EASK
“Do you want to take a 33% vaccine to feel safe against a virus with a .06% death rate?”
DETAILS
Incorrect: The claim that a COVID-19 vaccine has a mortality rate of 33% is not supported by scientific evidence. This claim is probably based on a separate false claim about a non-existent COVID-19 vaccine species from Ukraine.
KEY TAKE AWAY
More than one hundred COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in the midst of testing worldwide. The claim that a COVID-19 vaccine has a 33% “death rate” is false; there is no evidence to support it. The claim is likely based on a separate false claim that five of the 15 volunteers – including four Ukrainian soldiers – died in a fax test in Ukraine, which was refuted by the Ukrainian army. Despite efforts to accelerate the usual timelines used in vaccine development, COVID-19 vaccines are not approved by public health authorities until they undergo rigorous safety and efficacy tests. A vaccine with a proven 33% “death care system” has not been and would never be approved for use in the US like most other countries.
FULL CLAIM: “Do you want to take a 33% vaccine to feel safe against a virus with a .06% death rate?”
REVIEW
Facebook posts (for example) ask the question “Do you want to take a vaccine with a mortality of 33% to feel safe against a virus with a mortality of 0.06%?” began circulating in late July 2020, and has received more than 10,000 interactions on Facebook, according to social media analytics tool CrowdTangle. The identity of the virus and the vaccine are not explicitly mentioned in the post, but it probably refers to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 vaccine.
The claim is probably based on a recently debunked claim about a COVID-19 vaccine trial in Ukraine that never took place
The question posed in the post introduces the false premise that a COVID-19 vaccine has been developed and found that it causes death in 33% of people who receive it. Although the Facebook posts do not provide information on the source of this figure, it is likely based on a recent false claim that five out of 15 test subjects died in a clinical trial conducted in Ukraine, which tested a COVID-19 vaccine that The assumption was developed in the US The claim, which was attributed to the Lugansk Media Center (example) and the Lugansk People’s Republic, was debunked in factual checks published by Vox Ukraine and AFP Fact Check. Lugansk is a city in eastern Ukraine that is involved in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia. The claim was also published by News Front, an outlet known for publishing pro-Russia disinformation, according to PolitiFact.
PolitiFact reportedly found no record of a COVID-19 vaccine trial conducted in Ukraine in ClinicalTrials.gov, “a database of private and publicly funded clinical trials conducted around the world”, which is managed by the US National Library of Medicine. Similarly, the ISRCTN Registry, a clinical trial registry recognized by the World Health Organization and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, does not contain a record of such a study. Vox Ukraine also stated, “There is no confirmed information about the start of the COVID-19 vaccination in Ukraine” and “The Ministry of Defense has not reported [about COVID-19 vaccination], if. ”
According to AFP Fact Check, the Ukrainian army also refuted the claim, with spokesman Oleksiy Mazepa confirming, “There are no tests with our soldiers. This is obviously false news. This is the way Russian propaganda works. ”
The involvement of the Lugansk Media Center and the Lugansk People’s Republic in the propaganda of this claim suggests that it may have originated as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Outlets with references to the Russian government have had a track record of misinformation about faxes and COVID-19, among other topics. EUvsDisinfo, a project of the European External Action Service’s Task Force EastStratCom, which tackles Russian disinformation campaigns, has documented these ongoing campaigns here and here.
In a 2018 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from George Washington University who study more than 1.7 million tweets found that Russian trolls and bots contributed to false information about faxes by promoting traffic and false equivalence, the emergence of a truly public debate on faxes. promoting, and wavering faxes[1].
Faxes are rigorously tested and checked for safety
As of August 9, 2020, more than 165 COVID-19 vaccine candidates worldwide are in development, according to the New York Times Coronavirus Fax Tracker. A vaccine remains the only way to secure herd immunity, as Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington, and Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, in a New York Times opinion piece.
It is challenging to determine the exact percentage of immunizations needed to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 in a population, as the number depends on many biological and social variables, such as Marm Kilpatrick, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, explains in this Twitter thread. One study published in Science used a mathematical model that considered variations in human behavior to estimate that herd immunity would be achieved when 43% of a population was immune to the disease[2]. In contrast, an article published in Immunity estimated that about 67% of the population must be immune[3]. However, this estimate is based on the model of classical herd immunity, and the authors have warned that ‘this model requires simplification of assumptions, such as homogeneous population mixing and uniform sterilizing immunity in recovered individuals across demographic groups, which are probably not true. [in real life]”.
Although there is pressure to develop a COVID-19 vaccine rapidly, scientists insist that vaccine safety should remain a top priority. “You really have to test a vaccine, and not just roll it out, because people are clapping for it with an epidemic going on,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, in a PNAS news article published March 30, 2020.
Shibo Jiang, a virologist at Fudan University, also warned of important consequences if vaccines and therapies reach the market before adequate safety tests are performed. ‘The public’s willingness to reduce quarantines and other public health measures to spread slowly has declined in correlation with how many people trust the government’s health advice. An urgency in potentially risky vaccines and therapies will forget that confidence and discourage the development of better assessments, ”he wrote in a Nature article.
Vaccine candidates, including those for COVID-19, must pass various stages of clinical trials proving their safety and efficacy before being approved for public use in the US (see figure below), the United Kingdom, Australia, the European Union , and other parts of the world.
A COVID-19 vaccine that kills one in three people would not pass clinical trials or be licensed by health authorities, as this would be considered an unacceptably high risk for serious adverse effects.
Overall, the claim that a COVID-19 vaccine has a “33% mortality rate” is false and not supported by scientific evidence. It is probably based on a separate claim, which was refuted by multiple sources.
While it remains unclear which, if any, of the COVID-19 vaccine candidates currently being tested will eventually be licensed for public use, there has been an increase in misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. Health Feedback has reviewed some of these claims, including the false claims that RNA vaccines alter our DNA and that a volunteer died during a fax trial in April. The proliferation of such misinformation has left its mark. According to an article published in Science on June 30, as few as 50% of Americans plan to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, while in France more than 25% said they would not receive a vaccine. In the UK, around 16% of people surveyed said they would refuse a vaccine and another 16% said they were unsure.
