RT: Maria Van Kerkhove, Head ai Emerging Diseases and Zoonosis at the World Health Organization (WHO), speaks during a press conference on the situation of the coronavirus at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, January 29, 2020.
Denis Balibouse | Reuters
A senior World Health Organization official said Tuesday that misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines is preventing people from getting the injections, leading to an increase in cases around the world.
“Over the past four weeks or so the amount of misinformation out there seems to be getting worse and I think this is really confusing for the general public,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical director on Covid, while a question-and-answer live stream on the organization’s social media channels.
Misinformation has become another risk factor that “really makes the virus thrive,” she said.
Public health executives have blamed conspiracy theories and misinformation for growing suspicions about vaccines around the world – so much so that US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared Covid misinformation a “serious public threat” in July.
Misinformation has become a growing problem during the outbreak, fueling concerns about vaccines among a suspicious public, health officials say. They hope that the Food and Drug Administration’s formal approval of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, announced Monday, will help encourage some people to get vaccinated to get the vaccinations.
According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted July 15-27, three in ten unvaccinated Americans said they would be more likely to receive the vaccine once it is approved by the FDA. Some medical experts fear that some unvaccinated Americans have used the lack of full FDA approval as a credible explanation for their reluctance and are now looking for other reasons to refuse the vaccine.
Most unvaccinated Americans believe that the Covid vaccines pose more of a threat to their health than infecting themselves with the virus, according to Kaiser’s data. Americans, who are the least likely to get a Covid-19 vaccine, are mostly white, Republican, and less likely to have a college degree, according to Kaiser’s data.
Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said misinformation about the vaccine was “one of the greatest challenges we still face in getting the public vaccinated”.
“We have heard false claims that the Covid-19 vaccine causes infertility, contains microchips, and causes Covid-19,” Marks said. “And worse, we’ve heard false claims that thousands of people died from the vaccine. Let me be clear: these claims are just not true.”
Misinformation about alternative treatments for Covid-19 has gone so far that the FDA and the Mississippi State Department of Health issued warnings over the weekend to warn Americans not to take the animal deworming drug ivermectin.
The Director of the Latin America Branch of WHO, the Pan American Health Organization, personally appealed to residents of the Caribbean to “wake up” and get vaccinated from the slumber of the misinformation spreading across the islands.
Misinformation has plagued public school board meetings across the country as school districts weigh mask and vaccine mandates for children and staff returning for the upcoming school year. Parents and community residents have appeared at public school board meetings to interview education and public health officials to consider masking requirements, and videos of residents citing unproven and false claims about Covid and vaccines have gone viral on social media become.
The vaccination could help us get Covid under control by spring, according to the President’s senior medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“I would like to appeal to the people in the country who are not vaccinated to recognize that we have the opportunity to substantially shorten the time frame until the end of this pandemic,” Fauci said during a press conference Tuesday. “Get vaccinated and the time frame will be shortened dramatically.”
