Joe Biden's top public health official continued on Sunday to criticize social media giants for not doing enough to combat coronavirus misinformation, as he claimed Facebook policies around vaccine information are costing American lives.
'We know that health misinformation harms people's health. It costs them their lives,' Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told CNN on Sunday morning. 'I have seen that as a doctor over the years, as patients have struggled with health misinformation.'
'And here's the key thing to remember,' he added when speaking with State of the Union host Dana Bash, 'health misinformation takes away our freedom and our power to make decisions for us and for our families. And that's a problem.'
'The platforms have to recognize that they have played a major role in the increase in speed and scale with which misinformation is spreading.'
Murthy's comments come after Facebook officials defended the platform on Saturday when President Biden accused social media misinformation of 'killing people.'
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy doubled-down on the administration scapegoating the plateauing vaccination rate by saying social media isn't doing enough to combat misinformation. 'We know that health misinformation harms people's health. It costs them their lives,' Murthy said on Sunday
Vaccination rates in the U.S. have sharply declined since the jab was opened to all adults earlier this year. Minority and poor communities, as well as southern states and more Republican areas, are experiencing heightened hesitancy surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine
On Thursday, Murthy also issued an advisory calling health misinformation an 'urgent threat.' He provided a 22-page 'confronting health information' pamphlet.
The deflection in blame also follows the administration missing Biden's July 4 deadline to administer at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to 70 per cent of American adults – and have 160 million fully vaccinated by the mid-summer holiday.
Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the matter on Sunday, claiming Biden is 'not doing well at all' in vaccination mobilization and gaining the trust of Americans.
'He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth,' he wrote in a statement.
The vaccination rate has plateaued around the 68 per cent mark in adults. Children under the age of 12 have still not been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration to get the vaccine, which is still under emergency use authorization rather than gotten full approval from the federal agency.
Vivek said while he has praised social media privately for their efforts, he has a message for them: 'It's not enough.'
'We're still seeing a proliferation of misinformation online,' he told CNN.
A Facebook vice president defended the platform and lashed out at the administration after Biden used social media as a scapegoat for the decline in vaccination rates.
'The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19,' Guy Rosen posted in a lengthy corporate blog post on Saturday.
'President Biden's goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.'
'At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies. While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a whole of society approach to end this pandemic. And facts — not allegations — should help inform that effort.
'The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the US has increased. These and other facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days,' Facebook wrote in a defensive posting.
Still, a source from the Biden administration said Saturday that Biden publicly lambasted the platform after the White House has been asking for 'months' for help fighting what it called disinformation, according to Fox News.
President Biden last week accused Facebook of 'killing people' by allowing misinformation to circulate on its platform. The social media giant, headed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg (left), hit back on Saturday
The platform defended itself against Biden in a lengthy corporate blog post from Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity at Facebook
Despite its puffed-up statements, Facebook hasn't done enough to stamp out untruths, the administration official said, according to Fox.
'They've been withholding information on what the rules are, what they have put in place to prevent dangerous misinformation from spreading [and] how they measure whether it's working,' the officials said.
The disagreement has bubbled over after the Indian Delta variant has ripped across the world - and now is showing up in U.S. data, as cases rise in many places, even as polls show, many of the unvaccinated believe the negative information that's circulating about the shots - information the White House says is false.
'For people in the US on Facebook, vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50%; and they are becoming more accepting of vaccines every day.
'Since January, vaccine acceptance on the part of Facebook users in the US has increased by 10-15 percentage points (70% → 80-85%) and racial and ethnic disparities in acceptance have shrunk considerably.
'Increased vaccine acceptance has been seen on and off Facebook, with many leaders throughout the US working to make that happen,' the posting continued. 'We employed similar tactics in the UK and Canada, which have similar rates of Facebook usage to the US, and those countries have achieved more than 70% vaccination of eligible populations. This all suggests there's more than Facebook to the outcome in the US.
'Since the beginning of the pandemic we have removed over 18 million instances of COVID-19 misinformation,' Facebook explained.
'We have also labeled and reduced the visibility of more than 167 million pieces of COVID-19 content debunked by our network of fact-checking partners so fewer people see it and — when they do — they have the full context.'
Tension between the social media platform at the Administration had been brewing.
On Friday, a Facebook official said similar to NBC: 'In private exchanges the Surgeon General [Vivek Murthy] has praised our work, including our efforts to inform people about COVID-19... The White House is looking for scapegoats for missing their vaccine goals.'
The Biden Administration hoped to have 70 percent of American adults partially vaccinated against COVID by Independence Day - a goal they missed by three percent.
The Commander-in-Chief has voiced his frustration about vaccine misinformation proliferating on social media, saying it is stopping millions of Americans from getting the jab.
Earlier this week, the White House confirmed it had stepped up COVID-19 misinformation tracking as it tried to tackle slowing rates of vaccination.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki explicitly singled out Facebook saying that influential anti-vaxxers 'remain active' on the site 'despite some even being banned on other platforms'.
'You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation,' she stated on Thursday.
The following day, President Biden was asked if he had a message for Facebook, to which he responded: 'They're killing people. I mean it really. Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people.'
Guy Rosen – Facebook's Vice-President of Integrity
By Guy Rosen, VP of Integrity
At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies. While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a whole of society approach to end this pandemic. And facts — not allegations — should help inform that effort. The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the US has increased. These and other facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days.
Since April 2020, we've been collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University and University of Maryland on a global survey to gather insights about COVID-19 symptoms, testing, vaccination rates and more. This is the largest survey of its kind, with over 70 million total responses, and more than 170,000 responses daily across more than 200 countries and territories. For people in the US on Facebook, vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50%; and they are becoming more accepting of vaccines every day.
Since January, vaccine acceptance on the part of Facebook users in the US has increased by 10-15 percentage points (70% → 80-85%) and racial and ethnic disparities in acceptance have shrunk considerably (some of the populations that had the lowest acceptance in January had the highest increases since). The results of this survey are public and we've shared them — alongside other data requested by the administration — with the White House, the CDC and other key partners in the federal government.
The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Biden's goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.
Graph showing rise in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in the US
In fact, increased vaccine acceptance has been seen on and off Facebook, with many leaders throughout the US working to make that happen. We employed similar tactics in the UK and Canada, which have similar rates of Facebook usage to the US, and those countries have achieved more than 70% vaccination of eligible populations. This all suggests there's more than Facebook to the outcome in the US.
Now vaccination efforts are rightly turning to increasing access and availability for harder-to-reach people. That's why we recently expanded our pop-up vaccine clinics in low-income and underserved communities. To help promote reliable vaccine information to communities with lower access to vaccines, we are using the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index. This is a publicly available dataset that crisis and health responders often use to identify communities most likely to need support, as higher vulnerability areas have had lower COVID-19 vaccination coverage.
We have been doing our part in other areas, too:
Since
