Thank you, Bakers!
Covid misinformation spikes in wake of
Damar Hamlin's on-field collapse
A bit of the article:
The baseless tweets began to circulate within minutes of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin's stunning collapse on the field during "Monday Night Football."
Anti-vaxxers and right-wing provocateurs sought to link the injury that left Hamlin in critical condition and the coronavirus vaccine, without any evidence. Their claims built on years of coronavirus vaccine misinformation that has been seeded across social media.
Yet as of Tuesday evening, little information was known about the cause of Hamlin's collapse. Nor was it known if Hamlin had been vaccinated against covid, though the NFL previously has said nearly 95 percent of players are vaccinated. The Bills announced Tuesday that Hamlin had suffered a cardiac arrest, and two cardiologists told The Washington Post that a blow to Hamlin's chest may have thrown his heart out off rhythm, disrupting blood flow to the brain. The doctors said they could only speculate after watching video footage of the play.
The tweets' broad and rapid reach, however, underscores how baseless claims related to the coronavirus can ricochet across Twitter with little friction since new owner Elon Musk rolled back the company's policy against covid misinformation in November. The company has also restored the accounts of many previously suspended individuals, including multiple high-profile anti-vaxxers. The moves are indicative of Musk's broader efforts to undo years of work to prevent the spread of falsehoods on Twitter in favor of a "free speech" agenda.
Public health experts and social media researchers warned that the tweets risk creating more fears about coronavirus vaccinations at a time when cases continue to spread in the United States, nearly three years after the pandemic began.
Naomi Smith, a sociologist at Federation University Australia who has researched covid misinformation, said such tweets risk planting "seeds of doubt" at a time when medical professionals are urging the public to obtain booster shots.
Covid misinformation "does actually kill people who take it seriously," she said in an interview. "It is a problem that has a ripple effect in society."
The viral tweets were sent as millions of Americans were looking for answers about Hamlin's condition with news broadcasters and sports commentators having little immediate information about the player's condition. The information vacuum created a perfect storm for anti-vaxxers, who had already been priming people to believe sudden deaths or sudden collapses could be linked to vaccinations, social media experts say.
https://news.yahoo.com/covid-misinformation-spikes-wake-damar-001623351.html
last one. I'm sick of this word.
Was nice to see lots of push back on the "misinformation" article with solid comments. Of course there were the hired "medical professionals" posting their fear and compliance agenda. The orchestration really is frightfully amazing to see, but the more people who wake up, the more they will see that propaganda for what it is. Keep up the good fight!