… it didn’t go so well, apparently.
Britain’s Prince Harry has spoken to his elder brother William for the first time since he and his wife Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey interview but the talks were “not productive”, a friend of the couple said on Tuesday.
Hmm… not that I’m that interested in this saga, but still. The way the aftermath has panned out its a classic case of “one divides into two”. Democrats are mostly sympathetic to the couple and especially Megan, while Republicans not so much. There’s also a divide across the Atlantic. Americans are sympathetic overall; in Britain, the couple’s popularity has plunged.
That means people in the US have bought into the narrative, despite years of “fake news". No double checking, no desire to Call the Bullshit.
My comment at the site (typos and all...):
Which reminds me, the "fake news" bit: the AstraZeneca vaccine is being delayed in many countries because “blood clots”. Individual cases have brought vaccination to a halt. But: in Britain they’ve jabbed 11 million with the AZ, and had 37 folks with blood clots. That’s less than the number of blood clots one would expect in an equivalent population. And in tests, there were more clots in the placebo group so it makes zero sense to stop jabbing cause of that. But they do, despite saying endlessly, “we follow the science”. A hypocrisy I don’t get. (LATER: they've now restarted in the EU with the AstraZeneca vax).
ADDED: A good explanation of how to read numbers and unmask bullshit numbers.
I have another example. A year or so ago, there was the horrifying news that eating cured meats, like bacon, led to a 20% increase in colon cancer deaths, in the UK. Yikes!
Delve into the figures, however, and you find that that eating massive amounts of bacon (ten rashers a day) led to a few more people dying of colon cancer. The number went up from 247 per million per year to 297 per million per year. Sure, that's a 20% increase. It's also: an extra 50 people who might die per year, from a massive increase in consumption of bacon. In a population of 67 million, does a 0.000074% increase in the number of deaths really warrant the headline of "20% increase", even if it's correct on a facile level?
