Monday I watched a large part of the United Facts of America virtual event.
I was one of millions, well thousands, maybe hundreds, dozens and dozens, or a couple dozen people at least who did so.
Seriously – when I looked at the views counter on the YouTube page it had fewer people – total – engaged than the number of people (like you – thanks!) who read my “UFA – Insert Dirty Joke Here” preview story.
CheckMate is new and The Point – where it was cross-posted – is still pretty small (tell your friends about both!!) so the fact that we won, as it were, is amazing – and should show PolitiFact, the Poynter Institute, and all of the censorship-industrial complex what the world outside of their bubble really think of them and their work.
Not very much at all.
The UFA event featured well-known people, was pushed internationally by two of the most important “journalism” creatures on the planet, and revolved around some of the “hottest” button issues of the day.
In other words, lots and lots and lots and lots of people everywhere knew it was happening.
And at end of the session Monday it had 334 views on YouTube and when I was watching the disinformation portion live it had about 48.
As of about now (I’m writing this just before posting it) there are 31 people watching – thirty one. True, the totals from yesterday have now broken 500 total for all three session, but we’re still ahead…
It is a situation reminiscent of the thousands and thousands of woke DEI Vlogs and such produced by government agencies, foundations, and non-governmental organization every day: nobody watches them.
Like this from the Mass(achusetts) Cultural Council – Health and Wellness through Creativity:
43 views over 10 days.
I picked on them because of their inherent absurdity and because I actually got them a bunch of views when I wrote about that very absurdity in a piece entitled “Sandwiches Against Racism”
. After the story, the video in question shot up 20 percent in viewership – starting from about 330 and going up to about 400, but still.
So as to the actual content of the UFA – check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/@politifact - the guy from the Alliance for Securing Democracy said the internet is being deluged with bad information, apparently mostly coming from Russia (again? You’d think they’d be pretty busy about now…)
And TV Dr. Celine Gounder said there is lots of COVID misinformation, that people are making money off of COVID misinformation, and that said misinformation has damaged public health.
In her chat, she really didn’t distinguish between people who were leery of the COVID shot – an experimental, poorly-tested drug based on an entirely new medical platform – from people who think Oprah is putting cyanide in measles shots – to her, they are all equally “anti-vax.”
Gounder deplored the politicization of public health and then said something very interesting, in a terrible kind of way. She said many, many pediatricians have told her that parents say “we’re Republicans, we don’t do vaccines” when they ask them about regular actual vaccine shots for their kids.
She added menacingly that because of this laughably unlikely scenario “we have to go after the culture and identity” of those people to address that specific issue in order get those people to goodthink and stop being troglodytes. I believe she has met Hilary – at least that’s a class she should propose to her at her re-education camps (joke but not really for Hilary.)
One other fun note from Gounder: people expected too much from the vaccine, that they had “impossible expectations” about their use and effectiveness, such as the ability to at least hinder transmission of COVID so you don’t kill grammy.
Vaccines are primarily meant to “prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death” Gounder said…twice.
She studied epidemiology at Johns Hopkins and she has a podcast called “Epidemic” and she still seems a bit unclear on the definition of “vaccine” -
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Gounder admitted that some vaccines prevent getting and transmitting the disease, but that people who thought the COVID vaccine would do so – I wonder why people thought that? – are just being manipulated by misinformation.
There was so more UFA today but I didn’t bother.
Would you?