Tag: moral panics

Measles, Oh My!

History is repeating itself. We’re back in 2014, folks.

Remember the absolutely horrifying and sure-to-be-lethal “outbreak” of the measles at Disneyland? The one that killed caused a rash in so many children?

That same measles scare prompted mainstream media to call for parents who did not vaccinate to be put in jail (this brilliant idea came to us courtesy of Useless USA Today).

It was also used to justify the idea that vaccine choice needed to be abolished to keep us all safe. (Thank you, Washington Post)

So here we are again, hearing about measles outbreaks

In the last two days there has been a new onslaught from the media—from television news to internet sites—seeking to terrify parents about a small number of recent cases of … yeppers … measles.

The Atlantic is reporting a “Return of Measles” (because of three cases in Chicago).

STAT is regaling readers with tales about “What it’s like to watch children die of measles.” (Spoiler: it’s devastating to watch a child die of any cause. The chief of medical research who wrote this absolute must-read article lives in one of the poorest provinces in one of the poorest countries in the world where half the people are under 18 and almost no one has access to paved roads, clean drinking water, or enough to eat.)

And Live Science wants us all to know that 300 people have “possibly” been exposed to measles at the UC Davis Medical Center where a child was treated for measles on March 5th.

To say nothing of the Big Bad Measles that have devastated hurt no children in Broward County, Florida.

Oh my god. I am so so scared.

I will rush out and get as many MMR vaccines as I can. For myself. And for my children. Shoot ‘em up. In the back arm.

Because if one measles vaccine works, like the CDC says, more will work even better!

And you can’t have too many of such a good, effective, and wonderful thing!

Besides, the ONLY way to not get the measles or not die from the measles is by supporting Big Pharma’s Big Profits.

Big Fear: 1 million
Commonsense: 0

But who’s keeping score?

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The U.S. Wants to Ban TikTok for the Sins of Every Social Media Company

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will likely vote to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok, which sets the stage for a possible full ban of the platform in the United States (Update: it did). The move will come after a slow but steady drumbeat from politicians on both sides of the aisle to ban the platform for some combination of potential and real societal harms algorithmically inflicted upon American teens by a Chinese-owned company. 

The situation is an untenable mess. A TikTok ban will have the effect of further entrenching and empowering gigantic, monopolistic American social media companies that have nearly all of the same problems that TikTok does. A ban would highlight, again, that people who use mainstream social media platforms run by corporations do not actually own their followers or their audiences, and that any businesses/jobs/livelihoods created on these platforms can be stripped away at any moment by the platforms or, in this case, by the United States government. 

Bytedance and TikTok itself have been put into an essentially impossible situation that is perhaps most exemplified in a 60 Minutes clip from 2022 that went viral this weekend, in which Tristan Harris, a big tech whistleblower who has turned the attention he got from the documentary The Social Dilemma into a self-serving career as a guy who talks about how social media is bad, explains that China is exporting the “opium” version of TikTok to American children. 

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“Measles Mayhem”: Where is this going?

The headlines are full of measles at the moment, in the way that always reeks of coordination.

The measles outbreak in the US has been simmering away for weeks, but was brought back to the front burner in the last few days. The Daily Mail headlining:

America on verge of measles MAYHEM: Hundreds feared to be infected in California and Arizona outbreaks as US suffers year’s worth of cases in two months

It’s not just Arizona and California either. Chicago, Florida and Philadelphia all have “outbreaks” of their own.

An article in the Atlantic headlined “The Return of Measles”, claims there have been measles outbreaks in 19 separate states.

Meanwhile, on our side of the pond, a measles outbreak that started in Birmingham in January has apparently spread north and south. The UK’s total cases are apparently up to ~733.

In Ireland, the scary story is that one person on a flight from Abu Dhabi to Dublin tested positive for measles a couple of days ago. That number has since risen to three! The authorities are desperately hunting down anyone who was on that plane.

That’s three measles scare-stories in three different countries at the same time, with maybe more on the way

To quote Ian Fleming, “once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence and three times is enemy action”.

So what is this “enemy action”? Where is this story going?

First, let’s get this out of the way: This is not a public health scare. Not a real one. Measles is not especially dangerous, with a reported case fatality ratio of about 0.02% in Western countries, meaning for every 5000 people who get measles 4999 will survive.

So what’s with the scary headlines? What’s the endgame here?

To answer that we need to ask “who are the media are blaming?”, and as with most issues these days there are two answers to that.

Yes, it’s another binary.

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Teen Use Of Delta-8 THC Is Higher In States Without Legal Marijuana, New Study Published By American Medical Association Finds

Teen use of delta-8 THC is higher in states where marijuana is illegal, according to a new study published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). When it comes to adolescent consumption of cannabis itself, “there were no differences in marijuana use by state-level cannabis policies,” the researchers concluded, contrary to legalization opponents’ oft-repeated claim that the reform will lead to increased teen use.

Overall, just over eleven percent of high-school seniors self-reported using cannabis products containing delta-8 THC in the past year, the study found. Use of the largely unregulated psychoactive cannabinoid “is appreciable among US adolescents,” authors wrote, “and is higher in states without marijuana legalization or existing Δ8-THC regulations.”

In states where marijuana remains prohibited, 14 percent of high-school seniors said they had used a delta-8 product in the past year, the federally funded research found. Where marijuana was legal, that figure was 7 percent.

Local decisions to regulate delta-8 THC were linked to even lower use rates among adolescents. In states with no delta-8 rules, 14.4 percent of participants had used the cannabinoid within the past year compared to just 5.7 percent in states with delta-8 regulations.

“Given the federal policy context and divergent regional and policy correlates of Δ8-THC and marijuana use found in this study,” the report says, “Δ8-THC may be marketed to and/or used by adolescents as a psychoactive cannabis substitute in places in which adult-use marijuana is illegal.”

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Utah May Soon Ban Non-Existent ‘Satanic Ritual Abuse’

Let me tell you a terrifying fact: 72 percent of the Amazon reviews of the book Satan’s Underground give it 5 stars. If you’re not familiar, the book is the “memoir” of a woman named Lauren Stratford, aka Laurel Rose Wilson, who claimed to have been a victim of Satanic ritual abuse. This is despite the fact that Stratford was outed as a fake decades ago, and that after her claims were thoroughly debunked by the evangelical magazine Cornerstone, she embarked upon a career as fake Holocaust survivor Lauren Grabowski until she was outed by Cornerstone again, along with another fake Holocaust survivor whom she claimed to remember.

This is very easily available information. So easily available that even some of the positive reviewers acknowledge it. They even say that they know that this particular account of Satanic ritual abuse might be nonsense, but that they appreciate the book because they know it for sure happens to other people. Somewhere. This isn’t the kind of thing I should be shocked by, having covered conspiracy theories and Satanic panic and Q-Anonsense for the last million years, and I’m not. I do, however, remain profoundly creeped the fuck out.

Last week, also decades after anyone could even almost reasonably believe that “Satanic ritual abuse” is a real thing outside of their own fevered imaginations, legislators in the state of Utah advanced a bill outlawing “ritual abuse.” This feels pretty deeply ironic given that we have many, many proven instances of actual abuse within the Mormon church and literally zero proven incidents of “Satanic ritual abuse” … anywhere.

The bill has already received a “favorable recommendation” from the House Judiciary committee and a large majority of the Legislature are on board.

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Legalisation is not linked to an increase in cannabis-related psychosis

A study of data from pre and post-cannabis legalisation in Canada has found no increase in admissions to hospitals for cannabis-related episodes of psychosis.

The relationship between cannabis use and episodes of psychosis is a contentious issue that is often raised by opponents of legalisation. Results from previous studies have been mixed, with some finding evidence to suggest cannabis use, particularly in adolescence, can be a cause of psychotic episodes, and others finding no association between the two. 

The present study was published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in February 2024 and used data collected from the three emergency departments (EDs) in Quebec City. The number of admissions for psychosis where evidence of cannabis use was present was compared by researchers to the number of admissions in the 12 months following legalisation. 

Only admissions from adults aged 18 years and above were included in the data, and evidence of cannabis use was obtained from the patient’s medical records and included results of urine tests as well as clinical notes. 

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Ahead Of Legalization Vote, Florida Senate Panel OKs Proposal To Limit THC In Adult-Use Marijuana Products

Florida’s Senate Committee on Health Policy advanced a bill on Tuesday that would preemptively limit THC levels in adult-use marijuana products. The change would restrict products allowed under a recreational cannabis legalization ballot initiative that organizers are working to put on November’s ballot.

The bill, SPB 7050, would prohibit dispensary sales of marijuana flower with a potency of greater than 30 percent THC. All other cannabis products would be limited to 60 percent THC. It would also set a serving size on edible products of 10 milligrams THC or less, with the total amount per package no more than 200 mg.

“This is setting the stage and recognizing that should the amendment pass—should it be on the ballot and should the amendment pass—that we will continue to have a medical marijuana market and we would have a personal use market,” said Sen. Colleen Burton (R), who chairs the committee and who spoke in favor of the committee’s proposed THC limit bill. “The potencies and quantities that you see in the recommended language today are based upon keeping that separate.”

As more states have legalized marijuana and highly concentrated THC products become more widely available, some have raised concerns about apparent associations between high-THC products and mental health problems, especially in developing brains.

On the House side, that chamber’s Healthcare Regulation Subcommittee last week advanced a bill, HB 1269 from Rep. Ralph Massullo (R), that would set the same preemptive THC limits on recreational marijuana.

At Tuesday’s Senate panel hearing, Sen. Gayle Harrell (R) referenced studies indicating an association between high THC cannabis products and mental health issues like psychosis and schizophrenia, especially in youth.

“When I look at the medical evidence out there and the dangerous impact that high-potency THC has, it is overwhelming,” she argued, adding: “I can tell you, the high risk of schizophrenia is sixfold with high levels of THC.”

Other members expressed mixed feelings on the bill. Sen. Rosalind Osgood (D), who said she was 13 when she smoked her first joint—a decision she said led her to “be on the streets, homeless, with other addictions”—said she supports limiting the strength of mind-altering substances.

But rather than take up THC levels in the standalone measure, she said, “I would have preferred to have this bill at another time, after voters have made a decision, to comprehensively look at all the different arms that go toward this.”

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It’s Time to Retire Super Bowl ‘Sex Trafficking’ Stings and Myths

Super Bowl LVIII is fast approaching. For many Americans, that will mean gathering with friends to watch the game, enjoy some sort of dip-based snacks, and gripe about the halftime show. But for sex workers and those who would like to patronize them, it will mean a higher chance of getting nabbed by cops.

Under the guise of “stopping sex trafficking,” authorities tend to ramp up prostitution stings around Super Bowl time. The ostensible motive behind this is that large sporting events like the Super Bowl draw an influx of traffickers and their victims to the locales hosting these events.

Yet no one has managed to marshal evidence of these hordes of traffickers allegedly descending on Super Bowl cities. The best authorities can do is sometimes point to a spike in Super Bowl weekend arrests of sex workers and their customers—a spike easily explained by the fact that cops are making a concerted effort to catch people offering to sell or pay for sex.

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Is TikTok brainwashing the kids about Gaza? No, this is just an old moral panic in a new form

In a famous two-frame meme from The Simpsons, Principal Skinner asks himself: “Am I so out of touch?” “No,” he decides, with resolve. “It’s the children who are wrong.” It’s the easiest thing, dismissing the views of young people when they question our beliefs. It’s even easier when those views are mainly expressed on a social media platform that can also be dismissed as a lawless land of misinformation and clickbaiting. And so as Palestine- and Gaza-related content explodes on TikTok, predictable responses have arrived, and some have been pretty out there.

The Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley called for the banning of TikTok altogether when she said in a primary campaign debate last week that “for every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok, every day they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that”. Last month, a Republican congressman said that TikTok was “digital fentanyl”, brainwashing young Americans against their country and its allies. Over at the Telegraph, we are told that the app’s “threat is real”.

TikTok responded by stating that it’s just how the algorithm works. It does not “take sides” but simply personalises the user’s news feed to show more of the kind of content they interact with. And as Israel, Palestine and Gaza began to dominate the news cycle, users naturally began to search and consume more content relating to them. That has resulted in a whole churn of videos. Some informative, such as Gaza map breakdowns; some poorly sourced and propagandistic on both sides; and some competitively supportive of one party or another. Within those interactions, there are nuances, such as breakdown of support by location and age profile. The overall picture, though, shows a much higher appetite for content that is supportive of Palestine; views attached to pro-Palestine hashtags vastly outnumber those such as #istandwithisrael.

Dismissing this as “brainwashing” is to write off not only millions of young people, but also an entire social media development that is not just a fad, but a new way of consuming news and information. TikTok is the most downloaded app for 18- to 24-year-olds, and the way they use the platform to navigate their daily lives means it is no longer just for viral dance videos, but increasingly a search engine that users turn to instead of Google. Instagram has evolved in the same way. Prabhakar Raghavan, a Google senior vice president, in an acknowledgment of the encroachment of these apps on Google’s territory, said that according to Google’s own studies, “almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram”.

Ignoring these developments also assumes that all information on TikTok is bad, self-generated and highly manipulable garbage. The reality is that news reports about Gaza from mainstream media are frequently clipped and circulated on TikTok, extending their window of relevance and consumption. Over the past few days the most-watched clip on CNN’s TikTok account, which has more than 3 million followers, is one of its news anchor Jake Tapper taking Mark Regev, senior adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, to task over the killing of the family of one of CNN’s producers in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes. On the Guardian’s TikTok account, the most-watched video of the past six weeks, with more than 7m views, is of a protester interrupting the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and calling for a ceasefire.

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Advocate Thinks ‘Marijuana Bomb’ Will Hit Ohio Because of Legal Weed

An anti-weed advocate believes a “marijuana bomb” will hit Ohio as the state proceeds with legalizing weed. 

Ohio already has legal medical weed but voters recently passed a measure legalizing possession, growing, and sales for anyone over 21. 

Despite the fact that Ohio is following in the footsteps of nearly two dozen other states, Aubree Adams, director of anti-weed organization Every Brain Matters, had some rather creative doomsday predictions about the impact of the new policy. 

“Ohio voters were fooled into thinking marijuana was less harmful than alcohol. It’s not. One swallow of alcohol can’t induce psychotic behaviors, but one swallow of a marijuana edible can. One hit off a potent THC vape can. And two hits from a marijuana bong can,” she said, speaking to a Senate General Government Committee meeting earlier this week. 

“Thankfully, members of this committee are the gatekeepers that can lessen the impacts of this marijuana bomb before it’s detonated on Ohio families.” 

While a marijuana bomb sounds scary—or fun, depending on your stance—Adams’ claims are misleading at best. 

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