An English actor has made several false allegations on social media about COVID-19 vaccines to deter people from stabbing. This check will address the most damaging claims.
Sean Ward, a soap star known for supporting the anti-lockdown and anti-mask movement (here), has posted several videos on social media criticizing the safety of vaccines. One video was originally posted on Ward’s account as an Instagram story in mid-March and has since been shared on Facebook (here). It was viewed by more than 47,000 people.
“Morning guys, it’s just your daily reminder that COVID-19 has an effective survival rate of 99.96% if you are 0 to 60 years old with or without an underlying health condition,” Ward says in the clip. “The vaccine has 95. The Johnson & Johnson has 81. So you’re taking the medicine that puts you at risk of dying from COVID, and you do not see the problem here.”
Ward continued: ‘Do not take any medicine that gives you a chance to fight the virus. Come. Common sense … If you take the vaccine, you will have symptoms that are few or none. Low to no symptoms, this is what the vaccine does. It does not stop the transmission, so you can still transmit it to someone, but you are going to have symptoms that are few or none, which makes you, sorry, asymptomatic. If you take the vaccine, you become asymptomatic. It turns you into a super spreader with an effective survival rate of 95%. And we’re those fucking nutjobs? The vaccine is not safe. ”
However, Ward’s allegations are not true – and they show a lack of understanding of the virus, the vaccine and various forms of data. Ward did not respond to a request from Reuters for clarification on his claims.
Vaccine efficacy and ‘survival rates’ are two different measures and cannot be directly compared. For example, if you are talking about a survival rate of a disease, it is likely that someone who already has the disease will survive. Vaccine efficacy, meanwhile, is the likelihood that the vaccine will prevent someone from contracting the disease in the first place.
When 95% of the vaccine efficacy is discussed, it does not mean that 95% of the people are protected while the remaining 5% COVID-19 catch and die. This means that people in the vaccinated group are 95% less likely to catch COVID-19 than the control group (here).
Reuters addressed the issue earlier by comparing mortality rates and vaccine efficiencies in a previous debunk here.
SURVIVAL RATE
First, both the Oxford / AstraZeneca and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines have been found to provide 100% protection against severe COVID-19, hospitalization and death in the analysis of Phase III clinical trials (here, here).
Second, it is not clear where Ward took the 99.6% survival rate; a rate that includes only people aged 0-60 years misses the important context of the increasingly deadly effects of the virus on older populations.
For example, there are 66.7 million people in the UK (here). About 0.19% of the population died within 28 days after receiving a positive COVID-19 test result. It may seem like a small percentage, but it covers 127,087 people (here).
Experts currently estimate that the mortality rate between COVID-19 and the mortality rate among infected persons is between 0.5% and 1% (here, here). This means that if the entire UK population were to catch COVID-19 (in other words, if there was an infection rate of 100%), it is estimated that between 333,500 and 667,000 people would lose their lives.
Marshall Shepherd, an American meteorologist who uses weather analogies to make statistical arguments about survival rates digestible, said such narratives with percentages are “short-sighted, statistically challenging and sad.”
He writes in Forbes magazine: ‘It strikes me that so many people do not understand the concept that many people have very small percentages … Imagine that the National Hurricane Center would give this warning:’ Hurricane SoandSo will land make in the Miami area there is a 99% survival rate, so do not take precautions and we are sorry in advance for the 1% we are likely to lose. ‘There are more than 6 million people in Miami. 1% of the 6 million people have 60,000 lives. It will be ridiculous ”(here).
The World Health Organization (WHO) made a similar remark to Reuters in October: “If 0.01% of the world population dies from a disease, it means a large number of deaths: 780,000 deaths, bringing the world population to 7.8 billion treasure “(here). If between 0.5% and 1% of the world’s population were to die, the calculation of the deadly lethal infection would be between 39 million and 78 million deaths. Just over 3 million deaths due to COVID-19 were reported on April 12 (here).
Ward’s argument also rejects the impact of ongoing diseases after contracting the new coronavirus, known as ‘long COVID’. Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, told Reuters in November that COVID is already a “significant chronic burden” among young and healthy, or among those who have experienced a mild initial infection (here) .
EFFECT OF ENTSTOE
Clinical trials and actual data have shown that COVID-19 vaccines are very effective in reducing both symptomatic and asymptomatic diseases.
Controlled studies show that approved COVID-19 vaccines reduce the risk of infection compared to people receiving the placebo. For Pfizer, this efficiency is 95% (here); 94.1% for Moderna (here), and 70.4% for AstraZeneca (here).
The government has also been monitoring the vaccine’s effectiveness since vaccines launched to the public and comparing the vaccine rates between vaccines and vaccines. Analysis published in late February said the Pfizer vaccine was between 85-6% effective against symptoms of COVID-19 in the elderly and health care workers. The government has said it is still working on the findings of AstraZeneca, but early signs suggest it offers similar protection. (here)
It is important that hospitalization and mortality rates have also dropped significantly since vaccination of vaccines began in December. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported on March 30 that the survey of COVID-19 hospitals in England had halved in the three weeks before March 21 (here). Meanwhile, the report said deaths also decreased by 35.8% compared to the previous week (here).
TRANSMISSION
Ward’s suggestion that COVID-19 vaccines give you low to no symptoms that ‘make you a superspreader’ is wrong. This may be due to his apparent misunderstanding about the effectiveness of the vaccine and how it differs from a survival rate.
The vaccine cannot give you COVID-19. The Pfizer and Moderna jabs use mRNA technology and the AstraZeneca shot uses viral vector techniques, both of which stimulate an immune response to the coronavirus without causing disease (here).
Discussions about whether transmission can still occur in those vaccinated against COVID-19 do not mean that people can spread the virus by getting the vaccine, but refer to situations where vaccinated recipients catch coronavirus after getting a jab. Research continues, but early data show positive signs, as highlighted in a recent Reuters fact check (here).
VERDICT
Untrue. Approved COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to be effective in protecting people from the disease. Vaccination of vaccine does not describe a survival rate; it is the percentage probability that a vaccinated group will contract the disease in the first place. Survival rates are also misleading because a small percentage can make up a large number of people.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.