Partisans spin, propagandists lie

Dr. Sarah Taber, tweeted our bodies are too complex for the simple claim that people are obese because they eat junk food and don’t exercise. There are likely other contributing factors, such as insufficient sleep, stress, violence, and untreated PTSD. Insufficient sleep messes up appetite and glucose tolerance to the point of being a huge risk for diabetes.

I just think it's funny how ~the obesity epidemic~ started at the same time that falling real wages, longer work hours, & longer commutes started to eat away at Americans' sleep time almost like it's a symptom of larger-scale societal problems that are profitable for some people

Stress comes from overwork, poverty, harassment, discrimination, and other forms of oppression. Chronic stress – the fight or flight reflex – destroys the body when it goes on too long. That stress can be tamped down by eating high calorie foods. A part of the stress can be from untreated childhood trauma. And that happens in middle and upper income homes too. Taber wrote that blaming it all on diet allows these people to avoid the problems in their own homes. Taber also tackled the idea that if one is sick it is because one eats junk food and is lazy. There is a lot of “consumer education” which is really advertising – buy my health food, which will cure you. Yeah, healthy food is good, but it isn’t a substitute for sleep and PTSD treatment, and ending overwork and domestic violence. Resia Pretorius of The Guardian discussed the latest research into long COVID, which is a feeling of tiredness, brain fog, and other symptoms that show up after a case, even an asymptomatic case, of COVID. This malady may be debilitating and may affect 100 million people worldwide. This research suggests what is going on is the virus is creating microclots throughout the body. The standard bodily methods of breaking down clots don’t appear to work. The standard tests for clotting disorders don’t show anything. That’s because it appears various inflammatory molecules are buried in the clots where they affect the clot cleaning process but aren’t detectable yet. Because they aren’t detected doctors sometimes tell patients their malady is psychological. Some treatments are showing promise, such as anti-clotting drugs (with careful monitoring) or a blood filtering process similar to dialysis. Tara Haelle, a science and health journalist, tweeted about the media reporting on vaccines (scroll up to begin):

I'm currently reading my 5th or 6th article today that includes in it some form of looking back on the pandemic and its lessons. *Every* *single* *one* includes a variation of one or more of the following from scientists, public health agency heads, journalists, etc.: —"I didn't expect so much public loss of trust" —"I didn't expect political leaders to eschew public health advice bc of ratings/donors/etc" —"I didn't expect big swaths of public opposition to vaccines/masks/etc" —"I didn't expect ppl to ignore public health recs" ... My real question is: "Did you EVER consider reading a SINGLE social science paper on cognitive bias, public attitude formation, tribalism, vaccine hesitancy, science communication, health literacy, or anything related to these? Have you read anything about epistemology?" ... And here's the thing: All of THIS {waves hands around at the world} was 100% predictable. Better yet, IT WAS PREDICTED, by dozens of social scientists. What we're seeing is Human Behavior 101 in sociology. Ask literally *any* sociologist. I've been covering vaccine hesitancy for over a decade. I learned VERY quickly that understanding cognitive bias & sociology was *just* as essential to my work as knowing vaccine science & epidemiology. ... So as I read all these end-of-year "looking back" articles, it's frustrating & baffling to see all these "we didn't expect" statements. You *should* have expected it. You *should* have prepared for it. Any social scientist, or even medical historian, could have told you so.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on the latest news of the Omicron variant. One bit was the hassles in telling the difference between delta and omicron because there are differences in how patients should be treated. For example, monoclonal antibody treatment has little effect on omicron patients, so save it for delta patients. However, that problem of differences is going away – within five weeks omicron went from barely detected to 95% of all cases in the US. Other bits of news Sumner covered: Hospitals are being swamped, so it doesn’t matter whether an omicron case is much less likely to result in hospitalization. This time children’s cases are setting records. Also, if you’ve had omicron, you won’t get delta. If you’ve had delta your protection against omicron is low. Finally, trying to keep schools open, which many governors and school officials are trying to do, simply won’t work. Too many teachers are absent and there aren’t enough substitutes. SquireForYou of the Kos community wrote about what it is like to work in the emergency room these days.

The only problem is that the people who make those kinds of proclamations of “wanting things to go back to normal” seem to share a common attribute: They want someone else to pay the price to make that happen. [Gov. Jared] Polis isn’t one of these; he seems to recognize the cost, as recently Colorado announced that because of the toll of unvaccinated COVID patients, hospitals were authorized to turn people away from ERs. So he’s saying aloud to everyone, “We’ll open up, sure, but people might die from it.” But there are an enormous number of people who want that response, and to have anyone but them pay the cost. ... And I say, fine, open everything up, have no restrictions. But then give us the resources we need to tackle that problem. And, yet, there's the rub. Because giving us the needed resources would show the depth and magnitude of the problem we're facing. And nobody is willing to reckon with that right now. ... If someone dies on the floor in my waiting room, it's my fault, not the 50 patients waiting with mild COVID symptoms clogging up my ER. It’s not the fault of the half of my staff who are out with COVID. It’s not the fault of the scores of experienced providers who quit in the wake of successive COVID waves after realizing they could find a job where they didn't get their asses absolutely beaten, day in and day out. ... Over the last two years, the number of experienced providers we’ve bled has been catastrophic. Turns out that abusing the hell out of your most talented folks, asking them to save a country where its own government seemingly has no interest in protecting its people, is bad for morale. I’ve been an emergency department nurse for 11 years now, and in pediatric acute care before that—but when I started in emergency services, that pedigree might’ve been good for the 50th percentile rank in professional experience. Now? That might be good enough for “most experienced” at a startling number of emergency departments nationally. Or near enough to it as to not matter much. And that kind of brain drain matters.

Leah McElrath tweeted:

I’m so tired of these straw man freak outs that assert the only options are for everyone to stay locked in isolation forever or to return to “normal.” Normal is gone. It died. Get over your denial and move on to acceptance already. Start problem-solving to create a new world. There is no reason we need to be constrained by returning to the exact same social structures. Those structures were largely predicated on the needs of the Industrial Revolution for replicability, in particular the use of human beings as identical—and replaceable—units of labor. ... We. Are. Not. Constrained. Unless we choose to be. Unless we choose not to think differently. Unless we choose not to demand more. Unless we choose not to take our lives and our families back. Imagine a better world. ... There’s an economic concept called a “disruption,” meaning an event that enables an upending of established hierarchy. The pandemic is a disruption. If we do not chose to demand and to work to create a new world that we have a voice in shaping, it will be weaponized against us.

Hunter of Kos discussed that the political press has taken a baby step. But it needs to take a big one and shows no sign of doing so.

The press has taken a full year to ease into the notion that attempting to nullify democracy is an anti-democratic position worth calling out as such. We have not yet reached the point where they will believe historians who point out that the collection of ultranationalism, government-promoted propaganda, anti-immigrant and anti-minority fervor, vilification of the press, vilification of expertise, book-burning, and eliminationist rhetoric toward political foes all pin the movement as specifically a fascist one. ... What we are not seeing, as top media outlets grapple with their own seeming inability to write about an attack on our government with any sense of alarm or urgency, are editors willing to confront the gutlessness of their own coverage by changing it. The Times editors find many places where blame can be assigned, but not a word of it suggests the paper intends to move forward by privileging propagandists less, or by more sharply separating Republicans who take concrete action to erase democratic rule as anti-democratic rather than merely partisan. Partisan actors may spin events to cast themselves in better light. Propagandists tell flat lies, lies that the press already knows to be lies, so as to erase the ability of citizens to determine what is or is not true. ... We may learn through the Times or the Post that a powerful figure said a provably false thing. What we will not get, the thing that is being intentionally held back from us from reporters and editors unwilling to take a position on whether attempting to defraud the public is wrong, is a fact-based condemnation of the propagandist as someone who is saying that false thing as an intentional lie meant to damage our democracy by stealing, from Americans, the truth. This is not something that journalists in other sects of the profession have such trouble with. We do not hear that a convicted murderer with a string of deaths trailing behind him had some good points to make—unless the murders are political, in which case we might. ... We can name, very easily, dozens of politicians and shouting voices who are at this moment pushing propagandistic falsehoods so as to bend their supporters into accepting the nullification of future elections that would strip too much power from Republican hands. So name them and describe them as such. It isn't hard. Such voices are not partisan—if they are spreading hoaxes, they are attacking democracy itself. Note that, in each story. Note that, when refusing to air a segment in which a hoax-promoting guest attempted to spread falsehoods. Note that, when refusing to quote a claim intended specifically to mislead. Doing otherwise isn't remaining neutral. It's being an accomplice.

In this week’s Gaslit Nation bonus (alas, available only to donors) hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa discuss their new favorite movie, Don’t Look Up. It is about researchers who see a comet heading straight for earth and they can’t get anyone to pay attention. They are Cassandras – the people who give out accurate warnings and are ignored. Of course, it is an allegory for how climate scientists are ignored. Though written before the I don’t want to see it because I read about it a lot. I would have a low tolerance for those characters who refuse to listen. However, Kendzior and Chalupa have a different take. Since, through Gaslit Nation, they are professional Cassandras they are delighted having a movie that explores their emotional reality. Now that Sen. Joe Manchin has killed (or put on hold) the big Build Back Better bill, Chuck Schumer has turned to voting rights. He’ll have a vote on the voting rights bills in the next few days – and since Republicans are united against them they’ll fail again. So Schumer has announced that he’ll turn attention towards ending the filibuster, which Manchin has proclaimed must stay untouched. It is annoying, though not at all surprising, as April Siese of Kos reported, that One Nation, a conservative political group, is spending a million dollars on ads in Manchin’s state of West Virginia asking voters to call Manchin asking him to keep his promise. Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of “words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling, or irritating.” A few of the ten phrases on this year’s list: * No worries – incorrectly substitutes for “you’re welcome.” * At the end of the day – most things don’t resolve at the end of the day. * Asking for a friend – that ruse isn’t fooling anyone. * Circle back – this isn’t figure skating in the Winter Olympics. * Deep dive – this isn’t a body of water and calling it deep is redundant.