{"id":16788,"date":"2024-07-15T14:00:14","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/calling-out-fake-news-part-5-who-getting-owned-by-community-notes\/"},"modified":"2025-01-06T16:38:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T16:38:03","slug":"calling-out-fake-news-part-5-who-getting-owned-by-community-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/post\/calling-out-fake-news-part-5-who-getting-owned-by-community-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling out fake news part 5: WHO getting owned by community notes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a bust few weeks in the world of safer nicotine products, what with Australia\u2019s effective prohibition<\/a>, some European country urging a continent wide flavour ban<\/a>, and Sweden going the other way and implementing harm-based taxation<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In amongst all of these, we haven\u2019t put out an update on our series on prohibitionists getting owned by Community Notes in a while.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s stopped happening, as today\u2019s offerings will show.<\/p>\n

WHO goes off the deep end, claiming vapes are \u201cdesigned to kill\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

OK, so we\u2019re all fairly numb to the WHO telling outright lies about vaping by now. That\u2019s not a good thing: at some point, WHO officials will want people to follow other public health rules. Staying indoors during a pandemic, for instance. So the loss of trust – and loss of face – WHO seems to be imposing on itself through its oft called-out lies on X, could have very real consequences.<\/p>\n

This time, they\u2019ve gone all in, claiming that vapes are \u201cdesigned to kill\u201d while citing no evidence whatsoever.<\/p>\n

This is clearly nonsense and it\u2019s difficult to know where to begin in rebutting it. But community notes certainly tried, simply by telling the truth: \u201cVapes were designed as a smoking cessation device and are vastly safer than smoking. Banning vapes increases smoking rates\u201d.<\/p>\n

There then follows lots of high quality, independent science backing this point up, none of which will be read by any of the ideological bureaucrats in Geneva putting out this nonsense:<\/p>\n

\n
\"__wf_reserved_inherit\"<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

WHO official – and former Russian Foreign Service employee – quotes WHO head\u2019s falsehoods<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Alexey Kulikov isn\u2019t new to this column, but just like his employers, it seems that he doesn\u2019t mind being called out by Community Notes. According to his LinkedIn page, Kulikov spent seven years working for Sergey Lavrov in the Russian foreign service before joining WHO. We\u2019ll just leave it there.<\/p>\n

In this post, Kulikov makes a number of evidence free statements about vaping, but one that stood out is his assertion that the tobacco industry invented vaping.<\/p>\n

It is fairly easy to Google this one and discover that modern vapes weren\u2019t dreamed up by anyone over in \u201cBig Tobacco\u201d, but by a Chinese chemist named Hon Lik,  who lost his father to a smoking related disease. But why let facts get in the way of your chosen narrative, eh?<\/p>\n

This lie, as well as many others Kulikov floats in the post, are well refuted by Community Notes, who make it clear that the WHO is \u201cnot telling the truth about vaping at all\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n
\"__wf_reserved_inherit\"<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Obvious astroturfing – WHO asks \u201ca youth\u201d for their perspective. Youth turns out to be a spin doctor for Tobacco Control group.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We thought we\u2019d end on this one as those of us who think giving smokers safer nicotine products is a good idea are oftent accused of \u201castroturfing\u201d: where supposedly neutral figures get involved in a campaign \u201cspontaneously\u201d, when in reality they are paid advocates for one side.<\/p>\n

This usually manifests itself in accusations that vapers are in some way \u201cfront groups\u201d for big tobacco, when most are just passionate advocates doing it in their spare time.<\/p>\n

Bear this in mind when we listen to this \u201cyouth perspective\u201d, publicized by the X account of WHO\u2019s Europe office. The video itself is full of the usual half-truths and misinformation that we\u2019ve come to expect from WHO, and these are called out in the ensuing Community note.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s interesting is that the post fails to mention that the \u201cyouth\u201d in question is actually a communications Manger at the European Network for Smoking Prevention which – despite its name – seems to dedicate most of its time to calling for bans on products that are not smoked at all.<\/p>\n

The post was swiftly called out by Community Notes, but it\u2019s worth considering what might happen if this were the other way around, and a pro harm-reduction outfit tried to cast an employee of big tobacco as an independent voice.<\/p>\n

\n
\"__wf_reserved_inherit\"<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

\u200d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a bust few weeks in the world of safer nicotine products, what with Australia\u2019s effective prohibition, some European country urging a continent wide flavour ban, and Sweden going the other way and implementing harm-based taxation.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":990003,"featured_media":13608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[183,25,186,185,333],"slider":[],"class_list":["post-16788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-harm-reduction","tag-news","tag-nicotine","tag-quotes","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/990003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16788"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18075,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16788\/revisions\/18075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16788"},{"taxonomy":"slider","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/slider?post=16788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}