The Covid-19 Vaccine Disinformation War is Heating Up

The New York Times reports that social media is being flooded with lies and misinformation about non-existent Covid-19 vaccines. The situation is characterized by a combination of crackpot conspiracy theories, flat out lies, pseudoscience and some things that are of legitimate political and social concern. The mixing of some truth with a toxic message indicates that the anti-vaxx community has become much more sophisticated and organized in its use of dark free speech to. Propaganda that contains at least some truth tends to be more persuasive because the truth tends to deflect from lies, deceptions and motivated reasoning by making them appear more plausible. The goal is, among other things, to deceive, confuse, misinform and foment unwarranted distrust and fear among Americans.

A crackpot video

On May 4, a 26-minute video taken from a longer video entitled “Plandemic” was posted on YouTube. In it, a discredited scientist, Dr. Judy Mikovits, 62, claimed that global elites including Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci are using the coronavirus pandemic to shield a plot to expand their wealth and political power. As is usual for crackpot conspiracy theories, the theory is not accompanied by any evidence of a conspiracy. What Mikovits alleged was that existing vaccines have damaged people's immune systems, making them susceptible to diseases including Covid-19.

In 2011, Mikovits was fired from the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease in Reno, NV, after her research into chronic fatigue syndrome was discredited.
The anti-vaxx community seized immediately on the crackpot science video and elevated Mikovits to what the NYT calls “a new star of virus disinformation.” The NYT writes:

“Her ascent was powered not only by the YouTube video but also by a book that she published in April, “Plague of Corruption,” which frames Dr. Mikovits as a truth-teller fighting deception in science. In recent weeks, she has become a darling of far-right publications like The Epoch Times and The Gateway Pundit. Mentions of her on social media and television have spiked to as high as 14,000 a day, according to the media insights company Zignal Labs.  

The rise of Dr. Mikovits is the latest twist in the virus disinformation wars, which have swelled throughout the pandemic. Conspiracy theorists have used the uncertainty and fear around the disease to mint many villains. Those include Dr. Fauci after he appeared to slight President Trump and Mr. Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft, as someone who started the disease. They have also pushed the baseless idea that 5G wireless waves can help cause the disease.”

The crackpots get organized and become sophisticated

In an analysis article for the NYT entitled, Get Ready for a Vaccine Information War, Kevin Roose discusses the growing sophistication of the anti-vaxx movement. Roose has been following the anti-vaxx movement for years. His concern is that, due to anti-vaxx conspiracy lies and pseudoscience, a significant number of Americans will refuse to take an effective Covid-19 vaccine if one can be successfully developed. Roose writes:

“I’ve been following the anti-vaccine community on and off for years, watching its members operate in private Facebook groups and Instagram accounts, and have found that they are much more organized and strategic than many of their critics believe. They are savvy media manipulators, effective communicators and experienced at exploiting the weaknesses of social media platforms. (Just one example: Shortly after Facebook and YouTube began taking down copies of “Plandemic” for violating their rules, I saw people in anti-vaccine groups editing it in subtle ways to evade the platforms’ automated enforcement software and reposting it.) 

First, because of the pandemic’s urgency, any promising Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be fast-tracked through the testing and approval process. It may not go through years of clinical trials and careful studies of possible long-term side effects, the way other drugs do. That could create an opening for anti-vaccine activists to claim that it is untested and dangerous, and to spin reasonable concerns about the vaccine into widespread, unfounded fears about its safety.”

Roose goes on to point out that if a vaccine is developed, it is possible that the Gates Foundation or the World Health Organization could have played a role. That would play into the conspiracy theories about what Gates or the WHO is really doing and why. Also, if a vaccine is developed, people may be required to take it, e.g., before flying on an airplane or going to a public school. That too would play into conspiracies the anti-vaxx community has voiced about mandatory vaccinations.

Finally, Roose checked with academics who study the anti-vaxx movement to see if there is empirical data to support his concerns about a rise in anti-vaxx propaganda. There is. A paper in Nature that published yesterday, The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views, reported that anti-vaxx propaganda and fake conspiracies “will dominate in a decade.”[1] The paper did not report how many people might turn against a Covid-19 vaccine if one is developed. The modeling data projects that although the number of people who are undecided about vaccines is huge, anti-vaxx messaging is predicted by one model to be dominant by about 2033. Time will tell if that modeling turns out to be correct or not.

The Vaxx, Anti-Vaxx and Undecided Online Ecosystem

A dark big picture

Arguably, a broader disturbing message can be taken from this situation. The new normal in American politics is a coalescence of the armies of dark free speech. They are unifying in their tactics and goals as they fight for what appears to be a generally anti-democratic, authoritarian, society and central government. Given the similarity in their tactics and generally anti-government tone, it appears that the anti-vaxx community can cooperate with most other conservative populist movement and groups or even formally unite with them. The similarities of the main conservative political movements, e.g., gun rights, abortion, free speech, anti-government, etc., appear to share a mindset that strongly rejects expertise, inconvenient facts and truths and rationality. This mindset, the 'irrationalist mind', has a strong affinity for fake truth, fake conspiracy theories and an intolerance of enemies (real or perceived) or disfavored groups. The out-people and groups are perceived, judged and attacked in intolerant moralistic, often bigoted terms.

If that analysis is basically correct, America's political and social situations are getting uglier, more reality- and science-detached and more intolerant. America is definitely going in the wrong direction.


Footnote:
1. The paper’s abstract: “Distrust in scientific expertise1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 is dangerous. Opposition to vaccination with a future vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the causal agent of COVID-19, for example, could amplify outbreaks2,3,4, as happened for measles in 20195,6. Homemade remedies7,8 and falsehoods are being shared widely on the Internet, as well as dismissals of expert advice9,10,11. There is a lack of understanding about how this distrust evolves at the system level13,14. Here we provide a map of the contention surrounding vaccines that has emerged from the global pool of around three billion Facebook users. Its core reveals a multi-sided landscape of unprecedented intricacy that involves nearly 100 million individuals partitioned into highly dynamic, interconnected clusters across cities, countries, continents and languages. Although smaller in overall size, anti-vaccination clusters manage to become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network, whereas pro-vaccination clusters are more peripheral. Our theoretical framework reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade. Insights provided by this framework can inform new policies and approaches to interrupt this shift to negative views. Our results challenge the conventional thinking about undecided individuals in issues of contention surrounding health, shed light on other issues of contention such as climate change11, and highlight the key role of network cluster dynamics in multi-species ecologies15.”

The researchers analogize the situation with warfare: “Support and potential recruitment of these green clusters (crowds) [undecided people] is akin to a battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of individuals in insurgent warfare.”