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San Diego –
San Diego County will step up efforts to address medical misinformation after its board of directors voted 3-2 to declare medical misinformation a public health crisis.
The board approved the move on August 31, after a tumultuous 15-hour session that included eight hours of often angry public comments against vaccine and mask requirements. Democratic overseers Nathan Fletcher, Nora Vargas, and Terra Lawson-Remer voted for the resolution, and Republican overseers Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson opposed it.
Fletcher said the move is necessary to ensure misleading statements about COVID-19 don’t prevent doctors and nurses from treating patients as rising COVID-19 cases fill hospitals again. He added that San Diego County would be the first district in the nation to pass such a resolution.
“I trust our public health doctors, who devote their entire life and profession to public health to guide through difficult situations, make recommendations, examine and investigate all available data,” he said.
Anderson and Desmond said that while they support vaccination efforts, they think it is an exaggeration to lead the debate on the pandemic.
“I can’t support it,” said Anderson. “I don’t want our neighbors to die. But I don’t know how you can stop misinformation. “
The resolution does not include steps to suppress misinformation or penalties, but instead outlines steps to negate misinformation.
Even so, many of the more than 200 protesters at the meeting condemned the measure as censorship and said it would curtail their right to freedom of expression.
On Wednesday, Daniel Hallin, professor of communications at UC San Diego, said the county’s actions were necessary to counter misleading or dangerous information about the virus and possible treatments.
“Government agencies have a responsibility to do the things that they do here,” Hallin said. “If they are to play a role in protecting public health, communication is essential.”
The county action, borrowed from a recommendation by US General Surgeon Vivek H. Murthy in his Confronting Health Disinformation recommendation, offers a broad, general direction on how this will be done.
County health officials will identify and flag misinformation and instead offer accurate information, the measure said.
Staff need to identify health information gaps and questions and concerns, especially in hard-to-reach communities.
For example, the county’s numbers show that while 72 percent of Hispanic San Diegans, 70 percent of Asian residents, and 63 percent of white residents received at least one COVID-19 vaccination by August 25, only 44 percent of black San Diegans were vaccinated.
The resolution also instructs district officials to research sources of health misinformation and calculate their effects. And it empowers the county to invest in health worker training and education programs to help people differentiate between medical research and personal opinion.
It calls for partnerships with federal, state, territorial, tribal, private, nonprofit, research, and other local institutions.
And it instructs district officials to create a website to act as a clearinghouse for medical information while dispelling myths about the virus and vaccines.
County officials said they haven’t ironed out many details of this effort, but they are creating a task force to work on it. For example, you need to define what medical misinformation is and how to label it.
The newly adopted measure also calls for the recruitment of “trusted messengers” to involve people on public health issues such as COVID-19 vaccination.
County officials have yet to determine who these messengers might be or how they would contact people to discuss health issues. It is also not clear whether these campaigns would take place online or in person at public gatherings, clinics, or in neighborhoods.
Hallin said protesters and other skeptics are unlikely to be persuaded by information from the county, but many other people hesitant about vaccines or masking would benefit from education on these issues.
“Nobody is going to convince the hardcore of those who think the pandemic is a joke, but there are a lot of people who hesitate … it’s not that hard,” Hallin said. “Initiatives to reach this segment of the public are really important.”
Argentina Servin, Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, leads UCSD’s 2VIDA !, an awareness and vaccination campaign in the hardest-hit communities in San Diego.
2VIDA! trying to lessen the vaccination delay often caused by misinformation, she said. Among colored people, medical hesitation is sometimes rooted in suspicion of government and science, she said, but there have been more questions lately, rooted in conspiracy theories and misinformation.
For example, there are rumors that the vaccines contain microchips or can cause infertility and miscarriages, she said. Some people also exaggerate the likelihood of rare but real side effects, she said.
“They perceive a small part and make their own interpretation of it, and this is where misinformation comes in,” Servin said.
Some organizations already offer guidance on how to correct medical misinformation.
In 2019, shortly before the announcement of the pandemic, the British Medical Journal offered strategies to combat medical misinformation in an editorial. It said health professionals should find ways to deal with “information silos” and “echo chambers” that spread myths about important health issues.
It also suggests “targeted, expert fact-checking of social media posts” and health workers to “promote a culture of fact-checking in public” to discourage people from believing and passing on false information.
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