Hello.

The Covid pandemic provided perfect conditions for a storm of misinformation, and some people rode the waves to popularity and power. Misinformation has divided the country and diminished trust in the government, scientific institutions, and mass media — making it even harder to combat. How did we get here? 

As Covid-19 took off in 2020, people anxiously searched for answers about a novel disease that scientists were just beginning to understand. Uncertainty was hard for many to grapple with, and information — much of it poor — was all over the internet. Americans were online, especially on social media platforms, where companies benefited from posts that got attention. 

Researchers who study misinformation traced the origins of influential posts and mapped networks of misinformation across different platforms. Neil Johnson, a physicist at George Washington University, analyzed how people drawn into one misinformed topic could find themselves immersed in another through “wormhole” links. A person exploring anti-vaccine content, for example, might start learning about racist conspiracies. 

Fringe ideas became mainstream with just a few key points of amplification. For example, Elon Musk tweeted out a Google Doc from tech entrepreneurs and investors on March 16, 2020, that extolled the benefits of an old malaria drug, chloroquine, as a treatment for Covid. His tweet garnered 12,000 shares and, days later, Fox News aired a segment on the document. The following day, President Donald Trump called the drug “very powerful” at a press briefing, despite a lack of evidence.

Under Trump’s leadership, the FDA granted emergency use authorization to chloroquine and a derivative, hydroxychloroquine. The agency revoked authorization shortly after because studies showed they do not treat Covid, and can lead to heart attacks, kidney injury, and liver failure.

Still, support for hydroxychloroquine and other disproven Covid treatments grew in some conservative circles. They became a rallying cry, pitting political parties against one another, and against scientific institutions. 

Last year, David Gortler, a research fellow at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, argued that the Food and Drug Administration overstepped its authority in advising against hydroxychloroquine and “eroded public confidence” in “historically safe products.”

This month, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended gutting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by citing an alleged “suppression of low-cost therapeutics,” and more.

Kennedy is now in charge at the Department of Health and Human Services, and reporters like me are running fast behind, trying to debunk a drumbeat of misleading statements and anticipate those on the way. 

But debunking and “prebunking” (also called “inoculating”) is limited in its efficacy, and it relies on readers already trusting the source. “If people think the WHO is anti-American, or Anthony Fauci is corrupt, or that Bill Gates is evil, then elevating an alternative source doesn’t so much — it just makes people think that platform is colluding with that source,” Renée DiResta, at Georgetown University, told me back in 2020.

But giving up isn’t an option for public health reporters, so send a note if you’ve found a better way.

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