Comparability of Vaxxing Saves with Jesus Saves as Misinformation

Problematic challenge of global discernment

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Misinformation: "vaccine hesitancy"?

Misinformattion: The United Nations and its Specialized Agencies have been very explicit regarding the challenge of misinformation:

• Dispelling misinformation, countering vaccine hesitancy vital to beat COVID-19, countries affirm (UN News, 7 April 2021)
• 5 ways the UN is fighting 'infodemic' of misinformation (United Nations Department of Global Communications, 30 April 2020)
• UN tackles 'infodemic' of misinformation and cybercrime in COVID-19 crisis (United Nations Department of Global Communications, 31 March 2020)
• Battling COVID-19 misinformation hands-on (United Nations Department of Global Communications, 17 June 2020)
• UN chief: world faces misinformation epidemic about virus (Associated Press, 16 April 2020)
• United Nations Launches Global Initiative to Combat Misinformation (UN Ethiopia, 21 May 2020)
• Immunizing the public against misinformation (World Health Organization, 25 August 2020)
• A Global Study Shows the Link Between Misinformation on Social Media and Vaccine Hesitancy (UN Dispatch, 9 December 2020)
• Misinformation and growing distrust on vaccines, 'dangerous as a disease' says UNICEF chief (UN News, 28 June 2019)
• WHO -- Vaccine Hesitancy Top Health Threat (Science-Based Medicine, 23 January 2019)
• United Nations: there needs to be â-"e;no place for misinformation on social media platformsâ-" (Reclaim the Net, 6 July 2020)

Vaccine hesitancy: The international community strongly deprecates the perspective of the isolated voices associated with vaccine hesitancy. These raise concerns regarding use of experimental vaccines on the global population, citing possibilities of: autism, vaccine overload, paradoxical vaccine responses, autoimmune triggering, prenatal infection, ingredient concerns, sudden infant death syndrome, and infertility (Tara Haelle, Writing about vaccine hesitancy? There's a study for that, Covering Health, 22 March 2019).

Reference is notably made to the experience with other vaccines in the past and to the incidence of vaccine-related injuries (readily dismissed by authorities as rare and negligible):

• Jason Garshfield: When Government Lies Are Routine, Vaccine Hesitancy Is Justified (TownHall, 27 April 2021)
• Bonnie Meibers: Hesitancy around vaccines more than misinformation (Dayton Daily News, 25 March 2021)
• Serena Marshall and Lara Salahi: COVID Vaccine Hesitancy: Anti-Vax Craziness or Reasonable Caution? (MedPage, 7 April 2021)
• Caitjan Gainty and Agnes Arnold-Forster: Vaccine hesitancy is not new -- history tells us we should listen, not condemn (The Conversation, 27 November 2020)
• Judy Wilyman: Misapplication of the Precautionary Principle has Misplaced the Burden of Proof of Vaccine Safety Science (Public Health Policy, and The Law, 2, 2020)
• Eve Watling: Why Do Some People Believe Vaccines Are Dangerous? (Newsweek, 25 February 2019)
• Amy Boulanger: Understanding Opposition to Vaccines (HealthLine, 15 September 2017)
• Jen Christensen: Past vaccine disasters show why rushing a coronavirus vaccine now would be 'colossally stupid' (CNN, 1 September 2020)
• Jeffrey Young: Here's Why Some Health Care Workers Don't Want The COVID-19 Vaccine  (HuffPost)
• Teresa Carr: Many Anti-Vaxxers Don't Trust Big Pharma: Here's Why (Undark, 24 April 2019)
• Gautam Tejas Ganeshan: Is there an intelligible "anti-vaxx" position? (23 June 2019)
• Alice Dreger: What if not all parents who question vaccines are foolish and anti-science? (New Statesman, 4 June 2015)

Censorship and hate: Websites raising any concerns about use of experimental vaccines are themselves condemned (if not de-platformed) as inherently misleading (Anti-Vaccine Websites, Vaxopedia, 13 January 2018; Anti-Vaxx Websites, We're Onto You, Time, 11 February 2016). Talk shows and conferences claiming objectivity carefully exclude those critical of the mainstream perspective and righteously deny any irresponsibility in doing so. Expression of vaccine concern is readily and uncritically conflated with misinformation and even "digital hate":

• Daniel Allington and Nayana Dhavan: The relationship between conspiracy beliefs and compliance with public health guidance with regard to COVID-19 (Centre for Countering Digital Hate, 2020). In actively seeking to suppress all such precautionary voices, there is little academic concern by authorities for the use of the term (The online anti-vaccine movement in the age of COVID-19 , The Lancet, 2, 2020, 10).
• Joseph Mercola: State Attorneys General Threaten to Silence Dr. Mercola (Mercola, 22 April 2021). This notes that government officials are misusing their positions of power to openly call for censorship of certain groups, organizations and individuals in direct violation of Constitutional law
• Greta Jaruseviciute: The Internet Is Shutting Down Anti-Vaxxers One By One (BoredPanda, 2019)
• Facebook removes popular rabbi's anti-vaxxer group that peddled fake news (The Times of Israel, 9 February 2021)
• The Disinformation Dozen: why platforms must act on twelve leading online anti-vaxxers (Centre for Countering Digital Hate, 2020)

By so explicitly framing dissidence as "hate", authorities, and especially academic authorities, cannot avoid a degree of implication in that modality -- in effectively hating those they perceive as expressing hate. They are then faced with the paradoxical situation of seeking digital means to counter that of which they are themselves a partial expression.

Infodemic implications: With the United Nations framing the lev

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