A senior administration source said the decision to take a tougher line against misinformation has been made, with plans to name Republican elected officials and particular social media sites in the coming days.
Plans of Biden Administration in Combatting COVID-19 Vaccine Disinformation
In a recently published article in CNN News, as Republicans and their media friends ratchet up their outspoken skepticism about vaccinations, White House officials are developing methods to combat the proliferation of misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines, according to the administration officials.
Officials say President Joe Biden may soon take on some of the right's corrosive messaging, as the administration's vaccination efforts hit a snag just as the highly transmissible Delta strain of the virus rips through the country.
Additionally, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, will make a rare appearance in the White House press briefing room this week to discuss how the amount of disinformation has become a serious public health problem, according to a published article in News Opener.
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Status of Vaccinations in the Country
Vaccination rates are down nationwide, and new cases are up at least 10 percent in 45 states this week compared to the previous week, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University. According to one source, officials are preparing a call to attention rather than a call to action.
The gap between vaccinated and unvaccinated people has started to narrow along political lines, with Democratic-leaning regions seeing higher vaccination rates than Republican-leaning areas.
Officials attribute some of the disparity to messaging in conservative media that question why individuals need the vaccination and that Biden's efforts to vaccinate the country amount to government overreach, according to a published article in Good Word News.
Addressing COVID-19 Skepticism
Biden will release vaccine-related educational videos alongside Fauci and Olivia Rodrigo on Wednesday, a pop phenomenon the White House believes would entice young people to get vaccinations. Moreover, the plans to include explicitly address some of vaccination doubts that have been shown on conservative sources are expected to be unveiled soon.
In a recently published article in BitRss, the White House has spent the last week attempting to counter conservative criticism of its plan to go door-to-door to educate Americans about the virus, a reaction fuelled by conservative media that has only served to highlight the vaccination effort's increasing politicization for officials.
Meanwhile, Jen Psaki, Biden's press secretary, released a statement this week in response to Republican South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster's criticism of Biden's attempts to have more Americans inoculated. Psaki said that people are dying as a result of the inability to deliver accurate public health information, including vaccination effectiveness and accessibility throughout the country.
Furthermore, the White House is also debating on how to fight disinformation on vaccines on major social media sites. In May, Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, addressed Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook over vaccination misunderstandings that he claimed originated from "postings on Facebook."
While praising Facebook's efforts to assist individuals in finding vaccinations, Klain remained silent on whether businesses like Facebook should be regulated over problems like vaccine misinformation, stating that it was a "policy choice" for the administration to make.
