August 21, 2021

NPR reports that Facebook held back an internal study showing its most-viewed link in early 2021 was a news article raising doubts about the vaccine, a disclosure that fed the wider push to police what Americans could see and say about the shots. Actor Sean Penn tells CNN that being unvaccinated is like pointing a gun in someone’s face, the kind of moralizing framing that became common as the summer wore on.

The messaging had a grimmer counterpart. Tennessee radio host Phil Valentine, who had questioned the vaccine, dies of COVID and receives wide coverage built around his family’s plea for listeners to get the shot.

In Alabama, where ICUs are full and vaccination rates are among the lowest in the country, Donald Trump holds a large rally. In Australia, police arrest scores of people and report several officers injured as demonstrators across the country protest lockdowns that had stretched on with no clear end.