/townhall/ - Townhall

Can we count this article in "faulty analysis and lack of context"?

>>11748
I wasn't happy with that smug comment. I figured I could do better.

So I went back to the primary sources. I jumped on the VAERS database, requested the data for STILLBIRTHS as the adverse affect, ALL VACCINES for the vaccine (there is an option for covid-19 vaccines only but there are only 8 reported instances obviously over the past couple years), and asked it to crap me out a graph.


So yeah. Now let's have a conversation about lying.

>>11749
Here is a better graph with absolute count. Slightly below the peak of 3700 reported events the graph provided by our esteemed "journalist" with their "faulty analysis".

>>11750
I decided to challenge myself to recreate the chart provided in the report.

I have the right shape and I'm within an order of magnitude for the first time, it's taken me an hour to find the approximately appropriate data. It isn't a perfect reproduction. I have to tweak the ages and locations I guess. but it is fine.

ANYWAYS. This graph? ALL serious reactions by ALL females age 18-39 from ALL vaccines for the entire United States plus territories.

Here you go. Plug it in for yourself instead of believing everything you're told.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html
I haven't figured out how to get it to label axes or titles but I don't care. Especially after seeing that any yokel can rename an axis to say "Miscarriages/Stillbirths" regardless of what the data actually is, and in this brave world of ours they can do it apparently without lying!

>>11751
Ok that was going to be the last one, but I think I found it...

This is all serious reactions reported in males and females age 18-29 overlaid with the "miscarriage" data.

It is not perfect but fuck it I am close enough. I am tired I am going to bed.

>>11752
Is this statistics saying that the number of miscarriages skyrocketed after Covid vaccines came into the picture?

Is there a credible source for this?

Cause this seems like a very grim conspiracy.
Up to 20 times more miscarriages and not a single report on it or any confirmation from the general medical community, they have the hospitals filling up with women miscarriaging and they just don't report on it?

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-vaccines-idUSL2N2X2251
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaers-miscarriage-idUSL1N32I2KR

>>11759
I may have been too subtle/confusing.
They're literally lying.

The data for the miscarriage graph in the link in the original post is not miscarriage data. It looks like they relabeled a different graph on adverse reactions in young people.

>>11760
Oh, you're pointing out that the graph is misused / fraudulent.

So, not to propagate it as truth.
Hmm, an illustration for this thread I suppose.

Truth be told, a giant issue is that you always get your information sourced from somewhere.
And then it is a challenge to find out what the truth is.
Honestly, you can believe that gravity is lie and call every textbook on the subject a fabrication and a method to brainwash kids. you can say "I can fly anytime I want, but the doctors cut out our airblather when we're born" and you know? It can be tricky to convince me otherwise if I just deny all other sources contradicting me.

I dunno

Maybe I'll find someday that a very scandalous conspiracy is taking place.
But it's hard to imagine everyone in the business is simultaneously shushed and efficiently shills for the reptilian overlords.

>>11759
>Is this statistics saying that the number of miscarriages skyrocketed after Covid vaccines came into the picture?
No, it is not. This is the example used in the article linked in OP. What you describe here is what the statistics appear to say, but turn out to not actually say; and that, according to Scott, is how misinformation enters the world.

Specifically, these statistics measure the number of reported miscarriage incidents in the VAERS database. The VAERS database tracks cases where adverse medical conditions happen to people shortly after getting a medicine, or in this case a vaccine, such that it might plausibly be related to the medicine. That it to say, it tracks suspicions of possible side effects, not confirmed links.

And that makes all the difference in the world, because in the covid pandemic we have far more people of reproductive age than usual getting vaccine shots; which means that simply by the numbers, the number of people getting miscarriages after getting a vaccine shot will also spike upwards even if the two events are completely unrelated. If there are 20 times as many adults getting vaccines in 2021 and 2022 than in regular years, and miscarriages are completely unrelated to this, then the number of miscarriages shortly after getting a vaccine is also going to be 20 times as high as in regular years. Because the VAERS database tracks cases where the timeline invokes a suspicion of a relation between the two, not the number of actual linked cases.

And that is indeed a great example of misinformation. Nothing in these graphs is false; it just does not mean what it appears to mean at all.

>>11762
>Nothing in these graphs is false
The graphs are literally falsified is what I'm saying though.

>>11761
I am using the database the graph author claims to use. I am using the exact same source he claims to use. I am using his data.

>>11763
That doesn't seem right. The picture in this last post is also VAERS data, right? And it describes 2121 events in 2022 (so far). That seems inconsistent with >>11751 being all adverse effects across women in that age bracket, as they are approximately the same number.

>>11759
>Is this statistics saying that the number of miscarriages skyrocketed after Covid vaccines came into the picture?
No, it is saying that the number of miscarriages reported in VAERS skyrocketed.  The total number of miscarriages (regardless of whether reported in VAERS) seems to be about the same, IIRC.  (Also VAERS does not attempts to assess causality.)

>>11766
No. The table is not divided by years. It is the entire database back to 1950.

>>11749
>>11750
Stillbirths might be much smaller than miscarriages.

>>11751
>>11752
I tried to get data from VAERS but Oh God, the user interface is such a clusterfuck.  I am phone now or I'd try to download the data as CSV and filter it myself.

>>11771
Miscarriages are not reported as such in VAERS. I didn't find until recently that they're filed as spontaneous abortions.


I am not making any claims with these charts beyond the fact that the study linked in the OP is an egregious lie.

>>11772
I found Reuters article saying:
>A Reuters search of VAERS data for all reports from the U.S. and abroad of miscarriage (“spontaneous abortion”) and stillbirth in 2021, associated with any vaccine, found a total of 2,608 in 2021. In contrast, VAERS shows 38 miscarriage reports in 2019 with 15 reported stillbirths, for a total of 53.
(https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaers-miscarriage/fact-check-graph-of-unverified-data-is-not-evidence-of-increased-miscarriage-risk-with-covid-vaccination-idUSL1N32I2KR )

I dunno how the numbers cited by InfoWars were obtained, but they're reasonably close to the Reuters numbers.  So, I think Scott is mostly right that the misrepresentation is mainly about the interpretation of the VAERS numbers -- they indicate merely an increase in reporting, not a real increase in miscarriages.

I feel like three different issues exist in terms of modern media:

>Media being biased by strongly manipulating information in various ways, such as denying helpful context, in a way that fails to inform and thus doesn't increase empathy, ethics, and/or intelligence.

>Media engaged in the incitement of hatred against particular groups for whatever supposed reasons, such as transphobia against trans people or sexism against men, with this dehumanization actively decreasing the empathy, ethics, and intelligence of the audience.

>Media engaged in the advocacy of criminal violence or other ways of promoting direct harm on individuals out of certain beliefs, such as claiming that a victim of sexual assault deserved to be attacked, with this going beyond the other two cases to be a kind of psychological toxin to the audience.

All three of these behaviors are immoral, to me. I'm really not sure which should be actively illegal. I'm also not truly sure practically how to fight all three.

Alex Jones, from the OP, seems like a clear example of justified censorship to me. Since he does all three repeatedly. I'm glad that he's been in trouble with the law.

My default instinct was that previous U.S. legal tradition is correct such that a public figure should be able to say almost everything including celebrating the murders of people they dislike (as Jones did about the Orlando massacre victims deserving to get shot to death due to them being LGBT). It was. Now? Maybe more government regulation of speech must happen.

>>11795
>(as Jones did about the Orlando massacre victims deserving to get shot to death due to them being LGBT
I'm rather skeptical of that. It's certainly the first I've heard of it.
Could you provide a clip or some other such item?
It seems a pretty extreme claim.

>>11797
>>11795
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-blames-the-orlando-massacre-on-the-lgbt-community/

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-orlando-attack-was-a-false-flag/
Unfortunately the videos of him saying what the articles are describing are no longer up, and I'm too drunk to dig into it much further.

From what I recall Alex described the event as a "False Flag Attack" then blamed the LGBT community itself for promoting an environment to allow themselves to be shot at, but then after calling it a false flag operation he then tries to save face by mourning the people that died or something.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/after-orlando-shooting-false-flag-and-crisis-actor-conspiracy-theories-surface.html

Most of what he got inspired from probably came from this or resulted in this, where a lot of people claim it was all actors and a bid to paraphrased"Both restrict guns and allow Muslims into America"

So from what I can find he didn't exactly say "the Orlando massacre victims deserved to get shot to death due to them being LGBT". Technically. Not until I can find a clip somewhere that wasn't deleted.

It's weird that he's creating an equivalency between outright lying for profit and "this government study data needs to be analyzed with caveats in mind". Rightly or wrongly, it triggers my bullshit alarm that the author may have some agenda.

And again, it's my faulty bullshit alarm firing when it wouldn't be entirely appropriate, but lately I've been getting the same impulse feeling from threads that start with "discuss", a link to an incredibly dubious article, and a handful of leading questions. Part of it is the feeling I get when somebody in a political T-shirt asks me to fill out a survey. Part of it is the feeling I get when I get a text from the IRS at an international number asking me to pay my back taxes in google play cards.

>>11799
>the author may have some agenda.
Scott explains his agenda at the bottom of the blog post: That it is impossible to censor misinformation by censoring only objective falsehoods, because most misinformation is technically not lying but is still deceptive.

>>11798
Fair enough, then. Still real bad,
I know he says some crazy stuff, but I think that's something I would've heard about.