Doctors who treat Covid describe the ways the illness has gotten milder and shifted over time to mostly affect the upper respiratory tract.

Doctors say they’re finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish Covid from allergies or the common cold, even as hospitalizations tick up.

The illness’ past hallmarks, such as a dry cough or the loss of sense of taste or smell, have become less common. Instead, doctors are observing milder disease, mostly concentrated in the upper respiratory tract.

“It isn’t the same typical symptoms that we were seeing before. It’s a lot of congestion, sometimes sneezing, usually a mild sore throat,” said Dr. Erick Eiting, vice chair of operations for emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Downtown in New York City.

The sore throat usually arrives first, he said, then congestion.

  • darq@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I think you might be using too broad a definition of propaganda.

    Nah.

    The result of influencing opinion does not make something propaganda. Propaganda needs some intent to persuade or push an agenda.

    A bar this article very easily clears. What to publish is a choice. A choice was made to publish this article, with obvious influence on opinion and action.

    The article might be propaganda, largely that depends on the motivations for writing and publishing it. But the fact that the content of the article might change people’s opinions does not make it propaganda.

    Nah. Intent a nonsense metric. We can bicker forever about intent. Because we cannot know anyone’s mind.

    Using intent as a metric gives a lot of propaganda a free pass. Because we can’t prove intent.

      • darq@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t say it did? I didn’t even say that propaganda is universally bad?

        • cloaker@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Sure, but propaganda has to have intent. The article itself cannot be propaganda without it. It may advance a claim of COVID being trivial, but those who advance it must bend the article in some way. What they say then is the propaganda.

          • darq@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The choice of what to publish at all, is intent. News outlets are not just firehoses of all facts. They choose what to publish.

            There is no need for the article to be “bent” in any way.

            • Stuka@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              So to you propaganda is a synonym for news, and that is simply incorrect.

              • darq@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                No. Not a synonym. But the line between news and propaganda is not clear-cut. Especially in the case of a self-contained article. A news outlet may serve as a source of propaganda, based on the editorial decisions they make. The individual articles are still news, even as they serve as propaganda for their audience.

                • Stuka@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  You’ve kind of arrived at the point while ignoring it.

                  Propaganda requires intent. You are correct that we can’t know their intent directly, therefore we can only use evidence to try to determine the authors intent.

                  Admittedly I did not pick the article a part, but I saw no tell-tale signs of propaganda. It was primarily interviews with doctors. I saw no signs of manipulative wording, attempts at persuasion, or unsupported opinions of the writer.

                  While I can’t definitively say this article is not propaganda, it probably isn’t.

                  So it’s not propaganda until you can provide good evidence that it is.

                  • darq@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    Propaganda requires intent.

                    And editorial choice clears the bar for intent.

                    Admittedly I did not pick the article a part, but I saw no tell-tale signs of propaganda. It was primarily interviews with doctors. I saw no signs of manipulative wording, attempts at persuasion, or unsupported opinions of the writer.

                    You are ignoring what I’m saying. You are trying to look at a single article for evidence of propaganda. But that isn’t the whole picture.

                    A news desk picks what articles that they publish. If they publish a whole bunch of articles saying “the average case of covid has become more mild” that is furthering a specific viewpoint. If they instead publish articles about “people are still suffering from long-covid”, that is furthering a different viewpoint.

                    And crucially, both “the average case of covid has become more mild” and “people are still suffering from long-covid” can be true. Both types of articles can be written with absolutely zero bias, and still serve as propaganda.

            • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              So your own comments here are propaganda? If everything published by choice is propaganda, then everything is propaganda, because everything is published by choice. Nobody just dumps a bunch of rocks on the keyboard and publishes whatever it types out.

              • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                No, they think propaganda influences opinion, but I don’t think anything they’ve said has changed anyone’s mind about anything.