FDA commissioner has made social media a key part of outreach. Agency aims to counter misinformation without amplifying it.
When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during a National Football League game in January, dozens of Twitter trolls quickly blamed it on Covid-19 shots.
“Snake-oil salesmen” seized on the event, said Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf in an interview. The #diedsuddenly hashtag, which appeared in tweets about the incident, is often used to discredit vaccines by linking them to deaths and injuries without evidence.
The FDA is treading a fine line between responding to misinformation on social media without amplifying it. After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter Inc. last year the platform stopped enforcing a policy designed to suppress false or misleading information about the pandemic.
“Sometimes if you get into a dispute with people that are not telling the truth, it just magnifies the situation,” Califf said. “I think it’s better in this case to reinforce the truth and not get into a back-and-forth argument with people that are peddling falsehoods.”