The social problem caused by misinformation and

fake news

Mask-recommended by public health officials and mandated in many

counties. Many people are protesting against it.
- Only 60% of people would always wear a mask when they went out in July and 74%
in october.
- Here are the arguments for not wearing a mask
- Wearing a mask is causing them medical issues. Usually for people with
impossible health conditions to wear a mask as N95 mask, which creates a
tight seal around the nose and mouth, can make it hard to breathe for people
with obstructive lung disease, this should not be the case with surgical masks
and face covering. However, this line of exception is understandable. Since
these kinds of people can try to stay in their own homes as much as possible.
- The messaging sent by the mask: “weak and not cool”, “giving up freedom”,
“supporting for democrats”, wearing a mask has become a signal of stance.
- Not believing in science: COVID-19 is no worse than the flu. Protesters have
said masks impair breathing, breed illness. The solution of these anti mask
protesters is usually sunshine and nature.
- Believe in the conspiracy theory that the whole pandemic is a hoax with Bill
Gates behind the scenes and government to test people’s compliance.

A similar thing is happening on anti-vaccine.

- A report noted that 31 millions people follow anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, with
17 million subscribing to similar Youtube.
- One CCDH(centre for countering digital hate) report divided the online anti-vaccine
movement into four groups.
- Campaigners work full-time to foment distrust in vaccines but they only reach
12% of the total audience that follows the anti-vaccine movement.
- Entrepreneurs reach around half of the anti-vaccine following, exposing them
to advertisements for products purporting to have health benefits.
- Conspiracy theorists
- Existing research suggests there is no single, monolithic anti-vaccination
movement. Instead, those who oppose vaccination are a heterogeneous
group with a diverse set of concerns and motivations. Safety concerns are the
most common reason for both vaccine hesitancy and opposition. These
concerns increased after a now-retracted and discredited 1998 study
purported a link between vaccines and autism, and the damage has persisted
to date. Other concerns include distrust of government, preference for
alternative medicine, and suspicion of health care professionals’ and
pharmaceutical manufacturers’ motives.
How does social media and misinformation come into play?
- Large online community against mask and vaccine. Social media accounts held by
so-called anti-vaxxers have increased their following by at least 7.8 million since
2019. The CCDH calculated that the anti-vaccine movement could realise US $1
billion in annual revenues for social media firms. As much as $989 million could
accrue to Facebook and Instagram alone, largely from advertising targeting the 38.7
million followers of anti-vaccine accounts. It is reasonable to assume that
anti-vaccine has been used as a feature or hashtags for Facebook to classify users
and expose them to certain advertisers.
- A survey done by CCDH alongside their report found that individuals who relied on
social media for information on the pandemic were more hesitant about the potential
vaccine.
- According to Stahl and colleagues, the internet and social media have opened new
conduits for misinformation about vaccination to spread unchecked, and
anti-vaccination groups have harnessed these opportunities far more effectively than
pro- vaccine groups. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll shows that 79% of Americans
report hearing a great deal or a fair amount about the potential disadvantages of
vaccination in 2019 versus only 39% in 2001. The COVID-19 crisis may intensify
these barriers to addressing vaccine opposition due in part to voluminous information
circulating about the pandemic and physicians’ unfamiliarity with a coronavirus
vaccine.

A case study of the misinformation and fake news online

- For conspiracy theory: Bill Gates created the virus and wants to profit from it by
requiring everyone to get a vaccine and eventually use Covid-19 as a tool to cull the
global population. In a 2015 speech, Bill Gates warned that the greatest risk to
humanity was not nuclear war but an infectious virus that could threaten the lives of
millions of people. This speech has resurfaced in recent weeks with 25 million new
views on YouTube. Anti-vaccinators, members of the conspiracy groups QAnon and
right-wing pundits have instead seized on the video as evidence that one of the
world’s richest men planned to use a pandemic to wrest control of the global health
system. Misinformation about Mr. Gates is now the most widespread of all
coronavirus falsehoods tracked by Zignal Labs, a media analysis company. The
misinformation includes more than 16,000 posts on Facebook this year about Mr.
Gates and the virus that were liked and commented on nearly 900,000 times,
according to a New York Times analysis. On YouTube, the 10 most popular videos
spreading lies about Mr. Gates posted in March and April were viewed almost five
million times.
- A lot of political parties are cultivating these conspiracy theories for their political
purpose. Mr.Kennedy, a son of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who campaigns
against vaccines as a director of the Children’s Health Defense network. On his
Instagram page, Mr. Kennedy has said Mr Gates pushes vaccines to feed his other
business interests. Mr. Kennedy, whose Instagram followers have doubled to more
than 285,000 since March, said in an interview that he was telling the truth about the
“terrible damage” that Mr. Gates had inflicted on the world with vaccines.In an April 7
tweet, Ms. Ingraham, a Fox News host, shared a conspiracy theory about nefarious
 motives behind Mr. Gates’s call to track and identify who had received a Covid-19
vaccine. “Digitally tracking Americans’ every move has been a dream of the
globalists for years,” she wrote. On Wednesday, after Mr. Gates said pulling funding
to the World Health Organization was ill advised, the online reaction was swift. (The
Gates Foundation funds the organization.) One anti-vaccinator posted a poster of the
movie “Kill Bill” on Instagram that read “Kill Bill Gates” and called for people to flood
the comments on Mr. Gates’s Instagram account.That same day, when Mr. Gates
posted his thanks to health care workers, it received over 14,000 comments. One
read: “This virus is a big, big lie.” As the coronavirus pandemic has spread around
the world, Gates has pledged $250 million to fight the disease and create a vaccine.
According to a ​FactCheck.org followup​, "There was in fact an exercise (called 'Event
201') that took place in October that was hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for
Health Security — which the Gates Foundation participated in — that focused on
emergency preparedness in the event of a 'very severe pandemic.' But it didn't deal
with 2019-nCoV [novel coronavirus], and it didn't make real-life predictions about
death tolls."The Infowars piece attempted to connect the Gates Foundation's ongoing
investments in fighting global pandemics to prior knowledge of the coronavirus
pandemic.

Why is it important? Why is it so serious?

- Hope of ending the COVID-19 pandemic rests mainly on development of an effective
vaccine. Availability of a vaccine is only part of the solution, though; Americans’
decisions to receive or forego the vaccine will determine its ultimate success. If too
few people immunize, outbreaks will continue. Such outbreaks pose serious health
risks to those who cannot vaccinate and translate into continued economic and
health care costs, which those in higher-risk and disadvantaged groups
disproportionately shoulder.
- Vaccine opposition was a growing social problem before COVID-19, and abundant
misinformation, economic uncertainty, politicization of the pandemic, and anxiety
about government overreach following pandemic-related restrictions have
exacerbated existing anti-vaccination sentiment.
- A 2019 Gallup poll found that 84% of parents considered vaccinating their children to
be extremely or very important, down from 94% in 2001. In May 2020, a Pew
Research poll found that 27% of Americans would not get a COVID-19 vaccine if it
were already available, and a separate AP/NORC poll found that only about half of
respondents planned to get a coronavirus vaccine if it were to become available in
the future. Of the quarter of Americans who indicated little or no interest in a
coronavirus vaccine in a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 40% believed the risks of the vaccine
would be greater than the risks of the disease itself.
- Misinformation is not true but once read and seen by people, it will possibly persuade
them to form a belief and affect their personal decision. When the only way to go
through this global pandemic is for all the citizens to work collectively wearing masks
and get vaccinated. Misinformation floating on the internet is costing us human life.