In the 2021 booklet Confronting Health Misinformation¹ produced by the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, M.D., M.B.A. says:

“I am urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health, and undermine public health efforts.”

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, along with prominent scholars, responded by saying much of the misinformation causing this confusion and mistrust is rooted in poor action and communication of government entities.² This is true. 

In an interview with The Washington Post in July of 2021, Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, said:

“And what that experience [with the vaccine] tells us is two things… the vaccine remains remarkably effective at reducing infection rates…[and] it also has a very strong safety profile and that the rare risks, you know, of anything you may experience with the vaccine are far outweighed, in fact, by the tremendous benefits that you receive by not having COVID… We have more experience with this vaccine than we do with many other health products that–you know, at this stage of their development.”³

The Surgeon General’s statements here are patently false. Even at the time, this interview was given, Dr. Murthy and other officials knew the vaccines were increasingly ineffective in stopping the spread of the disease.⁴

Dr. Murthy’s conclusions lack any scientific basis, and he, along with other Federal officials, increasingly conclude that the current vaccines are utterly incapable of reducing the spread of this disease, so much so that they risk a doomsday variant.⁵

The Center for Disease Control (CDC), to this day, continues to promulgate guidance that Americans should wash their hands and disinfect surfaces to combat COVID-19. However, COVID-19 is an airborne virus; washing hands and surfaces to combat COVID-19 is, on the whole, useless.⁶ The CDC has compelled Americans to use masks, even though the CDC had no data to support this requirement⁷ — and still doesn’t to this day.⁸

The FDA has approved and advocated the use of Remdesivir as a COVID-19 antiviral. However, research shows Remdesivir is useless against COVID-19⁹ — and has adverse effects, so concerning the WHO refuses to recommend the drug’s use.¹⁰

The government told Americans that the EUA vaccines would protect them indefinitely against COVID-19. Dr. Fauci claimed that the vaccines would, in effect, cure COVID-19 like vaccines have largely eradicated polio. New data shows the vaccines provide little, if any, protection against infection and swiftly waning protection against serious cases.¹¹

Moreover, misinformation is not just what is said, but also what information the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) censors from being said. Scientific studies and reviews were conducted throughout the pandemic, which provided helpful and effective ways to battle COVID-19. However, when studies offered a differing narrative than the HHS’s myopic interpretation, those same government officials, along with others, went to extensive lengths to censor sources from informing the public. 

When the government’s own sources of, what should be science-driven information, only offers one narrative, even in the face of the contrary, competing science — and the government goes further to extinguish other information — the public lacks information to make informed health choices and trust in public health offices diminishes. This compels people to seek out their own sources of information, the creation and expansion of unsubstantiated theories, and the spread of misinformation.

The point of government agencies like HHS sharing information should not be to control the narrative (and thus the public) to one determined end, but to provide good information so the public can make well-informed decisions — allowing people to choose their own actions to provide for their own health.

Without using and sharing all good information, society suffers.

Along with being concerned about the spread of misinformation, the Surgeon General should also be concerned about the lack of genuine support for all good information available. Without that kind of support, the public begins to doubt and mistrust the government, its officials, and their representatives, creating the havoc and confusion witnessed throughout the pandemic.

In a free and democratic nation, the free marketplace of ideas and solutions cannot survive government control and censorship. That is the risk we face today.

References:

¹ https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-misinformation-advisory.pdf
² https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/INAG/2022/05/16/file_attachments/2159907/Indiana%20Attorney%20General%20COVID%20Misinformation%20Submission.pdf 

³ Winfield Cunningham, P., & Murthy, V. (2021, July 16). Coronavirus: Vaccines & Variants with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, MD. The Washington Post Live. other, The Washington Post. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2021/07/16/transcript-coronavirus-vaccines-variants-with-us-surgeon-general-vivek-h-murthy-md/. 

⁴ Wang, et al., Severe breakthrough COVID-19 cases in the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant era, Lancet, Jan. 1, 2022, available at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00306-2/fulltext – article Information (reporting data from July 2021 and before and finding numbers of even severe breakthrough cases of COVID-19 rising); Johns Hopkins Medicine, Coronavirus Second Wave, Third Wave and Beyond: What Causes a COVID Surge, Oct. 21, 2021, available at https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/first-and-second-waves-of-coronavirus (“Another surge began in July 2021 as the contagious delta variant began to circulate and eventually become dominant. Waning immunity and relaxation of public policies and infection prevention measures also played a role.”) 

⁵ Stephanie Armour, Can We Develop a Covid-19 Vaccine That Lasts?, Wall St. J., June 17, 2022, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-we-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-that-lasts-11655478373. But the COVID vaccines don’t last nearly as long as shots given for other viral illnesses…Even more worrisome to some scientists and public health officials, the current vaccines don’t fully protect against infections, which hurts their overall effectiveness and gives the virus an opportunity to mutate into more contagious and lethal strains. Id.; see also Id. (statement of Peter Marks, Dir FDA Ctr of Biologics Eval and Research, “In terms of what really keeps me up at night, it’s the knowledge that we can’t keep boosting.”)

⁶ Xiao J, Shiu E, Gao H, Wong JY, Fong MW, Ryu S, et al. Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures. Emerg Infect Dis. 2020;26(5):967-975, available at https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2605.190994.

⁷ Peeples, L., Face Masks What the Data Say, Nature, Oct. 6, 2020, available at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8.

⁸ Xiao J, Shiu E, Gao H, Wong JY, Fong MW, Ryu S, et al. Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures. Emerg Infect Dis. 2020;26(5):967-975, available at https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2605.190994.

⁹ Institute for Antiviral Research, Utah State University, Study Report; Antiviral Efficacy Against Virus Infections in Human-Derived Tracheal/Bronchial Epithelial Cells, Dec. 1, 2021

¹⁰ WHO recommends against the use of remdesivir in COVID-19 patients, Nov. 20, 2020, available at https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-recommends-against-the-use-of-remdesivir-in-covid-19-patients.

¹¹ Stephanie Armour, Can We Develop a Covid-19 Vaccine That Lasts?, Wall St. J., June 17, 2022, available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-we-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-that-lasts-11655478373.

Image: Reuters