07/18/2021 4:31 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 07/18/2021 4:31 PM
A day after
the forceful accusations against the social networks
of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, went around the world, Facebook came to his defense.
While the US president claimed that social networks are "killing people" by allowing false information about coronavirus vaccines to proliferate on their platforms, the social network argued that the figures tell a different story: "The data shows that Mark Zuckerberg 85% of Facebook users in the United States
have been vaccinated or want to be vaccinated against Covid-19, "
said the Menlo Park company in a post on its corporate blog by Vice President Guy Rosen.
"President Biden's goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4.
Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed."
Disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic has spread like wildfire on portals such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, all over the world and especially in the United States,
where conspiracy theories
have always had followers.
Researchers and lawmakers in the country have long accused Facebook of failing to monitor harmful content on its platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg contradicted Joe Boden.
AP Photo
Biden did launch his accusations at a time when
vaccination has stalled with 50% of the population inoculated across the country
, registering some resistance to vaccines in conservative states, where there are more supporters of former President Donald Trump, friend conspirators.
The company
has introduced rules against making
specific
false claims
about the covid disease and its vaccines, and says it provides people with reliable information on these topics.
The Delta variant of the coronavirus is now the dominant strain worldwide
, accompanied by an increase in deaths in the United States almost entirely among unvaccinated people.
Infections have increased by 70% on Friday compared to the previous week and deaths by 26%, with outbreaks occurring in parts of the country with the lowest vaccination rates, such as in the southern states.
Presidential anger
"The only pandemic we have is that of the unvaccinated
," Biden said Friday, in remarks similar to those made earlier by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The increase in the numbers is due to the existence of large sources of infection among the more than 90 million Americans authorized to be vaccinated, but who have not yet done so.
Four states with low vaccination rates
accounted for 40% of the new cases last week, and nearly half of them came from Florida.
Yet there is little desire in the White House to reimpose broad mandates for masks or other measures,
as 161 million Americans are fully vaccinated.
The government's new expression of frustration comes amid near-disbelief that tens of millions of Americans continue to refuse to be vaccinated,
unnecessarily prolonging the pandemic
and costing lives, as health officials emphasize that nearly all cases and serious deaths can now be prevented.
More than 99% of
COVID-19
deaths
and 97% of hospitalizations occur among people who have not been vaccinated, according to the CDC.
The pandemic is now
"one that predominantly threatens unvaccinated people,
" White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday.
He said the Biden administration
expects cases to increase in the coming weeks
due to the spread in communities with low vaccination rates.
Nonetheless, Zients added that there is a sign that the increase in cases is prompting more people in those communities to seek the vaccine, reporting that "states with the highest case rates are seeing their vaccination rates rise faster. than the national average.
Source: La Vanguardia, AFP and AP
PB
Look also
Hard message from Joe Biden against Facebook for disinformation: "They are killing people"
Joe Biden signs executive order to regulate tech monopolies