Malice has never earned its rightful place in a civilized society. During a pandemic, it is even more reprehensible.
These past few days we learned that the Internet—which has greatly helped people, communities, and industries during this pandemic—was used to create disruption, chaos, and confusion with regard to the ongoing vaccination drive to combat COVID-19.
For example, at least two Facebook accounts announced that the Quezon City government was accepting walk-in vaccinations on certain sites, leading to overcrowding and causing a potential super spreader event over the weekend.
“This is definitely a work of malicious intent,” said Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte on the ABS-CBN News Channel. “Unlike other fake news, we don’t know the cause. This one was a deliberate Facebook post on two different troll accounts.”
Last week, just before the enhanced community quarantine came into force again in the capital region and environs, an inordinate number of people swarmed to vaccination sites in Las Piñas, Manila, and Antipolo in the mistaken belief that they would not be allowed outdoors or receive cash aid if they were not vaccinated.
In the City of Manila, troll farms are suspected to be behind the hacking of the website for vaccination registration. The city government said it was highly likely that the attack was triggered by bots that generated at least 1.2 million registration requests during a single night. The result was that legitimate Manila residents encountered difficulty getting into the system.
An initial probe traced the high volume of requests to five IP addresses.
We have no way of understanding what the motive could be behind these interventions. This is a time when we should be helping each other in many ways—hanging onto a job or finding one, reminding one another about safety protocol, providing for families’ basic needs, obtaining medical assistance, and getting inoculated against the deadly virus—the only way we can collectively outpace and defeat the pandemic.
Amid the great need to be helpful, constructive, compassionate, and reasonable during this period of grief and danger, some people perversely choose to do the opposite. There is a special place in hell for those who derive pleasure out of such acts. These people should be fished from their murky hideouts, paraded in shame, and then thrown into jail for all the aggravation they cause an already beleaguered nation.
