Is There a Cure for the Pandemic of COVID Denialism?
The federal judge who reversed California’s ban on assault weapons, comparing the deadly weapons to a Swiss Army knife, included a claim that "More people have died from the Covid-19 vaccine than mass shootings in California." (Debunked here)
Four out of five items in the Fact Check part of my morning news feed today concerned COVID-19.
False ‘reasons’ to refuse Covid-19 vaccines circulate online (8 of ‘em, with debunking)
Sherri Tenpenny makes false COVID-19 vaccine magnetism claim to Ohio lawmakers (The video is a must see)
Meme misuses Australian data to falsely claim COVID-19 vaccine deaths (False claims about COVID deaths seems to be popular at the moment.)
Health authorities refute false claims about Covid-19 death reporting
A hospital in Houston is making headlines after suspending 178 employees for refusing to get vaccinated. It’s worth noting here that the employees in limbo amount to less than 1% of the organization’s personnel.
In fact, making stuff up about this coronavirus has become a worldwide cottage industry, and it appears as though purveyors of this stuff are upping the ante even as cases of the disease are falling.
Wikipedia has a page tracking disproven claims about prevention, detection, and cures, listing over ninety items from around the world. My favorites:
Televangelist Kenneth Copeland urged followers to touch their televisions as a means of vaccination by proxy, and also attempted to exorcise COVID-19 on at least three occasions by summoning "the wind of God", stating that this had destroyed the virus (either in the US or worldwide).
Celebrity chef Pete Evans claimed that a device called the BioCharger NG Subtle Energy Platform, costing US$14,990, could cure the coronavirus. He faced backlash, taking down his advertisement after the Australian Medical Association dismissed the product as a "fancy light machine"
A mix containing amphetamines, cocaine, and nicotine, on sale on the dark web for US$300, was presented as a vaccine against COVID-19.
USB flash drives were being sold for $370 as a "5G Bioshield", purportedly offering protection from the non-existent threat of infection transmitted via 5G mobile telephone radio waves
Controversial alternative medicine proponents Joseph Mercola and Thomas Levy claimed that inhaling 0.5–3% hydrogen peroxide solution using a nebulizer could prevent or cure COVID-19.
Casting doubt on public health measures has become a core cause for conservative politicians, although denial is not strictly a right wing phenomena.
To my way of thinking, a recasting of an old Soviet joke is appropriate when considering the motivations of those politicians:
You can be anti-vax, you can be honest, you can be intelligent. Pick two.
The “moderate Republican” point of view is to repeat the mantra about masks, closures, etc. being a threat to commerce. (or education). Politicians from Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis to SD County Supervisor Jim Desmond have built their reputations on making these claims.
Now it turns out those assumptions were as inaccurate as the claims about sniffing bleach being a cure. Via Yahoo News:
Yet for much of the past year, some experts have quietly advanced a counterargument: that economic activity is mainly affected by the rising and falling severity of the pandemic itself — not the relative strictness of the measures implemented to mitigate it. In fact, these experts argued, nonpharmaceutical interventions, or NPIs — a set of 20 government responses such as business closures, mask mandates and stay-at-home advisories that Oxford University rates according to stringency — can have an economic upside. The more the virus seems to be under control, the more eager people will be to participate in the economy.
Last week, this argument got a boost with the publication of a new report by economists at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to the latest quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast, not only did big states with more stringent COVID measures end 2020 with fewer infections per capita, they also tended to post better economic growth numbers last year than states with fewer restrictions.
In other words, California’s economy actually fared better than Florida’s.
Then there’s the China conspiracy claim, holding that a lab either accidentally or deliberately is responsible for the pandemic. I suspect the festering nationalism infection in both China and the U.S. will prevent the “truth” from ever being told.
What I don’t get is how can the right be saying the coronavirus was created in a lab in China to destroy the world but argue against getting vaccinated?
In the meantime, our domestic delusionalists will feel as though they have justification for unprovoked attacks on people of Asian descent.
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All this misinformation/disinformation is unfathomable to the vast majority of people. Unfortunately, curing this ailment may prove to be more difficult than the disease at the heart of those beliefs.
There is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that exposure to online misinformation about vaccines can reduce people’s intentions to be vaccinated. So it’s probably no coincidence that vaccine hesitancy is highest in those parts of the world where people spend the most time online.
I have a family member who exists within the alternate reality created by the deniers and conspiracists surrounding COVID 19. They’re being passive aggressive when speaking about it... “I’m still considering…”
There is no point in arguing with anti-vaxxers. Most of them do not believe in lurid conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and George Soros. At the same time, their saying they have “doubts” isn’t true. They’ve made their decision at this point in the game.
Saying my family member is stupid will only maker them defensive. Just as most alcoholics who deny their affliction, changing minds has to have the appearance of something coming from within.
(Obviously this approach doesn’t apply to those who are aggressive about being anti-vaxx; the best approach is to avoid those types whenever possible.)
At this point I’ve become convinced the best path forward to support vaccination is by talking about it as something normal and uncontroversial, and by not saying or doing anything that might help to create an impression of vaccination as something that people might argue about.
We’re looking at an intense delusion dividing families, threatening the lives and well-being of children, targeting scientists and doctors, and enriching a bunch of grifters, while endangering literally all of humanity.
Anti-Vaxx Is An Industry
The Center for Countering Digital Hate has run the numbers on how the propaganda underpinning these beliefs gets spread through the internet.
A dozen people are responsible for nearly 70% of the misinformation on COVID 19 spread through social media platforms. Their various for and/or non-profit entities have estimated revenues of $35 million, and are estimated to have reaped at least $1.5 million in PPP loans from the US government.
The worldwide audience of anti-vaxxers, estimated to be more than 62 million followers, is worth up to $1.1 billion in annual revenue for Big Tech companies. Only recently have they shown an interest in limiting how false information gets spread.
Anti-vaxx organizations have privately admitted in legal filings that they are reliant on mainstream social media platforms for reach and revenue, saying that deplatforming has curtailed their ability to spread anti-vaccine messages.
(FYI- Given that Facebook, Twitter, etc. are not government entities, they are not constrained by the First Amendment.)
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John Feffer at the Business Standard authored an interesting essay, conflating the ongoing political situation on the right and anti-vaxxers:
Human beings are adaptable creatures. We have an unfortunate ability to normalize worst-case scenarios. Rising temperatures? Guess it’s time to sell the beach house and move inland. Raging pandemic? A good opportunity to chill for a few months with Netflix and UberEats.
But dystopias are not just about objectively terrible things. Dystopia is about losing control over your life. It’s about a faceless bureaucracy trying to evict you from your home. It’s about a virus evading all your carefully constructed defenses. It’s about right-wing crazies subverting democracy even as they claim to revere it.
So, tell me the truth: in June 2021, do you really feel back in control yet?
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Lead image via Kaiser Health News