It's a question of evidence. Advertisers and salespeople are experts at deception and misdirection, of course, that's a key component of the job. This is entirely separate from fact-checking. Fact-checking is evidence-based. If you visit a 'fact checking' website, and it says 'we've fact-checked this statement, and it's false'... but they don't provide any evidence to support this assertion, then this is not fact-checking. Fact-checking involves gathering data to determine whether or not a claim is true. A 'fact-checker' that provides no data, and that provides no links to its sources, is not a fact-checker.




I don't vote Democrat. You should do some fact-checking.

I am not suggesting that everyone who works for Facebook is utterly impartial and does not let personal opinion affect their judgement. But many of the threads in P&S start with someone posting some debunked crap from a shared FB post. Over and over again I provide the data to refute their baseless copy-paste nonsense, but they are usually unable or unwilling to engage for some reason.  

You can try to politicise it if you want, but here's some fact-checking: Trump came out with over 30,000 false or misleading claims during his single term in office. Any mechanism that attempts to staunch the flow of sewage is a good thing. It may be imperfect, but it's an improvement. Self-policing of a global social media platform is a separate and much broader issue. But FB has some self-interest here, the stuff they will most want to block is stuff that will get them into legal trouble, i.e. spreading lies.

Or instead of listening to random wacko, you could just look at the data. I posted this recently in another thread, but here's what the Covid-19 death rate in the US looks like, split by vaccination status. The pattern seems pretty clear to me.


https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination

If you want to see the data behind the chart, then look here: https://data.cdc.gov/Public-Health-Surveillance/Rates-of-COVID-19-Cases-or-Deaths-by-Age-Group-and/3rge-nu2a/data

But if you don't like the CDC, then charts and backing data are available for many other countries, too. The pattern is quite consistent.

What? That's insane.



Or is a perfectly reasonable response to innate unfairness within society.



You are suggesting that media strategy is determined entirely by women, and not just women, but specifically women who hate men?



Yes, it really sounds like it.  

Most religions do have this morally abhorrent superiority complex (and are morally abhorrent in general). I suppose it's more apparent in Judaism because there it's tied up with concepts of race and nation.
But it is possible for an outsider to become a Jew, so it's not quite a closed club. Having said that, it's clear that any club that sees itself as better than everyone else is not one that's worth joining in any case.

I don't think the European quota should be increased. If the World Cup was just the best teams in the world, it would be entirely Europe and South America, it would be the same teams every time, and it would lose some appeal. It is far better, and more truly a World Cup if it is the best representatives from every continent. Even though I am European, I would like to see more African and Asian nations there. It is more exciting to encounter new teams from new nations, and these nations don't get thrashed 10-0 every time, they do genuinely compete, we've seen it many times.

I suppose it's all open to debate, but I'd read the opposite, that sexual attraction is to dissimilar scents, and that this relates specifically to the possibility of broadening the immune system: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-evidence-humans-genetically-dissimilar-partners.html

Also (although a somewhat older article), here:

I think if your team is in a contest with another team for the championship, as it was with Red Bull and Mercedes this year, then you have to favour whichever of your drivers has the most points. It's only logical. And this is what Ferrari are saying, if LeClerc is fighting for the title, Sainz becomes #2, and the same the other way around. This is exactly how it should be for all teams. It might be difficult to imagine at Red Bull, Perez fighting for the title and Verstappen with lower points (and the same with Russell and Hamilton at Mercedes)... but in this circumstance the team would surely order Verstappen (or Hamilton) to let Perez (or Russell) through.

It depends. For an ordinary person, who is not especially brave, then intimidation would probably work. They could say we will let you travel so long as you remain silent, but if you try to defect then we can track you down very easily. This would probably be enough of a threat. But Peng Shuai has demonstrated that as well as being a great tennis player, she is also an extraordinarily brave person to go up against the Chinese authorities as she has. I would imagine intimidation won't work too well on her personally.... but of course they can also threaten to harm her family if she steps out of line, which is another issue entirely.

Basically the whole world knows that China is guilty here, even if she 'voluntarily' retracts her allegation. How China reacts to this situation is a question that can have far-reaching consequences.

The winter is likely to add further evidence to support the existing patterns, which are extremely clear. And this isn't about who's right, it's about ensuring people are informed, so they don't die from decisions made due to a misunderstanding of the data. Here are the charts for your country and my country, for example. Note that rates between charts aren't standardised, but look at the patterns within each chart.






If you're not convinced, visit this page and check out the data for other countries, too. There is also a simple explainer, in case you're one of those who is led towards erroneous conclusions from headlines such as "Half of those who died from the virus were vaccinated" (I'm not suggesting you are one of those people, but it's useful for others who may not understand basic maths).

The 'X' comes from chi. It's not that it's something unknown, it's an abbreviation.



Chi followed by Rho (the first two letters of 'Christ' in Greek, see above) is a very old Christian symbol. So maybe if we wanted a slightly longer abbreviation, we could have Xpmas instead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram



Maybe Xmas should be pronounced Chi-mas?

I've just read that Latifi has been receiving death threats after the Abu Dhabi debacle. This is depressing, and yet utterly inevitable. Do people really think he did it on purpose? If not, then why attack? I can understand them being angry and casting around for someone to blame, and whilst it's totally unacceptable to make death threats to anyone, I don't understand why they're targeting Latifi, and not Masi, who orchestrated the whole thing.

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I don't think that will happen, at least certainly not initally. Put Russell and Hamilton in the same car, and Hamilton will win every time. But Russell is still young, and can improve. There's only one person on the grid at the moment who could compete with Hamilton in the same car... Verstappen. But I'd still say Hamilton is ahead on consistency, tyre-management, and big-picture thinking (i.e. back out when needed in order to secure second place, instead of making kamikaze lunges that can result in 0 points). But Lewis and Max are a long way ahead of everyone else. As for best of the rest, who knows? But it would be good to see Alonso in a competitive car again.

Okay, so your argument is that Dem voters were physically eating Rep voters in order to prevent them from voting. If this were true, then the Republicans would surely be able to present some evidence. But where's the smoking faeces? Where are the samples of ordure containing bits of shredded MAGA caps or Trump t-shirts? Why is Trump's legal team not gathered around the sewage outlet, knee-deep in waste? I mean, they are in a metaphorical sense, but why not in reality, if there is evidence to be found? Wake up and smell the covfefe.

I'm pretty sure they didn't. That would definitely have made the news.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=voring

But I'll certainly agree that it's illegal and unconscionable. Unlike the voting, which was perfectly legit and above-board (where has that Kraken got to?).

I've absolutely no idea, but you keep doing it.




I'm sure it's more than 10 by now, but what point are you trying to make? Omicron is a new variant, yes? So just maybe... more people might contract it as time goes on? Just an idea...




Well, masks and vaccines work on an individual basis, don't they? If someone has Covid and is wearing a mask, they are less likely to cough the virus out onto other people, and infect them. If someone is vaccinated and is exposed to Covid, they are less likely to contract it and, even if they do contract it, they are less likely to die.

Of course vaccines will work better on a population level if more people have them... because the more people who have been vaccinated, the harder it is for the virus to spread. This is not complicated. And yes, if everyone in the world is vaccinated, then R will be considerably less than 1... and end of pandemic.

Obviously the FIA would have rejected the Mercedes case. Presumably then they'd have had to make a civil case to try to seek redress in the French legal system.

I'm sure Wolff would have wanted to pursue this in the courts as far as he could, and probably Hamilton likewise. But Wolff only owns 1/3 of the F1 team. For Mercedes/Daimler I'm sure it's more about brand management and publicity, and the reward of a drivers' title was not worth the negative publicity (and looking like bad losers) that would have come out of dragging it through the legal system. It doesn't really matter to them that they had a rock-solid case, and that Hamilton would likely have been found legally to be the championship winner, the cost of getting to that result was not worth it.

It's the same in the UK. It seems that a prerequisite for becoming a mainstream politician here is that you are a rabid Zionist. Even daring to suggest that the Palestinians might be experiencing some human rights issues is considered outrageous antisemitism. Our main leftish-but-not-really-left party had to sign up to the international definition of antisemitism, which contains the following gem:

https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism

Turns out the Israeli government is irreproachable, and anyone daring to question their actions on any subject at all (but particularly the subject of the huge concentration camp they built to house their victims) is... Worse. Than. Hitler.

And they really don't like these guys...

Yes, that wouldn't surprise me at all, it's just that I've not seen anyone really claiming this, and I've not seen any evidence for it - although obviously finding evidence for the absence of sufficient reporting can be problematic. It might also be that people are wary of suggesting poor reporting from Africa in case they are accused of racism.



If a doctor can't grasp that the concept of evolution through natural selection also applies to viruses, then they are incapable of rational thought, and so deserve to lose their license.
And anyone who feels that the vaccine roll-out or a requirement to wear face masks during a pandemic is equivalent to the Third Reich is either unaware of Godwin's Law, or is trolling. Or is a bit simple - but of course we discount that possibility.

Japanese society is, to Western people, very strange. The people are extremely obedient. I think if the government says take a vaccine, the people will take a vaccine. I was in Japan a few years back. Just some anecdotal evidence to illustrate the point, but I witnessed a drunken fight in Tokyo, two guys came out of a bar, stood a few paces away from each other, started yelling but took turns to do so, each politely letting the other finish before he started. After a few minutes of this they bowed to each other, and went back in. The culture is very different there, I'm sure this is a contributing factor to vaccine take-up.

If you are quoting ourworldindata, then does that mean you trust evidence from this site now?   But it is nice to see you posting proper figures, anyway.

Africa certainly does appear to have a lower death rate from CV19 than more developed (and, yes, more highly vaccinated) nations in the EU or North America. And whilst we might suspect under-reporting due to the fact that these are generally developing nations, AFAIK there is no evidence that's the case.

However, there are many factors to consider here. One important consideration, for example, is the age profile of African nations... they tend to have a vastly higher percentage of young people, and very few elderly people in comparison to EU/North America. We know that on average severity of CV19 increases with age. On a related note, it's not just that overall deaths per million people is lower, it's also true that there are fewer fatalities in relation to number of cases... i.e., an African who does catch CV19 is less likely to die than a European who catches it. Again, suggesting the differing age profiles.

What the chart you've shared does not suggest is any relation to vaccination... because the pattern of lower deaths in Africa has been apparent from early 2020, well before the vaccines were available.

I'm not prepared to go anywhere near the 2022 season yet, we just have no idea which car is going to be best. If you were going to guess one team that might do better than the others, then yes, Mercedes is the one to pick... but still, it's a guess.

As for drivers, it seems impossible that Russell would win it, given he will be in the same car as Hamilton, who is considerably better. Same goes for Red Bull, there is not a chance that Perez will be WDC when he's in the same car as Verstappen.

The only thing I'd be willing to bet on for the moment for the 2022 season is which will be the best driver within a team.