The magnetic attraction of anti-vaccination theories
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Venezuela is the first foreign country to start using Cuba’s Abdala vaccine — despite warnings from Venezuelan local health authorities and doctors that there isn’t enough publicly available data about the shot’s efficacy and safety. Cuban officials have said the vaccine is 92% effective, but its clinical data has yet to go through peer review or be shared with the World Health Organization. Venezuela has the lowest vaccination rate in South America, with less than 1% of the population having received shots imported from China and Russia.
As infection rates spiked again across tranches of Asia this week, three Central Asian countries — Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan — took a cue from Russia and introduced mandatory vaccinations. In Kazakhstan, the move caused protests and a reported increase in demand for fake vaccination certificates. Proponents of mandatory immunization argue that Russia, where vaccination rates are now rapidly rising, shows that mandating that people get their shots works. But data analysis, published by the radio station Ekho Moskvy, has compared Russian regions with mandatory vaccine policies to those without. It concludes that forcing individuals to be inoculated doesn’t work. A far bigger factor in vaccination uptake is whether or not the pandemic stays in the headlines.
Remember when a nurse from Ohio tried to stick a key to her neck to show that she had been magnetized by her Covid-19 shot? A video of Joanna Overhold, trying to prove the alleged side effects in a court hearing on House Bill 248 — a motion to bring the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act to law in the state — went viral in June. Overhold looked frustrated and comical, trying and failing to get keys and a hairpin to stick to her skin. But, while she may have failed, the myth seems to be holding. Coda’s Alexandra Tyan finds the latest source of the lie in, of all places, Luxembourg. Keep reading.