When 'fact checkers' fight facts

Frontline News last week reported that Jacob Giris, the director of the COVID ward at a leading Israeli hospital, revealed that 80% of severe COVID cases have been vaccinated 3 times. This in a nation where less than half the population is fully vaccinated (defined by having 3 shots). The report was later carried by the Gateway Pundit and Israel National News. 

Devastating implications

In one short statement, Dr. Giris illustrated the failure of the “immunizations” to provide immunity, removing the very basis for the vaccination campaign. 

“Right now, most of our severe cases are vaccinated,” said Giris. “They received at least three injections. But 70%-80% of the severe cases are vaccinated. So the vaccine has no significance regarding severe illness.” [Emphasis added].

This comes on the heels of the release of death statistics by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics showing that 2021, a year that started with an extremely aggressive vaccination plan that was largely complete by March, saw more deaths overall, even when adjusted for population growth, than 2020, the year of the pandemic without a vaccine, as well as every other year in the past decade. As posted on Yariv Hammer on X, formerly Twitter, deaths rose from 48,797 in 2020 to 50,756 in 2021, an increase of more than 4% when the population increased by less than 2%.

It goes without saying that a vaccine that is not efficacious is not justified even where side effects are truly rare and mild, without getting into claims they are more common and severe in nature.

A new low for so called “fact checking” 

Not taking this charge of vaccine ineffectiveness lightly, fact checking site Lead Stories and Dr. Adrian Wong’s Tech ARP claimed to have debunked these reports - by calling out the initial reporting of Dr. Giris’ statement for … the transliteration of the doctor’s Hebrew name into English and for … not using the full name of the hospital.

Lead Stories, which is joined to Facebook's Third Party Fact Checking Partnership, complains,

“The Israel National News article identifies the physician as Professor Yaakov Jerris, who it says works at Ichilov hospital. The hospital's official name is Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center - Ichilov Hospital. Its website describes it as Israel's largest acute care facility. The doctor's name wasn't quite right either. The name Yaakov Jerris didn't appear in the hospital directory, but there was a similar name, Jacob Giris, when taking into consideration translation from Hebrew to English.”

A simple Google search would have turned up a recent article using the original version of the spelling of the doctor’s name on Ynetnews, the online English-language Israeli mainstream news website of Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest-paid newspaper in Israel by sales and circulation: 

"We never collapsed in the two years [of pandemic]. The collapse was more psychological than physical. Did we collapse in terms of patient overload? No. I do not recall that happening to us," said Prof. Yaakov Jerris, director of the COVID ward at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, known as Ichilov Hospital.” [Emphasis added].

Don’t believe your ears?

Tech ARP also challenges the reporting with, “Fact #3: His Words Were Taken Out Of Context” and Fact #5: It Was Likely A Bad Translation.” Then, in complete contradiction, states, 

“I realised that the viral news report was most likely mistranslated from Hebrew. With that in mind, and based on what he said a week earlier, this was my interpretation of what he said …

• “Between 70% and 80% of his severe cases were vaccinated with at least three shots.”

That is a complete corroboration of AFLD’s translation:

“Right now, most of our severe cases are vaccinated,” said Jeris. “They received at least three injections. But 70%-80% of the severe cases are vaccinated.” [Emphasis added].

Tech ARP was called out for its illogical attack in the comments on their own facebook page:

“Rick Spung: Everything you said is a lie. There is a public video documenting the statement and multiple public records proving the identity of the hospital and the doctor.”

“Julie Quan: You created strawmen. You are "disproving" things that were not said. What was said? - 70-80% of those hospitalized are 3x vaxxed”

Lead Stories even had to admit that it “reached out to Giris and in a February 8, 2022, email, he confirmed he is the Ichilov Hospital doctor who made the claim that 80% of Israel's serious COVID cases are people who were vaccinated.” [Emphasis added].

True story, but fake because it’s not important?

Appearing to concede the veracity of Dr. Giris’ numbers, Tech ARP then attacked the significance of 80% of severe COVID cases being vaccinated. To do so, they created a Base Rate Fallacy diagram which assumed a 90% vaccination rate of the population and that 67% of severe COVID cases are from the 90% vaccinated, arguing that the vaccine is working if 90% of the people represent 67% of the cases. 

How to lie with statistics

Dr. Giris referred specifically to the percentage of severe cases with 3 shots. Less than 48% of Israelis have received 3 doses and even the elderly population does not reach a 90% rate for 3 shots. (Dr. Giris did not specify the age of the patients in any case).

Tech ARP tried to turn the stats upside down and perform a statistical analysis in which 90% of the population are only 67% of the severe cases, an underrepresentation of the boosted populace.

The uncontested facts show that, in reality, Dr. Giris reported on 80% of the severe COVID cases coming from the 48% with 3 shots, a huge overrepresentation of the boosted populace.

The true rate of danger to the vaccinated may be even higher than reported

Alex Berenson has pointed out that many of the most sick people have been determined to be too weak to handle the vaccine. Those people, who are much more likely to be hospitalized for various causes, and then to test positive for COVID, are grouped with the unvaccinated, artificially increasing the hospitalization rate for the unvaccinated. Even with that artificial increase, the unvaccinated are underrepresented in COVID hospitalizations.

Blind attack

Lead Stories attempted to attack Dr. Giris’ data but the expert they contacted actually conceded that he couldn’t challenge the data directly because he never saw the data to which Dr. Giris referred:

“The claim seems to be going against what the Israeli Health Ministry is saying ... I haven't seen the data for the particular hospital, but …”

Corroboration

The fact checkers claim that what the head of a corona ward says is going on in his corona ward is fake if it doesn’t match what the government says is happening in other wards. 

A google search would have revealed, however, that Dr. Giris’ hospital is not alone. As just one example, the UK’s NHS Blackpool Teaching Hospitals reported similar findings, with 93% (169 of 182) of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 having received at least one vaccine dose (89% received at least 2 doses and 71% received all 3 doses).

From internal researchers to fact checking politicians to censoring private citizens

Fact checking articles internally before publication

Fact checking began as an internal editing system as explained by Time:

“it was around the turn of the 20th century, between the sensational yellow journalism of the 1890s and muckraking in the early 1900s, that the American journalism industry began to really focus on facts…

“Perhaps the earliest published use of the phrase ‘fact-checker’ can be found in an ad for TIME in a 1938 issue of Colliers, which mentions the expansion of ‘its researchers and fact-checkers from ten to twenty-two.’”

Fact checking public figures

Later, independent journalists researched statements made by politicians, especially once politicians had a direct connection to the populace via radio and television. They fact checked claims about the numbers of jobs created, the percentage reduction in taxes and the like.

Disguising opinion as fact

So called fact checking entered a new phase before the turn of the century with agenda driven fact checkers like the now disgraced head of Snopes, allowing opinion to drive their “fact checks.” 

Censoring the public; hiding conflicts of interest

Fact checking took a big turn in recent years as the industry began to focus on communications of the lay public. UncoverDC, in a piece entitled Thomson-Reuters Fact-Checkers Financially Tied to Pfizer, revealed that, 

“Thomson Reuters Corp.—a $40 billion international multimedia company—is a significant and growing force in the “fact check” world, with a fact-checking unit based in its editorial department. Partnered with Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program since February 2021, the principal aim of the unit is to “fact-check visual material and claims posted on social media…

“Notably, when announcing the launch of its fact-checking initiative to identify misinformation in partnership with Facebook, Reuters made no mention of its ties to Pfizer, the WEF, or Trusted News Initiative (TNI)...

“Mr. Jim Smith represents Reuters as the company’s Chief Executive Officer. He is also a Director of Pfizer, Inc., serving on the company’s Board since 2014. Known as James C. Smith at Pfizer, he is a member of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF).” [Emphases added].