Censorship Podcast Agenda

Overview: Throughout the pandemic, opponents of lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and other pandemic restrictions have felt the decks have been stacked against them in sharing their message on social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube.

Detailed show notes of podcast:

Early pandemic censorship

* Zuckerburg email to Fauci offering to help

* Aaron Ginn and AJ Kay censorship in March / April 2020. They both argued a hypothesis that covid had spread more widely than public health realized then, and that the infection fatality rate was likely lower than the case fatality rate. Medium censored their essays for being dangerous for public health.

* In April 2020, Santa Clara study I went on NPR to explain the results. The reporter asked me if I was worried that people would intentionally seek out getting covid (e.g. covid parties).

* In late April/May 2020, I gave an interview where I mentioned that contact tracing was largely useless given the mode and ease of spread of covid. The Stanford human subjects review board – for a study that had nothing to do with contact tracing – mentioned this interview as a potential human subjects violation in a bid to silence me.

* In 2020 Ontario Canada, doctors who wrote about natural immunity on twitter (e.g. Dr. Kulvinder Gill) faced censure from medical boards with risk of losing license.

* Heavy censorship of early treatment options in online settings. Discussion about whether this was appropriate. Some of the early results for cheap, safe drugs were promising. Why not let people try them for a disease that was deadly in older people?

* The clear purpose of these censorship efforts was to create fear in the population and gain compliance regarding lockdown orders.

Censorship of the GBD

* GBD signed on October 2020

* Collins email to Fauci / fringe epidemiology / devastating takedown

* WHO says no such thing as herd immunity

* Google deboosted search results / hit pieces came first

* Facebook took down the GBD page for a week without explanation

* Reddit slapped down accounts mentioning the GBD and limited discussion of it.

Censorship and Propaganda in 2021

* With the advent of the vaccine, propaganda and censorship efforts by governments intensified.

* Government officials vastly overstated the results of the clinical trials re: infection blocking. This included Fauci, Walensky, etc.

* Governments engaged celebrities. FB highilghted posts of young attractive people bragging about getting vaccinated early, even while millions of older people who would have benefited more did not get a vaccine until late.

* DeSantis Roundtable March 2021. Masking children Youtube pulls the video

* Severe censorship of vaccine discussion online (e.g. Alex Berenson on effectiveness of the vaccine vs. disease spread; Naomi Wolf on menstrual problems caused by the vax)

* Twitter files blacklist

Government Role in Censorship

* As 2021 rolled on, the vaccine campaign fizzled out. The government turned to censorship and mandates to fix the problem.

* In Berenson case government officials like Andy Slavitt directly wrote to Twitter to ban Alex.

* Missouri vs. Biden.  Dozen federal agencies involved in the censorship effort, including the White House, CDC, Office of the Surgeon General. The government threatened section 230 status. Direct line of communication from white house to twitter, FB regarding censsorship. Topics inlcuded true facts (e.g. ineffectiveness of vaccine at blocking infection).

* Even the White House itself caught up in censorship J&J pause

* Censorship efforts often informed by Stanford virality project & a “disinformation” team at the University of Washington

* Use of AI algorithms, with word lists sent by the government, for widescale censorship

* Roots of censorship apparatus linked to national security concerns. Obama signed “On Dec. 23, 2016, he signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which used the language of defending the homeland to launch an open-ended, offensive information war.”

Government as #1 source of misinformation

* Indiana AG letter

* Overcounting covid cases

* Questioning natural immunity

* Covid vax prevents transmission

* School closures effective and costless

* Everone equally at risk of dying from covid infection

* No policy alternative available to lockdown

* Mask mandates effective in reducing covid spread

* Mass asymptomatic testing and contact tracing effective in reducing covid spread

* Eradication of covid is a feasible goal.

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