America’s COVID-19 vaccination program has been plagued by logistical problems from the start, but it seems more and more that a new enemy – misinformation – is even more dangerous. On social media, individuals have been perpetuating myths about the COVID-19 vaccine for weeks, claiming it can cause infertility or alter a person’s DNA, which is not true.
The latest myth that the vaccine is responsible for several recent deaths may be the most worrying.
The idea started steaming with the loss of the famous baseball player and civil rights activist Hank Aaron, who died on January 22, two weeks after receiving the Moderna vaccine. Aaron’s death was determined to be the result of natural causes, but left the question of whether his recent vaccination played a role. A similar conversation took place online a few weeks earlier when a doctor in Florida died of a rare blood disorder 16 days after receiving the vaccine. His death has led to Reddit threads that have since been removed being questioned as to whether there is a link.
But, with more than 33 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine being administered in the US, is there evidence that it is lethal? In interviews with Yahoo Life, three experts on infectious diseases and vaccinations say that the claims are unfounded and probably motivated by the desire to make the world meaningful. “People are wired to think so, and it deceives them – temporality is not a cause,” says Dr. Gregory Poland, an immunologist and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group. “In other words, just because the event took place in conjunction with another event, does not mean it was caused.”
Susan Ellenberg, professor of biostatistics, medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, agrees. “People are always looking for a cause,” Ellenberg says. ‘Why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to my child? Why did this happen to my spouse? There is a certain comfort in knowing at least the cause, and if you have something nearby, it’s an obvious thing to look at. ‘
Ellenberg points to the large clinical trials that Moderna and Pfizer conducted as proof of their safety – trials that were not only much larger than typical vaccine studies, but also much longer. In the wake of these studies, both vaccines were authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, which conducted a careful analysis of their safety data. The major side effects, as confirmed by the CDC, are still not life-threatening and temporary, such as muscle aches, fever and fatigue.
Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease expert and professor at the University of Southern California, says deaths that occur in the weeks that follow should not create any suspicion. “Most serious vaccine incidents will occur within 15 minutes or 30 minutes,” says Klausner. Anaphylaxis, for example, a severe allergic reaction, occurs within minutes of exposure and can be treated with an EpiPen. The CDC says it occurs at a rate of 11 out of a million for the COVID-19 vaccines.
Poland adds that with more than 30 million doses given, it would be extremely clear at this point if the vaccine was lethal. ‘As [the COVID-19 vaccine] “Even if we had 1 percent chance of causing death, we would have hundreds of thousands of deaths – it would be noticed immediately,” he says. ‘We just see no difference in the background [death] rates and that’s what’s important. ”
Ellenberg, who has spent more than a decade with the FDA, says Americans need to realize that deaths will occur. “The vaccine is meant to prevent diseases associated with the infection, but it can prevent any other bad things that happen to people,” she says. “It will not stop you from dying in a car accident. This will not stop you from having a heart attack. All the things that happen especially with older people. So if you start giving a vaccine to millions and millions of people, all the bad things that would have happened to people without the vaccine are still going to happen. ‘
As someone who has been helping people better understand vaccine safety for decades, Ellenberg says she understands the desire to link a tragedy to a vaccine. “It’s the most natural thing in the world,” she says. “So I do not blame people for being suspicious.” But she hopes Americans understand that two things at once do not prove that one caused the other. “Some people will experience bad things, and some will happen to happen shortly after a vaccine,” she says. “While it may seem hard to think it’s coincidental, coincidences will happen if you have millions and millions of people.”
“People need to have confidence in this vaccine,” Klausner adds. “Both in safety and that it works.”
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over the age of 60 and those with an immune system are at greatest risk. If you have any questions, please refer to the CDCse en WIE’s resource guides.
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