Viral Posts Lift Bogus 'Quarantine' Story from Satire Site

SciCheck Digest

A satire site a month ago published a joke about the Biden administration creating “quarantine camps” for the unvaccinated. Now that fabricated story is circulating online, presented as if it’s real.

Some employers have required their employees to be vaccinated, or undergo regular testing, for COVID-19. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said that employers aren’t prevented from having a mandatory vaccination policy for COVID-19 for employees who are physically in the workplace, as long as employers comply with federal laws stipulating that reasonable accommodations should be made for workers who cannot be immunized because of a disability or religious reason.

President Joe Biden also signed executive orders in September 2021 to require all federal workers and contractors who do business with the federal government to be vaccinated.

But the Supreme Court blocked a broader effort by the Biden administration to require all businesses with 100 or more employees to mandate that workers either be fully vaccinated or tested at least once a week.

In January 2022, the high court put the administration’s rule on hold while an appeals court considers its legality. In the ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s attempt to use the Occupational Safety and Health Act to issue an emergency rule requiring vaccination or testing. “Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers,” the court’s opinion reads, “it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly.”

However, the Supreme Court allowed an administration requirement that health care workers at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding be fully vaccinated, with exemptions for medical and religious reasons.

In that opinion, issued the same day as the OSHA ruling, the court agreed that the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services had the authority to issue the requirement. In its ruling, the court said that “healthcare facilities that wish to participate in Medicare and Medicaid have always been obligated to satisfy a host of conditions that address the safe and effective provision of healthcare” and that vaccination requirements for other diseases were common for health care workers nationwide.

States also can require individuals to be vaccinated.

As legal and public health expert Joanne Rosen of Johns Hopkins University has explained, the legal precedent for states to make vaccinations compulsory goes back to a 1905 Supreme Court case involving the smallpox vaccine. The court sided with the state, finding that the vaccination requirement was a reasonable regulation to protect public health.

The federal government cannot direct states to issue a vaccine mandate, but could provide financial incentives for states to do so.

“[T]he Supreme Court has interpreted the Tenth Amendment to prevent the federal government from commandeering or requiring state officers to carry out federal directives,” the Congressional Research Service explained in a 2019 report. “In the context of vaccination, this principle prevents Congress from requiring states or localities to pass mandatory vaccination laws, but it does not impede Congress from using its Spending Clause authority to provide incentives (in the form of federal grants) to states to enact laws concerning vaccination.”

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A spoof story has been circulating on social media, presented as though it’s real, spreading the false claim that unvaccinated Americans will be sent to “quarantine camps.”

It’s completely made up.

The story originated on a website called The Stonk Market, which includes a disclaimer at the bottom of each page that says, “TheStonkMarket.com is a financial satire site.”

The original story was posted on June 17 with this headline: “President Joe Biden Announces Americans Not Vaccinated Before 2022 Will Be Put In Camps.”

Less than a week later, two other sites had copied it. They both included a satire disclaimer at the bottom of the story. But social media users missed the note and left comments like this one on Facebook: “Oh he really wants a civil war…doesn’t he???!!!”

Actor Noel Gugliemi, known for his role in “The Fast and the Furious” movies, shared a screenshot of the headline from one of the copycat sites with his 276,000 Instagram followers. He didn’t include a satire disclaimer at all and, instead, posted a comment that claimed, “Either put the poison in you or will try forcing the poison in you, either way you’ll get it or else.”

The same screenshot was then featured in a TikTok video that’s been viewed more than 939,000 times. That video then migrated to another Instagram account, where it’s been viewed more than 38,000 times.

Not only is the claim about “quarantine camps” completely fabricated, but Biden has said that he doesn’t think vaccines should be federally mandated.

As we’ve explained before, as far back as Dec. 4 — before he had taken office and before the first vaccines were available — Biden was asked about potential vaccine mandates. He answered, “No, I don’t think it should be mandatory. I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power, just like I don’t think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide, I’ll do everything in my power as president of [the] United States to encourage people to do the right thing.”

His administration has maintained that posture since he took office.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki answered a question about the cruise industry and vaccine passports at a May 24 press conference by saying, “[W]e are not instituting vaccine passports from a federal level. We certainly understand that industries will make their own decisions about how to continue their — the work they need to do.”

Then, at a July 12 press briefing, Psaki reaffirmed that the federal government wouldn’t mandate vaccinations, although she said the administration would support entities that do require the shots.

“That’s not a decision that we are making. That’s not a — that is not our intention from the federal government,” Psaki said, responding to a question about local mandates. “There will be decisions made by private-sector entities, by universities, by educational institutions, and even perhaps by local leaders, should they decide that is how to keep their community safe. If they decide to make that decision, we certainly support them in that step.”

The administration has encouraged people to get vaccinated, though, consistently highlighting the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

And Biden recently emphasized the importance of vaccination since the more easily transmissible delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 has become the dominant variant in the U.S.

“[M]illions of Americans are still unvaccinated and unprotected,” Biden said on July 6. “And because of that, their communities are at risk. Their friends are at risk. The people they care about are at risk. This is an even bigger concern because of the delta variant.”

He announced a shift in the focus of the vaccination program from large-scale facilities to, instead, “meet people where they are.” The administration is going to focus on supplying vaccines to local pharmacists and physicians and to invest in mobile vaccination clinics that can go to sporting events, places of worship, summer festivals — “wherever we can find people gathered,” Biden said.

“Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” Biden said.

The phrase about going “door to door” whipped up controversy among some conservative politicians and media personalities, who cast it as something akin to a mandate or forced vaccination scheme. For example, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, of Colorado, referred to the people knocking on doors as “Needle Nazis,” and Fox News host Tucker Carlson said, “I honestly think it’s the greatest scandal in my lifetime by far. … The idea that you would force people to take medicine they don’t want or need, is there a precedent for that in our lifetimes?”

But, as we’ve explained, there’s no evidence to support the claim that the outreach effort would result in forced vaccinations.

And, contrary to Carlson’s claim that vaccines aren’t needed, the seven-day rolling average of daily deaths from COVID-19 has declined by more than 90% since the vaccines became available in the U.S. The seven-day average of daily deaths was 2,781 on Dec. 14; as of July 20, it was down to 237, according to the CDC.

Psaki has made it clear that the federal government will not require anyone to be vaccinated against their wishes.

“What we’re doing is local officials are going to areas where there are lower vaccination rates and providing information on where people can get access to a vaccine, where they can go, that it’s free,” Psaki told reporters on Air Force One on July 7. “It’s up to individuals to decide whether they want to get vaccinated or not.”

The outreach effort relies on “trusted messengers” — who are largely doctors and community and faith leaders — going door to door in areas with low vaccination rates to answer questions and talk about the vaccines, Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, explained at a July 8 press briefing.

So, there is no evidence of a forced vaccination program or quarantine camps for the unvaccinated.

Editor’s note: SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over our editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.

Sources

“President Joe Biden Announces Americans Not Vaccinated Before 2022 Will Be Put In Camps.” Thestonkmarket.com. 17 Jun 2021.

Biden, Joe. “Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response and the Vaccination Program.” Whitehouse.gov. 13 May 2021.

Biden, Joe. “Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response and Vaccination Program.” Whitehouse.gov. 2 Jun 2021.

Gore, D’Angelo. “Greene’s Deceptive Claims of Forced COVID-19 Vaccinations and Vaccination ‘Deaths.’” FactCheck.org. Updated 21 Jul 2021.

“Joe Biden Speech on 2020 Job Numbers & Economy.” Video. Rev.com. 4 Dec 2020.

Psaki, Jen. “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki.” Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 12 Jul 2021.

Biden, Joe. “Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response and the Vaccination Program.” Whitehouse.gov. 6 Jul 2021.

Boebert, Lauren (@laurenboebert). “Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis to Mesa County. The people of my district are more than smart enough to make their own decisions about the experimental vaccine and don’t need coercion by federal agents. Did I wake up in Communist China?” Twitter. 8 Jul 2021.

“‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ on critical race theory, July 4th.” Transcript. Foxnews.com. Updated 8 Jul 2021.

Psaki, Jen. “Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Jen Psaki Aboard Air Force One En Route Crystal Lake, IL.” Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 7 Jul 2021.

Zients, Jeff. “Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials.” Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 8 Jul 2021.