💉 U.S. campaign to keep vaccines free 🚨 Wastewater virus levels rise, antiviral supplies dwindle 🚩
Nobody is immune to misinformation.
USA Letter Campaign to Congress: Keep Free COVID Vaccines for Uninsured Adults
By People’s CDC: “The CDC’s Bridge Access Program, which provides COVID vaccines to uninsured and underinsured adults, is ending prematurely in August 2024 due to a loss of congressional funding. Thanks to our community’s advocacy, the CDC voted to recommend the upcoming 2024-2025 vaccine formulations for all ages, 6 months and up. All of us need access to the latest vaccines to reduce the risk of severe disease, reduce the risk of Long COVID, better match currently circulating variants, and combat waning immunity.”
Nobody is immune to misinformation.
Disinformation is when information and ideas are spread on purpose - Brian Murphy has described the definition as having the following aspects: “a covert indirect source, intentionality that is destructive, and a political, military, or economic objective” — the intentionality is part of it. Misinformation is passed along often unwittingly out of what researchers say is often just human habit.
Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased, Gizem Ceylan, Ian A. Anderson, and Wendy Wood, Edited by Susan Fiske, Princeton University; received September 28, 2022; accepted December 3, 2022, January 17, 2023 120 (4) e2216614120 Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that attracts others' attention. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering response outcomes such as spreading misinformation. As a result of user habits, 30 to 40% of the false news shared in our research was due to the 15% most habitual news sharers.
False medical information is unfortunately very common. Habitual news sharers need to slow down and engage in critical thinking before sharing information to avoid passing on problematic or completely inaccurate information. We’ve all shared things before verifying at times. Yet most of us recognize it’s a problem.
One big problem seems to be the effect of passing on medical information that amounts to misinformation on the receiving end because it’s meant for a scientific interest audience as speculative conjecture, but then received by the actual audience as personal medical advice. And then to make matters worse, this is then used by bad actors to push products or ideas.
A Behind the Bastards podcast about William Bailey told the story of how Marie Curie went around hyping excitement about radiation — and then a bunch of grifters like William Bailey used that hype to scam people with radiation “cures” that harmed and killed people desperate for treatment for various ailments, by giving them radiation poisoning.
Unfortunately today there are even more insidious incentives for doctor pundits and scientist influencers to disregard science communication best practices and succumb to audience capture. Others actors in the information space are up to influence for financial motives.
It’s up to all of us now to keep these truths in mind when consuming media content.
🗞️ In the news
Los Angeles Times - COVID in California keeps rising: Wastewater levels worse than last summer By Rong-Gong Lin II Staff Writer July 22, 2024 3 AM PT Most Americans probably know a family member, friend, co-worker or acquaintance who has come down with COVID-19 recently, perhaps being infected while traveling or at a social gathering. “If you call — I don’t know — 20 or 30 friends, you’re very, very likely to find a bunch of them actually have COVID, or have had COVID recently, or are starting to be symptomatic,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a COVID expert and chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri. One notable recent case was President Biden, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday while traveling in Las Vegas.
Arkansas Times - Pharmacies running low on Paxlovid as summer COVID spike continues by Lara Farrar July 26, 2024 12:37 pm As Arkansas experiences a spike in cases of COVID-19, many independent pharmacies across the state are not adequately stocked with Paxlovid, a crucial antiviral medication that helps mitigate serious effects of the disease among vulnerable populations, including the elderly and people with underlying health conditions.
This is NOT fine
Far-right British media commentator and covid contrarian Katie Hopkins excited about pro-Trump militias in America.
Katie Hopkins is an anti-vax proponent who became famous after being on the tv show The Apprentice. She was deported from Australia for a lawbreaking level of covid contrarianism. And now she’s apparently gleeful about potential violent militia activity.
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
Peter Thiel wanted Trump to appoint this weird anti-FDA tycoon to lead the FDA
With the choice of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate for president, his connections to Peter Thiel have been remarked upon a lot lately, such as in recent podcasts by John Ganz and Paris Marx.
The billionaire cryptocurrency proponent Balaji Srinivasan was on a list for Trump to pick to run the FDA back in 2017, and favoured by Peter Thiel. Like many other cabinet picks in the Trump administration, he would’ve been someone appointed to lead an agency they were against. Another person who wanted to see Srinivasan run the FDA was the Dilbert Guy. If you haven’t heard that this cartoonist is off the rails, Behind the Bastards had a 2-part podcast episode about him.
Balaji Srinivasan has some peculiar world-building ideas. Gil Duran reported that Srinivasan’s book “outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories.” Now they reportedly want to “transform” Solano County California into its own dystopian plutocrat nation-state. This guy had also claimed back in late 2020 that broken trust in the pandemic that supposedly led to anti-mask sentiments could be solved with blockchain.
There’s no question that many of these Silicon Valley tycoons have an interest in public health issues — but not apparently on the side of the humans.
Quote:
"It always seems impossible until it's done." - Nelson Mandela