Another Trump COVID Lie

Trump’s remarks came during an Oct. 24 rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Trump, Oct. 24: If somebody’s terminally ill with cancer, and they have COVID, we report them. And you know, doctors get more money and hospitals get more money. Think of this incentive. So some countries do it differently. If somebody is very sick with a bad heart, they die of COVID, they don’t get reported as COVID. So then you wonder, gee, I wonder why their cases are so low.

This country and their reporting systems are really not doing it right. If somebody has a really bad heart, and they’re close to death, even if they’re not, but they have a very bad heart and they get COVID, they put it down to COVID. Other countries put it down to a heart. So we have to be — we’re gonna to start looking at things because you know, they have things back — they have things a little bit backwards.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trump-baselessly-suggests-covid-19-deaths-inflated-for-profit/

If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?

Will Rogers

 

New measures to curb the viral spread of pandemic misinformation

In the hopes of curbing the rampant spread of coronavirus misinformation, the WHO announced yesterday that it will grant Wikipedia free use of its published information, graphics, and videos in a first-of-its-kind collaboration.  This partnership also means WHO material will be part of the Wikimedia Commons, and can be reproduced or retranslated anywhere so long as there’s appropriate attribution.

Since the start of the pandemic, Wikipedia—once widely regarded as unreliable—has been a key resource for debunking misinformation about coronavirus. By contrast, researchers from Cornell recently found that President Trump was likely the loudest source of coronavirus misinformation during the pandemic’s early months. As a result of the president’s attitudes, many prestigious scientific and medical journals have published editorials denouncing his handling of coronavirus.

Who Checks the Fact Checkers

When circulating the information about Poynter.com, I was asked, “Who Checks the Fact-Checkers?”

My first response was -- use what I posted on my website https://mtskeptics.blogspot.com/2020/10/fact-checking-101.html  

However, I thought I would “google” the question to see if I could get a better answer.

I figured with the upcoming election that email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. would be Jammed with fallacious “information,” since one side or the other must lose. To avoid a lot of unnecessary hyperventilation, I would share what I find out. I hope people of either political persuasion would rather not hear misinformation that only substantiates their opinion. They prefer the truth. Maybe.  

FACT CHECKING 101

Poynter.com offers a FREE self-directed course in FACT CHECKING for Seniors. The course is very much apolitical and unbiased. However, I would not be surprised if when some people apply these lesson material to their favorite sources they find them full of mis- or dis-information and as a result think this course is biased or political.  It is. It is biased against the spread of garbage.

The course teaches the following checks and procedures:

• How to check who is behind the information

• What is the evidence

• What are other sources saying

• Lateral reading

• Smart keyword search and click restraint

• Using Wikipedia responsibility

• Reverse image search

I have been asked, "Who checks the fact-checkers?" Answer is - YOU! and this teaches you how.

Why do we see ghosts?

This story appears in the Fall 2020, Mystery issue of Popular Science.

By Jake Bittle ,October 6, 2020

Let's call it the Scooby-Doo effect.MC Wolfman

Are ghouls real? That depends. Current science can’t prove that there are spirits walking through walls or screaming below floorboards. Our spooky sightings, however, have certainly felt real. Humans have been spotting specters for as long as we’ve been around, and to some degree we can explain why. These seven mental and physical factors can account for almost any creepy occurrence—including some famous ones ripe for debunking—and help to make sense of our perpetual urge to sleep with the night light on.

Dying in a Leadership Vacuum

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.The magnitude of this failure is astonishing.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. This election gives us the power to render judgment. The truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs. 

New England Journal of Medicine.

Trump is a Major Source of Coronavirus lies

COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded alongside what the World Health Organization has termed an “infodemic” of misinformation. This study identifies and analyzes the most prominent topics of COVID-related misinformation that emerged in traditional media between January1 and May26,2020 based on a total sample of over 38 million articles published in English-language media around the world. To our knowledge, our analysis is the first comprehensive survey of the traditional and online media landscape on this issue. We found that media mentions of US President Donald Trump with in the context of COVID-19 misinformation made up by far the largest share of the infodemic. Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall misinformation conversation, well ahead of any other topics. We conclude that the President of the United States was likely the largest driver of the COVID-19 misinformation “infodemic”. Only 16.4% of the misinformation conversation was “fact-checking” in nature, suggesting that the majority of COVID misinformation is conveyed by the media without question or correction.

SOURCE:
Coronavirus misinformation:quantifying sources and themes in the COVID-19‘ infodemic’

 Sarah Evanega, MarkLynas, JordanAdams, Karinne Smolenyak

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/evanega-et-al-coronavirus-misinformation-submitted-07-23-20-1/080839ac0c22bca8/full.pdf  

The Cornell Alliance for Science,
Department of Global Development,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Cision Global Insights, Ann Arbor, MI