Misinformation Alerts

In a post that has been widely shared on social media, a former New York Times reporter is claiming that a person is 300 to 900 times more likely to die from a COVID-19 vaccine than the flu vaccine. This conclusion was made using data from the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS). This post continues a trend of incorrectly using self-reported VAERS data to draw causal links between vaccines and adverse health events. The VAERS is a passive surveillance system in which any individual can self-report any health problem following self-reported immunization. VAERS is the official US vaccine adverse event reporting system, maintained and monitored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However, reports to the VAERS do not determine if a vaccine caused a reaction or death; if a report is found to have merit, it begins the first of many subsequent steps taken by health officials to investigate adverse events.

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Social media users are sharing a new website that compiles both anecdotal reports of adverse events following COVID-19 immunization and information reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is a passive surveillance system in which any individual can self-report any health problem following immunization, maintained and monitored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The new website is not affiliated with any health authority or research institution. The site directs its users to search for adverse events in its searchable database, and provides videos, some several hours long, taking viewers through individual self-reported events or exploring news stories on adverse events. Videos are hosted on sites where fact checking is left up to individual users. The site itself is linked to a network of sites known to promote conspiracy theories.

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A widely circulated article is claiming the CDC has inflated the number of COVID-19 deaths by 1600%, due to changing the way COVID-19 deaths are recorded. This claim had been fact checked and found to be false previously, but has resurfaced due to routine guidance coming from the US National Center for Health Statistics on updating COVID-19 mortality data collection codes for a World Health Organization system (not the CDC). Death reporting has not changed significantly in the US during the pandemic, and health officials actually believe COVID-19 deaths are undercounted.

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News is spreading that South Africa paused use of AstraZeneca-Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine after a small-scale, unpublished study found it was less effective at preventing mild to moderate disease from the B1351 variant strain, dominant in South Africa. Misinformation is circulating that the vaccine is ineffective against all strains of the virus. Research studies are under way to confirm these preliminary findings, and to study the vaccine’s effectiveness in older adults, as some European countries the study’s earlier trials did not have sufficient data on this group. The World Health Organization has approved the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for use in all adults, paving the way for its use in low- and middle-income countries.

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Anti-vaccine advocates, including senior leaders in the movement, are claiming that requiring a COVID-19 vaccine is a violation of the Nuremberg Code and health care providers who administer the vaccines are guilty of war crimes.

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