USA Today Debunks Vaccine Microchips, Ignores Evidence
- Reporters nitpick dye vs. microchips to protect Bill Gates
- Bill Gates microchip theory persists online and combines Gates’ public statements with development technology about microchips
- USA Today authors attempt to debunk the microchip theory and vindicate Bill Gates and label everything false
- However, the authors ignore vital context and nitpick to smear those who have doubts about Gates’ intentions
OUR RATING: 4 = Major Negligence. MSNBC-level basic journalistic negligence
Indicted Outlet: Matthew Brown, Elizabeth Weise | USA Today | Link | Archive
USA Today rates “false” a claim that Bill Gates might be trying to implant devices in the public in order to control the spread of COVID. The problem is that there is evidence that Gates does, indeed, intend to propose this microchip solution.
The authors Brown and Weise, instead of giving all the evidence in an unbiased manner, give their own opinions about the legitimacy of certain theories. The reporters clearly have a predisposition to cover for Bill Gates and the COVID-19 vaccine, and they give an unfair and unbalanced representation of the prevailing opinions and theories concerning the billionaire. The authors nitpick erroneous claims to obscure the truth behind the situation.
Major Violations:
- Unbalanced
- Misrepresentation
- Nitpicking
Brown and Weise are correct that Bill Gates does not want to implant microchips in people. However, they claim “there is no evidence Bill Gates is trying to implant microchips in people around the world through COVID-19 vaccines,” on the basis of a technicality and then proceed to give an unbalanced presentation that denies legitimate doubts about the ethical implications of Gates’ efforts to vaccinate the globe.
The authors recognize that the microchip conspiracy theory may come from a study published from MIT and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that would physically embed the record of a vaccination in a person. According to Scientific American, the “child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin.” [1] [2] This study was the result “of a direct request from…Bill Gates himself,” according to Scientific American. [1]
But according to the authors, because the dye is not a microchip or capsule, it holds no weight and doesn’t add any legitimacy to the theory. The vaccine in the study is also not a COVID-19 vaccine. This is nitpicking to obscure the implications of this study. Bill Gates directly requested a study to inject people with a physical record of their medical history using a special dye. Other emerging technologies available today offer the same service via microchip implanted under the skin. It is certainly no stretch to think that Gates’ preferred method of vaccine recordation would shift in methods from dyes to microchip.
Whether it’s dye or a microchip, isn’t the fear that there would be something in your body that would track your medical history? One day ago, it was revealed that Pentagon scientists “created a microchip to be inserted under the skin, which will detect COVID-19” [3] Bill Gates and his foundation have supported contact tracing and funded vaccinations in developing countries for years. [4] [5] The authors deny the importance of this context, that there are efforts to track people’s medical histories through medical chips and other methods. A truthful fact check would have recognized that the conspiracy comes, at least in part, from fact.
The second fact the authors dismiss is that Gates “wants to create a ‘digital certificate’ or ‘digital identity’ for all people with the microchip conspiracy theory. Gates has said that some kind of ‘immunity certificate’ may be necessary to reopen the economy.” But the authors say this claim is irrelevant:
“Others have also tried to link claims that Gates wants to create a “digital certificate” or “digital identity” for all people with the microchip conspiracy theory. Gates has said that some kind of “immunity certificate” may be necessary to reopen the economy, but the intended idea is far from mass surveillance or microchipping.”
This last sentence, that mass surveillance is a far cry from vaccination certificates, is clearly an opinion stated as fact. Factually speaking, the definition of mass surveillance is the use of “systems or technologies that collect, analyse, and/or generate data on indefinite or large numbers of people instead of limiting surveillance to individuals about which there is reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.” [6] Recording vaccinations necessarily implies a record of everyone’s healthcare. This would have been considered mass surveillance in any other context.
There is enough evidence to claim that Gates supports tracking people through both vaccinations and technology. Nonetheless, both Brown and Weise deny the possibility that anxiety or fear about the COVID-19 vaccine is founded in some truth. The conspiracy theorists are wrong in overstating the degree and intentionality of the people involved, but they are not wrong in their most basic factual claims: vaccine records can be recorded under your skin, and that record may be in the form of a microchip.
The authors cite social psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia Matthew Hornsey to explain the source of the microchip theory: “Here, people have a single issue that they have rallied behind; they don’t trust vaccinations. Conspiracy theories are then selectively embraced to justify that feeling.”
Weise and Brown write that the theory has no substantiating evidence, despite these numerous examples of Gates taking serious steps to track people’s medical history. But this is because the fact check is really their opinion that none of these facts yield reasonable suspicion about Bill Gates’ intentions. Instead, we must conclude (according to them), they reflect the irrational behavior of conspiracy theorists.
Bill Gates doesn’t want to put microchips in people using COVID vaccines. He just funded a study that looked to implant a physical marker of a person’s medical history, and now he talks about tracking people for COVID-19. But they conclude that this is irrational fear unfounded in fact. Their approach is painfully obtuse: they choose claims that make premature conclusions to debunk while ignoring the reasonable implications of the facts they report. This fact check earns a rating of 4 because they ignore vital context and, if given the benefit of the doubt, negligently delegitimize any doubt about Bill Gates.
OUR RATING: 4 = Major Negligence. MSNBC-level basic journalistic negligence
Bibliography:
2] https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/523/eaay7162
6] https://www.privacyinternational.org/learn/mass-surveillance
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