Anonymous wrote:
jsteele wrote:http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/dec/15/2014-lie-year-exaggerations-about-ebola/
Politifact's "Lie of the Year" for 2014 is various exaggerations about ebola. I think it is pretty funny that some of DCUM's regular right-wing posters were prolific spreaders of these lies, including spreading them on DCUM. It would be nice to see a few of them admit their error and, maybe, learn from it. But, I won't hold my breath.
We will likely be told that Politifact is a Marxist front operation that is the propaganda wing of IS, etc., etc.. Of course, we will be told this by the same people who routinely remind us that Politifact's 2013 Lie of the Year was Obama's "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" statement.
As one of your resident right-wing trolls, Mr. Steele, I don't recall spreading any "lies" about Ebola here---a significant outbreak was always a very low-probability scenario in my view---but I don't view PolitiFact's article as particularly compelling. I will freely grant that the odious McCain told a whopper, but the criticisms made of the statements by George Will (who I am no friend of) and Rand Paul are pretty weak. Politifact admits that Will's scenario was "theoretically possible" and basically bangs on Rand Paul for not being sufficiently nuanced. From there, debunking sources like "InfoWars" is pretty small beer.
I believe there is a lot more uncertainty surrounding many of these issues than Politifact implies---its worth noting that there is some evidence that at least one strain of Ebola HAS gone airborne in the past, albeit one that was harmless to humans---and the current outbreak spread much more widely and rapidly than typical Ebola outbreaks. There was certainly cause for concern about the low-probability/high-consequence scenario of an outbreak, and Politifact's suggestion that those who were concerned were "lying" is misplaced in my view. Of course, anyone who freaked out was overreacting, I quite agree.
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