Online Nurses’ Groups Are Rife With Vaccine Disinformation – By Kiera Butler (Mother Jones) / Feb 2 2021
This could help explain why so many health care workers are refusing shots.
Nicole Bennett, a critical care nurse practitioner in Massachusetts, had always found humor and camaraderie in her Facebook group for nurses. She joined the group, called Nurses, in 2019, right after a Washington state senator had publicly suggested that nurses “probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day.” In the group, Bennett, whose name I’ve changed to protect her privacy, found nearly a million other nurses just as outraged as she was about the politician’s perception of their profession. The posts varied—from funny nurse memes to touching stories from busy shifts—but the comments were almost always supportive. When the pandemic hit, the group came together, cheering each other on as the worst of the first wave of cases came crashing over hospitals across the country. “It was a place of solidarity,” she recalls.
But this fall, Bennett noticed the tone slowly began to change. Members started posting about the US rollout of coronavirus vaccines, noting that health care workers would be first in line. While some in the group cheered this news, others railed against it. On December 11, a group administrator posted an article announcing the emergency use authorization of the Pfizer vaccine. “My husband read an article to me from a physician who works for one of the big pharms (I wish I could remember which one) that stated there’s evidence that one of the vaccines can and had caused sterility in women,” one commenter said.
Another commenter added: “Just keep this in mind—taking the vaccine will not release you from the perils of face masks and social distancing. The torture will continue, while your DNA is being genetically modified by design.”
