(work in Progress)
One of the big tendencies is to "cancel" fake news. and put shackles on social media platforms. It is far more dangerous to give authorities to ban or regulate social media than learn "how to read" it.
(In response to a repeat clip going viral even though the issue was clarified and rebutted statement, I explain , in example what I means by "how to read" whatsapp post. Yes, we must indeed raise our interaction to the level of Whats Apps University.. )
"This was an old press briefing by WHO . It was in response to a direct question if the direct opposite was true.. it was a a hour briefing and this question came up in the fortieth meeting.
[13/06, 15:49] Joep: Who listens? And especially to the whole thing? 😩
[13/06, 15:53] Joep : WHO is one of the few institutions we can rely on for facts, not fear, about the Covid-19 epidemic. ☮️😊❤️
[13/06, 15:55] John: Also media people should know how multilateral agencies operate. the experts, the rapporteurs.. .. So they should be a little careful when they report, especially when it is something so sensational...
[13/06, 16:06] John: this is a generalised problem with the scientific method, and peer review system.. and after the Climate Change IPCCC, another method of appointing panels to evaluate and give brief on each of their findings has become the method. Even episodic data is evaluated and spoken about as episodic data. It is left to the scientific journalists, and scientific departments of governments to interpret these and take decisions for their wards. I have not seen the guardian article.. I will read it after this..
[13/06, 16:13] John: It is not the brief, but an extract which makes "appears to be rare" to "very rare" in the headline. Even the first clip in foxnews used it taken from a half-word, and looping it twice.
[13/06, 17:27] Johna: It was a 45 min press conf. at 31 minutes, Emma Farge asked about asymptomatic patients. Maria replied that there are two scenarios: One is how asymptomatic cases are identified in the first place. Most tests are conducted following contact tracing, and truly many have very mild symptoms. But there is little follow up done for those who are asympotomatic, so data is scarce.. and from the little data there is, she says, it "appears to be rare" that they have passed on to other. She then added we would do better to follow up with the symptomatic patients as they transmit much more and therefore .. more sense following up those cases. All in all I listened to most of the press conference, and I did not get the impression that she was saying that all asymptomatic positively tested patients rarely transmit the disease. She had gone into great detail about what she called "truely asymptomatic" positively tested persons, and said that onward transmission from them "seems to be rare".. I thought it was a very reasoned response to the question also she is the Technical Lead, COVID emergency response. And at the beginning of the press conference they say their job is to review scientific information from all over the world, and evaluate it and generally give public health advice. Their job is not to speculate, but give leads for public health officials to decide upon. So, I still stand my first reaction that the channels have taken bits of response, and put it out as if it was a "farmaan" or directive. I say that journalists should be happy that they get such details, so that they can make reasonable conclusions. The same is not the case of the daily briefings, now suspended, by the central health ministry. As far as model are concerned, they are looking at different models for collecting data, appreciating the differences, and pointing them out.. epidemiology is making sene of the data, and different models give you different projections on different things. One cannot be equated with the other.. and from the little that I heard.. they are equidistant from different models. And here she was trying to say what she meant by a symptomatic.. and clearly said that each one has their own understanding of what asymptomatic is.. so she alsway quality it in terms of "mild symptomatic" and "truly unsymptomatic" and then gave her judgement of truly unsymptomatic.. and then said whay they would recommend following up of the mild and heavy cases, because theri contact tracing would give more result and help breaking the transmission more than the other. Tehir case was that different countries have different capacities to do contact tracing, and they seem to be suggesting that if falling short of resources, follow up case which are symptomatic. rather than asymptomatic.. The reason why I am going into this carefully, is that all of us need to learn how to decipher news, espcialy since we are in social media days. Rather than ban social media, I would rather educate people on how to read news.. and also how to train students of journalsim to write.. Actually we at the media labs are trying to get young people to do consious media consumption and production.. because these days they are producing and forwarding more than consuming.. They just let a thing pass as past.. and move onto the next event.. Sorry, if I imposed this on you guys, but I am going to use this interaction in my class.
[13/06, 17:37] Joe Pinto: One reason why Trump had to back-track on his "disinfectant" comment was that he had crossed what we call the conmon-sense line.
(yet there are many people in India who use turmeric as an anti-septic/disinfectant orally, to good effect at least to "reduce the viral load" or some "non-COVID" symptom.)
[13/06, 17:41] Joe Pinto: An aside: After Trump's decision to get the USA out of funding WHO, we will see a lot of attacks on the WHO. The commonest trick is to misrepresent what a WHO spokesperson says and hope that U can get away. Watch out: we will see widespread sniping at WHO to justify that WHO has lost credibility…
Thank you for explaining in detail the scene in total perspective.
I agree with you that reading selective passage/s on WhatsApp is many times dangerous.
I replied that we should take this (fake news, twisted quotes, hate speech etc) as a given, and build our ability to take a reasoned view, rather than lament that it is dangerous, because the latter is more dangerous for democracy. It is only when we "slow down" and "respond appropriately will the "right wing" which thrives of instant and reactive media will be contested.. I have been discussing these kind of issues with our younger lot, who tend to take "flight" rather than "fight", and that to me is the third tragedy of this kind of media.. They also need to see that the Left is not the same as the Right in the mud-slinging.
Response from DK.. Why we need to Avoid watching too much of breaking news & panel discussions on Indian TV news channels now a days! Specially local channels.
The notorious concept of Zohnerism
Zohnerism - all about twisting of simple facts to confuse people.
In 1997, 14 year old Nathan Zohner presented his science fair project to his classmates, seeking to ban a highly toxic chemical from it’s everyday use.
The chemical in question? Dihydrogen monoxide.
Throughout his presentation, Zohner provided his audience scientifically correct evidence as to why this chemical should be banned.
He explained that dihydrogen monoxide:
- Causes severe burns in while it’s in gas form
- Corrodes and rusts metal
- Kills countless amounts of people annually
- Is commonly…