news

“Years ago now — 15 years ago — I was in Washington doing ‘Meet the Press.’ It was a sunny Sunday and lightning struck at home on a little lake that is outside of our home — not on a lake, a big pond,” Biden said.

“And it hit a wire and came up underneath our home into the heating ducts, air conditioning ducts. And to make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette and my cat.”

Belief in misinformation about key health issues persists among a good chunk of adults, with false claims about COVID-19, vaccines and reproductive health garnering a substantial amount of support, a new poll from KFF has found.

Whether or not they believed the claims, nearly all participants in the survey were aware of the misinformation with 96 percent saying they had heard at least one of the 10 claims presented to them. The most widespread misinformation claims had to do with COVID-19 and vaccines.

The new polling data found that a third of adults believed the COVID-19 vaccines “caused thousands of sudden deaths in otherwise healthy people,” with 10 percent believing that claim to be “definitely true” and 23 percent saying it was “probably true.” Another 34 percent said it was “probably false” and 31 percent said that claim was “definitely false.”

Nearly a third of people also said they believed the parasitic deworming medication ivermectin was an “effective treatment for COVID-19.” Among the naysayers, 44 percent said that claim was “probably false” and 22 percent said it was “definitely false.”

Health experts and clinicians have repeated stressed that there is no evidence that ivermectin has any efficacy in treating or preventing COVID-19 infections, and the Food and Drug Administration has never authorized the drug for use in treating the coronavirus.

In the same poll, roughly a quarter of people said they believed vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella caused autism in children and that COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility. No evidence has so far been found to indicate that immunization against SARS-CoV-2 affects male or female fertility.

The claims that vaccines cause autism have long been refuted. Several studies, including one in Sweden published in 2020 that followed children exposed to flu vaccinations for several years, have found no link between vaccinations and autism.

The British physician Andrew Wakefield who originated the claim has since been barred from practicing medicine in the U.K. and the 1998 study he conducted that linked autism to vaccinations has since been deemed fraudulent.

Regarding reproductive health, about a third of survey participants said they believed sex education would lead to teens being more sexually active and also that birth control the pill or IUDs make it harder for women to get pregnant after they stop using those methods.

Larger shares of participants believed in misinformation having to do with gun violence when compared to the other issues, with 60 percent saying they believed “armed school police guards have been proven to prevent school shootings.”

A 2021 analysis of 133 school shootings from 1980 to 2019 found that armed school police officers — who were present in nearly a quarter of school shootings included in the study — were not associated with a significant reduction in gun injuries.

~~Another 42 percent said they believed people who have firearms in their homes are less likely to be killed by a gun than people without guns at home. In fact, the opposite has been observed, with a 2022 analysis of California adults from 2004 to 2016 finding that overall homicide rates were more than two times higher among people who lived with gun owners than those who didn’t.~~ [the original study didn't control for income, which is fucking lib]

While these results indicate a sizeable minority of adults believe in disproven claims about health, KFF noted that the rate of people who believe them to be “definitely true” was small overall. The majority people fell in what the organization referred to as the “malleable middle,” who were unsure about most of the claims presented to them.

KFF found that certain groups were more susceptible to misinformation than others, including those with lower levels of educational attainment, those who identify as Republican as well as Black and Hispanic adults.

The findings came from the KFF Health Misinformation Tracking Poll Pilot that was conducted from May 23 to June 12. Pollsters included 2,007 adults in the survey and the results have a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Context...

Nationwide, there are some 3,000 sheriffs, whose salaries are funded by taxpayers. They serve as the chief law enforcement officers in their counties and are the only elected peace officers in the country. They appoint deputy sheriffs and jailers and service the courts in their jurisdictions. Especially in rural areas, sheriffs hold immense sway over what happens in their county.

[...]

The public-facing image of the sheriffs group, which is led by white men, prominently features the American flag and the experiences of Black civil rights icons who pushed back against unjust laws. But details of its operations are closely held, and its finances are shielded from public scrutiny. It was briefly registered as a nonprofit in Arizona, but internal records indicate it is now a private company.

The group does not release its list of dues-paying members, nor does it publicize information about where or how it conducts trainings. The sympathies of the group's leaders for right-wing, white-nationalist extremist causes, however, are well documented.

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Rickets – a disease associated with Victorian-era slums – is on the rise in Scotland, while other conditions linked to poverty and malnutrition are also increasing across the UK. On the rise: rickets and other diseases

Rickets is a skeletal disease caused by a sustained lack of Vitamin D. It can lead to skeletal deformities such as bowed legs or knock knees. Research has linked rickets to a lack of exposure to sunlight and Vitamin D, which is found in foods like oily fish and eggs. It largely disappeared from Britain more than half a century ago. This was after government and health service efforts to improve the public’s diet and exposure to sunlight. However, it’s now on the rise again.

In Scotland, a total of 442 cases of rickets were recorded in 2022, compared to 354 in 2018 – a 25% increase. Most of the cases were recorded in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area, with 356 diagnoses.

Glasgow is one of the most deprived local authority areas in Scotland. 32% of all children in the city were estimated to be living in poverty in 2021-2022. According to the latest data from 2019, men living in the most deprived areas of the city on average live 15.4 years less than those in the most affluent parts. For women, the gap has increased from 8.6 to 11.6 years in recent times.

Some 482 cases of rickets were also found across England. Back in Scotland, and data collated by the Times showed 112 cases of tuberculosis in 2022, another disease which historically had been got under control. There was a sharp rise in scarlet fever diagnosis, with 223 cases in 2022 compared with 39 the year before. Meanwhile, in England there were 171 cases of scurvy in 2022, with three recorded in Scotland. This is a disease linked to Vitamin C deficiency.

People are poor in the UK – poverty has increased, and it set to continue to do so. With think tank the Resolution Foundation forecasting that child poverty is set to reach its highest levels since since 1998/88 in 2027/28, it’s likely that without action, the increase in Victorian-era diseases will only continue.

Steady decolonization efforts in Mali.

Unironically what a lib-brainwormed blahaj/lemmy user would probably do and/or support... Go to another country like a white savior but actually make things worse for the local LGBTQ community...

West Virginia University, a crucial institution in one of the nation’s most impoverished states, is poised to jettison all of its faculty dedicated to teaching Spanish, French, Chinese and other foreign languages. Students interested in learning a new tongue would be pointed to instructional alternatives — such as, possibly, an online app.

Image is from @Parsani@hexbear.net, who got it from @RNAi@hexbear.net, who got it from Discord.

Thread update: Prigozhin's fucking dead.

The BRICS summit will begin on Tuesday and end on Thursday, with various world leaders, politicians, and representatives meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.

America's anxiety about the summit has been obvious. They have been complicating the event by pushing for the arrest warrant for Putin to be upheld if he steps foot in the country. While this is a remarkably dangerous and unhinged thing to do - even by America's standards - to the leader of a nuclear superpower who could end the world within an hour, it does betray their desperation. Unfortunately, for those of us who wanted to see Putin surrounded by an army of security guards fending off people holding handcuffs, he has sent his Foreign Minister, Lavrov, in his place. Additionally, America has likely been spreading rumors about the lack of interest in gaining new members in the organization.

With apparently 20 countries formally seeking membership and another 20 informally doing so, the bloc has been elevated, whether they like it or not, to the position of the international vanguard of the non-western world. It is extremely important to say that this is not the same as it becoming an anti-American bloc, and many of them (including original members Brazil and India) wish to keep a friendly relationship with the United States. Nonetheless, with the United States' policy of "if you are not with us, you are against us," and as the US seeks to weaken China, in coming years many of them might find themselves under hostile pressure.

BRICS has to try and solve many problems if they are going to chip away at America's stranglehold of the world economy. These problems - like mitigating the dollar's status as a global reserve currency, and America's dominant role in the world economy - are extremely complicated, and will takes years, even decades, to be overcome. Therefore, one should temper their expectations and excitement for this summit. It took tens of millions of deaths in cataclysmic wars, and then several more decades, for America to reach its current position. I see no reason to believe why its downfall will be any less bloody and elongated.

To end on a less depressing note, I've been searching for appropriate anagrams given the list of countries that seek to join BRICS. Obviously not all of them will make it in, but even so. The best I've come up with is HIBISCUS EMANCIPATES BBBBKKRVV.

(also, "bulletins and news discussion" can be rearranged to "libidinous newsstands uncles".)

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

This week's first update is here in the comments.

This week's second update is here in the comments.

https://archive.is/MqpSB

God is punishing COMMIEfornia for not promoting the sound of freedom enough over barbie, sweetie.

RIP; we love our queer comrades

Also must read:

Sex lives in focus for Ukraine's injured veterans - BBC

"There's sex in the hospital, sex at home, sex before procedures, sex after. There's a lot of good sex going on"

-- Ivona Kostyna is one of the founders of Veteran Hub, the group which runs the ReSex project

The brutal American regime continues its pattern of human rights abuses with ruthless, secret prisons that are closed from journalists and auditors. The government continues to deny the reports.

All the "human rights" stuff from the West is pure projection, as usual.