24 October: Weekly disinformation round up
Connecting the dots behind the narrative
Looking back at the past week its best to start with the US Covid Oversight Committee’s third report on how the actions of the Trump Administration led to thousands of preventable deaths.
This report focuses on political influence on the CDC. The report provides the evidence that information was delayed, suppressed and altered for political purposes, Michael Caputo, Paul Alexander and Scott Atlas feature throughout the report.
Full report and review
Airborne Transmission
Following on from last week’s look at how early on in the pandemic authorities covered up their knowledge of airborne transmission, Carl Heneghan is still producing papers in 2022 claimed there is a lack of evidence for airborne transmission.
https://f1000research.com/articles/10-232/v3
Immunity debt
A rise in respiratory diseases has seen more references to immunity debt in the media, and the need for children to be exposed to pathogens for their own benefit. However as the Counter Disinformation Project has previously reported the the concept of immunity debt was created in 2021 without the evidence to back up the concept.
John Ioannidis
As predicted there is a clear ramping up of disinformation in recent weeks, first with Aseem Malhotra’s anti-vax paper and then with Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s paper by anonymous authors who concluded no one under the age of 40 should be vaccinated.
Last week began with Ioannidis’ producing a paper claiming covid was considerably less harmful than the majority of scientists think.
Of course this quickly went viral in sceptic circles, however it was also shared by others not directly linked to disinformation groups such as Shamez Ladhani who is an influential paediatrician advising the UK Government on the impacts of covid on children.
There were serious issues with the methodology, for instance official statistics from countries with less accurate data collection and lack of access to mass testing were included artificially lowering the risk statistics.
Like Malhotra two weeks before, Ioannidis released a video alongside his paper,
Thread continues
Malhotra
Aseem Malhotra continues to be the new favourite of the anti-vax movement. See last week’s round up for more details on his tour of disinformation media.
Last week he appeared at UK parliament APPG set up by Christopher Chope MP who has done a lot to promote HART’s narratives. Malhotra and Chope used the meeting to push their agenda while the representatives of those who have suffered extremely rare reactions struggled to be heard.
Full details in this thread
UK Parliament needs to take action regarding the misuse of APPGs to provide a platform for extremists like Mark Sexton,
Child Vax
Covid vaccinations being added to the CDC schedule was misrepresented.
Tucker Carlson’s comments were promoted in the UK by the usual individuals and organisations like Molly Kingsley of Us for Them and the Together Declaration that has Kingsley on its executive board.
Its worth noting that dismantling the public school system had been a long term goal of the US radical right. The proposed system of vouchers in a privatised system has also been suggested for the UK by Kingsley who has used many of the same talking point including attacks on “trans ideology”.
The culture wars haven’t reached the same fever pitch in the UK as they have in the US, however there has been an escalation in the number of organisations following the Koch format since 2020. This was in response to the reaction to the murder of George Floyd and the creation of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union with the aid of Peter Thiel’s chief of staff has been a driving force behind this.
What is less likely to gain much traction in the UK are the accusations of witchcraft and satanism we see in the states.
What we do see in the UK are accusations of sneaking “dangerous ideologies” and political indoctrination into education.
There has also been a focus on undermining vaccinations for under 5’s vaccination.
The fear mongering is based on misrepresenting statistics.
Boosters
With the rise of the variant soup of Omicron descendants, many countries are worried by the low take up of the new boosters and have begun boosters campaigns, and some countries are reintroducing the recommendation for masks in certain settings, particularly in hospitals. There has been efforts from disinformation groups and from minimisers to discourage people from adopting masks and taking up boosters.
A couple of examples.
Mainstreaming Conspiracy
Covid disinformation has become a gateway to other conspiracies, reading through the #HARTleaks it became clear that the echo chamber the members placed themselves in has lead to them further radicalising themselves as the most extreme members like Michael Yeadon dragged them further down the rabbit role. After some action was taken against a few individuals early on in 2020 there had since been a failure by authorities to hold even the most extreme examples to account.
There are academics who still get platformed by sections of the mainstream media who propagate the foundations of the alternative evidence base of covid disinformation and are in contact with various members of the more extreme groups. They know that their actions are providing confirmation bias to conspiracy theories even if they do not directly share the conspiracy theories.
There is a rise in the number of conferences and events focused on preventing accountability for those spreading disinformation. The legislation recently passed in California is cause for concern in skeptic circles and they continue to claim they have been silenced from large media platforms despite the fact they had private meetings with the US President and UK Prime Minister.
The issue is that many governments are putting out incorrect information about covid, however this has generally been to minimise the ongoing harms as they pretend we have learnt to successfully live with covid. However it does seem hypocritical to make accusations about colluding with Big Tech and raise concerns about democracy and freedom when you are involved with Peter Thiel whose Palantir is associated with a number of human rights abuses.
While claiming in the media to have been censored, silenced and ignored, these groups also claim to have had considerable influence over policy. The Heritage Foundation, a cornerstone of the Council for National Policy which created America’s Frontline Doctors is bragging about writing covid policy for 35 states and for picking Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe vs Wade.
With the upcoming US mid-terms and the political instability in the UK, I’ve decided to split this weeks round up into general disinformation stories and a second part to follow that will focus on wider political connections between individuals and groups.
Further Reading
