The meme below was written by a profile that had a woman's name. She has either blocked me now or her account is gone, but it did look legitimate.
When she first posted it, I shared it. I think there were maybe a few thousand shares at that point. It was about a day old. Right after I shared it, I realized I had responded to it emotionally ("oh thank you AMA, we are all united against this fascism").
This is EXACTLY the state of mind that disinformation agents look for or seek to create. People want them to be true, they respond emotionally, and they don't fact check it.
If the disinformation is challenged, they will defend it by going to great lengths to "prove" that it must be true.
Disinformation is not just about spreading harmful lies or slander, it is also about cultivating a lack of commitment to truth and fact checking.
The J.D. Vance couch sex story is a good example of this. Everyone wanted this to be true. It seemed like it could be true. How could someone make something like that up?
But they had. Then there were rumors that it appeared in some earlier edition, perhaps a review galley, a special first edition that no one seemed to have a copy of. It's not in the first edition and if it had been we'd have heard the story ages ago.
The story spread so far, so fast, and so virulently that it is now just accepted. Everyone knows it isn't true, but we don't care.
And that it makes us as bad as the MAGAs doesn't bother us because it is harmless.
But I don't think this one is harmless. For one thing, this has gained the AMA youtube site over 100,000 new followers in a very short time.
No one is on the CDC site, which had fewer followers to begin with. Instead of creating more of a watchdog effect on the CDC it has created a feeling of false satisfaction that the AMA is watching over the CDC and public health like a guardian angel.
And it has created a situation where people have accepted unverified information, that could be true but is not publicly acknowledged anywhere.
And until the AMA comes out with a public statement saying this is true, we should not promote it as fact.
If a newspaper reported this as fact they would become unreliable. Anyone that wanted to divert people to the AMA site could simply say "I believe" or "I think it is likely" but instead they continue to share this meme.
I went to the AMA youtube site. No notice they were doing this. I looked through their videos. I looked at both websites and their press releases. I searched both sites and the youtube page for any official announcement confirming this.
I conducted a search to see if there were rumours about this anywhere else- Alt National Park Service perhaps? Nothing anywhere.
I contacted both organizations through their press contact form. They have never responded to me. I contacted Snopes. Still no response.
This woman posted it right after this story appeared in the news (February 6th):
CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Transmission Between Cats and People - The New York Times
And there had been a stoppage of reports in late January:
Trump Administration Halts All Communications From The Centers For Disease Control As Bird Flu Spreads
HHS official halts CDC reports and health communications for Trump team review
After two weeks these updates were reinstated with some restrictions
CDC Weekly Report Back After 2-Week Halt But No H5N1 Bird Flu Info
CDC scientists barred from publishing certain research as communication limits continue : Shots - Health News : NPR
The CDC has been updating on bird flu, but not so much on their youtube, which gets very little following, especially now that everyone is over on the AMA site.
H5 Bird Flu: Current Situation | Bird Flu | CDC
Bird Flu | Bird Flu | CDC
In October of 2024, before Trump's electionthe AMA and CDC declared a joint venture:
"The AMA has been selected as a partner to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a five-year, $176 million initiative aimed at strengthening the nation’s public health infrastructure and building its workforce."
AMA, CDC will work to bolster public health infrastructure | American Medical Association
This was posted on January 29, 2025. It is the first in the series
https://youtu.be/FoXZvHYHd_Y?si=5L00brOwcozv7Tyl
So when people went to the site this is the video they saw, and everyone that have challenged about this has insisted that this is "verification" of the meme.
Now is not the time for this kind of thinking. We need to catch ourselves. This could end up damaging the CDC. Or the AMA. It may not.
But it is certainly damaging our credibility, and the integrity with which we monitor our thought processes and information intake.
Within a few days of the meme, it had been shared over 100k times. I have seen it everywhere, with no one challenging the "daily updates" (not true) or that the "AMA is doing this because the CDC can't."
The meme is misinformation, deliberate, and should not be shared. I'm sorry to be sharing it here.
One side note:
Just as I began to write this, I got a comment from someone on my post about neoliberals saying "I read as far as Jimmy Carter and stopped. He's my hero." This particular person is being directly affected by neoliberal policies.
This kind of avoidance, refusing to learn about something, because it infringes on hero worship, is another aspect of the kind of emotional thinking that makes people susceptible to disinformation.
(PS-At a later date, when I have some more time, I will post some clips of the arguments I have had with people about this. I need to remove their names and format them as facebook has a lot of coding in each text that makes it nightmare to directly paste into blogger. This is not to shame anyone, but to point out how tricky people will get when confronted with their own gullibility and lack of critical thinking. Yes, I do it too.)
