Ubiquitous Federal Nudge Platoons
wouldn't you love some wonderful injections mmm yes you would
Getting a glimpse of how much money the federal science and intelligence organizations are spending to intervene in the public sphere, I started looking today for other federal efforts to steer social media and the discussions that happen there — and for government projects to combat supposed “vaccine misinformation.” My preliminary and tentative answer is that there don’t appear to be many places in the federal government that aren’t working to shape your perception of the world that reaches your brain through your computer screen, and to get needles into your arm. Narrative control is looking like a whole-of-government project, in an endless stream of me-too efforts from every office that can get in on the action. If there’s one dude from NOAA sitting in a shack on Antarctica on a project to count the penguin poops, he probably has a social media vaccine disinformation project he’s looking to fund.
The US Embassy at the Hague has $275,000 for a team that can build and run an online game — in English, Dutch, French, and “a European, Asian, and/or African language, to be determined at a later date” — that will teach players to resist disinformation on the Internet. This was a project from 2021 that does not yet appear to have found a winning applicant, so experts on stupid things may still have a shot at grabbing this cash.
The US Embassy in Cambodia has $20,000 for a team that can produce a program “to teach Cambodian youth to stop the spread of misinformation and disinformation online, especially on Facebook.”
In the realm of Tom Cruise movies about precrime, the CDC has a million dollars available for the people who can deliver a “Public Health Tool to Predict the Virality of Vaccine Misinformation Narratives.”
WE KNOW WHAT YOU’LL SAY ABOUT NAZI HORSE PASTE TOMORROW, JOE ROGAN:
Purpose: The purpose of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) is to support research to develop and pilot a predictive model and tool to aid federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial public health agencies in identifying emerging vaccine misinformation about recommended vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, that is likely to spread and have a high potential for impacting vaccine confidence. This research and tool will give public health agencies the ability to identify misinformation that may impact vaccine confidence before spreading or impacting people’s health decisions. This will allow public health agencies to identify misinformation and prioritize response rather than allocating more resources and time to mitigating misinformation that would have little to no impact on health behaviors. The resulting tool may also benefit communicators and researchers.
You can read that whole request for applications here:
With apologies to the reader who hates this term, the online mind control effort seeps into meatspace. While the CDC is trying to find a way to figure out what argument against mRNA injections you’ll find persuasive when you open Twitter next week, the Department of Health and Human Services is looking for the team that will allow them to pivot to effective vaccine persuasion IRL:
The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to support research to: 1) obtain a better understanding of existing vaccination counseling practices for adults, particularly adults who may experience disproportionate burden of vaccine-preventable diseases (e.g., pregnant women, racial or ethnic minority groups, those living in rural communities, those with chronic medical conditions); and 2) implement and evaluate interventions, such as a presumptive approach to vaccination counseling and motivational interviewing, to improve adult vaccination counseling practices at all provider levels (e.g., scheduler, medical assistants, nurses, advanced practice clinicians, physicians) in order to decrease misinformation about vaccines, increase vaccine confidence, and ultimately increase adult vaccine uptake.
Read that one here, if you feel the need:
The “presumptive approach to vaccination counseling” works on the model of telling instead of asking. Here’s an example of an NIH paper on that topic, which applies the model of “Presumptively Initiating Vaccines and Optimizing Talk with Motivational Interviewing (PIVOT with MI)” to overcome resistance from Vaccine Hesitant Parents (VHPs): “Moreover, the communication format used to initiate the vaccine recommendation is influential: a presumptive (eg, ‘We have to do some shots’) rather than a participatory (eg, ‘How do you feel about vaccines today?’) format has been associated with increased parental acceptance of childhood and adolescent vaccines. Even among VHPs, significantly fewer verbally resisted vaccine recommendations when clinicians used a presumptive (vs participatory) format.”
That would work, right? If your child’s pediatrician walked into the exam room and said, “We’re going to do some shots today,” instead of asking, you would just hold up your child’s arm and passively submit, because the presumption of cooperation would render you helpless. It’s science.
Anyway, that’s what HHS is working on. “To decrease misinformation about vaccines.”
Everywhere, all over the federal government, every kind of agency is to trying to goose the language and police the parameters of discussion, in big ways and small ways.
There’s a war on for your mind, and you’re paying for it. April 15 is when you pay people to try to shit inside your brain.
I know what would work to reduce vaccine “misinformation.” A vaccine that was actually safe and effective, and, as a result, people who took it no longer became infected, and did not suffer injuries or death.
Recently my daughter took my ten-year-old grandson to the pediatrician for a well-child checkup. When she again refused the Covid shot as well as a flu shot for her son, the doctor sighed and said "I don't know what to do with 'you people.' I used to be a doctor. Now I'm just a consultant." As an unrepentant optimist, I'm believing this is already backfiring. The strong arm of the government and the holier-than-thou attitude of medical personnel has become tiresome and maddening. The eventual result may be a collective push from the uncooperative for medical independence. We are already seeing general vaccine resistance and the cumulative frustration of subjection to censorship and government mind warps. "We people" are smarter than these manipulators think out here in reality land.