TracingVRL / is on Nostr

Using my own software I run the COVID project tracing the information going ViRaL. TracingVRL.substack.com. Newsletter by programmer-journalist A.J. Fish. Bylines @ East Bay Express, muckrack.com.

Newsletter: tracingvrl.substack.com

Last Notes

2024-09-02 19:40:25

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https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/ambiguous-language
"Pandemics need named phases to coordinate mitigations with a general public busy living their lives. In the first 2021 editions of this newsletter I explored endemic COVID as a worthy goal. I now see this term as inaccurate as pandemic and endemic aren’t mutually exclusive. Also, diseases eliminated through vaccination are not referred to as “endemic”. This word too easily leads people into the folly of pursuing infection as a means to immunity."
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2024-09-02 05:35:39

"Can you show me a citation for this?"
"Yes! I got it from search."
SEARCH IS NOT A SOURCE

2024-09-01 19:06:18

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6/ Mark Zuckerberg whines in 2024, working men died in 2021.
Zuckerberg in his letter to House Republicans this week says he feels "regret" **for responding** in 2021 to President Biden's bully pulpit pleading by removing from Facebook media artifacts misleading people about the COVID vaccine.
See the October 2021 unpaywalled issue of TracingCOVID to decide for yourself if Zuckerberg, who earned higher-than-typical profits in 2021, is right.
https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/tracing-brief-is-this-thing-still
#Infodemic #PublicHealth
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2024-09-01 18:00:34

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5/ In late 2022, a deranged-yet--lucid man named David DePape broke into then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's house and beat her husband in the head with a hammer.
It was an attack Paul Pelosi miraculously survived.
DePape's posts to Facebook showed he amplified COVID vaccine and other conspiracy theories.
https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/tracing-brief-is-this-thing-still
#COVID #ConspiracyInfluencers #Infodemic #politics #socialmedia #Pelosi
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2024-09-01 17:49:45

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4/ In late 2022 Elon Musk purchased and took over the Twitter social media platform.
He covered the "w" in the Twitter headquarters marquee in a crude reference to women's anatomy by spelling out "Titter".
Online he promoted his cryptocurrency Dogecoin by swapping for one day the Twitter bird for a Doge dog, sending Dogecoin valuation soaring. Lawsuits for currency manipulation ensued.
https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/tracing-brief-is-this-thing-still
#ElonMusk #Markets

2024-09-01 17:41:04

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Find full thread over at: https://mstdn.social/@tracingcovid/113063344770105919

2024-09-01 17:39:10

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3/ 1918 Great Influenza Plus Five Years: Adolph Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch/First Coup Attempt
We're now at five years after COVID.
The 1918 Influenza pandemic did NOT screech to a halt in 1920 as history textbook summaries suggest. Historical trends attributed to WWI fallout were more influenced by waves of deadly influenza for which there was no test no vaccine and no post-infection treatments like antivirals.
https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/tracing-brief-is-this-thing-still
#history #publichealth #pandemic #COVID
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2024-09-01 17:33:18

3/ 1918 Great Influenza Plus Five Years: Adolph Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch/First Coup Attempt
We're now at five years after the start of COVID.
Newspaper archives show the 1918 Influenza pandemic did NOT screech to a halt in 1920 as history textbook summaries suggest. Historical trends strictly attributed to WWI fallout were more influenced by waves of deadly influenza for which there was no test and no vaccine.
https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/tracing-brief-is-this-thing-still
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2024-09-01 17:06:26

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2/ Within the info ecosystem we have now, with more mIcro-targeted content and less mAcro-targeted content, I thought I'd zoom back and review snapshots of the pandemic.
This brief highlights past issues of TracingVRL worth a second look.
https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/tracing-brief-is-this-thing-still
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2024-09-01 16:55:28

1/ Newsletter: Is This Thing Still On?
We're in a very blind election season
Two years after I started programmer-journalism work on the #infodemic our media grew *more hospitable* to laundered disinformation.
https://tracingvrl.substack.com/p/tracing-brief-is-this-thing-still
#publichealth #economy
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2024-08-31 20:08:20

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3/ Aug 20 "Some Thoughts About Bad Reportage" (TalkingPointsMemo.com) -
[Gift link: ] 🎁 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-thoughts-about-bad-reportage/sharetoken/2299f91b-1a04-4a3b-869b-e0f81b62a4fc
" ... the extent that things suddenly seem a bit worse or a bit more untethered than they seemed even in the recent past this may be part of the reason. ... there’s very little left from the prior era of journalism to provide a ballast against its worst tendencies. "
LOST FUNDAMENTALS. W/OUT REGIONAL DAILIES NO BALLAST.
What do you think?
#Election #Election2024
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2024-08-31 19:58:07

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2/ Aug 20 Some Thoughts About Bad Reportage (TalkingPointsMemo.com) -
[Gift link: ] 🎁 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-thoughts-about-bad-reportage/sharetoken/2299f91b-1a04-4a3b-869b-e0f81b62a4fc
..."In the past many reporters got their starts at regional dailies with their own vital journalistic traditions, or the DC bureaus of those same dailies. But most of those don’t exist anymore because of the changes in the industry. So that’s an education in fundamentals that doesn’t exist anymore ..."
#Election2024
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2024-08-31 19:54:52

Aug 20 Some Thoughts About Bad Reportage (TalkingPointsMemo.com) -
🎁 [Gift Link: ] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-thoughts-about-bad-reportage/sharetoken/2299f91b-1a04-4a3b-869b-e0f81b62a4fc
"In a staff discussion several days ago we got to talking about how recently a lot of political press reporting just seems … well, bad.
"Everyone’s a critic of course. And TPM has always been critical of many things about mainstream media. But it seems worse. So we were discussing ..."
#Election2024
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2024-05-26 05:37:31

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Apr 22 Are drivers ruder since the start of the pandemic? (Boston Globe) -
http://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/22/opinion/drivers-are-ruder-since-covid-19/
“Not that drivers in Boston were exactly Boy Scouts before COVID-19, but flagrant rudeness—for instance, double parking unnecessarily, simply because a driver doesn’t feel like parallel parking into an open space—certainly seems more prevalent.”
#COVID #COVID19 #pandemic #drivers #bad_drivers