It’s amazing to get so far in our scientific advances, only to have it tossed aside by misinformation. A Daily Mail article explained the conclusion of a study that, “They confirmed that the shots made by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are linked to significantly higher risk of five medical conditions – including
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A Puff of Absurdity: The Big Lie of Covid Herd Immunity
Why do some healthcare professionals still insist that herd immunity will work despite visual evidence to the contrary? A nicely explainer came out in Journal of Infectious Diseases March 2022: “As commonly understood, herd immunity thresholds are reached when a sufficient proportion of the population is vaccinated or has recovered from
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Media Subterfuge
Want to be a respected news outlet? Stop writing horribly misleading headlines. An article in The Guardian is causing a stir, not because of what the article says, but because of the heading and subheading: “Thousands of Covid generation under-fives excluded from schools in England: Nearly half of children in some
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Truth is Out There
Because it’s harder than ever to discern fact from fiction means we have to work harder. Don’t give up! Definitely not an example of Art Deco. I once dated a guy I thought was absolutely brilliant. He seemed to know everything about every topic. He could answer and explain every
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Ignorance is No Longer a Defence
There is compelling evidence that vaccines work, with few serious side effects, yet they’re still being demonized while media continues to suggest Covid ended. An Australian 8-year-old went into cardiac arrest but was saved her mum’s ability to do CPR until an ambulance arrived. The Australian news mention that “cardiac arrest
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Weirdness of Now
This morning I listened to a Naomi Klein interview from this week about her very different type of book, while reading a prescient Geroge Monbiot article that he reposted from last March. There’s a striking amount of overlap. Both are about the new right-wing alliances being formed, and the furthest
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The New CPC
Image from this great Breach article Remember back when Harper was PM, and he opened Canada’s media to foreign ownership despite widespread protests? So now Poilievre all but owns Canadian MSM. Media is backing him and many pollsters are backing him, and Trudeau has little mainstream media on his side. Even
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rachel DuRose writes about the rise of the Eris COVID-19 variant, while Esther Choo notes that health care workers are bracing for another fall wave even as the ongoing risks have been disappeared from any public attention by authorities looking to squelch any
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: The stages of corporate social media
Corporate social media essentially goes through three stages. The first is new, free and wonderful, lots of functionality, user friendly and free, or at least pretending to be free. It’s purpose is to build a customer/product base (as the customer is the product). The second stage is monetization. The purpose
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: How the Media Works
A new study just out that followed 548 people with Long Covid in Spain and found that only 7.6% of them recovered in the two years of the study. People think Long Covid means you’re sicker a little longer, but this study suggests that most people possibly don’t recover. Yet you can
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Stephen Harper – he haunts us still!
Stephen Harper is having a bit of a moment lately, thanks to his instantly notorious selfie last week with Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán, which both of them proudly tweeted about. Justin Trudeau – the anti-Harper (Photo: Justin Trudeau/Flickr). Mr. Harper is the former Conservative prime minister of Canada who is
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Should We Bring Back The Lord’s Day Act
No I am not going all religious on you This would be more of a Day for Humanity, a day that would not belong to the billionaires and millionaires but to the common people and the community. This would be a day where all profit making activities would be banned
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Google on C-18
It’s a bill, not a virus. The gist of it is that it requires American tech companies to pay Canadian news organizations for content that appears on their platforms. The hope is that the law will help Canadian news agencies. But Google and Meta responded that they’re just going to block
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Debating Science
Dr. Peter Hotez is a medical doctor in Texas who did his undergrad at Yale and his medical degree at Cornell. He has been successful at creating Covid vaccine technology cheaply and patent-free so it can be distributed to low-income countries. His work has been “nominated for the 2022 Nobel
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Turns out Facebook didn’t censor or ban Alberta’s premier, but Danielle Smith’s complaint raises a legitimate policy question
It should be well known to everyone now that the claim Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was censored or banned by Facebook is nothing more than a tall tale. Premier’s Office Executive Director Rob Anderson back in the day when he was a Wildrose MLA (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). On Wednesday,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The boss is going crazy! She’s practically giving her restaurant away! Plus, big tech is censoring her!
Premier Smith in a flattering photo published by Postmedia along with its flattering story about her restaurant in High River (Photo: Source not identified, via National Post). Yesterday morning, Internet sleuths noticed the notorious High River railcar restaurant owned by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her hubby has been put
Continue readingScripturient: The Challenge of Citizen Engagement
I recently read a good opinion piece in The Meaford Independent, titled, The Challenge of Remaining Informed & Engaged in Municipal Governance in Our Busy Modern World, In it, editor Stephen Vance opines about the difficulties of engaging the public in municipal issues and government. It’s refreshing to see an
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Why Mastodon
So why did I open a Mastodon account and why do I think Mastodon can replace Twitter. I started looking for alternatives to Twitter soon after Elon Musk purchased it and sent it to hell in a hand basket. Of course, Twitter’s problems started much earlier than that. As soon
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Kat Eschner interviews John Peters about the growing inequality in wealth, income and influence. And Scott Martin offers a reminder not to conflate the gross disparity in pay between CEOs and workers with anything that’s actually been earned. – Mitchell Thompson discusses how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Kelsey Piper writes about the U.S.’ memory-holing of the successes of a vaccine program which resulted in exceptionally quick development and distribution of effective COVID vaccines (and should have set a precedent for future pandemic planning). – Dustin Cook and Mike Hager
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