Recycled disinformation: the infertility myths that conspiracists are borrowing from the past
Justin Bieber, unwittingly, has become the latest poster boy for the anti-vax community. The 28-year-old singer recently announced on Instagram that he was suffering from a rare disorder — Ramsay Hunt Syndrome — that had left his face partially paralyzed and forced him to cancel several upcoming shows. The condition is caused by varicella, a virus that also leads to chickenpox and shingles. When it affects a nerve in the ear, it can lead to partial paralysis.
Since Bieber’s video message, vaccine skeptics have been tweeting screenshots of his paralyzed face using hashtags like #vaccineinjuries and #vaccinedeaths. Some turned the screenshots into memes, with captions like “the face you make when they say ‘trust the science.’” Others scolded Bieber for requiring a Covid-19 vaccination certificate for his concerts in 2021 and even composed poems mocking his predicament.
There is no evidence that the singer’s condition is the result of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to epidemiologist Katrine Wallace. She explained in a Twitter thread that since the paralysis is caused by the varicella virus, the singer’s condition is in fact a vaccine-preventable disease. At 28, Bieber is likely too old to have received a varicella vaccine (which came into broad circulation in North America the mid-late 1990s) in childhood, but too young to be considered vulnerable to shingles. Vaccines against shingles are typically recommended for people ages 50 and older.
In other vaccine-related news, posts have been circulating online claiming that Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company behind the BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, aims to halve the world’s population by 2023. A post in Spanish, originally shared on the messaging app Telegram and later reposted on Facebook, captioned “CEO PFIZER: OUR GOAL IS TO REDUCE 50% OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION BY 2023” includes a video excerpt of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla talking at the World Economic Forum in May, reports Argentinian independent fact-checking service Chequeado. Similar posts have been spreading in English, Italian and French.