Knowing what misinformation is being shared can help you generate effective messaging.
These insights are based on a combination of automated media monitoring and manual review by public health data analysts. Media data are publicly available data from many sources, such as social media, broadcast television, newspapers and magazines, news websites, online video, blogs, and more. Public health data analysts from the PGP (The Public Good Projects) triangulate this data along with other data from fact checking organizations and investigative sources to provide an accurate, but not exhaustive, list of currently circulating misinformation.
This week in misinformation
Trending Misinformation about Vaccines & COVID-19
- Claims are spreading that the WHO considers school attendance informed consent to be vaccinated. These claims are sensationalizing the WHO’s description of how implied consent processes work, used to stoke fears that vaccines are being used for population control.
- As flu season approaches, many are talking about how taking the flu vaccine might increase the risk of getting COVID-19. Studies done prior to the COVID-19 pandemic on the risk of contracting respiratory infection after receipt of flu vaccine are being used to demonstrate the risk of flu vaccine. According to the CDC, “flu vaccination will be very important to reduce flu because it can help reduce the overall impact of respiratory illnesses on the population and thus lessen the resulting burden on the healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
- In the weeks after Africa was declared eradicated of wild polio, some groups are emphasizing the presence of vaccine-derived polio to question the Gates Foundation’s vaccination efforts. In addition to funding the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the Gates Foundation is also heavily involved in funding COVID-19 vaccine development and trials, which are also active in Africa. Some radical vaccine opposition sites are using the Gates’ connection to vaccines in Africa as evidence of the conspiracy that Bill Gates wants to depopulate the planet.
- Claims are spreading that the WHO considers school attendance informed consent to be vaccinated. These claims are sensationalizing the WHO’s description of how implied consent processes work, used to stoke fears that vaccines are being used for population control.
- As flu season approaches, many are talking about how taking the flu vaccine might increase the risk of getting COVID-19. Studies done prior to the COVID-19 pandemic on the risk of contracting respiratory infection after receipt of flu vaccine are being used to demonstrate the risk of flu vaccine. According to the CDC, “flu vaccination will be very important to reduce flu because it can help reduce the overall impact of respiratory illnesses on the population and thus lessen the resulting burden on the healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
- In the weeks after Africa was declared eradicated of wild polio, some groups are emphasizing the presence of vaccine-derived polio to question the Gates Foundation’s vaccination efforts. In addition to funding the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the Gates Foundation is also heavily involved in funding COVID-19 vaccine development and trials, which are also active in Africa. Some radical vaccine opposition sites are using the Gates’ connection to vaccines in Africa as evidence of the conspiracy that Bill Gates wants to depopulate the planet.