Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Rob Schneider, and I am proud
Speaker 1: to be able to stand with you and say that
Speaker 1: we can no longer be afraid to live in fear
Speaker 1: of the powerful pharmaceutical companies. It's October an actor and
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live Along. Rob Schneider is performing at a
Speaker 1: virtual conference. He starts a set with a paper Whole
Speaker 1: Foods bag over his head with a little eyes and
Speaker 1: a mouth cut out. The joke, I think is that
Speaker 1: he is shielding his identity from people who might find
Speaker 1: what he is saying controversial. As long as we stand
Speaker 1: together and be brave and courageous and stand up for
Speaker 1: liberty and insists on body integrity, there's nothing big Pharma
Speaker 1: can really do to us. He takes the bag off
Speaker 1: his head. At this point, as we've seen the last
Speaker 1: six months, our government is known is not only capable
Speaker 1: of taking away our liberties, they seem actually kind of
Speaker 1: excited about it. He's sitting in what looks like a
Speaker 1: messy office wearing a blue dress shirt and tie. He
Speaker 1: pokes fun at lockdowns and social distancing and masks, and
Speaker 1: even jokes that COVID isn't really a serious disease. And
Speaker 1: then he moves on to COVID vaccines, and if you're
Speaker 1: worried about the side effects, don't. This new vaccine will
Speaker 1: be thoroughly tested to the same vigorous standards as all
Speaker 1: other vaccines. No fewer than twelve people will be tested
Speaker 1: for the vaccine that will be given to a billion people.
Speaker 1: Other speakers at the conference include Sherry Tenpenny, an osteopathic
Speaker 1: physician known for her expensive anti vaccine boot camps. There's
Speaker 1: also wellness guru Dr Joseph mccola and former Minnesota State
Speaker 1: Senator Dr Scott Jensen. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Spoke just
Speaker 1: before Schneider, and Andrew Wakefield will give a speech tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You've heard some of these names before in this series.
Speaker 1: Some of them are new, but what they all have
Speaker 1: in common is that they are prominent or up and
Speaker 1: coming members of the anti vaccine establishment. This conference is
Speaker 1: a who's who of the biggest names in the anti
Speaker 1: vax world. The conference was put on by the National
Speaker 1: Vaccine Information Center. That's a group that has been questioning
Speaker 1: vaccine safety since the theme of this year's conference is
Speaker 1: protecting autonomy and healthcare, but not everyone sticks to that.
Speaker 1: Some speeches focus on rights and liberty amid the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Others preached alternative health practices or the ulterior motives of
Speaker 1: big pharma. Sometimes the messages even kind of conflict with
Speaker 1: each other. If you watch the conference, one thing becomes
Speaker 1: absolutely clear. Speaker after speaker hits on the same point.
Speaker 1: The pandemic is an opportunity to grow the moon space
Speaker 1: and they are not going to waste it. We need
Speaker 1: all hands on desk. We need everybody to release their
Speaker 1: fear from their brains, get rid of their mask, so
Speaker 1: hug people and absolutely say no. We're seeing an inflection
Speaker 1: of events is bringing our issue to the forefront of
Speaker 1: Vaccines today are talked about every day, and we've seen
Speaker 1: this now. The population who are aware of these issues
Speaker 1: has grown dramatically in the face of coronavirus COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: All of the truths that we've been trying to broadcast
Speaker 1: for many, many years, Um, there are people hearing it
Speaker 1: and the impact and those seeds are landing on very
Speaker 1: fertile ground. That last voice belongs to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Speaker 1: Kennedy is the founder of the Children's Health Events, a
Speaker 1: group that pumps out a whole lot of vaccine misinformation.
Speaker 1: It is one of the most high profile anti vaccine groups.
Speaker 1: Kennedy and just talk with a battle cry, and let's
Speaker 1: go to war and protect these children. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Let's go to war. If the pandemic is a battlefield.
Speaker 1: The anti vax ER's are on the march, and they
Speaker 1: have been gaining ground. They've been winning the hearts and
Speaker 1: minds of the people in the middle, those who mostly
Speaker 1: trust vaccines but maybe have some misgivings or questions about
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen shots. People are scared right now and
Speaker 1: they're looking for answers, and this has given the anti
Speaker 1: vaccine movement the chance to reach a bigger audience than
Speaker 1: ever before. In this episode, we're going to look at
Speaker 1: how this movement gets their message out and why people
Speaker 1: believe it if they're waging a war. This is a
Speaker 1: look at the battle plan. I'm Bloomberg News health reporter
Speaker 1: Kristin B. Brown from the Prognosis podcast This is Doubt.
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Was the nephew of JFK. His
Speaker 1: dad was former Senator and U S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.
Speaker 1: Both his dad and uncle were assassinated when he was
Speaker 1: a kid. Kennedy is a lawyer, and until more recently,
Speaker 1: he was best known for a long and impressive legacy
Speaker 1: of environmental work. Over the past few years, Kennedy has
Speaker 1: increasingly turned his attention to vaccines. This is a little
Speaker 1: ironic since his uncle JFK played a big role in
Speaker 1: making vaccines routine in modern society. In ninety two, JFK
Speaker 1: passed the Vaccine Assistance Act, which was really the first
Speaker 1: national immunization program in the US, giving states federal money
Speaker 1: to help make vaccines more accessible. These days, Kennedy is
Speaker 1: working in opposition to his uncle's legacy. Where JFK wanted
Speaker 1: to give people more access to vaccines, Kennedy spends a
Speaker 1: lot of his time discouraging people from getting them. Kennedy
Speaker 1: says the movement was still pretty fringe when he got involved.
Speaker 1: In the mid two thousands. He was advocating against mercury
Speaker 1: polluting rivers and contaminating fish. He says moms would approach
Speaker 1: after talks he gave worried about the mercury in vaccines.
Speaker 1: Back in episode two, we talked about those mercury concerns.
Speaker 1: There is a type of mercury used as a preservative
Speaker 1: in some vaccines, but this mercury is cleared quickly by
Speaker 1: the human body. It is not the same as the
Speaker 1: stuff that was contaminating fish in rivers. But you could
Speaker 1: see why this might cause some people to panic. So
Speaker 1: Kennedy started looking into it because they kept hearing more
Speaker 1: and more of these stories from moms. The movement at
Speaker 1: that time, it was so tiny, really, just the people
Speaker 1: who had been injured by vaccines. I had it actually injuries,
Speaker 1: that's really I was I would say probably n the
Speaker 1: mo time, and it was having almost it was having
Speaker 1: a zero impact on vacccine rates, on vaccine coverage. He
Speaker 1: says the movement grew gradually, people came to it as
Speaker 1: the vaccine schedule expanded, and then later when states tightened
Speaker 1: childhood vaccination laws. But Kennedy says this year has been different.
Speaker 1: You know, it's undeniable that the explosive expansion of our
Speaker 1: movement place after the pandemic. If you've been fighting against
Speaker 1: vaccines for years, then a pandemic is a great opportunity
Speaker 1: for your cause. Just think about it. The pandemic hit
Speaker 1: in March. It's a new disease there is no vaccine.
Speaker 1: It spreads rapidly, the world shuts down. By May, former
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump announces Operation Warp Speed. It's a public
Speaker 1: private partnership meant to fast track vaccine development. And here's
Speaker 1: where the window for the anti vaccine groups opens. Trump
Speaker 1: keeps promising a vaccine by election day in November. The media,
Speaker 1: who is often skeptical of Trump to begin with, starts
Speaker 1: pointing out potential problems with that headline, the main one
Speaker 1: being that vaccines typically take years to develop. I have
Speaker 1: no idea how somebody is proposing a shortening of the length.
Speaker 1: It's length of time it's going to take to test
Speaker 1: this whatever new vaccine there is out there for both
Speaker 1: effectiveness and safety. I'm concerned about the safety and the efficacy.
Speaker 1: These are the two criteria that are a crucial in
Speaker 1: a vaccine. Vaccine advocates and scientists appear on the news
Speaker 1: and say they're worried steps in development are being skipped.
Speaker 1: In other words, they're putting this idea in people's heads
Speaker 1: that this vaccine is rushed and potentially unsafe safe, which
Speaker 1: is okay. Bear development time on these new vaccines was unprecedented,
Speaker 1: But this all plays right into an argument that anti
Speaker 1: vaccine movement was already making For years. This movement has
Speaker 1: argued that safety issues with vaccines are too often ignored
Speaker 1: by manufacturers and government regulators were all in cahoots together,
Speaker 1: and here was the press and scientists pointing to what
Speaker 1: seemed like an example of this. This messaging had a
Speaker 1: real effect on people. For example, when vice presidential candidate
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris said during her debate, if the doctors tell
Speaker 1: us that we should take it, I'll be the first
Speaker 1: in line to take it absolutely. But if Donald Trump
Speaker 1: tells us I should take that we should take it,
Speaker 1: I'm not taking it. Support for vaccines among Democrats dropped.
Speaker 1: Vaccines just became highly politicized at different points, People on
Speaker 1: both sides of the aisle were basically working in favor
Speaker 1: of the anti vaccine movement, spreading messages of uncertainty, malfeasance,
Speaker 1: and fear. At a low point last September, in the
Speaker 1: run up to the election, about half of Americans said
Speaker 1: they wouldn't get vaccinated against COVID. This gave groups like
Speaker 1: Kennedy's a broader audience, and they took advantage of it.
Speaker 1: A report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate or
Speaker 1: c c d H says that roughly a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty leading anti vax accounts gained more than ten million
Speaker 1: social media followers between and December, especially on Instagram and YouTube.
Speaker 1: Those and other channels have taken some steps to curb misinformation,
Speaker 1: including removing some of the movement's biggest names. Kennedy was
Speaker 1: kicked off Instagram in February, but this hasn't really stopped
Speaker 1: the broader community of vaccine skeptics from growing. Kennedy calls
Speaker 1: this censorship in a statement after he was kicked off Instagram.
Speaker 1: He writes, quote face book, the pharmaceutical industry and its
Speaker 1: captive regulators used the term vaccine misinformation as a euphemism
Speaker 1: for any factual assertion that departs from official pronouncements about
Speaker 1: vaccine health and safety, whether true or not. End quote.
Speaker 1: The c c d recently found that since December, while
Speaker 1: the removal of celebrity anti vactors like Kennedy has caused
Speaker 1: the movement to lose millions of followers, the growth of
Speaker 1: the rest of the network has almost entirely made up
Speaker 1: for that loss. They're just so many more groups of
Speaker 1: people whose ideas now align with anti vaccine agenda, alternative
Speaker 1: health purveyors, and Q and on conspiracy theories have joined in.
Speaker 1: As of more and more people concerned about government overreach,
Speaker 1: the states have implemented mask mandates and lockdowns. Kennedy says
Speaker 1: bringing in these other interests has really helped the movement.
Speaker 1: He doesn't use the term anti vaccine. He talks about
Speaker 1: vaccine orthodoxy instead. I think people are saying confluences and
Speaker 1: connections with other issues with government coersion. I'm with the
Speaker 1: erosion of our constitutional rights and of our civil rights
Speaker 1: who have come into the movement and people who are
Speaker 1: concerned with other forms of government coerce. I think people
Speaker 1: are feel like there's something happening that um, there's there
Speaker 1: are strings being pulled by invisible hands. It turns out
Speaker 1: so they're sort of our invisible hands pulling the strings,
Speaker 1: but those hands belonged to anti vaccine groups. The c
Speaker 1: C d H says these groups have organized themselves around
Speaker 1: a master COVID narrative. It's focused on three key messages.
Speaker 1: COVID is not dangerous, the vaccine is dangerous, and vaccine
Speaker 1: advocates cannot be trusted. It's a playbook for sewing doubt
Speaker 1: and it has been used to great effect during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: We've talked before about how times of uncertainty become fertile
Speaker 1: ground for rumor and misinformation. Well, sometimes the public health
Speaker 1: community couldn't provide us with all the answers when we
Speaker 1: wanted them. They had to take time to study things
Speaker 1: like masks and how far we distanced from one another.
Speaker 1: They sometimes messed up the messaging and created more uncertainty
Speaker 1: and confusion. And they can't say any vaccine is a
Speaker 1: percent safe and effective. Science is just an inherently uncertain thing,
Speaker 1: especially when you're dealing with a brand new virus. In science,
Speaker 1: there are always going to be gray areas you can't
Speaker 1: combat yours. People have about COVID vaccines being unsafe or
Speaker 1: understudied by just saying, look, don't worry, these things are
Speaker 1: a percent safe. But anti vaccine groups have the luxury
Speaker 1: of dealing in black and white. COVID is not dangerous,
Speaker 1: the vaccine is dangerous. Vaccine advocates cannot be trusted, simple right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I always say, you try and disprove to
Speaker 1: me that Bill Gates is a lizard, and there is
Speaker 1: a conspiracy of lizards to cover up the fact that
Speaker 1: he's a lizard. And it's impossible because these are non
Speaker 1: falsifiable hypotheses in the jargon, but they're basically designed to
Speaker 1: be difficult, if not impossible, to disprove. This is Imran Ahmed,
Speaker 1: the head of the c c d H. He refers
Speaker 1: to anti vaccine groups as a really sophisticated industry. They
Speaker 1: excel pushing ideas out there that are scary and hard
Speaker 1: to disprove, but of course they also need to back
Speaker 1: up their claims with something that looks like a convincing argument.
Speaker 1: Unlike scientists, anti vaccine groups are perfectly willing to draw
Speaker 1: conclusions where there aren't any yet. They create spaces online
Speaker 1: in places like Facebook groups and Instagram stories that seem
Speaker 1: to have every answer to your concerns. They make their
Speaker 1: arguments seem scientific by using lots of hard to part terminology,
Speaker 1: and then they offer training and education through social media
Speaker 1: tools designed to convert the merely skeptical into active anti
Speaker 1: vaxxer's spreading the message. One activist, for example, urged followers
Speaker 1: to approach new people with easy to verify facts about vaccines,
Speaker 1: like how many vaccines kids get before getting into the
Speaker 1: more controversial stuff. The key one training module in a
Speaker 1: popular anti vaxx group said, it's a plant that first
Speaker 1: seed of doubt. Another activists wrote, quote, once we have
Speaker 1: established some doubt about vaccines, we can move on end quote.
Speaker 1: Groups even offer advice on how to not waste time
Speaker 1: on people who are unpersuadable, how to spread the vaccine
Speaker 1: debate into new groups of people, and how to end
Speaker 1: arguments with pro vaccine people. They produced vast amounts of
Speaker 1: content that's optimized for sharing and to do well on
Speaker 1: the algorithms for social media platforms, and that's been key
Speaker 1: to their success, of their ability to weaponize the algorithms
Speaker 1: um and make the understand the dynamics, the specific dynamics
Speaker 1: of algorithms that only care about one thing. Engagement, not factualness,
Speaker 1: not public good, just engagement. We've said up for but
Speaker 1: it is worth repeating. This is not an organic rag
Speaker 1: tag group of concerned citizens. It is a coordinated and
Speaker 1: sophisticated campaign. It's pr their message is getting through. It's
Speaker 1: the majority of people, and we we we shouldn't blame
Speaker 1: the side of science for being overwhelmed by a very
Speaker 1: well resourced industry of bad folks. Um. I do think
Speaker 1: that we've been naivea societies in not understanding that there
Speaker 1: is an organized opposition. This messaging feels especially relevant in
Speaker 1: a climate where most people agree the government has bungled
Speaker 1: many aspects of pandemic response. There are lots of good
Speaker 1: reasons why these vaccines were able to be developed so quickly.
Speaker 1: Scientists from around the world worked together with government support,
Speaker 1: and technology was already in development for similar vaccines. But
Speaker 1: that's a more complicated explanation than the one anti vaccine
Speaker 1: groups are pushing. The anti vaxxers argue that politics and
Speaker 1: profit are being put first, and that leading vaccine advocates
Speaker 1: have hidden agendas. For example, billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates
Speaker 1: has become a memified symbol of all this billionaire creator
Speaker 1: of Microsoft, of person with a kind of face of
Speaker 1: an eternal student with glasses. But what if Bill Gates
Speaker 1: is actually not as simple as it seems, and now
Speaker 1: that we are presented with the very problem that Gates
Speaker 1: has been talking about for years, we will soon find
Speaker 1: that this software developer with no medical training is going
Speaker 1: to leverage that wealth into control over the fates of
Speaker 1: billions of people. In anti vaxx propaganda. You'll even see
Speaker 1: his names sometimes attached to things he has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with. And okay, some of the Bill Gates conspiracies
Speaker 1: are pretty easy to roll your eyes at, like that
Speaker 1: he's trying to sterilize the world through vaccines and control
Speaker 1: the global population. This was literally the plot of a
Speaker 1: TV series darring John Cusack last year. But for the
Speaker 1: average person, a lot of misinformation isn't so easily debunked.
Speaker 1: Organizations like Kennedy's are savvy. Often, the Children's Health Defense
Speaker 1: will cite accurate information from news organizations or government agencies,
Speaker 1: but cherry pick and arrange those facts so that they
Speaker 1: promote a false narrative. This is really clever because it
Speaker 1: means that if you try to casually fact check those ideas,
Speaker 1: it might appear to confirm the misinformation with legitimate sources.
Speaker 1: For example, they claim to participate in the trial for
Speaker 1: the Maderna vaccine had become really sick after being vaccinated,
Speaker 1: but they failed to mention he quickly recovered and has
Speaker 1: actually become a vocal advocate for the vaccine. There assembling
Speaker 1: devastating information warfare from conventional ideas news articles, but when
Speaker 1: put together in the right way they can be. They
Speaker 1: can be incredibly persuasive and making people do harm for themselves,
Speaker 1: which is what what not taking a vaccine is. And
Speaker 1: then we live a pandemic. Okay, so this group of
Speaker 1: people spreading vaccine misinformation is organized, well funded, and aided
Speaker 1: by a global pandemic and finding an audience. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't fully explain how it ends up convincing our relatives
Speaker 1: or friends to not get vaccinated. It's not like people
Speaker 1: just google anti vaccine content. Please. The way it ends
Speaker 1: up in front of our mom or our dad is
Speaker 1: more carefully choreographed than that. And how this happens is
Speaker 1: no accident. So we believe that a lot of it
Speaker 1: starts and WhatsApp or tell gram or this type of
Speaker 1: messaging services, and it's only then from those services it
Speaker 1: is being pushed to Twitter, Facebook and other social media
Speaker 1: or the digital media. This is Simon pon Tech. He
Speaker 1: monitors social media to see how misinformation spreads as part
Speaker 1: of the Vaccine Confidence Project. In the first episode of Doubt,
Speaker 1: we heard from Heidi Larson, the head of the organization.
Speaker 1: Simon is the guy on the ground. My background is
Speaker 1: in the study of misinformation, information, politics, and trying to
Speaker 1: understands pushing what narratives, why they might want to push
Speaker 1: these narratives. Simon says, misinformation often starts with private messaging
Speaker 1: services and then is unwittingly shared by people who aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily part of the orchestrated campaign. When we say misinformation
Speaker 1: here we're talking about conspiracy theories like Bill Gates trying
Speaker 1: to use vaccines to sterilize people, or vaccines altering your DNA.
Speaker 1: This is stuff intended to cause confusion. One hiccup for
Speaker 1: Simon because that he knows where these messages first gained traction,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to figure out their exact origins or
Speaker 1: who's crafting them. So it's basically sometimes we just get
Speaker 1: a new narratives that's just come out of the blue,
Speaker 1: and they just suddenly become really popular. And so, for example,
Speaker 1: more recently, we were seeing that someone is pushing in
Speaker 1: narative about COVID ending the civilization. The Vaccine Confidence Project
Speaker 1: is working to set up experimental listening tools to try
Speaker 1: and understand how misinformation travels between private and public social networks.
Speaker 1: The hope is to set up what is essentially an
Speaker 1: early warning system to limit the spread, stopping misinformation before
Speaker 1: it has a chance to go viral. Like Kennedy, Simon
Speaker 1: points out that all kinds of groups are now jumping
Speaker 1: into the vaccine fight. For example, um, these would be
Speaker 1: people who believe in natural medicine, so they usually motivated
Speaker 1: by very strong belief that vaccines are not natural. And
Speaker 1: it's not just vaccines that they don't trust. It's GMO
Speaker 1: and and and any other modern technologies, and they very
Speaker 1: strongly believe that is it's a kind of not natural
Speaker 1: thing and we should avoid it as much as possible.
Speaker 1: When these groups rebrand anti vaccine information, it can become
Speaker 1: part of their platform. If you're a politician and your
Speaker 1: basis suddenly saying vaccination is an assault on their freedoms,
Speaker 1: well then it's likely you're going to start pushing that
Speaker 1: idea too, in order to stay in your voters good graces.
Speaker 1: It's now not just healthy issue. It is a very
Speaker 1: political issue. So we we kind of going out of
Speaker 1: this space where you would only have you know, two
Speaker 1: or three players. Now it's more complex, and obviously people
Speaker 1: trying to make money on it, but then people who
Speaker 1: are trying to gain political capital here as well. There
Speaker 1: are lots of different reasons why people would want to
Speaker 1: put misinformation out there. It can be used to score
Speaker 1: political points or sell things like vaccine information classes or
Speaker 1: bogus COVID treatments. Often it has little to do with
Speaker 1: actual concern about vaccines. Sometimes people weaponize misinformation simply in
Speaker 1: order to cause division. Genuinely, they're trying to polarize populations.
Speaker 1: So there is no common ground, there's no shared values,
Speaker 1: and people are unable to come to any sort of agreement,
Speaker 1: and that is a big problem. Simon says that misinformation
Speaker 1: campaigns are nothing new, but there's a reason why your
Speaker 1: friend or family member suddenly spouting conspiracy the areas when
Speaker 1: that was something they were never in due before. A
Speaker 1: lot of people are asking questions about the moment we're
Speaker 1: living in, and anti vaxers are just better at giving
Speaker 1: them answers. Are we're doing a terrible job with engaging
Speaker 1: with hesitant audiences. We we just, like, I think, the
Speaker 1: minute that people express any doubt, we just put them
Speaker 1: into this bucket. All right, you must be anti vactor
Speaker 1: and and that is kind of like a stigma and
Speaker 1: people hate it. We need to say, hey, right, it's fine,
Speaker 1: it's fine. You have some doubts like I'll help you
Speaker 1: exactly the same way the antivactors are doing. That's what
Speaker 1: they're doing. Come here to join us. Will will explain
Speaker 1: this all to you. You will get a full understanding.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're doing that. I think what we're
Speaker 1: doing is not good enough, and that that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the essence of the problem. Kennedy agrees. He says the
Speaker 1: real reason people are coming to him for answers is
Speaker 1: that they feel their concerns just are being addressed anywhere else.
Speaker 1: You know, just an extent, anybody who asked me about
Speaker 1: vaccines has already about what aga of vaccines is already
Speaker 1: kind of laws, some faith in you know, the traditional
Speaker 1: structure of um. You should trust your doctor, or you
Speaker 1: should trust A D S D. You should trust F
Speaker 1: D A and and you should not think for yourself.
Speaker 1: This is the thing that really gets to me. There
Speaker 1: is an opportunity to address the concerns of the people
Speaker 1: in the middle, But the camp that is doing it
Speaker 1: best is the anti vaxers. Anti vaccine misinformation campaigns are
Speaker 1: definitely sophisticated, and social media has enabled them to reach
Speaker 1: a lot of people in a highly targeted, effective and
Speaker 1: inexpensive way. But people who believe all of this misinformation,
Speaker 1: they're more open to it because they're not getting what
Speaker 1: they need from other sources. For people like Kennedy, that
Speaker 1: makes it a lot easier to win them over. So
Speaker 1: now that we've covered how this misinformation gets out there,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss why people believe it. Matt Moda
Speaker 1: is a professor at Oklahoma State University who studies this
Speaker 1: exact thing. He says, there are two types of people
Speaker 1: who come to believe misinformation. The first group are people
Speaker 1: who have basically already decided misinformation is true. They are
Speaker 1: instead rationalizing their first arriving at the conclusion at which
Speaker 1: they want to arrive, and then finding evidence that backs
Speaker 1: it up. But that's thankfully a relatively small group of people. However,
Speaker 1: they have a big public reach in heart because of
Speaker 1: social media. And then there's a second group, and that
Speaker 1: one is way bigger. These people come across misinformation, often
Speaker 1: by chance and often because of that first group is
Speaker 1: spreading it. And so, you know, the key thing that
Speaker 1: we have to remember here is that because the people
Speaker 1: who create and share misinformation are rationalizing because they're very
Speaker 1: motivated to believe a particular thing. They'll often use the
Speaker 1: language the imagery, etcetera of science. They will draw on
Speaker 1: scientific studies, they will refer to people who are experts
Speaker 1: in a particular field, who might have a doctor prefix
Speaker 1: or a PhD suffix with their name in order to
Speaker 1: build their case. And to those of us who might
Speaker 1: not follow these issues very closely. Being exposed that misinformation
Speaker 1: may be somewhat compelling, in part because it seems on
Speaker 1: some level scientific. Matt says that a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the second group might be motivated to believe it
Speaker 1: for similar reasons to the people who create it. For example,
Speaker 1: they might also be suspicious of the government or health
Speaker 1: authorities and therefore more willing to buy in. But that's
Speaker 1: not always the case. Some people will fall prey to
Speaker 1: misinformation just by being exposed to it. This is perhaps
Speaker 1: especially true over the past year. In a pandemic where
Speaker 1: so much is unknown, people may be willing to latch
Speaker 1: onto conspiracy theories and misinformation in order to fill that
Speaker 1: information void, in order to be able to believe something
Speaker 1: that just kind of puts the matter to rest, irrespective
Speaker 1: of its veracity. Once someone believes a conspiracy theory. It's
Speaker 1: hard to shake them out of it. Matt says, just
Speaker 1: throwing a bunch of facts at them probably won't work. Okay,
Speaker 1: If say there's a rampant conspiracy theory circulating on the
Speaker 1: Internet and a bunch of news organizations published fact checks
Speaker 1: on that conspiracy, you probably won't change the minds of
Speaker 1: most believers, and you also risk exposing more people to
Speaker 1: the misinformation. I've thought about this a lot while making
Speaker 1: this podcast. Talking about misinformation runs the risk of exposing
Speaker 1: people to it, but it's also important to talk about
Speaker 1: all of this in order to address it. That's why
Speaker 1: Matt says one way to fight misinformation is to make
Speaker 1: it harder to find. Social media platforms have taken steps
Speaker 1: to this effect during the pandemic. They've kicked people like
Speaker 1: Kennedy and del Brigtree off of their platform. If you
Speaker 1: make it harder for misinformation to spread, especially on mainstream platforms,
Speaker 1: fewer people will see it. I should know here that
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google both did not respond to interview requests
Speaker 1: for this podcast. Both companies have continued to get a
Speaker 1: lot of flak for how they're handling misinformation. Facebook, for example,
Speaker 1: kicked Kennedy off Instagram, which owns but didn't remove him
Speaker 1: from Facebook itself, and they didn't remove his organization from
Speaker 1: either platform, making it easy for his ideas to still
Speaker 1: spread On Facebook. Kennedy just directs people to his organization's website.
Speaker 1: But booting people off your platform doesn't solve the whole problem.
Speaker 1: It just limits the spread. Anti vaccine activists have already
Speaker 1: moved on to newer platforms where anyone can easily find
Speaker 1: their content, and it doesn't change the fact that people
Speaker 1: will still encounter misinformation through friends and family members post
Speaker 1: things on mainstream sites or texted to them. There was
Speaker 1: rampant rumormongering before Facebook, and that is probably never going
Speaker 1: to change. A much better way to reach people is
Speaker 1: not to fact check or to debunk, but instead to
Speaker 1: meet them where they are. What Matt means by this
Speaker 1: is we have to figure out why people believe vaccine
Speaker 1: misinformation and then address their specific point of view rather
Speaker 1: than just apply them with facts. And to give you
Speaker 1: an example of this with the MMR vaccine, we know
Speaker 1: that people, based on our research, who are high in
Speaker 1: what we call moral purity, the types of people who
Speaker 1: view their body as a temple, who strongly value bodily
Speaker 1: sanctity who don't want to put something foreign into their body.
Speaker 1: These people tend to be more likely to not want
Speaker 1: to vaccinate their children against MMR. And you know what
Speaker 1: we do to try to reach those people is to say, look,
Speaker 1: we totally get it. A vaccine is quite literally putting
Speaker 1: a foreign substance into your body, and we understand why
Speaker 1: that might be discomforting. But you know what else is
Speaker 1: a foreign agent entering your body and doing harm to
Speaker 1: your children. Measles, moms and rubella. Those are diseases that
Speaker 1: we can prevent with the vaccine. This means that there
Speaker 1: actually is something we can do about vaccine hesitancy. We
Speaker 1: need to change how we think about people who have
Speaker 1: these hesitations and how we talk to them. There is
Speaker 1: no silver bullet, there's no one size fits all approach,
Speaker 1: because there's no one size fits all reason why people
Speaker 1: accept vaccine hesitant views. I write about this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff a lot, but it can be hard to understand
Speaker 1: how people really wind up here in a place where
Speaker 1: they wonder whether Bill Gates is trying to track them,
Speaker 1: or whether the government is secretly putting out a vaccine
Speaker 1: that isn't actually safe I didn't really start to get
Speaker 1: any of this until I'm at Deborah. In mid December,
Speaker 1: I got an email with a subject that read, are
Speaker 1: there tracking chips in COVID nineteen vaccines? So this is
Speaker 1: a well worn COVID conspiracy theory, the justice that Bill
Speaker 1: Gates conspired to put microchips into coronavirus vaccines in order
Speaker 1: to track who gets one. There are a bunch of
Speaker 1: videos floating around out there suggesting this. They all do
Speaker 1: something we've seen elsewhere in the anti vaccine playbook. Videos
Speaker 1: will mash up news footage and commentary from Bill and
Speaker 1: Melinda Gates in a selective and suggestive way. This reader
Speaker 1: had obviously seen one of them. What struck me about
Speaker 1: the email, though, was how earnest it aimed. I run
Speaker 1: a weekly COVID Q and A at Bloomberg. We're readers
Speaker 1: right in with their questions about the pandemic, and I
Speaker 1: tracked down experts to answer them. The author of this
Speaker 1: email was a woman named Deborah Shuffler. It seemed like
Speaker 1: she was genuinely confused and looking for answers. I wrote
Speaker 1: back immediately and told her it was not true. There
Speaker 1: are definitely not tracking chips. In any COVID vaccines, And
Speaker 1: then I asked if I could call her up? Hi?
Speaker 1: Can you hear me? Hi? Kristin, how are you doing today? Good?
Speaker 1: How are you doing? Debora is fifty. She lives in
Speaker 1: Newberry Park, California, a little town about forty minutes from
Speaker 1: l A. Debra's two kids are grown. She lives with
Speaker 1: two cats, a dog, and an iguana named Dino. Debra says,
Speaker 1: the iguana is king of the condo. Let's put it
Speaker 1: this way. The pecking order is iguana and then the
Speaker 1: mail cat. Everybody respect those two mail cat respects like
Speaker 1: Guanna and then everybody else fleas, I mean not with fleas,
Speaker 1: but they run away when the iguanas around, they're kind
Speaker 1: of like, ah yeah. Since the pandemic started, Deborra has
Speaker 1: been extremely cautious. She's older and has some health issues,
Speaker 1: so she feels like she just can't be too careful.
Speaker 1: She doesn't order to take out or even see your
Speaker 1: kids that often. If someone has to come into her
Speaker 1: home to do her pairs or something like that, she
Speaker 1: makes them take off their shoes just in case. And
Speaker 1: she gathers all the information she can about COVID. She
Speaker 1: keeps a running list of it in a word duck
Speaker 1: that is a hundred and seventy three pages long and counting.
Speaker 1: She admits she's a little obsessed. I'm just afraid of it.
Speaker 1: I'm just afraid of it. It's terrifying. Information is power, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a fear of the unknown. Is is pretty frightening,
Speaker 1: and when you have the information on how to counter it,
Speaker 1: then you know what to do. So for the past year,
Speaker 1: every day, Deborah has collected information about COVID. She reads
Speaker 1: mainstream news sites like Bloomberg and The New York Times.
Speaker 1: She gets newsletters from a bunch of places like Joseph Marcola,
Speaker 1: one of the doctors that presented at the anti vaccine
Speaker 1: conference we mentioned earlier, and the National Vaccine Information Center.
Speaker 1: That's the group that hosted the anti vaccine conference, but
Speaker 1: Debora told me she thought their names sounded official. She
Speaker 1: didn't realize the group was generally against vaccines. Debora says
Speaker 1: she does this to feel like she's doing something to
Speaker 1: protect herself. Sometimes she could sniff out bad information when
Speaker 1: she came across it, like the rumor that COVID is
Speaker 1: really caused by five get Internet that seems fake, but
Speaker 1: sometimes she would find herself unsure, which is how she
Speaker 1: wound up sending that email to me. Early on there
Speaker 1: was talk about huh, and I guess you would call
Speaker 1: it conspiracy theory, but there was talk about Bill Gates
Speaker 1: and inserting a tracking chip in the actual vaccines, and
Speaker 1: I I did a double take on that one, thinking Wow.
Speaker 1: I was curious to talk with Debrah because the Bill
Speaker 1: Gates conspiracy seemed pretty obviously fake to me. I wanted
Speaker 1: to understand what made it seem plausible to her. Devor
Speaker 1: says the YouTube video she first saw about this let
Speaker 1: her think about the movie Divergent. That's a dystopian sci
Speaker 1: fi film series from I call it Divergent. You can't
Speaker 1: let them find out about you. They're always watching and
Speaker 1: the first Divergent in the series, they had an injection
Speaker 1: that made people like robots and they could control them.
Speaker 1: You know, you watch movies and things and then you
Speaker 1: apply it to life. I wouldn't want to track your
Speaker 1: chip put in me. And maybe it's an irrational fear
Speaker 1: from her movie, but I just don't think that anyone
Speaker 1: should have the right to track us. But the movie
Speaker 1: was just what god her thinking about it. Then she
Speaker 1: did some research. I saw a picture of the world's
Speaker 1: tiniest microchip, and it was the size of a grain
Speaker 1: of salt. They actually took a picture of it with salt.
Speaker 1: If it was possible to have one that's small, that
Speaker 1: means that injecting it would not be so far fetched.
Speaker 1: It's actually smaller than the microchip that you would put
Speaker 1: in a cat. Debora didn't believe it was necessarily true,
Speaker 1: but once she saw how tiny microchips can be, the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory seemed at least possible to her. I should
Speaker 1: say here that tens of thousands of people shared this
Speaker 1: video on Facebook. Local news broadcasts also covered the fears,
Speaker 1: and when Debora mentioned this, it occurred to me that
Speaker 1: my cats are micro chipped, and I actually have an
Speaker 1: r F I D chip implanted in my own hand
Speaker 1: that I got while reporting on body hackers. That's another story, though,
Speaker 1: but the point is, it's not like the idea of
Speaker 1: putting microchips into living things is that outlandish anyway. Debor
Speaker 1: reached out to me and eventually also checked out snopes
Speaker 1: dot com, a website she trust the bus Urban Legends.
Speaker 1: After that, she felt confident the conspiracy was false. There's
Speaker 1: a microchip on each bile or on each inject or whichever.
Speaker 1: I've read that sense, but not in the actual shot itself.
Speaker 1: It makes more sense to me because they want to
Speaker 1: track the actual vials or the actual shots so that
Speaker 1: they know the quality of the product. This is true.
Speaker 1: Each vaccine label does have a tracker on it in
Speaker 1: order to keep tabs on all those vaccines shipments and
Speaker 1: make sure they're not expired. After we talked, Debora says
Speaker 1: this rumor no longer bothered her on social media. You're
Speaker 1: not really unless there's an actual quotation of a study
Speaker 1: or something, you can't really be sure it's accurate, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. I try to, you know, consider
Speaker 1: the source. That's what I try to do. But the
Speaker 1: email about Bill Gates was not the last email I
Speaker 1: got from Deborah. She continued to send me misinformation. She encountered.
Speaker 1: Some of it actually concerned her. Other stuff she thought
Speaker 1: sounded fake, but figured I might find it interesting. Life
Speaker 1: almost seems like a rumor whackable for Deborah. Just as
Speaker 1: quickly she quashes one piece of misinformation, another one appears
Speaker 1: that makes her question the reality of the moment. We're
Speaker 1: living in and all of this just makes it hard
Speaker 1: for her to decide whether or not to get vaccinated.
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me about Deborah is that she's one
Speaker 1: of those people who is perfectly in the middle when
Speaker 1: it comes to this debate. A true COVID nineteen vaccine fencitter,
Speaker 1: Debora fully vaccinated her kids and says she really trust
Speaker 1: the advice of her own doctor, but she's had some
Speaker 1: concerns about vaccines before. Emails from Joseph Mrcola made her
Speaker 1: regret giving her kids Gardasil, the vaccine to prevent HPV,
Speaker 1: and she no longer gets the flu shot after reading
Speaker 1: something else from him, Deborah says she mainly stopped getting
Speaker 1: the flu shot because she doesn't trust drugmakers. Trusting them
Speaker 1: is a hard thing to do for many people. Sure,
Speaker 1: they make life saving medicines and vaccines, but they also
Speaker 1: do aim to make money off of them. The second
Speaker 1: time we talked in mid February, she told me she
Speaker 1: probably would get vaccinated. The bottom line is, I have
Speaker 1: underlying conditions, so it is going to be offered to me,
Speaker 1: and I probably will opt for it because it's a
Speaker 1: pretty frightening thing. And here in California and in southern California.
Speaker 1: In my area alone, since January one, we've had twenty
Speaker 1: six deaths and it's a small area. Towards the end
Speaker 1: of January, she sent me another Facebook conspiracy. This one
Speaker 1: featured a doctor who took a scientific paper wildly out
Speaker 1: of context and suggested people might die months after vaccination.
Speaker 1: It really concerned her. She wrote me a few times
Speaker 1: about it, saying it was the main thing making her
Speaker 1: hesitant to get vaccinated. Then she found a Reuter's article
Speaker 1: debunking it, and she had to make a call. Does
Speaker 1: she believe the spacebook doctor or Reuter's. First of all,
Speaker 1: I had never heard of the doctor before, but Reuter's
Speaker 1: is much more how do I put it, reputable source.
Speaker 1: So I just kind of weighed the two, you know,
Speaker 1: in my mind, it it just what makes sense. In
Speaker 1: the end, Debora decided it just seemed more likely that
Speaker 1: what the video was saying was false, and her own
Speaker 1: doctor had also told her there was no reason for
Speaker 1: her to worry about getting the vaccine. In late March,
Speaker 1: I got another email from Deborah. She had gotten her
Speaker 1: first shot. My shoulder was sore for I would say
Speaker 1: probably two days, but I was a little llergic for
Speaker 1: like maybe the first day to two days. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: really uh more relieved, and I'll be even more so
Speaker 1: after the second one. At least this time information triumphed
Speaker 1: over conspiracy, deborra is just one person, though it's a
Speaker 1: whole other game. When you're trying to convince an entire
Speaker 1: community to get vaccinated. There's just more than what's true
Speaker 1: or not to consider. History, generational trauma, and how we
Speaker 1: talk about science all gets folded into that conversation. I
Speaker 1: don't like to have to throw tuskegee in your face
Speaker 1: in an order for you to understand that black lives matter,
Speaker 1: and they don't have to be marching in the street
Speaker 1: to matter. They may be in a hospital that matters too.
Speaker 1: I think of what I'm saying to you, that these
Speaker 1: institutions have a history of abuse in the name, but
Speaker 1: I'm here to help you in the name of science.
Speaker 1: Now you want me to trust this science, that's next
Speaker 1: time I'm doubt. Doubt is written and reported by Me
Speaker 1: christ and v Brown Top Foreheads is our senior producer.
Speaker 1: Molly Nugent is our associate producer. Our theme was composed
Speaker 1: and performed by Hannis Brown Special Thanks to Bloomberg editors
Speaker 1: Tim Annette and Rick Shine. Francesco Levie is the head
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe to problem Osis
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Speaker 1: the show. Thanks for listening. To see you next time.