Op-Ed: COVID Vax Misinformation May Be Our Worst Enemy

President Biden’s sweeping new COVID-19 response plan has put the country in a stronger position to defeat the virus. But as the attack on the U.S. Capitol last month made clear, the single biggest challenge the Biden administration faces in saving American lives isn’t vaccine distribution, it’s online misinformation. Just as the spread of election misinformation drove Americans to commit acts of sedition and attack the heart of our democracy, vaccine misinformation has the power to deal a death blow to the nation’s COVID-19 response. The good news is there are concrete steps the Biden administration can take to fight back.

Vaccine misinformation on social media is corroding trust in science when we need it most. Nearly 40% of Americans say they aren’t planning on getting vaccinated, putting us far short of the 70%-75% public health experts say will be needed to reach herd immunity and contain the pandemic. Black and brown communities that have borne a disproportionate brunt of the virus are even more hesitant to get vaccinated. Because ending the pandemic is contingent upon getting enough people to accept a vaccine, the COVID-19 crisis cannot be solved without addressing the misinformation crisis at the same time — they are inextricably linked.

Social media giants have actively grown this crisis by their work over many years to help a small but vocal group of users spread conspiracy theories intended to undermine confidence in vaccines. A 2017 study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Vaccine analyzed the interactions of 2.6 million Facebook users over seven years and found the platform pushed users into echo chambers, polarized their beliefs in vaccines, and likely contributed to vaccine avoidance. In 2019, vaccine hesitancy fueled the worst measles outbreak in the U.S. in over 30 years.

But the growth of online vaccine misinformation wasn’t a random aberration, it was a business model. Both Facebook and YouTube have ignored warnings from their own researchers that their algorithms boost extremist content to keep users engaged. One report found anti-vaxxers’ followers alone are worth an estimated $1 billion to tech companies. So when COVID-19 struck, social media platforms became a hotbed of misinformation while reporting staggering profits.

An Accountable Tech study of Facebook found the company’s algorithms actively boosted COVID-19 content already marked as false, including claims that masks are “mind control devices,” vaccines will cause autism, and the virus was created by Bill Gates so that he could profit from a vaccine. The results have proved fatal. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, localities exposed to content downplaying the pandemic saw more cases and deaths because residents ignored public health precautions.

Increasing public pressure has prompted Facebook to respond. Well over a year into the pandemic, Facebook recently announced it would remove false claims about vaccines. But Facebook has made bold promises before. In fact, they made similar promises to crack down on vaccine misinformation in 2019 following the measles outbreak, only to turn a blind eye as anti-vaxxers gained millions of new followers and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation spread across their platform.

The stakes are too high to take these companies at their word. Combating misinformation must be a central feature of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response, leveraging their power to hold social media giants to account. There are specific steps they should take immediately.

First, the Biden administration should appoint a misinformation expert to its COVID-19 task force, responsible for coordinating strategy across government agencies and holding platforms accountable to their promises. Jeffrey Zients – Biden’s coronavirus czar – is a former Facebook board member, so he knows first-hand the magnitude of the threats posed by this information crisis.

Second, the administration should launch a public health information campaign dedicated to debunking harmful COVID-19 misinformation in real-time. Just as the nation’s leading cybersecurity agency created an online hub to debunk election misinformation, this effort should include a website and regular public briefings. And they should urge the social media companies to join this effort by signing an agreement with the administration to publish aggregate data about COVID-19 conspiracy theories gaining traction.

Finally, the administration should publicly encourage platforms to implement common-sense changes to curtail the spread of vaccine-related misinformation. For example, because a disproportionate amount of harmful content can be tied back to a small number of users, platforms should implement a COVID-19 “pre-clearance system” for vaccine-related posts from highly influential accounts. Utilizing existing proactive detection technologies, these posts would be flagged before publication for expedited human review. According to Avaaz, content from the top ten websites spreading health misinformation on Facebook had almost four times as many views as equivalent content from ten leading health institutions, including the CDC. Unlike Facebook’s new promise to remove anti-vax content, a COVID-19 preclearance system could help stop misinformation before it causes harm.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re not there yet. To reach the other side and beat COVID-19, President Biden needs to convince the American public to take a vaccine. It will be one of the most important tasks of his presidency, and to be successful he will need to rebuild confidence and trust in science and facts. That starts with tackling online misinformation.

Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) is the co-founder of Accountable Tech, a nonprofit dedicated to combating online misinformation. Joseph V. Sakran, MD, MPH (@JosephSakran), is a trauma surgeon, public health expert, and director of emergency general surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Last Updated February 22, 2021

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