The Greatest Mistake of Debunking Anti-Vaccine Myths
The F.A.S. Theory of Social Media Grifting
“Spurious accounts that snare the gullible are readily available. Skeptical treatments are much harder to find. Skepticism does not sell well.” -Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World
After years of study and having compiled an overwhelming mountain of supporting evidence as the core of the Pandemic Accountability Index, I finally feel prepared to lay out my grand theory of what is at the rotten core of modern anti-vaccine medical disinformation.
If you’ve enjoyed any of the Pandemic Accountability Index over the past years, your direct support would be greatly appreciated now more than ever:
The greatest mistake of countering the past five years of unyielding disinformation propaganda from the anti-vaccine war on science was that people turned to the wrong industry for answers. People understandably turned to doctors & scientists for answers about how to respond to dishonest smears against lifesaving COVID-19 mitigations. The problem with such an approach is that the enemy you seek to draw swords against has no concern with medicine, nor science. Sadly, we are dealing with feelings, not facts.
No, the answers people sought lied with the advertising industry. I mean no disrespect to the tireless efforts of voices like Dr. Peter Hotez, who has faced down a relentless torrent of abuse with calm, unwavering honesty and the scientific facts. Yet, the anti-vaccine movement has attained a historic amount of power and influence previously unheard of. It’s clear that an evidence-based approach is not converting the misguided, who are more passionate about their fantasies than ever.
A Short History of Advertising
In the pursuit of knowledge, I have inflicted massive psychic damage upon myself by exposing my retinas to a highly toxic amount of anti-vaccine propaganda on social media, I think it’s fair to call myself knowledgeable on how these charlatans operate. In the advertising industry, we tap into people’s emotions to sell products and services, instead of rational, fact-based arguments. For a historical example, here is sci-fi icon Max Headroom of Max Headroom fame selling Coca-Cola:
Now I know what you’re thinking: what sort of loser would be caught dead drinking a Pepsi? Obviously, cool people (like me!) drink Coca-Cola! This was a common advertising technique of the 1990s. The video-game industry also has a long and tedious history of cringeworthy advertisements attempting to play off the emotional insecurities of adolescent boys - “Sega does what Nintendon’t” being an iconic battle cry of the Sega Genesis versus Super Nintendo console war. Often times, advertisers would simply make shit up, as Sega attempted to claim that the Genesis hardware was capable of “Blast Processing:”
The media darlings of the anti-vaccine movement also frequently make shit up to exploit the emotional insecurities of the general public. When they learned that there were no negative consequences for getting basic facts wrong, and in fact were greatly rewarded for doing so, this societal contagion only began to grow. In fact, you can make a great deal of money spewing anti-vaccine nonsense on social media - an advertising niche to sell products and services that is completely unregulated.
It was not so long ago that tobacco companies were allowed to freely advertise their harmful cancer-causing trash to the public. From “9-out-of-10 Doctors Recommend Lucky Strike” to the stoic “Marlboro Man” cowboy to the cartoon “Joe Camel” mascot, emotional appeals exploiting people’s insecurities ran rampant in American media. In the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, the federal government was forced to bring down an iron fist against the tobacco industry for their underhanded shenanigans, claiming that smoking something which could kill you was “cool.” Many conservative politicians & pundits would be outraged if the government attempted to outlaw tobacco advertising today, screeching that this would be a grave violation of “free speech.”
The Anti-Vaccine Sales Formula: F.A.S.
“[Make America Healthy Again] is little more than an economic stimulus plan for a corrupt wellness influencer industry.” -Prof. Peter Hotez
Anti-vaccine propagandists have never admitted fault whenever proven to be wrong, because they’ve never been invested sharing scientific facts, or helpful advice. They cultivate an audience of gullible marks and extract every last ounce of profit out of them. To admit fallibility is to tarnish their brand and infringe upon their profit margins. You’re dealing with people running a business, not intellectual scholars.
When disinformation artists like Vinay Prasad make personal attacks against those who debunk their myths, writing them off as “misinformation police not knowing what they’re talking about,” it’s because their income is being directly challenged.
Social media subscriptions & ad revenue, unregulated supplements which often don’t contain what’s on the label, quack cures prescribed over expensive telehealth consults, massive speaking fees, and other elaborate schemes have been a massive boon for scam artists to exploit the gullible. These swindlers know that the facts are directly opposed to their claims, so they prey upon the public’s emotional vulnerabilities. Tragically, we have yet to evolve beyond our animal instincts and remain irrational beings - a hard truth easy exploited.
It starts with FEAR:
The government is out to get you!
Big Pharma is poisoning you!
The vaccines have killed millions!
They lied to you about masks!
Your freedoms are being stolen by public health tyrants!
Followed by ANGER:
Fauci caused the pandemic!
They made Long COVID up just to scare you!
Those pieces of shit are still lying!
An entire generation of children have been destroyed!
We need public executions of doctors and scientists!
The mark has become so emotionally primed at this point that they have lost all capacity for critical analysis. This process isn’t overnight but instead requires months if not years of exposure to a rogues’ gallery of screeching & howling the same memes over and over. They inevitable become imprinted in the target’s mind as fact. The mark is now primed to be converted into a paying customer.
Which leads to the SELL:
Reverse the vaxx with this supplement I’m shilling in a sponsored post!
Get a telehealth prescription for this miracle drug I sell!
Buy tickets to this convention and meet your favorite anti-vaccine grifter!
Show off your unvaccinated baby with this branded onesie!
Buy my book where I write arrogantly about topics I know nothing about!
In exchange for cheap, worthless garbage, the anti-vaccine salesman walks away with a pretty penny. We have a word for what this is called in English: a scam. Typically, scam artists are frowned upon in civil society. Yet, this mentality is now in charge of setting public health policy in the federal government. We can see the results: historic measles outbreaks are a mere preview of what’s to come in a snowball effect, as other once-forgotten diseases begin to experience a major resurgence. This is the intended outcome: sick kids mean terrified parents to profit off of.
Speaking from experience, compiling mountains of peer-reviewed medical research on COVID-19’s impacts and shoving it in the faces of anti-vaxxers, these are people who simply refuse to read. They come to the internet for sensationalist infotainment, not factual scientific information. They crave the emotional stimulation, getting all worked up over obscene accusations completely detached from reality.
What Is to Be Done?
You hear a lot of talk about the need to “restore trust” in public health, but you simply can’t “convince” those who value emotional appeals over scientific fact with a mountain of peer-reviewed medical research. Every time an anti-vaccine influencer’s claim is debunked, they simply ignore it and make up another ridiculous accusation. You’re never going to make someone who has a financial interest in selling anti-vaccine garbage willingly give up the grift. The general public doesn’t have the time to sort through mountains of scientific literature, and many credentialed, seemingly legitimate “experts” have peddled anti-vaccine lies in the media these past five years.
America has a very sick culture where telling lies rewards you with wealth and power, while telling the truth has you demonized and hounded with relentless abuse.
Those of us in the trenches fighting anti-vaccine disinformation need to be frank with the public: when anti-vaxxers get their way and are allowed to set policy, children end up dying as a result. How many anti-vaccine grifters have volunteered to fund the funerals of the unvaccinated children who will die in future outbreaks? How many children are considered an “acceptable” loss without the protection of vaccines? If we’re turning our back on vaccines, then why not other lifesaving public health interventions such as sewage treatment plants and pediatric cancer wards?
The modern anti-vaccine movement prioritizes their profits above all else, and a few dead kids is a worthy sacrifice they’re willing to make you pay. That’s what the public needs to understand.
On a larger scale, we need to do to anti-vaccine “influencers” and the “wellness industry” what was done to the tobacco industry: the federal government taking an iron fist to these exploitative scam artists taking people’s money in exchange for worthless, sometimes outright dangerous garbage, and putting them out of business. People should have confidence that they aren’t being ripped off in the marketplace, and that is a central role that falls to government, not random citizens on social media.
Children shouldn’t have to pay the ultimate price for the greed of craven adults.