The massive vaccination campaigns against covid-19 feed an incessant flow of misinformation on the internet and social networks, rumors that exaggerate or invent the side effects of immunizers until the remedy becomes worse than the disease.
The distortion of health figures
Since the beginning of the vaccination campaigns, pharmacovigilance (the scientific branch in charge of detecting the side effects of drugs) has served as a tool to alarm public opinion.
In most countries, when a person or health personnel detect unknown effects after a vaccination, they can report it to the authorities, and these records are usually public.
It is up to the health authorities to determine if they are side effects.
Deaths are also included in these records. But the fact that a vaccinated person has died does not at all mean that the cause is the drug.
The undesirable effects of anticovid vaccines, such as myocarditis, pericarditis or arterial thrombosis, have been very rare, on a basis of billions of injected doses worldwide.
And despite this, social networks have published a large number of messages about the “thousands of deaths” that the vaccines supposedly have caused, including screenshots with figures from those public records.
At the beginning of November, in countries such as Taiwan or Australia, a large flow of information was detected on the networks about more deaths caused by vaccines than by the virus.
Speculations without scientific foundation
A recurring rumor on social media is that vaccination causes sterility. The AFP has dedicated several verification articles in this regard that deny that theory.
Another false danger: the drug causes Alzheimer’s disease. Another unsubstantiated speculation, which was written by an anti-vaccine militant.
As soon as the messenger RNA method began to be discussed, the theory circulated that this type of vaccine modifies the human genome. But the messenger RNA from the vaccine does not reach the nucleus of the cell, where our DNA is found.
The vaccine that makes you magnetic
Countless TikTok videos circulated this year about the possibility of the messenger RNA vaccine “magnetizing” your body, that is, becoming a magnet.
The images showed spoons, magnets “stuck” on the skin …
This rumor is based on two false theories: on the one hand, that vaccines contain computer chips or metallic substances, and on the other hand, that they use a technique known as magnetofection, which uses the chemistry of magnetic nanoparticles and magnetic fields to concentrate particles that they contain nucleic acid.
Another speculation related to these theories is that vaccines contain graphene, something totally false.
The famous vaccinated dead
The former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, died last October at the age of 84, of complications related to the covid, despite the fact that he had been twice vaccinated.
That sparked an avalanche of comments about the alleged ineffectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines.
But those claims left out two major illnesses Powell suffered from. On the one hand, a multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that affects the immune system, and on the other, Parkinson’s disease.
Manufacturers and scientists have explained on countless occasions that the effectiveness of vaccines decreases among the elderly and people who suffer from other diseases, because the immune system of these people is weaker.
This is also the case of a famous musician from the French island of Guadeloupe, Jacob Desvarieux, 65.
He died in July from covid, despite having been vaccinated, fueling rumors on an island where opposition to vaccination is very strong.
However, those pseudonoticias forgot an important detail: the musician had undergone a recent kidney transplant.
