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WASHINGTON – U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Sunday he is worried about the increasing number of new coronavirus cases in the country and laid part of the blame on social media companies for not doing enough to remove misinformation about the need to get vaccinated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned about what we\u2019re seeing,\u201d Murthy told \u201cFox News Sunday,\u201d as about 29,000 new cases are being diagnosed every day in the United States, roughly the same level as in April 2020, when the pandemic first swept through the country. The highly contagious delta variant has been particularly problematic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis pandemic isn\u2019t over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news is that the vaccinated are still highly protected,\u201d he said. But he noted that 95% of the deaths occurring now in the U.S., more than 250 a day, are of people who have not been vaccinated.<\/p>\n
Echoing recent remarks by President Joe Biden, Murthy said people are being \u201cinundated with misinformation,\u201d about the available vaccines being unsafe or unnecessary.<\/p>\n
President Biden last week said misinformation posted to social media sites was \u201ckilling people,\u201d and that, \u201cThe only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Facebook site used by millions of Americans says it has removed 18 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation. Murthy said, \u201cDespite what they\u2019ve done, it\u2019s not enough. The intention is good, but I\u2019m asking them to step up\u201d and do more.<\/p>\n
In a separate interview on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week\u201d show, Murthy urged people using social media sites to \u201cverify their sources before posting\u201d comments about the efficacy of the shots.<\/p>\n
Analyses have shown that the vaccination rate in the U.S. is markedly lower in states that voted in last November\u2019s election for then-President Donald Trump, who at times downplayed the severity of the pandemic, and now often the number of new cases is higher in the Trump states.<\/p>\n
Biden set a goal several months ago of having at least 70% of adults in the U.S. getting at least one vaccine shot by the annual July 4th Independence Day holiday. The U.S., however, fell short of that objective and the number now stands at 68.1%, according to government statistics.<\/p>\n
Facebook on Saturday pushed back against claims that it is to blame for people not getting vaccinated.<\/p>\n
In a blog post, Facebook said Biden and his aides should stop \u201cfinger-pointing\u201d and detailed what it had done to encourage inoculations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,\u201d said Guy Rosen, Facebook\u2019s vice president of integrity. \u201cThe fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the U.S. has increased.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosen said the company\u2019s data showed that 85% of its U.S. users had been or wanted to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. \u201cFacebook is not the reason (the 70% goal) was missed,\u201d Rosen said.<\/p>\n
Over a period of months, Facebook has acted against misinformation on its site, banning anti-vaccination ads and later removing posts with false claims about vaccines, such as that they cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract the coronavirus than to be inoculated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON – U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Sunday he is worried about the increasing number of new coronavirus cases in the country and laid part of the blame on social media companies for not doing enough to remove misinformation about the need to get vaccinated. \u201cI\u2019m concerned about what we\u2019re seeing,\u201d Murthy told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recposts"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96980,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96977\/revisions\/96980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}