mekka okereke :verified:
*sigh*
*Deeper sigh*
*Sighs so deeply, exhales all breath and falls off couch*
The levels of irony here: A news headline saying that most Black Americans believe "conspiracy theories" about US institutions, including the news. But when you look at the "conspiracy theories" that Black folk believe, they are supported by data.
🤡
Including the "conspiracy theories" like "the news is designed to make Black folk look bad."
🤡🤡
Sorta like this article.
🤡🤡🤡
1/N
rjohnsonmn
@mekkaokereke They’ve added this now. But who in their right mind thought this “shorthand” was a good idea?
mekka okereke :verified:
White folk believe many conspiracy theories about science*!
They believe that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen**!🤣
They believe that the sun is mostly made of hydrogen and helium**!🤣
What's wrong with them?! We ran surveys to learn more!🤡
(*Data supports these beliefs.)
(**For the purpose of my article, I'm going to define "science conspiracy theories" to mean "Belief in established concepts supported by peer reviewed research and centuries of reproducible experiments.")
Simplicator
@mekkaokereke Exactly, it was obvious at the time, Fauci et al. worked backward from “shortage of N95s, save them for health care workers” to “the general public wouldn’t get any benefit b/c they don’t know how to wear them properly” all the way to “if you’re not a health care worker, you don’t need one.”
mekka okereke :verified:
@dan613 @mike805 @jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland
No. It was a lie, because the US did not have enough N95s, and they were worried that if the public bought them, there wouldn't be enough for healthcare workers.
The "we didn't know it was airborne at first!" is such a laughable lie that only US/EU folk believe it.
There is no new evidence or new way to determine if Covid was airborne that was discovered recently. The evidence and ability to confirm this, was always available.
mike805
@mekkaokereke @jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland I actually had some N95s in 2020 because a family member bought some when SARS happened. Good old 3M type. I did not listen to Fauci, and wore them, and did not get a symptomatic case.
Lying to the public is not ok in a case like that. If you have to ration them then straight-up ration them. The public can go ahead and pay $10 a mask to preppers who are scalping them. But do not lie to the public.
Dan Neuman
@mike805 @mekkaokereke @jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland It was a complex message poorly communicated, based on faulty information. It's true that with so few cases at the beginning, there was no value in masking. But the mistake was thinking SARS2 would pass mostly by droplets picked up by your hands. In that case poor mask practice could make things worse. But as we now know, it is airborne and masking was definitely better.
mekka okereke :verified:
@jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland
But Dems *are* systematically misinforming people, and they have been since the early days.
* 2020: "You don't need N95s!" Was a lie when Fauci first said it. Everyone in the medical community knew *why* he said that (N95 shortages). Doesn't make it right.
* 2024: "You can go back to work, even if you're Covid positive!" Is dangerous, misinformation garbage. This Biden CDC guidance, is bad. Everyone knows why this guidance exists (the economy!).
jonathanpeterson
@mekkaokereke @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland No question. The US failure to invest in sound public health, use of a pandemic as a political wedge issue and cultural resistance to minimal sacrifice, lack of science education, etc was a systemic and cultural failure. Sitting on the porch hearing car horns honking and people cheering at healthcare shift change o'clock was amazing. Pretty much everything else showed me that my country is horrifically and maybe terminally flawed.
jonathanpeterson
@mekkaokereke @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland But claims that Democrats are uniquely, systemically and purposely misinforming citizens is a pretty significant claim from @noyes
IMO - Democrats are a lot like Churchill's quote about Democracy being the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.
But in a world where state level propaganda attacks on reality and attempts to influence politics are a reality, blame without alternatives seems pointless.
jonathanpeterson
@mekkaokereke @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland The white, Republican president was pushing states and federal agencies to ignore best practices to save lives to reopen the economy and try to save his reelection campaign.
mekka okereke :verified:
@jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland
I agree that the GOP was worse, but the Democratic response to Covid was fantastically incompetent. Give the GOPs an F, and the Dems a D minus.
I don't think folks realize that the Nigerian response to Covid was more effective and based on more sound science than the US response.
There is no city in the USA, at any point during the pandemic, that ever achieved this level of basic, 101 level competence:
jonathanpeterson
@mekkaokereke @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland I agree 100%. Cuomo did a LOT wrong with covid. It didn't make a lot of national news because news was everywhere and NY's disaster was an outlier and watched most closely by New Yorkers. But ignoring CDC recommendations was overwhelmingly something happening in GOP areas and not Democrat one. My black, Democrat mayor TRIED to execute those policies and was overruled by the white, Republican governor. That wasn't unique to Atlanta.
jonathanpeterson
@mekkaokereke @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland Cuomo's early response was horrific. But it was the hottest hotspot in the country, which kind of amplified mistakes that were pretty universal as we learned more about the virus. Of course what some places did worked better than others - the nature of real time experimentation with a global public health emergency. African culture has dealt with emerging viral threats for millenia - traditional solutions require sacrifice westerners don't like.
mekka okereke :verified:
@jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland
No. You're not listening to me.
My father is a Nigerian born, Nigerian and UK trained, heart transplant surgeon, and head of emergency surgery at a US hospital. His hospital was one of the first US hospitals to show *any* success in keeping Black and Hispanic people alive during the pandemic. I asked him why, and he laughed.
He said that the US, especially NYC, ignored *their own CDC practices* that every reasonable country in the world took.🤡
mekka okereke :verified:
@jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland
Me calling out this foolishness in 2020:
https://x.com/mekkaokerekebye/status/1233750872049344513
And again. Lagos knew exactly how to prevent the spread of Covid back in 2020. So did NYC. The difference is, Lagos chose to act to protect their Black population, and NYC didn't.
jonathanpeterson
@noyes @EdSanders @mekkaokereke @beadsland
Covid spread most quickly in cities before we knew how to handle it. Once we knew, things reversed and deaths were overwhelmingly in GOP parts of the country. If you believe otherwise, feel free to educate me. I particularly want to hear about "disinformation amplified through state apparatus"
Congress members who wanted to keep supporting Ukraine had to tie that funding, to border security and Israel funding to get it passed. Who's fault?
mekka okereke :verified:
@jonathanpeterson @noyes @EdSanders @beadsland
That's not true.
I spent the entire early part of the pandemic posting on Twitter about how we knew how to stop the spread of Covid, but how we were doing the exact opposite of that, in cities like NYC, where Covid ripped through the Black population, due to callous indifference of local government decision makers, most of whom were democrats.
1. Cuomo let Covid rip through the elderly Black population.
2. 1 in 20 Black US citizens, lives in NYC
J.H.Noyes
@jonathanpeterson
Yes Democrats spread Covid, and use disinformation amplified through the state apparatus to do so. If you just learned that today, your part of the problem.
As for Netanyahu, we gave them weapons to defend themselves against a threat. They instead used them to kill women and children. That's on them.
Then we replenished them. They used the resupply to kill more women and children. Over and over and over again. That's on us.
@EdSanders @mekkaokereke @beadsland
J.H.Noyes
No. But if Dems had kept adolescent sex slaves in the basement of a pizza parlor in some sort of institutional capacity, it would still be a hell of a lot less evil than what they've done with spreading Covid and underwriting genocide in Palestine.
Dems had a great four decade run as the good guys that just couldn't get things done for golly gee shucks reasons. Always reasons. That's over now. Now they're just another bad guy flavor.
jonathanpeterson
@noyes @EdSanders @mekkaokereke @beadsland TIL Democrats spread Covid and are somehow at fault for the GOP poster boy Netanyahu waging genocide.
jonathanpeterson
@EdSanders @mekkaokereke I gave up about 1/4 way through reading the study, for just that reason. It seemed to be trying REALLY hard to equate black folks not trusting American institutions with QANON style craziness. Sure there are some nutty anti-vaxing POC, just like white folks. But almost all POC know about Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee Experiment. Did I somehow miss actual history of democrats keeping adolescent sex slaves/adrenochrome donors in the basement of pizza joints?
Ed Sanders
Here's an example of the bait and switch tactics from the survey:
Anyone with eyes can see that black people are disproportionately jailed. Whether they all agree that it's specifically to make money for prisons or not I can't say, there's certainly evidence for lots of other reasons, like denying them their right to vote or even just "to keep them down" (the general supposition of the study).
It's the second part that tries to make the obvious conclusion seem "crazy".
Ed Sanders
Pew seems to be trying to step back from this incendiary "study" or the language in it, or something.
I can't really figure out what they're doing, but at least part of it is trying to redefine "conspiracy theory" when it has to do with race.
How about this Pew:
Admit you screwed up. Admit that these observations aren't "conspiracy theories", but data-supported conclusions by people with direct experience with these activities and institutions.
Ed Sanders
That Pew headline really does capture the essence of institutional racism.
It is the most respected institution in the field of social research in the country.
It knows full well that the data supports the conclusion that systemic and structural racism pervades American society, but it couldn't stop itself from condemning people who understand that obvious truth as buying into conspiracy theories.
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