column | Scientists allow themselves to take advantage of the role of VWS

During the Corona crisis, the VWS Ministry was concerned that disinformation might lead to people having wrong ideas. They may think that a secret society of civil servants, communicators, doctors, scientists, bloggers, and columnists will influence the media so that they don’t see certain messages.

To prevent people from harboring such misconceptions, the ministry set out to work with a secret society of government officials, communications experts, doctors, scientists, bloggers, and columnists to ensure that some of the messages would be unnoticed or barely noticed by the public.

The secret society was called a “think tank”. It’s been around since 2017, when vaccination coverage fell from around 95 percent to 92 percent in a few years, and Minister Bloches (VWS, ChristenUnie) went on the offensive. When the Corona crisis broke out, the biggest concern from day one was controlling the provision of information. And what works better than this complex network of trusted and confidence-inspiring think-tank members?

It is not currently clear who is involved in this government-initiated information manipulation and who decides which information is desirable and which is not. In any case, it has a significant impact on public debate. For example, for a long time it was impossible to freely discuss the origin of the coronavirus. The possibility of the virus spreading from a laboratory accident has been described by social media companies as misinformation. When the World Health Organization sent a team to Wuhan to investigate this possibility, lockdowns and bans were quickly lifted. Turns out the premise isn’t just for wappies.

The media campaign reminded me recently Norwegian Refugee CouncilResearch that has become clear General Trade Journal Information from the security services was published in the newspaper during the Cold War. Against the unfree propaganda of the communist ideal state, the use of one’s independent press to obtain classified information for the state was also permitted.

The Corona pandemic broke out at a time when the establishment was also becoming convinced that we were in a kind of cold war. The information war between facts and alternative facts, pro-science and anti-science, news and fake news. Otherwise, how could Americans dream of voting for Trump? This should have been based on a Russian misunderstanding of his situation. How could Britain’s exit from the European Union happen? correct. Lies and Deceit, via Facebook, Cambridge Analytica – That was the only way, right? If these Brexit voters had the right information, they could not have made the wrong decision.

You will no longer find traditional media editors meeting in secret with the Department of Health, Welfare and Sport. However, it seems that the employees of the social media platforms are very willing to contribute to the ministry’s efforts to promote correct information. That is why they no longer have to use horse products as before. They can now simply render the information computationally innocuous. The opposite of Search Engine Optimization. You are simply letting it disappear into the depths of the internet.

One member of the think tank is Ted Van Essen, who holds weekly consultations with the program time to max. He sees no harm in it. The center of thought follows science, and whoever does not follow it is, according to Dr. Van Essen, “devoid of God.” According to Van Essen, this scientific fact is absolute.

It is precisely they who are the last trust-bearers of society, doctors and scientists, who allow themselves to be employed by the VWS. But they forget one thing: information is always less important in how people make choices than trust in the authorities the information comes from. And if anything gets damaged by this kind of covert manipulation, that’s it. trust.