Conversation #63, Part 3:Disinfowars (August 14, 2021)

I was hoping to get this one out earlier, but we had a 30-hour power outage, which put a real dent in our plans.

This episode contains the third part of our conversation about COVID-19, the Delta variant, and the territory we’re all lost in. In this part, we talk in some depth about the kinds of COVID tests, and take a deep dive into currently circulating disinformation that claims the CDC’s COVID test procedures have been incorrectly reporting cases of influenza as cases of COVID, and other claims about tests. Paul describes his attempts to get into the scrum on Twitter. Finally, we talk about why smart people often believe in things that aren’t true, and talk briefly about Baffler article about what facts are in our age of social media.

Show Notes

The article “What Are the Different Types of COVID-19 Tests?” can be found here.

We also briefly mentioned genomic sequencing which could distinguish specific variants of COVID-19, but did not cite any sources on this. One such source can be found here and an example of current research on variants can be found here.

The article “Claims that CDC’s PCR test can’t tell COVID from flu are wrong” can be found here.

The Baffler article “What Does a Fact Look Like?” can be found here.

The music clips are from the songs “Too Much Information” by The Police, and “Academy Fight Song” by the post-punk band Mission of Burma. Both songs are from 1981.

How to Listen

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The Podcast channel on YouTube is here.