The People Monetizing Vaccine Hesitancy

First of all, let me state for the record that Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore are not antivaxxers. What they do is even worse: They monetize vaccine hesitancy, legitimizing and reinforcing it, thereby doing their part to prolong a COVID-19 pandemic rapidly approaching its second birthday, after 5.3 million lives lost and countless more ruined.

They do it in a particularly sneaky fashion. They don’t advise against vaccination per se, and even insist they’re pro-vaccination and vaccinated themselves. But they strongly denounce vaccine mandates as tyranny and critics of antivaxxers as heartless meanies, sympathizing with the reluctance to getting vaccinated among those who just can’t stand putting a vaccine in their bodies, reassuring them that their fear is fair and their refusal is reasonable and presenting simplistic libertarian arguments that reduce vaccination purely to a matter of personal choice, as if other people have no stake in the matter.

It’s impossible to gauge how much of an impact they have on people choosing whether or not to get vaccinated. What is clear, however, is that their huge social media followings – including Greenwald’s 1.7 million on Twitter and Dore’s 916,000 on YouTube – owe a significant portion of their growth to their relentless pandering to vaccine-hesitant people, especially those on the far right, who in addition to helping them grow their fanbases are also willing to help them grow their incomes.

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They could use that enormous reach to disseminate accurate information about vaccines and urge people to take them, helping public health officials and experts constructively address the misinformation, mistrust and – in some cases – selfishness that conspire to feed vaccine hesitancy. But instead of helping combat vaccine hesitancy, Greenwald, Dore and others like them milk it for fame and fortune.

Wednesday saw two prime examples of this insidious practice. An article on Greenwald’s Substack lionized former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and other British leftists in their crusade against vaccine mandates while whinging about people being mean to those who refuse to get vaccinated over unfounded concerns about vaccines’ safety and efficacy, complete with a button readers can click to subscribe for $5-$150 to see exclusive content. Meanwhile, for $9.99, you can view all premium content on Rokfin, including Dore’s nearly three-hour episode featuring an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently published the book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” but is best known as a leading light in the antivaxxer movement and promoter of the falsehood that vaccines cause autism.

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It’s cynical. It’s irresponsible. And frankly, it’s despicable.

Greenwald’s article exemplifies his rhetorical sleight-of-hand. As is typical of his verbose style, one must dig to the earth’s core, through five long-winded paragraphs of shrieking about vaccine-hesitant people being lumped together with antivaxxers, before getting to the central and most disinforming point, which is to rationalize opposition to vaccine mandates and passports because “it is immoral and profoundly anti-worker to fire health care front-line workers and other workers for refusing a vaccine they have not been convinced is safe and effective,” while “persuasion is a far more effective and ethical means of administering public health policy than coercion, dictate and punishment.”

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As any responsible journalist would do, Greenwald could affirmatively state that the vaccines are, in fact, safe and effective, providing some of the publicly available data to support that statement. This could include data showing efficacy rates north of 90% and low adverse event rates in clinical trials conducted with unprecedented transparency. Or data showing overwhelming safety and efficacy in regular use, with 57.7% of the entire population of the planet having received at least one shot. Or a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website showing that the likelihood of serious side effects like Guillain-Barre syndrome, blood clots and myocarditis is extremely low, while myocarditis is more likely with COVID-19 itself. After all, if persuasion is better than coercion, Greenwald would be perfect to do it because his fans are far more likely to listen to him than to Fauci.

But he blows that opportunity, instead uncritically presenting the unfounded skepticism of those who “do not believe” the vaccines are safe and effective as rational and understandable.

Other examples abound. In a tweet Sunday, Greenwald sarcastically wrote, “Just keep sticking out your arm and don’t question. And definitely don’t express any skepticism online about any of these decrees because you’re likely to end up banned.” The “decree” in question was a carefully couched statement by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla that fourth shots may need to happen earlier than 12 months after the third due to the spread of the Omicron variant, but that wasn’t certain yet due to the lack of data. And kicking off a Sept. 15 Rumble video decrying Democrats’ “threatening tech companies to censor more” was a headline about Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Adam Schiff of California condemning Amazon for allowing sales of anti-vaxxer books.

Again, he’s not telling you not to get vaccinated. He’s simply pumping anti-vaccine innuendo into the discourse while expounding his belief in untrammeled freedom of expression that just so happens to prioritize antivaxxers’ sacred right to misinform the public.

Greenwald inadvertently let the mask slip a bit in a Dec. 7 tweet of a video of himself taking his sons to get flu shots. That prompted numerous angry replies from some of the antivaxxers he has been attracting as of late.

“Why would thriving, healthy children need a flu shot,” inquired one responder.

“Children don’t need flu shots. They have strong immune systems and you’re compromising them,” declared another.

He followed up with a bemused tweet wondering “how or why a flu shot is controversial.”

Do you get it? Greenwald is totally not an antivaxxer. But if you’re one, or you refuse to get vaccinated due to baseless “skepticism” about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy or because a free-of-charge intramuscular shot that is over in seconds and causes at most mild and easily treated side effects is just too much to bear, he will do nothing to change your mind. In fact, he’ll make you feel like your refusal is principled and courageous. Oh, and as you bask in his love, please praise him on Twitter as the greatest journalist who ever lived, hurl playground insults at his critics and consider giving him money.

It would be the stuff of a low-budget comedy film if it wasn’t so repugnant, and if not for the strong likelihood that many find in Greenwald’s tweets, blog posts and videos vindication and reinforcement for their refusal to get vaccinated against a virus that acquires vaccine- and drug-resistance mutations as it spreads and only needs one infected person to start a deadly outbreak.

Dore goes even further than Greenwald, outright promoting antivaxxers and spreading falsehoods about the vaccines themselves, as exemplified by his reckless decision to give a megaphone to Kennedy. Dore has also multiple times falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines do not reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

“I think to be safe I’m supposed to say vaccines reduce your chance of contracting the virus and they reduce your chance of transmitting it … That’s so I can keep my YouTube channel,” Dore said perfunctorily in a recent video, before flashing a sarcastic smile and accusing “the authoritarian left” of deriving enjoyment from vaccine mandates. He then pushed back against accusations of being anti-vaccine, insisting he’s only anti-mandate and allowing that people at high risk of serious disease should be vaccinated, but overlooking the fact that a vast majority of people getting vaccinated is necessary to achieve the herd immunity required to end the pandemic. He has also defended use of ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug popular among antivaxxers, but that no properly conducted clinical trial has ever shown as effective at preventing or treating COVID-19.

Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, a blog best known for trafficking in apologia for the authoritarian regimes of Syria and China, has even gone on Dore’s show to falsely claim that vaccine mandates violate the Nuremberg Code.
Greenwald and Dore’s vaccine hesitancy grift – insisting they’re pro-vaccination while pandering to antivaxxers – is similar to how they have built huge followings among the far right by pretending to be leftists while pandering to right-wing extremism and regularly appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News programs. Make no mistake: Vaccine hesitancy is a significant public health threat, and the increasingly fascistic American far right threatens democracy. But to people like Greenwald and Dore, they’re markets to be tapped.

Alaric DeArment is a journalist in New York. Follow him on Twitter at @biotechvisigoth.

Topics

Alaric DeArment, COVID, Glenn Greenwald, Health Care / Medicine, Jimmy Dore, Media and Journalism