Censored

My most recent blog about vaccines for children was removed by LinkedIn because of a violation of LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies.  Although LinkedIn won’t tell me what specifically provoked removal of my article, I must have somehow run afoul of this sentence in their policy, “Do not share content that directly contradicts guidance from leading global health organizations and public health authorities.”  

It’s not just LinkedIn.  Twitter has a lengthy policy on COVID-19 tweets, including a ban on misleading information about “the safety or efficacy of treatments or preventative measures that are not approved by health authorities.”  Referring again to “government health authorities,” Facebook’s policy explicitly lists examples of prohibited claims about vaccine effects such as “Bell’s palsy,” “blood clots,” “death,” or the emergence of a “new COVID-19 [sic] strain” with such authority that it would be an exquisite piece of satire if Facebook were not so sadly unaware of its naivety.  I stopped looking for more examples of Big Tech’s holier-than-thou-know-it-all-ism quite confident that I could find as many as I wished.

The question is inescapable.  When “health authorities” disagree, how does Big Tech decide which position is right and permissible, and which position is wrong and censorable?  When an observation contradicts its orthodox viewpoint, Social Media labels it false and removes it.  According to Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, unorthodox observations should be highlighted since they power the movement of scientific understanding.

But let’s not get into the science.  Let’s talk about disagreements among government health authorities.  About the same time that USFDA permitted Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for emergency use in children 5 to 11 years old, Taiwan halted plans for vaccinating those less than 12 years old, France’s Haute Autorité de Santé advised against Moderna vaccination for anyone less than 30 years old, Finland prohibited the vaccine in the same age group, and Denmark and Sweden prohibited its use in anyone under 18 years old.  While other countries are restricting the use of mRNA vaccines in young people, USA is vaccinating preschoolers.

Outside government sponsored health organizations there is also disagreement about safety of vaccines in young people.  Although 17 members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted that the benefits of vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 outweigh the risks, the opposite opinion is held by over 13,000 international physicians and scientists who have signed the Global Covid Summit Declaration II.  

It’s clear there is a lack of consensus among “leading global health organizations” and “public health authorities.”  Yet U.S. government officials are using intimidation, ridicule, and disregard for legal process to make it appear the issues driving its public health policy are settled.  It’s just not true.

A vigorous public debate is needed, and social media could facilitate it.  But social media is not content to be the platform for debate.  Instead, it wants to control the outcome.  Without years of deliberate study and armed only with a crash course in medical science, social media proclaims itself the ultimate health authority, deciding what observations are fit for public consideration and hiding the rest.  Abandoning its journalistic legacy as the fourth estate, social media has become the stooge of government.  Because the first amendment prevents it from doing so directly, the government is using social media as its proxy to restrict the speech of Americans.

It’s not funny.  It’s no longer just our lives; the lives of our children are at stake.  Just as physicians have a duty to “do no harm,” parents have a duty to prevent harm to their children.  Quoting the best social media post I saw last week, “Don’t let your children die on the hill you refuse to fight on.”