Conversation

Cost to society of this headline: N = Number of people who read headline & don’t click X = Percent who decide against vaccination based on headline Y = Infection rate Z = Mortality rate Multiply it all together If result > 0, what an abhorrent, morally bankrupt thing to publish

Quote Tweet

Austen Allred

@Austen

· Oct 21, 2020

Unbelievable

Jim Baxter

@_JimB

Oct 22, 2020

To be fair, it just says someone who was part of the trial died, not that they died from the trial.

Bobby Goodlatte

@rsg

Oct 22, 2020

That's my point though. It's written in a way to provoke a question in the readers mind. The question: "is the vaccine potentially fatal?" If even one person misconstrues the headline, gets sick & dies: isn't that morally outrageous?

Jesse Powell

@jespow

Oct 23, 2020

Exactly. There is no story here but one was manufactured for clicks. Headline could just as easily have been “man who drinks water dies”. It can only be a story because people trust the media not to dupe them like this. There would be no story if it was nothing, right? Wrong.

This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more

Replying to

and

There should be a harsh market punishment for this kind of thing but I doubt most people care. It’s kind of like meat sources. How do you get people to care about animal treatment? You need some kind of reliable, convenient, obvious grading system people care about.

3:18 AM · Oct 23, 2020Twitter for iPhone

Replying to

and

I like that idea. Objectivity is key for that to work. The problem is getting people to trust it. With the decentralization of information happening now trust is a huge issue.