Every time a Fox News personality, politician or social media influencer promotes false ideas about vaccines or disparages scientists battling a pandemic, they not only make listeners more likely to contract the coronavirus, but they also add to ourselves the seemingly endless plight of pandemics.
No doubt we need more vaccines for poorer countries. But it is also true that in South Africa, lack of vaccines is not an issue. The problem, at least in part, is skepticism about the safety of the vaccine and the severity of the virus that conspiracy theorists and their echo chambers cause.
Like people around the world,
South Africans are listening malicious messages,
Usually comes from the United States, that they should reject the footage. That’s what a South African scientist discovered when her mother forwarded her a video making outlandish claims about the vaccine she was receiving.
prayer group was found on Facebook. It comes from the same chiropractor whose ideas seem to have
weirder during the day, which now includes the claim that the vaccine contains a “deadly parasite” that creates a “neural network” in the vaccine, possibly
“influencing their thoughts and actions.”The outrage of these claims is escalating, most shockingly on Fox News, which has become a hub for not only deranged ideas but its most offensive variations.
It’s hard to beat the once respected Lara Logan, the South African reporter who left “60 Minutes” in disgrace and joined Fox News shortly after. During an appearance on Fox News Primetime on Monday,
Logan is equated Dr. Anthony Fauci – the leading infectious disease physician in the United States and one of the world’s most respected scientists –
none other than Dr. Josef Mengele, Nazi doctor known as the “Angel of Death” for performing brutal and brutal experiments on concentration camp prisoners during World War II. It’s hard to imagine that the madness, slurs, and attacks on science could get much worse, but even harder to believe they wouldn’t.
Logan’s words resonated around the world, triggering a backlash. The Auschwitz Museum in Poland, where the Nazis murdered more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, condemned Logan, noting that it “exploited the tragedy of those who became victims of medical experiments fake priest in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemics and people fighting to save lives is shameful.” It called it,
“a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.” American Jewish Committee
ask for an apology.
But Logan is hardly alone among Fox characters and GOP politicians in
promote lies and false equivalence.
Right from the start of the pandemic, Republicans have turned Covid-19 into a political football. Texas Senator Ted Cruz
famous and wrong prediction that if Joe Biden became president, Democrats would immediately declare “things magically better” with the pandemic.
The GOP’s deadly strategy is to deny the seriousness of the problem and often discourage vaccinations that have a not-so-hard-to-detect target. I
t debuted last summer, when a Fox News reporter asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, “Whose fault is it” as the pandemic worsens. Looks like it’s Biden’s fault. By this logic, the worse the pandemic gets, the worse it gets for Biden.
Then there’s the opposite logic, courtesy of one of the most Trumpist members of Congress. As soon as the Omicron variant became known, Congressman Ronny Jackson of Texas,
Doctor becomes controversial White House politician, has switched to acting
doubts about its existence. “Here’s the MEV – Midterm Vote Variant,” he tweeted, claiming it was part of the Democrats’ plan to “CHEAT” the election.
Sadly, for Republican voters, the strategy of turning the attack on the pandemic response into a political one, even with conflicting logic, is leading to a
The death toll is getting worse and worse between their own ranks. Tragically for others, it also contributes to a never-ending pandemic.
In October, 25 out of 100,000 people living in counties that voted heavily for Trump died of Covid. That is
triple death rate in crowded Biden counties, according to data analysis cited by the New York Times.
Some people may be invisibly pleased to know that the anti-vax measure is wiping out supporters of those who promote it, but the reality is that the virus is not limited to those who mock it.
Yes, we need to vaccinate everyone – everywhere. But as long as there is a massive propaganda effort to prevent people from accepting the vaccine, the arrival of Omicron is yet another warning shot, another sign that the pandemic can exploit social weaknesses. , division and cynicism to continue to prevent us from returning to full life. Liars are at least partially responsible for everyone’s continuing plight.
.
