Vaccine Expert: "It will not have a chip or manipulation" 0:58
(CNN) -
Anti-vaccine groups are exploiting the suffering and deaths of people who fall ill after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, threatening to undermine the largest vaccination campaign in US history.
In some cases, anti-vaccine activists are making up stories of deaths that never happened.
"This is exactly what anti-vaccine groups do," said Dr. Peter Hotez, Infectious Diseases Specialist and author of the book "Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccination Diplomacy in Times of Anti- science."
Anti-vaccine groups have falsely claimed for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism, weaving fantastic conspiracy theories involving the government, big business, and the media.
Now, the same groups blame the patients' overlapping medical problems on covid vaccines, even when it is clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said.
"They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone receives a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine," Hotez said.
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As more seniors receive their first doses of Covid-19 vaccines, many will inevitably suffer unrelated heart attacks, strokes, and other serious medical problems, not because of the vaccine, but because of their age and deteriorating health. said epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
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"Cause and effect" of vaccines
For example, in a group of 10 million people, nearly 800 people between the ages of 55 and 64 typically die of heart attacks or coronary artery disease in one week, Osterholm said.
Public health officials are "unprepared" for the oncoming flood of news and social media stories, he warned.
"The media will write a story that such a person received their vaccination at 8 am and at 4 pm had a heart attack," Osterholm said on his weekly podcast.
"They will make assumptions that it is cause and effect."
Public health officials must do a better job communicating the risks, real and imagined, of vaccines, said Osterholm, who served on President Joe Biden's transitional coronavirus advisory board.
"You have a chance to make a first impression," said Osterholm.
"Even if we come back later and say, 'No, [the deaths] had nothing to do with the vaccination, it was coronary artery disease, the damage was done."
Anti-vaccine groups such as the National Vaccine Information Center and Children's Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are already stoking fears about a handful of deaths, mainly in Europe, that have followed the global launch of vaccines.
In a blog post, Kennedy poked fun at the autopsy results that concluded that the death of a Portuguese woman was not related to a vaccine.
He questioned statements by Danish medical authorities who said the deaths of two people there after vaccination were due to old age and chronic lung disease.
In an interview, Kennedy said the post that the vaccine deaths of some very frail and terminally ill nursing home patients in Norway are a danger sign.
Norwegian officials have said that elderly patients died from their underlying illnesses, not from the vaccine.
"The coincidence is proving to be quite lethal for recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine," Kennedy wrote.
He described the deaths as suspicious, accusing medical officials of following an "all too familiar vaccine propaganda playbook" and "strategic ruses."
In the United States, vaccine opponents have pounced on the tragedy of Dr. Gregory Michael, a 56-year-old Florida obstetrician and gynecologist, to cast doubt on the safety of vaccines and government oversight.
Michael died on January 5 after suffering a catastrophic drop in platelets, elements in the blood that control bleeding, suggesting that he may have developed immune thrombocytopenia.
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According to a Facebook post from his wife, Heidi Neckelmann, doctors tried a variety of treatments to save her husband, but none worked.
A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is investigating Michael's death, as well as all suspected vaccine-related health problems.
California authorities had recommended pausing vaccines with a particular batch of COVID vaccines manufactured by Moderna due to a high rate of allergic reactions.
Following an investigation, vaccinations were resumed a few days later.
"We are going to see these events happen and we have to follow up on each of these cases," Osterholm said.
"I don't want people to think that we are hiding them under the rug."
Many Americans were already nervous about covid-19 vaccines, with 27% saying they would "probably or definitely" not get an injection, even if the injections were free and scientists considered them safe, according to a December survey by KFF.
(KHN is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Foundation Foundation).
These people can be particularly susceptible to vaccine misinformation, said Rory Smith, research manager for First Draft, a nonprofit that reports misinformation online.
Thrombocytopenia, a rare condition
Seven blood disorder experts interviewed by KHN said there is not enough information available to blame a vaccine for Michael's decline and that the demonstrated benefits of covid vaccines far outweigh any potential bleeding risk.
Even if researchers conclude that Michael's vaccine caused his death, it would still be an incredibly rare event, given that more than 20 million doses have been administered.
"No one should think about whether the vaccine is safe or not," said Dr. James Zehnder, hematologist and director of Clinical Pathology at Stanford Medicine.
Michael's bleeding disorder could have developed quietly for some time, said Dr. Adam Cuker, director of the Penn Blood Disorders Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
It could be a coincidence that Michael started showing symptoms shortly after the vaccination, he said.
About 30 Americans are diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenia every day.
The timing of Michael's illness suggests it had another cause, doctors said.
According to his wife's Facebook post, his bleeding problems started three days after his first covid vaccination.
It takes the body 10 to 14 days after vaccination to generate antibodies, which would be necessary to cause immune thrombocytopenia, said Dr. Cindy Neunert, a pediatric hematologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.
In most cases, the cause of thrombocytopenia is never known, said Dr. Deepak Bhatt, executive director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Immune thrombocytopenia is rarely associated with certain vaccines, with approximately 26 cases per million doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
But it can also be caused by the viruses themselves, including measles and the novel coronavirus, said Dr. Sven Olson, assistant professor of Medical Hematology-Oncology at the Oregon Health and Sciences University School of Medicine.
Many patients with immune thrombocytopenia now wonder whether they should get vaccinated against COVID-19, Cuker said.
He urged nervous patients to get vaccinated, noting that any problems could be managed by closely monitoring their platelet levels and adjusting medication if necessary.
Even in patients with underlying bleeding conditions, "it is still safer to get vaccinated than to get COVID," Zehnder said.
"If you give a vaccine to a large enough number of people, there will be rare adverse events, but there will also be coincidental events not related to the vaccine," Cuker said.
"If an anti-vaccine group uses a single case, where no link has been shown, to deter people from vaccination, that's terrible."
Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, said her site provides balanced information from reputable news sources such as CNN, CBS and the Miami Herald, as well as Pfizer and the CDC.
In an interview with KHN, Kennedy said he wonders why government officials have been quick to dismiss connections between vaccines and deaths.
How the hell do they know if it's a vaccine effect or not? He wondered.
"We don't discourage anyone from getting vaccinated," Kennedy said.
"All we do is transmit the data, which is what the government should do ... We print the truth, which is what medical agencies should do."
Alternative facts?
Vaccine opponents have played down concerns about the new coronavirus for months, opposing face masks and fighting stay-at-home orders and contact tracing, said Richard Carpiano, a professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California-Riverside.
"They have spoken out against all public health measures to control the pandemic," Carpiano said.
"They have said that public health is public enemy number one."
Recently, anti-vaccine activists have been so eager to discredit immunizations that they have blamed COVID-19 for the deaths of people who are very alive.
Social media users selectively edited a video of a Tennessee nurse, Tiffany Dover, to make it look like she fell dead after being vaccinated, when in fact she simply passed out, said Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Hastings School of Law. in San Francisco.
Although Dover recovered quickly, social media users posted a fake death certificate and obituary.
Anti-vaccine activists also harassed Dover and his family online, said Reiss, who recounted Dover's ordeal in a blog post.
Anti-vaccine activists are experts at manipulating videos, Smith said.
"They are known for using videos and images that purportedly show adverse effects of vaccines, such as autism in children and seizures in other vaccine recipients," Smith said.
"The more emotional and graphic the videos and images are, regardless of whether they are actually linked to vaccines or not, the better."
In December, multiple Facebook posts falsely claimed that an Alabama nurse died after receiving one of the state's first covid shots.
A Twitter user went on to identify the nurse as Jennifer McClung, who worked at Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama.
In fact, McClung died of covid.
The social media posts were so widespread that Alabama Department of Health officials contacted every hospital in the state to confirm that no vaccinated staff members had died.
Anti-vaccine groups often build fables around "a tiny, tiny grain of truth," Smith said.
"This is why misinformation, specifically vaccine misinformation, can be so compelling ... But this information is almost always taken completely out of context, creating claims that are misleading or completely false."
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity misrepresented a story about the deaths of 24 people in a nursing home in upstate New York, incorrectly blaming their deaths on covid-19 vaccines.
The original article noted, however, that a covid outbreak in the nursing home began in late December, before residents received any vaccinations.
The covid vaccines, which require two doses for complete protection, did not arrive in time to save the lives of residents.
Kennedy repeated the misinformation, again incorrectly blaming the residents' deaths on vaccines, on his blog, though he linked to a local news station that reported the information correctly.
Distorting the facts to discourage vaccination, Cuker said, is "very irresponsible and damaging to public health."
- KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a non-profit news service that covers health topics. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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