reSee.it - Tweets Saved By @NateB_Panic
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Boris Johnson argued for the free spread of covid in the UK, telling officials 'let the bodies pile high.' This reflects a colonial mindset about viruses that has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths over centuries🧵
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
In 1763, British colonists were losing to the Shawnee and Mingo warriors in Ohio. A British commander wondered: “Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.”
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
That year tribal chiefs were lured to discuss a peace deal. At the meeting the colonialists tried to infect the chiefs with smallpox. A settler wrote: "We gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the small pox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
It had the desired effect. In the spring and summer of 1763 a devastating smallpox outbreak began among the tribes of the Ohio valley, emptying villages and killing thousands
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
In 1788, English colonists arrived in Sydney to set up the first European colony in Australia. On board the ships were bottles of smallpox variola matter. Within sixteen months of their arrival, up to 90% of the Aboriginal people living in and around Sydney were dead
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Many Aboriginal people suspect smallpox was deliberately introduced to kill them. Historians believe it too, citing the handful of years between the outbreaks in North America and the outbreak in Australia, as well as the losing position the colonists found themselves in in 1789
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
In 1862 a smallpox outbreak began in Victoria on Vancouver Island. The colonial authorities contained it among the colonialists but let it spread among the indigenous people where it travelled through the Pacific Northwest Coast and into the First Nations of the Northwest Plateau
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Up to 90% percent of the indigenous population of British Columbia was killed, and the epidemic collapsed large segments of indigenous British Columbian society. Historians have called it a genocide.
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
There are accounts from the 18th century of Ottawa First Nations being given gifts by French colonists (who they sometimes fought alongside against the British) that likely contained smallpox variola – the scabs and pus of people infected with smallpox
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The 55 million indigenous people that died in the Americas from viruses after colonial arrival ushered in a little ice age. As cities were emptied huge tracts of cultivated land turned back to forest, absorbing massive amounts of CO2, cooling the world https://archive.ph/x2LwK
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The failure to deliver the promised vaccines to the global south reveals a coloniser mindset alive and well. By September 2021, nearly 70% of Brits had received 2 vaccine doses and more than 70% of Americans at least one, compared to just 1.4% of people in low-income countries
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The UK’s covid inquiry shows us that our leaders still retain the coloniser mindset. Our world is not run by humanitarians. It is run by sociopaths that believe in eugenicist survival of the fittest. For all sources and to read more: https://shorturl.at/ruPS8
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Climate scientists just said the failure to tackle global warming is because democracy is rigged by capitalists. You didn't hear about it🧵
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The other day a story about long covid risk being exaggerated appeared across mainstream media outlets, garnering millions of views. It revealed a major problem with how news originates, particularly through news agencies such as PA Media, Associated Press, Reuters 🧵
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The story in question began life as an opinion piece by 3 medical academics renowned for downplaying covid and taking an activist stance to ensure society takes no covid safety measures. It was coordinated by Vinay Prasad, a professor at the University of California https://t.co/UIx7YEIRuW
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
It was published in the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, a low impact journal. As the covid and long covid experts at the Putrino Lab said, the lack of scientific rigour behind it meant it "may as well have been a blog piece." https://t.co/rfGFWi7OgG
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Prasad has mocked people with long covid, appeared to suggest the condition is a delusion, said no one should test for covid any more, and said research into long covid only delivers "fear" https://t.co/6RK747wiRu
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The first sighting of this piece as a news story was in PA Media. PA media is a news agency, or news wire, service. News wires write up news that begins as a press release. PR agencies and PR teams at companies send thousands of press releases to news wires every day https://t.co/Mu7SuiA3GF
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
As a PR person, getting a journalist at a news agency to write up your press release is like striking gold. Because these agencies sell news to media outlets around the world. If your press release gets turned into a story by a news agency service, it will get widely syndicated
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
All major newsrooms have a portal where they log on and see what stories are being uploaded to the wires by the main agencies like PA, AP, Reuters, AFP. Editors will then decide which of these stories they will pick up (buy) from the agencies
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Every day a proportion of all news you read starts at just a handful of these agencies. Which means it starts with a press release. For example this Guardian story today was not written by a Guardian journalist it was bought from the Associated Press https://t.co/B32sXyToSJ
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The problem is that too often the people at the news wires are inexperienced, busy and rushing to churn out a certain number of stories every day. Turnover at the wires is high. They may have little appreciation for the politics of a story, especially a science story
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
So when this release (possibly from the BMJ journal PR team, possibly Prasad with help from a PR person at Uni of California where he works) came on to the radar of the person at PA Media who wrote it up, there were no control mechanisms, no sense checks. They just churned it out
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The broader point here is one about declining media standards and massive cuts due to a business model eaten alive by the internet/new media. This has resulted in what is sometimes called "churnalism" with press releases loaded with agendas being presented to us as neutral news
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
This is a problem at the national and international news level, but particularly at the regional and local news level, where cuts have been so deep and now so much news is purely press release generated
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
This matters because people believe a regional or local outlet is more trustworthy than a national outlet. In a significant way this erosion of local and regional news in favour of churnalism (but without people knowing) is a major contributor to the reactionary political shift
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
This all means that with just a little bit of knowledge about how the media works, bad actors, especially those with credentials who may appear impressive/intimidating to young reporters, are able to game the system and distort public debate towards fringe ideas and theories
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Breaking news: Infectious disease scientist urges colleagues to speak out after excess deaths fail to return to pre-pandemic levels and instead hit highs not seen outside of war time 🧵
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
"The emperor has no clothes." https://t.co/XMYmErEYUt
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Abandoning mask protections in hospitals where the most vulnerable people in society expect to be safe is "that final, profoundly unjustifiable step." https://t.co/eintVOMyxr
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The mass media is failing to report on the excess death crisis, and failing to link the rise in premature death to covid. While covid is allowed to spread unchecked the excess death crisis will only deepen https://t.co/arEw0RGSAc
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The excess death crisis is goes far beyond just the UK and US. Excess deaths in the EU have in many months been elevated beyond the levels seen during the official pandemic period, despite a fall in acute covid deaths https://t.co/45l5GEZiaa
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
At the end of March England reported 21.5% excess deaths in a week, almost 2,000 more dead people than a normal pre-pandemic end of March https://t.co/4nhL4FZAXo
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
The crisis challenges deeply held notions of progress and failing to face this reality will hurt our societies for many decades to come. It is time for our political leaders and the mass media to face the excess death crisis https://t.co/rRDJdD3Ql1
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Scientists are demanding politicians face reality and institute sensible infectious disease protection measures, including mask and air filtration policies https://t.co/jREamtJYlK
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Doctors around the world know that scrapping mask protection measures in hospitals is a decision that will harm and kill people. Will the mass media report on this outpouring of concern about such dangerous policies? https://t.co/kb4Cc1gsGq
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Hi @andrewgregory @BBCHughPym @Meera_Senthi @ShaunLintern @natashaloder @NC_Robinson will you report on the excess death crisis and the outpouring of concern from doctors about the lack of infectious disease protections in hospitals and the harm this will do to patients?
@NateB_Panic - Nate Bear
Hi @EditorCheryl @celiadugger @paulcullenit @katlay @gerardofortuna @JonathanFahey @TracyJan will you report on the excess death crisis and the growing concern that it is being fuelled by the effects of covid on the body in the post-acute stage?