Anatomy of a Soft Disinfo Grift Made for Trump to Blow Up
I found this posted on Facebook by a remote family member and it struck me as peculiar:
New study investigates California’s possible herd immunity to COVID-19
Possible herd immunity, already? That’s pretty amazing. Reading on I see Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, and my spidey senses are set off. After reading this a few times and digging around the slightest bit it appears that we have establishment journalism running an ad for COVID-19 antibody testing, not approved, costing only $70, wrapped up and packaged as journalism inside of a right wing frame, sprouted and spread through small market mainstream media, founded on an apolitical Made For Facebook anecdotal trope.
It’s brilliant. Subversive, evil, but truly brilliant. And made for Trump to push a la Hydrochloroquinine. It’s appears it’s not only an ad to get in on the disaster capitalism, it’s also a major vehicle for a right wing media frame be spread by mainstream meda: social distancing isn’t all that, we won’t have to do it that much, herd immunity works.
I’ve emailed the reporter to inquire how this story came about and she inferred it was from Hanson, because Stanford medicine, yada yada. It’s a Hearst family television station and this story has run on other Hearst stations in larger markets, and now I’ve seen it today in an LA paper not sourced to the original Salinas station.
This coudn’t be more obvious.
I’m going to whittle down to the details a little more and may update later.