The top 10 wildest anti-vaccination theories and why a Covid-19 shot won’t alter your DNA
Welcome to the Infodemic. We're tracking disinformation is shaping the global pandemic response. Here are the narratives that have grabbed our attention this week and deserve yours.
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We had been warned. From the very start of the pandemic, scientists said that coming up with a Covid-19 immunization and distribution plan would only be half of the battle. Fending off disinformation against it, would be the other. And, now, that fight has begun. As the UK injected its first patients with Pfizer’s vaccine, we watched in real time as myths and fake news about it spread across social media, threatening the roll out and endangering public health.
Newsguard, a company that ranks reliability of news sites has an excellent rundown of the top 10 wildest vaccine theories. The best known among them, which states that Covid-19 vaccine will use microchip surveillance technology created by Bill Gates, is obviously on the list. Others include the idea that a Covid-19 vaccine will contain aborted human fetal tissue (it won’t), has been proven to cause infertility in 97% of recipients (it hasn’t) and will turn us all into monkeys (pretty unlikely).
The new vaccine is also a challenge to skeptics because it doesn’t contain any of the ingredients that anti-vaxxers traditionally rally against, such as preservatives and viruses. Instead, it employs brand new technology using mRNA, which essentially works like a messenger, telling the body how to recognize and fight the coronavirus. And that’s behind the biggest and most prevalent Covid-19 myth. Isobel Cockerell explains and debunks it below, so keep reading.