The internet is unquestionably the most extraordinary and impressive invention of our time. Some influential writers consider the internet to be the greatest invention of humankind, and suggest that everything people have invented up till now, including the invention of writing, has led us to the internet.

And yet, there is also an argument that the internet, in its myriad forms, is deforming society, decreasing trust in institutions and warping politics around the world. Which is more correct?

Well, in support of the latter argument, I give you Jay Naidoo, former Cabinet minister and die-hard anti-vaxxer. 

I’m slightly picking on Naidoo – there are lots of anti-vaxxers out there, but you know, I’ve just had it. For most of us, Covid is a distant and horrible memory, and yet he is still going on about vaccinating.

Every second post and repost to his 200,000-plus followers on X, as recently as a few weeks ago, is something from some or other attention-seeking nitwit with limited knowledge about the Covid vaccine. 

And here is the irony: Naidoo is a caring, thoughtful, smart person. When I was a parliamentary reporter way back when, I bumped into him often when he was a minister in Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet. He was an open, considerate, solicitous minister, and in many ways smarter and more accomplished by a long shot than a lot of his peers.

Yet now, his approach is transparently like so many anti-vaxxers out there; the application of scientific rationality is seen as a kind of evil institutional censorship and oppression, which he and his brave cohorts are heroically trying to face down.

In Naidoo’s world, he is the victim, and those encouraging vaccination are the manipulative, lying, tyrannical despots. He tends to cling to snippets of truth by pseudo-scientists, and “questions” things because, you know, he is just a humble participant in the cosmos.

Well, here is the truth: the debate is long past. 

That anti-vaxxers are still going on about it says far more about them than it does about pro-vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers are arguing in a vacuum; nobody cares any more.

For those who are interested, the facts can be summarised in a sentence: vaccinations, like many other medical treatments, potentially have side effects that can be harmful. 

Calculated risk

The responsibility of science is to calculate the risk – is the risk of the side effects greater than the risk of the disease? In the case of Covid, the answer to that question is so obvious; the vast majority of the healthcare community around the globe recommended administering the vaccines. 

I honestly don’t mind Naidoo’s decision to question the application of vaccines, their efficacy, the systems used, and all the other now hoary debates we had a few years back. 

I don’t mind the touchy-feely poems he keeps publishing about the evils of Western thought and the sacred geometry of the world. 

What I do mind is his inability to add. I mean, simply add. This is not deep theoretical mathematics. It’s your basic, school version of maths. 

In late 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined 600,000 cases and found that the unvaccinated were about 11 times more likely to die of the disease and 10 times more likely to be hospitalised with the disease.

So keep that in mind: if you were not vaccinated at the height of the most virulent form of the disease, the likelihood of your death was over 10 times that of someone who’d had a jab. 

But there were side effects; many trivial, but some serious. The three main ones were thrombosis, myocarditis and pericarditis. So what proportion of people who took the Covid vaccine got myocarditis, for example? The answer is 64.9 per 100,000, ie, infinitesimal. Myocarditis is treatable and rarely results in death – do you know what increases your chances of getting it? Contracting Covid, of course.

South African figures

In SA, the numbers look roughly like this. Overall, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority reports that 38,342,910 cumulative doses of Covid vaccine have been administered. There were 234 reports of deaths: every single one is under investigation. Exactly 176 of those were found to be coincidental; in 44 cases, information was lacking; 10 cases were indeterminate; in three cases, death was linked to taking the vaccine. Three.

As the Covid infection decreases in severity (as infectious outbreaks do), at some point the proportion of side effect risk will equal the risk of the disease itself. 

But overall, the world’s response to Covid was magnificent; a technological and organisational wonder. 

Rough calculations by the Global Alliance for Vaccines are that about 20 million lives were saved, by comparing death rates in countries that had the vaccine with those that didn’t.

Of course, there were legitimate debates to be had about keeping kids out of school, lockdowns, the expense, harm to businesses, etc. But for anyone to be throwing shade at the aims and intentions of the people involved in battling a lethal pandemic, especially a former Cabinet minister, is just hateful and stupid.

Social media

If there is an argument in favour of the notion that social media, and the internet broadly, is fostering this kind of weird paranoia, what precisely would the proposition be? 

I suppose it would be this: before the internet, information flows were extremely mediated, and it was comparatively more difficult to convincingly air and publicise a contested view. Newspaper editors would toss your bonkers letter into the bin, for example. But generally, I think it’s great to have lots of contested views. Why is this bad?

After the advent of the internet, two things began to operate in tandem. 

First, internet algorithms are inclined to elevate views similar to your own, however outlandish they might be, feeding you content to satisfy the pre-existing views and prejudices of practically anyone with any given view. 

The total volume and variety of views necessarily make all views seem equally valid. By introducing infinite diversity and false equivalence, the internet has effectively downgraded the institutional view. 

Institutional trust levels

As Martin Gurri suggests, there has been a general bleeding away of authority; the advent of a very angry public, and a public mired in negation.

Second, this tends to intensify what we describe as confirmation bias. 

Confirmation bias is perhaps the most obvious and pernicious of the 14 or so biases that people are susceptible to. It’s the tendency to favour and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. 

The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs, Wikipedia tells us. And it’s not affected by intelligence; ie, smart people are as susceptible as dumb clucks. Doesn’t that all just ring a bell?

How disruptive to life and politics is this effect?

This is a much harder question to answer. After all, despite the best efforts of Naidoo and people like him, South Africans, and people all over the world, submitted to the vaccine process. The vast majority of SA’s citizens believed the science. Fabulous. Hats off to us.

On the other hand, the world’s political systems are transparently more fragile and more susceptible to populists, and levels of institutional trust are sitting at all-time lows. 

But there could be all kinds of reasons for that, including, most obviously, the increasingly bifurcated nature of global power. To my mind, the correlation between those factors and the advent of the internet is conceivable but has yet to be demonstrated. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a journalist, but I prefer to have the facts first. DM