Opinion: Fact Check by Facebook’s Fact Checkers

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The Facebook label links to the third-party website Health Feedback, a member of a vaccine project led by the World Health Organization and a subsidiary of the nonprofit Science Feedback that confirms scientific claims in the media. Another affiliate scientific feedback examines climate-related articles in predominantly conservative media.

“The misleading opinion piece of the Wall Street Journal makes the unfounded claim that the USA will have herd immunity by April 2021,” reads the fact-check from Health Feedback. “Three scientists analyzed the article and underestimated its overall scientific credibility.” This is a counter-opinion that is considered fact-checking.

Dr. Makary did not present his opinion as a factual claim. He argued, based on studies and other evidence, that by early spring, Americans would have enough immunity to vaccination and natural infections to sharply reduce the spread of the virus. He essentially made a projection, just as the epidemiologists at Imperial College and the University of Washington do.

But the progressive health clergyman does not like his projection because they are worried that it could lead to fewer virus restrictions. The horror! The fact checkers of Health Feedback do not agree with the evidence that dr. Makary does not mention, as well as how he interprets it. Well. Scientists do not agree all the time. Many of the conventional health wisdoms about red meat, sodium and cardiovascular risks are still hotly debated.

The same goes for Covid-19. There is still much we do not understand about the virus and its transmission and immunity. Yet Facebook’s fact checkers are ‘cherry-picking’, to borrow their word, to support their own opinions, which they present as fact. So let’s check out Facebook’s fact checkers.

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An epidemiologist from Kent State quarrels with dr. Makary’s claim that ‘when [reinfections] does occur, the cases are mild. Her testimony? A single case report in the Rhode Island Medical Journal which has cited a handful of serious reinfections worldwide since April. Yet the same study noted that ‘there were only a few reports of reinfections in COVID-19 patients’.

In a New England Journal of Medicine study last month, only two asymptomatic possible reinfections were identified among more than a thousand UK health workers with antibodies to previous infections. Another study last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that antibodies from previous infections provide a degree of protection that is ‘clinically equivalent’ to mRNA vaccines.

Another fact checker says dr. Makary has misplaced the proportion of Americans who are likely to be infected. We will never know this number with certainty because most people with no or mild symptoms are not tested. Antibody uptake can help extrapolate infections, but antibodies decrease over time and more rapidly in mild and asymptomatic cases. They can therefore underestimate infections.

A study in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that 2% of American blood donors had antibodies by mid-December. In early spring, the test picked up only one in 11 cases. The ratio dropped with the drop to about 1 in 4 as the tests expanded. Dr Makary applied a time-weighted case-taking average of 1 to 6.5 ‘, which he mentions.

A disease ecologist at the University of Santa Cruz says he should have used 1 in 4, which would have exposed a lower estimate of infections. This is an arbitrary number and will underestimate the number of infections during the spring. She also claims that the 0.23% “mortality rate for infections” that dr. Makary mentions, is wrong and says it is about 0.6%.

Infection mortality rates (IFR) are based on models and vary according to population demographics and the extent to which societies protect the elderly. Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis found that the average IFR estimate at 51 locations worldwide was 0.27%, but many estimates were from spring onwards when there were few treatments. The mortality rate for infections has probably dropped since then.

A recent study in the journal Science estimates an infectious mortality rate of approximately 0.23% in Manaus, Brazil. An epidemiologist from Harvard talks about dr. Makary’s Manaus as an example of ‘herd immunity’. Epidemiologists estimated that 52.5% of Manaus had been infected by June, while hospitalizations had plummeted and remained low for seven months despite relaxed government restrictions.

The Washington Post cited Manaus in August as a possible example of herd immunity. Yet hospitalizations shot up inexplicably in December. A recent Lancet article provides several hypotheses for this boom, including new virus variants that evade antibodies and defective models. These hypotheses deserve to be investigated.

However, the Harvard epidemiologist concludes that Manaus’ should be more than enough to demonstrate the dangers of trusting ‘herd protection’ against infection. It is always a red flag when a scientist proclaims that a single ambiguous proof is enough to demonstrate anything. These Facebook fact checkers do not act like scientists.

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Scientists often disagree on how to interpret evidence. Debate is how ideas are tested and arguments refined. But Facebook’s fact checkers present their opinions as fact and try to silence other scientists who challenge their opinion.

We have had many proposals in Congress to change the protection of Article 230 which protects internet platforms from liability. But giants on social media are increasingly adding fake fact checks and deleting articles tagged by left-wing users without explaining them. In short, they act like publishers to judge and stigmatize the content of reputable publishers. The legal privileges that enable these companies to dominate public discourse need to be discussed and perhaps reviewed.