A Failure of Leadership
The failure of our institutions to create an adequate strategy to fight back against disinformation and misinformation will continue to have devastating consequences for healthcare and public health for generations.
I was reading this exceptional piece by Natalia Solenkova in Science Based Medicine in which she quotes Dr. Ashish Jha from his tenure as the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator for the Biden Administration.
“What we have seen is the widespread propagation of misinformation and disinformation. And the reason it has taken root is because there was an information vacuum. I come back to our role as physicians. It is critical that we fill that vacuum because if we don’t, others will.”
- Ashish Jha, MD — March 31, 2023
Natalia and I have both been significantly involved as physicians on the front lines treating patients with COVID, as well as monitoring developments in the science around the virus SARS-CoV-2 and COVID illness throughout the pandemic. I believe this quote elicited a similar response for both of us.
While his statement is both correct and aspirational, what Dr. Jha neglected to include is how he was part of the institutional failure to do anything about the spread of disinformation and misinformation. We needed a national coordinated strategy to address disinformation and misinformation and support for those of us doing the work. Instead, those of us who WERE trying to fill that information vacuum with more scientifically accurate and current information and address the misinformation and disinformation were left abandoned, unsupported, and facing threats to ourselves, our jobs, and even our families. All the while, those most egregiously and intentionally spreading misinformation and disinformation continued to do so without an adequate response or punishment for doing so. In fact, many continued to be actively incentivized to continue to spread disinformation and generate anger and hate to the tune of millions of dollars by their grifting. They didn’t need to exercise caution, require support, or have any shame.
What he neglects to include is how disinformation has been weaponized as a political weapon for the right in an effort to get Trump re-elected, as well as part of a larger effort involving the Council for National Policy to create an alternative reality devoid of facts, to diminish social trust, and to break institutions — including healthcare. This is not conjecture or politicking, this is based simply on the facts that exist about these large, well-coordinated, and well-funded networks spreading such disinformation and propaganda. Those networks include credentialed people including physicians to launder their propaganda and even turn that laundered propaganda into policy (see Florida and multiple court cases in which these folks have been included as “experts.”)
Additionally, with the propaganda sufficiently laundered to be commonly viewed as “contrarian thinking,” people outside of the primary disinformation networks but who latch onto heterodox or contrarian ideas either out of clout-chasing narcissism and their own Galileo complex, or simply for their own financial incentives of their own attention-based closed-loop environments (podcasts, YouTube, Substack, etc) — often without their knowledge of or understanding of any of this larger scale effort. Some even directly benefited from support from these well-funded groups and well-coordinated networks and weaponized their own credentials to further perpetuate disinformation.
In fact, when I simply mentioned facts about some of the people involved in perpetuating disinformation initially spread by well-coordinated disinformation networks, I was bullied, harassed, and even threatened with lawsuits. If the belief of leadership is in trying to address misinformation and fill the information vacuum, where were the institutions who should have been supporting us then?
If you’re leading those institutions and there was no institutional support for those who are trying to accomplish your stated goals, then I don’t think you get to complain about us as physicians not doing enough. So what happened?
The break down of leadership and institutional support was critical to the unabated spread of disinformation. On July 29, 2021 the Federation of State Medical Boards stated “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license. Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not. They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health.”
Why was nothing ever done? Where was the leadership we needed then? What happened?
I can tell you that the breakdown of leadership based either on a fundamental lack of understanding of the issue even the highest levels or an unwillingness to actually do anything to provide institutional support was critical to the unabated spread of disinformation. That should be the takeaway from this statement. Unfortunately, the failure to act — or even create an adequate strategy of support to fight back — will have devastating consequences for healthcare and public health for generations.
