not nearly as deadly as early data from China suggests" - despite now nearly 80,000 dead Americans. By contrast, the WSJ's main pages (A1, A8) present a veritable compendium (including anatomical images) of the sundry ways this virus destroys the body from ravaging the lungs to "the brain, the kidneys, heart, vascular, digestive, gut and nervous systems". And yet a fool like Sternberg actually tries to claim the "policy makers" (scientists) are "guided less by the science than by a perceived public demand for a draconian response". No you can't make this shit up. And this is why U.S. deaths from COVID-19 will indeed surpass 100,000 by the end of this month.
Now for some levity: Janice's favorite cartoon:
See also:
And:
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