The nonprofit was to set up a live chat with the director of public health
The Powerhouse Science Center had its Facebook page suspended Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of spreading misinformation about COVID-19. The Powerhouse was to host a live conference with public health officials. (Jerry McBride/Durango Herald file)
Hours before the Powerhouse Science Center hosted a COVID-19 presentation Tuesday on Facebook, the nonprofit realized its social media account had been suspended.
Executive Director Jeff Susor said Facebook suspended the page based on reports that the Powerhouse violated Facebook policies that prevent spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
The Powerhouse was set to feature the latest in a three-part series on the virus, vaccines and misinformation surrounding the pandemic. The third session, on the current state of COVID-19, was going to feature Liane Jollon, executive director of public health for the San Juan Basin, which serves La Plata and Archuleta counties.
Susor said a small but vocal minority of people were stalking the powerhouse for its COVID-19 presentations. He said he received emails – all from the same group of half a dozen people – saying that Susor and Powerhouse staff “don’t know what science is”.
“‘You don’t understand that the COVID vaccine is killing tens of thousands of children,'” Susor said, summarizing the messages he received.
“And that’s completely untrue,” he said.
Susor suspects that the same people behind the angry emails are responsible for spamming the report button on Powerhouse’s Facebook page.
Susor provided The Herald of Durango with the contents of various emails he had received, although he withheld the names of the senders.
Susor said the emails interpreted or misrepresented data reported through VAERS, the national vaccine safety surveillance system that accepts reports of adverse events after vaccination. The emails also allege that drug companies are withholding data on vaccine ingredients and side effects. And several emails suggest clinicians have conflicting financial interests related to vaccines.
“There are tons of resources online that debunk a lot of this misinformation, but it’s national and disconnected from our local community,” Susor said. “So we felt it was our role to help people orient themselves to reliable sources.”
He said the powerhouse’s role during the pandemic has been to fight misinformation by giving people reliable information from local sources and answering questions in good faith.
Susor tries to reschedule the presentation featuring Jollon.
In an interview Wednesday with the HeraldJollon said the overwhelming majority of people who died from COVID-19 in the past two months were unvaccinated despite access to vaccines.
“When something like this (false power plant reports) happens, it really has a huge impact on the community,” she said. “It is not fair to people who really want to know more about this pandemic and who really want to assess when they want to get vaccinated, for this discussion to be cut short. Because it leads to death if people are not vaccinated.
Misinformation and misinformation about vaccine effectiveness is a trend medical professionals have noticed even before the pandemic arrived, Jollon said. Epidemics of childhood diseases such as measles occurred in the United States and abroad. But the rate of misinformation has accelerated since COVID-19 hit the scene, scaring some people off vaccines and prolonging the pandemic, she said.
A small group of people can easily spread misinformation online, and small adjustments to the number of people vaccinated can give viruses a chance to cause outbreaks, the health director added.
Jollon said she looked forward to Tuesday night’s discussion.
“There are real consequences with this,” she said.
Eight of 10 La Plata County residents have received at least one vaccine and seven of 10 residents are fully vaccinated, she said.
“We know from the statistics that an overwhelming number of individuals want to protect themselves, protect their families and protect the community,” she said. “The incident that happened last night (Tuesday) is a continuation of a campaign of fear and intimidation of public health officials that we have been experiencing as an agency for some time.”
She compared efforts to shut down the Powerhouse’s Facebook page to previous incidents in which people showed up outside her home to protest public health orders. The backlash against public health agencies and other organizations is “very intense” and “very unfair”, she said.
As of Wednesday morning, Susor was still working with Facebook to restore Powerhouse’s online profile. He believes the removal of misinformation from the social media platform is automated and expects it will take a real person a few days to review Powerhouse’s content.
cburney@durangoherald.com
