Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of coordinating with social media companies to suppress certain information about the COVID-19 vaccine.
Citing one of his own social media posts about the mislabeled vaccine, Johnson claimed the agency had abused his authority and demanded he turn over key documents about the effort in a letter Monday to CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen.
“Based on recent information I have received … it is clear that the CDC is abusing its authority by engaging in a censorship campaign to suppress and discredit certain views labeled as ‘misinformation,'” Johnson wrote in the letter, obtained by The Post.
For example, Johnson highlighted a January 3, 2022 post he made on Twitter, now known as X, which highlighted information from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Ron Johnson has arrested various health agencies to respond to the outbreak.REUTERS
The Wisconsin senator rebuked the CDC’s push to moderate social media content regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. Senator Ron Johnson
The post that got Senator Ron Johnson slapped with a misleading label on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.Senator Ron Johnson
In the post, Johnson claimed that VAERS data showed there were more than 1 million adverse effects from the COVID-19 hit. The post was misleadingly labeled on the platform with a note explaining that most public health officials have deemed the vaccine safe.
All replies, shares or likes resulting from the post are then blocked by the platform, according to Johnson. Since then, X has switched to a “Community Notes” system that crowdsources corrections to potentially misleading posts.
The platform’s new leadership then explained to Johnson that executive branch officials, specifically from the CDC, “communicated with social media companies, including Twitter, about ‘Covid Vaccine Misinformation,'” the senator wrote.
Mandy Cohen took over as CDC director last month. TNS
“The information provided by Twitter shows a clear and concerted effort by CDC to censor those who tweet about VAERS data,” Johnson added.
Johnson, the ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, demanded records detailing interactions between all CDC employees and employees on X, Facebook and YouTube regarding 10 individuals who expressed skeptical views on vaccines and the shutdown as of Dec. 1, 2019.
The 10 include Johnson himself, Brianne Dressen, John Ioannidis, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Pierre Kory, Theresa Long, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Harvey Risch, and Aaron Siri.
The Wisconsin senator also requested all records related to the CDC’s interactions with both private sector companies and federal agencies about online speech suppression or COVID-19 misinformation policies.
He’s also looking for records on the topic of “Be On the Lookout” and a list of all social media posts flagged by the CDC as “containing misinformation, misinformation or generally objectionable speech.”
Johnson gave the CDC a September 11 deadline to comply. The agency did not return The Post’s request for comment, but has stated in the past that VAERS relies on reports submitted by individuals rather than health officials.
“VAERS is not designed to determine whether vaccines cause health problems but is useful for detecting unusual or unexpected adverse event reporting patterns that may indicate possible safety problems with vaccines,” read an advisory to social networks included in Johnson’s letter.
The senator expressed the CDC’s advice to the platform about misinformation and what to watch out for on social media. Senator Ron Johnson
In the letter, Johnson also laid out a timeline showing the sequence of events leading up to his tweet about VAERS.
“It appears that the CDC’s efforts to coordinate with Twitter to discredit posts about VAERS soon followed my own public statements about the VAERS data and the mainstream media’s condemnation of my statements,” he wrote.
Content moderation policies on social media platforms have long been a rallying cry for conservatives who complain they have been unfairly censored.
In the House, Republicans led by Subcommittee on Government Guns Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have scrutinized social media policy.
Ron Johnson wins re-election in the battleground state of Wisconsin in the 2022 midterm elections. AP
Johnson has also examined other actions by government health agencies surrounding the outbreak.
Earlier this month, he asked the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services whether government scientists were hiding critical information about COVID-19 from the public.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
