The attack on the people of Africa has always been methodical and concentrated: Introducing the Mercury Project!

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

The Mercury Project (run by the Social Science Research Council, and funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation) has invested $7.2 million in behavioural research focused on convincing more people to the benefits of taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Mercury Project, which alludes to the ancient Roman god Mercury of messages and communication, is funding researchers to discover new, evidence-based, data-driven tools, methods, and interventions to counter mis-and disinformation and to support the spread and uptake of accurate health information.

This is not news that is hot in the press, but it is definitely not news that you will hear readily propagated on mainstream media, so I thought it best to share it with the community. In September 2021, the SSRC received a three-year $7.5 million grant from Rockefeller Foundation toward the cost of launching the research consortium to drive acceptance and uptake of COVID-19 vaccination efforts, but their main goal is to counter health mis-and dis-information. The grant will be funded through to August 31^st, 2024.

The money will be distributed to 12 teams working in 17 countries in order to better understand how health mis-and dis-information spreads, how to combat it, how to build stronger information systems, and of course to continue to push the vaccine agenda.

The first cohort of social and behavioural scientists can be found in: Bolivia, Brazil Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, Haiti, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, United States, and Zimbabwe.

Do you think that it is a coincidence that most of this research is happening in Africa. The attack on the people of Africa has always been methodical and concentrated, and it is not a surprise that the colonizing elites are once again going back in to cause even more damage. One of the reasons for this concentrated effort is the fact that Africans are hesitating to get COVID-19 vaccines amid concerns about their safety.

According to the World Health Organization, Africa, whose 1.3 billion people represent 16% of the world’s population, has received less than 2% of the COVID-19 vaccine doses administered around the world, and African leaders seek to vaccinate up to 60% of its people by the end of 2022.

Each team on The Mercury Project received over $600,000 to research topics including: “Combatting health mis-information with community-crafted messaging,” and “Developing a scalable community-driven approach in Latin America and the United States.”

Teams are studying how to harness influencers to counter misinformation and censor dissenting viewpoints on social media through network-transforming interventions for reducing the spread of health misinformation online.

According to The Mercury Project website (https://www.ssrc.org/), “The information networks that carry public health guidance into communities are among the most essential elements in a disease outbreak response. However, in today’s information ecosystem, accurate information is not getting through to everyone, everywhere. The viral spread of mis-and dis-information has been widely acknowledged as a major and growing threat to public safety and to effective pandemic response.”

What I find interesting is that once again, they are targeting Africans on the continent as well as Africans living in the diaspora. Dr. Alonzo Plough, Chief Science Officer and Vice President of Research-Evaluation-Learning at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had this to say.

“Mis-and dis-information disproportionately impacts communities of colour and plays out in the context of structural racism and a history of medical abuse and neglect in this country. It feeds off of racial tensions and deep-seated socioeconomic anxieties in ways that are harmful to individual health and trust in community institutions.

We need to understand how an individual’s information ecosystem forms and evolves and what makes it vulnerable to mis-and dis-information; we need to develop more targeted interventions to counteract mis- and disinformation; and we need better ways to ensure that everyone has access to accurate, high-quality information from a source they can trust. Research on these topics will help to define the future role for public health in keeping our information environment safe.”

So basically, they are going to research how we think so that they can find ways to override our resistance to their messaging. Community, I would love to hear what you think about this. Have they not taken enough from our beautiful continent? Have they not caused enough damage? Apparently not!