Anti-vaxxers misuse VAERS clearing house Covid data to undermine vaccine efforts

Anti-Vaxxers Turn Covid Data Into a Weapon Here’s the latest news from the global pandemic. Kristen V Brown Bloomberg.com

In a misleading video that recently went viral on Facebook, a man narrates as he scrolls through possible Covid-19 vaccine side effects reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a U.S. government-run clearinghouse for potential issues with vaccines. 

“See that? All of them are dead people! Dead people!” he exclaims. “Why does nobody talk about them dying from the vaccine? Much less Covid itself.”

The video has been viewed on Facebook more than 21,000 times since late March. In the final episode of “Doubt,” a Prognosis podcast that explores vaccine hesitancy, we look at how VAERS has become a favored tool of anti-vaccine groups, and how to combat their misinformation.

The answer might be found in a simple but not so easy attitude adjustment from public health officials. Studies suggest anti-vaccine groups are able to spread misinformation, in part, because health officials haven’t done a good job establishing confidence in vaccines in the first place. 

VAERS is a perfect example. Anyone—a doctor, a patient or even an anti-vaccine activist—can post a report about what they perceive as a vaccination side effect. If patterns emerge, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration investigates. The same information is also available to the public, even though it hasn’t been verified or fact-checked.

While that’s turned VAERS into a source of misinformation, it still provides a critical public service. Last week, for instance, the CDC and FDA recommended a pause in the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid shot after six cases of rare blood clots were reported on VAERS among nearly 7 million people who had received the vaccine.

Anti-vaccine propaganda, though, twists facts into a distorted reality. “Latest VAERS data shows vaccine injury trends continue,” read one email newsletter headline from a major anti-vaccine group last week. What makes this content so difficult to combat is that it’s not so much factually inaccurate as it is lacking crucial context.

In this case, the number of serious side-effects are minuscule compared to the lives potentially saved by the vaccine. Yet public health officials rarely acknowledge the dangers that do exist, which enables anti-vaccine groups to weaponize them.

“We want to be transparent about only the positive things,” says Chris Martin, a professor at West Virginia University School of Public Health. “We struggle when it comes to those negative things.”—Kristen V. Brown 

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