Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

My feeling is they pushing the extra crazy ones though. Watching a clearly not well Person argue crazy theories isn't very convincing to healthy people anyway.

On the other Hand people like Dr. Erickson get censored, because they simply dare to question the lock down and argue that there is no evidence supporting it's effectiveness in saving lives.

It might have been correct to say there's no evidence in March (which is not a reason to not do something, we would still be in the Stone Age if every action we took required evidence.). There's plenty of evidence now as we have data for both going into and coming out of lockdown.

> On the other Hand people like Dr. Erickson get censored, because they simply dare to question the lock down

Erickson, among other things, makes provably false statements about the prevalence and mortality of covid19. You’re allowed to be misinformed as a private citizen; you’re not allowed to grandstand in public as a physician and spread misinformation. He’s lucky he only got deplatformed, rather than have his license taken.

You make it sound like he was expressing an unpopular interpretation of the data, rather than actively spreading untrue assertions.

There's plenty of weird, contradictory evidence. Many places have come out of lockdown early, been told they're facing certain doom ("Georgia's Experiment in Human Sacrifice" [1]), and then been quietly forgotten when the predicted consequences don't come. It's hard to believe that lockdowns don't do anything at all, but I don't think anyone can honestly say we have definitive proof they were necessary.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georg...

I can. R0~5.7 has dropped below 1.0 in many mask-averse stay-at-home regions, which I consider compelling evidence of efficacy in an adverse environment, under common-sense priors informed by the medical literature.

"This number is below 1.0" is not, by itself, an argument that some particular social policy was necessary or effective. An argument that lockdowns were necessary would at a minimum need to address the questions of "would a less strict policy have sufficed" and "will the long-term outcome after lockdowns end be different".

Georgia has 164 deaths per million residents, versus 82 in South Carolina next door and 87 in California. Are you sure you still want to call that a bad prediction?

> Erickson, among other things, makes provably false statements about the prevalence and mortality of covid19.

Such as?

> you’re not allowed to grandstand in public as a physician and spread misinformation

For all I know Erickson is saying no one died of Covid or something that ridiculous/obviously false, but labelling statements as misinformation and censoring them instead of retracting endorsements and getting others to realize those statements are false is an aggressive seize of power by authorities over what is or isn’t true.

I realize authoritative knowledge is necessary; not everyone has the time or ability to parse through medical information and come to reasonable conclusions.

But authoritative bodies should have to earn their authority from the public, not use censorious platforms to assert it. The fundamental problem we’re running into now with misinformation is a lack of trust, not a lack of information. Forcing people to listen to sources they don’t trust and blocking sources they do trust will make the situation worse.

If people trust a crackpot more than they trust an established authoritative body, that authoritative body should take a real hard look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves why that’s the case.