COMMENT | Plugging the flow of the fake and false

COMMENT | My 84-year-old aunt died from Covid-19 in a Penang nursing home. She was not vaccinated. Would she have lived had she taken the jab?

My brother in Perth got his first jab after hesitating for months. That was after I insisted he stopped ingesting “news” from conspiracy sites and stories forwarded by friends of other friends.

I know a devout family that sees the pandemic as the signs of end times. What can happen will happen, the mother said. Faith and prayers are their shields. Vaccines are not needed.

A colleague, highly sceptical of pharmaceutical companies but otherwise intelligent, constantly sends me “peer-reviewed papers” on alternative treatments for Covid-19. He is unvaccinated.

Unqualified advice? Understandable hesitancy? Inexplicable faith? Valid scepticism of ‘big pharma’?

Whatever it is, we are all party to believing and spreading unverifiable ‘information’ about Covid vaccines.

Lingering dread caused by long lockdowns has turned many of us into active spreaders of dubious texts, doctored photos and deep-fake videos to the extent that...