Sen. Ron Johnson says CDC pressured social media to censor his COVID vaccine submit

Sen. Ron Johnson is accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of abusing its authority by coordinating with social media platforms to censor details about COVID-19 vaccines.

The Wisconsin Republican referenced social media posts about vaccines, together with one among his personal, that had been characterised as deceptive.

In a letter he despatched earlier this week to Dr. Mandy Cohen, CDC director, he known as for essential paperwork and supplies concerning the efforts to suppress vaccine info from the general public via social media.

“Based on recent information I have received … it is clear that CDC abused its authority by engaging in a censorship campaign to suppress and discredit certain viewpoints it labeled as ‘misinformation,’” Mr. Johnson wrote within the letter.

He cited his personal social media submit on the platform now often known as X, which was labeled as “misleading” when the social media website was known as Twitter.

“On January 3, 2022, I wanted to share with the public information from the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) regarding the COVID-19 vaccines. In a tweet, I examined and compared government data on the number of adverse events reports associated with COVID-19 vaccines, medications used to treat COVID-19, and non-COVID-19 medications,” he wrote.

“After I tweeted the information from my official U.S. Senate Twitter account, Twitter labeled it ‘misleading’ and blocked all replies, shares, or likes for the tweet,” Mr. Johnson stated.

The senator’s submit says that VAERS knowledge confirmed 1 million hostile results from COVID-19 vaccines. The “misleading” label on the submit countered that the majority public well being officers stated that the vaccines are secure.

Since Twitter modified possession and its title to X, it has additionally moved to a Community Notes protocol that deploys a crowd-sourced system to deal with doubtlessly incorrect posts on the platform.

In response to Mr. Johnson’s inquiry about why the massive tech firm censored him and others, X’s most up-to-date administration stated Executive Branch officers, notably from the CDC communicated with social media firms, together with Twitter, “about ‘COVID Vaccine Misinformation.’”

Mr. Johnson additionally revealed that X staff famous that the “CDC identified ‘misleading information about VAERS reports’ as a specific subset of ‘COVID Vaccine Misinformation,’ which they encouraged social media companies to address.”

“The information Twitter provided showed a clear and concerted effort by the CDC to censor those who tweeted about VAERS data,” Mr. Johnson wrote.

Mr. Johnson, who serves as the highest Republican on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, needs all of the data exhibiting the communications between all CDC staff and staff at X, Facebook, and YouTube about 10 individuals who mentioned vaccine and lockdown-skeptical stances beginning Dec. 1, 2019.

This contains Mr. Johnson, Brianne Dressen, John Ioannidis, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pierre Kory, Theresa Long, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Harvey Risch and Aaron Siri.

He additionally demanded data referring to the CDC’s interactions with firms within the non-public sector, and different third-party teams, similar to nonprofit organizations, relating to disinformation, misinformation, disfavored speech, content material moderation, any type of censorship or suppression of on-line speech, or the event of COVID-19 misinformation insurance policies.

Mr. Johnson additionally requested for paperwork about “Be On the Lookout” matters and an inventory of all social media posts the CDC flagged as “containing misinformation, disinformation, or generally disfavored speech.”

The Wisconsin Republican gave the CDC Director a deadline of Sept. 11 to ship this materials.