(gentle music) - [Narrator] The COVID 19 pandemic has altered our everyday reality, changing our perceptions of the world and each other.

As this novel virus has spread globally, it has infected and killed millions of people, while socially blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

The widespread transmissions, vast death tolls, and uncertainty of this lethal disease has fueled fear, coinciding with established vulnerabilities within our population and structural failures within our media systems.

This has led to rampant misinformation and vaccine hesitancy.

As in the previous episode, the themes of misinformation and disinformation are still relevant.

Disinformation is defined as false information, deliberately or often covertly spread in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.

Often, with the intent to harm.

Misinformation is defined as incorrect or misleading information, usually with the intent to help.

This is Words of Mass Destruction, part two, Confronting COVID.

Humans are highly impressionable creatures who are defined by their communities.

While this is often seen as a positive trait, recently, regarding the COVID 19 vaccine, it has manifested itself negatively, harming people in the process.

Vaccine hesitancy isn't inherently a bad thing.

People should be informed about what is being put in their bodies and should have easy access to unbiased medical information at no cost.

Furthermore, herd immunity can't be achieved without collective acceptance of the COVID 19 vaccine.

Getting vaccinated is not just a personal choice, but is one that also impacts the community as a whole.

We spoke with UC Berkeley Professor of Epidemiology, Dr. Art Reingold, to better understand the factors that weigh into considering the vaccine.

- I've spent 40 years trying to study vaccines, convince people vaccines are safe and effective, that the benefits outweigh the risks, which is the key issue.

I never say things are totally safe.

I never tell people vaccines are 100% safe.

That would be a lie.

No medication you take is 100% safe.

Nothing you do is 100% safe.

So, the balance is, do the benefits outweigh the risks?

- [Narrator] And, we spoke to Professor of Medicine and infectious disease specialist at Temple University, Dr. Thomas Fekete.

- People have had all kinds of funny anxieties about vaccines.

Some of them are a little bit goofy, whether you turn magnetic or have to interact with 5G cell towers.

Other ones are maybe a little more understandable, because they really feel that there's something unknown about vaccines.

They may have other, perhaps, longer term complications.

And, coronaviruses hit people differently.

Some people have had a lot of friends who've been ill, some who've been dying.

Other folks haven't seen as much of it and aren't as worried about it.

So, it's a bit of a complicated situation with this new pandemic virus, because, A, the disease is new, and, B, the vaccine's even newer, and our confidence level as a society is a bit low.

- [Narrator] COVID 19 vaccine hesitancy is a product of community influences including various cultural, political, and familial factors.

Within this video, we will discuss potential reasons for vaccine hesitancy to better understand how our unfiltered social climate impacts that decision.

The first reason we will discuss is generational trauma.

Generational trauma is the result of historical patterns of abuse targeting a specific demographic.

It's worth noting this isn't directly causing huge populations of people to refuse the COVID 19 vaccine.

Instead, this just adds complexity to the challenging decision making process.

In the context of medicine, generational trauma runs clear in communities of color.

Dr. James Marion Sims is known as the father of modern gynecology.

He gained notoriety from gruesome experiments he performed on enslaved Black women to understand female anatomy.

These agonizing procedures were performed without anesthesia based on the stereotype that Black people were immune to pain.

While this practice led to scientific breakthroughs, his exploitive methods and racist reputation fueled a mistrust in the medical community.

During the Cholera epidemic of the Philippines, there were 166,000 documented cases and 109,000 deaths.

Though the true statistics are likely larger, the outbreak was exacerbated by the oppressive colonial government of the United States that used violent tactics to mitigate the disease and stamp out revolutionaries.

This included concentration camps for those infected and burning down the homes near outbreaks, leading to the massacre of indigenous people.

The Tuskeegee syphilis study exploited 600 Black male sharecroppers in Alabama by experimenting on them without their consent.

The project which studied the effects of syphilis on the human body was only supposed to last six months.

However, it continued for 40 years.

The White scientists leading the study purposefully left the subjects untreated, and, by the end of the study, only 74 subjects remained alive.

Compulsory sterilization is the product of the early 20th century social movement, eugenics.

Eugenics sought to genetically improve the human race through racist and ableist practices, like forced sterilization on individuals deemed unfit for society, including minorities, criminals, disabled people, and impoverished individuals.

Tens of thousands of people were forcibly sterilized during the 20th century, and, today, forced and coerced sterilization are still commonly performed.

As early as 2020, whistleblower reports and petitions have asserted that non-consensual sterilization were performed upon dozens of immigrant women in ICE detention centers.

According to the CDC, today in the United States, Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than White women.

The striking statistic is not not only a testament to the absence of quality healthcare within many Black communities, but also to the systemic issue that lead to health conditions that can make childbirth riskier.

The pattern of medical racism doesn't just happen in a historical vacuum or textbook, but can also influence perceptions of authority and medicine today.

This has been exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic with disproportionately high cases among people of color and instances of minority patients receiving insufficient care.

While there aren't extreme vaccination disparities between White communities and communities of color that can be attributed directly to generational trauma, this theme can increase mistrust when considering a vaccine.

- When I hear people talk about vaccines, a lot of it is, I would say, not necessarily a scientific concern.

It's more kind of an emotional one.

And, doctors are not always great at conveying the information that people want to hear, people feel comforted to hear, around matters that are more emotional.

Doctors can quote you numbers and they can tell you about side effect rates, and they can tell you what the plans would be if anything were to happen, and that's great, and nothing's wrong with that, but the emotional part's often hard to capture.

And, do I get mad at people who don't take vaccines?

No, I don't get mad at anybody.

I think that that is a dangerous thing to do.

I just feel bad when people are so misinformed - [Narrator] In our increasingly digital age, vast amounts of information is consumed on a daily basis through social media and news outlets.

While the increased flow of information comes with its benefits, in the context of COVID 19, it has also created easily accessible and widespread misinformation that can subsequently lead to vaccine hesitancy.

- It in an earlier era, if you wanted to come across misinformation about a vaccine or vaccines, you either got it from a relative or a friend or you read it in a magazine that you could buy as you exited the grocery store.

But, these days, anyone who wants to sit in a room and put out utter rubbish on the internet is free to do so.

- [Narrator] The vast and algorithmic nature of the internet leads itself to false realities and echo chambers where lies can be disguised as the truth.

Specifically, the corporate news industry and the rise of QAnon conspiracy theories on social media are prime examples of large platforms having an enormous influence on their viewer's perception.

Today, the corporations, Comcast, Walt Disney, CBS, AT&T, News Corp, and Viacom, control 90% of the news outlets that produce the media we consume daily.

The capitalist nature of these companies motivate them to market their news reports to target audiences and choose media sensationalism at the expense of objective reporting, inherently creating bias in the process.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, some of these mainstream outlets have been especially problematic as a reporting of misinformation has led to COVID denialism and vaccine hesitancy.

We spoke to Dr. Damon Centola, Elihu Katz professor of communication, sociology, and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania to dive deeper into this concept.

- Well, the media is one thing.

There's really two different worlds, right?

So, the media is big business, and it is governed by the interests of the organizations who are presenting the media.

We all know that different news stations have different agendas, so that needs to be taken into account.

But, I would say on social media, which is this largely decentralized space where people are talking to each other, one of the questions becomes, well, if the structure of the interactions people have on social media is affecting what people are ultimately coming to believe, then what can one person do?

- [Narrator] Media personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, and Tucker Carlson maximize their views by exploiting the allure of controversy, feeding into COVID misinformation.

These individuals routinely question the effectiveness of the vaccine, feed into conspiracy theories, and make outlandish claims such as comparing children wearing masks to child abuse.

This wildly inaccurate rhetoric is crafted to incite rage and conspiratorial thinking by purposefully simplifying the CDC health guidance and using logical fallacies to emphasize political agendas.

This damages public health and feeds into conspiracy theories.

QAnon is a far right conspiracy theory that believes there is a satanic sex trafficking ring run by top US government operatives.

The believers of QAnon blindly follow the anonymous social media post of Q, an account that claims to be a government agent with security clearance.

Ever since Q'S first post on October 28th, 2017, these posts have made outlandish claims and called attention to events that encourage sweeping skepticism.

QAnon's following has exploded through social media posts, recognizable hashtags, YouTube videos, and mainstream attention.

As it has grown, its network of theories have also greatly expanded, becoming more outlandish and complex.

These theories and claims have spread from the internet into the real world, creating violence and chaos, and even despite the recent investigation reports revealing the possible identities of those behind the Q drops, the delusion continues.

Both of these trends have been exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic and former President Trump.

As uncertainty in COVID 19 spread, people stayed inside and consumed information online, leading some down a rabbit hole of misinformation and QAnon.

This was supported by former President Trump as he purposefully downplayed the severity of COVID 19, allowing QAnon beliefs to enter the mainstream discourse.

Many claimed that COVID 19 was a hoax and that the government actions to mitigate its spread like mask and vaccine mandates were overreaching and a sign that confirmed their conspiratorial beliefs.

Much of this information was spread through social media.

- One of the... one of the concerns with regard to vaccines and COVID is that simple information, as I said, tends to be information that reinforces our existing beliefs and biases, and that tends to spread very well from highly connected people.

So, this is what we refer to as influencers.

That puts us into kind of a dangerous position where someone who's very highly connected is in a position of disproportionate power and their ability to spread things that are false about a vaccine to people who are willing to believe that thing.

And, that it means that complex information, which challenges that, explains in more detail, some of the risks, but also the benefits, right?

In a way that's more scientifically informed, but also ultimately helping people to get vaccinated in ways that are responsible.

That information doesn't, it's complex, it doesn't spread from those hubs to everybody.

It sort of kind of malingers in the corners of the network.

So, the question is how to activate those corners of the network so that they become more influential on the rest of the population.

- The issue is that these conspiracy theories are acknowledged within the accepted discussion about COVID 19.

A recent NPR poll conducted in December of 2020 showcased this concept by polling American adults on their understanding of mainstream misinformation.

It was found that 69% of US adults either believe or are unsure if COVID 19 was created in a lab in China.

54% of US adults either believe or are unsure if a group of Satan worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics in media.

And, finally, 49% of US adults either believe or are unsure that there's evidence that the vaccine causes autism.

It is clear that these theories show denialism and uncertainty in our society, prolonging COVID 19's influence on our world.

With this in mind, in today's ceaseless whirlwind of information, opinions, and news, it's important to be responsible consumers of information.

While each individual should monitor what they consume, we must also acknowledge that there are greater powers at play in social media algorithms and marketing strategies designed to grab our attention instead of inform.

The systemic issues ingrained in our media and healthcare system are especially disruptive during crisis, whether it's by uncovering the skeletons in our past or through flawed media sites, desperation, panic and fear can push people towards misinformed solutions.

Deriving from the themes of this episode, communication has also done a lot of good in our COVID era.

We've witnessed love and factual guidance spread on the same platforms used to incite hate and spread falsehoods.

It's important to recognize, but not get overwhelmed by, the shortcomings of our reality.

Progress can only happen when optimism persists through a challenging time.

In a social climate where communication is due so much for dishonesty and negativity, how do we transform the narrative as we work towards a COVID free world?

The fluid COVID 19 situation leaves tomorrow suspended in uncertainty.

So, continue to follow our reporting as we cover the developing future in the final episode.

(epic music)