Topic: WorldNetDaily
If there's one thing WorldNetDaily is good at -- aside from publishing falsehoods and misinformation -- it's fearmongering, and the Biden administration's attempt to increase the number of Americans vaccinated against coronavirus by having health workers go door-to-door provided another opportunity to do that.
A July 6 article by Art Moore introduced the idea in a surprisingly fair manner -- but then he called on notable COVID misinfomers to shoot it down. He repeated Peter McCullough's wildly wrong claim that "The Delta variant is the mildest one we've seen so far" with a "very low mortality," followed by Harvey Risch's utterly disproven assertion that "This is a very mild variant, and the cases are going to go up ... whereas at the same time the mortality is flat, near zero."
Bob Unruh ramped up the fearmongering in a July 9 article:
When President Biden's latest extreme COVID move – a door-to-door visit to Americans to promote the vaccines – was announced, one of the reactions was from South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who said those decisions are "personal" for his residents to make.
"Enticing, coercing, intimidating, mandating, or pressuring anyone to take the vaccine is a bad policy which will deteriorate the public’s trust and confidence in the state’s vaccination efforts," he said.
One member of Congress openly suggested while the door knocks this year may concern COVID vaccinations, those next year might be about collecting Americans' guns.
But a a report from Press California explains Oregon already is considering ways to implement Biden's agenda, and "one tactic could be to send out the National Guard to neighborhoods."
The state actually has some 70% of is residents vaccinated, but "that’s not enough, according to zealous public health bureaucrats," the report said.
Surprisingly, Unruh did balance out his artile withh a view from the other side -- albeit in the very last paragraph -- auoting White House vaccine coordinator Jeffrey Zeints as saying that "organizations that are feeding misinformation and trying to mischaracterize this type of trusted messenger work" are "doing a disservice to the country and to the doctors, the faith leaders, the community leaders and others who are working to get people vaccinated, to save lives and help to end this pandemic."
A July 12 article by Unruh tried to portray instructions to the door-to-door workers as somehow sinister and Nazi-esque:
It's not taking long for President Biden's plan to dispatch federal representatives to your front door to ask you about your COVID vaccine to become reality.
One county in Illinois already has posted instructions for those interrogators on how to act when they confront you, including for them to ignore "No soliciting" signs.
No mention, however, of whether they're supposed to ignore "No trespassing" directives.
"We went from 15 days to slow the spread, to Biden's gestapo knocking door-to-door to see your papers," wrote Jenna Ellis. "Who did Nazi that one coming?"
[...]
There's no mention of possible conflicts with HIPAA, the federal medical information privacy requirements which are supposed to prevent an individual's medical details from being released to members of the general public, like a door-knocker.
In fact, it is not a HIPAA violation to ask whether a person has received the COVID vaccine.
On July 14 Unruh touted how "A new national poll has found Americans giving a thumbs down to Joe Biden's agenda to send strike forces 'door-to-door' across America to convince people to take the COVID vaccinations." Unruh didn't explain why he called health workers giving vaccinations "strike forces." Later that day, Unruh rampted up the fear and hateful rhetoric:
The newest version of Joe Biden's "Big Brother" agenda, which already features strike forces going door-to-door asking people about their COVID vaccinations, now has members of a coalition knocking on doors and giving shots on the spot.
A report from PJMedia explains, "Joe Biden wasn’t kidding. When his spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the Biden administration would send people door-to-door to convince people to get the COVID shot, there was a chill sent down the spines of freedom-loving Americans everywhere. Many people took it as a threat.
"Now those door-to-door COVID-shot salespeople are here and they've brought back-up: injectors," the report said.
It was not explained why health workers offering vaccinations would not have the vaccines with them when doing so, or why that is a "threat."
Unruh devoted a July 16 article to invoking Karl Rove to manufacture a sinister political motive to the plan:
But now longtime political analyst Karl Rove is suggesting that there is an unwelcome political influencer making the decisions on what campaign is being done where.
"If you’re in the White House and you’re attempting to solve this problem, do you really want to pollute it with a big draw-up of highly partisan and ideological groups rather than focusing on the mission at hand? Are these people around in, let’s say, Nebraska? Are these people around in let’s say Rhode Island?" he said.
"In fact, the list I’ve seen is virtually only states that are swing states, close states from the 2020 election. Somebody in the White House and somebody at the Department of Health and Human Services has to be held to account. Who’s making these decisions? Who’s allowing politics to enter into something that ought to be as far away from politics as possible?"
A commentary at The Gateway Pundit was blunt: "Are Joe Biden's vaccine teams going door-to-door in swing states doing more than promoting vaccines? Americans need to know."
Of course, all this scaremongering from Unruh -- complete with Nazi references -- is just parroting right-wing narratives designed to keep their followers afraid of the government, not to report truthfully on what is actually happening.
Unruh really needs to go back to Zeints' criticism of fearmongerers like himself and ask whether the fearmongering and misinforming he's doing is actually doing a disservice to the country and its health workers -- and whether that's worth doing for a website that's on the precipice of failure.
