Trump Can’t Cram His ‘Fake News’ Genie Back in His Bottle

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Aug 25, 2021

The irony of that fear is how much it has prevented him from doing something he usually loves to do, take credit for stuff. Thanks to his “Operation Warp Speed” project, this country developed the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine and in record time.

Its success would have benefited greatly from his early public endorsement. Instead, it has encouraged some Republican governors, particularly Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Texas’ Greg Abbott, to join the anti-vaxxers’ condemnation of shots and masks as infringements on “freedom.”

Somehow, I find it hard to believe the freedom to risk spreading sickness and death is exactly what this nation’s founders had in mind. But the result has been devastating to thousands of victims of a pseudo-information contagion that the World Health Organization calls an “infodemic,” a confusing tide of false or misleading information through a variety of media during a disease outbreak.

In another tragic irony, three conservative radio hosts who had denounced vaccines on air died in August with COVID-19: Dick Farrel, based in West Palm Beach, Fla., Phil Valentine, of Nashville and Bible prophecy teacher Dr. Jimmy DeYoung, Sr., of Chattanooga, Tenn.

“He is the reason I took the shot,” Amy Leigh Hair, a friend of Farrel’s, wrote on Facebook. “He texted me and told me to ‘Get it!’ He told me this virus is no joke and he said, ‘I wish I had gotten it!’ ”

So do I. His politics were way to the right of my own but no one deserves to be taken in by false COVID-19 information, even if they played a role in spreading it.

But, as Trump may be discovering, once you’ve let that “fake news” genie out of the bottle, it’s impossible to reverse all of the damage it can bring.

Research into the “infodemic” finds what you well might expect. Fueled by confirmation bias, we can be taken in by news that aligns with what we want to hear, even when more reliable sources are telling us what we need to hear.

To push back when an infodemic appears to be taking in your friends or relatives, psychologists tell me it’s often best to connect them to a family doctor, or other knowledgeable figures who already have their trust. It works a lot better than horse paste.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)