| Social media tries to battle vaccine misinformation; China continues to crack down on Hong Kong. Tonight's Sentences was written by Benjamin Rosenberg. | | | | | | | Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube join fight against vaccine misinformation | | | | | Hannah McKay/Getty Images | | - Twitter joined Facebook and YouTube on Wednesday in saying it will not allow Covid-19 vaccine misinformation to be posted on its website. Next week, the platform will begin removing false vaccine content and labeling other posts as misleading. [Recode / Rebecca Heilweil]
- Facebook announced earlier in December that it would remove misinformation on vaccines after countries began rolling them out. Both Facebook and Instagram, which it owns, will take down false claims related to vaccines that have been disproven by public health experts. [CNBC / Ryan Browne]
- Twitter will enforce its new policy starting next week, and starting early in 2021, it may flag tweets that promote "unsubstantiated rumors, disputed claims, as well as incomplete or out-of-context information about vaccines," even if it does not take them down. [AP / Barbara Ortutay]
- Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine was distributed to Americans for the first time this week, with Moderna's vaccine likely to follow soon. Both vaccines have proved very effective in trials — at least 94 percent, with few side effects. [NYT / Noah Weiland, Denise Grady, and Carl Zimmer]
- That has not stopped many people from spreading misinformation about the vaccines on social media. The misinformation includes the false claims that the vaccines contain a barcode to keep track of everyone and that they are actually harmful to people's health. [NYT / Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel]
- Claims about the vaccines causing allergic reactions are few and far between. Two health care workers in Alaska suffered allergic reactions just 10 minutes after taking the Pfizer vaccine, but the CDC said those have been the only two such cases in the US so far. [CBS News / Zoe Christen Jones]
- Health care workers were the first to receive the vaccine in the US, but nursing home residents are beginning to get them as well. Nursing homes were the site of some of the first major Covid-19 outbreaks, and 118 such facilities in Florida are now administering the vaccine. [NYT / Frances Robles, Neil MacFarquhar, and Miriam Jordan]
- The vaccines could not come at a more critical time, as the US is repeatedly breaking records for Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The San Francisco Bay Area has returned to a stay-at-home order as ICU bed capacity dropped below 15 percent this week. [San Jose Mercury News / Paul Rogers and Julia Prodis Sulek]
- Meanwhile, Congress is close to passing a new stimulus bill for the first time since April. The deal has not been finalized yet, but is likely to include more than $300 billion in aid to businesses and $600 in direct payments to individuals. [AP / Andrew Taylor]
| | | China indicts Hong Kong activists who attempted to escape to Taiwan | | - Several months after 12 Hong Kong protesters attempting to flee to Taiwan were arrested by the Chinese government and brought to mainland China, 10 of them were indicted. If convicted, they would face two to seven years in jail, and potentially life imprisonment. [CNN / Nectar Gan, James Griffiths, and Eric Cheung]
- The activists have not yet been put on trial, but if they are, their odds are slim — China's court system has a conviction rate of around 99 percent. Two of the protesters were charged with organizing an illegal border crossing; the other eight with illegally crossing the border. [The Guardian / Helen Davidson]
- The other two protesters are juveniles and have not yet been charged, but they are due to have a separate, closed investigation into their cases. All 12 activists have not had much contact with their families, and their relatives have been unable to hire lawyers for them. [NYT / Austin Ramzy]
- This episode is just the latest example of the Chinese Communist Party cracking down on Hong Kong's pro-democracy opposition. The current setup, called "one country, two systems," calls for Hong Kong to operate semi-autonomously until 2047, but that may no longer hold true. [Vox / Jen Kirby]
| | | | | | | New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland is President-elect Joe Biden's pick for Secretary of the Interior. If confirmed, she would be the first Native American to hold that job. | | | [Washington Post / Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni] -
A number of more progressive Democratic senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, plan to pressure Biden to take drastic action against climate change, even to the point of obstructing some of his Cabinet nominees if he is not sufficiently aggressive. [Axios / Amy Harder] -
Biden's inauguration will be a scaled-down event due to Covid-19 — there will be an extremely limited audience at the swearing-in ceremony on January 20. Outgoing President Donald Trump has not said whether he will be in attendance. [CNN / Kate Sullivan and Sarah Mucha] -
French President Emmanuel Macron became the latest world leader to test positive for the coronavirus. He will self-isolate for the next week while working remotely, but he attended several major events recently, including a European Union summit. [BBC News] -
A Chinese space capsule has returned to Earth carrying fresh rock samples from the moon, the first time in more than four decades that lunar debris has made its way back to Earth. [AP / Ken Moritsugu] | | | | | "In the context of a global pandemic, vaccine misinformation presents a significant and growing public health challenge — and we all have a role to play. We are focused on mitigating misleading information that presents the biggest potential harm to people's health and wellbeing." | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | This email was sent to edwardlorilla1986.paxforex@blogger.com. Manage your email preferences, or unsubscribe to stop receiving all emails from Vox. If you value Vox's unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036.
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