More stories about staffing problems and lawsuits over the mandates
By Meryl Nass, MD | October 14, 2021
Massachusetts may lose 40-50% of its corrections officers to the mandate, and the governor is talking about bringing in the National Guard. The Guard is already driving school buses. Massachusetts is possibly the bluest state in the nation. It was the only state that voted for McGovern in 1972.
Massachusett’s State Police union has filed for an injunction against the clot shot mandate. So has the corrections officers’ union.
If this is what is happening in the bluest state, just think how many clot shot refusers there are everywhere else. The society can’t run if the workers can’t work. Are the bosses trying to create chaos as a pretext for something else, or are they only trying to bluff and coerce us into submission?
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Dr. Peter McCullough said doctors are now being hunted for refusing to go along. One day after an affidavit I wrote was filed in court in Maine against our health department’s mandate for healthcare workers, I got a letter from the secretary of the medical board telling me I had to respond to a complaint. What was the complaint? Someone who never met me and does not know any of my patients didn’t like a video interview he saw, and said so to the board. Not a single specific complaint or allegation was made against anything I said.
I will keep you all updated regarding this business. I am dismayed but simultaneously amused at how a medical board or its secretary can ask me to defend myself against a charge of being disliked. Is this America’s COVID jurisprudence?
Go Fund Me Takes Down Fundraising Campaign for Litigation Over Vaccine Mandate
By Jonathan Turley | October 12, 2021
We previously discussed how GoFundMe has joined social media sites in censoring opposing viewpoints on subjects from critical race theory to vaccines to election fraud. The site once offered a neutral site for those seeking to support others with similar views or interests. The company now insists that it will only allow people to gather on the site if it believes their views are true and correct. However, it was still surprising to see the site take down a fundraising account for litigation against vaccine mandates. The effort of former nurse Jennifer Bridges was simply to get such matters before the courts, which can be the ultimate authority on what is “misinformation.” GoFundMe however blocked people from contributing to the litigation.
Bridges is a former registered nurse at Houston Methodist hospital who was fired after refusing to comply with the hospital’s vaccine requirement. She raised more than $180,000 for her lawsuit before being shutdown under the company’s “misinformation” policy. Heidi Hagberg, a spokesperson for GoFundMe, said in a statement to Business Insider that “when our team initially reviewed the fundraiser, it was within our terms of service as the funds were for legal fees to fight vaccine mandates. The fundraiser has since been updated to include misinformation which violates our terms of service.”
What is striking about this latest ban is that the courts are the place for such claims to be weighed in a neutral and dispassionate forum. “Misinformation” can be addressed by judges after both sides are allowed to present evidence. Bridges’ lawsuit was dismissed in June, Bridges’ attorneys appealed the decision. We should all favor such reviews. Indeed, if GoFundMe believes that Bridges is wrong, it should invite further judicial review to establish a clear record on such issues.
GoFundMe admits to have taken down “hundreds” of fundraisers that included statements of “misinformation related to vaccines.”
I do not agree with the arguments against the vaccine. I and my family are vaccinated. However, I am equally concerned with avoiding the growing virus of censorship. In the last few years, we have seen an increasing call for private censorship from Democratic politicians and liberal commentators. Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views. The most chilling aspect of this story is how many on the left applaud such censorship. A new poll shows roughly half of the public supporting not just corporate censorship but government censorship of anything deemed “misinformation.”
Free speech can be its own disinfectant for bad speech. GoFundMe is a private company and can impose such rules on users. However, it is an act of censorship and it is a denial of free speech by a corporation. In this case, the company is preventing its site from being used to raise money to allow courts to review the factual and legal basis for these claims — a curious effort for a company that claims to be fighting “misinformation.”
UK government criticized for GPS “women-tracking” proposals
UK’s answer to every problem: “increase surveillance”
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | October 13, 2021
The proposed 888 tracking service for women in the UK has been blasted by rights groups as “flawed” and “deeply misguided.” The human rights advocates have warned that the tracking service violates both privacy and freedoms.
The tracking service was proposed by telecoms company BT and supported by home secretary Priti Patel. It is an app and reporting system that would enable women to enter their home, office, and other regularly visited addresses. In case a user travels, they would be required to enter the details of their trip, and would be tracked and monitored through GPS.
In case a user misses the automated checks, an alert would be sent to their emergency contacts or law enforcement.
The 888 service appears to be the government’s response to the increased violence on the streets. Over the past few months, the government and law enforcement agencies have been blamed for their inadequacy in tackling violence, following the sexual assault and murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer employed by the London Met.
Officer Wayne Couzens used coronavirus restrictions to falsely arrest Everard, who was a marketing executive. He then kidnapped, raped, and strangled her. He was sentenced to life in prison.
“Tracking women’s movements is not a solution for male violence,” said the director of Big Brother Watch Slikie Carlo, speaking to The Independent. “This is a terribly misguided, invasive and offensive policy that misdiagnoses the problem and will do nothing to make women safer.”
The senior legal officer at Rights for Women Leigh Morgan said the 888 tracking service was “deeply flawed in its approach and expectation on women to adapt our lives to try and ensure safety from male violence.”
“This approach encourages a culture of victim responsibility and victim-blaming, and doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the issue,” she added.
Why the Mainstream Media Remains Silent on the JFK Records Deadline
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 13, 2021
With the October 26 deadline only two weeks from now on releasing the 60-year secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination, the silence from the mainstream press is deafening. The great mainstream defenders of transparency and openness in government, at least when it comes foreign dictatorships, cannot bring themselves to openly advocate for the release of thousands of records relating to the JFK assassination that the CIA still insists on keeping secret.
Why the silence? I will explain the reason, but first please permit me to restate the prediction I have made regarding this matter.
I predict that within the next weeks, President Biden will grant a request by the CIA for continued secrecy of its assassination-related records. I predict that Biden will order the release of some of the records for appearance’s sake, but he will cite “national security” to justify continuing the secrecy of the vast majority of the records.
Why do I make this prediction? Because the reason that the CIA needed to keep these records secret 60 years ago still exists. That same reason was why it it needed to keep them secret during the 1990s, when the Assassination Records Review Board was enforcing the JFK Records Act of 1992, which mandated the release of all federal records relating to the assassination.
Further, that same reason obviously caused the CIA, despite the law’s mandate, to continue keeping its records secret for another 25 years after the JFK Records Act was enacted. When that deadline came due in 2017, that same reason obviously motivated the CIA to petition President Trump for another extension of time for secrecy, which Trump dutifully granted. That deadline comes due on October 26, 2021 — two weeks from now — and mark my words: The same reason will cause the CIA to request that Biden grant another extension of time for secrecy, which Biden, like Trump, will dutifully grant.
What is the reason that has caused the CIA to want to keep these thousands of records secret from the American people. The reason, I am more convinced than ever, is that the CIA knows that those remaining records constitute more pieces to the overall puzzle of criminal culpability on the part of the CIA in the regime-change operation that took place on November 22,1963.
After all, let’s face it: No matter what definition is put on that nebulous and meaningless term “national security,” there is no possibility that anything bad will happen to the United States if those 60-year-old secret records are released to the American people. The United States will not fall into the ocean. The supposed international communist conspiracy to take over the United States that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia!) during the Cold War won’t be reinvigorated. Communist Cuba will not invade the United States. The dominoes near North Vietnam will not fall to the communists. North Korea will not come and get us.
President Biden just ordered the release of President Trump’s secret records relating to the January 6 Capitol protests. Why not the same decision with respect to those 60-year-old secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination?
Why won’t the mainstream press call on Biden to enforce the JFK Records Act of 1992? They’re scared to do so. In a remarkably candid and direct statement made to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in 2017, New York Senator Charles Schumer explained why they are scared: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer said to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Schumer was referring to President Trump, but actually the admonition applies to everyone. The CIA, the Pentagon, the NSA, and the FBI — i.e., the entire intelligence community — has “six ways from Sunday at getting back” at anyone who takes it on, including newspaper owners, publishers, and editors.
Most people know about Operation Mockingbird, the top-secret operation of the CIA to acquire assets within the mainstream press to advance the CIA’s propaganda. Does anyone really think that the CIA would stop there in the quest to expand its power and influence?
Not a chance! For example, the entire national-security establishment would concentrate on acquiring, installing, and grooming assets in Congress, which sets the budgets. Does anyone think it’s just a coincidence that Congress gives the national-security establishment whatever it wants plus sometimes even more than what it wants? There is good reason why President Eisenhower planned to use the term “military-industrial-congressional” complex in his Farewell Address. No one can reasonably deny that Congress is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the national-security establishment.
But they obviously would not stop there. They would also be acquiring assets within the IRS, one of the most powerful and tyrannical agencies within the federal government. There isn’t anyone, including newspaper owners, publishers, and editors, who isn’t afraid of receiving an audit notice from the IRS.
And if it happens, no one would ever be able to prove that it originated with the CIA or the rest of the national-security establishment. It would just look like it was occurring at random. If any victim of an IRS audit accused the CIA or the rest of the national-security establishment of being behind the audit, they would be ready to hurl the infamous “conspiracy theorist” label at him.
What newspaper owner, publisher, or editor wants to take that chance? They all know that the national-security establishment frowns very seriously on any mainstream media outlet that even remotely suggests that the Kennedy assassination was a regime-change operation, no different in principle from those in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Congo, and Chile both before and after the Kennedy assassination. But they also do not want to take the chance of upsetting the CIA by simply calling on it to release its 60-year-old still-secret records relating to the assassination.
After all, everyone knows that if an entity is powerful enough to regime-change presidents and prime ministers, both foreign and domestic, with impunity, it can easily destroy any mainstream media executive who dares to buck the CIA on the assassination.
It’s just the way life works in a national-security state. It’s why the mainstream media is maintaining strict silence on the upcoming October 26 deadline on the release of those 60-year-old still-secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination.
The Great New Normal Purge
By CJ Hopkins | The Consent Factory | October 12, 2021
So, the Great New Normal Purge has begun … right on cue, right by the numbers.
As we “paranoid conspiracy theorists” have been warning would happen for the past 18 months, people who refuse to convert to the new official ideology are now being segregated, stripped of their jobs, banned from attending schools, denied medical treatment, and otherwise persecuted.
Relentless official propaganda demonizing “the Unvaccinated” is being pumped out by the corporate and state media, government leaders, health officials, and shrieking fanatics on social media. “The Unvaccinated” are the new official “Untermenschen,” an underclass of subhuman “others” the New Normal masses are being conditioned to hate.
But it isn’t just a purge of “the Unvaccinated.” Anyone deviating from the official ideology is being systematically demonized and persecuted. In Germany, Australia, and other New Normal countries, protesting the New Normal is officially outlawed. The New Normal Gestapo is going around to people’s homes to interrogate them about their anti-New Normal Facebook posts. Corporations are openly censoring content that contradicts the official narrative. New Normal goon squads roam the streets, checking people’s “vaccination” papers.
And it’s not just governments and corporations carrying out the New Normal Purge. Friends are purging friends. Wives are purging husbands. Fathers are purging children. Children are purging parents. New Normals are purging old normal thoughts. Global “health authorities” are revising definitions to make them conform to New Normal “science.”
And so on … a new official “reality” is being manufactured, right before our eyes. Anything and anyone that doesn’t conform to it is being purged, unpersoned, memory-holed, erased.
None of which should come as a surprise.
Every nascent totalitarian system, at some stage of its takeover of society, launches a purge of political opponents, ideological dissidents, and other “anti-social deviants.” Such purges can be brief or open-ended, and they can take any number of outward forms, depending on the type of totalitarian system, but you cannot have totalitarianism without them.
The essence of totalitarianism — regardless of which costumes and ideology it wears — is a desire to completely control society, every aspect of society, every individual behavior and thought. Every totalitarian system, whether an entire nation, a tiny cult, or any other form of social body, evolves toward this unachievable goal … the total ideological transformation and control of every single element of society (or whatever type of social body it comprises). This fanatical pursuit of total control, absolute ideological uniformity, and the elimination of all dissent, is what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.
Thus, each new totalitarian system, at some point in its evolution, needs to launch a purge of those who refuse to conform to its official ideology. It needs to do this for two basic reasons: (1) to segregate or otherwise eliminate actual political opponents and dissidents who pose a threat to the new regime; and (2) and more importantly, to establish the ideological territory within which the masses must now confine themselves in order to avoid being segregated, or eliminated.
The purge must be conducted openly, brutally, so that the masses understand that the rules of society have changed, forever, that their former rights and freedoms are gone, and that from now on any type of resistance or deviation from official ideology will not be tolerated, and will be ruthlessly punished.
The purge is usually launched during a “state of emergency,” under imminent threat from some official “enemy” (e.g., “communist infiltrators,” “counter-revolutionaries,” or … you know, a “devastating pandemic”), such that the normal rules of society can be indefinitely suspended “for the sake of survival.” The more terrified the masses can be made, the more willing they will be to surrender their freedom and follow orders, no matter how insane.
The lifeblood of totalitarianism is fear … fear of both the system’s official enemy (which is constantly stoked with propaganda) and of the totalitarian system itself. That the brutality of the system is rationalized by the threat posed by the official enemy doesn’t make it any less brutal or terrifying. Under totalitarian systems (of any type or scale) fear is a constant and there is no escape from it.
The masses’ fear is then channeled into hatred … hatred of the official “Untermenschen,” whom the system encourages the masses to scapegoat. Thus, the purge is also a means of allowing the masses to purge themselves of their fear, to transform it into self-righteous hatred and unleash it on the “Untermenschen” instead of the totalitarian system, which, obviously, would be suicidal.
Every totalitarian system — both the individuals running it and the system, structurally — instinctively understands how all this works. New Normal totalitarianism is no exception.
Just reflect on what has happened over the last 18 months.
Day after day, month after month, the masses have been subjected to the most destructive psychological-terror campaign in the history of psychological terror. Sadly, many of them have been reduced to paranoid, anus-puckering invalids, afraid of the outdoors, of human contact, afraid of their own children, afraid of the air, morbidly obsessed with disease and death … and consumed with hatred of “the Unvaccinated.”
Their hatred, of course, is utterly irrational, the product of fear and propaganda, as hatred of “the Untermenschen” always is. It has absolutely nothing to do with a virus, which even the New Normal authorities admit. “The Unvaccinated” are no more of a threat to anyone than any other human being … except insofar as they threaten the New Normals’ belief in their delusional ideology.
No, we are way past rationality at this point. We are witnessing the birth of a new form of totalitarianism. Not “communism.” Not “fascism.” Global-capitalist totalitarianism. Pseudo-medical totalitarianism. Pathologized totalitarianism. A form of totalitarianism without a dictator, without a definable ideology. A totalitarianism based on “science,” on “fact,” on “reality,” which it creates itself.
I don’t know about you, but, so far, it has certainly made quite an impression on me. So much so that I have mostly set aside my satirical schtick to try to understand it … what it actually is, why it is happening, why it is happening now, where it is going, and how to oppose it, or at least disrupt it.
The way I see it, the next six months will determine how successful the initial stages of the roll-out of this new totalitarianism will be. By April of 2022, either we’ll all be showing our “papers” to the New Normal Gestapo to be able to earn a living, attend a school, dine at a restaurant, travel, and otherwise live our lives, or we will have thrown a monkey wrench into the machinery. I do not expect GloboCap to abandon the roll-out of the New Normal over the longer term — they are clearly committed to implementing it — but we have the power to ruin their opening act (which they’ve been planning and rehearsing for quite some time).
So, let’s go ahead and do that, shall we? Before we get purged, or unpersoned, or whatever. I’m not sure, as I haven’t seen a “fact-check” yet, but I believe there are some commercial airline pilots in the USA who are showing us the way.
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Learning To Fear Free Speech: How Politicians Are Moving To Protect Us From Our Unhealthy Reading Choices
By Jonathan Turley | The Hill | October 11, 2021
“Caution: Free Speech May Be Hazardous to Your Health.” Such a rewording of the original 1965 warning on tobacco products could soon appear on social media platforms, if a Senate hearing this week is any indicator. Listening to former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, senators decried how Facebook is literally killing people by not censoring content, and Haugen proposed a regulatory board to protect the public.
But before we embrace a new “ministry of information” model to protect us from dangerous viewpoints, we may want to consider what we would lose in this Faustian free-speech bargain.
Warnings over the “addiction” and “unhealthy” content of the internet have been building into a movement for years. In July, President Biden slammed Big Tech companies for “killing people” by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic. On Tuesday, many senators were enthralled by Haugen’s testimony because they, too, have long called for greater regulation or censorship. It all began reasonably enough over concerns about violent speech, and then expanded to exploitative speech. However, it continued to expand even further as the regulation of speech became an insatiable appetite for silencing opposing views.
In recent hearings with social media giants, members like Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) were critical of limiting censorship to areas like election fraud and instead demanded censorship of disinformation on climate change and other subjects. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has repeatedly called for “robust content modification” to remove untrue or misleading information.
Haugen lashed out at what she said was the knowing harm committed against people, particularly children, by exposing them to disinformation or unhealthy views. Haugen wants the company to remove “toxic” content and change algorithms to make such sites less visible. She complained that sites with a high engagement rate are more likely to be favored in searches. However, the problem is that sites deemed false or harmful are too popular. Haugen said that artificially removing “likes” is not enough because the popularity or interest in some sites will still push them to the top of searches.
It was a familiar objection. Just the week before, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for Amazon to steer readers to “true” books on climate change. Her objection was that the popularity of “misleading” books was pushing them to the top of searches, and she wants the algorithms changed to help readers pick what she considers to be healthier choices — meaning, more in line with her views.
Similarly, Haugen’s solution seems to be … well, her: “Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what is happening inside … there needs to be a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty after working at a place like [Facebook], and have a place to work on things like regulation.” Censorship programs always begin with politicians and bureaucrats who — in their own minds — have the benefit of knowing what is true and the ability to protect the rest of us from our harmful thoughts.
Ironically, I have long been a critic of social media companies for their rapid expansion of censorship, including the silencing of political critics, public health experts and pro-democracy movements at the behest of foreign governments like China and Russia. I am unabashedly an internet originalist who favors an open, free forum for people to exchange ideas and viewpoints — allowing free speech to be its own disinfectant of bad speech.
Facebook has been running a slick campaign to persuade people to embrace corporate censorship. Yet, now, even the Facebook censors are being denounced as too passive in the face of runaway free speech. The focus is on the algorithms used to remove content or, as with Haugen and Warren, used to flag or promote popular sites.
Haugen describes her approach as a “non-content-based solution” but it is clearly not that. She objects to algorithms like “downstream MSI” which tracks traffic and pushes postings based on past likes or comments. As explained by one site, it is “based on their ability to engage users, not necessarily its usefulness or truthfulness.” Of course, the objection to those “un-useful” sites is their content and claimed harm.
Like Warren, Haugen is calling for what I have criticized as “enlightened algorithms” to protect us from our own bad choices. Our digital sentinels are “non-content-based” but will magically remove bad content to prevent unhealthy choices.
There is no question that the internet is fueling an epidemic of eating disorders and other great social problems. The solution, however, is not to create regulatory boards or to reduce free speech. Europe has long deployed such oversight boards in removing what it considers harmful stereotypes from advertising and barring images of honey or chips — but the results have been underwhelming at best.
It is no accident that authoritarian countries have long wanted such regulation, since free speech is a threat to their power. Now, we also have U.S. academics writing that “China was right” all along about censorship, and public officials demanding more power to censor further. We have lost faith in free speech, and we are being told to put our faith into algorithmic guardians.
We can confront our problems more effectively by using good speech to overcome bad speech. When it comes to minors, we can use parents to protect their children by increasing parental controls over internet access; we can help parents with more or better programs and resources for mental illnesses. Of course, it is hard to advocate for restraint when the image of an anorexic child is juxtaposed against the abstract concept of free speech. However, that is the siren’s call of censorship: Protecting that child by reducing her free-speech rights is no solution for her — but it is a solution for many who want more control over opposing views.
Free speech is not some six-post-a-day addiction that should be cured with algorithmic patches. There is no such thing as a content-neutral algorithm that removes only harmful disinformation — because behind each of those enlightened algorithms are people who are throttling speech according to what they deem to be harmful thoughts or viewpoints.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
FB “whistleblower” saga has propelled push for social media “permits”
It’s easy to see where this is going…
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 11, 2021
Apparently emboldened by a recent “Facebook whistleblower’s” congressional testimony and media tour, an op-end has surfaced on project-sindicate.org exploring how information could be further and more efficiently contained and obscured from users, beyond “old-fashioned” ways like censorship and downranking.
And Steven Hill, formerly of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) – an outfit dedicated to “radically reimagining our digital infrastructure” – has an appropriately radical idea: introduce digital operating permits and “protect people” by not allowing more than 1,000 to see a particular post.
To make the idea somewhat palatable, it was introduced under the guise of a novel way of dealing with what everybody seems to agree needs to be dealt with: tech monopolies. But the tech monopoly horse has left the barn a long time ago, and it seems that a degree of regulation will now be needed to rein it in and then allow natural ways of dealing with monopolies – fair competition and innovation to take care of the problem.
But Hill thinks the way to make them less dominant is by making major social media sites’ audiences artificially smaller. And since an average person hardly communicates with 1,000 people “in real life” (notwithstanding that people’s digital lives have very much become a part of their “real” one), Hill doesn’t think that users would be “deprived” by this limitation.
But right away, the true nature of this extraordinarily dystopian idea reveals itself to be not to truly limit the power of tech monopolies, but to make sure that the message that does get out to a lot of people (so, more than 1,000 at a time) is very controlled.
Namely, these new constrained, “digital camps” of allegedly “undeprived users,” would apply to everybody but what Big Tech decides are “legitimate news, information, music, and videos from leaders, artists, and thinkers.”
To a society that is reliant upon the internet, having access to information and communication constrained in this way would be unprecedented, even in some reviled authoritarian regimes. And who would act as the “front company” for this operation?
The report would like those to be human “moderators” like the kind social media giants already employ. They would “identify public-interest content” that would be exempt from the digital operating permits enforced on social media.
Doctor Says Physicians Are Being “Hunted” For Speaking Out by Press & Medical Boards
Dr Robert Malone branded a “terrorist” by Italian media
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | October 7, 2021
Dr Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccines, says he was branded a “terrorist” by the media in Italy and warns that physicians who speak out are being “hunted via medical boards and the press.”
“I am going to speak bluntly,” tweeted Malone. “Physicians who speak out are being actively hunted via medical boards and the press. They are trying to deligitimize and pick us off one by one. This is not a conspiracy theory – this is a fact. Please wake up. This is happening globally.”
“I was labeled as a ‘terrorist’ in the Italian press when I was in Rome for the International COVID Summit. My crime? Advocating for early treatment of COVID-19 disease. I suggest that merits a bit of meditation,” he added.
Malone is one of many doctors who have been completely persecuted merely for discussing issues relating to COVID treatments and vaccine side-effects.
He has faced fierce opposition for his assertion that children shouldn’t be given COVID-19 vaccines and has also consistently highlighted concerns over links to myocarditis risk.
Those concerns are now being justified by Finland, Denmark and Sweden halting the Moderna jab for for younger males after reports of cardiovascular side effects.
Despite such concerns being regularly voiced by doctors, the Federation of State Medical Boards announced back in July that it would consider pulling medical licenses of doctors who traffic in “misinformation” about COVID.
In another stunning development, Malone’s IP address was blocked by the New England Journal of Medicine so he couldn’t read studies on their website.
The doctor said he was aware of how to get around the IP block, but called the move a “petty act.”
Fact-Checking the Fact Checkers
By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • October 8, 2021
One of my recent posts on the Daily Sceptic was the subject of a ‘fact check‘ by Full Fact, which self-importantly describes itself as “the UK’s independent fact checking organisation” but is in fact funded by Google, Facebook and George Soros, among others, to help them suppress unapproved news and views. Even U.K. broadcasting regulator Ofcom has said it relies on the organisation to tell it what to censor regarding COVID-19, so unfortunately the dog has teeth and can’t just be ignored as one more absurd website with excessive faith in its own infallibility.
The post in question, from September 10th, simply reported on Public Health England’s latest Vaccine Surveillance report, which included infection rates by vaccination status for the previous month so allowed the calculation of an unadjusted estimate of vaccine effectiveness. Full Fact, however, took exception to the idea that vaccine effectiveness can be estimated in this way, because it wasn’t adjusted for confounders. Or used the wrong population data. Or because the article included the (entirely accurate) claim that the PHE report showed higher infection rates in the vaccinated in some age groups. Or because the heading didn’t include ‘caveats’. Or something. In any case, it was ‘incorrect’.
Here follows my correspondence with them, attempting to explain that the factual errors lay entirely in their ‘fact check’, not in my piece.
September 27th 2021
To: The Editor
Incorrect claim that report from Public Health England shows COVID-19 vaccines have “negative effectiveness” in the over-40s: Full Fact correction request
I’m writing to you from Full Fact, the U.K.’s independent fact checking organisation. I have seen an article you published on Friday September 24th so I know you are already aware of a fact check we published earlier last week, but I wanted to send an email to explain why we wrote that fact check.
The article you published on September 10th had the headline “Vaccines Have NEGATIVE Effectiveness in the Over-40s, as Low as MINUS 38%, Shows New PHE Report”
This headline falsely claims that a report from Public Health England (PHE) shows COVID-19 vaccines having “negative effectiveness” in the over-40s. It is not true that the PHE report shows this.
You note in your article that PHE says its data cannot be used on its own as a reliable measurement of vaccine effectiveness. However your headline makes a claim about vaccine effectiveness based on it.
As you will know we have published a fact check on these claims which is available on our website here:
“Vaccines do not raise your risk of catching Covid”
We are asking that you issue a correction on this article in line with the above. We would also ask that you bear this in mind when writing future articles about this data, including the one you published on Friday. We hope our fact check is helpful in this regard.
Please let me know if you’d like to discuss this further.
Many thanks,
Bethan Davies
Policy and Impact Manager
Full Fact
October 5th 2021
Good afternoon,
I just wanted to follow up on an email I sent last week about a fact check we have written on an article you published on 24th September. I will be updating this fact check on our website this week with details of what action we have taken so I wanted to check in with you before I do this. If you are planning to amend this article I’d be very grateful if you could let me know.
Many thanks,
Bethan
October 5th 2021
Dear Bethan
Thank you for your email.
Apologies – I appear to have missed your first email.
As you are aware, I have written in response to your piece ‘fact-checking’ my article of September 10th (here and now also here).
Your piece wrongly implies that people had been confused by PHE’s report as it “seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t”. However, the report doesn’t “seem” to show that, it plainly does show that. Can you explain why your piece attempts to cast doubt on this correct understanding of the data in PHE’s report, and thus misinform the public about the infection risk among vaccinated and unvaccinated people during that month? Will you be amending your piece to ensure it does not confuse or mislead in this way and makes clear that in fact the PHE report does show that vaccinated people in those age groups were more likely to test positive for Covid during that period?
Your piece’s discussion about population estimates is interesting but I hope you will agree that people are entitled to present data and make calculations based on the population data PHE presents in its reports?
You say in your email: “PHE says its data cannot be used on its own as a reliable measurement of vaccine effectiveness.” Those are your words, not theirs. They say: “The vaccination status of cases, inpatients and deaths is not the most appropriate method to assess vaccine effectiveness…” (emphasis added).
However, regardless of what PHE say is the “most appropriate method”, the fact is that vaccine effectiveness is defined as the reduced risk of infection in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated (see here). I am clear in the piece that the VE figures given are unadjusted (though they are controlled for age). I explain the limitations of the estimates and address the reason PHE gives for the sample being biased. This is a perfectly valid approach to presenting an estimate of vaccine effectiveness, provided the limitations are clear. It also needs to be kept in mind that studies which do attempt to adjust for various confounders can come with significant problems of their own (see e.g. this and this).
A study in the Lancet published yesterday confirms that vaccine effectiveness has been declining fast against Delta and over time – and that study used data only up to the start of August. This indicates that the VE figures you quote in your ‘fact check’ to counter mine are out of date. The point of estimating unadjusted VE from real-world data is to try to keep up with how vaccines are faring now, not six months ago. We are not trying to denigrate vaccines – that’s why we are sure to make clear their continued effectiveness against serious illness and death. We are only interested in reporting up-to-date factual information about them.
My question for you is why you appear to be attempting to cover over the fact that infection rates in the vaccinated are very high – on PHE data, higher than in the unvaccinated, with the gap increasing week-on-week? Would fact-checking energies not be better spent on those who continue to claim that the vaccines are highly effective against infection, a claim which looks less and less accurate with each passing week?
I would be grateful for confirmation that you have amended your piece to ensure it does not mislead about current infection rates in vaccinated people (according to PHE data) and about the latest vaccine effectiveness estimates.
Kind regards
Will
Will Jones
Associate Editor – Daily Sceptic
October 7th 2021
Dear Will,
Thank you for your response to my email.
We disagree with your point that we have misunderstood the PHE report.
We acknowledge in our fact check that your article mentions PHE’s caveats, but our fact check and the email we sent you initially are related to your headline, which has no caveats in it.
We are happy with information we included on vaccine effectiveness and we have made it clear to readers where this came from.
We very much appreciate you setting out your position. In conclusion however, after consideration, we will not be amending our fact check.
Kind regards,
Bethan
October 7th 2021
Dear Bethan
Thank you for your reply.
You say your ‘fact check’ is related to our headline. Please can you spell out more precisely for me what you object to in the headline? Is it because it doesn’t include the word ‘unadjusted’ before ‘vaccine effectiveness’? Or is it something else? Unadjusted vaccine effectiveness is still a form of vaccine effectiveness so the headline is not inaccurate on that point (and the caveats are explained in the piece). Part of the problem is that you seem to regard vaccine effectiveness as something which can only be calculated in a formal study, rather than a quantity representing the reduced proportion of infections in a vaccinated group versus an unvaccinated group which may be calculated on any such data set (with limitations acknowledged). It is therefore not ‘incorrect’, as you claim, for me to calculate vaccine effectiveness from population data and report on it.
I appreciate that you are happy with the information you have included on vaccine effectiveness. However, the important point is it is not valid to claim that an article using more up-to-date data on real-world infection rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated groups is ‘incorrect’ by citing out-of-date estimates from studies using data from earlier periods, even if they come from government sources. You can point out that the new estimates disagree with the old estimates, but that doesn’t invalidate the new estimates or make them ‘incorrect’. What you are doing amounts to attempted censorship of reporting on emerging data, rather than ‘fact-checking’.
You say you disagree that you have misunderstood the PHE report. But you clearly imply that the PHE report does not show infection rates higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. To quote:
This data had already caused widespread confusion, because it seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t. In particular, a chart displaying the data seemed to give this impression.
This is a patently misleading section as you completely fail to acknowledge that the report plainly does show infection rates higher in the vaccinated in these age groups and instead attempt to make it sound like it does not and that this was a matter of ‘confusion’ on the part of others. The PHE report even explicitly states: “In individuals aged 40 to 79, the rate of a positive COVID-19 test is higher in vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated.”
I urge you again, as a matter of professional integrity and for the sake of the credibility of your site, to amend the ‘fact check’ so that it is not misleading in this way and makes clear that the PHE report is correctly understood as showing infection rates higher in the vaccinated in these age groups during this time period.
Kind regards
Will
Will Jones
Associate Editor – Daily Sceptic
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