America’s COVID-19 vaccination program has been plagued by logistical problems since the beginning, but it increasingly seems that a new enemy – disinformation – is proving to be even more dangerous. On social media, individuals have been perpetuating myths about the COVID-19 vaccine for weeks, claiming that it can cause infertility or alter a person’s DNA, none of which is true.
The latest myth, that the vaccine is responsible for several recent deaths, may be the most alarming.
The idea gained momentum with the loss of famous baseball player and civil rights activist Hank Aaron, who died on January 22, two weeks after receiving the Modern vaccine. Aaron’s death was determined as a result of natural causes, but left some questions about whether his recent inoculation played a role. A similar conversation circulated online a few weeks earlier, when a Florida doctor died of a rare blood disorder, 16 days after receiving the vaccine. His death led to deleted Reddit topics asking if there was a link.
But now, with more than 33 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in the United States, is there any evidence that they are deadly? In interviews with Yahoo Life, three infectious disease and vaccinology experts say the allegations are unfounded and likely motivated by a desire to make sense of the world. “Human beings are programmed to think that way, and that deceives them – temporality is not causality,” says Dr. Gregory Poland, an immunologist and director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic. “In other words, just because the event happened in association with another event doesn’t mean it was caused by it.”
Susan Ellenberg, professor of biostatistics, medical ethics and health policy at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees. “People are always looking for a cause,” says Ellenberg. “Why did this happen to me? Why did it happen to my son? Why did it happen to my spouse? There is a certain comfort in at least knowing the cause and when you have something that happens in close temporal proximity, it is an obvious thing to look at. ”
Ellenberg points to the large clinical trials that Moderna and Pfizer conducted as evidence of their safety – trials that were not only much larger than typical vaccine studies, but also much longer. Following these studies, both vaccines received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, which conducted a rigorous analysis of their safety data. The main side effects, as confirmed by the CDC, remain non-fatal and temporary, such as muscle pain, fever and fatigue.
Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease specialist and professor at the University of Southern California, says that deaths in the following weeks should not attract suspicion. “Most serious vaccine events will occur in 15 or 30 minutes,” says Klausner. Anaphylaxis, for example, a severe allergic reaction, occurs within minutes of exposure and can be treated with EpiPen. The CDC says it is occurring at a rate of 11 in a million for COVID-19 vaccines.
Poland adds that, with more than 30 million doses administered, it would be extremely clear at this point whether the vaccine was deadly. “What if [the COVID-19 vaccine] if we had up to a 1 percent chance of causing death, we would have hundreds of thousands of deaths – that would be noticed immediately, ”he says. “We are not seeing any difference in the background [death] fees and that is what is important. “
Ellenberg, who spent more than a decade at the FDA, says Americans need to realize that the deaths will happen. “The vaccine aims to prevent the disease associated with the infection, but it cannot prevent other bad things that happen to people,” she says. “This will not prevent you from dying in an automobile accident. This will not prevent you from having a heart attack. All the things that happen especially to the elderly. So when you start giving millions and millions of people a vaccine, all the bad things that would have happened to people without the vaccine are still going to happen. “
As someone who has spent decades helping people better understand vaccine safety, Ellenberg says he understands the desire to link tragedy to a vaccine. “It’s the most natural thing in the world,” she says. “So I don’t blame people for being suspicious.” But she hopes that Americans understand that two things that happen at the same time do not prove that one caused the other. “Some people will go through bad things and, incidentally, some will happen right after the vaccine,” she says. “Even though it seems difficult to think that it is a coincidence, when you have millions and millions of people, coincidences will happen.”
“People should feel confident about this vaccine,” adds Klausner. “Both in safety and at work.”
To latest coronavirus news and updates, go together on https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and immunocompromised remain the most at risk. If you have questions, consult the CDC‘sand Who is it resource guides.
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