Plain Talk: Conspiracy theorists will try to make 2021 just as difficult as 2020

While we’ll have a new secretary of education who actually knows about and believes in public schools, an EPA head who understands we’ve got to protect our environment and work to prevent more global warming, and a secretary of state who respects our allies and the need to nurture relationships with the rest of the world, you can bet that the Donald Trump cultists and Republican senators will do everything they can to disrupt new President Joe Biden’s administration.

And it’s also clear that we’ll continue to be beset by the conspiracy theorists whose goals are to sow discord among the American public.

A story in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago gave a hint of what’s ahead.

Now that the forces that attempted to overturn the presidential election with their false claims of fraud and illegal voting appear to have failed, many of the leaders of that movement are turning their sights elsewhere. What better place to start than casting doubt about the coronavirus vaccine?

Sidney Powell is the lawyer who dreamed up a theory that asserted “communist money,” the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and a manipulated computer algorithm were all connected in a secret plot to alter potentially millions of ballots to steal the election from Trump. It was, of course, laughed out of court, but nothing will deter her and her echo chamber among believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Now she’s tweeting disinformation that says the U.S. population will be split into the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and “big government” will surveil those who don’t get the COVID-19 shots. It has gained traction on social media.

“This is more authoritarian communist control imported straight from China,” she tweeted.

Apart from Powell, the Times reported, others who have spread political misinformation such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, as well as far-right websites like ZeroHedge, have begun pushing false vaccine narratives, researchers said. Their efforts have been amplified by a robust network of anti-vaccination activists like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

“Among their misleading notions is the idea that the vaccines are delivered with a microchip or bar code to keep track of people, as well as a lie that the vaccines will hurt everyone’s health (the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have been proved to be more than 94% effective in trials, with minimal side effects). Falsehoods about Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist who supports vaccines, have also increased, with rumors that he is responsible for the coronavirus and that he stands to profit from a vaccine,” the report said.

Other Trump supporters who claimed the election was stolen also began posting vaccine falsehoods. Angela Stanton-King, an ex-reality TV star, contended that her father would be forced to take the vaccine, despite the fact that the government hasn’t made it mandatory. She added that her 78-year-old father got COVID-19 before Thanksgiving, was told to go home and quarantine with no prescribed medication.

“He had zero symptoms and is perfectly fine,” she added in her tweet. “Help me understand why we need a mandatory vaccine for a virus that heals itself.”

Problem is, all too many people believe these lies, making it more difficult to convince Americans that in order to end this pandemic, vaccinations are essential.

Yes, we’re starting a new year in a few days, but the conspirators are going to continue trying to make it as difficult as the old one.