[HN Gopher] Facebook suppressed report that made it look bad
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Facebook suppressed report that made it look bad
Author : underscore_ku
Score : 214 points
Date : 2021-08-21 15:51 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| saltmeister wrote:
| oh no!
| bryan0 wrote:
| The most-viewed headline in the quarter was:
|
| > "A 'healthy' doctor died two weeks after getting a COVID-19
| vaccine; CDC is investigating why."
|
| Yeah not a great look.
| classified wrote:
| ...as a result of their enragement-optimizing algo. Now they
| are getting a report showing the effects of their own
| manipulations. What a surprise!
| ineedasername wrote:
| That death has since been investigated and determined to be
| natural causes.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/...
| ctoth wrote:
| Does anyone else enjoy the linguistic contortions this
| article must engage in to spin this poor doctor's cause of
| death as "natural?" Even writing this comment makes me feel
| like some sort of weird anti-vaccer but seriously what the
| heck, words have meanings and I am going to push back against
| this! Sometimes, vaccines, just like literally anything else,
| have negative side effects. It sucks, but to pretend that oh,
| this was just a natural death? This seriously makes people
| look insane. What the heck possibly motivated you to post
| this and spin it like that? Did you read the link you posted?
| Or did you merely post this because it was sufficiently
| ridiculous and you are making a meta point?
| ineedasername wrote:
| The medical examiner classified it as natural and a causal
| relationship with the vaccine couldn't be determined.
| Normal healthy people die of sudden illnesses sometimes,
| and with millions upon millions of vaccinations then
| "sometimes" is occasionally going to be "shortly after
| getting vaccinated."
|
| Without more evidence, those occurrences merely corelate in
| time, in which case going further than making it a mere
| foot note is a _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ mistake.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| There are already too many people out there afraid to get a
| vaccine.
|
| Unless we know for sure, why stir up the pot especially
| with speculation.
|
| A few weeks ago I got an email from an acquaintance that
| was in perfect health, and young, from Marin General
| hospital.
|
| They put him on a ventaliator because of Covid.
|
| He is out now, but will be on blood thinners for 6 months.
| He had blood clots in his lungs. 23, and an exercise nut.
|
| Every member of his family were anti-vax, until they saw
| him through the glass.
|
| They all have the first shot of Pfizer.
| deworms wrote:
| No shortage of fake scary stories whenever anyone
| suggests that there might be anything wrong with the
| vaccines, but discussing that possibility is a huge
| taboo, no matter how probable it may be. At this point
| even if they're massively flawed you'll be forbidden from
| suggesting that.
| ctoth wrote:
| I mean obviously anyone with any grasp of numbers will
| look at the balance of probabilities, note that Vaccines
| have an incredibly low risk compared to Covid, and get
| vaccinated. This does not mean that we should literally
| lie about those risks when they do occur!
|
| When you think you're smarter than someone and so you're
| going to shape their information in such a way that they
| do what you want them to? This is called manipulation. It
| is a dark art. it is evil. Don't do it.
| deworms wrote:
| Depending on the demographic you're in the vaccine risk
| might not be worth it.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| There is literally no demographic where the mRNA vaccines
| are risker than COVID-19. None.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| You have to agree its somewhat confusing when governments
| (in the UK anyway) are pushing hard while you have
| professors like Sir Andrew Pollard (Paediatric Infection
| and Immunity Oxford)
|
| Stating in Parliament that the herd immunity will never
| happen.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/delta-
| variant-...
| ineedasername wrote:
| I don't find it confusing. Even experts can disagree, and
| even if we never, or can't ever, reach herd immunity
| there is still a perfectly good reason for someone to get
| vaccinated for their own safety.
| makomk wrote:
| It's not that inconsistent from a UK perspective, I don't
| think. The government is still pushing vaccination hard
| because it protects the people being vaccinated from
| hospitalization and death and reduces the rate at which
| Covid spreads, both of which guard against hospitals
| being overwhelmed, but the idea of vaccinations stopping
| Covid altogether is pretty much dead here. Official
| policy is that we'll have to learn to live with the
| virus.
|
| I know the US media and medical establishment has still
| been pushing hard on the idea that they could have herd
| immunity and stop the virus spreading if it wasn't for
| the evil anti-vaxxers ruining it for everyone, but that
| seems to be founded more in partisan politics than actual
| evidence. There's also a lot of pressure on any US
| publication that runs articles about how ineffective the
| vaccines seem to be against people catching and spreading
| Delta not to do so.
| mionhe wrote:
| I may be totally wrong here, but I think the point
| they're trying to make is that a lot of people are
| hesitant to get the new vaccines, despite how well
| they're working and the (for the most part) lack of side
| effects, because they keep hearing conflicting
| information about those vaccines. It's hard to feel
| confident about something when people who are for
| something are busy saying that there are _no_ negative
| side effects at all, while others are pointing out that
| 's untrue in some cases.
|
| Rather than withhold information, it's better to treat
| people as adults, and give them the whole picture so that
| they can make a decision with all the available
| information. The example of your acquaintance is a good
| one, I think, to demonstrate how people are willing to
| change their mind when they have more of the facts. (In
| this case, the reality of how bad things can be, and I
| would guess more accurate information about the vaccines
| from doctors on-site.)
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'd love if people were just giving the whole picture and
| the facts. It seems to be difficult to find said truth
| behind all the lies and misinformation out there.
| hellgas00 wrote:
| That's not exactly what the article you post says;
|
| "Dr. Gregory Michael's official cause of death stemmed from
| complications with immune thrombocytopenia, or ITP, a blood
| disorder caused by an immune reaction, after getting the
| Pfizer vaccine, the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner
| Department said."
| slownews45 wrote:
| What's interesting is that an immune reaction is the GOAL
| of a vaccine. How did they turn this into "natural causes".
|
| BTW I'm fully vaxed and looking forward to my booster. But
| I'm not dumb enough to imagine there is no side effect to a
| vacine that is designed to generate something in my blood
| to help me fight covid. Blood / heart stuff seems like a
| somewhat natural area to find occasional side effects?
| cxf12 wrote:
| You don't have to imagine it. Side affects are tracked by
| the CDC.
| Chazprime wrote:
| Color me surprised.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The actual NY Times article which broke the story is also on the
| front page:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28257958
| gojomo wrote:
| Alt headline: To support public health priorities, Facebook
| withheld report that risked spreading vaccine fears.
|
| It's all how you spin it!
| [deleted]
| thethethethe wrote:
| In other news: water is wet
| esalman wrote:
| Surprised Pikachu face.
| hhsub wrote:
| They should've amplified it instead. Posted it on the login page.
| marto1 wrote:
| So they are at the same time both neutral and heavily biased.
| Isn't that true innovation - being the first company to exist in
| a quantum superposition :-)
| paulddraper wrote:
| They're hardly the first.
|
| Every media company is unbiased-but-not.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Marketing vs reality
| joe_the_user wrote:
| FB suppressing the accounts of the NYU researchers was a deeply
| problematic.
|
| FB choosing not to release a report that they, themselves
| generated, was FB acting as any corporation does.
|
| If every company was assigned an internal watchdog whose
| reports they couldn't suppress, I'd be fine with that. But
| that's not happening and companies have the freedom to publish
| or not publish whatever information they choose.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Wait? So FB needs a report to make it look bad?
| peterlk wrote:
| For anyone else who looks at the comments first, there is nothing
| to see here. I was hoping for a link to the original report, but
| this article just states that some VP didn't want an internally
| generated report to go out because the top shared content wasn't
| a good look.
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(page generated 2021-08-21 23:01 UTC)