The Vaccine Misinformation Crisis Is More Severe Than You Think

There is a profit to be made peddling anti-vaxx conspiracy theories, and no mechanism left to stop them.

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by Ben Cohen

While deep into research for this piece, the news broke that Alex Berenson was the latest “journalist” to be handpicked by Elon Musk to disseminate private Twitter files on the company’s previous policies towards vaccine misinformation. Given I was using Berenson as a primary example of Covid misinformation and grift, I found the news to be extremely distressing.

The wrongest man

Berenson was dubbed “The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man” by The Atlantic and has been thoroughly debunked as one of the leading sources of Covid vaccine misinformation. The Atlantic piece itself was so devastating that it is a wonder Berenson continued saying anything else on the subject. Derek Thompson didn’t just debunk Berenson’s claims, he laid waste to them. Quoting doctors and scientists involved with studying Covid and the vaccine trials themselves, Thompson showed Berenson appeared to be incapable of interpreting the data or understanding basic science. Furthermore, Berenson’s misinformation was so egregious it was hard to see it as anything other than disinformation. Here’s a stunning example of Berenson’s shocking dishonesty (from The Atlantic piece):

On February 11, Berenson warned his followers that early data from Israel proved that vaccine advocates “need to start ratcheting down expectations.” This was a strange claim to make at the time: An Israeli health-care provider had reported no deaths and four severe cases among its first 523,000 fully vaccinated people. But the claim seems even more ridiculous now, in light of Israel’s incredible success since then. New positive cases in Israel are down roughly 95 percent since January. Deaths have plunged, even though the economy is almost fully open.

Thompson asked Berenson to explain himself, leading to this extraordinary exchange:

When I asked Berenson to explain his beef with Israel’s vaccine record, he sent a link to a news story in Hebrew that, he said, reported “several hundred deaths and hospitalizations and thousands of infections in people who have received both doses.” I can’t read Hebrew, so I reached out to someone who can, Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel. He replied by email: “This link actually shows that the vast majority of those who died were NOT vaccinated.” By Segal’s calculations, the vaccines have reduced the risk of death by more than 90 percent in the Israeli population.

As you can see, Berenson should not be regarded as an accurate source for anything, let alone something as important as a global pandemic featuring a novel coronavirus. But the nature of today’s fractured media system meant that Berenson could go on spreading more vaccine disinformation. He became a feature on Tucker Carlson’s show, got invited onto the Joe Rogan Podcast, and sold hundreds of thousands of books.

Berenson has also made a fortune spreading conspiracy theories on Substack (the platform we use to publish The Banter). He is currently the 7th highest paid writer on the platform with “tens of thousands of paid subscribers”, just behind the man regarded as the leading source of Covid conspiracy theories, Dr. Joseph Mercola. And now he has the Elon Musk seal of approval, catapulting him to new heights of fame, influence and wealth.

The new Twitter files dud

Unsurprisingly, Berenson grotesquely misrepresented the Twitter files he was handpicked to release, so much so that no major news organization bothered reporting on it. Berenson claimed Pfizer executive Scott Gottlieb, who previously worked for the Trump administration as the FDA’s Commissioner, lobbied Twitter to suppress data showing natural immunity was superior to a vaccine. Twitter complied by flagging a tweet from assistant secretary for health in the Trump administration Brett Giroir as “misleading”. Berenson cherrypicked emails in the leaked interaction to heavily imply Gottlieb was working to increase Pfizer’s profits by lying about natural immunity.

The problem of is that Gottlieb was right, and Giroir was wrong. The data gathered at the time proved conclusively that vaccines overall provided better immunity than natural immunity. The evidence for this is still strong, but with some caveats (like how severe the case of prior infection was, how long ago, etc).

Alex Berenson is probably the last journalist on earth you’d want to release highly complex, sensitive information on vaccines to. But in the new era of disinformation and alternate reality bubbles, he was Elon Musk’s first choice.

Culprit No. 1

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other social networks reward content creators algorithmically for publishing content people like to click on. This has generally meant that the more shocking the content, the more likely it is to be spread through the network. In the beginning stages of the Covid pandemic, this meant a disinformation bonanza with an explosion of conspiracy theories flying around social media networks with disastrous effects.

Important studies for example have shown that Covid vaccine misinformation has caused demonstrable spikes in the spread of the disease:

Has misinformation about COVID-19 circulating on social media affected the spread of the disease? A group of UWM geographers has tested the question scientifically by painstakingly examining nationwide Twitter chatter and then showing the results on a national map, revealing who was sharing what early in the pandemic.

The researchers found a direct correlation between locations where Twitter misinformation originated and subsequent spikes in COVID-19 infections and deaths in those areas weeks later.

The major social media platforms have at least partially recognized the extreme dangers of this and have worked on flagging and stopping the proliferation of disinformation. Pre-Elon Musk, Twitter dramatically clamped down on Covid misinformation, removing content and banning the worst offenders. Youtube went as far as banning all content spreading misinformation.

The results were mixed at best with social media still playing a prominent role in vaccine misinformation — especially Twitter now it is owned and operated by notorious conspiracy theorist Elon Musk.

Censoring misinformation on one platform also had the unfortunate effect of driving it elsewhere. New right wing social media networks sprung up giving conspiracy theorists new avenues to promote their disinformation and boost their earnings. Platforms like Rumble algorithmically promote vaccine misinformation leading viewers down dark rabbit holes filled with deranged conspiracy theories.

Elon Musk handing over Twitter files on the company’s vaccine content policies to rabid anti-vax conspiracy theorist Alex Berenson is a public health disaster. Leading vaccine disinformation merchants have also taken to Substack to spread their conspiracy theories via email, making it even harder to combat.

Substack’s role in anti-vaxx disinformation

Given we publish on Substack I recognize the company’s commitment to protecting publishers is critical to The Banter’s longterm survival. We have been censored and suppressed on various social media platforms for unknown reasons, so Substack’s position — at least to The Banter and other independent publishers — is an important one. I am undecided on the subject of censorship and where redlines are, but I do have real concerns about notorious disinformation merchants raking in millions of dollars. Is Substack culpable given they also profit immensely from this disinformation?

I reached out to the company to comment on the ethics of publishing and profiting from Covid misinformation. Their Head of Communications Helen Tobin responded via email to my questions. I have published the exchange in full (my questions in bold):

Can you explain your reasoning behind allowing antivaxxers to publish on Substack? 

We believe in freedom of the press. Short of clear red lines being violated, we try our best to minimize interference and keep our promise to writers and podcasters that they and their subscribers have control. 

The structure of the network also matters a great deal here. We are not a social network where algorithms push content into people's newsfeeds to support an ad-based revenue model. On Substack, what you see as a reader is determined by the people you subscribe to and the communities you choose to join. Thus, the bar for us to censor a Substacker and forcibly break up the relationship with their audience is very high.

Do you believe freedom of speech and expression is always more important than preventing the spread of misinformation and potentially dangerous content?

We believe in the importance of a free press and free expression, allowing writers to explore ideas even when they are unpopular, and empowering readers to thoughtfully evaluate an argument’s merits for themselves. 

Do you think Substack has any responsibility when it comes to public health?

While we do have content guidelines, we don’t put ourselves in charge of separating “information” from “misinformation” because we don’t think a corporation should be the arbiter of truth, and we think people should be allowed to be wrong on the internet. 

Have you considered implementing stricter guidelines or policies around the publication of antivax content on Substack? 

I’ll point you toward an essay on this topic from our co-founders, and specifically this passage:

As we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation. While we have content guidelines that allow us to protect the platform at the extremes, we will always view censorship as a last resort, because we believe open discourse is better for writers and better for society. 

Where are the redlines when it comes to content on Substack? Would you, for example, publish someone like Alex Jones? 

We don’t traffic in hypotheticals, but we do remove publishers when they violate our content guidelines.

How do you address any negative consequences that may result from this type of content being shared on your platform?

Again for this answer, I’ll point you toward an essay on this topic from our co-founders that addressed this, and specifically this passage:

[W]e allow writers to publish what they want and readers to decide for themselves what to read, even when that content is wrong or offensive, and even when it means putting up with the presence of writers with whom we strongly disagree. But we believe this approach is a necessary precondition for building trust in the information ecosystem as a whole. The more that powerful institutions attempt to control what can and cannot be said in public, the more people there will be who are ready to create alternative narratives about what’s “true,” spurred by a belief that there’s a conspiracy to suppress important information. 

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I also asked fellow Substack publisher author and co-host of “Conspirituality” podcast Derek Beres whether he thought the platform should be offering their services to people like Berenson and Mercola.

Beres has spent countless hours tackling Covid conspiracy theorists, having started his podcast along with Matthew Remski and Julian Walker to counter the extraordinary explosion of Covid related disinformation early on in the pandemic.

“It's so tough,” said Beres. “I don't personally think Mercola should be published anywhere given how egregious he is, and how much pseudoscience he peddles. And Berenson is a nightmare. But it's a private platform and it gets into the question of gatekeeping, which is never easy.”

There is a distinction to be made between agnostic publishing platforms and algorithmically driven social media platforms. But, as Beres notes, the line with Substack is a little blurry.

“When Substack first appeared, I was paying like $50/month to manage my email list of 15k members. I was immediately like, I can send emails to them all for free? That's why I jumped on,” he told me.

“It's more of a blogging platform than social media”, Beres continued. “But Substack just isn't really social media in my head, even though I know in some ways it is.”

And therein lies the rub. Substack wasn’t built to be a social media network, but it can be used as a social media network. As Tobin noted, Substack does not actively promote particular newsletters based on opaque algorithms. It just allows them to publish and build out their own networks, just as you could do on any other publishing platforms like Wordpress, Wix and Joomla. Right now, Substack does not behave like a social media network, although that could change in time.

A broken media system

The mainstream media is, according to most Americans, pretty awful. Colorful graphics, shocking headlines, partisan hosts, and even more partisan guests means no one trusts any of the major corporate outlets. This distrust extends to major newspapers too, leaving a huge void that is being filled with right wing disinformation. This lack of trust is in large part due to a decades long, extremely well funded right wing war on reality. But CNN/MSNBC etc do not help themselves by following the Fox News “opinion as news” model in a never ending war for ratings.

This isn’t to “both sides” the media, but rather to point out that our media system as a whole failed spectacularly to address one of the worst public health crises in modern history. Liberal, reality based news media did accurately report on the Covid pandemic and the efficacy of vaccines. Unfortunately this was of little consequence to much of the country enthralled by Tucker Carlson and other right wing disinformation merchants who happily sent them off to ventilators and early graves.

This toxic combination of unregulated social media platforms and a highly partisan, profit-driven media system also meant a colossal opportunity for disinformation grifters. Bad actors gamed social media outlets and new publishing platforms, making out like bandits in the process.

Declaring war on disinformation

While social media and the right wing entertainment complex can be blamed for much of the Covid disinformation disaster, it would be remiss not to mention the Trump administration’s criminal behavior at the outset of the pandemic. Studies have shown Trump himself was likely the major source of Covid disinformation, leaving not only a public health crisis, but a spiraling information crisis for the Biden administration to contend with.

Thankfully, the Biden Administration has done much to remediate the disaster they were handed. They have diligently stuck to the science and urged the public to listen to public health officials and doctors about the risks of the ongoing Covid crisis. The Covid pandemic is decidedly less deadly than it was thanks to vaccines, sensible government planning, and improved treatments for the disease.

The information crisis however, is still metastasizing, and at breakneck speed.

As a publisher trying to combat disinformation, it often feels like bailing out a rapidly sinking ship. No matter how much water we throw out, there is always more coming. With Musk’s purchase of the country’s most important social media network, we are now facing a tidal wave the government and responsible media outlets are ill equipped to handle. There is a growing resistance to this madness, but it is still fractured and unable to effectively combat these powerful forces.

This will be the defining fight for the foreseeable future, and determine our ability to handle escalating crises in public health, geopolitical conflicts, and our natural environment. We cannot let the ship sink, no matter how insurmountable the challenge might seem. Thankfully, Covid is no longer the grave threat it once was. But next time we might not be so lucky.

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