Clip from President Trump's conversation with Fox News. BBC/Fox News.
Facebook and Twitter have removed a President Trump video from his accounts that contain factual information. BBC. The clip showed President Trump saying that children are "essentially immune" to the Coronavirus and that is a reason why schools should open up. Both Twitter and Facebook claimed the post is "misinformation". However, children are at an extremely low chance of dying from the Coronavirus when compared to adults and the elderly. In the largest study only .08% of hospital patients were under 19. In an American study only seven children died out of almost 8000 studied. The removal is also controversial as a similar tweet from Elon Musk was not removed.
My Comment:
This is obviously election interference. The bias here is terrible as President Trump said something that was essentially correct but Twitter and Facebook removed it anyways. And they didn't do anything to Elon Musk who said the same thing. It's clear their motivation isn't to inform their users, it's to prevent President Trump from reaching the American people.
It's also bad since Facebook and Twitter are trying to force policy regardless of what the science said, and I think they are doing it for political reasons. If the schools open up that means the economy will do better and it will also prove that Facebook and Twitter (along with their Democratic allies) that Coronavirus is not a huge threat to children.
And their is no doubt in my mind that President Trump is correct here. Children are at a much lower risk of dying or becoming sick from the Coronavirus. Most of them, if they have symptoms at all, only have minor symptoms. And the younger the children are the more resistant to the virus they are. This doesn't mean they have immunity but using common language isn't not that different. I've used the same phrasing and though it's not technically correct it's still extremely petty for the tech companies to do this. Immunity and resistance might not mean the same thing medically but for all intents an purposes for a lay person it's the same thing.
You could argue that older children (ie late teenagers) are not as safe from the virus, but that's not what Twitter and Facebook are doing here. Indeed, they are pedaling misinformation themselves. Even the BBC article, which was more fair than the western press, didn't differentiate from older children and young ones.
As far as the schools opening, I'm in favor of it, for elementary and middle school students at the very least. I don't see much danger there and what little there is, isn't worse than the average flu season. There is some danger for teachers but the most vulnerable ones can be sent home.
I have little sympathy for the teachers complaining about this. For the longest time they have argued that they are the most important people in the country as they are the ones that teach the children. I never bought that regardless but if they really are that important then they can be classified critical workers as well. If a cashier at McDonald's or a worker in a slaughterhouse is a critical worker than shouldn't teachers be considered the same thing?
As for the tech companies it's extremely dangerous to have them be the arbiter of what is true or not when it comes to medicine. Especially with an emerging virus where there isn't anything near settled science. With the hydroxychlorquine example there are studies that go both ways proving and disproving it but according to big tech, it's settled science when it couldn't be further from the truth. About the only thing that is settle science is that the virus is not very dangerous to children and even that is labeled as misinformation.
As for President Trump and the Republicans, they really screwed up badly by not dealing with the tech companies back in 2016 when they had control of all three houses of government. Had they done so they probably would have kept the house in 2018 and it is not helping their chances in 2020. They had every right to do so and an obvious motivation to do so but instead they just kind of trusted that the tech companies would do the right thing. They didn't and now it might be too late...
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