Anti-Vaxxers and Vaccine Misinformation / Lies

[LFC]

Thanks, Elon.

As the troubled social media platform Twitter rolled out a paid verification system and laid off thousands of content moderators, health misinformation accounts on the social network began pushing their messages to a wider audience than ever.

Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue.

Social media sites have long struggled with misleading information and content moderation.

“There’s always been misinformation on the platforms,” said Sarah Barry, a vaccine advocate. Social media companies “only respond when something gets reported on, but they’re not actually proactively watching these groups”, she said.

Some tools, like verification on Twitter, were meant to address impersonation on the platform by verifying the identities of government officials, public agencies, celebrities, journalists and others.

But the tools are now being used to create a false sense of validity in order to spread dangerous falsehoods, including about vaccines. And groups on other platforms, like Facebook, continue to circumvent moderation by making minor changes to their names and the terms they use to promote anti-vaccine agendas.

Verified accounts are frequently seen as reliable and trustworthy, and Twitter’s algorithm gives them a higher ranking in search results, replies and follow recommendations.

“There’s a sense of legitimacy that comes with it,” said Barry. “By verifying this anti-vaccine account, they’re kind of verifying all of the misinformation it shares … it makes people think, ‘Oh, well, this is a verified account. This must be true.’”

Before the change in leadership, Twitter was working to remove some accounts that spread anti-vaccine disinformation.

But “now it looks like Twitter’s giving these accounts some legitimacy”, said Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

“It looks like now they’re going to move in the wrong direction, and actually help promote groups that are touting anti-vaccine, anti-science disinformation.”

[LFC]

A certain brand of white people continue to prove to the rest of us that they are far from the master race. They are becoming more and more willing to risk their children's lives. Of course you know that if white kids start dying from diseases at a higher rate they'll come up with a conspiracy theory rather than accepting their own role. We already saw them do it with COVID deaths.

We know that before the pandemic there were political fringes on the right and left which opposed vaccination. But the idea that politics would have anything to do with whether you got your flu shot would have seemed strange. Now, however, we’re seeing another concrete downstream effect of anti-vaccine activism on the right.

We’re now in the midst of a pretty bad flu season. That appears mostly due to the fact that the population has been relatively insulated from contagious respiratory diseases for going on three years. Our immune systems are out of practice. But it’s not only that. Vaccination rates are also down. New data show that vaccination rates among US children are down 4.8% compared to before the pandemic. But the details tell a more specific story. Vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic children are still slightly behind where they were pre-pandemic. Among white children however, the rates are down more than 7%.

In other words, the problem is White kids. That would require some explanation in any case. But that is especially so since it’s almost always poorer and more marginalized communities that lag behind population averages on all sorts of medical care and prevention. White kids are neither.

If I were an epidemiologist or statistician I might want more data to explain this divergence. But living in the real world of US politics I don’t think I need any more information at all. This seems pretty clearly to be about US Republicans growing resistance to vaccinations of all kinds and the fact that US Republicans remain overwhelmingly white.

Also notable, just over the last year uptake rates have risen 8.7% among Black children and 4.5% among Hispanic children. There was a drop off across the board in large part because the early pandemic kept people from the doctor’s office. But the number has continued to drop, even over the last year, among White children, down 3.7% over the last year.

It’s one more impact of the politicization of COVID and one that is not going away.

[LFC]

Oh, FFS. There really is just way too much stupid in this country.

QAnon conspiracists were quick to claim that Cheers actor Kirstie Alley on Monday was possibly murdered because of her outspoken criticism of the COVID-19 vaccines. That, or she was forcibly given one and it killed her.   

Alley’s death was confirmed in a statement from her children True and Lillie Parker that was posted on social media Monday night. “We are sad to inform you that our incredible, fierce and loving mother has passed away after a battle with cancer, only recently discovered,” they said. 

But within minutes of Alley’s death being announced, far-right conspiracy groups on platforms like Telegram were spinning up their own narratives, without any evidence, about why or how Alley died.

On the QAnon message board the Great Awakening, members concluded that the sudden nature of Alley’s death was a clear sign that her death was part of a global plot to silence critics of the COVID vaccines. 

“I wholly believe the [deep state] has a way of dosing people with poisons that create aggressive cancers,” one member wrote. Another added: “She either just drew the short straw or she was poisoned by the Deep State for being a public Patriot.”

Anti-vaccine conspiracy channels typically blame a sudden death like Alley’s on the COVID vaccine, with a recent conspiracy film called “Died Suddenly” racking up almost 2 million views on Twitter in just a couple of weeks. But because Alley claimed she never got the vaccine, and spread plenty of conspiracies herself, members of conspiracy groups worked quickly to try and come up with new, and false, theories about Alley’s death.

[AnBr]

[LFC]

Onward Christian vector! I wonder what their vaccination rates look like.

USA Today reports:

Three measles cases have been identified in Kentucky and are linked to the large, two week-long revival on the campus of Asbury University, a Christian school in Wilmore. Thousands of people from all over the country and globe attended the religious service – which captured the attention of social media users worldwide as the revival went viral on TikTok. “Anyone who attended the revival on Feb. 18 may have been exposed to measles,” said Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health.

CNN reports:

For over three weeks, worshipers flew from across the country for the spontaneous event, standing in line outside of the college’s main chapel for an opportunity to take part in the singing, praying and discussion unfolding within. The event began February 8 and ended on February 23, according to CNN affiliate WTVQ, and it hosted 50,000 to 70,000 people. Measles is caused by a highly contagious respiratory virus spread through the air.

Christian and right wing outlets are comparing the Asbury Revival, which has headlined their sites for days, to the 70s “Jesus Freaks” youth movement.

Anti-vax headlines continue to be political.

Forbes reports:

If the Lee County Republican Party has their way, the state of Florida will be banning the use of Covid-19 vaccines. Yes, you heard that correctly. Based on a majority vote, the Party has passed a so-called “Ban the jab” resolution that will now go to the desk of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) for his consideration.

And why does the Party want such a ban? “The Lee County Republican Party is going to be on the vanguard of this campaign to stop the genocide because we have foreign non-governmental entities that are unleashing biological weapons on the American people.”

Fort Myers’ CBS affiliate reports:

The full resolution is officially in writing. While short and to the point, the resolution invokes a great deal of medical misinformation, calling the vaccine a biological and technological weapon in the first sentence.

Dr. Joe Sansone, the man who wrote the resolution, is a licensed psychotherapist (with no formal expertise related to vaccines or epidemiology) and believes in absolutes.

“If you got this shot, you go home and hug your pregnant wife—she can have a miscarriage through skin contact,” Sansone said. “The injections meet the legal definition in the state of Florida as a bioweapon,” Sansone said of the FDA-approved injections.

[LFC]

On the one hand I'm horrified that sperm from non-vaccinated men is considered to have value. On the other hand I'm more horrified that these men would be procreating.

Fighting to survive in the crowded ecosystem of far-right social media companies, the pro-Trump platform Gettr has in recent weeks held high-level deliberations on the oddest of business pivots: remaking the site to add an online clearinghouse for human sperm.

But it’s not just any sperm. The proposal would see the company expand to include a marketplace for semen from men who haven’t taken any of the vaccines against Covid-19.

Three sources familiar with the matter, and a fourth briefed on the situation, describe serious, repeated discussions about creating the online anti-vax semen market, in which unvaccinated men would self-advertise and sell sperm to the highest bidder. Two of the sources say stakeholders have gone so far as to explore possible “testing requirements” to ensure specimens came from unvaccinated donors.

Some staff have also expressed skepticism internally about the feasibility of the plan, noting restrictions of semen sales in other countries and other hurdles. All four sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe these deliberations, with one adding that “it’s just so embarrassing, man.”

It’s “the most ludicrous fucking thing to come out of pro-Trump social media in a long time, and that is saying something,” another of the sources says.

[LFC]

These people continue to be so f***ed up. It's nauseating.

My 6-year-old boy died in January. We lost him after a household accident, one likely brought on by a rare cerebral-swelling condition. Paramedics got his heart beating, but it was too late to save his brain. I could hold his hand, look at the small birthmark on it, comb his hair, and call out for him, but if he could hear me or feel me, he gave no sign. He had been a child in perpetual motion, but now we couldn’t get him to wiggle a finger.

My grief is profound, ragged, desperate. I cannot imagine how anything could feel worse.

But vaccine opponents on the internet, who somehow assumed that a COVID shot was responsible for my son’s death, thought my family’s pain was funny. “Lol. Yay for the jab. Right? Right?” wrote one person on Twitter. “Your decision to vaccinate your son resulted in his death,” wrote another. “This is all on YOU.” “Murder in the first.”

[LFC]

These people will believe anything without taking the slightest moment to even think about it. They are idiots.