Seems like a good use of his time
Surgeon general launches effort to get to the bottom of Covid-19 misinformation
The office of US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a request Thursday for information surrounding health misinformation, seeking input and data from tech companies, health care providers and community organizations.
The request seeks to understand the scope and impact of misinformation on Covid-19 — especially when it comes to health care and people’s willingness to get vaccinated.
“Misinformation has had a profound impact on Covid-19 and our response,” Murthy told CNN. “Studies have demonstrated that the vast majority of the American public either believes common myths about Covid-19 or thinks those myths might be true. And many of those include myths around the Covid-19 vaccine, so we’ve seen firsthand how misinformation is harming people’s health when it comes to Covid.”
This marks the first time the administration has called on tech companies to share certain data publicly, including data on the major sources of misinformation, how widespread it is and who may have been targeted more than others.
So, what, he’s going to use the power of government to data-mine posts and tweets and such? When COVID is supposedly almost over? Maybe he should be asking why some politicians and celebs wear their mask sometime and not at other times. Why Biden wears it outside. Why he sometimes wears it inside and not at others. Why Jen Psaki always takes hers off to speak to people.
The focus has been on reaching out to tech companies with the broadest reach and use, Murthy said, and he wants them to be more transparent and open about sharing data with the public.
“We’ll be looking forward to whatever information they have to share. We’re certainly approaching this with an open mind,” he said. “Many of the new technology platforms have also been talking about solutions that they are trying to implement, but what we want to understand is what data do they have on whether these solutions are actually working or not.”
And what will he do with this information? It’s not all concerning that the government will be taking names of people they believe are engaged in Wrongthink, right?
“Health misinformation is making the jobs of health care workers much harder at a time where our health care work force is strained,” he said. “I hear from health care workers that they are battling Covid in the hospitals during the day, and they’re going home and battling health misinformation at night.”
Ultimately, the information will be shared with the public and used to steer responses to future public health emergencies.
You are not allowed to have your own thoughts, Comrades. Anyway, can we start with the misinformation that cloth and surgical masks actually work? If they did, we wouldn’t have had the Delta and Omicron spikes. The government surely didn’t lie about herd immunity. And they didn’t give us misinformation that the vaccines would stop most people from getting COVID. And they certainly didn’t lie about the number of people who were dying from COVID and not with COVID, right? Or use dated statistics? Nor hide that the NIH was funding gain of function with coronaviruses in China, right? What other lies, er, sorry, disinformation has the government told us?
Read: Surgeon General To Spend Time Going After Chinese Coronavirus “Misinformation” »