You will, I hope, forgive me if I remind you that if there is Official mis- or disinformation, then there must necessarily be Official Truths.
And if there exist Official Truths, there must be some agency or persons responsible for creating and maintaining a list of them, however formal or informal this process is.
The CDC is one of the agencies in our regime that generates, maintains, and promulgates Official Truths. Not coincidentally, they also promote a lot of crappy science, such as their absurd studies on masks and acquired natural immunity, which we have dissected before.
Turns out there exist emails from the CDC to Twitter, Facebook, and Google, that state a set of Official Truths, and “suggestions” on how these corporations should deal with them. Rather, how the companies should deal with people who are caught speaking against Official Truths.
Over the course of at least six months, starting in December 2020, CDC officials regularly communicated with personnel at Twitter, Facebook, and Google over “vaccine misinformation.” At various times, CDC officials would flag specific posts by users on social media platforms such as Twitter as “example posts.”
In one email to a CDC staffer, a Twitter employee said he is “looking forward to setting up regular chats” with the agency. Other emails show the scheduling of meetings with the CDC over how to best police alleged misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. -Free Beacon
Key is a set of slides sent to companies containing Official Truths (OTs), which the CDC asks not be “share[d] outside your trust and safety teams.”
Trust and safety teams. This term, of course, reeks with effeminacy, as if even hearing a contrary voice is dangerous. So dangerous that only those with extensive hard-bitten experience and intense training to be part of the trust and safety team could dare look at Official disinformation.
Now even true Official Truths that are truly true can cause harm. Let’s see that with examine an example on which I side, in part, with the CDC, from a set of slides dated last May 21.
Whatever you think of vaccines, it is goofy to suggest they cause the body to become so magnetic that spoons stick to it. (Indeed, we met this trick in yesterday’s post.)
It is a silly claim. Yet should the government be in the business of actively suppressing silly claims? They were. But should they have been?
I’d say perhaps the maximum effort would have had somebody officially laughing it off. Maybe point to videos of magicians showing the trick. Maybe, in the extreme event the magnetic claim became as ridiculous as global-warming-of-doom claims have become, they could have had a physicist give some simple back-of-the-envelope calculations to demonstrate how it just couldn’t happen.
Instead, the CDC encouraged the OT that “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.”
Well, maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t. But it’s largely irrelevant to the claim. And to start with the mantra, as they do in every commercial, outlet, and opportunity, makes the OT sound like somebody is trying to sell you something you don’t want.
The CDC’s message goes on to boast how thoroughly the vaccines were tested, et cetera. Not one word of that, even it were all perfectly true, says anything directly about spoons sticking to arms.
In other words, they didn’t answer the question. It appears to be an evasion. Here’s a brief imagined dialog between somebody worried about the vaccine and a CDC official.
Do spoons stick to bodies or don’t they?
“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.”
Yeah, but what about the body becoming magnetic?
“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.”
All right, fine. But can there really be chips in the vaccine that put out magnetic fields?
“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.”
Even I would go away from the conversation wondering about microchips.
In short, the CDC used a bludgeon where a giggle would have sufficed. That bludgeon encouraged skepticism.
There are other examples in those emails, like male fertility (some say the vaccine lowers it), and adulterated vaccines (some say extraneous ingredients can cause harm), depopulation (Hi, Bill!), and every one of them is answered with a variant of “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.”
Every message thus is, in essence, “Trust us.”
But then we recall CDC Chief Rochelle Walensky saying, on camera, many times, that those who are vaccinated cannot catch the coronadoom. And then we recall their “studies” on masks, and on natural immunity, and so on.
Trust us forsooth.
The point is obvious. The bludgeon the CDC favor causes skepticism, even where skepticism is silly. Their arrogant attitude of “Trust us — you have no choice” causes the very “disease” they seek to cure.
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I suspect the magnetism story was planted by the CDC to discredit skeptics using a ridiculous claim.
One of my major worries is that the government might get some intelligent propagandists. Right now they appear to be blithering idiots.
Never mind that, Briggs. These lying thieves stole my foreskin. I want it back.
Churchill : In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Robin: If the “intelligent propagandist” could be convinced we were in wartime, you might have something to worry about
However it would take an “intelligent propagandist” to convince another of that
I think they tried to convince the idea of wartime but it was quite apparent who the enemy was (see Pogo)
The adjunct to the magnetic claim is the claim that the injections turn people into Bluetooth nodes. That may also be another planted story to discredit people questioning the official narratives.
I’m compelled to recall that distribution of certain vaccine lots in Japan was actually stopped due to–shocker–the presence of contaminants that were ‘magnetically reactive’
I still regard the magnet-gate stuff as a bit ridiculous, but even in this seemingly stupid claim there seems to be a grain of truth.
Just heard a (may as well have been NPR) podcast from Scientific America
(bright and chipper woman ; Mr. know-know-it-all – but not the lovable moose)
“Trust can beat covid quickly” … they reference a Lancet study … it’s to laugh
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/how-common-are-reinfections-and-how-trust-can-beat-the-virus-covid-quickly-episode-35/
I never heard about “becoming magnetic” or spoons sticking to the body–so it’s a good thing the CDC nipped that in the bud!
Politics, an bureaucracy in general, is always like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc0_UnDsTqg
(It’s usually not as blatant in the video, but the theme of answering questions that weren’t asked until you shut up is always there.)
@Pk “I suspect the magnetism story was planted by the CDC to discredit skeptics using a ridiculous claim.”
Yes, an old technique called “poisoning the well”. I suspect that the whole “flat earth” thing is a similar attempt, but meant to discredit ANY form of conspiracy ideation.
@John B() ““Trust can beat covid quickly”
Thanks for the link. That article is a wonderful example of BS posing as science. (Sad, but SciAM used to be a GREAT magazine up until 40 years ago. Sigh…) My first thought about their premise that “nations with a high level of trust for government did better in the fight against COVID” did not quite match their explanation. My take on it? “Untrustworthy governments told much bigger lies about how many people died of COVID.”
Simpler, makes more sense, and fits the facts better than their “Trust can beat covid quickly”