Anyone rational person following COVID misinformation understands that foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, China and to some extent Iran, are the source of most COVID misinformation. The proof is posted below in the eleven links attached from sources like the NYT, the WSJ and Harvard University among others.
If you are a COVID antivaxxer and were not aware of how you are being manipulated read these links and search Google for “Russian COVID Misinformation” and you will find nearly 3 million references.
There really is no excuse for not realizing where this false information is coming from. Russia is succeeding in sowing civil discord, adverse economic impact and death. Russian misinformation contributed to the 1.2M American COVID deaths, 300,000 - 400,000 of which were preventable had the victims been vaccinated.
My concern is less about Russia as the proven source of COVID misinformation but the willingness of certain people to believe it even after being made aware of its roots. Why are some so gullible that they eagerly swallow Russian lies? The answer lies in the psychopathology of antivaxxers. Numerous well done studies have demonstarted peculiar physychological characteristic among antivaxxers including paranoid thinking, willingness to believe conspiracy theories, distrust of authority, rejection of expertise, lack of compassion for others and very prominently - aggression. Simply read the comments to my posts and you will see all these features on display.
Whats worse than people with aberrant psychological profiles who willingly accept Russian disinformation are the folks who are intentionally using it for political leverage and personal financial gain. FOX News, Donald Trump, Ron Desantis and many other Republican politicians are eagerly spreading COVID misinformation because it resonates with their base, undereducated and misinformed people who will believe anything tagged with a socialist label.
Then there are those who are doing so for profit. Nearly all the well known antivaxxers are leveraging it for profit. All of the “Doctors of Disinformation” have income streams built on it. It is estimated that antivaxxery can generate millions of dollars in revenue. RFK Jr has managed to make a very good living doing so for several decades and now wants to leverge those gains to further his own political ambitions.
So we have foreign adversaries pumping false information into the US through social media amplified by fake news cable outlets and politicians who are only too happy to feed it to their base which include the psychologically aberrant antivaxxers who believe anything so long as it resonates with their bizarre mental models and aggressive tendencies.
Just read the comments to my posts, its on full display.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/russian-misinformation-seeks-to-confound-not-convince/
https://www.rand.org/blog/2021/11/reining-in-covid-19-disinformation-from-china-russia.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/covid-19-disinformation-backfires-russian-deaths-climb-eu-says-2021-10-21/
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-china-covid-disinformation-campaigns/31590996.html
https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/clarity-for-friends-confusion-for-foes-russian-vaccine-propaganda-in-ukraine-and-serbia/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/us/politics/covid-vaccines-russian-disinformation.html
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/russia-helped-covid-vaccine-lies-spread-study-shows/
https://esoc.princeton.edu/publications/how-russia-china-and-other-governments-use-coronavirus-disinformation-reshape-2
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-disinformation-campaign-aims-to-undermine-confidence-in-pfizer-other-covid-19-vaccines-u-s-officials-say-11615129200
https://cepa.org/comprehensive-reports/post-mortem-russian-and-chinese-covid-19-information-operations/
https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/china-and-russia-are-joining-forces-to-spread-disinformation/
There you have it. Read the replies. Aggression. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20226-9
Antivaxxers have a unique constellation of aberrant personality features. They are on full display in the comments. I post eleven excellent articles from reputable sources all documenting the same finding...COVID misinformation originates with foreign adversaries. The replies dont even addres the post. I doubt they even read the artlices I linked. Personal attacks are all that results. You would think a reasonable person would say...hmmm....maybe I have been manipulated or at least be opemn to considering the evidence of that. Nope, just attack personally.
Doesn't misinformation originate here, from Patmas's mouth?