Disinformation Governance Board
The Biden Administration has established a Disinformation Governance Board within the the Department of Homeland Security.
Jen Psaki, Biden's Press Secretary, said the department would monitor misinformation on topics such as Covid, elections and Russia.
The fact that this sounds a little like the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 should give everyone pause.
If you are not familiar with the book here is a short synopsis of how the Ministry of Truth played into the plot.
The protagonist of Orwell's classic, Winston Smith, works in the ministry, a governmental department that controls information coming from news, entertainment, arts and education. Smith's role at the ministry is to correct historical records to align with the messaging of Big Brother, the leader/symbol of the novel's ruling totalitarian party.
The woman selected to head the Board, Nina Jankowicz, was previously a "Disinformation Fellow" at the Wilson Center.
Who knew there were Fellows of Disinformation?
However, in looking at the statements Ms. Jankowicz has made in the past it does not appear to me she is particularly adept at distinguishing information from disinformation.
She was an ardent supporter of the Steele dossier and the Russian collusion narrative against Trump which has now been almost entirely discredited.
She claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a classic example of disinformation. The New York Times and The Washington Post have now reported that the Hunter Biden laptop story was correct.
She railed against Donald Trump when he complained about "Fake News" and in 2020 (when Trump was President) said the the Executive Branch should not have the power to determine what was "fake news".
What is she now going to be doing by executive order?
What is the truth?
Isn't the best method to allow as much information to be shared in the public domain as possible and allow people to make up their own mind about the "truth"?
That clearly was the intent of our Founders.
Why else have a First Amendment which was supposed to guarantee free speech?
The Tech Slant
Claims and concerns about disinformation have expanded greatly as technology has expanded.
This is particularly true in the social media world we live in today.
I think this is largely due to the fact that social media allows a message to amplified so it reaches many more people than simple speech did before.
Of course, information to some is deemed disinformation to others.
Who is to decide?
The Biden administration seems to think Nina Jankowicz and her Disinformation Governance Board will know best.
Elon Musk is clearly concerned about how the decision is made between what is information and what is disinformation. He is spending $44 billion to attempt to bring some balance to the issue of free speech.
Is it a level playing field today?
Is there balance?
Consider three charts.
This chart shows the political contributions made by employees of major companies in the tech space that was compiled by Vox.
98.7% of political contributions of Twitter employees went to Democrats?
Do you think this might color their view of information vs. disinformation?
What I found interesting is that 93.9% of the political contributions of Tesla employees went to Democrats and yet you would now think Elon Musk is only one step better than the Devil himself when it comes to the opinions of liberals and the media establishment.
The second chart shows the changing political attitudes of Democrats and Republicans over the last few decades.
Many complain that the center as has been lost in politics. This has resulted in the loss of trust in information as each side sees "truth" from their own perspective.
However, where has the largest deviation from the center come from?
The fact is that the median Democrat has moved much further left than the median Republican has moved right.
The median Democrat has moved leftward at a magnitude of 4x-5x greater than the median Republican has moved right.
This data is from surveys done from Pew Research from 1994 to 2017.
It is clearly much worse today as this was before the further leftward lurch of the Democrats in the last five years.
The fact is that the Democrats have abandoned the center to a much greater degrees than have Republicans.
However, to hear the media spin on this, it is exactly the opposite.
The chart below is also interesting as it shows the % of people by party affiliation who state they have a "great deal of confidence" in the scientific community.
20 years ago there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats on their trust in the scientific community.
Look at it today, particularly what happened in 2020.
Is this due to too much information... or too little?
Or has the scientific community simply been co-opted by politics (climate change, Covid, etc)?
Covid, Mask Mandates and Canada
It has been two weeks since the mask mandate was lifted on airplanes in the United States.
When the mask mandate was lifted there were some experts who predicted this would be disastrous.
For example, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist said this.
"It's very clear that the airline industry is particularly vulnerable, and this creates a cascading effect on society more than, say, a restaurant closing would," Feigl-Ding said. "This is critical infrastructure and these are essential employees, and we're endangering our economy. Stopping COVID is good for our economy, 'letting it rip' is the exact opposite."
It was predicted that this would lead to mass cancellations of flights as crew members would be exposed to the virus and not be available to work.
Here are the percentage of flight cancellations on Saturday, April 30 for any reason among the major U.S. air carriers. This data is from FlightAware for April 30, 2022.
American 1%
Delta. 0%
Southwest. 0%
United 2%
Compare that to cancellations for some of the domestic China air carriers.
China Eastern. 46%
Spring Airlines 70%
Hainan Airlines. 47%
Tianjin Airlines. 32%
As far as the argument that this would cause people to avoid air travel here is the data.
In the week ending April 2, 2022 (with the mask mandate in place) there was an average of 2,063,000 air passengers per day according to TSA statistics.
In the week ending April 30, 2022 ( four weeks later with the mask mandate removed) there was an average of 2,106,000 air passengers per day.
Cases nationally have risen modestly over the last two weeks but the increase is principally being driven by an increase in cases in the Northeast which also happen to be the most heavily vaccinated states in the nation.
 |
| Source: The New York Times, 5/1/22 |
Seasonality may be contributing to the rise in cases in the Northeastern states as colder weather lingers longer and drives case loads higher.
This may also be a reason that Canada is still dealing with higher case loads and much higher hospitalizations than the United States right now despite much higher vaccination rates and much stricter Covid mandates.
For example, those who are not vaccinated cannot even get on an airplane, train or bus in Canada.
Masks are also still required on all flights in Canada.
82% of every man, woman and child in Canada has been fully vaccinated. (63% in U.S.)
49% have received booster doses. (30% in U.S)
How is Canada doing on what is now considered the key metric on the effectiveness of the vaccines regarding Covid? (Preventing severe disease, e.g. hospitalizations)
Right now Canada has four times the number of patients per capita in the hospital with Covid than the United States.
This chart tracks hospitalizations since January 1, 2022 in the Canada and the United States.
The chart below is from the Government of Canada's Covid-19 Daily Epidemiology Update as of April 29, 2022 which shows the number of hospital beds occupied in Canada by Covid patients since April, 2020.
I have added the dates in which Covid vaccines and booster doses were approved for the population in Canada.
 |
| Source: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-summary-covid-19-cases.html |
You can draw your own conclusion about how effective the vaccines and all those mandates have been at preventing severe disease in Canada.
However, posting this type of data has been considered "misinformation" by Twitter, Facebook and others for most of the last two years.
All I can say is.....hmmmmmm.
No comments:
Post a Comment