Many Americans who have not yet been vaccinated do not want to be immunized at all. This is said to be due to the amount of misinformation that is in circulation. In a poll, a fifth believed in the microchip conspiracy theory.
The story is as old as the corona vaccinations are new. The vaccinations, it is claimed, serve only one purpose: to implant microchips in people so that they can be controlled. In the crosshairs of the skeptics: Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The stumbling block is said to have been a discussion on Reddit, which from then on grew into one of the most persistent conspiracy stories about the corona vaccination. A narrative that one has now discovered has established itself in the minds of many Americans. A fifth of the 1500 respondents therefore consider the microchip story to be “very true” (5 percent) or “probably true” (15 percent). That would be 42 million US citizens.
US President Joe Biden pressed hard on the tube during the vaccination campaign. Syringes were placed there at record speed, now 3.5 million a day. Biden’s promise that 100 million vaccinations should be administered in his first 100 days in office was already kept after 60 – whereupon he doubled the number of targeted vaccinations. On July 4th, according to the American vaccination dream, the pandemic should be in check. It was planned that 70 percent of all adults should have received at least one vaccination dose by then, and 160 million even complete corona protection. The project failed. Because many Americans do not participate. The number of those who do not want to be vaccinated is still large – and progress in vaccination has long been slowed down.
The pace is up
According to the CDC health authority, 48.6 percent of the American population are now fully vaccinated, and 56 percent have received at least one vaccine dose. So nowhere near the 70 percent that was planned. On the cut-off date, American Independence Day, the “New York Times” (NYT) published an extrapolation instead, according to which, given the vaccination rate at the time, this number could probably not be reached until the end of October. For herd immunity, however, according to estimates by experts, a lot more would have to be vaccinated – namely around 85 percent. But achieving that seems increasingly unlikely in the United States. Because as it turns out, the country is having a hard time convincing those who have not yet been vaccinated.
On the one hand, this includes People of Color. Since they had bad experiences with the health system in the past, for example for medical experiments, they are skeptical about the vaccinations. Many rural US citizens and religious groups are also unconvinced about the vaccinations. There are also many Republican voters. Quite a few believe conspiracy narratives are influenced by misinformation. This is also reflected in the survey. Almost a third (32 percent) of the Republicans surveyed believed that the microchip theory was “very” or “likely” true, compared with 14 percent of the Democrats.
Lots of misinformation – online and on TV
Social media platforms are still a source for such claims. Among other things, the video circulated there claiming that Gates had teamed up with Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma to implant microchips as part of the vaccinations. “It’s so bizarre in a way you might find it almost funny. But I guess it’s actually not that weird,” explained. And made it clear: “I’ve never dealt with any type of microchip.” The theory was not only taken apart by the news agency “Reuters” in a fact check.
On top of that, there is also stink against the vaccination campaign on US television. For example, there is the Fox News Channel, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Although he had himself vaccinated before the US President and asked everyone to do the same, in one of the prime-time shows of his station, however, completely different sounds are struck.
“Scary Stuff”
To give the vaccination campaign a new boost, the government is planning to send people out door to door to explain the vaccinations. That was scary stuff, said presenter Tucker Carlson on the show. This is an attempt to “force people to take medicine they do not want or need”. Carlson and co-host Laura Ingraham and guests on other programs had previously spoken of the fact that the vaccines could be dangerous. It is criticized that the moderators are fueling common arguments of skeptics, namely that the measures to increase the vaccination rate represent a violation of civil rights and are anyway nothing more than a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The spread of misinformation is becoming an increasing problem for vaccination progress in the United States and, as US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said last Thursday, poses a threat to the health system. Companies, including platforms such as Facebook, should take responsibility and change their algorithms, for example. Misinformation should become easier to identify and report, Murthy said. “In general, people aren’t that good at spotting fake news,” Joshua Tucker, co-director of NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics, told Vice News.
In a large study on the subject, Tucker and colleagues found that a third of the participants did not recognize false information as such. He said, “It’s telling that we’ve spent billions of dollars developing vaccines, but much less thinking about how to make sure people are ready to use them”.
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