Mark Zuckerberg said that the establishment was wrong to censor skepticism during the coronavirus pandemic that ended up being either true or debatable.
Zuckerberg, who is the CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, made the comments during an interview on the "Lex Fridman Podcast" while explaining the difficulties of identifying misinformation on social media.
"So misinformation, I think, has been a really tricky one because there are things that are obviously false, right, or they may be factual but may not be harmful. So are you gonna censor someone for just being wrong? If there's no kind of harm implication of what they're doing? There's a bunch of real issues and challenges there," said Zuckerberg.
"Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier in the pandemic where there were real health implications, but there hadn't been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions," he continued.
They don’t want you to see this … Big Tech does its best to limit what news you see. Make sure you see our stories daily — directly to your inbox.
"Unfortunately, I think a lot of the kind of establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true. And that stuff is really tough, right?" he added.
"It really undermines trust," Zuckerberg concluded.
Zuckerberg has been criticized by many on the right, most notably for censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story just ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
In an interview with Joe Rogan in August, Zuckerberg said that Facebook censored the story on the basis that the FBI had previously warned about the possibility of Russian disinformation being released in order to damage the Biden presidential campaign.
"We just kind of thought, hey look, if the FBI, which I still view is a legitimate institution in this country, it's a very professional law enforcement, they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously," he explained at the time.
Zuckerberg said that they restricted the reach of the story after believing it fit the guidelines of Russian disinformation issued by the FBI. He said he didn't remember whether the FBI specifically singled out the Hunter Biden laptop story as disinformation.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/zuckerberg-misinformation-covid-censor
***********************************************Can Fluvoxamine Help Mitigate Some of the Problems with Long COVID? Dr. Eric Lenze is on a Mission
TrialSite has extensively chronicled fluvoxamine research during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the effort while Dr. David Boulware submitted an emergency use authorization (EUA) request to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but unfortunately, the agency rejected the initiative.
Involved early on with the research, Dr. Eric Lenze is at it again. The Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis investigator serves as Principal Investigator of the clinical trial titled “Fluvoxamine as a Treatment for Long COVID-19: A Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial.”
The study tests the effects of fluvoxamine as a treatment for Long COVID. It’s estimated that anywhere between 10%-30% of persons infected with COVID-19 may be afflicted with the condition. According to some surveys, 14+ million people in the U.S. may struggle with some form of the condition. The investigator-initiated study is made possible by Washington University School of Medicine and a fund for COVID-19 studies called Balvi.
The study drug
An FDA-approved SSRI for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), it’s been demonstrated in previous research that it can help prevent hospitalization in patients with COVID-19 (STOP COVID and TOGETHER trials). TrialSite reminds that tech entrepreneur Steve Kirsch put $1 million of his own money into the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF) which helps early on investigate the SSRI drug’s efficacy against COVID-19. An early contributor to TrialSite via opinion editorials, Kirsch has become an intense anti-vax activist which was covered by MIT Technology Review.
This trial is testing whether fluvoxamine helps to improve symptoms and the negative impacts of long COVID. Importantly, Dr. Lenze, previously interviewed by TrialSite on the topic of fluvoxamine, leads this study. He has emerged as a leading key opinion leader on the topic of SSRI and SARS-CoV-2.
The study
Targeting 300 long COVID patients, the study investigates the use of fluvoxamine, an economical repurposed, FDA approved drug, as a promising drug for treatment of long COVID.
As far as study participants, they 1) are post-COVID-19 (at least 3 months since initial COVID symptoms and/or test confirming SARS-CoV-2 infection); and 2) have evidence of neurocognitive Long COVID (e.g., "brain fog", trouble concentrating, etc.) which is causing suffering and/or impairment.
Lenze and supporting staff seek in this study to determine whether fluvoxamine (1) reduces long COVID symptoms, 2) improves cognitive performance.
For the current study, Lenze and team at Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis will randomize participants to fluvoxamine, which is initially dosed at their preference, vs. placebo.
In the study, first, each participant will receive an acute dose of fluvoxamine: one dose of 25mg, then one dose of 50mg, then one dose of 100mg. Lenze and team will assess their subjective reaction to these test doses and use the information to randomize them to an individually tailored course of fluvoxamine, vs. a matched placebo, for 16 weeks.
The investigators at this prestigious trial site communicate that the benefits of their study methodology include (1) participants are more likely to accept randomization and continue in the study if randomized to a dose they've already tested and accepted; (2) participants' initial response, if any, to the acute dose may allow future precision-medicine use of fluvoxamine, allowing physicians to give patients a test dose and then a full trial preferentially to participants who are likely to respond.
After the randomized portion of the trial, participants will be given an opportunity to participate in open-label treatment with fluvoxamine for 16 weeks. At the end of treatment, the study medication will be tapered off over an approximate 1–2-week period, depending on the final dose of study medication, and adjusted as appropriate if they experience discontinuation symptoms. Outcome assessments will be a combination of patient-reported assessments, validated neuropsychological tests, and biomarkers of underlying inflammatory pathophysiology.
The study’s primary outcome measure? Number of participants with improvement of long COVID symptoms over an 18-week duration.
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SARS-CoV-2 Mutations Evade manufactured antibodies
Not much use against Omicron
A prestigious team of UK-based scientists at University of Oxford, and the UK Health Security Agency investigate dynamics associated with monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. mAbs such as casirivimab+imdevimab were administered in combinations to minimize virus escape from neutralization, while other mAbs such as sotrovimab targeted specified conserved regions.
Now according to the Oxford-based scientists unprecedented genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in England has led to a “genome-first approach to detect emerging drug resistance in Delta and Omicron cases treated with casirivimab+imdevimab and sotrovimab respectively.” The scientists demonstrate using surface plasmon resonance and pseudoviral neutralization assays how SARS-CoV-2 mutations reduce or do away with mAb Aantibody affinity and neutralizing activity.
In this study, the investigators describe how the mutations occur within the antibody epitopes and for the Regeneron-developed casirivimab+imdevimab multiple mutations are identified, simultaneously impacting both components. They also demonstrate how, especially with Omicron, the pathogen evades Sotrovimab.
The study shows how the pathogen evades the neutralizing impacts of both classes of mAb. With Omicron mutation, Sotrovimab demonstrated an approximately sixfold reduction in neutralization.
The team’s experiment employs both plasmon resonance, an optical technique used to measure molecular interactions in real time, and pseudoviral neutralization assays to demonstrate in the lab how the mutations lessen, or completely render the mAbs not useful. The British-based scientists declare that this process is likely driven by immune evasion. Additionally, they showcase selected mutations and their lessening of associated neutralizing activity of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine-induced serum.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/sars-cov-2-mutations-evade-mabs-sterilizing-impact-b03340f0
********************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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