U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy raised the alarm on Thursday over a growing wave of misinformation about COVID-19 and related vaccines that threatens efforts to quell the pandemic and save lives, urging technology companies and others to act.
In his first advisory as the nation's top doctor under President Joe Biden, Murthy called on tech companies to tweak their algorithms to further demote false information and share more data with researchers and the government to help teachers, healthcare workers and the media fight misinformation.
"Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative," he said in the advisory, first reported by National Public Radio.
False information can lead to hesitancy to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, leading to preventable deaths, Murthy said, noting misinformation can affect other health conditions and is a worldwide problem.The advisory also urges people not to spread questionable information online, something the head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that tracks COVID-19 misinformation online, said will not be enough.
"On tobacco packets they say that tobacco kills," the group's chief executive Imran Ahmed told NPR. "On social media we need a 'Surgeon General's Warning: Misinformation Kills.'"U.S. COVID-19 infections last week rose about 11% over the previous week, with the highest increases in areas with vaccination rates of less than 40%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , and continued to tick up on Wednesday.
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