November 26, 2020 • 14 mins
With a Covid-19 vaccine on the horizon, Stephanie speaks with public health expert and professor of epidemiology at Kent State University, Tara Smith, about the misinformation campaign launched against a potential COVID vaccine. And they discuss how misinformation spreads on social media and why it threatens the success of a future vaccine program.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The seeds of doubt have already been planted across the
political spectrum from people who believe that maybe on the left,
they really buy into the belief that pharmaceutical companies released
this virus to create a vaccine that will, you know,
provide them a huge profit. And on the right you
have people that maybe believe the government was involved in
releasing this vaccine, or the Chinese government. I think that
(00:22):
the commonality between both of those is really still distrust
or mistrust of some of these institutions. It used to
be that our biggest political debates as a nation were
over things like gun control, clean energy, and education reform,
but the coronavirus pandemic has fueled new fights over things
that aren't really political at all. Wearing masks, washing hands,
(00:45):
listening to science, and in the background, largely on social media,
a misinformation campaign spread widely promoting ideas from COVID's not
real to masks make you more susceptible to the virus.
And lastly, it's a sophisticated conspiracy orchestrated by big pharma
looking to profit. There are messages that actually resonate across
(01:07):
the political spectrum, and now as so many of us
prepare for the holidays, hoping and wishing for a time
when we can see our families safely. We're faced with
good news about an effective vaccine. Oxford University just announced
its vaccine is at least effective, making it now the
third promising candidate. Health officials now say the first Americans
(01:29):
could get the vaccine within three weeks. But what happens
when Americans don't want to be first in line. I'm
Stephanie Rule, MSNBC Anchor, NBC News Senior correspondent, And this
is Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think and I
Heart Radio. On this episode of Modern Rules, we're looking
(01:51):
at how to fringe groups came together to spread misinformation
about a common grape, a COVID vaccine, and we're asking
the question, is in America two divided for a vaccine
to fix it? Tara Smith is a professor of epidemiology
at Kent State University and expert in public health and
(02:12):
an NBC Think contributor. Tara, welcome, thank you for having
me on. I want you to start by just setting
the stage for us. You've got politics and play here
from those who want to say COVID isn't real and
then you've got fringe players who want to profit. When
you look at anti vaxx or movements, what is it about?
(02:32):
Who are the other players here? So the players that
really are on the front lines here are ones that
have been involved in the anti vaccine movement for years
to even decades. So one that really rose to prominence
is a former scientists named Judy mcavitts, and she was
the one who is behind the plandemic movie that went
(02:53):
viral in the spring. Some other big ones are Andrew Wakefield,
who was a disgraced British doctor who put forward the
first paper suggesting that autism was caused by the MMR vaccine,
which still leads people to fear vaccines to this day.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who is environmental lawyer, did some
good work on mercury and the environment, but then switched
(03:15):
to vaccines and has gotten a big audience from that.
And Del Bigtree, who is a former producer for the
TV show The Doctors and then kind of went out
on his own and really drives a lot of this
misinformation as well. So those are the ones that I
really can reserve my ire for. Those are the ones
who originate a lot of this misinformation and spread it
(03:38):
to you know, their followers, of which there are millions
on their social media channels. Though, if you have the
anti vax or community that for years have been looking
for a big stage, who just gave them the stage?
Was this pandemic a way for this message and this
mission to catapult in a much much bigger way. So
(04:00):
I think audiences is for the most part, skeptical parents.
Now all of a sudden, you have a vaccine or
a vaccine and development for this pandemic virus that potentially
could affect all of us. So we expect that the vaccine,
when it's available, it will be you know, marketed to
adults and children. So it's not something that you know,
only parents have to worry about. Is something that everyone
(04:22):
has to be concerned about. And I think there's an opening.
And so as some of the leaders of the movement
took advantage of that. They knew that this was a
new vaccine, they knew that that's an area where lots
of people are going to have skepticism, so they really
kind of amped up their messaging and I think it
has spread beyond their typical audience. The anti vaccine movement
already had the structure in place, and they have local
(04:45):
anti vaccine groups, national anti vaccine groups, so those were
already in place to spread some of this misinformation. And
you already had people who already were skeptical, who already
were hooked into these networks, mostly on social media, so
they were able to I think, effectively sell this. I
want to get specific on this one because we talked
broadly about the dangers of misinformation. It's a general term
(05:09):
and we use it a lot these days, but specifically
walk us through how COVID deniers have used the anti
vaccine community and their strategies to supercharge their effort. These
ideas that coronavirus is really just about government control, that
it's infringing on personal freedom and civil liberties just as
(05:31):
vaccine mandates are, that it can actually harm people instead
of help them. All of these ideas that really are
have have similar ideas to the anti vaccine movement. They
have kind of taken them for their own, adjusted them
for coronavirus, and spread them out to their followers. So
you have it on the right side of the political spectrum,
(05:51):
mostly in people who kind of lean libertarian, who don't
let the government involved in their daily decisions. And then
you have people that lean a little bit more toward
the left that have this kind of natural lifestyle, right,
so you know, avoid chemicals, avoid preservatives and food, avoid
anything that is not organic. And so you have those
(06:14):
individuals who are um kind of position to see vaccines
as a natural and as something that is being injected
into their child's body with perhaps ingredients that they don't
understand or don't trust. Even though there are reasons for
being skeptical of these vaccines may be different, they come
to the same ultimate conclusion, which is, we're not ready
(06:34):
for a vaccine. We don't trust it, we don't think
it's necessary. So you have a COVID denying group who
refused to wear masks and refused to quarantine. That's one group.
Then you have an anti vaccine group that's another group.
And then you have a third group that in all
normal circumstances are pro vaccine, but because they fear that
(06:55):
the president is trying to push this thing through for politics.
Is that what's made this anti vaccination movement so powerful. Yes, exactly.
And I think there's a lot of overlap between kind
of the general anti vactors and the anti maskers or
COVID deniers, and I think the ones who are skeptical
(07:16):
because this vaccine is coming out of a Trump administration
are are kind of a separate group from those. I
understand the reaction. You have to put your trust in someone,
and if you're putting your trust in a government institution
that you all believe in that you think has wronged you,
understandably you're not going to accept what they are saying.
(07:38):
We'll be back after the break. So what's interesting is
anti vaxers don't have a stereotype, right is that what
makes it so hard to cut it off. What it
(07:59):
takes to sway them, regardless of what side they're on,
usually is some kind of a personal connection, unless they
have somebody in their family or a close friend or
something like that who has had a really serious case
and maybe even died from it. Those are the types
of things that unfortunately it takes to change minds, whether
coming in from the mindset of either side, it really
(08:22):
feeds some of these pre existing biases that people have.
I mean, I totally understand that people are distrustful of
pharmaceutical companies. I totally understand that they're just trustful of
the government. And so when you write articles against vaccination
and you pull in some of those pre existing biases,
people believe those articles. People share those articles because they
(08:43):
generate outrage two institutions that people already largely dislike. They
use that outrage. They use that knowledge to get those
articles to be pushed higher and higher, and the stories sell.
The stories get circulated on social media, and that can
be terrifying to parents. You know, you can't really counter
(09:04):
some of those emotional stories with dry scientific evidence. The
story is out there, the emotion is out there, and
that's what people really latch onto. I often say on
my show, the truth matters, but only if you see it,
only if you hear it. How much of this misinformation
stronghold can we blame social media for? If I wanted
(09:27):
to write an article that said the vaccine they're working
on is going to make men go bald, women are
gonna become infertile, and children are gonna end up with
two left feet, and I wanted to publish that on
NBC news dot Com tomorrow, that would not be an
option for me. Legal and standards would give me my
walking papers. However, if I wanted to write that article
and buy the domain Concerned American Moms dot com. I
(09:50):
could do that, plug it into all of these Facebook groups,
and within hours or minutes it could be out there
in the universe, and by dinner time, my mom is
calling me on the phone warning me against it. How
much has social media played a role in this and
how much harder has it made it for you to
do your job? Social media in cases kind of a nightmare.
(10:13):
I use it to try to, you know, talk to
people directly, to get my messages out there. I don't
have millions of followers, so anything from kind of their
side tends to spread faster and to percolate, so it
spreads really quickly, and it's really hard once something is
out there to pull it back right. Pinterest has been
one that for a long time has kind of cracked
(10:34):
down on some of this Facebook and Twitter less, so
I know it's really a lot of whack a mole
that you take down the groups, but then they just
pop up again. So I don't know that you know,
just eliminating them from certain platforms is going to be
the answer. I think that can help sometimes, but you
really have to have people at those social media companies
who are really invested in that and really understand what
(10:56):
it means to eliminate them from those platforms without them
just popping back up. But this is real life, and
this is really happening. How dangerous do you think it is? Right?
You're not going to return immunity levels if you don't
get enough people to take it, And so I think
that is what is so concerning here. You know, once
you're into some of those anti vaccine groups, especially on
social media, it's really hard to get disentangled from those.
(11:19):
My concern, of course, is that this is going to
bring more people into their ideas without examining them closely,
just kind of jumping on the bandwagon and becoming part
of those groups. Public confidence in vaccines in general, in
vaccination is significantly higher than public confidence in a coronavirus vaccine,
(11:41):
and that is absolutely attributable to politics. Right usually, where
we would have the CDC to act as kind of
an arbiter of truth, we know that the CDC has
also been politicized. So I think it's understandable that there
is just a lot of mistrust out there about the science,
about vaccines, about everything that is going on during this pandemic.
(12:02):
So given where we are in this moment in time,
that you've got so much misinformation out there, You've got
anti vaxers, other people who want to deny COVID, what's
the real impact of this. Yeah, and I think we
don't know that. I mean, I think we can see
right now some of the COVID denial aspects are leading
to increasing spread. You know, people who are not distancing,
(12:24):
who are not wearing masks, who are not listening to
guidance about gatherings. You know, that's what we're seeing, at
least in the Midwest. Most of our cases are coming
from like small family gatherings, you know, weddings or reunions
or just dinners with people that usually you don't see.
They are happening inside and unmasked, you know, extended period
of time, and that's how people are getting this infection.
(12:47):
I'm hoping that, you know, once we do have a
COVID vaccine available, that people will see others using it.
I mean, we anticipate that frontline workers would get at first,
and that other people who are at high risk, followed
by kind of the general public. So I'm hoping that
people will see in those groups, that it is safe,
that it is effective, that it is something that has
(13:08):
been studied well by the pharmaceutical companies, and they didn't
release a bad product. So I'm hoping that could change
the tide a little bit. In this podcast, we are
(13:29):
trying to get straight to the point and leave you
some time to think. Something Tara left me thinking is this.
For months, everyone has talked about a return to normal,
but increasingly it looks like the only way we'll even
start to get there is if enough people take an
effective vaccine. That is why these fringe movements and misinformation
campaigns are dangerous and why every single American should care
(13:52):
how widespread they are. Misinformation can be fought, but what
defense do we really have in place to protect against it?
And if a vaccine camp bring us together, what will
I'm Stephanie Rule and you're listening to Modern Rules, a
podcast from NBC Think, MSNBC and I Heart Radio. This
(14:14):
podcast is hosted by Me Stephanie Rule. Mike Beet and
Katrina Norvell are executive producers. Meredith Bennett Smith is Senior
editor for NBC Think and our editorial lead. The podcast
is engineered and edited by Josh Fisher, Additional production support
provided by Charles Herman, Rachel Rosenbaum and Lauren Wynn, and
special thanks to Katherine kim Are, Global head of Digital
(14:35):
News right here at NBC News and MSNBC. For more
thought provoking analysis, visit NBC news dot com slash thing
The seeds of doubt have already been planted across the
political spectrum from people who believe that maybe on the left,
they really buy into the belief that pharmaceutical companies released
this virus to create a vaccine that will, you know,
provide them a huge profit. And on the right you
have people that maybe believe the government was involved in
releasing this vaccine, or the Chinese government. I think that
(00:22):
the commonality between both of those is really still distrust
or mistrust of some of these institutions. It used to
be that our biggest political debates as a nation were
over things like gun control, clean energy, and education reform,
but the coronavirus pandemic has fueled new fights over things
that aren't really political at all. Wearing masks, washing hands,
(00:45):
listening to science, and in the background, largely on social media,
a misinformation campaign spread widely promoting ideas from COVID's not
real to masks make you more susceptible to the virus.
And lastly, it's a sophisticated conspiracy orchestrated by big pharma
looking to profit. There are messages that actually resonate across
(01:07):
the political spectrum, and now as so many of us
prepare for the holidays, hoping and wishing for a time
when we can see our families safely. We're faced with
good news about an effective vaccine. Oxford University just announced
its vaccine is at least effective, making it now the
third promising candidate. Health officials now say the first Americans
(01:29):
could get the vaccine within three weeks. But what happens
when Americans don't want to be first in line. I'm
Stephanie Rule, MSNBC Anchor, NBC News Senior correspondent, And this
is Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think and I
Heart Radio. On this episode of Modern Rules, we're looking
(01:51):
at how to fringe groups came together to spread misinformation
about a common grape, a COVID vaccine, and we're asking
the question, is in America two divided for a vaccine
to fix it? Tara Smith is a professor of epidemiology
at Kent State University and expert in public health and
(02:12):
an NBC Think contributor. Tara, welcome, thank you for having
me on. I want you to start by just setting
the stage for us. You've got politics and play here
from those who want to say COVID isn't real and
then you've got fringe players who want to profit. When
you look at anti vaxx or movements, what is it about?
(02:32):
Who are the other players here? So the players that
really are on the front lines here are ones that
have been involved in the anti vaccine movement for years
to even decades. So one that really rose to prominence
is a former scientists named Judy mcavitts, and she was
the one who is behind the plandemic movie that went
(02:53):
viral in the spring. Some other big ones are Andrew Wakefield,
who was a disgraced British doctor who put forward the
first paper suggesting that autism was caused by the MMR vaccine,
which still leads people to fear vaccines to this day.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who is environmental lawyer, did some
good work on mercury and the environment, but then switched
(03:15):
to vaccines and has gotten a big audience from that.
And Del Bigtree, who is a former producer for the
TV show The Doctors and then kind of went out
on his own and really drives a lot of this
misinformation as well. So those are the ones that I
really can reserve my ire for. Those are the ones
who originate a lot of this misinformation and spread it
(03:38):
to you know, their followers, of which there are millions
on their social media channels. Though, if you have the
anti vax or community that for years have been looking
for a big stage, who just gave them the stage?
Was this pandemic a way for this message and this
mission to catapult in a much much bigger way. So
(04:00):
I think audiences is for the most part, skeptical parents.
Now all of a sudden, you have a vaccine or
a vaccine and development for this pandemic virus that potentially
could affect all of us. So we expect that the vaccine,
when it's available, it will be you know, marketed to
adults and children. So it's not something that you know,
only parents have to worry about. Is something that everyone
(04:22):
has to be concerned about. And I think there's an opening.
And so as some of the leaders of the movement
took advantage of that. They knew that this was a
new vaccine, they knew that that's an area where lots
of people are going to have skepticism, so they really
kind of amped up their messaging and I think it
has spread beyond their typical audience. The anti vaccine movement
already had the structure in place, and they have local
(04:45):
anti vaccine groups, national anti vaccine groups, so those were
already in place to spread some of this misinformation. And
you already had people who already were skeptical, who already
were hooked into these networks, mostly on social media, so
they were able to I think, effectively sell this. I
want to get specific on this one because we talked
broadly about the dangers of misinformation. It's a general term
(05:09):
and we use it a lot these days, but specifically
walk us through how COVID deniers have used the anti
vaccine community and their strategies to supercharge their effort. These
ideas that coronavirus is really just about government control, that
it's infringing on personal freedom and civil liberties just as
(05:31):
vaccine mandates are, that it can actually harm people instead
of help them. All of these ideas that really are
have have similar ideas to the anti vaccine movement. They
have kind of taken them for their own, adjusted them
for coronavirus, and spread them out to their followers. So
you have it on the right side of the political spectrum,
(05:51):
mostly in people who kind of lean libertarian, who don't
let the government involved in their daily decisions. And then
you have people that lean a little bit more toward
the left that have this kind of natural lifestyle, right,
so you know, avoid chemicals, avoid preservatives and food, avoid
anything that is not organic. And so you have those
(06:14):
individuals who are um kind of position to see vaccines
as a natural and as something that is being injected
into their child's body with perhaps ingredients that they don't
understand or don't trust. Even though there are reasons for
being skeptical of these vaccines may be different, they come
to the same ultimate conclusion, which is, we're not ready
(06:34):
for a vaccine. We don't trust it, we don't think
it's necessary. So you have a COVID denying group who
refused to wear masks and refused to quarantine. That's one group.
Then you have an anti vaccine group that's another group.
And then you have a third group that in all
normal circumstances are pro vaccine, but because they fear that
(06:55):
the president is trying to push this thing through for politics.
Is that what's made this anti vaccination movement so powerful. Yes, exactly.
And I think there's a lot of overlap between kind
of the general anti vactors and the anti maskers or
COVID deniers, and I think the ones who are skeptical
(07:16):
because this vaccine is coming out of a Trump administration
are are kind of a separate group from those. I
understand the reaction. You have to put your trust in someone,
and if you're putting your trust in a government institution
that you all believe in that you think has wronged you,
understandably you're not going to accept what they are saying.
(07:38):
We'll be back after the break. So what's interesting is
anti vaxers don't have a stereotype, right is that what
makes it so hard to cut it off. What it
(07:59):
takes to sway them, regardless of what side they're on,
usually is some kind of a personal connection, unless they
have somebody in their family or a close friend or
something like that who has had a really serious case
and maybe even died from it. Those are the types
of things that unfortunately it takes to change minds, whether
coming in from the mindset of either side, it really
(08:22):
feeds some of these pre existing biases that people have.
I mean, I totally understand that people are distrustful of
pharmaceutical companies. I totally understand that they're just trustful of
the government. And so when you write articles against vaccination
and you pull in some of those pre existing biases,
people believe those articles. People share those articles because they
(08:43):
generate outrage two institutions that people already largely dislike. They
use that outrage. They use that knowledge to get those
articles to be pushed higher and higher, and the stories sell.
The stories get circulated on social media, and that can
be terrifying to parents. You know, you can't really counter
(09:04):
some of those emotional stories with dry scientific evidence. The
story is out there, the emotion is out there, and
that's what people really latch onto. I often say on
my show, the truth matters, but only if you see it,
only if you hear it. How much of this misinformation
stronghold can we blame social media for? If I wanted
(09:27):
to write an article that said the vaccine they're working
on is going to make men go bald, women are
gonna become infertile, and children are gonna end up with
two left feet, and I wanted to publish that on
NBC news dot Com tomorrow, that would not be an
option for me. Legal and standards would give me my
walking papers. However, if I wanted to write that article
and buy the domain Concerned American Moms dot com. I
(09:50):
could do that, plug it into all of these Facebook groups,
and within hours or minutes it could be out there
in the universe, and by dinner time, my mom is
calling me on the phone warning me against it. How
much has social media played a role in this and
how much harder has it made it for you to
do your job? Social media in cases kind of a nightmare.
(10:13):
I use it to try to, you know, talk to
people directly, to get my messages out there. I don't
have millions of followers, so anything from kind of their
side tends to spread faster and to percolate, so it
spreads really quickly, and it's really hard once something is
out there to pull it back right. Pinterest has been
one that for a long time has kind of cracked
(10:34):
down on some of this Facebook and Twitter less, so
I know it's really a lot of whack a mole
that you take down the groups, but then they just
pop up again. So I don't know that you know,
just eliminating them from certain platforms is going to be
the answer. I think that can help sometimes, but you
really have to have people at those social media companies
who are really invested in that and really understand what
(10:56):
it means to eliminate them from those platforms without them
just popping back up. But this is real life, and
this is really happening. How dangerous do you think it is? Right?
You're not going to return immunity levels if you don't
get enough people to take it, And so I think
that is what is so concerning here. You know, once
you're into some of those anti vaccine groups, especially on
social media, it's really hard to get disentangled from those.
(11:19):
My concern, of course, is that this is going to
bring more people into their ideas without examining them closely,
just kind of jumping on the bandwagon and becoming part
of those groups. Public confidence in vaccines in general, in
vaccination is significantly higher than public confidence in a coronavirus vaccine,
(11:41):
and that is absolutely attributable to politics. Right usually, where
we would have the CDC to act as kind of
an arbiter of truth, we know that the CDC has
also been politicized. So I think it's understandable that there
is just a lot of mistrust out there about the science,
about vaccines, about everything that is going on during this pandemic.
(12:02):
So given where we are in this moment in time,
that you've got so much misinformation out there, You've got
anti vaxers, other people who want to deny COVID, what's
the real impact of this. Yeah, and I think we
don't know that. I mean, I think we can see
right now some of the COVID denial aspects are leading
to increasing spread. You know, people who are not distancing,
(12:24):
who are not wearing masks, who are not listening to
guidance about gatherings. You know, that's what we're seeing, at
least in the Midwest. Most of our cases are coming
from like small family gatherings, you know, weddings or reunions
or just dinners with people that usually you don't see.
They are happening inside and unmasked, you know, extended period
of time, and that's how people are getting this infection.
(12:47):
I'm hoping that, you know, once we do have a
COVID vaccine available, that people will see others using it.
I mean, we anticipate that frontline workers would get at first,
and that other people who are at high risk, followed
by kind of the general public. So I'm hoping that
people will see in those groups, that it is safe,
that it is effective, that it is something that has
(13:08):
been studied well by the pharmaceutical companies, and they didn't
release a bad product. So I'm hoping that could change
the tide a little bit. In this podcast, we are
(13:29):
trying to get straight to the point and leave you
some time to think. Something Tara left me thinking is this.
For months, everyone has talked about a return to normal,
but increasingly it looks like the only way we'll even
start to get there is if enough people take an
effective vaccine. That is why these fringe movements and misinformation
campaigns are dangerous and why every single American should care
(13:52):
how widespread they are. Misinformation can be fought, but what
defense do we really have in place to protect against it?
And if a vaccine camp bring us together, what will
I'm Stephanie Rule and you're listening to Modern Rules, a
podcast from NBC Think, MSNBC and I Heart Radio. This
(14:14):
podcast is hosted by Me Stephanie Rule. Mike Beet and
Katrina Norvell are executive producers. Meredith Bennett Smith is Senior
editor for NBC Think and our editorial lead. The podcast
is engineered and edited by Josh Fisher, Additional production support
provided by Charles Herman, Rachel Rosenbaum and Lauren Wynn, and
special thanks to Katherine kim Are, Global head of Digital
(14:35):
News right here at NBC News and MSNBC. For more
thought provoking analysis, visit NBC news dot com slash thing
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