A Miasma of Misinformation
by John Lawrence
This is how Fareed Zakaria characterized the current state of vaccination rhetoric. 12 people on Facebook are pushing anti Vax information, and making money doing it. Needless to say, Facebook is making money sponsoring their "free speech." The question is does government have the right to effectively censor Facebook and tell them to get these 12 people off their social media. Guess not according to our Constitution. Rephrased the question might be does the government have the right to tell Facebook to diminish their profits by getting these 12 people off their social media. Unwritten rule: government doesn't have the right to tell any private company to diminish their profits by making changes to their business model. So we are in a quandary. A pandemic is raging and killing Americans. Yet the government is powerless to do things that would bring the pandemic to an end, and Facebook has financial incentives not to get the anti vaxxers off their social media. Let's be clear. If they wanted to do so, it could be accomplished in a nano second. Technology has the capability to identify and terminate any account espousing anti vaxxing.
So is there something wrong with our Constitution that it prevents government from doing much about the twin pandemics of anti vaxxing speech and gun violence. I guess the courts are supposed to clarify that, but so far they haven't or they haven't done so in a way that has solved these twin problems. So these twin pandemics could stymy us in perpetuity. This is so much wasted energy. How can our society successfully recover from the pandemic and get back to work full steam ahead if we are being retarded in perpetuity by COVID despite having miraculously developed an effective vaccine against it? How can our society get on with the business of healing the sick, alleviating poverty, educating the masses and saving the planet from the ravages of climate change if we have to perpetually deal with foolishness and ignorance on the part of people who assert their right of free speech even if that speech represents misinformation? How can we get on with business if a certain segment of society is proliferating and utilizing firearms to kill one another? We can't. We're stuck. Stupidity and ignorance rule the day.
Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows. This article on on NPR goes on:
"Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
"The 'Disinformation Dozen' produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts.
"Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have gotten it, but many others are holding out, these 12 influential social media users stand to have an outsize impact on the outcome.
"After this story published on Thursday, Facebook said it had taken down more of the accounts run by these 12 individuals.
"These figures are well-known to both researchers and the social networks. They include anti-vaccine activists, alternative health entrepreneurs and physicians. Some of them run multiple accounts across the different platforms. They often promote "natural health." Some even sell supplements and books.
"Many of the messages about the COVID-19 vaccines being widely spread online mirror what's been said in the past about other vaccines by peddlers of health misinformation."
Sending children back to school unvaccinated is a disaster waiting to happen. COVID is watching and waiting. While other countries beg for the vaccine, in the good ole US, where there is a vaccine glut, people are saying "No thank you. I just don't feel I want to do it. My feeling is it's not in my best interests." People are feeling too much and not thinking. So what did they learn in school? Not much I guess.
