The 'Fact Check' scam

 David Strom:

“Fact checks” are almost always intended to deceive or distract you.

During the Trump Administration, every “fact checker” in America needed you to know that every bit of hyperbole Donald Trump spewed out was a “lie,” not an intentional exaggeration for effect and that the Babylon Bee was not a credible news source.

Fact checks, in other words, are about spinning you. Misleading you. Burning up straw men and then declaring victory.

They are bullcrap, in other words.

The latest BS is Reuters spinning the insane decision by the Centers for Disease Control to recommend that all school children be vaccinated in order to attend public schools. While countries around the world–including those Nordic countries that were celebrated as models of wise public policy during COVID–are discouraging or even not allowing COVID vaccination of children in their health systems, the CDC is recommending that they become standard or even required.
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What sparked this controversy, other than the obvious fact that the recommendations is batsh&t crazy, is a segment from the Tucker Carlson show in which the eponymous host said “The CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule, which would make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school.”

Both the CDC and Reuters went crazy over this “misinformation.” The CDC correctly notes that they alone cannot mandate any particular vaccine standard for public schools because the final decision is made by the individual states. What they fail to include in their explanation is the fact that a significant number of states–12 or more–just cut and paste those recommendations into their requirements.

Hence the CDC–in these cases at least–is effectively mandating the COVID vaccine for students in those states. And it’s not like the CDC doesn’t like it that way. The whole point of the recommendations is to get everybody to adopt them. It’s not some passive academic exercise–these are recommendations in the same way all such recommendations are: if you don’t do this you are engaged in a dereliction of duty.
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The thing that makes the Covid vaccine different is that it does not prevent the spread of the disease or getting the disease.  While it may have some efficacy it is not as effective as other vaccines which actually prevent the spread of disease.  There is also the fact that children are probably the least vulnerable to Covid.