Will you be taking a booster?

Lol. Your post was a little far fetched for me and I was pointing that out. That is, if you (whoever you are) ask for more information and the poster (no matter the reason) chooses not to reply that is defacto misinformation? With respect, don’t flatter yourself.

If it was the latter so what?

btw I have no idea when you previously mentioned bleach and you didn’t answer the question but then maybe you just ask questions.

Not particularly. Not enough to give them a pass on using gigantic platforms to spread misinformation, at least. Your mileage may vary.

Apologies. I didn't realise that was what you thought you had done.

What you actually posted was a "fact check" article from August 2021, which takes issue with the way that people were interpreting a side-by-side of Walensky in May 2021 and Walensky in August 2021 to make a point about purposeful narrative manipulation. I happen to agree with the article (thought it strikes me as opinion rather than fact, as so many "fact check" articles do) that there is little sense taking statements that are months apart during a pandemic and blaming the people making the statements for the changing data. But in any case I wasn't making any point about what Walensky said in May 2021 as it compares to August 2021; I was only making the point that someone "official" has ever stated that vaccines prevent infection, which the article I posted more succinctly achieves without obfuscating that proof-of-point by including video material from months later. I don't think that "well here's what she said three months after she said the thing you're referring to" really counts as "context".

Biden is POTUS, and as such has a huge platform. Possibly the biggest in the world. It is my opinion that in that situation, anyone who knowingly gives out inaccurate information is acting immorally. To wit, purposely "exaggerating" is worse than merely being wrong in this situation. Again, YMMV.

It's **** stupid, obviously. But maybe if I liked them and I were a dishonest and highly political person without integrity, I'd be prepared to beclown myself on a public forum by saying that person had a "slip" and was merely referring to hypotheses that Hydrogen Peroxide (a bleach) may have some utility as an adjuvant therapy for Covid-19, at a time when no effective treatments or vaccines were available. I'm not saying that, to be clear—it's obviously a dumb thing to say—but when how much one "likes" a given official is in play, things can get fuzzy fast.

Anyway, I have proven my original point several times over and we're going around in circles here, so I'll leave it there.

People definitely said that vaccines prevent infection. Q.E.D.

Peace.

I'm certain that there are, but you're being purposely disingenuous in stating that I'm "politicising" anything because I didn't provide an example of a GOP-aligned person stating that the vaccines prevent transmission—which is, let's remind the reader, the point I have proven. We were never talking about general, pandemic-based mistakes.

I could go through pandemic misinformation and pluck out a few examples of GOP or GOP-aligned people posting things that are factually inaccurate, but that would not be at all relevant to the point at hand, I feel no need to atone for the "sin" of pointing out a flaw in someone's "team", and it would smack of an inability to assess people on their merits rather than on their politics. I do not enjoy that compulsion in others, and I won't be indulging in it myself.

No, but if it makes you feel better I don't particularly dislike him either. He's just a dude doing a job. I don't know him and I don't feel any obligation to actively like or dislike people because they exist.

It doesn't matter. My assertion was that it is inaccurate to say that "No one has ever claimed [the Covid vaccines] gave immunity from infection". That assertion has been proven, and whether the people who said it misspoke, exaggerated, or were speaking during the first week of trials when the rate of infection in vaccinated people was 0.00% and it was therefore true, doesn't matter. Someone of influence at some time claimed that the Covid vaccines gave immunity from infection.

You are free to postulate, speculate and mind read to your heart's content about the why of it. Fill your boots. But it remains irrelevant to my proven point.

I don't believe such a politician exists.

No, that is not right.

You asked me, hypothetically, "If what Biden said lead to more people being vaccinated, would that be a good or a bad thing in your mind?"

I stated that I believe strongly in informed consent and would consider it to be a bad thing. I would have said the same if we were talking about misinformation under-playing the effectiveness of the vaccines.

You then said: "A politician told what you believe to be a white lie and thereby saved lives."

I did not state that I believed it was a white lie.

You also said: "Regardless, it is clearly the case that Biden was merely exaggerating."

In response I said that it is my belief that knowingly disseminating misinformation (which would be the case if Biden was telling a "white lie" or "merely exaggerating") is, in my opinion, worse than being mistaken.

You have confidently stated that:

1: Biden was exaggerating.

2: I believe that Biden was telling a white lie.

I have made no judgment on whether either Biden or Walensky was purposely spreading misinformation. Because that is irrelevant to my point—that some influential people have said that the vaccines prevent infection—which is now (many posts ago) proven.

I haven't thought about it a great deal. My immediate gut feeling is that it's worse, but then I suppose it depends on how many people, believing themselves to be afforded protections by the vaccines that they were not, subsequently went on to take risks they otherwise would not have taken, became infected, and suffered and/or died as a result. And how do they stack up against people who would otherwise not have gotten vaccinated but did so because they thought it would prevent infection (having heard Biden say so), who subsequently went on to be exposed or infected and have better results than they might have otherwise? That would have to be weighed against how many people were harmed because they drank or injected bleach into themselves in an effort to protect against or treat a SARS-CoV-2 infection. And then there's intent. If Biden was telling a white lie (and I don't know if he was) with the intent of getting more people to come forward for vaccination because he believed that was the best way to save lives, that is a different thing to Biden telling a white lie with the intent of getting more people vaccinated because he thinks that a higher vaccination rate would be politically expedient for him, for example. And if the latter, is that better or worse than Trump just blurting dumb **** because he's losing control and getting desperate about an upcoming election? I think that's probably a matter of opinion and pre-existing, politics-based cognitive bias.

I'm not team "Orange Man Bad" or team "Let's Go Brandon" (though I do think both are pretty funny in their own way), so I don't see it as a black-and-white, my-team-good-your-team-bad issue.

But it is still very irrelevant to my point, which is that "No one has ever claimed [the Covid vaccines] gave immunity from infection" is a factually inaccurate statement.

It is.

Work to do now, and I'm sure this is getting tedious for people coming here to chat about boosters.

Peace.

Sure, Lumen, I'd agree with that. But the point I was making was that the statement that "No one has ever claimed [the Covid vaccines] gave immunity from infection" is factually inaccurate. Nothing more or less.

Aristotle doesn't like the fact that it can be demonstrated that people he likes politically have (whether through mistake, misspeaking or intentional lie) disseminated misinformation, so he's trying to drag me into a mud fight about politics and intent, which are irrelevant to the point I made (and proved).

And people who have said "No one has ever claimed [the Covid vaccines] gave immunity from infection" (which is misinformation in itself) now want to argue about my own opinions on vaccination efficacy or the intent of the people who demonstrably stated that vaccines give immunity from infection, instead of admitting they were wrong and moving on.

I'm not particularly married to the surrounding arguments about intent, effect and politics, but I'm also not going to permit people to drag this down the road of "HAH! You knew the misinformation was misinformation so it doesn't matter!" or "Well Orange Man was worse!" because those arguments are an insult to all of us, when my original point was correct and almost immediately proven.

I'll probably let it drop now, though. Art doesn't make itself, eh.

Lesson learned, must try harder to idiot proof posts, and of course, allow for the more pedantic amongst us.

I'm 40 myself and can't get a booster in clare or limerick until Wednesday. Seems odd.

Not if your over 30, try there. Unless you can book one that your under 30 and just rock up.

You can in most of the rest of the country. Ah I'll wait till Wednesday