AP: Russian military behind spread of Coronavirus disinformation.

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Over 140k Americans dead, millions infected, and Trump is still allowing us to be attacked by the Russian military while pushing conspiracies and attacking our citizens, Fauci, our allies, and any other country every chance he gets to stop his cult from waking up to him being a con man.

https://apnews.com/3acb089e6a333e051dbc4a465cb68ee1
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow’s military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to reach American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence.

Between late May and early July, one of the officials said, the websites singled out Tuesday published about 150 articles about the pandemic response, including coverage aimed either at propping up Russia or denigrating the U.S.

Among the headlines that caught the attention of U.S. officials were “Russia’s Counter COVID-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Détente,” which suggested that Russia had given urgent and substantial aid to the U.S. to fight the pandemic, and “Beijing Believes COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon,” which amplified statements by the Chinese.

The disclosure comes as the spread of disinformation, including by Russia, is an urgent concern heading into November’s presidential election as U.S. officials look to avoid a repeat of the 2016 contest, when a Russian troll farm launched a covert social media campaign to divide American public opinion and to favor then-candidate Donald Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The U.S. government’s chief counterintelligence executive warned in a rare public statement Friday about Russia’s continued use of internet trolls to advance their goals.

Even apart from politics, the twin crises buffeting the country and much of the world — the pandemic and race relations and protests — have offered fertile territory for misinformation or outfight falsehoods. Trump himself has come under scrutiny for sharing misinformation about a disproven drug for treating the coronavirus in videos that were taken down by Twitter and Facebook.

Officials described the Russian disinformation as part of an ongoing and persistent effort to advance false narratives and cause confusion.

They did not say whether the effort behind these particular websites was directly related to the November election, though some of the coverage appeared to denigrate Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and called to mind Russian efforts in 2016 to exacerbate race relations in America and drive corruption allegations against U.S. political figures.

Though U.S. officials have warned before about the spread of disinformation tied to the pandemic, they went further on Tuesday by singling out a particular information agency that is registered in Russia, InfoRos, and that operates a series of websites — InfoRos.ru, Infobrics.org and OneWorld.press — that have leveraged the pandemic to promote anti-Western objectives and to spread disinformation.

Officials say the sites promote their narratives in a sophisticated but insidious effort that they liken to money laundering, where stories in well-written English — and often with pro-Russian sentiment — are cycled through other news sources to conceal their origin and enhance the legitimacy of the information.

The sites also amplify stories that originate elsewhere, the government officials said.

An email to InfoRos was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Beyond the coronavirus, there’s also a focus on U.S. news, global politics and topical stories of the moment.

A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling American cities read “Chaos in the Blue Cities,” accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up under the tough-on-crime approach of former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg “and have zero street smarts” must now “adapt to life in high-crime urban areas.”

Another story carried the headline of “Ukrainian Trap for Biden,” and claimed that “Ukrainegate” — a reference to stories surrounding Biden’s son Hunter’s former ties to a Ukraine gas company — “keeps unfolding with renewed vigor.”

U.S. officials have identified two of the people believed to be behind the sites’ operations. The men, Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have previously held leadership roles at InfoRos but have also served in a GRU unit specializing in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials said.

InfoRos and One World’s ties to the Russian state have attracted scrutiny in the past from European disinformation analysts.

In 2019, a European Union task force that studies disinformation campaigns identified One World as “a new addition to the pantheon of Moscow-based disinformation outlets.” The task force noted that One World’s content often parrots the Russian state agenda on issues including the war in Syria.

A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence. The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some financial connections between InfoRos and the government.

“InfoRos is evolving in a shady grey zone, where regular information activities are mixed with more controversial actions that could be quite possibly linked to the Russian state’s information operations,” the report’s authors concluded.

On its English-language Facebook page, InfoRos describes itself as an “Information agency: world through the eyes of Russia.”


Trump's campaign gave the Russian military all of our American data that he got from the RNC to attack us in our homes. He has not kept us safe, and is utterly incompetent in his job and the world is too dangerous of a place for his lack of any leadership other than what he gives to the white power crowd.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Holidays will be gruesome with trumpvirus toll.
This stupidity outside the WH is just in time for all those people to take back to their families and all those kids coming home will help move it all across the nation.

The Russian military could not have hit us harder without firing a actual shot. And Trump welcomed it.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Almost 100,000 HOSPITALIZED because of this virus.

https://apnews.com/article/10-things-to-know-coronavirus-pandemic-c148dc1feed39d9999627c23059e02ef
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Here’s what’s happening Wednesday with the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.:

THREE THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

— With hospitalizations hitting new peaks every day, medical providers are desperately trying to add beds and find nurses and doctors. Governors are trying to lure nurses out of retirement and convince college students to work in hospitals for academic credit.

— In a major milestone, Britain authorized the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, and could begin dispensing shots this week.

— Health officials are already issuing guidance for the upcoming holidays, and their advice is clear: Stay home or get tested before and after traveling if they decide to leave town.

THE NUMBERS: The number of people hospitalized with the virus in the U.S. is approaching 100,000, more than doubling from one month earlier. The nation is averaging more than 160,000 cases and 1,500 deaths per day.

QUOTABLE: “We cannot get this pandemic under control if we do not address head-on the issues of inequity in our country. There is no other way.” — Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a pandemic adviser to President-elect Joe Biden.

ICYMI: California has been going deeper into lockdown as its case counts and hospitalizations soar, but some governments are pushing back. Pasadena has kept outdoor dining open despite the restrictions.

ON THE HORIZON: Key dates for the vaccine are quickly approaching. States must submit requests for doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week. The Food and Drug Administration has a critical meeting next Thursday to authorize emergency use.
Oh indeed. And the worst months are ahead of us.

I hope you are just trolling and staying safe while keeping the people you care about safe too. This cult logic that Trump is using to keep his base loyal is killing people and wrecking lives.
 

JoeBlow5823

Well-Known Member
Almost 100,000 HOSPITALIZED because of this virus.

https://apnews.com/article/10-things-to-know-coronavirus-pandemic-c148dc1feed39d9999627c23059e02ef
View attachment 4758157


Oh indeed. And the worst months are ahead of us.

I hope you are just trolling and staying safe while keeping the people you care about safe too. This cult logic that Trump is using to keep his base loyal is killing people and wrecking lives.
Ive always hated the people that spread sickness. Go out to eat sick. Go to the casino sick. Go to theme parks sick. Touching coughing sneezing on everything. Its nice that we are creating a new social norm to "keep your fucking germs to yourself". That being said, if i called into work every time i got sick, id be one broke ass mother fucker right now.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Ive always hated the people that spread sickness. Go out to eat sick. Go to the casino sick. Go to theme parks sick. Touching coughing sneezing on everything. Its nice that we are creating a new social norm to "keep your fucking germs to yourself". That being said, if i called into work every time i got sick, id be one broke ass mother fucker right now.
This is something that we need to learn to deal with as a society, because future illnesses are only going to keep coming.

This is this millenniums version of learning not to dump shit out our windows.
 

JoeBlow5823

Well-Known Member
This is something that we need to learn to deal with as a society, because future illnesses are only going to keep coming.

This is this millenniums version of learning not to dump shit out our windows.
The problem is, a "cold" to me will cripple if not kill another. Yet that same person gets the flu and has a sore throat for a few hours while it puts me in the hospital. I honestly dont know if ive ever had a "cold". Im either good to go, or sick as fuck for 2-6 weeks. Who the fuck can call into work for 6 weeks because they are "sick".
 

DrKiz

Well-Known Member
This is something that we need to learn to deal with as a society, because future illnesses are only going to keep coming.

This is this millenniums version of learning not to dump shit out our windows.
I saw a meme the other day... something along the lines of "If Covid only affected the young, all the Mothers and Fathers and Elderly would do everything to protect them..".

Every Covid case I've heard of around my industry so far is some 20ish year old bar star chick that "just arrived on site 2 days ago." Every fucking time.
 

Wastei

Well-Known Member
Social distancing doesn't work. I think the only long term solution is everyone need to take personal responsibility to optimize their health and living.

From my understanding you don't solve anything by forcing people into small groups. Viruses and illness will always exist and personally I'm more afraid of contracting any form of cancer than Covid. We need a long term solution, the only solution is personal responsibility. Do everybody follow healthy guidelines? Do you feel you spend as much time working to optimize your health in the same way you work for profit?

Don't give away your freedom for anything. You can't remove basic principles when you don't really work actively for prevention. Social distancing is not preventative, there's no evidence it actually works. It's just theory based on moral values. I know people will argue against this, most people have been brought up to just reflect everything they read by big media without questioning the source of information.

It takes a lot of personal investigation and work to even say you have a true personal opinion about anything. If you only reflect information from one source. You're just a sheep following the pack.
 
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hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/05/coronavirus-misinformation-facts/
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Living through a pandemic in the Internet age means misinformation can sometimes spread more rapidly than facts.

Faced with a deluge of claims about the coronavirus and the illness it causes, covid-19, you may be wondering whether gargling with saltwater is a cure or if the pathogen was man-made in a Chinese laboratory. (Spoiler: Saltwater doesn’t work, and scientists believe the virus occurs in nature.)

To help you out, we rounded up eight facts about the coronavirus to keep in mind if you see claims to the contrary.

Fact: Masks help prevent the spread of the coronavirus

Several studies support the theory that face coverings reduce the risk of infection. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before the Senate in September that masks are “the most important, powerful public health tool we have” for combating the pandemic.

Part of the confusion about face coverings seems to have come from President Trump’s false claim in October that 85 percent of people diagnosed with covid-19 wore masks — a mischaracterization of a CDC study.

As The Washington Post’s Fact Checker explained, that study compared groups of people who had tested positive and negative for the coronavirus and found that a much higher percentage of the positive cases had had close contact with someone known to have covid-19. The people in the positive group were also more likely to recently have eaten at a restaurant.

In the 14 days before they got sick, the study says, 71 percent of positive cases and 74 percent of the negatives reported “always” wearing a mask in public. Those numbers are almost the same, with the main difference between the groups being that a higher percentage of the positive cases had contact with an infected person.

Masks, of course, work only when you’re wearing them. It matters what you do when you take them off. Someone can say they “almost always” wore a mask and still could have had instances when they needed to take it off in a public setting — say, while dining out.
Fact: There are no known cures for covid-19

While a cure for covid-19 would be more than welcome, no drug or other treatment has been found to eliminate the illness. Since the coronavirus emerged in China late last year, myriad false rumors have circulated about potential cures, ranging from drinking bleach to snorting cocaine. The Food and Drug Administration has issued nearly 150 warning letters to companies fraudulently promising a cure, treatment, prevention method or diagnostic tool.

In reality, “the pharmaceutical toolbox for physicians to treat covid-19 is seriously restricted,” as The Post’s Christopher Rowland put it in September. The FDA so far has authorized only two drugs for the illness: remdesivir, for in-hospital use, and bamlanivimab, for people with mild or moderate symptoms.

Remdesivir appears only somewhat beneficial, with evidence that it shortens hospital stays but not that it improves a patient’s chance of survival. Health experts have expressed optimism about the effectiveness of bamlanivimab, but the drug is scarce and logistically complicated to administer.
Fact: Hospitals have no reason to purposely diagnose covid-19 inaccurately

The falsehood that hospitals are financially incentivized to over-diagnose people seems to stem from an interview that Minnesota state Sen. Scott Jensen (R) did with Fox News in April, in which he appeared to suggest that hospitals would inflate their coronavirus numbers if they were being reimbursed more for those patients.

The Cares Act did include a provision to reimburse hospitals more for uninsured coronavirus patients and those with Medicare, but there is no evidence that hospitals are gaming the system. Jensen eventually walked back his claim in an interview with FactCheck.org, in which he said he did not believe that hospitals were intentionally misclassifying cases for financial benefits.

In part because Congress knew that Medicare reimbursement rates are far lower than those of private insurers, the Cares Act provided an additional 20 percent reimbursement for hospitals on top of Medicare’s normal rate for a coronavirus patient. The law also created a $100 billion fund to reimburse hospitals for uninsured patients at Medicare rates.

Still, an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the fund may not be enough to cover the costs of the uninsured, as well as the purchase of medical supplies and construction of temporary medical facilities. In reality, hospitals are probably losing money on covid-19 patients because the illness is difficult to treat and many hospitals have been overwhelmed by a surge of people needing care.
Fact: The coronavirus is more deadly than influenza

Unfortunately, the coronavirus is much more lethal than seasonal flu. About 2 percent of diagnosed coronavirus cases are lethal, compared with 0.1 percent of diagnosed flu cases.

For both illnesses, experts believe that far more people are infected than receive official diagnoses — meaning the true death rates are probably much lower. The CDC estimates that, including people who have been infected with the coronavirus but didn’t know it, the U.S. death rate is around 0.65 percent. The flu’s infection fatality rate may be about 0.05 or 0.025 percent, epidemiologists estimate.

There’s also no truth to the idea that doctors are inflating the coronavirus death toll by indiscriminately attributing deaths to covid-19. To determine a cause of death, physicians consider the patient’s infection, response to treatment and medical history. They also look at whether underlying conditions, which exist in most people who die of covid-19, contributed to the death.

Covid-19 is usually listed as a contributing cause of death, with the primary cause being a problem precipitated by the illness, like pneumonia. The official coronavirus death toll includes those fatalities because covid-19 spurred the other health issues that killed the patient.
Continued
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Fact: The coronavirus vaccine candidates do not affect people’s DNA

Two vaccine candidates on the table for FDA approval — one from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German biotechnology company BioNTech, and another from biotechnology company Moderna — are examples of a new technology that uses a piece of genetic material called messenger RNA. That mRNA teaches the body’s cells to build the protein on the surface of the coronavirus, therefore making the immune system recognize and block the true virus.

This groundbreaking technology stands in contrast to traditional vaccines, which introduce into the immune system an inactivated or weakened version of a virus. But despite allegations suggesting otherwise, the coronavirus vaccine candidates using mRNA do not “affect or interact with” a person’s DNA, according to the CDC. Additionally, reputable news and fact-checking sources, including the Associated Press, the BBC, PolitiFact and Poynter, have confirmed with various scientists that mRNA vaccines do not change DNA.

“That’s just a myth, one often spread intentionally by anti-vaccination activists to deliberately generate confusion and mistrust,” Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science group, told Reuters. “Genetic modification would involve the deliberate insertion of foreign DNA into the nucleus of a human cell, and vaccines simply don’t do that.”
Fact: Staying home, using hand sanitizer and washing our hands more often are healthy

None of those behaviors, which are recommended for preventing the spread of the coronavirus, pose a risk to our immune systems, despite claims that they do.

The incorrect notion that limiting time with people outside our households could damage our ability to fight diseases may stem from the “hygiene hypothesis,” or the idea that young children who are exposed to germs are less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune conditions. But this concept does not apply to adults, whose immune systems have already been strengthened by exposure to bacteria, according to MIT Medical, a clinic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While the hygiene hypothesis is probably also the cause of the false assumption that hand sanitizer and hand-washing weaken our immune systems, scientists at the Cleveland Clinic say there is no evidence that temporarily increasing these hygiene routines is damaging.

Anne Liu, an infectious-disease doctor and allergist/immunologist at Stanford Medicine, told Women’s Health that people should make sure to moisturize their hands while they are washing more frequently, since dry, cracked skin can make it easier for bacteria to penetrate.
Fact: Scientists believe the coronavirus originated in animals

Claims that the coronavirus was man-made in a Chinese laboratory continue to circulate, despite virologists and public health officials repeatedly explaining that the virus’s genome suggests it is naturally occurring in nature. Others have suggested that the virus accidentally leaked from a lab that was studying bat-borne pathogens in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus originated.

The Post’s Fact Checker investigated these theories in the spring and found that most scientific evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the virus was not manufactured. Immunologist and microbiologist Kristian Andersen, who published a study on the virus’s origins, said at the time that his research shows that the coronavirus “is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

Trevor Bedford, a researcher in computational biology and infectious diseases at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told the Fact Checker that the coronavirus’s genome does not indicate that chunks of genetic material were inserted or removed, as would be the case if humans had altered it.

Top international and U.S. public health officials — including the World Health Organization, the CDC and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — have also made clear that evidence indicates the virus is naturally occurring.

As for the idea that the virus may have leaked from a lab accidentally, the Fact Checker concluded that it was an unlikely possibility still under exploration by intelligence agencies. While escape from a lab would require many unexpected coincidences, the Chinese government has not been forthright in addressing questions about the role of its Wuhan labs.
Fact: Urging high-risk people to stay home and letting everyone else live normal lives would not “solve” the crisis

Putting aside the moral and ethical questions at play, isolating the vulnerable and allowing other people to go about their usual business has significant pitfalls. Post columnist Megan McArdle outlined some of the issues, including that hospitals would probably still be overwhelmed by lower-risk people and that it is nearly impossible to keep high-risk people from interacting with others.

While many younger people may have asymptomatic or mild cases of covid-19, the illness can be serious for others. Patients 49 and younger made up 23.1 percent of U.S. covid-19 hospitalizations in the week ending Nov. 21, CDC data shows. And while people with underlying conditions are much more likely to be hospitalized or die, CDC figures from June show that 7.6 percent of patients without underlying conditions were hospitalized.

Letting people interact freely, as if there were no pandemic, would enable the virus to travel through the population even more quickly, straining the capacities of already overwhelmed hospitals and burned-out health-care workers.

Isolating the vulnerable is also not practical. As McCardle points out in her column, roughly 21 percent of U.S. adults 65 and older live in a multigenerational household, as do many people with preexisting health conditions.
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Social distancing doesn't work. I think the only long term solution is everyone need to take personal responsibility to optimize their health and living.


It takes a lot of personal investigation and work to even say you have a true personal opinion about anything. If you only reflect information from one source. You're just a sheep following the pack.
lulz

It's time for you to "do a lot of personal investigation and work". I will also add "from reputable sources."
 

Wastei

Well-Known Member
lulz

It's time for you to "do a lot of personal investigation and work". I will also add "from reputable sources."
Everybody has right to their own opinion. To remove personal freedom is not a long term solution IMO. Do you want to live in a concealed room with air filtration systems under the ground just to feel safe?

The issue with politics is that people cant listen and respect other people's opinions and values and believe there's only one optimal solution for every single problem. Some things should be set in stone, like peoples right to move freely on the earth and their full sovreign right over their minds and opinions. Reality is something different.
 

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Everybody has right to their own opinion. To remove personal freedom is not a long term solution IMO. Do you want to live in a concealed room with air filtration systems under the ground just to feel safe?

The issue with politics is that people cant listen and respect other people's opinions and values and believe there's only one optimal solution for every single problem. Some things should be set in stone, like peoples right to move freely on the earth and their full sovreign right over their minds and opinions. Reality is something different.
"Doing a lot of personal investigation". I laughed at your post because it was so obviously not that.

You and your kind are a joke.
 

schuylaar

Well-Known Member
Everybody has right to their own opinion. To remove personal freedom is not a long term solution IMO. Do you want to live in a concealed room with air filtration systems under the ground just to feel safe?

The issue with politics is that people cant listen and respect other people's opinions and values and believe there's only one optimal solution for every single problem. Some things should be set in stone, like peoples right to move freely on the earth and their full sovreign right over their minds and opinions. Reality is something different.
since you brought this up- let's talk. i'm willing to listen, respect your values and opinions. i bet you there is more than one solution to the problem you will pose.

the topic is your choice; ready when you are.
 
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