> In November 2021, Malone shared a deceptive video on Twitter that falsely linked athlete deaths to COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, the video suggested that Jake West, a 17-year-old Indiana high school football player who succumbed to sudden cardiac arrest, had actually died from COVID-19 vaccination. However, West had died years earlier, in 2013, due to an undiagnosed heart condition. Malone deleted the video from his Twitter account after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from West's family. Malone later said on Twitter that he did not know the video was doctored.
> In an April 1, 2022 interview, Malone made the unfounded claim that COVID-19 vaccines are "damaging T cell responses" and "causing a form of AIDS". Malone claimed that he had "lots of scientific data" to back up his claim, but did not cite evidence.
I find that about as plausible as the other side's claims about Dr. Fauci's role in the AIDS crisis. In the (lengthy) interview I linked I never once heard him make those sorts of claims, he just hammered the point about informed consent. Which I'd really like those who agree with his deplatforming to stop dodging.
You don’t believe what, exactly? The quotes? The source from the article is the AP, are you claiming the AP fabricated these quotes?
> In a video circulating widely on social media, Dr. Robert Malone, a frequent critic of COVID-19 vaccines who once researched mRNA vaccine technology, made the claim that the vaccines are “damaging T cell responses” and “causing a form of AIDS.” “People think, when they hear AIDS, they hear HIV. No, the vaccines aren’t causing you to be infected with the HIV virus,” said Malone, during a taped interview with a website that focuses on COVID-19. “They are causing a form of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, that’s what AIDS stands for.” In the interview, published April 1, Malone claimed that “lots of scientific data” support his claim, but cited no evidence. The claims are unfounded.
So this topic is rather new to me, in particular about this Dr. Robert Malone. That being said, it seems to me that you are far more sure about their incompetence than you should be.
I would assume the quotes are not fabricated.
I'm also looking at corporate journalism and wondering why I should trust the messages in the articles it produces.
This excerpt appears to be a pretty good example of exactly why I should not trust it.
> In a video circulating widely on social media, Dr. Robert Malone, a frequent critic of COVID-19 vaccines who once researched mRNA vaccine technology, made the claim that the vaccines are “damaging T cell responses” and “causing a form of AIDS.”
The emphasis is on the part of that sentence that is supposed to prime the reader to start thinking from a certain perspective. (This person is against COVID vaccines and you're not supposed to like that.) The quotes in that particular sentence are also very likely cherry-picked out of their original context just looking at how they are fragments of a sentence interpolated into the author's thoughts.
> “People think, when they hear AIDS, they hear HIV. No, the vaccines aren’t causing you to be infected with the HIV virus,” said Malone, during a taped interview with a website that focuses on COVID-19. “They are causing a form of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, that’s what AIDS stands for.”
This is the presentation of the doctor that is most fair.
The quotes are full sentences, and it's notable that the meaning here is not disagreeable.
> In the interview, published April 1, Malone claimed that “lots of scientific data” support his claim, but cited no evidence. The claims are unfounded.
This quotes only the subject (either direct or indirect; we've lost that context) from a complete thought and attempts to suggest that it is ridiculous to believe their completion of the thought.
Anyway, maybe it comes across that I believe everything Dr. Malone has to say but I wasn't kidding when I said this topic is new to me.
This excerpt of someone's opinion does a very poor job of convincing me that I should agree with the opinion.
I do think it does a good job of priming readers to think a certain way but I don't consider that to be a virtue in journalism.
Disregarding any editorializing from the AP, not following up these quotes:
> “People think, when they hear AIDS, they hear HIV. No, the vaccines aren’t causing you to be infected with the HIV virus,” said Malone, during a taped interview with a website that focuses on COVID-19. “They are causing a form of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, that’s what AIDS stands for.”
With concrete and compelling evidence, is irresponsible and unbecoming of someone who is claiming expertise in a subject.
That’s the point. One can have a discussion about the integrity of the media in general, but that doesn’t have any bearing on the facts of Dr Malone’s public behavior. We’re talking about someone who clearly knows the ethics of his profession who is going around making extremely inflammatory statements without providing evidence, and tweeted out a video claiming a kid died from the Covid vaccine without actually making a basic effort to examine its provenance.
Y’all want to sit here and point fingers but my point was never about the integrity of the media nor tech companies. The original question was more or less “I don’t see why they have a problem with this guy“ and I answered it.
I think, based on statements I actually heard him make and my Bayesian priors towards corporate journalists, that articles like this one grossly misrepresent the substance of whatever he was actually saying.
I find it amusing that simply because I pointed out the faults of Dr Malone, you assume I’m some sort of devotee of the Washington Post/NYTimes. This is a fabrication inside your own mind.
> This makes sense because most are being sold at a big loss
Your article is 3 years old and the economics of BEV production have changed rapidly in that time span. It quotes battery pack cost per kWh at $190-$210, but current prices are averaging closer to $132. [1]
The costs are primarily a function of scale, and the reason why there is limited supply is that you can’t scale manufacturing that fast. Within 2-3 years, major manufacturers will be pumping out millions of EVs and the economies of scale will really kick in.
> Plus, there are practically no used EVs on the market
The restrictions are on the sale of new EVs by 2035, so this is irrelevant. And to add, there will be a significant used EV market by then.
> The car companies haven't exactly figured out what to do about EVs and are selling a few half-baked products at a loss just for show, but its not sustainable at these price levels. I'll be fine, sure I don't want to pay 20-30k more for a car
Multiple manufacturers have released good products in the last two years, and you can buy a perfectly fine EV today for under 30k. (Nissan leaf, Chevy bolt)
I’ve owned a BEV for over a year and can’t charge at home. I rely on workplace + public charging. It’s been pretty great honestly.
You don’t have to spend 40 minutes at a charger either. That only happens if you want to go from empty to full. That’s bringing a gas tank mindset to a completely different paradigm. You charge when you can for how much you need at the time and you’re fine.
There can't be sufficient public charging in NYC in 2035. Most cars are parked on the street and parking lots where chargers could be installed are scant. Those who have to commute to work by car usually park on the street. NYC is the (slim) majority of NY State's population and a large chunk of the vehicle fleet. That said I could imagine a scenario where private parking garages become de-facto gas stations.
NYC should do what my London borough has done and turn every streetlight pole into an EV charging station. A fast update to the pole, an attachment that is about the size of a paperback book, and instant charging station. That is what allows people to easily use EVs in a city with nearly double the percentage of people living in apartments as NYC and where an actual garage is almost unheard of for any property costing less than $10M.
This is a big piece of the solution for street charging. Another piece would be mandated chargers at retail parking lots. Start with 5% of parking spots and increase that percentage as EV sales grow.
Plus parts of NYC rely heavily on Parking Meters which should in theory be even easier to adapt to chargers than streetlight: they've already got the credit card charging infrastructure for time spent parked in one spot, adding EV charging as a bonus utility to the parking prices already paid in theory should be easy.
Is that the solution? I don’t know, but honestly all of these issues are solvable problems and the idea that we can’t figure it out in 13 years says more about our self belief than it does about the tractability of the problem.
> yet it's fighting inflation and has the largest national debt out of any country in the world ... is this simply a circumstance that the US is "less bad off" than the rest of the world?
Debt is usually benchmarked against GDP for a reason, by that metric the US doesn’t have the highest debt level, it also doesn’t have the highest level of inflation.
The USD is also the currency of basically all international trade and settlements, it’s value is determined by external factors to a significant degree, not only on the US economy itself.
“Liquidity” literally means the ease with which assets can be converted into cash. In the context above it’s saying they have removed cash from the system, in specific reference to the M1 money supply.
It’s one of those words that gets used in a bunch of different contexts without a consistent meaning, unfortunately.
> Is that removing liquidity? Not really, it's just decreasing the active injection of liquidity that the Fed has been doing for the past 15 years.
This is a pretty ideologically based statement. The fed is quite literally removing liquidity from the system. They aren’t “actively” adding any liquidity and haven’t been for months.
For context, yes it’s helpful to keep in mind the build up of the balance sheet, but the spin here is overly politicized.
>They aren’t “actively” adding any liquidity and haven’t been for months.
Just so you know, in order to keep the balance constant, the Fed actively participates in the market to buy new Treasuries to replace those that have matured.
I see no ideology in saying that buying bonds (even if it's to replace old ones) is active support.
In fact, the Fed is still a huge player in Treasuries markets even during QT.
I’m aware that is the case. If they weren’t doing that, though, it would result in a massive uncontrolled level of tightening. I don’t see how it’s somehow a bad thing that they are being intentional about the draw down.
If I were to buy a bond ETF, that fund would be doing the same thing on my behalf. I wouldn’t be “buying” bonds just because the underlying product is maintaining a fixed asset level/ratio.
>I’m aware that is the case. If they weren’t doing that, though, it would result in a massive uncontrolled level of tightening.
Yes, so they aren't 'removing liquidity' because they are still 'injecting liquidity' at literally every treasury auction (as they have been for 15 years). They are simply injecting less liquidity than they have been, which is my entire point.
>I don’t see how it’s somehow a bad thing that they are being intentional about the draw down.
It's not a bad thing and I never said it was. If you want ideology, I think the Fed shouldn't even be doing QT and probably never should (I think inflation is largely unrelated to this liquidity).
>If I were to buy a bond ETF, that fund would be doing the same thing on my behalf. I wouldn’t be “buying” bonds just because the underlying product is maintaining a fixed asset level/ratio.
In literal terms, the government holds an auction for Treasury debt at various maturities. ~20 primary dealers bid on those Treasuries. Those ~20 primary dealers know exactly how much The Fed needs to buy from them. That influences their bids. If The Fed weren't buying from those dealers, they would bid for higher rates. In no way do those dealers consider the amount of debt that has reached maturity that month, they only care about new issuances.
Isn't this pretty basic supply/demand stuff here? Are you also implying that demand for bond ETFs has no effect on the price of underlying bonds?
> Yes, so they aren't 'removing liquidity' because they are still 'injecting liquidity' at literally every treasury auction (as they have been for 15 years). They are simply injecting less liquidity than they have been, which is my entire point.
Your point is myopically focused on the bond market (and realistically the mortgage backed securities market as well).
The net amount of liquidity is going down. They are removing liquidity.
If I’m in a sinking ship and frantically pulling out buckets of water, the ship is still sinking even though I’m removing water. The fact that the fed has to continue to make bond purchases is a technicality that is irrelevant to anyone outside of the trading industry, and has little net effect of the Marco economy.
Like, when headlines come out saying “alphabet stock sell off on earning miss” do you tell everyone around you that technically there was a buyer on the other side of every one of those transactions?
I can't reply to your many new comments (guess this is a flamewar lol), but
>Liquidity is the amount of cash in the system relative the size of the market for assets. All else equal, adding or removing is the same as adding or removing cash.
Citation needed there buddy. Like you're arguing that the Fed is hoovering up too much cash? Wouldn't QE be anti-liquidity since it's net result is more cash goes to the Fed and QT be pro-liquidity since the opposite happens?
On this earth, liquidity is about transaction velocity, and The Fed taking transactions off the table (by being a guaranteed buyer at every auction) makes non-Fed transactions happen at lower prices. The end.
> Wouldn't QE be anti-liquidity since it's net result is more cash goes to the Fed and QT be pro-liquidity since the opposite happens?
You have QE and QT backwards.
QE => fed builds up it’s balance sheet, it sends out cash.
QT => fed reduces its balance sheet, it gets cash back.
>On this earth, liquidity is about transaction velocity, and The Fed taking transactions off the table (by being a guaranteed buyer at every auction) makes non-Fed transactions happen at lower prices. The end.
Transaction velocity matters but it’s not everything. You’re myopically looking at one market, while the rest of us are talking about the systemic effects.
Transaction volume follows from the supply and demand for money. If you remove money from the system, you remove liquidity.
Look, you quoted a blatantly incorrect definition of QE/QT below. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
You have QE/QT backwards. QE increases the money the Treasury sends to the Fed as coupon, which you said removes liquidity.
My entire point was that you are backwards in one of your two conflicting arguments.
EDIT: Maybe let's put it this way, the US pays off it's debt and no longer sends coupon payments to anyone. In your framework, that reduces 'liquidity.' But in what market exactly? The "systemic" market?
>The net amount of liquidity is going down. They are removing liquidity.
Yes, they are actively injecting less liquidity than they were before which is my original point?
Wouldn't removing liquidity be actually selling holdings?
EDIT: Maybe this helps - you're taking for granted that the US Treasury auctions an increasingly large amount of Treasuries to cover an increasingly large amount of debt, but The Fed doesn't create that debt, that's a separate phenomenon. If the government balanced its budget for a year, does that create liquidity?
> EDIT: Maybe this helps - you're taking for granted that the US Treasury auctions an increasingly large amount of Treasuries to cover an increasingly large amount of debt, but The Fed doesn't create that debt, that's a separate phenomenon. If the government balanced its budget for a year, does that create liquidity?
Do you actually understand what liquidity is?
Bonds are just one instrument the fed uses, the bond market isn’t the end all be all of open market operations. As I noted earlier, the fed was previously injecting liquidity by buying bonds and mortgages. What you’re talking about is tangential.
Liquidity is the amount of cash in the system relative the size of the market for assets. All else equal, adding or removing is the same as adding or removing cash.
The fed removes liquidity every time it receives a coupon payment or a bond matures (ie, it gets paid cash by the government). It could stop all open market operations and it would continue to remove liquidity from the system by virtue of that process. So, no, it doesn’t need to sell any assets in order to remove liquidity from the system, it simply needs to have lower net outflows of cash than its inflows of cash. As the headline states, since mid April it’s net outflows of cash have been $140 billion less than its inflows.
The Fed reduces liquidity by receiving coupon payments? So then, unless it's growing its balance sheet by the amount of those payments (i.e. returning that cash to market), it's removing liquidity?
Interesting take, I like the moxy.
EDIT: You have QE/QT backwards. QE increases the money the Treasury sends to the Fed as coupon, which you said removes liquidity.
My entire point was that you are backwards in one of your two conflicting arguments.
> Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy whereby a central bank purchases predetermined amounts of government bonds or other financial assets (e.g., municipal bonds, corporate bonds, stocks, etc.) in order to inject money into the economy to expand economic activity.
Note that many people on this and other forums have been talking about how the fed just prints money forever and is out of control. This is them destroying money.
It might not be enough for you personally, but let’s not pretend that money printing only goes in one direction.
Note: as a base expectation, you want to be printing a small amount of money unless circumstances dictate otherwise. In a growing economy, if the growth in the money supply doesn’t keep up with growth, you’ll eventually see deflation. This is explained by the following identity (where the velocity of money is typically observed to be fairly constant):
[Price] * [output] = [velocity of money] * [money supply]
> In an April 1, 2022 interview, Malone made the unfounded claim that COVID-19 vaccines are "damaging T cell responses" and "causing a form of AIDS". Malone claimed that he had "lots of scientific data" to back up his claim, but did not cite evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone?wprov=sfti1