Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Censorship on media and social media, or just trying to prevent irrational panic.

There is news that one person, here in Washington State, has died due to the rare blood clot complications related to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Apparently her obituary was censored on Twitter so now people are saying censorship.

Nothing is perfect and with 0% risk, but the vaccines are still safe, compared to being in a car or even riding a bicycle. Much, much safer than the risk of catching the virus, itself.

It's like playing the odds. What's the lowest risk, realizing that there's never totally no risk.

In an ideal world, all the news would be available, including the rare and freak incidents, but I can also see why media is under pressure to cool discussion a bit due to problems with public reaction.

Odd and rare stories, like a commercial airline crash, will make the news and be remembered, but something far more common, like everyday automobile crashes, gets less attention.

Due to this problem in public reaction, some types of news can feed people's distorted views of risk and cause reactions that lead to more deaths.

The news is out there, but I'm sure some editors are trying to cool things as so much of the public does tend to go off on distorted tangents.

I have heard about that situation with the J&J vaccine from several sources, so the news is out there.

Part of what makes this controversial is that the person didn't want to be vaccinated, but had to comply with a mandate related to being with a child at school.

Too bad she got the J&J as the Pizer or the Moderna are even safer and don't have that rare blood clot issue with pre menopausal women. I can only guess, but maybe she did the J&J because she was up against a deadline for the mandate and it's only a one shot vaccine. The Pfizer and Moderna are two shot vaccines which would take more time. That's only my guess.

A real good response to my post on Facebook

This is exactly the problem. The rare event gets lots of news coverage because it's rare, and then people see all that news coverage and get an exaggerated sense of the risk the rare event poses to their own lives and the lives of people in general. It's what's happening with the battery fires in Bolt EVs (electric vehicles). Some Bolt owners are panicking and selling their cars, saying they're going back to gasoline-powered vehicles and will never again buy an EV. There are far more fires in gasoline-powered vehicles than in EVs, but it's difficult to convince people of that.

No comments: