The Anti-Vaxxers Strike Back

Nurses come through every day to check on my dad. Each one casually talks about vaccine conspiracies and disinformation that they're reading on their phone. It's not clear if they believe it or not, but they mention these theories like 'hmmm...could be true. It sounds true emotionally.' My mom 'casually' tries to steer them in the direction of facts. But they're glued to their phones and reading cray stuff on social media. They drive around all day treating patients and their only source of consistent info is their phone. Their phone is linked up to social media as their main source of news. 

And these are NURSES!! Educated. All POC. These are ppl who work in the medical industrial complex, see the results of covid, know ppl who have died... and they're talking anti-Vaxxer stuff.

There are side effect to all vaccines. There are side effects to aspirin. Ppl actually die from Tylenol every year. There are side effect to the the polio and small pox vaccine. But we decided that the societal good of mass inoculation far outweighs the 1% side effects. And we have quantifiable evidence that our society is better as whole in not having to deal with outbreaks of polio and small pox crippling and killing kids in super spreader explosions in densely compact urban areas. 

If we are voluntarily agreeing to live in a city and in human civilization we have made a pact with each other. There has to be some base line of 1) truth 2) protection 3) and protection of the group. Without that a city can not exist, without this compact human civilization's greatest creation (cities!) can not exist. The center can not hold if each person says 'I'm going with my own facts right now' and by cherry picking medical information (see...someone got sick from taking aspirin...throw out all aspirin) we are spreading the virus of misinformation which undermines our foundation. We are seeing outbreaks of diseases which were eradicated generations ago b/c ppl are not willing to fulfill this our basic social compact to each other. Social media is backing up our worst fears and fostering selective ignorance of cherry-picked data to create conspiracy videos that are based more in our animistic emotions than an overall rationale awareness.

 If we have to convince nurses and medical workers about the vaccine, how are we going to get to vaccine herd immunity? Marco Rubio, Mike Pence, and Dr. Fauci getting injected on camera does not sway them. It isn't even included in their social media news stream. All they know is shaky cam videos with scary music that play on POC's historical abuse and torture from modern medicine. The narrative is very strong and it's not being undone by calm talk and photo shoots of smiling ppl giving the camera a 'thumbs up.' 

1.6 million ppl have died in a year. What happens when there's an infectious disease that is 10% more serious? Or that has a mortality rate that is just 5% higher? 

Social media disinformation is a public health crisis. One day we're going to face a disease that is going to wipe out hundreds of millions in the blink of an eye. And this future plague is going to be aided by social media barons playing on our past traumas and mistrust. These sites and many others are going to be the gas chamber of human civilization.