Misinformation on COVID Abounds

By SAM URETSKY

Word has gotten around (please don’t ask) that President Biden has mandated a return to masks as protection against the latest strain of COVID-19. It seems unlikely. The web site 538.com reported (8/25/23) that President Biden has an approval rating of 41.3% and a disapproval rating of 53.7%. For the record, former President Trump has a favorable rating of 39.7% and an unfavorable rating of 56.2%. While the Biden presidency has been essentially successful, a proper evaluation will have to wait for posterity, and regrettably, the same can be said for Trump’s. Mask mandates were never really popular, never totally effective, and were frequently undercut by red state governors. This is a time when any savvy politician would be most interested in making friends.

Also, the World Health Organization (WHO) offers a Q&A about selection and use of masks with guidance that would intimidate all but the most confirmed hypochondriac. The instructions on washing, both hands and masks, seemed to be cribbed from past episodes of “Monk” (now streaming on a bunch of channels). At the same time, the level of misinformation available on the internet is confounding. A report from the journal Vaccine (Apr 24, 2023) begins “Efforts to contain COVID-19 in the U.S. were hampered by misinformation and conspiracy theories. Resistance to public health measures, such as lockdowns, masking and vaccines was particularly strong among conservatives and Republicans, driven by elite cues from media and politicians, including former President Trump. This partisan asymmetry continues a decades-old trend of politicization of science that was accelerated during the pandemic, but influenced health behaviors that are not related to COVID-19 as well.”

The growth of the Internet and social media has increased the distribution of misinformation and quackery. The current availability of LLMs (Large Language Model, the best known of which is ChatGPT, although at this point there are many others available) can produce huge amounts of misinformation which can be spread, even innocently, through social media.

When an LLM (not ChatGPT) was asked for the percentages of deaths attributed to COVID-19 who did not have a pre-existing potentially fatal condition, it replied “... Another study, published in the journal Nature Medicine in 2021, found that 10% of COVID-19 deaths in the United Kingdom occurred in people without any underlying health conditions.”

But, when asked for a link to the study, it came up with “Nalbandian, A., Sehgal, K., Gupta, A. et al. ‘Post-acute COVID-19 syndrome.’ Nat Med 27, 601–615 (2021).” This was a study of patients who had survived COVID-19. Andisearch.com did a much better job, although the question was not really answered. There are apparently over 100 LLMs available to the general public, with varying degrees of accuracy, but all of them faster than anything the mere human minds at Q-Anon can come up with.

All which is frightening in our divided society. In Ezra Klein’s column in the New York Times he wrote, “In the aftermath of the Capitol attack, the polling firm Echelon Insights decided to ask voters a simple question: Do they think the goal of politics is more about ‘enacting good public policy’ or ‘ensuring the country’s survival as we know it?’ Only 25%of Republicans said politics is about policy; nearly half said it’s about survival. That’s today’s Republican Party in a nutshell.”

According to Pew Research “Nearly eight-in-10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (78%) say they have “a lot” or “some” trust in the information that comes from national news organizations – 43 percentage points higher than Republicans and Republican leaners (35%).”

And therein lies the problem. On July 19, the New York Times reported, “Google Tests A.I. Tool That Is Able to Write News Articles.” The new AI, called Genesis, is offered as a helper for reporters. The reporter would collect facts, and Genesis would write the report. The system was presented to the Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Google, the company behind Genesis, has said that it sees Genesis as a way to help journalists with their work, not to replace them. Even if these three newspapers declined to turn their newsrooms into computer terminals

What follows was inevitable. According to Wired (8/19/23), “It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine: A developer used widely available AI tools to generate anti-Russian tweets and articles. The project is intended to highlight how cheap and easy it has become to create propaganda at scale.” Also, a recent episode of Matt Groening’s cartoon Futurama (S11E7) is titled “Rage Against the Vaccine.” It’s streaming on HULU (Disney has a majority interest in HULU, subscription required).

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sam.uretsky@gmail.com

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2023

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