If you believe "the vaccine turned people into the Hulk", thats a mental health problem.
But when inconvenient claims, like "vaccines can cause blood clots in rare cases", often flagged as misinformation, you don't instil much confidence with the public.
And so they go out and get information from other sources.
> If you believe "the vaccine turned people into the Hulk", thats a mental health problem.
Can you identify anyone who actually believes that? Keep in mind that people don't always have logically consistent beliefs, and they sometimes exaggerate their beliefs so they're not even true at all. If I really believed that claim, I would be making a bet with somebody who doesn't believe it and prove myself right by finding this hulk and asking them to punch a hole in a brick wall of flip a car over or something like that. Are there people who have put their own skin in the game like that to support that belief? If not, you're probably strawmanning.
> Can you identify anyone who actually believes that?
I'm not sure if you are trolling but even though Hulk is a hypothetical example, people believe equally strange things, such as invisible microchips inside face masks, viruses being spread by 5G cell towers, that the world is flat and Australia does not exist.
But do they stake something of significant value on those beliefs or just say them on the internet and it's you who is incorrectly believing their claims of their beliefs to be true? People often willingly enjoy false beliefs for emotional reasons and wouldn't actually act on them if the outcome was going to materially affect them.
I used to have a conversation with a crank who kept almost inventing perpetual motion machines. But every time he had nearly finished one, he somehow didn't quite do the last few steps. He talked like he believed they would work but somebody who actually believed that would be chomping at the bit to finish one and prove it working. They'd be richer than God. It seems like some part of him knew it wouldn't and he preferred to enjoy the fantasy of being an unrecognized genius. Does that kind of thinking count as a belief or not? I don't think it's really clear cut. You see a similar inconsistency with religious people who "believe" they'll go to heaven when they die but they still try not to die.
Has "vaccines can cause blood clots in rare cases" been flagged as misinformation? I don't think it has. I get the impression that the misinformation filter is 99% accurate.
There are crazy things that people believe (not necessarily vaccines turning people into the Hulk, but still) that, in the past, I would have assumed were mental health issues.
But when massive numbers of people believe these things, blaming it on individual problems is not so productive. About 300 people a day are dying because intense political polarization has caused people to believe whatever best feeds their tribal urges. The same thing caused an attack on the US seat of government, and a very large percentage of the population thinks that's ok.
I don't know the solution, short of us declaring that the internet and cable tv was a bad idea and we need to go back to simpler times of unconnected computers and 3 TV networks. But I'd agree that facebook, Twitter, etc has to do something.
But when inconvenient claims, like "vaccines can cause blood clots in rare cases", often flagged as misinformation, you don't instil much confidence with the public.
And so they go out and get information from other sources.