#third wave

2nd wave feminism: factual wave. Equality in court, stop bias against women.

3rd wave feminism: wait what’s going on? Wave. Defined by confusion and splitting into several groups

4th wave feminism: no United front wave. Tries to get social equality around, but some groups try to just drag down men to do so, while others empower women to do so.

(Both of those ways are unlikely to be the way to go, and there should be a middle way. If you drag down men, you’re effectively bullying the other gender and saying they’re all bad means you’re a misandrist. If you empower all women, you’ll also empower women who are in positions where they shouldn’t be empowered, for example morbid obesity is not healthy as evidenced by countless studies and common sense. Logically you shouldn’t say being fat is a good thing, but if a woman is fat it’s suddenly acceptable?)

There’s the feminist waves to my understanding, now for MRAs

Men’s rights activists: we agree with what feminism wants in the sense of gender equality but can we also address men’s issues?

MGTOW: well if you don’t want us in here, we don’t want you in here. We will aggressively ignore women now. Bye!

InCel (involuntary celibates): we will fix our issues with our inability to get a girlfriend by... becoming domestic terrorists in Canada. That seems like a good idea

Breathe. Breathe through cloth, Through layers that bear no name. Through everything the ones you love And you Are going through.

Breathe in. Breathe out In your private space. A third of a second spawns a brand new case Despite you washing hands and covering face, Yet barefaced people walk about In shops and bars that are not sparse Anymore.

From the report by Beth Mole, posted 19 July 2021:

Fully vaccinated people are largely protected from delta; the current vaccines are still highly effective against developing COVID-19 from delta and other variants of concern. Though a small proportion of people can develop so-called “breakthrough infections,” those infections will mostly be asymptomatic or mild. But, unvaccinated people are completely vulnerable. Moreover, those who have received only one dose of a two-dose vaccine or have only recovered from COVID-19 are not much better off than those who are completely unvaccinated.

But according to new polling data from CBS News, a new wave of vaccinations seems unlikely. Among unvaccinated and partly vaccinated people, only 48% said they are concerned about delta. Among fully vaccinated people, 72% reported being concerned about the variant.

Despite the fact that the current COVID-19 vaccines have proven highly effective and safe, 53% of those who are unvaccinated or partly vaccinated said in the poll that they are concerned about side effects. 50% of the group cited a lack of trust in the government as a reason not to get vaccinated. And 45% said they don’t trust the science. All of these percentages are higher than they have been in earlier polls, indicating that these anti-vaccine sentiments are hardening among the unvaccinated.

Some unvaccinated people who may be more persuadable have said they are waiting for the vaccines to receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration (currently, they are authorized by the FDA under an emergency use authorization). On Friday, Pfizer and BioNTech said that the FDA had granted them a Priority Review designation for their mRNA vaccine, but they didn’t expect a decision on full approval until January 2022. Currently, vaccine providers are administering only around 520,000 COVID-19 vaccine per day, down from a record of 4.6 million in a day in April.

With over 161 million people vaccinated, only 48.6% of the US population is fully vaccinated.

See also: How much COVID misinformation is on Facebook? Its execs don’t want to know

For years, misinformation has flourished on Facebook. Falsehoods, misrepresentations, and outright lies posted on the site have shaped the discourse on everything from national politics to public health. But despite their role in facilitating communications for billions of people, Facebook executives refused to commit resources to understand the extent to which COVID-19-related misinformation pervaded its platform, according to a report in The New York Times.

Early in the pandemic, a group of data scientists at Facebook met with executives to propose a project that would determine how many users saw misleading or false information about COVID. It wasn’t a small task—they estimated that the process could take up to a year or more to complete—but it would give the company a solid understanding of the extent to which misinformation spread on its platform.

The executives listened to the data scientists’ pitch and then reportedly ghosted them.

The data team’s proposal wasn’t approved, and they were never given an explanation for why it was silently dropped.

The revelations come as Facebook has drawn fire from the White House for its role in the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines that prevent it. “They’re killing people,” President Joe Biden said about the role of social networks in the spread of misinformation. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. They’re killing people.”

Biden later walked back his comments slightly, but they revealed the administration’s frustration with social media platforms—and with Facebook in particular—over their response to the pandemic.

For weeks, the White House pressed Facebook for details on how the company is combating COVID vaccine misinformation. The social network offered some details but gave unsatisfying answers to other requests.

Facebook’s unwillingness or inability to understand the scope of COVID misinformation on its platform was apparent in comments it gave to The New York Times, in which it blamed its nescience on the lack of a “standard definition” for pandemic-related misinformation. “The suggestion we haven’t put resources toward combating COVID misinformation and supporting the vaccine rollout is just not supported by the facts,” said Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman.

“With no standard definition for vaccine misinformation, and with both false and even true content (often shared by mainstream media outlets) potentially discouraging vaccine acceptance, we focus on the outcomes—measuring whether people who use Facebook are accepting of COVID-19 vaccines.”

For researchers who study misinformation, that explanation isn’t sufficient. “They need to open up the black box that is their content ranking and content amplification architecture,“ Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The New York Times. “Take that black box and open it up for audit by independent researchers and government. We don’t know how many Americans have been infected with misinformation.”

Me: 

This situation is extremely bad!

First off, the individuals that aren’t getting vaccinated just do not care to. They’ve bought hook line and sinker into all the disinfo and misinfo on facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok, reddit, and/or whatever 8chan replacement one choosed. What they see and read reinforces their pre-conceived (and factually incorrect) views that “experts” “really don’t know shit about anything” and thusly are “blowing things way the fuck outta proportion,” etc. Their views are both informed by, and reinforced by:

what they read and see online

what they hear on FM/AM radio

what they watch on broadcast TV

what their friends and communities consume from media

what the prevailing societal and political attitudes in one’s community are

“rugged individualism” and the post-1980 erosion of the social contract

So, if your fb friends are covid truthers, if the on-air personalities you hear on the radio at work are covid truthers, if your neighbors and friends at werk are covid truthers, if the elected leaders are covid truthers, if the snippets of Fox News you get to see randomly are pushing covid truther disinfo, and if those in your inner circle at that 4th of July party you went to are covid truthers, then you yourself, at a minimum from peer pressure, will dismiss the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, scores of hospital operators, plus countless professionals in medicine and epidemiology in your decision not to get vaccinated, nor to mask up indoors in public even when “recommended”.

“I have rights. I know what’s really going on. I’ve got things figured out.”  Or, at a minimum, “I don’t give a fuck either way.” “Fuck you.”

Facebook absolutely is responsible for the covid truther disinfo and misinfo being shared on their platform.  I believe they are the largest vector of disinformation and misinformation to the public. So many people are chugging the “vaccines are a scam, masks don’t work and I have rights” kool-aid thanks to disinfo introduced and shared widely on facebook

Some other major vectors of disinfo: iHeartMedia - Premiere Networks - iHeartRadio, Entercom/Audacy, Westwood One, One America News, Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcast Group, YouTube + Google, TikTok, and Reddit.

“I saw a video on YouTube where the military did a study…”  or “I heard a guy on the radio saying mask mandates are part of a plot…”  It's all bullshit!

At this point it cannot be anything but an active choice the leadership at these companies consciously make to pipe out total bullshit in a time of crisis. Content from all of the above easily makes its way to facebook, too, unrestricted!

The U.S continues to spiral into this post fact, post truth, anti-intellectual, anti-science neo-fascist hellscape where no lives matter and where mass death is AOK because “none of us get out of this world alive” or some asshat folksy quip that masks as wisdom.  Empathy, reasoning, established facts and observable reality have all become political statements… People hear what they want to hear.

IMO this is truly a disastrous situation with no easy way out.

Many, many people will not wear masks again.  Many, many people see the survival rate for coronavirus and they surmise wrongly that the risk for them of getting covid is worth it, that the risk for others isn’t remotely their concern, and that the entire situation is overblown. The social contract is in bad shape. Public confidence in the state is almost gone. Covid truthers are everywhere.

Getting a vaccine requires time off from work to travel to a mass vax site that’s still open, time off to recoup post-shot (if necessary), and overcoming fear that the anti-vax disinfo on social media was true after all. Plus overcoming peer pressure from unvaccinated friends and family.

Covid case numbers are likely undercounts. Test kits are still problematic. Persons with no health insurance have no PCP to call when they get sick. Underinsured persons may have to wait weeks for their approved PCP to get around to a telehealth call. Many people are getting sick and not getting tested and they’re not reporting anything to anyone. State officials, wanting to look good, may skew whatever data is reported to them.

COVID-19 is an airborne virus. Most people catch covid from contagious asymptomatic people. Coronavirus has always been a risk for children! Getting vaccinated is part of an overall good strategy to keep COVID-19 at bay. Masks work!!! If indoors, stay in a ventilated room if you’re with other people, and keep doors and windows open for air circulation. Coronavirus is producing extremely serious long-term cognitive and cardiovascular complications for many people who survive it. “Long covid” is real.

We don’t have to live with this! The political and business leadership in much of the United States today have collectively decided there’s nothing that can or should be done in regards to covid-19, no masking requirements, no easy supplies of N95 masks, and no mitigation efforts of any kind. They wrongly conclude that COVID-19, a new virus with so many unknowns, “isn’t that bad” and so the level of permanent damage or death resulting from covid is acceptable.