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Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have always been bothered by the vagueness of "COVID cases" in the news. Being a molecular biologists, I understand very well what PCR is good for. Is there even a study that investigated the ratio of PCR positive cases and actually sick people?

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But the problem with PCR is that is indicates nothing about actual infectivity as it doesn't indicate infectious virions: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32475066/.

On a few episodes of This Week in Virology (at microbe.tv/twiv) they discussed what high CT values would indicate, such as with Michael Mina (https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/).

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@csaba Kiss re: “ratio of +PCR test to sick people”—good question. Though, that is a metric that would be very unlikely to inform the existing, official narrative.

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When over half of the COVID positives in the hospital are hospitalized WITH covid rather than FOR covid, the stronger point is that we shouldn't reflexively count a positive as a "covid case" in the first place. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062/

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But, also, the smart set today won't use the PCR test at the end after getting COVID to "clear" themselves with a negative test, because PCR detects low level and even inactive remnant protein as you intimate. So that tells you something. People use the antigen test at that point as more representative of continued infection.

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The real problem with any testing is that a person has been shedding prior to symptom onset. So, timing is pretty tricky and so I don't see any use for it but for the case in which the person has a baby or old person around them and they test every day.

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Just to add to my above statement, the metric we should be looking at false positive for non infected and infected and false negatives for non infected and infected.

This is sometimes referred to as specificity and sensitivity. In medical testing there is a trade off between these two and there is a generally a preference to have a cheap/quick highly sensitive test (like to PCR with cycle counts >40) that produces a high proportion of false positives relative false negatives. (I.e. sensitivity) This level of sensitivity is usually followed up with a more expensive test, if you are positive, with higher specificity (I.e less false positives) However, they do not do this this follow up with the PCR. (I wonder why?:-) )

My understanding is that (according to Peter mcollough) there is a 90% false positive for PCR test for asymptotic (i.e. likely non infected.)

The question, why are these metrics on sensitivity and specificity not available?

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Sorry. My first sentence above should read :

...”false positive for non infected and false negative for infected”

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But unfortunately it does inform the existing, official narrative, indicating that they don't have a clue about virology! They talk about testing without knowing what the PCR even tests for and what, if anything, it might even mean when correlated with sick people, which would be essentially nothing.

The reason that I say this is that symptoms begin after shedding starts to decline, for example as seen here: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Summary-curves-of-viral-shedding-and-total-symptoms-scores-in-experimental-influenza_fig3_5620669. As symptoms peak after peak shedding, testing has less of a chance to prevent infections as the symptomatic person will be shedding more viral RNA than viable virions as time goes on, if they were shedding enough virions in the first place.

The real testing that is needed are assays that indicate that there are enough infectious virions as viral RNA or DNA, depending on the virus, mean little to nothing about infectivity as far as I can tell, and they do not do this.

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Looks like it, but that idea never seemed to get off the ground, a cheap, less sensitive test that could have actually made a difference. I think that the current push for testing is ill informed and will actually do nothing. It makes sense if one is around very young children or old people, high risk groups, but the person would have to test constantly.

As that article notes, in "Infected ≠ Infectious", most people aren't a threat, studies indicate that superspreaders are the threat, 20% of the sick cause 80% of the infections, and so if one is vaccinated, then the risk of being a spreader is even lower.

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Yeah but I wonder if she said that before she realized that vaccinated can still spread the virus. She wrote it in sept. 2020.... i agree about testing I think that’s what many people have been trying to say that aysmptomatic testing is ridiculous bc your not likely to spread it if you don’t have symptoms but also the way I understand PCR is that it can pick up other virus like flu so all the people who were infected twice- were they? For so long we were using higher cycle thresholds were they really infected twice or did they have flu or other virus. I dunno that’s speculation!?

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Well, first, there was no expectation that the vaccinated couldn't infect others, with the exception of the immediate four to six months in which the vaccinated person and the Covid-19 patient effectively has neutralizing immunity due to the amount of antibodies produced. All but one vaccine, the HPV vaccine, only reduce the risk of severe illness and death. It's the very nature of vaccines, they are only as good as the actual disease in setting up the immune system.

I find that few people actually understand the most fundamental facts about vaccines, such as what I stated above. The one thing that studies of the vaccinated and of Covid-19 patients is that they shed a lot less infectious viruses, see:

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-855/

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-854/

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Thank you for sharing this. What do you make of the data in the U.K. for example and elsewhere that shows higher infection rates in the vaccinated populations and or, it seems everytime we’ve stArted vaccinating cases start to skyrocket. Take Israel currently as an example. I also keep hearing about vaccine inequity in Africa but they seem relatively unphased and in fact South Africa is the 90% majority of their cases. Just curious. I’ve seen all these graphs where when boosters start it seems cases go up in almost every case??

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You're welcome. There's a lot in that post! You'd have to post links to the information in question, such as a news article about it. I know of no such research that indicates that the vaccinated get infected at a higher rate than the unvaccinated.

The fact is that after about six months, both the vaccinated and ex-Covid-19 patients effectively lose whatever neutralizing immunity that they had as their immune systems contract the antibodies. This is normal. Going forward, these people would have the same infection rate as unvaccinated people, not higher, as they are part of the same community as the unvaccinated people, so why would they have a higher rate?

The issue seems to be that most people do not understand what I posted immediately above and so falsely believe nonsense.

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Given that in some places authorities are using a Ct as high as 40 as a cutoff (e.g. the Olympics), I don't think people are very concerned about false positives. I've seen (delta) Cts around 40 in PCR based gene expression arrays for genes that are basically not expressed.

"Who cares about false positives" is a recurring theme in this pandemic and is an outgrowth of the "better safe than sorry" mindset. I similarly don't understand how anyone can take numbers of COVID cases or deaths at face value in the US when there is a Medicare bounty for COVID patients.

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"I don't think people are very concerned about false positives."

I agree. Most people are too ignorant to even question CT numbers and that ignorance leads them to demand ill-informed "better safe than sorry" policies that then feed the ignorant anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers backlashes. Too many people are either anti-intellectual or too lazy to educate themselves, IMO.

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A question such as the one you have posited takes me back to the kinds of questions I would see on a freshman level test in statistics.

When discussing things Like PCR tests, what I see is that the information in regard to a single individual is not particularly useful.

PCR tests may have usefulness only in regard to a group of say 10,000 or 100,000 individuals. What is known is that there are consistently meaningful levels of false positives and false negatives.

Also, the exact meaningfulness of what biological information is derived has no meaning for a single individual. By itself, a single test of a single individual has no value. But, multiple tests of hundreds of thousands of individuals provide information that is obviously useful (at least in the opinions of some).

Thus, to posit a meaningful question - one must say something like... if PCR tests are given every week to a population of 100 thousand individuals and there are approximately 1,000 positive results per week that result from that process... what beneficial actions can be put in place based on that information... knowing that a meaningful proportion are false positive or false negative.

And of course, as you ask, what proportion "are actually sick".

And from data I have seen, "actually sick" is usually defined as those requiring hospitalization, those ending up in an ICU and those that end up dying.

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A PCR test is useful if the question is whether an individual has a specific viral infection. IMO, these PCR tests don't provide much information because asymptomatic people would be shedding viral RNA or DNA as would symptomatic people. So, you might get an idea of how many people were infected at any given time, but the real issues are a) the number of infectious people and (b) the number of people who require hospitalization.

But you have to ask yourself, is the PCR information relevant? For example, we do not do this normally as far as I know. We don't sample wastewater or inside air for any viruses, so why continue testing for SARS-CoV-2 now that we have safe and effective vaccines and hospitals can handle the stupid anti-vaxxers who get "immunized" by getting sick? IMO, the PCR tests are a waste.

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Re the "Stupid anti'vaxxers", our small local hospital just reported 25 covid cases in the hospital, with 12 unvaccinated and 13 FULLY Vaccinated.

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From now on, post your evidence with your comment. There are so many trolls here it's very difficult to determine if someone is genuine or just making shit up.

What they don't say is why they're hospitalized, for Covid-19 or something else in which they tested them for Covid-19 and found that they are shedding RNA. All studies show that the vaccinated and those that had Covid-19 and recovered are at risk for mild to no symptom Covid-19 and that a lot of people who go to the hospital for one thing are found to have had or have Covid-19 in that cohort. This article is a case in which the lack of information is a problem.

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Just to be clear, wastewater is commonly analyzed for covid. New York City wastewater has been in the news quite a bit lately. Perhaps I misunderstand your point.

Air quality analysis is also under scientific investigation - but, again perhaps I am misunderstanding. This falls under scientific investigation and doesn't have actionable real-world benefit at this time... perhaps that is your point.

Regardless, you legitimately question the usefulness of PCR testing results. It is obviously not accurate enough to make specific treatment decisions, for example. Most medical treatment for covid is oriented to treating the symptoms for obvious reasons. But, again - to repeat myself - if you are making decisions where the population is 330,000,000 and you are realistically dealing with variances of +- 10% or even more - then, yes, you can say do this and approximately 30 million people will die - or alternatively, do this other thing and approximately 15 million people will die.

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My argument is that we do not normally test for the existence of any number of viruses, such as polio, dengue, smallpox, flu, cold, but they do test for common pathogens, such as e-coli. Looking for the SARS-CoV-2 virus now wouldn't surprise me, it may provide a high level view of infection in the population, maybe.

I don't see much use in the current testing for Covid-19 though as one would need to detect that a person is shedding enough infectious virions to infect others, not just RNA, and do it every day as people start shedding before they show symptoms.

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Yes, your assertion is correct. A covid test cannot tell you if a specific individual is infectious - and, I am reasonably certain no rebuttable scientist would disagree with you.

But, again... and I apologize for repeating the exact same point...

If you test 100,000,000 people for covid and 100,000 of them test positive... you can make decisions based on that information that would lead to fewer people dying from covid.

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I understand your argument, but I just don't see it the same way. Currently, we do not test for flu, yet upwards of 50,000 people die of flu every year. So, why test for Covid-19? I think that hospitals and clinics will be a better source of such data, as they are now for flu. We just see this a bit differently, and that's fine.

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Feb 3, 2022
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Again, I am repeating myself... just to clarify...

In regard to PCR testing, it would be erroneous to suggest at the individual person level that any one decision is reasonable.

To more clearly understand the decision-making process... it is something more like if we put a policy in place for 50,0000,000 air passengers then we estimate at approximately +-15% that 5,0000 of individuals will die - or, alternatively we implement a different policy then the probability is that approximately 25,000 people will die.

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Feb 3, 2022
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Hasn’t conflating positive PCR tests with cases generated fertile soil for a false narrative to flourish?

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Feb 3, 2022Edited
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Agreed. Thanks for your input. I find it helpful.

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I'd love to make it but in case I don't or can't get a comment in, I've had Neil Young's "Old Man" going through my head a lot these past few days. "Old man, take a look in my eyes, I'm a lot like you...I need Joe Rogan's podcast to see me through..."

Anyway, these old hippies (Joni Mitchell included) were so on top of demanding rights and bucking the system it's hard to believe the irony of becoming the voice of the government/MSM is lost on them. Personally, i'm frantically checking myself for any developing psychological fissure that might cause me to become as unmoored from primary principals as they seemingly have.

Are we all destined to become the enemy we fought? I suppose an argument could be made that they see the inverse situation and maybe that's where we need to begin? But the thing I don't get is how you can listen to 10 minutes of JR and not go, "Oh, yeah, he's fine. Maybe not a genius, but clearly a decent person trying to do right." The only arguments I ever hear that have any basis in reality are, "he has a responsibility to do X because of his platform," which is difficult to see as anything other than policing.

Last thing I'll say about Neil Young is that he's been shaming people into compliance since the beginning as demonstrated in the song, "Southern Man." It's easy to listen to that song in the context of the 1960's and see what's right about it ("Rednecks" by Randy Newman is another example), but in the modern context it looks like punching down. Music is interesting in this regard because it's always intended for a listener, but these things don't hold up well when the listener changes. Maybe scolding isn't the best way to make timeless art.

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Safer Enjeti connects these singers to hedge funds that own their music and have interlocking ties w Big Pharma.

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It's called selling out. Most of our "heroes" (well, I really mean who we're fans of) end up selling out and disappointing us. Kneel Young is dead to me. I can't listen to his music the same way anymore.

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Agreed, but the question that interests me (and I hope everyone) is how can I prevent it from happening to me. I don't want to 'sell out' or lose my principles, but maybe the deeper question is how well-defined and true those principles are in the first place. An argument could be made that Neil Young's (vis a vis all the hippies) were never that deep. I don't want to end up like that.

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Principles matter. Not to all of course. People who value intelligence over wisdom will always value material over principle.

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Agreed.

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How does Neil Young pulling his music have anything to do with government coercion - or the "MSM"? It was his free choice, which, I'm assuming is something we all believe in. No one even mentioned this distinction in the conversation. There's a difference between top down pressure from the Dems, and individuals expressing their liberty...

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He doesn’t own his music you ignorant dumbkopf. He had no control. The pharmacy connected billionaire s and hedge funds are manipulating him like an ass puppet.

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Namecalling is really unnecessary. I get this topic means a lot to you (big fan of Neil Young, I take it?). It really appears as though the other players in music are trying to sink Spotify and using bogus arguments about misinformation (Biden himself is a serial offender) to drive business away from Spotify. This should be obvious to anyone willing to look past the noise.

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Cool story. I never said he owned his music. Also nice language - it makes you seem very intelligent.

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I was under the impression he didn't even own the music anymore. That this was more about money and less about his political decision. Still... he uses Rogan's platform and "misinformation" as his published reasoning. It aligns with the "top down pressure from the Dems"... how can you not see the connection?

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Neil Young stated "you can't have Young and Rogan", so it was his decision. Just because his choice aligns with the mainstream liberal narrative, doesn't mean it's caused by it.

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its funny how the same people who think that Rogan has no influence and is completely independent think that Neil is brainwashed and under corporate control, meanwhile Rogan has a 100 million dollar deal with a corporation, not to mention a snake oil supplement company

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Neil Young is a shaman.

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In his dreams..

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Neil Young is a shame, man :-D

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In the same vein as when Dennis Hopper started being a spokesperson for retirement fund Ameriprise. What's next for Neil Young, shaman for Depends (adult diapers)?

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Feb 5, 2022
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see lyrics for Helpless

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Source?

No they were infected by hedge funds and billionaires closely tied to Big Pharma who bought (stole) their music and which are manipulating them like ghostly dock puppets … there but not there.

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Source?

Lol, I won't wait up...

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The White House and all the various Govt health agency spokespeople only need to look in the mirror to see why their credibility continues to nosedive … they want Spotify to shutdown “misinformation “ while LA DA Garcetti says “he doesn’t breathe when he takes his mask off” for a photo…. Did Bill Clinton text him that explanation? Do “they” not understand that this daily assault on our intelligence and their rules “we” must adhere to but not them only reinforces our skepticism that it’s their information that is bogus.

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Newsom also said he only took his mask off for his photo with Magic Johnson. BUT, there are numerous photographs of Newsom without his mask on while at SoFi Stadium, where due to the current mandates for outdoor events with over 5000 people, masks are suppose to be worn at all times.

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"I’m going to add a standard apology about the Apple-only aspect of these discussions for as long as that continues to be true - I really am sorry about this. "

You could always threaten to remove your content from the platform until they stop playing the corporate favoritism game 😄

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Hey I'm a frustrated Android user too, but I think Matt should continue to do these Callins. They seem like a great way to connect with the community, and I look forward to the day when I can join in too.

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Yeah, another frustrated Android user here. ARGH.

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OK, I haven't looked into it, but it could be an Apple-only protocol thing. He could look at other platforms, if that's the case.

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Thanks Matt , Miss you on UI. Just not the same.

I Love how Ole' Zuck blames Tick Tock for the drop in daily users costing him billions in theoretical wealth. In a simple anecdotal story I call my own , one user stopped using FB (5 years ago) for the very reasons you listed in your message here. I think the information crackdown is reaching critical mass and people are voting with their thumbs and spending their attention elsewhere thus costing FB billions in magical value. Also the metaverse is the ultimate in cringe and I think scares the hell out of regular people.

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I am trying to train myself that if a random post FROM A STRANGER in particular makes me emotional, to put down the keypad.

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Metaverse is totally interesting and not at all a new concept. Can be amazing, if not for the obvious corruption, manipulation, and mental slavery aspects.

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Dr. Peter McCullough cited almost everything he said why does no one discuss that? Also, no one is talking about what’s happening in Israel! I’ve seen multiple news sources say this same thing! They have more cases in the month of January than in the entire year in 2021! https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321674

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Man, Matt....we all pay you money to keep searching for the truth...stop being lazy and get to RUMBLE....the very people you warn us about is AAPL.

Put our/your money where your mouth is

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Matt doesn't want to ipset his left-leaning constituency. Still, I support Matt since he's had balanced takes in the past and deserves support. Maybe he'll be less concerned about how he's perceived after the culture war has stabilized :)

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What has happened to Matt? All the generalities about 'woke', 'press freedom,' etc. have lost all meaning in the artificial constructs he now references. I was such a fan when he was nailing the banks and other big corps. But, now, finding 'cracks' and 'inconsistencies' or whatever in the "mainstream LIBERAL narrative"? Please....Matt...the country is going into the shitter and you are doing this nonsense?

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What do you think the odds are that Matt has been the same this whole time, but now you don’t agree with him and so your biases are coloring your perception differently? What if you are the one who is wrong now and Matt is still right? Or what if your view of the world is correct, but you were both wrong before?

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That's a good point, of course. Do you not think it never occurred to me that I could be wrong?? I am paralyzed by that issue. Come on....please. My point is that Matt - my man - used to zero in on banks, income distribution, class stratification, media bias, i.e. issues of consequence. NOW, however, as with his pal, Jimmy Dore, he wants to go into relatively trivial (in my opinion) issues such as the Joe Rogen/Neil Young/anti-Fauci/ nonsense. Please, please, please. And while they are at slapping themselves so hard on the back about how insightful and unbiased they are to actually criticize the "liberal media" as if, see everyone?....I'm not woke too! The fact that the Taibbi is even taking on this pseudo 'woke' issue, which is a relatively benign one in the scheme of things, is not only boring my tits off, but depressing. Please, Matt, take a look at the war machine, income distribution, climate change....for fuck's sake. Who cares whether Joe Rogan is right, wrong, 'woke', 'unwoke,' whatever about vaccinations.

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The suppression of Joe Rogan is possibly an interesting issue, not because of its practical or ideological content, but because it is evidence of a breakdown of the ability of the ruling class to protect and compel their narratives and propaganda. That is, what the people getting after Rogan are responding to, which must be their own weakness (or they would not be concerned). This might be a thread worth pursuing. It's like "follow the money" only in this case it's "follow the power."

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YES, OF COURSE. But you are all missing the point. There is not a substantive issue about Joe Rogan. BOTH the "conservative" and "liberal" (if you prefer any of those classifications) are irrelevant. They are only semantics that serve....and here it comes....to stall and deflect while the real issues of social and societal changes can really and truly change. While all of you are dicking around about Neil, Joe, anti-vaxxers, Anthony Fauci, etc. etc. , the rich are getting richer and the fucking Republicans are screwing everyone. In short, the MSM and the Republicans are probably all laughing their way to the bank while Matt Taibbi and, apparently, all of you are fixated on "woke." Follow the money, folks. As big an asshole that Trump and his Republican whores are (and will always be), they are making hay (as they say in the Midwest) while we dumbass "liberals" are writing about 'woke." Believe me, to the eternal regrets of us and our children, we and Matt have been taken to the cleaners by the "conservatives" and the "Republicans" (the distinction being totally meaningless, by the way). In short, forget about Joe Rogan; he is an unsuspecting idiot being used by the ruling class for THEIR purposes. The content (if one can EVER subscribe "content" to Joe Rogan) is a side show.

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Well, it's interesting. We have people who call themselves 'liberals' trying to gin up a war with Russia -- although I guess I have to concede that liberals have certainly supplied their share of warmongers in past epochs -- and professing affection for the secret police, and now here we have them trying to suppress speech on the grounds that it is contrary to authority. I think that's a significant evolution. I think it's worth discussing.

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Feb 5, 2022
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You're exactly right, in my view. This woke BS, and the culture war generally are explicitly a distraction to get the working class to fight with each other as opposed to realizing who the real enemy is.

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Is there a chance you are underestimating the significance of a coordinated effort to control the narrative? How easy it is to dismiss people as “far right” conspiracy theorist? It’s like a magic spell, and it gets push so relentlessly and with such practice that it’s pretty terrifying. Look at how easy it is to get one guy to show up at some corner of a protest with a nazi flag and watch how every media story has the same narrative and the same single image.

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Jesus.....of course I am not underestimating controlling the narrative. My single point has nothing to do with 'conspiracy' or 'far right' or whatever...or even 'far left.' So, yeah, a single asshole waving a flag on the corner can say pretty much anything....and get MEDIA attention. That has NOTHING to do with anything, however, other than how corrupt our own media has become to even allow you to say something so depressing. Forget all this, get the babies and young kids some good education and hope that our generation dies off as fast as possible before it is too late, which it probably already is. Why is everyone so fixated on Joe Rogan?....he is a nobody ALREADY and will be even less so as things descend into the shitter....precisely what the 'ruling class' wants. This is not that difficult, folks. Matt Taibbi was on this years ago...but now look what has happened. He has gone to the other side. Keep talking about "woke" and "Joe FUCKING Rogan".....that is what the ruling class hopes we do, anyway. Right?....Matt?

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What percentage of the population do you believe thinks the main stream media is propaganda? Like if you were to graph it over time would it look exponential? The Joe Rogan stuff is a red pill experience mill. It exposes the media to the people who are not as far down the rabbit hole as you are. Also Joe Rogan gets clicks bro.😂

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Did I use the word 'propaganda?' No. 'Propaganda' assumes the editors, writers, broadcasters, etc. etc. or whoever you define are some monolithic block. You also use words like 'rabbit hole', 'red pill', etc. as if everyone watches some dumbass trendy Hollywood 'movie' has coalesced around some "significant' meaning. Use words, not manufactured Hollywood-manufactured phrases, "bro." Yeah, Joe Rogan gets clicks...but so does everyone else in the universe with a computer. Whatever are you talking about???? And, I am reasonably sure I am not your 'bro.'

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Precisely. It’s a long journey of false equivalencies from income inequality, Goldman Sachs, unfair outcomes for the impoverished to over-wokeness.

Matt is a great writer who can and does make all of his subjects worth discussing, but this constant takedown of the left for comparatively trivial baloney is disheartening. I occasionally enjoy Joe Rogan as a conversationalist but don’t take him seriously as an intellect, and I don’t care about any conversation he has whether it’s with reasonable, well informed people or nutbags. I don’t care if he AGREES with nutbags. He’s a voice on a podcast. I also don’t care if either Red or Blue want to take him down-at $100 million and 11 million listeners, he’s fair game.

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Possibly liberals who have given up their professed affection for free expression aren't really liberals any more.

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How is this responsive to my comment?

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I guess I jumped over several steps. I think what set me off may have been "constant takedown of the Left". Taibbi's recent targets have been liberals, progressives, Democrats, whom I don't regard as the Left, but some use that language. Liberals etc. are supposed to have _some_ leftish qualities, like believing in freedom of expression. If they have abandoned this position (which is what calling for Rogan to be deplatformed amounts to) it might be significant to those who have not abandoned it. Since a fairly fundamental principle of the current social order is in question, it seems might be in the bag along with income and wealth difference.

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I am so happy I am not alone in feeling this way. I appreciate a "reporter" who is an equal opportunity critic, but lately many in the alt middle seem to be focusing soley on the liberal agenda as if that POV makes them honest or more relevant.

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Taibbi is reporting on the most obvious idiocy happening in real time. You prefer he focuses on something like fracking right now while the country is turning into China by way of mass censorship?

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Controlling the narrative through any and all means necessary ....was always part of the plan as discussed during the coronavirus pandemic exercises held in October of 2019- https://beyondspin.wordpress.com/2022/01/27/pandemic-exercises/

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Please make reference to a specific time zone when you announce an event or presentation. Not all of us live on the east coast!

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Have you tried those darn world clock apps?

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The problem is that it isn't clear that Matt means Eastern time. You have to have a starting point in order to back calculate your time...

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Matt -- I love you as only an ex-newsman can, but for the love of Strunk & White could you please hyphenate Call-In? :+)

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Agreed, but since it’s not a proper noun, no caps.

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Agreed, but it was in a headline, with initial cap style.

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Agreed, but in that case, only “Call” would get initial capped. “In” wouldn’t be initial capped, as it would follow the hyphen, and is a preposition, besides.

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Feb 5, 2022
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Ah, did not realize that. I guess that makes it a proper noun and I need to rescind my comment.

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Matt, I just listened to your comments on the Callin about what is/isn't "misinformation" on Joe Rogan's show. Did you actually listen to the Robert Malone interview? If so, you might have heard him assert that the pandemic was literally pre-planned for profit and control. You might have also heard Joe rephrase that assertion as sort of a fake question, intended to amplify the statement, not to challenge it. This is Alex Jones territory and it crosses a line. I'm not calling for censorship, but come on, to ignore this (and it's by no means an isolated example) you're just avoiding a difficult issue.

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For the record, it was McCullough not Malone who said to Rogan that the pandemic was pre-planned and coordinated. Those two interviews -- and throw in the Weinstein's for good measure -- are of a piece and run together in my head.

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I really for the life of me don't understand why Rogan is the hill they want to die on for free speech, ignoring that the people that don't like him are also exercising the same free speech. None of this involves the government and therefore free speech doctrine doesn't even apply in the first place.

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You make it sound as if Taibbi and Greenwald focus on Rogan to the exclusion of all other concerns around free speech issues. And if you were right that this "is the hill they want to die on" it would be perplexing. The current controversy around Rogan might not be so concerning if not understood from the broader context in which we are seeing a level of censoriousness that the Christian right of the 90's, "Satanic panic" etc pales in comparison to. The coordinated effort that resulted in the Parlor app being shutdown by Amazon, the branding of those who question the official narrative around Covid as "conspiracy theorists" and nutjobs, Democrats demanding more censorship from 'Big Tech' etc,. In my lifetime I have never witnessed such a concerted effort to silence opposing views. Considering everything above, and that none of it should be new to any reader of Greenwald and Taibbi, I can't help but suspect that the bafflement you and others are expressing is disingenuous. Or maybe "for the life of you" you are just too dense to comprehend what is plain for the rest to see.

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its not a free speech issue, these are citizens that want to cancel Rogan, not the government. Their voice is as valid as anyone elses and spotify can do what they want. Until they are sanctioned by the government without breaking the law this has zero to do with free speech.

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Feb 5, 2022
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Indeed.

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The constitution is a legal doctrine, and doesn't protect you from vague calls by Jen Psaki for platforms to regulate their content. The constitution is only as good as the court and state that enforce it, you seem to have it confused with a sort of philosophical doctrine.

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"Until they are sanctioned by the government without breaking the law this has zero to do with free speech."

Being concerned about a censorious trend in the culture need not have anything to do with the First Amendment. Some of us are interested in living in a society where open and lively debate is encouraged because we understand that a functioning collective intelligence necessitates a free flow of ideas. I wonder are all of your values informed by the dictates of the state and what it does or doesn't allow? When you contemplate whether not to do something is this a simple matter of checking the law books?

That said there actually are potential civil liberties implications, considering that state officials Jen Psaki, and the Surgeon General have waded into all of this Rogan mania and have been calling on Spotify to take actions against misinformation etc,.

There was a precedent setting Supreme Court case in the 1960s regarding a bookstore in Rhode Island which ruled that informal notices produced by a state commission which warned that certain publications were in violation of obscenity laws amounted to CENSORSHIP. The commission did NOT forcibly remove products all they did was leave written notice from the commission and the court ruled that the state had violated the plaintiffs First Amendment rights.

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Thank you. Wondering if these are actually soft trolls.

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The "What's the big deal? You're over reacting and I am the shining example of sober thinking" troll.

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The thing about "crossing the line" of acceptable dialogue about topics such as the origins of this virus is that the line is being drawn by what you think is or isn't feasible. We mostly don't know the answer to the question. Branding a claim as Alex Jones territory is the sort of ad-hominem typically used to distract from the issues being discussed.

I get the impression people forget that episodes of JRE are conversations and can't be equated with MSM products that are specifically designed to disseminate curated information. JRE episodes are nothing like what Alex Jones puts out because when Alex turns the camera on there is a script that has been put together to communicate a specific message. There is no script on JRE, Joe has no plan for how a show will go, and what ensues is very often dialectic.

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"There are three great truths; your truth, my truth and the truth." - Proverb... The fact we're no longer free to discuss any version of it, means we'll end up an ill-informed populace, if we aren't already!?

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Facts that seem to be missing from discussions by Matt, Rogan, etc:

1. Over 690,000 COVID-19 US hospitalizations could have been prevented by vaccination between June to November 2021 (84% of hospitalizations were unvaxxed)

2. The cost of this to US healthcare system: $38 Billion

3. Other costs: Exhausted doctors and nurses, fewer beds for people with other medical emergencies

So when Rogan pushes an anti-vax agenda with his 11 Million followers, and people don't get vaxxed as a result, there are actual, real costs to society. Who should be responsible for paying those costs? I'm not suggesting Rogan should pay everything, but he does have some responsibility, doesn't he? The same day he posted his video about Neil Young, he tweeted a bogus Ivermectin "study" and when people pointed it out, he deleted the tweet, but not before almost 100K followers liked it. Did Rogan issue a correction? -- I haven't seen it. Is this responsible use of his platform with 11M followers? Do no journalistic standards apply to him?

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The "missing" facts to which you've referred are the mainstream consensus. That information is not only easily accessible but inescapable, unless you live in a cave. Has anyone shown any evidence that people are choosing to forego vaccination because of anything Joe Rogan says? Can you point specifically to what proves Rogan "pushes an anti-vax agenda"? Shall we make a comprehensive list of all the inconsistent claims (and admitted outright lies) made by MSM, CDC, WHO, NIH in the past 2 years? Can we estimate those costs? People flock to the likes of Rogan for good reason. They know they've been repeatedly deceived by their institutions for decades. People (11M of them at least) would rather listen to authentic conversations, however flawed, being conducted by those they deem to be of good faith than be intentionally manipulated and misinformed by cold-blooded robots whose agendas and allegiances are so obviously compromised.

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Guess what you knee-jerkers, I don't want Rogan to be censored. Hey, just like Joe Rogan, I'm "just asking questions and trying to have a conversation." The difference is, I don't have 11M followers (though I know you guys love me). It doesn't matter what Rogan claims to be (comedian, bro, whatever), what matters is the message impact and real costs to society. Tucker (mainstream media) claims to be an "entertainer" -- do you think his program has no impact on peoples' decisions about vax and politics? -- and he only has 2M regular viewers. Isn't it reasonable to conclude Rogan's impact is greater? Yet he's not willing to admit his 11M follower platform has any such impact on creating doubt about vaccinations. The pushback on Rogan has gotten him to agree to: 1) agree to disclaimers on his covid related shows, 2) to have more balance of pro-vax guests, 3) to follow anti-vax guests more quickly with pro vax guests. So all this so-called "censorship" that you guys and Matt keep whining about actually isn't censorship, but rather feedback which has had a positive effect on Rogan's actions. But tell me again why this makes me an "authoritarian" compared to you.

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Not a knee jerker here,

Have heard the WH lately? Did you hear Jen Psaki's response to Spotify and JR? I found it chilling. We know where this goes.

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If you want to make the argument above effectively I think you have to show that there are a significant number of people who would have gotten vaccinated but didn't because Rogan dissuaded them.

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People are more nuanced than you give them credit for. The wife and Ii are fully vaxxed and happy about it but we listen to (and follow) Joe Rogan. I don't think he is anti-vaxx but even if he was, people cherry pick what they want listen to. Just because you like someone or something you don't have to accept it all, box and dice. There could be a hundred reasons for hitting that "like" button and, unless, you ask everyone why it means very little. We have to stop dropping people into ideological groups and assume that they are going to act one way here because they supported something else there. It's good for arguments on forums, but real life is a lot more complex and messy.

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