H5N1

Dakotas reject masks, lead US in COVID-19 case growth

Via the Los Angeles Times, a report by The Associated Press: Dakotas reject masks, lead U.S. in coronavirus case growth. Excerpt:

Coronavirus infections in the Dakotas are growing faster than anywhere else in the nation, fueling impassioned debates over masks and personal freedom after months in which the two states avoided the worst of the pandemic. 

The argument over masks raged this week in Brookings, S.D., where the City Council considered requiring face coverings in businesses. The council was forced to move its meeting to a local arena to accommodate intense interest, with many citizens speaking against it, before the mask requirement ultimately passed. 

The Republican governors of both North Dakota and South Dakota have eschewed mask requirements, tapping into a spirit of independence.  

Infections have been spurred recently by the reopening of schools and universities and by mass gatherings such as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew hundreds of thousands of people from across the country to the small South Dakota town. 

“It is not a surprise that South Dakota has one of the highest [COVID-19] reproduction rates in the country,” Brookings City Councilman Nick Wendell said as he commented on the many people who forgo masks in public.  

Amid the brute force of the pandemic, health experts warn that the rise in infections must be contained before healthcare systems are overwhelmed. North Dakota and South Dakota rank first and second, respectively, in the U.S. in new cases per capita over the last two weeks, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.  

The states have also posted some of the country’s highest positivity rates for coronavirus tests in the last week — with nearly 22% of tests coming back positive in North Dakota — an indication that there are more infections than tests are catching. 

After early, serious outbreaks at meat processing plants, the Dakotas appeared to have avoided the worst of the pandemic, watching from afar as it raged through large cities. But surging infection rates have fanned out across the nation, from the East Coast to the Sun Belt and now into the Midwest, where states such as Iowa and Kansas are also dealing with growing outbreaks.  

When the case count stayed low during the spring and early summer, people grew weary of constantly taking precautions, said Dr. Benjamin Aaker, president of the South Dakota State Medical Assn. 

“People have a tendency to become complacent,” he said. “Then they start to relax the things that they were doing properly, and that’s when the increase in cases starts to go up.”

The COVID-19 infodemic: What can be done about the infectious spread of misinformation and disinformation

Via the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The COVID-19 infodemic: What can be done about the infectious spread of misinformation and disinformation. Excerpt:

Almost since its first emergence, the spreading SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has also been accompanied by a widespread proliferation of misinformation and disinformation, what the World Health Organization (WHO) described as “a massive ‘infodemic’—an over-abundance of information … that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” 

Misinformation can be information that is false or inaccurate, whether deliberately or inadvertently so. Disinformation refers to information that is intended to mislead, whether or not the information is literally true. 

Misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19 fall into several categories, including:  

• The biological origin and nature of the virus. One false claim is that the insinuation that the virus is the result of Chinese efforts to develop a biological weapon. Another is the false claim is that COVID-19, the disease, is caused not by a virus but by exposure to 5G wireless signals. 

• Diagnoses and/or treatments for the disease. One false claim suggests that the ability to take a deep breath and hold it for more than 10 seconds without discomfort is a reliable indicator of being infection-free. A second false claim was that the FDA had approved chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for Covid-19 at a time when it had not. A third false claim, made as early as February, asserted that “we are ‘very close’ to a vaccine.” A fourth: People with the disease get better “just by sitting around and even going to work.” An anti-vaccination disinformation effort based in California released a widely viewed 26-minute conspiracy theory video, “Plandemic,” that claimed that COVID-19 responses were a cover for forced mass vaccinations. 

• Public measures to respond to the epidemic. One claim made on February 24 was that the coronavirus is very much under control in the United States. A second claim made on March 6 was that any person in the United States who wants a SARS-Cov-2 test can get one. There are also multiple examples of governments dissimulating about the extent to which COVID-19-related illnesses and deaths have affected their population, including Russia, China, and even the American state of Florida. 

The combination of the psychology of pandemic—which causes societies to grasp at (mis)information in the midst of panic—and political polarization—which leads people to attribute partisan motivations to public health measures—have made the spread of false information about COVID-19 particularly problematic. 

This combination is compounded by a global information ecosystem that combines traditional and social media, interacting with human cognition in ways that accelerates the spread of misinformation. In addition, today’s global media environment makes possible the active spread of disinformation by states and other actors on an unprecedented scale to achieve geopolitical objectives or sow confusion among their adversaries, amplified by unwitting online communities predisposed to believe in and amplify false information about the pandemic. 

This combination has contributed to the virulent spread of disinformation and misinformation about the novel coronavirus on an unprecedented scale, and it challenges the capacity of states and public health authorities to develop, implement, and communicate scientific evidence-based responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly half of Brazilians say Bolsonaro not to blame for COVID-19 death toll, poll says

Via Reuters: Nearly half of Brazilians say Bolsonaro not to blame for coronavirus death toll, poll says. Excerpt:

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Almost half of Brazilians think President Jair Bolsonaro bears “no responsibility at all” for the country’s more than 100,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s second highest death toll, according to a new Datafolha poll. 

The poll was published on Saturday in Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper and says 47% of Brazilians do not assign him any blame for the body count, whereas 11% do. 

Brazil has the world’s worst outbreak outside of the United States and Bolsonaro’s response to the pandemic has been widely condemned by health experts. Right-wing Bolsonaro has pushed for the use of unproven anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to fight the disease, replaced health ministers who opposed his agenda, encouraged Brazilians to oppose lockdown measures and shown indifference to the rising death toll. 

Bolsonaro himself and several members of his family have gotten coronavirus. His current wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, got the disease in late July and her grandmother died from the disease this week. 

Bolsonaro’s fourth son, Jair Renan, who is 22, tested positive for coronavirus, his mother said on Instagram on Saturday. 

“He is doing very well, taking hydroxychloroquine and will soon recover,” the president’s second wife said in the post, still signing her name as Cristina Bolsonaro.  

Still, Bolsonaro is currently enjoying the highest popularity rating of his administration, according to the same Datafolha poll. Thirty-seven percent of Brazilians rated his term as great or good, compared with 32% in June.  

The poll said that the spike in popularity can be explained by emergency payments the government has been making to low-income and informal workers set to expire in September. The government is currently considering whether to extend the payments.

Ontario doctor subject of complaints after COVID-19 tweets

Via CBC News: Ontario doctor subject of complaints after COVID-19 tweets. Excerpt:

Ontario doctor Kulvinder Kaur Gill has been criticized by fellow physicians and others after a series of tweets that they say spread misinformation about COVID-19. 

CBC has reviewed two email complaints about Gill's tweets, including one by a family doctor to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which sets regulatory standards for doctors in the province. 

One of her tweets, from Aug. 6, stated: "#Humanity's existing effective defences against #COVID19 to safely return to normal life now includes: -Truth, -T-cell Immunity, -Hydroxychloroquine."  

That tweet has since been taken down for violating Twitter's rules. Twitter doesn't confirm what rules a specific tweet may have violated when it has been taken down. Many doctors also replied critically to Gill's tweet.  

Hydroxychloroquine is a drug used to treat malaria and some autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. It has been touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential fix for COVID-19. However, the drug has been shown to be ineffective in combating the virus, according to a major study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  

Medical bodies such as the Canadian Pediatric Society say hydroxychloroquine has no significant benefit in fighting COVID-19. Health Canada has not authorized hydroxychloroquine to treat or cure COVID-19 and has warned Canadians about products making false and misleading claims. It says hydroxychloroquine can have serious side effects. Only recently did Health Canada authorize, with conditions, remdesivir to treat severe cases of COVID-19. 

On Aug. 4, Gill tweeted "If you have not yet figured out that we don't need a vaccine, you are not paying attention," adding the hashtag #FactsNotFear. Gill identifies herself as Kulvinder Kaur on her Twitter profile.  

Another of Gill's tweets on the same day states, "There is absolutely no medical or scientific reason for this prolonged, harmful, and illogical lockdown." 

Gill operates a clinic in Brampton, Ont., and she has over 22,000 followers on Twitter. She is also the president and co-founder of Concerned Ontario Doctors, a self-described grassroots group that has been critical of the Ontario Medical Association, the organization that represents 34,000 of the province's doctors.

All practicing physicians in the province are legally mandated to pay dues to the OMA, though they do not have to be members of the group. The Concerned Doctors of Ontario did not respond to multiple requests for comment.  

Gill and others have said the OMA attempts to muzzle doctors, and it refuses to be financially transparent and accountable to its members. 

According to the CPSO, Gill's specialty is pediatrics.   

Gill did not respond to CBC News's multiple requests for comment. On Twitter, she said,"There are always opposing views in medicine — historically many have led to some of the most significant medical advances.  

"In a democratic society: there must always be open, constructive, public debate. Voices of Physicians & Scientists must never be attacked, censored or silenced." 

Gill has also retweeted another doctor, Simone Gold, who claimed there was a financial incentive to discredit hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. Gold's tweet was taken down for violating Twitter rules, but not Gill's retweet. 

Brazil's ex-health minister attacks Bolsonaro as Covid-19 deaths top 100,000

Via The Guardian: Brazil's ex-health minister attacks Bolsonaro as Covid-19 deaths top 100,000. Excerpt:

Jair Bolsonaro’s former health minister has accused the Brazilian president of failing to offer “a single word of comfort” to the families of the 100,000 Brazilians who have lost their lives to Covid-19.  

In an interview marking Brazil’s latest Covid-19 milepost, Luiz Henrique Mandetta – who was sacked in April after challenging the president’s internationally condemned coronavirus response – expressed consternation that Brazil’s leaders had failed to recognise so much pain. 

“There are 100,000 Brazilian families who have yet to receive a single word of comfort or solidarity from the government,” Mandetta told the newspaper O Globo.  

Brazil’s official coronavirus death toll was poised to top 100,000 on Saturday, with its total rising to 99,572 on Friday after another 1,079 deaths. 

But on the eve of that milestone Bolsonaro urged his country’s 210m citizens to put the unfinished tragedy behind them. “We regret all of the deaths,” the far-right populist said during his weekly live broadcast. “But let’s get on with our lives, get on with our lives and try to find a way of getting away with this problem.”  

Without offering proof, Bolsonaro insinuated state governors were deliberately inflating their Covid-19 death tolls in order “to panic the population”. Speaking to O Globo’s daily podcast, Ao Ponto, Mandetta attacked the Bolsonaro administration’s “misguided” reaction and the decision, after his dismissal, to hand control of the health ministry to military officials with no knowledge of health. 

Bolsonaro lost a second health minister, Nelson Teich, less than a month after Mandetta’s sacking, before making an active duty army general his interim chief. 

“You can’t go to war with doctors. You can’t do healthcare with soldiers,” said Mandetta, who said the ministry needed to be “immediately” repopulated with health experts.  

Mandetta, a doctor as well as a professional politician, also accused Bolsonaro of using hydroxychloroquine – which the president promotes as a treatment for Covid-19 despite proof it is ineffective – to distract from his botched response. 

“Chloroquine was brought into the debate as political prop designed to prevent the decisions taken by the president of the republic, to dismantle the health ministry … from being discussed. His responsibility [for the crisis] needed to be diminished and he used chloroquine to mitigate his responsibility,” said Mandetta who has hinted he will challenge Bolsonaro in the 2022 election.  

Mandetta said he believed Bolsonaro’s decision to downplay Covid-19 and blame China, where the pandemic began, for Brazil’s woes could be traced back to a meeting with Donald Trump in early March. 

“I’ve no doubt that the Trump administration directly influences the Bolsonaro administration,” the 55-year-old politician said, adding: “They both had an eminently political vision of the health crisis.”

Attacks on public health officials during COVID-19

Via JAMA Network: Attacks on Public Health Officials During COVID-19. Excerpt:

On June 24, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom remarked on a disturbing phenomenon: health officers are “getting attacked, getting death threats, they’re being demeaned and demoralized.” At least 27 health officers in 13 states (including Nichole Quick of Orange County in southern California, Ohio Health Director Amy Acton, and West Virginia Health Officer Cathy Slemp) have resigned or been fired since the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. 

Across the US, health officers have been subject to doxing (publishing private information to facilitate harassment), angry and armed protesters at their personal residences, vandalism, and harassing telephone calls and social media posts, some threatening bodily harm and necessitating private security details. 

The present harassment of health officials for proposing or taking steps to protect communities from COVID-19 is extraordinary in its scope and nature, use of social media, and danger to the ongoing pandemic response. It reflects misunderstanding of the pandemic, biases in human risk perception, and a general decline in public civility. Some of these causes resist easy fixes, but elected officials and health officials can take certain actions to help address the problem. 

Today’s increasingly routine harassment and threats against health officials have much in common with growing resistance to childhood vaccination. Since the 2015 measles outbreak that focused attention on vaccine policy, individuals opposed to vaccination mandates have attacked health officials and legislators online or in person in Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Colorado. 

For example, in 2019, protesters threw blood onto California legislators from the Senate gallery; State Senator Richard Pan received death threats and was physically assaulted. Some of the same groups, joined by other individuals frustrated with public health officials, are now actively resisting efforts to require masks, reinstitute business closures, and prepare for COVID-19 vaccination, jeopardizing the eventual acceptance of vaccines. 

What explains the unprecedented hostility to public health officials during COVID-19? Although acceptance of public health orders for COVID-19 is often framed as a “red vs blue” issue, even libertarians accept that liberty may be curtailed when its exercise harms others. However, people’s ability to perceive such harms can be undermined by decisional biases known to affect human thinking. 

Omission bias creates a preference for risks associated with doing nothing (ie, letting the virus spread) over those linked to affirmative acts, such as public health orders. Distance bias and optimism bias may be operating for those who believe COVID-19 will not seriously affect them or their loved ones. In an information space flooded with conflicting information, confirmation bias allows some people to dismiss evidence that does not comport with their preexisting beliefs. 

These forces help explain resistance to COVID-19 orders, but the shape and ferocity the resistance has assumed can be traced to other factors. The general decline in civility in political discourse in the US has made ad hominem attacks commonplace and hollowed out traditional ways of grappling with value conflicts. Social media amplifies such attacks, with the #FireFauci campaign providing an early template. Joining these attacks may be an easy outlet for people under stress from economic disruption and social isolation. One Facebook network of 22 000 users organized protests on the front lawns of health officers.  

The environment deteriorates further when elected leaders attack their own public health officials. Members of the current presidential administration, and various members of Congress, have displayed hostility toward experts inside and outside of government. In July, staff at the White House disseminated a misleading memo and op-ed about Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease physician and pandemic expert at the National Institutes of Health. For his part, President Trump retweeted statements including, “Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust.” 

At the state and local levels, the attacks have been even more personal. In April, an Ohio representative referred to the state health officer, who is Jewish, as an “unelected Globalist Health Director,” using an anti-Semitic slur. Some elected judges have even contributed: in the Wisconsin Legislature v Palm decision striking the state health secretary’s stay-at-home orders, conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court judges censured the health secretary with unusual harshness, alleging “tyranny” by “an unelected official” exercising “controlling, subjective judgment.” 

These statements are not mere rhetorical flourishes; they become ballast for personal attacks in the midst of the pandemic. Administration officials, legislators, and judges should model the ability to civilly disagree, setting out their policy concerns and using the legal means at their disposal to effect change. Important debates are necessary, such as how to open schools safely and how to balance opening businesses with preserving health. Yet even those with policy disagreements should call for respect and appreciation for public health officials, who are acting in good faith. In some contexts, only health officers have authority to enter public health orders; their actions are not a subversion of democratic process, but its prescribed expression.

Anthony Fauci says he has received death threats over his COVID-19 work

Via The Guardian: Anthony Fauci says he has received death threats over his coronavirus work. Excerpt:

Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, has had to hire security to protect himself and his family after receiving death threats in response to his work to stop the spread of coronavirus. 

Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, told CNN that the pandemic has brought out “the best of people and the worst of people and you know getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security, it’s amazing”.  

Donald Trump’s administration has consistently downplayed the public health threat of coronavirus, but Fauci has just as consistently rejected those efforts. Since the early days of the pandemic, Fauci has provided blunt assessments of the crisis in media appearances and in remarks at the White House, which have been less frequent in recent months.  

“I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams that people who object to things that are pure public health principles are so set against it and don’t like what you and I say, namely in the world of science, that they actually threaten you,” said Fauci.  

The US has recorded more than 158,000 Covid-19 related deaths and more than 4.8m coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University, far more than any other country in the world. 

In an interview with Politico’s Pulse Check podcast released on Thursday, Fauci was more specific about the threats against his family and said he had worked to ignore the conspiracy theories about him online.  

“There’s one thing about that nonsense that I do object to, and that is the effect that it has on my family,” the doctor added. “Because when you get death threats that require you having security protection all the time, and when they start hassling your children on the phone and at their job and interfering with their lives, that pisses me off. I must say.”  

In July, Trump officials and advisers publicly undermined Fauci and attempted to discredit his expertise. The White House trade adviser, Peter Navarro, went as far as to attack Fauci in an op-ed in the USA Today newspaper, where he said he treats the doctor’s advice with “skepticism and caution”.

Millions in Manila back in lockdown as Duterte loses control of COVID-19 spread

Via The Guardian: Millions in Manila back in lockdown as Duterte loses control of coronavirus spread. Excerpt:

More than 27 million people have been put back into lockdown in and around the Philippines’ capital, as stricter measures are imposed in an attempt to halt the country’s spiralling coronavirus case numbers. 

The measures were reintroduced on Tuesday after the country’s infection tally topped 100,000 and a coalition of health groups issued a “distress signal” urging President Rodrigo Duterte to act. “Our healthcare workers should not bear the burden of deciding who lives and who dies,” they said in an open letter at the weekend, warning the health system was at risk of being overwhelmed.  

Two major government hospitals in Manila city have been forced to close temporarily because infections among health workers have escalated so sharply, while some private hospitals are turning away patients due to bed shortages.  

Duterte, apparently rattled by medics’ public warning over case numbers, responded by lashing out at health staff. “If you mount a revolution, you will give me a free ticket to stage a counter-revolution. How I wish you would do it,” he said in a late-night address on Sunday. 

His speech followed comments last week pushing unscientific and dangerous health advice, suggesting poorer people should use petrol to wash their face masks. “If alcohol isn’t available, especially for the poor, just go to a gasoline station, and use [gas] to disinfect,” he said. “I am not joking. I am not joking.” 

The Philippines has so far recorded 106,330 cases, a number that is rapidly rising. On Monday, the country reported a record number of infections for a fourth successive day. It is likely the Philippines will soon overtake Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, to become the worst-hit nation in south-east Asia. Testing rates in both countries remain low. There have so far been 2,104 deaths in the Philippines.  

On Tuesday, the commuter trains, buses and other public vehicles stayed off the main roads and police were again staffing checkpoints to restrict public travel. Most domestic flights to and from the capital were cancelled, and night curfews will return in places. The lockdown will remain in place for two weeks. 

In a state of the nation address last week, Duterte promised to respond to the virus “with the same fervour” as he had pursued the war on drugs, a campaign in which as many as tens of thousands of people are feared to have died in extra-judicial killings. He told the public not to despair, stating: “The vaccine is around the corner. Sooner and not later, the virus that gobbled up thousands of lives will itself be laid to rest.”  

The World Health Organization has warned that a vaccine will not be available until 2021, if at all. 

There is growing speculation that Duterte’s popularity, which has remained high even during the brutal drugs war, could be undermined by his handling of the pandemic. Despite presenting himself as a strongman leader who gets things done, analysts say he has failed to produce a coherent national response to either the economic or health crises facing the country.

"I would be very surprised if his approval ratings are not negatively affected by his response to the pandemic. Unlike the war on drugs, and the alleged extra judicial killings, this pandemic has affected everyone,” said Jean Encinas Franco, associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines.  

An earlier lockdown in the Philippines, which caused misery for the poorest and was strictly enforced by the military, failed to stop the outbreak. Some argued that the government attempted to reopen the economy too quickly, and without adequate measures to protect against a surge in infections. 

“The Philippines has had the longest, strictest lockdown in the world but the government of Duterte wasted all that effort,” said Antonio La Viña, former dean of the Ateneo School of Governance. He added that Duterte has adopted a “coercive and blame the people approach” which has been both divisive and ineffective.

Bolivians driven from pillar to post as Covid-19 overwhelms hospitals

Via The Guardian: Bolivians driven from pillar to post as Covid-19 overwhelms hospitals. Excerpt:

In the two weeks before he died from suspected Covid-19, Grover Ponce was shuttled between six hospitals, as his wife Paola Medina battled the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Bolivia’s health system.  

Just days after he was finally admitted to the Santiago Segundo hospital in the city of El Alto, he had to be rushed to intensive care. But by then it was too late. He suffered two cardiorespiratory arrests and died on Sunday.  

“I could say a million things, but nothing will bring back my husband,” said Medina, 41, her voice breaking as she spoke by phone from the crowded main cemetery in downtown La Paz. 

“Obviously, I feel very, very angry with the health system,” Medina said. “They have made it so hard – and there are many people like me who didn’t know where to turn.” 

Ponce’s death, and his wife’s desperate efforts to save his life, have resonated with Bolivians as their country’s health service buckles under a surging coronavirus caseload. 

The daily number of new cases peaked on Thursday as the country of 11.5 million people reported 75,234 cases and 2,894 deaths – although experts suspect the true figure is much higher. 

A special police unit has collected more than 3,300 bodies from their homes or left lying in the street, about 80% of whom are suspected to have been infected with Covid-19. 

“Sometimes the patients are already dead when they arrive,” said Norma, an emergency nurse in one of La Paz’s main public hospitals who didn’t want to give her second name. “We feel powerless – we can’t give them oxygen because there are so many who need it. To see them die like that is just awful.” 

Norma, a mother of three, said she was obliged to continue working even though she had tested positive for Covid-19. “Eighty per cent of us must be infected by now and the worst is that we are going home and infecting our families,” she said.  

In desperation, many Bolivians have turned to homemade quack cures such as consuming chlorine dioxide, a toxic disinfectant, to treat the virus. The country’s health ministry warned against it, but last month Bolivia’s opposition-controlled congress promoted the chemical and the senate approved a bill for its supply and manufacture. 

Presidential elections, first slated for May, have been postponed for a second time, which will leave Bolivia’s interim president, Jeanine Áñez, in power until the end of the year. 

Áñez, who this week announced she had recovered from coronavirus, has been in office since late last year when Evo Morales was forced to step down amid electoral fraud allegations and fled the country.  

“The transitional government has been landed with a really poor health system, without economic resources, without equipment, without hospitals and without human resources,” said Dr Luís Larrea, president of La Paz’s chapter of the Bolivian Medical Association. 

The region of La Paz had just 74 intensive care doctors for more than 2 million people, he said.  

“They’ve made museums, they’ve made grand buildings for leaders but they didn’t think about health,” he said.

The epistemic tragedy of COVID-19 misinformation

Via Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop writes: The epistemic tragedy of coronavirus misinformation. Excerpt:

Yesterday, four of the most powerful men on earth—Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook; Jeff Bezos, of Amazon; Tim Cook, of Apple; and Sundar Pichai, of Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube—were dragged to Capitol Hill (well, a videoconference) to answer to a subcommittee of the House of Representatives. As well as allegations of monopolistic practices, abuses of privacy, and political bias, lawmakers asked about the spread of misinformation on social media, including content related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. 

Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who chairs the subcommittee, grilled Zuckerberg on a nonsense-stuffed COVID video that went massively viral earlier this week before Facebook pulled it down. Cicilline accused Facebook of exploiting such harmful content to juice engagement. Zuckerberg denied this. 

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, also asked about the incident. He described a claim from the video as “a legitimate matter of discussion,” and wanted to know why Facebook had punished Donald Trump, Jr., for sharing it. Zuckerberg gently replied that Twitter, not Facebook, had acted against Trump, Jr. So such hearings go. 

The content that perturbed Cicilline and Sensenbrenner, for different reasons, was published on Monday by Breitbart, and featured a group of doctors, in immaculate medical garb, making far-from-immaculate claims, including that masks don’t work against COVID-19, and that hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug beloved of the president and his boosters, is a COVID “cure,” which, by all credible accounts, it is not. 

As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer has reported, one of the doctors in the video—Stella Immanuel, a physician and religious minister in Houston—has claimed, in the past, that having sex with demons and witches can cause gynecological problems, that alien DNA is used in human medicine, and that aliens and reptiles help run the government, which, by the way, is working to vaccinate us against religion. 

Immanuel thanked the Daily Beast for Sommer’s story, which she said did “a great job summarizing our deliverance ministry and exposing incubus and succubus.” (Don’t ask.) She also invited the Beast (italics definitely necessary) to contact her should it ever find itself in need of “deliverance from these spirits.”

I digress. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all removed the video, citing various violations of their COVID-19 misinformation policies and general terms of service, but not before it had found some high-profile fans. Madonna shared it, and called Immanuel her “hero.” President Trump shared variants of the video; Twitter eventually scrubbed it from his account, though it didn’t temporarily block the president from tweeting, as it had done with his son, because the president only retweeted the video, whereas Trump, Jr., uploaded it himself. 

At a briefing on Tuesday, the president declared himself “very impressed” with Immanuel. When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed him on Immanuel’s past claims, Trump walked out. And so such briefings go.  

Junk about the coronavirus keeps cycling through our information ecosystem. The news media bears responsibility for that; as David Leonhardt, of the New York Times, put it yesterday, there are many reasons why the US has a worse COVID outbreak than any other rich country, “but one of them is the size and strength of right-wing media organizations that frequently broadcast falsehoods.” Flotsam washes from dark corners of the web right into conservative institutions—to cite one recent example, a COVID conspiracy video called Plandemic went viral online, leading Sinclair, the local-news chain, to interview one of its stars for a segment it planned to broadcast to millions of Americans. Under immense pressure, it reversed course. 

Such dynamics invite coverage from the reality-based media; we make clear that the claims we’re covering are bogus, but we are still, in the eyes of many information experts, contributing to a form of seepage. By the time one cycle is done, a new one has begun. As Casey Newton, of The Verge, pointed out this week, the Immanuel video “racked up nearly three times the views that the most-shared Plandemic video did in half the time.” We covered that. Then Congress got involved, and we covered Congress getting involved. Rinse. Repeat.  

Despite their COVID misinformation policies, social media companies could act much more quickly to remove harmful content, or at least limit its virality. The many calls for such action come amid a broader period of reckoning for the tech giants. Facebook, in particular, has faced loud complaints, including a staff walkout and a boycott by advertisers, about its laissez-faire approach to hate, including posts by Trump; others, including Zuckerberg, have argued that it isn’t Facebook’s role to interfere with political speech. 

In many ways, the problem of COVID misinformation is part of the same conversation. The threatened shooting of protesters and the threat of the virus both involve potential harm, albeit in different ways. And medicine is inseparable from politics, especially right now.