More, and More Dangerous, Lies We’re Told

 

More, and More Dangerous, Lies We’re

 Told

   

Apparently, the new favorite indoor sport of the Hannitys, Trumps and Carlsons, et al, is spinning falsehoods by ignoring context.

In a recent instance, while guesting on “Good Morning America” in early January, CDC director Rochelle Walensky cited an example of Covid vaccines effectiveness. She referenced a study of 1.2 million vaccinated people that found that more than 75% of COVID-19 deaths in the group (vaccinated persons) occurred in individuals who had at least four other illnesses or diseases, known as comorbidities.

Wallensky cited the study as evidence that vaccines were effective. Understand what she said: The study followed a group of 1.2 million, who had received both shots with all vaccines represented. Of the relatively small number of vaccinated individuals who died or experienced severe covid symptoms post vaccination, severe COVID-19-associated outcomes or death were rare among the group — 36 died of COVID-19. The implication is that being vaccinated gave 99.9997 probability of surviving! In the group who died, risk factors included being over 65 years old or having a suppressed immune system. All people who experienced severe disease had at least one risk factor and, twenty-eight of the people who died, or 78%, had at least four.

Obviously, this was problematic for talking heads such as Hannity and Carlson, both of whom have periodically lied about vaccines in several ways, all negative. So, the edited clip which ran on Faux News omitted the context (36 deaths in a 1.2 million sample, and then omitted the further fact that of those thirty-six, three quarters of them had at least four comorbidity factors. Fox and other conservative outlets simply reported that CDC had announced that 75% of all covid deaths were individuals with at least four comorbidity factors. Instead of showing vaccines’ high effectiveness rate, it minimized the importance of vaccination.

This factoid spread with the help of imbeciles like Donald Trump Jr. who tweeted:

Donald Trump Jr. @DonaldJTrumpJr

“75% of “Covid Deaths” were in people with at least four comorbidities according to the CDC. That’s it. That’s the tweet.”

That is also an egregious lie, although Trump Jr. is also too stupid to critically question or analyze much of anything except, “Does Dad like me?

Of course, to the vast unwashed MAGA mass, unaware that the USA now leads the world in covid deaths at over nine hundred thousand, this reads as, “Why get vaccinated if you’re healthy?” This can exacerbate the situation, which is that, believe or not, a higher percentage of Americans are now unvaccinated than the citizens of Brazil, Portugal, Viet Nam, and a host of others. As of today, February 4th, 2022, about one third of US citizens remain unvaccinated.

It isn’t only well-known nay-sayers who use public media in like manner to Joe Rogan, Aaron Rogers, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Henry Aaron was vaccinated and nine days later, suffering, as he had for years, from high blood pressure, He died of a stroke at the age of eighty-seven. Multiple “tweets” began, almost immediately, to cite his death as proof that “vaccines are dangerous.”

Appalling, simply appalling. and detrimental to us all.



A bit similar and just as confusing is the Maga group’s apparent and longstanding lack of knowledge about how the government and the economy actually work. I very recently saw a car with a magnetic sticker attached to the driver’s side door which proclaimed that, “Whoever voted for Biden owes me gas money.” This is apparently the lie which just won’t die. The same day, my wife returned from a rehearsal and shaking her head remarked about one of the other vocalists who was rabidly anti-Biden and citing gas prices as her reason. While aware that the woman’s real reason was simply partisan, Emily asked her how she thought the POTUS controlled or was responsible for high gasoline pricing gasoline prices. Her response was, “He killed the Keystone Pipeline.”

Disregarding the real reasons previously discussed at length, why POTUS has nothing to do with gas prices, I will address the myth that won’t die.

First, there is already a Keystone Pipeline system in operation between Hardesty, Alberta and Houston, Texas. The Keystone XL addition was to be a shortcut and much larger leg of the existing system. The system is Canadian and carries Canadian Athabasca Tar Sand to the gulf coast. Canada needs to export this environmental poison pill because they won’t be allowed to refine it in Canada due to huge processing carbon emissions and pollution dangers. “Building more tar sands pipelines will lock Canada into a highly polluting carbon-based economy for decades,” says Adam Scott, a climate and energy program coordinator for Environmental Defence Canada based in Toronto. “We cannot support any pipeline that furthers the ongoing reckless and unchecked expansion of the tar sands,” Scott told DeSmog Canada.

So, what’s the option? Lobby the hell out of the US Congress to get them to press POTUS to sign the permit for a Canadian company to build a larger shortcut to ship heavy, bitumen laden, tar sand through the US. Lobbyists also proclaimed that building the XL would “Provide nearly 119,000 jobs”, but a State Department report instead concluded the project would require fewer than 2,000 two-year construction jobs and that the number of full-time, permanent jobs would hover around thirty-five after construction.

So, what could go wrong? Since it first went into operation in 2010, TC Energy’s original Keystone Pipeline System has leaked more than a dozen times; one incident in North Dakota sent a 60-foot, 21,000-gallon geyser of tar sands oil spewing into the air. Less than two years before the project was finally pulled, the Keystone tar sands pipeline was temporarily shut down after a spill in North Dakota of reportedly more than 383,000 gallons in late October 2019.

When tar sands oil does spill, it’s more difficult to clean up than conventional crude because it immediately sinks to the bottom of the waterway. People and wildlife coming into contact with tar sands oil are exposed to toxic chemicals, and rivers and wetland environments are at particular risk from a spill. (For evidence, note the 2010 tar sands oil spill in Kalamazoo River, Michigan, a disaster that cost Enbridge more than a billion dollars in cleanup fees and took six years to settle in court.)

Keystone XL would have cut diagonally across eastern Montana, central South Dakota, and eastern Nebraska, joining the current path in Northern Kansas. These are agriculturally important and environmentally sensitive areas, including hundreds of rivers, streams, aquifers, and water bodies. One was Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water for millions as well as 30 percent of America’s irrigation water. A spill would have been devastating to the farms, ranches, and communities that depend on these crucial ecosystems.

It wasn’t just environmentalists who loudly opposed this project, but a broad segment of the residents of the potentially affected area. Additionally, although energy lobbyists on both sides of the border claimed developing tar sands would protect our national energy security and bring U.S. fuel prices down, NRDC and its partners found that the majority of Keystone XL oil would have been sent to markets overseas and could have even led to higher prices at U.S. pumps.

Now that’s a new thing you know. My point for all this is that the vast unwashed red hat brigade will, of course continue to blame Joe Biden for high gas prices, now, based on his cancelling a pipeline which wouldn’t and couldn’t have been completed sooner than 2 years from now anyway.

So, let’s wait and see if they credit him for the over 400,000 new jobs created last quarter. Don’t hold your breath!