By Néstor Fantini, Hispanic LA
Leer en español
In an intensive care room at the Shannon Medical Center, in San Angelo, Texas, Caleb Wallace breathed through tubes connected to machines with bars and digital numbers that rhythmically quantified how much life he had left.
Wallace always was soundly opposed to face masks and, when vaccines came out, he opposed vaccines, too. For the 30-year-old man, who worked at a company that sells solder, masks and vaccines were part of a conspiracy that included mandates.
Like Wallace, many Americans do not believe in vaccines. That is why it is no coincidence that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a quarter of the population in the United States has not received even a single dose of the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Why don’t they get vaccinated?
For children under 5 years of age, there are no vaccines yet. But, the others? Some argue that some negative experiences with the public health system, like the Tuskegee Experiment, raise doubts in communities like that of Black Americans. Others, like many of limited resources, cannot afford the luxury of missing a day of work to go get vaccinated at a health center that, in many cases, are far from their residences. Some, for religious or political convictions. But the majority, simply because they are misinformed.
According to a survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, almost half of those who responded were worried about the “possible side effects of the vaccine.” About 42% said they “did not trust the vaccine” and 35% said they “did not trust the government.”
All these explanations, clearly, are fueled by the disinformation that has contaminated the debate over masks, social distancing and vaccines. And the serious part of it is that this disinformation has translated into behaviors that have resulted in dangerous consequences. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, as of March 15, 2022 almost 80 million COVID-19 cases and 966,386 deaths had been registered in the United States. In addition, the economy has seen alarming quarterly deceleration and unemployment, especially in 2020. And the long-term effects in the educational sector and in other public health areas are still to be determined.
The anti-science message
When the epidemic started, Donald Trump was president. From the influential pulpit of Head of State, Trump did not do much to promote virus containment practices. Despite recommendations by organizations like the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration, the President refused to wear a face mask, he attended meetings where there was no social distancing and he even recommended taking hydroxychloroquine.
To a great extent, Trump’s attitude and his constant challenges to Dr. Anthony Fauci became an example of the anti-science movement based on an ideology of common sense and relativism that, with the emergence of Internet and social media, has dangerously multiplied in recent decades.
Disinformation
There is so much, so very much information on the Internet that some people are already talking about an infodemic (an information epidemic). Amid that ocean of articles and commentaries, for many people it is a challenge to find what is specifically needed. It is even more complicated to be able to distinguish between factual information and editorial opinion. Especially for 54% of adults who, according to a Gallup study, read at below a sixth grade level.
This mass of information, which includes facts and myths in the same cyberspace, which has a scandalous Inquirer article next to statistical reports by the Pew Research Center, is what creates an amorphous mishmash of information that for the untrained eye might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics and, which, ultimately, facilitates conditions that produce disinformation and, simultaneously, what some use to deliberately misinform.
The disinformation about COVID-19 that is going around in the social media, and that reproduces at the speed of light, has come to state that the vaccine causes infertility, that it changes DNA, and that it is a method for inserting a microchip so that the government can monitor its citizens.
This nonsense is nothing new, by the way. Already in 1796, when Edward Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine, opposition also was devastating. Some critics published pamphlets in which women were shown to have grown horns after having been inoculated with the vaccine and others who gave birth to calves no less.
A more contemporary example of misinformation would be that of the ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield, who, in the 1990’s, published an article in The Lancet suggesting a correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism. This was discredited when it was discovered that Wakefield had manipulated the data with the intention of misinforming.
The political dimension
But the analysis of the disinformation and the misinformation is incomplete until the political dimension is incorporated. In other words, until there is an investigation of the centers of power that contribute to this phenomenon reaching levels in which it not only impacts public health, but also threatens economic and political institutions, as was demonstrated on January 6, 2021, when mobs, motivated by disinformation, attacked the U.S. Congress
Misinformation is used by most of the sectors of the ideological and political spectrum in the United States, which is more and more polarized. In that sense, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, have used and use confusing and non-factual messaging to promote their political agendas.
But make no mistake, there is no doubt that an objective analysis will lead to the conclusion that the majority of distortions of factual truth about COVID-19 comes from the propaganda machinery related to the conservative sectors and supporters of the Republican Party. These have been joined by libertarians who have lashed out against what they see as violations of their individual liberties. small groups of extreme nationalism and bands of racist gangs. In addition, there are also political opportunists of all stripes that, with shameless Machiavellian utilitarianism, join any coalition that will weaken its opponents.
The same historical behavior
For many of them, attacking scientific truth is an exercise that they have been practicing for a long time in other historical contexts and with other topics, but always with the same ideological orientation that leads them to row against the current of social progress.
These agents of disinformation and misinformation have historically appealed to identity policies that aggravate the baser instincts of some sectors of the population that, due to demographic changes, the Technology Revolution, and forces of Globalization, have experienced great changes in their economic and social life and, with Proustian desperation, look for a messiah who promises to return what has been lost in what is paranoically (as Patrick Buchanon, the conservative right ideologue would suggest) defined as “a cultural war.”
In the 1980’s, they attacked women who received social assistance with the Reaganesque stereotype, “Welfare Queen”. In the 80’s and 90’s, they demonized the LGBTQ+ community and, in recent decades, they have dehumanized undocumented immigrants who they have characterized as criminals and rapists.
‘Reality’, quote, unquote
The Internet and social media are inundated with propaganda and intellectual garbage and, for those who are logarithm and computer experts it is easy to sell trinkets and dreams. The naïve accept them because “I heard it there”, “I read it in the Internet”, “Someone, who knows, told me.” There is no attempt to verify the seriousness of the source, it simply is religiously accepted as an unquestionable and infallible act of faith.
That is how the supposed COVID-19 infertility, the imaginary microchips, and the other fantasies that navigate the immensity of the social media, like Homer’s sirens, are transformed into ‘reality’. A false reality, by the way, but with real consequences: almost one million dead.That is the ‘reality’, the intellectual desert, inhabited by millions of Americans who deny the validity of the COVID-19 vaccine. That is the desert inhabited by Caleb Wallace, who, last August 28, because of his stubbornness, because of that intolerance that did not let him listen to other voices, the voice of reason, the voice of science, left his last breath in that intensive care room in San Angelo, where, unfortunately, he passed away…always rejecting the vaccines.
