The Viral Lies That Keep Killing Us

Both Twitter and Facebook have belatedly taken action to silence the lies being disseminated about Covid-19 by Marjorie Taylor Green.  The actions should have come far earlier and there are many, many others who need to be likewise banned from social media platorms for the deadly lies and misinformation that are their stock in trade.  While Green is, in my view, insane, many others are using anti-mask and anti-vaccine lies for personal advancement and political gain.  Frighteningly, they care nothing about the deaths they are causing even though a disproportionate number of those dying are part of the right wing/GOP base.  The cynicism and amorality of these individuals is chilling.  Meanwhile, the inability of their followers to realize that these false "leaders" are literally killing them is dumbfounding.  A column in the New York Times looks at the lies and political opportunism that are killing far too many.  Here are column excerpts: 

A year ago it seemed reasonable to hope that by early 2022 we’d mainly be talking about Covid — or at least Covid as a major health and quality-of-life issue — in the past tense. Effective vaccines had been developed with miraculous speed; surely a sophisticated nation like the United States would find a way to get those vaccines quickly and widely distributed.

So why didn’t we get past the pandemic? Part of the problem has been the creativity of viral evolution. . . . . Still, we could and should have done far better. And the main reason we didn’t was the power of politically motivated lies.

Before I get to the specifics of those lies and the damage they’ve done, let’s be clear: Yes, this is about politics.

I know I’m not the only commentator who has faced a lot of pushback against emphasizing the partisan nature of vaccine resistance. We’re constantly reminded that many unvaccinated Americans aren’t Republican loyalists . . . but politics has nonetheless played a crucial — and growing — role.

[A] KFF survey from October, which found that 60 percent of the unvaccinated identified as Republicans, compared with only 17 percent who identified as Democrats. Or look at the invaluable Charles Gaba’s analysis of county-level data, which finds that on average a one percentage point higher Trump share of the 2020 vote corresponds to about a half-point reduction in a county’s current vaccination rate.

But how did politics do so much to undermine what should have been a medical miracle? I’d identify three important lies that keep being repeated by Republican politicians and right-wing media.

First is the claim that the coronavirus is no big deal. You might think this claim would have been retired, given that more than 800,000 Americans have died from Covid since Rush Limbaugh compared its virus to the common cold.

But it’s still out there. . . . . And conservative commentators erupted in rage when President Biden pointed out, reasonably, that the coronavirus is still extremely dangerous if you haven’t gotten your shots; Tucker Carlson accused Biden of treating the unvaccinated as “subhumans.”

Next up: the claim that vaccination is ineffective. “If the booster shots work, why don’t they work?” tweeted Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

What they were getting at, presumably, is the fact that Omicron is producing a number of breakthrough infections, while carefully ignoring the overwhelming evidence that even when vaccinated Americans do get infected they are far less likely than the unvaccinated to be hospitalized — or die.

Finally, there’s the claim that it’s all about freedom, that remaining unvaccinated should be treated simply as a personal choice. . . . . the administration of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has used that argument as the basis for a lawsuit seeking to block federal vaccine mandates. . . . It’s all about freedom and free markets, but this freedom doesn’t include the right of private businesses to protect their own workers and customers.

So none of this makes any sense — not, that is, unless you realize that Republican vaccine obstructionism isn’t about serving a coherent ideology, it was and is about the pursuit of power. A successful vaccination campaign would have been a win for the Biden administration, so it had to be undermined using any and every argument available.

Sure enough, the anti-vaccine strategy has worked politically. The persistence of Covid has helped keep the nation’s mood dark, which inevitably hurts the party that holds the White House — so Republicans who have done all they can to prevent an effective response to Covid have not hesitated, even for a moment, in blaming Biden for failing to end the pandemic.

And the success of destructive vaccine politics is itself deeply horrifying. It seems that utter cynicism, pursued even at the cost of your supporters’ lives, pays.