“This is exactly what anti-vaccine groups do,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease specialist and author of ‘Prevention the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science’, said.
The same groups blame the accidental medical problems of patients on joint shots, even if it is clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said. “They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone gets a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine,” Hotez said.
As more elderly people get their first joint shots, they will inevitably suffer from unrelated heart attacks, strokes and other serious medical problems – not because of the vaccine, but rather because of their age and deteriorating health, said epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the University. of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
In a group of 10 million people, nearly 800 people aged 55 to 64 usually die within a week from heart attacks or coronary heart disease, Osterholm said. Public health officials “are not ready” for the onslaught of news and social media stories, he warns.
“The media will write a story that John Doe got his vaccine at 08:00 and had a heart attack at 16:00,” Osterholm said on his weekly podcast. “They will make assumptions that it is cause and effect.”
Osterholm, who was on President Joe Biden’s Transitional Coronavirus Advisory Board, needs to do a better job of communicating the risks of vaccines.
“You have one chance to make a first impression,” Osterholm said. “Even if we come back later and say, ‘No, [the deaths] had nothing to do with vaccination, it was coronary artery disease, ‘the damage has already been done.’
Anti-vaccine groups such as the National Vaccine Information Center and Children’s Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are already raising fears about a handful of deaths – mostly in Europe – that followed the global vaccination.
In a blog post, Kennedy mocked the results of autopsies that concluded that the death of a Portuguese woman was not related to a vaccine. He doubts statements by medical authorities in Denmark that the deaths of two people there after vaccination were due to old age and chronic lung disease. In an interview, Kennedy said that deaths after vaccination of many debilitated and terminally ill nursing homes in Norway are a danger sign. Norwegian officials said the elderly patients died from their underlying diseases, not from the vaccine.
“Coincidence is very lethal to recipients of COVID vaccines,” Kennedy wrote. Kennedy described the deaths as suspicious, accusing medical officials of following an “all-too-familiar vaccination propaganda playbook” and “strategic chicks.”
Here in the US, opponents against vaccines have spoken out about the tragedy of dr. Gregory Michael, a 56-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist in Florida, to cast doubt on vaccine safety and government oversight. Michael died on January 5 after experiencing a catastrophic drop in platelets – elements in the blood that control bleeding – suggesting he could have developed immune thrombocytopenia.
According to a Facebook message from his wife, Heidi Neckelmann, doctors tried a variety of treatments to save her husband, but none worked.
A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said the agency was investigating Michael’s death, as did all possible vaccine-related health problems.
Authorities in California have recommended vaccinations with a specific amount of covid vaccines made by Moderna due to a high amount of allergic reactions. After an examination, vaccinations resumed a few days later.
“We are going to see these events happen, and we need to follow up on each of these issues,” Osterholm said. “I do not want people to think that we are sweeping them under the rug.”
Many Americans were already nervous about gut vaccines, with 27% saying they “probably or definitely” would not get a chance, even if the shots were free and deemed safe by scientists, according to a survey by KFF in December. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)
These people are particularly vulnerable to misinformation against vaccines, says Rory Smith, research manager at First Draft, a non-profit organization that reports misinformation online.
A rare condition
Seven experts in blood disorders interviewed by KHN said there was not enough information available to blame Michael’s decline in a vaccine, and that the benefits shown by covid vaccinations outweighed the potential risk of bleeding. Even if researchers conclude that Michael’s vaccine caused his death, it would still be an incredibly rare event, given that more than 20 million doses have been administered.
“No one should dwell on the question of whether the vaccine is safe,” said Dr. James Zehnder, a hematologist and director of clinical pathology at Stanford Medicine, said.
Michael’s bleeding disorder could have developed quietly for some time, said dr. Adam Cuker, director of the Penn Blood Disorders Center at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, said. It may be a coincidence that Michael started showing symptoms shortly after vaccination. About 30 Americans are diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenia every day.
The timing of Michael’s illness suggests it has a different cause, doctors said. According to his wife’s Facebook message, his bleeding problems started three days after his first gift shot. It takes the body 10 to 14 days after vaccination to generate antibodies needed to cause immune thrombocytopenia, said Dr. Cindy Neunert, a pediatric hematologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.
In most cases, the cause of thrombocytopenia is never known, says Dr. Deepak Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Immune thrombocytopenia has rarely been linked to certain vaccinations, with approximately 26 cases for every 1 million doses of measles vaccination.
But it can also be caused by viruses, including measles and the new coronavirus, said Dr. Sven Olson, an assistant professor of hematology-medical oncology at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, said.
Many patients with immune thrombocytopenia are now wondering if they should be vaccinated against covid, Cuker said. Cuker said he encourages nervous patients to be vaccinated, noting that any problems can be treated by carefully monitoring their platelet levels and adjusting medication if necessary.
Even in patients with underlying bleeding conditions, it is still safer to be vaccinated than to be covid, Zehnder said.
“If you give a vaccine to a large enough number of people, there will be rare side effects, but there will also be incidental events unrelated to the vaccine,” Cuker said. “If an anti-vaccine group uses a single case, where no connection has been proven, to discourage people from getting vaccinated, it’s terrible.”
Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, said her website provides balanced information from trusted news sources, including CNN, CBS and the Miami Herald, as well as Pfizer and the CDC.
In an interview with KHN, Kennedy said he questioned why government officials so quickly dismissed the connection between vaccinations and deaths. “How in the world do they know if it’s a vaccine injury or not?” he asked.
“We’re not discouraging anyone from being vaccinated,” Kennedy said. ‘All we do is pass on the data, that’s what the government needs to do. “We express the truth, that’s what the medical agencies have to do. ‘
Alternative facts?
Opponents of the vaccination have for months downplayed concerns about the new coronavirus, fighting masks and fighting home orders and contact tracing, said Richard Carpiano, a professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California-Riverside.
“They fought against every social health measure to control the pandemic,” Carpiano said. “They said public health is public enemy No. 1.”
Anti-vaccine activists have recently been so eager to discredit vaccinations that they covid blame the deaths of people who are very much alive.
Social media users edited a video of a Tennessee nurse, Tiffany Dover, to make it look like she died after being vaccinated, while actually fainting, says Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Although Dover recovered quickly, social media users posted a fake death certificate and obituary. Anti-vaccine activists have also harassed Dover and her family online, Reiss said. He wrote Dover’s ordeal in a blog post.
Anti-vaccine activists are proficient in manipulating videos, Smith said.
“They are notorious for using videos and images that have the detrimental effects of vaccines, such as autism in children, and attacks on other vaccines,” Smith said. “The more emotional and graphic the videos and images are – whether or not they are actually linked to vaccines – the better.”
In December, several Facebook posts falsely claimed that a nurse in Alabama had died after receiving one of the state’s first vaccines. One
Twitter user went so far as to identify the nurse as Jennifer McClung, who worked at Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama. In fact, McClung died of covid. Social media messages spread so widely that Alabama Department of Health officials contacted every hospital in the state to confirm that no vaccinated staff member had died.
“Anti-vaccine groups often build fables around a tiny, tiny grain of truth,” Smith said. “That’s why misinformation, specifically misinformation about vaccines, can be so compelling. … But this information is almost always taken completely out of context, creating claims that are misleading or completely false.”
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has twisted a news report about the deaths of 24 people in a nursing home in New York State and wrongly accused them of guilty of guilty vaccinations. However, the original article notes that a serious outbreak at the nursing home began in late December before residents received any vaccines. Covid vaccines, which require two doses for full protection, did not arrive in time to save the residents’ lives.
Kennedy repeated the misinformation in his blog – and again wrongly accused the residents’ deaths from vaccinations – although he linked to a local news station that reported the information correctly.
The distortion of facts to discourage vaccination, Cuker said, is “very irresponsible and detrimental to public health.”
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a non-profit news service that covers health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
