On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services provided a toolkit for combatting vaccine disinformation. But a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, released one day earlier, shows just how far ahead the forces of ill-informed misinformation and deliberate disinformation are in this conflict. At this point, it’s no surprise that false claims about the safety of the vaccine are widespread. It’s also not all that shocking that a fair percentage of the population believes that medicine used primarily to kill parasitic worms is also effective against COVID-19.  But the most shocking insight may be the one that affects the most people. Why, after the deaths of over 770,000 Americans, are so many still prepared to discount the threat caused by the novel coronavirus? Why are Republicans able to make political hay in the midst of a pandemic by actively campaigning against, and even ridiculing, common-sense safety precautions? Because a majority of Americans, 60%, say they “they’ve heard that the government is exaggerating the number of COVID-19 deaths by counting deaths due to other factors.” Of that number, 38% say they believe it’s true and another 22% are unsure. America has suffered a mass casualty event that has killed over 250 times as many people as were lost on 9/11. But rather than erecting statues to the fallen or investing trillions into “never again,” over a third of the nation is mired in a place where they don’t believe it even happened, and another quarter just isn’t quite sure. That’s the power of disinformation. Not surprisingly, it also defines the portion of the population that listens to Fox News. Read more